"MY LADY AND MY LOVE."
Antonia was wounded to the quick by a revelation that lost her the one
friend whom she had counted as changeless amidst the fickle herd. She
knew of how airy a substance the friendship of the many is made; and,
pleasant as she found the polite world, she had as yet discovered no
kindred spirit, no woman of her own age, and tastes, and inclinations,
whom she could choose for her bosom friend. Lady Margaret Laroche was,
indeed, her only intimate friend amidst the multitude of her admiring
acquaintance. But in George Stobart, the man who dared to be uncivil,
who gave her vinegar and wormwood when she was satiated with the honey
and roses of modish society, she had found a closer sympathy, a quicker
appreciation of her ideas and aspirations, than in any one she had
known since those old days in Rupert Buildings, where she discussed
every thought and every dream with Kilrush. And stormily as that former
friendship had ended, she had never contemplated the possibility of
evil passions here, in that stern ascetic, the man who had renounced
the world, with all its pleasures, follies, and temptations. An
infidel herself, she had honoured Stobart for his steadfast faith, his
self-surrender.
She was troubled, shocked, distressed by the discovery that her friend
was unworthy. His absence made a blank in her life, in spite of her
innumerable distractions. The memory of his sin haunted her. She tried
in vain to banish the offender's image from her mind, and the thought
of him came upon her at strange seasons, and sometimes kept her awake
at night, like the hot and cold fits of an Indian fever.
She was not the woman to cherish weak sentimentalism, vain regrets
for an unworthy friend. She had lost him, and must endure her loss,
knowing that henceforward friendship was impossible. She could never
again admit him to her presence, never confide in him, never esteem
and honour him. The man she had trusted was dead to her for ever. It
was less than a week after the parting on Westminster Bridge when she
received a letter which removed all fear of any chance encounter with
the man who had offended her.
"The George Inn, Portsmouth.
"The wretch who writes these lines would scarce presume to
address you were it not to bid a farewell that is to be
eternal. I have gone back to my old trade of soldiering, and
am to sail from this place at the first favourable wind, to
serve in North America under General Amherst, with a company
of grenadiers, mostly volunteers like myself. 'Tis beginning
life again at the bottom of the ladder; but the lowest rank
in his Majesty's service is too high for the deserter from
Christ. The chances of savage warfare may bring me that
peace which I can never know in this world, and should I
fall I shall expire in the hope of salvation, trusting that
the Great Judge will be merciful to a sinner who dies in the
service of his King and country.
"If you ever think of me, madam, let it be with kindness, as
of one tempted beyond his strength, and not a willing sinner.
"GEORGE STOBART."
She put the letter away in a secret drawer of her bureau, but she did
not read it a second time. The lines were engraved upon her memory. She
was angry with him. She was sorry for him.
The friend was lost, but the world remained; and Lady Kilrush flung
herself with a new zest and eagerness into the modish whirlpool.
London was empty, but Tunbridge Wells was at the zenith. She took
the handsomest lodging in the little town, a stone's throw from the
Pantiles, with drawing-room windows looking over the Common, and
commanding all the gaiety of the place. She invited Patty Granger and
her General to spend the season with her, having an idea that her
old friend's joyous trifling would help her to be light-hearted and
prevent her brooding upon the past. She had not omitted Mrs. Granger's
name last season when sending out cards for her drums and dances; but
this invitation to Tunbridge was a more intimate thing, and Patty was
overwhelmed by her kindness. In the cosmopolitan crowd at the Wells, in
a company where German princes and English dukes rubbed shoulders with
tradesmen's wives from Smock-alley, and pickpockets newly released from
the Counter, Antonia's beauty and reckless expenditure secured her a
numerous following, and made her conspicuous everywhere. She could not
saunter across the Common with Mrs. Granger or Sophy Potter without
attracting a crowd of acquaintance, who hung upon her steps like the
court about the old King or the Princess of Wales.
Miss Potter declared that the Wells was like heaven. In London she saw
very little fine company, and only went abroad with her mistress when
her ladyship visited the poor, or drove on shopping expeditions to the
city. But manners were less formal at the Wells; and Sophy went to
picnics and frisked up and down the long perspective of country dances
hand in hand with persons of quality.
Never had Sophy known her mistress so eager for amusement as during
this particular season. She was ready to join in every festivity,
however trivial, however foolish, and diversions that had a spice of
eccentricity, like Lady Caroline Petersham's minced-chicken supper at
Vauxhall, seemed to please her most. She entertained lavishly, gave
breakfasts, picnics, dances, suppers--had a crowd at her tea-table
every evening; and Mr. Pitt being at the Wells that year, she gave
several entertainments in his honour, notably an excursion to Bayham
Abbey, in a dozen coaches and four, and a picnic dinner among the
ruins, at which the great minister--who had but lately grasped the
sceptre of supreme power--flung off the burden of public care, forgot
his gout and the dark cloud of war in Europe and America, Frederick's
reverses, misfortunes in Canada, while he sunned himself in Antonia's
beauty, and absorbed her claret and champagne.
"I could almost wish for another earthquake that would bury me under
these antique walls," he said gaily. "Sure, madam, to expire at your
feet were a death more illustrious than the Assyrian funeral pile."
"Sardanapalus was a worthless sybarite, sir, and the world could spare
him. England without Mr. Pitt must cease to be a nation."
"Nay, but think how glad Newcastle would be, and how the old King would
chuckle if a falling pillar despatched me. 'Twould be the one pleasing
episode in my history. His Majesty would order me a public funeral, in
his gratitude for my civility in dying. Death is a Prime Minister's ace
of trumps, and his reputation with posterity sometimes hangs on that
last card."
The minister's visit to Tunbridge was shortened by the news of
the taking of Cape Breton and the siege of Louisbourg, the first
substantial victory that English arms had won in America since
Braddock's disastrous rout on the Monongahela. Amherst and his dragoons
had landed on that storm-beaten coast in the nick of time. The
aristocratic water-drinkers and the little shopkeepers at the Wells
rejoiced as one man. Bonfires blazed on the Common, every window was
illuminated, martial music was heard on every side, toasts were drunk,
glasses broken, and a general flutter of excitement pervaded the Wells,
while in London a train of French standards were being carried to
Westminster Abbey, to the sound of trumpets and kettle-drums, and the
wild huzzas of the populace.
Antonia wondered whether George Stobart had fallen among the English
dragoons fighting in the trenches, of whose desperate courage old
General Granger talked so glibly. She heard of heavy losses on both
sides. She pictured him lying among the unconsidered dead, while the
cross of St. George waved above the shattered ramparts, and the guns
roared their triumphant thunder. She read the newspapers, half in hope,
half in fear of finding Stobart's name; but it was not till General
Amherst's despatches were made public some time later that her mind was
set at rest, and she knew that he lived and had done well.
That little season at Tunbridge, where people had to stay six weeks
for a water-cure, was a crowning triumph for Antonia as a woman of
_ton_. Never till now had she so concentrated her thoughts upon the
futilities of pleasure, never so studied every bill of fare, or so
carefully planned every entertainment. Her originality and her lavish
outlay made her the cynosure of that smaller great world at the Wells.
Everybody applauded her taste, and anticipated her ruin.
"The woman has a genius for spending, which is much rarer than a genius
for saving," said a distinguished gourmand, who dined twice a week
at Antonia's lodgings. "A fool can waste money; but to scatter gold
with both hands and make every guinea flash requires a great mind. I
doubt Lady Kilrush will die a pauper; but she will have squandered her
fortune like a gentlewoman."
Lady Peggy Laroche was at the Wells, and spent most of her leisure with
Antonia. While approving her _protégée's_ taste she urged the necessity
of prudence.
"Prythee, child, do not fancy your income inexhaustible. Remember,
there is a bottom to every well."
"Dear Lady Peggy, Goodwin could tell you that I am a woman of business,
and have a head for figures. I am spending lavishly here, but when the
season is over I shall go to Kilrush with Sophy and a footman, and
mope through the winter with my books and my harpsichord; and if your
ladyship would condescend to share my solitude I should need no more
for happiness."
"You are vastly kind, child, to offer to bury me before my time; but
I am too old to hibernate, and must make the most of my few remaining
winters in London or Paris."
"If you knew the romance and wild grandeur of that granite coast."
"Bond Street is romantic enough for me, _ma douce_. I depend upon
living faces, not granite rocks, for my amusement, and would rather
have the trumpery gossip of St. James's than the roar of the Atlantic."
After having sparkled at the Wells and lived in a perpetual _va et
vient_ of modish company, Lady Kilrush found life on the shores of
the Atlantic somewhat monotonous. Her nearest neighbours were ten
miles off. Dean Delany's clever wife could find hourly diversions in a
country seat near Dublin, where she could give a dance or a big dinner
every week, and had all the Court people from the Castle running in
upon her; but at Kilrush the solitude was only broken by visits from
Irish squires and their wives, who had nothing in common with the
mistress of the house. Antonia could have endured an unbroken isolation
better than the strain of trying to please uninteresting acquaintance.
She devoted a good deal of her leisure to visiting the cottagers on her
own estate, and ministered to every case of distress that came within
her knowledge, whether on her own soil or an absentee neighbour's. She
took very kindly to the peasantry, accepted their redundant flattery
with a smile, and lavished gifts on old and young. To the old, the
_invalides du travail_, her heart went out with generous emotion. To
have laboured for a lifetime, patient as a horse in the shafts, and to
be satisfied with so little in the end; just the winter seat by the
smouldering turf, by courtesy a fire; just to lie in front of the hut
and bask in the summer sunshine; just not to die of starvation.
The Gaffers and Gammers fared well while Antonia was at Kilrush; and
before leaving she arranged with her steward for tiny pensions to be
paid regularly until her return.
"You are not to be worse off for my going to England," she told one of
her old men, when she bade him good-bye.
"Sure, me lady, we should be the worse off for want of your beautiful
face, if you was to lave us the Bank of Ireland," replied Gaffer.
She went back to London in December, in a Government yacht that
narrowly escaped calamity, after waiting at Waterford over a week for
favourable weather. But Antonia enjoyed the storm; it thrilled in every
nerve, and set her pulses beating, and gave her something to think of,
after the emptiness of a life too free from worldly cares.
She could return to her house in St. James's Square without fear
of being troubled by the presence of the man who had made the word
friendship a sound that sickened her. That traitor was far away.
Assured of his absence, she went back to the slums by Lambeth Marsh,
where she was received with rapture. Her pensioners had not been
forgotten while she was away, since she had provided for all the
most pressing cases; but her return was like the coming of April
warmth after a bitter winter. Everywhere she heard lamentations at
Mr. Stobart's departure, although Wesley had filled his place with
another of his helpers, an indefatigable worker, but a raw youth of
unsympathetic manners and uncompromising doctrine. He was barely civil
to Lady Kilrush when they happened to meet, having been told that
she was an unbeliever, and did all in his power to discourage her
ministrations among his people.
"If your ladyship came to them with the Bible in your hand they might
be the better for your kindness," he said severely; "but the carnal
comforts of food and drink, which your generosity provides for them,
only serve to make them careless of everlasting bliss."
"What, sir, would you starve them into piety? Do you think 'tis only
because they are miserable upon earth that Christians long for the joys
of heaven? That is to hold the everlasting kingdom mighty cheap. Your
great Exemplar had a broader philosophy, and did not disdain to feed as
well as to teach His followers."
Antonia's heart was moved at the thought of the pretty young wife
deserted by her husband, and living in solitude, without the
distractions of fine company, or the delight in books and music which
filled the blank spaces in her own life. Impelled by this compassionate
feeling, she called on Mrs. Stobart one wintry afternoon, soon after
her return from Ireland, and was received with gratification which was
mainly due to the splendour of her coach, and the effect it would have
on the neighbours.
"Your ladyship has doubtless heard that my husband has gone back to
the army?" said Lucy, when her visitor was seated in the prim front
parlour, where the mahogany furniture shone with an increased polish,
and where there prevailed that chilling primness which marks a room
that nobody uses. "It was a sad blow to me and to Mr. Wesley; but
George always hankered after his old profession, though he knew it was
Satan's choicest trade."
"Nay, Mrs. Stobart, I cannot think that Satan has any part in the
calling of men who fight and die for their country. I doubt your
husband's life in America will be as unselfish as his life in Lambeth."
"'He has taken his hand from the plough.' That is what Mr. Wesley said.
'He was the best of my helpers, and he has deserted me,' he said. And
Mr. Wesley was sorry for my trouble in being forsaken by my husband."
She shed a few feeble tears as she dwelt upon her own dull life; but
she did not seem deeply impressed by the thought of her husband's
peril, or the chance that he might never come back to her.
"It was a cruel disappointment for me," she complained. "He had
promised to join the Church of England, and then we might have had a
vicarage, and he would have stayed at home, and only preached in his
parish church. He had promised to be a kinder husband."
"Kinder? Oh, Mrs. Stobart, was he ever unkind?" exclaimed Antonia,
kindling with the sense of injustice. She had noted his gentleness--his
supreme patience with the unsympathetic wife; so inferior to him in
mind and heart--a pink and white nullity.
"It was unkind to leave me while he went about the country preaching;
it was unkind to go back to the army and leave me alone for years, more
like a widow than a wife. And father comes and teases me for money now
that George is away. He dursn't ask for more than his allowance while
George was here."
"Your father is--a troublesome person?" inquired Antonia.
"I should think he was indeed. He kept himself tolerably sober while
mother was alive. She used to spend every penny on drink, and he
used to beat her for it, and both of them used to beat me. It was
a miserable life. Mother died in the hospital three years ago; and
when she was gone the thought of his unkindness to her seemed to prey
upon father's mind, and he was always at the gin-shop, and lost his
situation in the printing-office where he had worked half his life; and
then he came to us with a pitiful story, and my husband gave him ten
shillings a week, which was more than he could afford, without denying
himself, only George never minded. I don't think he would have minded
if he had been obliged to live like John the Baptist in the wilderness."
"And now Mr. Stobart is gone your father troubles you?"
"Indeed he does, madam. He comes for his money on a Saturday, looking
such an object that I'm ashamed for the servant to see him; and then
he comes again on Tuesday or Wednesday, and tells me he's starving,
and sheds tears if I refuse to give him money. And I'm obliged to
refuse him, or he wouldn't leave me a sixpence to keep the house. And
then father goes down the steps abusing me, and using the wickedest
language, on purpose for the neighbours to hear him. And he comes again
and again, sometimes before the week is out."
The idea of this sordid trouble oppressed Antonia like a nightmare.
She thought of her own father--so kind, so pleasant a comrade, yet
unprincipled and self-indulgent. It needed perhaps only the lower grade
to have made him as lost a creature.
"Let me give you some money for him," she said eagerly. "It will be a
pleasure for me to help you."
"Oh, no, no, madam. I know how generous you are; but George would never
forgive me if I took your ladyship's money. Besides, it would only do
father harm. He would spend it upon drink. There's no help for it.
Father is my cross, and I must just bear it. He has come to live in
the Marsh, on purpose to be near me; and he makes believe that he's
likely to get work as a book-keeper at the glass works. As if anybody
would employ a man that's never sober! And he's a clever man too, your
ladyship, and has read more books than most gentlemen. But he never
went to a place of worship, and he never believed in anything but his
own cleverness. And see where that has brought him! Sure I beg your
ladyship's pardon," concluded Lucy, hastily, "I forgot that you was of
father's way of thinking."
"You have at least the consolation of your son's affection, Mrs.
Stobart, and it must be pleasant for you to watch the growth of his
intelligence. Is he as healthy and as handsome as when I saw him last?"
"Handsomer, I think, your ladyship."
"Will he be home from school presently? I should love to see him."
"Nay, madam, that's impossible, for he is living at the Bath with his
grandmother, Lady Lanigan. Mr. Stobart wrote to her before he left
Portsmouth, a farewell letter that melted her hard heart. 'Twas after
the news of the taking of Louisburg, when her ladyship came here in a
terrible fantig, and almost swooned when she saw the boy, and swore he
was the image of his father at the same age."
"And she carried him away with her on a visit?"
"Yes, madam. She begged so hard that I could not deny her. For you
see, madam, he is her only grandson; and there's a fortune going
begging, as you may say. His father was too proud to try and bring her
round; but if Georgie behaves prettily, who knows but she may send him
to Eton--where his father was bred--and leave him the whole of her
fortune?"
"True, madam. No doubt you have done best for your boy. But I fear you
must feel lonely without him."
"Oh, I missed him sadly for the first week or two, madam; but a child
in a house, where there's but one servant, is a constant trouble. In
and out, in and out with muddy shoes, morning, noon, and night. 'Tis
clean, clean, clean after them all day long, and it makes one's girl
cross and impudent. He has his grandma's own woman to wash and dress
him, and a footman to change his shoes when he comes in from the
street."
"Is the visit to last long?"
"That depends upon his behaviour, and if her ladyship cottons to him."
"Well, so long as you can do without him, of course 'tis best," said
Antonia, in a dull voice.
Her mind was wandering to that exile whose name she would not
pronounce. To have sacrificed station and fortune for such a wife as
this--for a woman without heart or brains, who had not enough natural
feeling to tremble for a husband in danger, or to grieve at the absence
of an only child!
* * * * *
After a few visits to her Lambeth pensioners, Lady Kilrush wearied of
the work, and allowed herself to be charitable by deputy. She hated
the starched prig who had taken Stobart's place in the parish. She
missed the quick sympathy, the strength and earnestness of the man who
had helped her to understand the world's outcasts; and as her social
engagements were more numerous than last winter, she abandoned the
attempt to combine philanthropy with fashion, and made Sophy her deputy
in the Marsh.
Sophy had a tender heart, and loved to distribute her ladyship's
bounty. She liked the priggish Wesleyan, Mr. Samson Barker, who
lectured and domineered over her, but who was a conscientious youth,
and innocent of all evil, the outcome of nonconformist ancestors,
a feeble specimen of humanity, with a high narrow forehead, pale
protuberant eyes, and a receding chin. Impressed by his mental and
moral superiority, Sophy, who began by ridiculing him, soon thought him
beautiful, and held it one of her highest privileges to sit under his
favourite preacher, Mr. William Romaine, at St. Olave's, Southwark,
and to be allowed to invite Mr. Barker to Antonia's tea-table now and
then, where his appearance was a source of amusement to the rest of
the company, who declared that her ladyship was at heart a Methodist,
though she read Tindal and Toland, and affected liberal ideas.
"Before next season we shall hear of you among the Lady Bettys and
Lady Fannys who throng Lady Huntingdon's drawing-room, and intoxicate
their senses with Whitefield's raving," said one of her adorers; "and
then there will be no more dinners and suppers, no more dances and
drums--only gruel and flannel petticoats for old women."
Lady Kilrush drained the cup of London pleasures that winter, and was
a leader in every aristocratic dissipation, shining like a star in all
the choicest assemblies, but so erratic in her movements as to win for
herself the sobriquet of "the Comet."
"The last spot of earth where 'twould seem reasonable to expect you is
the place where one is most likely to find you," Mr. Walpole told her
one night, at a dinner of hard-drinking and hard-playing politicians,
where Antonia, Lady Coventry, and a couple of duchesses were the only
women in a party of twenty.
She had adorers of every age, from octogenarian peers, and generals
who had fought under Marlborough, to beardless boys just of age and
squandering their twenty thousands a year at White's and the Cocoa
Tree. The fact that she kept every admirer at the same distance made
her irresistible. To be adamant where other women were wax; to receive
the flatteries of trifling fops, the ardent worship of souls of flame,
with the same goddess air, smiling at her victims, kind to all, but
particular to none! That deliberate and stately North Briton, Lord
Dunkeld, hung upon her footsteps with an untiring devotion that was the
despair of a score of young women of quality, who wanted to marry him,
and thought they had pretensions for the place.
'Twas a season of unusual gaiety, as if the thirst for pleasure were
intensified by the news of the war, and the consciousness of fellow
countrymen starving, perishing, massacred, scalped, or burnt alive, in
the pathless forests across the Atlantic. The taking of Louisburg had
set all England in a tumult of pride and delight, to the forgetfulness
of the catastrophe at Ticonderoga, where there had been terrible losses
under Abercromby, and of the death of Lord Howe, the young, the ardent,
the born leader of men, slain by the enemy's first volley.
George Stobart's name figured in Amherst's despatches. He had fought
in the trenches with his old regiment; he had been with Wolfe in the
storming of Gallows Hill; and had been recommended for a commission on
account of his gallant behaviour. People complimented Antonia about her
"pious friend."
The King was near dying at the beginning of the winter, and the lion at
the Tower happening to expire of old age, while his Majesty lay ill,
the royal beast's dissolution was taken as a fatal augury, and his
master was given over by the gossips. But King George recovered, and
Sunday parties, drums and masquerades, auctions, ridottos, oratorios,
operas, plays, and little suppers, went on again merrily all through
the cold weather.
In the summer of 1759 Lady Kilrush carried out a long-cherished design
of revisiting Italy. When last in that country her father's critical
state of health had been a drag upon her movements. She would go there
now a free agent, with ample leisure to explore the region in which
she was most keenly interested, those romantic hills above the Lake of
Como, where her mother's birthplace was to be found.
She took Sophy, her French maid, Rodolphine, and her first footman, who
was an Italian, and travelled by Ostend and the Hague and the Rhine
to Basle, then by Lucerne and Fluellen, to the rugged steeps of the
St. Gothard, loitering on the road, and seeing all the churches and
picture-galleries that were worth looking at, her travelling carriage
half full of books, and her maid and footman following in a post-chaise
with the luggage, which was a lighter load of trunks and imperials than
a woman of _ton_ might have been supposed to require, her ladyship's
travelling toilette being of a severe simplicity.
When George II. was king there was a luxury of travelling, which made
amends for the want of the _train de luxe_ and the _wagon-lit_. It was
the luxury of slowness; the delicious leisure of long days in the midst
of exquisite scenery--by lake, and river, and mountain pass--that had
time to grow into the mind and memory of the traveller; journeys in
which there were long oases of rest; perfumed summer nights in quiet
places, where the church bell was the only sound; mornings in obscure
galleries where one picture in a catalogue of a hundred was a gem to
be remembered ever after; glimpses of humble lives, saunterings in
market-places, adventures, perils perhaps, an alarm of brigands, ears
listening for a sudden shot ringing sharp among snow-clad hills--all
the terrors, joys, chances, surprises of a difficult road; and at one's
inn a warmth of welcome and a deferential service that in some wise
atoned for bad cooking and ill-furnished rooms.
To Antonia that Italian journey offered a delicious repose from the
fever of London pleasures. After George Stobart's departure for America
there had been a jarring note in the harmony of life--a note that had
to be drowned somehow; and hence had come that craving for excitement,
that hastening from one trivial pleasure to another, which had made her
so conspicuous a figure in the London of last winter.
In the solemn silence of everlasting hills, in a solitude that to Sophy
seemed a thing of horror, Antonia thought of her last season; the
crowded rooms, reeking with odours of pulvilio and melting wax, the
painted faces, the atmosphere of heat and hair-powder, the diamonds;
the haggard looks and burning eyes, round the tables where play ran
high; the hatred and malice; the jests that wounded like daggers; the
smiles that murdered reputations.
"Shall I ever go back to it all, and think a London season life's
supreme felicity?" she wondered, standing in front of the Capuchins'
Hospice, among the granite peaks of the St. Gothard, in the chill
mountain air, while the mules were being saddled for the descent into
Italy. They had ridden yesterday morning through the Urnerloch--that
wonderful passage of two hundred feet through the solid rock, which
had been made early in the century--by the green meadows of Andermatt,
and across the Ursern valley; they had wound slowly upward through a
wild and barren region to the friendly hospice where there was always
welcome and shelter.
Lady Kilrush had left her English travelling carriage at Lucerne,
and the journey from Airolo to Como would be made in an Italian
post-chaise. Her footman was a native of Bellinzona, and was able to
arrange all the details of their route.
At Como she hired one of the country boats, new from the builders,
and engaged four stalwart Italian boatmen, who were to be in her
service while she made a leisurely tour of the lake, stopping wherever
the scene pleased her fancy, and putting up with the most primitive
accommodation, provided the inn were clean, and the prospect beautiful.
That year of 1759, remarkable for the success of British arms in
Europe, Hindostan, and America, the "great year," as Horace Walpole
calls it, was also a year of golden weather, a summer of sunshine and
cloudless skies, and Antonia revelled in the warmth and light of that
lovely scene. It seemed as if every drop of blood in her veins rejoiced
in the glory of her mother's birthplace. Here, in what spot she knew
not, but somewhere along these sunlit hills that sloped gently to the
lake, her mother's early years had been spent. She would have given
much to find the spot; and in her long rambles with Sophy, or alone,
she rarely passed a church without entering it, and if she could find
the village priest rarely left him till he had searched the register
of marriages for her father's name. But no such name appeared in those
humble records; and she thought that her father might have carried his
fugitive bride to Milan, or even into Switzerland, before the marriage
ceremony was possible; the girl being under age, and the bridegroom a
heretic. She looked with interest at every villa that sheltered a noble
family, and questioned the peasants, and the people of the inn, about
all the important inhabitants of their neighbourhood, hoping to hear in
such or such a patrician family of a runaway marriage with a wandering
Englishman. But the old people to whom she chiefly addressed herself
had no memory of such an event.
It was the beginning of September, and the scene and atmosphere
had lost nothing of their charm by familiarity, so having made the
tour of the lake villages, and being somewhat tired of rough fare,
ill-furnished rooms, and most of all of Sophy's repinings for the
comforts of St. James's Square, Lady Kilrush hired a villa near the
quaint little town of Bellagio, a villa perched almost at the point
of the wooded promontory, with a garden that sloped to the water's
edge. The villa belonged to one of Antonia's fashionable friends--a
certain Lady Despard, a banker's widow, who gave herself more airs
than an empress, and preferred Rome or Florence to London, because
of the superior consequence her wealth gave her in cities where the
measure of her rank was not too precisely known. This lady--after
trying to imitate Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and live among a peasant
population--had wearied of her villa and the little town at her
gates, the church bells, the voices of the fishermen, the feasts and
processions, and lack of modish company; and her house was to be let
furnished with all its amenities.
Antonia engaged the villa for a month, at a liberal rent, and
established herself, with Giuseppe, the Italian footman, as her
major-domo, and a modest household of his selection; not a household of
much polish or experience, but of willing hands, smiling faces, eyes
that sparkled and danced with the golden light of Italy. Antonia was at
home and happy among these people, who served her as it were upon their
knees, and whose voices had a note that was like a caress.
"I can understand how my mother loved her garden of roses, her chestnut
woods, and long terraces where the vines make a roof of shade, and how
she must have pined in a dull English village--a Lincolnshire village,
dismal flats without a tree, straight roads, and church steeples, with
the lead-coloured sea making a level line in the distance, that seems
like the end of the world. Alas, to her eyes, accustomed to this
golden land, these mountains climbing up to heaven, how heart-breaking
it must all have been!"
Summer in Italy, summer on the Lake of Como. Never till now had Antonia
known what summer means--that perfect glory of sunlight, that magical
atmosphere, half golden light and half azure haze, in which earthly
things put on the glory of a dream. Never before had she enjoyed the
restfulness of a land where the atmosphere and the light are enough for
happiness, a sensuous happiness, perhaps, but leaving the spirit wings
free for flight. After the stress and tumult of a London winter, the
strife of paltry ambitions, the malevolence that called itself wit,
the aching sense of loneliness in a crowd, what bliss to loll at ease
in the spacious country boat, under the arched awning, while the oars
dipped, and the water rippled, and life went by like a sleep! She had
almost left off remembering the days of the week, the passage of time.
She only knew that the moon was waning. That great golden disk which
had bathed the hills in light and tempted her to loiter on the lake
till midnight, was no more. There was only a ragged crescent that rose
in the dead of night and filled her with melancholy. She stood at her
open window, in the dark hour before dawn, drinking the cool sweet air,
and full of sorrowful thoughts.
Where was George Stobart under that dwindling moon? In what grim and
frowning wilderness, amidst what desolate waste of mountains, in what
wild scene of savage warfare, hemmed round by painted foes, deafened by
war cries more hideous than the howling of the wolves in the midnight
woods, done to death by the ingenious cruelties of human fiends, or
dying of famine and neglected wounds, crawling on bleeding feet till
the wearied body dropped across the narrow track that the tramp of
soldiers had worn through the wilderness, dying forsaken and alone,
perhaps, in the pitilessness of a panic flight.
Her heart ached as she thought of him. Alas, why had he been false
to his own convictions, to his own faith? She knew that he had once
been sincere, had once been strong in a hope that she could not share.
When first she knew him he had been a good man. She looked back, and
recalled the domestic picture--the rustic lawn basking in the June
sunshine, the warm air perfumed with pinks and southernwood, and the
husband seated in his garden reading to his wife. She had looked
down at him from the proud height of her philosophy, had scorned his
unquestioning belief in things unseen; but she had respected him for
his renunciation of all the luxuries and pleasures the common herd love.
Of the progress of the American campaign since the victory at Cape
Breton she knew very little. The posts between Italy and England were
of a hopeless irregularity, and the newspapers which she had ordered
to be sent her were more than half of them lost or stopped on the way,
while an occasional gossiping letter from a fashionable friend told her
more of the new clothes at the Birthday than the triumphs or reverses
of British arms. The London papers were at this time more concerned
about Prince Ferdinand's victory over the French at Minden, and Lord
George Sackville's strange backwardness in following up the Prince's
success, than about the fortunes of Amherst or Forbes, and the wild
warfare of the West.
It was perhaps from the desire to be better informed that Antonia was
glad to see Lord Dunkeld, who surprised her by alighting from a boat at
the landing stage of her villa, in the first week of her residence. He
found her sitting in her garden, dreaming over a book. He had arrived
at Varenna on the previous evening, he told her, and meant to stop some
time at the inn, which commanded a fine view of the two lakes, and had
better accommodation than was usual in out-of-the-way places.
"May one ask what brings your lordship to Italy, when most of the fine
gentlemen I know are shooting partridges in Norfolk?" Antonia asked,
when they were seated on a marble bench in front of the lake.
There was a fountain on the lawn near them, and oleanders white and
red, masses of blossom and delicate lance-shaped leaves, made a screen
against wind and sun, and there were red roses trailing all along the
marble balustrade above the lake, and poppies pink, and red, and white,
and pale pink cyclamen, filled a circular bed at the base of a statue
of Flora, and all the garden seemed alive with colour and light. A
double flight of steps, broad and shallow, went down to the water, and
Dunkeld's boat was moored there, with his two boatmen lounging under
the awning, idle and contented. It is a stiff pull from Varenna to the
point, when the wind is blowing from Lecco.
"Will your ladyship scorn me if I confess that I love better to sit
in an Italian garden than to tramp over a Norfolk stubble? There is a
delicate freshness in the scent of a turnip field at early morning; but
I prefer roses, and the company of one woman in the world."
"Oh, my lord, keep your compliments for St. James's. They are out of
harmony with my life here."
"Am I to have no license to say foolish things, after having crossed
the Alps to see you?"
"Oh, sir, I am very credulous, but I cannot believe you have been so
simple as to travel over a thousand miles for a pleasure that you could
enjoy next month in London."
"I should have died of that other month. I bore your absence as long
as I could, and questioned all your friends and your hall-porter to
discover any hope of your return. But no one would satisfy me, and my
heart sickened of uncertainty. So ten days ago I ordered my chaise for
Dover, and have scarce drawn rein till last night at Varenna, where
I heard of your ladyship. Nay, spare me that vexed look. I come as a
friend, not as an importunate suitor. Do you suppose I forget that I am
forbid all ecstatic hopes?"
She gave a troubled sigh, and rose from the bench, with an agitated air.
"Lady Kilrush, cannot you believe in friendship?" he asked, following
her.
"Hardly. I have believed, and have had my confidence betrayed."
"When you told me that I could never be your husband, that a life's
devotion, the adoration of the Indian for his God, could not move your
heart to love me, I swore to school myself to indifference, thought
it was possible to live contentedly without you. I have not learnt
that lesson, madam; but I have taught myself to think of your merits,
your perfections, as I might of a sister's; and I ask you to give me
something of a sister's regard. You need not fear me, madam. Youth and
the ardour of youth have gone by. I doubt you know that I was unhappy
in an early attachment, and that the exquisite creature who was to
have been my wife died in my arms in her father's park, struck by
lightning. She was but eighteen, and I less than three years older.
The stroke that should have taken us both, and sealed our love for
eternity, left me to mourn her, and to doubt God's goodness, till time
chastened my rebellious thoughts."
"I have heard that sad story, my lord, and have understood why you were
more serious than other men of your age and circumstances. You have
been happy in finding the consolations of religion."
"Alas, madam, to be without a fixed hope in a better world is to live
in the midst of chaos. A Christian's faith is like a lamp burning
at the end of a long dark passage. No matter if it seem but an
infinitesimal point of light in the distance, 'twill serve to guide his
footsteps through the gloom."
"Would not duty, honour, conscience do as much for him?"
"Perhaps, madam, since conscience is but another name for the fear
of God. Be sure the time will come when a mind so superior as yours
will be awakened to the truth; but I doubt the Christian religion
has suffered in your esteem by your acquaintance with Mr. Stobart.
The conversation of a fanatical Methodist, the jargon of Wesley and
Whitefield, their unctuous cant repeated parrot-wise by a tyro, could
but move your disgust."
"Indeed, my lord, you wrong my cousin, George Stobart," Antonia
answered eagerly. "He is no canter--no parrot-echo of another man's
words. His sacrifice of fortune and station should vouch for his
sincerity."
"Oh, we will say he is of the stuff that makes martyrs, if your
ladyship pleases; but 'tis a pity that a gentleman of birth and
breeding--a soldier--should have taken up with the Methodist crew.
Some one told me he has the gift of preaching. I doubt he expounds
the doctrine of irresistible grace in Lady Huntingdon's kitchen,
for the vulgar, while Whitefield thumps a cushion in her ladyship's
drawing-room."
"My cousin has left off preaching for these two years last past, sir,
and is fighting for his king in North America."
"Gad's life! Then he is a better man than I took him for, when his
puritan countenance and grey suit passed me in your ladyship's hall.
The American campaign is no child's play. Even our sturdy Highlanders
have been panic-struck at the cruelties of those Indian fiends, whose
war-whoops surpass the Scottish yell as a tiger outroars an ox."
"Can your lordship tell me the latest news of the war?"
"'Tis a tale of barren victories and heavy losses. Englishmen and
colonials have fought like heroes, and endured like martyrs; but I
doubt the end of the campaign is still far off. The effect of last
year's victory at Louisburg, at which we in England made such an
uproar, was weakened by Abercromby's defeat at Ticonderoga, and by
Amherst's refusal to risk an immediate attack upon Quebec. Had he taken
Wolfe's advice Canada would have been ours before now; but Amherst ever
erred on the side of caution. He is all for forts and block-houses,
deliberation and defence--Wolfe all for the glorious hazards of attack."
"Then I doubt my cousin, Mr. Stobart, would sooner be with Wolfe than
with Amherst."
"Is the gentleman such a fire-eater?"
"I believe he loves war, and would hate shilly-shally no less than Mr.
Wolfe," Antonia answered, with a deep blush, and a sudden embarrassment.
The desperate mood in which Stobart left England had been in her mind
as she spoke.
"Well, if he is with Amherst he has not seen much fighting since he
left Cape Breton. Does he not write to you occasionally?"
"No, he writes only to his wife, and not often to her."
"'Tis not easy for a soldier on the march through a wilderness to
despatch a letter--or even to write one," said Lord Dunkeld.
After this his lordship's boat was moored by the villa landing-stage in
some hour of every day. His society was not unpleasant to Antonia in
her Italian solitude. He had sworn to be her friend; and she thought
she had at last discovered a man capable of friendship. She had no fear
of being taken off her guard, shocked and insulted, as she had been by
George Stobart. Here was no slumbering volcano, no snake in the grass,
only a grave and dignified gentleman, of unimpeachable honour, and an
old-fashioned piety, fully impressed by his own importance, who would
fain have won her for his wife, but who, disappointed in that desire,
wished to keep her for his friend.
He was six-and-thirty years of age, and that tragedy of his youth had
exercised a sobering influence over all his after-life. He was a fine
classical scholar, and had read much, and travelled much, but showed
himself a true Briton by his ignorance of every living language except
his own. A courier and a French valet saved him all communication
with innkeepers and their kind, and a smile or a stately wave of the
hand sufficed to make his wishes known to his Varenna boatmen. He
loved Italy as a picture, without wanting to get any nearer the living
figures in the foreground.
There was a festa at Bellagio on the Sunday after his arrival--a festa
of thanksgiving for the fruits of the year, and he attended Antonia and
Sophy to the church, where there was to be a solemn service, and the
priestly benediction upon gifts provided by the faithful, which were
afterwards to be sold by auction for the benefit of church and poor.
The piazza in front of the church was dazzling in the fierce afternoon
sunshine when Antonia and Sophy climbed the steep street, and found
themselves among the populace standing about the square, the women
with babies in their arms, and little children at their knees, and the
maimed and halt and blind and deaf and dumb, who seem to make up half
the population of an Italian town on a Sunday afternoon.
The natives gazed in admiring wonder at the beautiful face under the
broad Leghorn hat, with white ostrich feathers and diamond buckle,
the tall figure in the straight simplicity of white muslin and a long
blue sash, that almost touched the points of the blue kid shoes, the
beautiful throat and pearl necklace showing above the modest muslin
kerchief. Sophy was in white muslin also, but Sophy being low in
figure, must needs affect a triple frilled skirt and a frilled muslin
cape, which gave her the shape of a penwiper.
"Did I not know you superior to all petty arts I might say you dressed
your waiting-woman to be a foil to your beauty," Lord Dunkeld told
Antonia, when Sophy was out of earshot.
"Miss Potter chooses her own clothes, and I can never persuade her to
wear anything but the latest fashion. She has but to see the picture
of a new mode in the _Ladies' Magazine_, and she is miserable till she
tries it on her own person."
They went into the church, where the hot sunlight was intensified by
the pervading decoration, and the high altar glowed like a furnace.
The marble pillars were covered with crimson brocade, and long crimson
curtains hung from the roof, making a tent of warm rich red, the
scarlet vestments of the acolytes striking a harsher note against the
crimson glow.
Three priests in richly embroidered copes officiated at the altar,
and between the rolling thunder of the organ came the sound of loud
strident voices chanting without accompaniment, while children's treble
pipes shrilled out alternate versicles. The congregation consisted
mostly of women, wearing veils, white or black.
Antonia stood by a pillar near the door, enduring the heated atmosphere
as long as she could, but she had to leave the church before the end
of the service, followed by Sophy. Lord Dunkeld found them seated
in the piazza, where they could wait for the procession, and watch
the tributes of the pious being carried into the church by a side
door--huge cakes, castles and temples in ornamental pastry, baskets of
fruit, a dead hare, live fowls, birds in a cage, a fir tree with grapes
and peaches tied to the branches, a family of white kittens mewing and
struggling in a basket.
The train of priests and acolytes came pouring out into the sunshine,
gorgeous in gold and brocade, the band playing a triumphal march. After
the officiating priests came a procession of men in monkish robes,
some struggling under the weight of massive crosses, the rest carrying
tapers that burnt pale in the vivid light; some with upright form and
raven hair, others the veterans of toil, with silvery locks and dark
olive faces, strong and rugged features, withered hands seamed with
the scars of labour; and following these came women of every age, from
fifteen to ninety, their heads draped with white or black veils, but
their faces uncovered.
Lord Dunkeld surveyed them with a critical eye. "Upon my soul, I did
not think Italy could show so much ugliness," he said.
"Oh, but most of the girls are pretty."
"The girls, yes--but the women! They grow out of their good looks
before they are thirty, and are hags and witches when an Englishwoman's
mature charms are at the zenith. Stay, there is a pretty roguish
face--and--look, look, madam, the girl next her--the tall girl--great
Heaven, what a likeness!"
He ran forward a few paces to get a second look at a face that had
startled him out of his Scottish phlegm--a face that was like Antonia's
in feature and expression, though the colouring was darker and less
delicate.
"Did you see that tall girl with the blue bead necklace?" Dunkeld asked
Antonia, excitedly.
"I could not help seeing her, when you made such a fuss."
"She is your living image--she ought to be your younger sister."
"I have no sisters."
"Oh, 'tis a chance likeness, no doubt. Such resemblances are often
stronger than any you can find in a gallery of family portraits."
Antonia turned to a little group of women close by, whom she had
already questioned about the people in the procession. Did they know
the girl in the blue necklace?
Yes, she was Francesca Bari. She lived with her grandfather, who had a
little vineyard on the hill yonder, about a mile from the piazza where
they were standing. The signorina had noticed her? She was accounted
the prettiest girl in the district, and she was as good as she was
pretty. Her mother and father were dead, and she worked hard to keep
her grandfather's house in order, and to bring up her brother and
sisters.
Dunkeld's interest in the girl began and ended in her likeness to the
woman he loved; but Antonia was keenly interested, and early next
morning was on her way to the hill above the Lecco lake, alone and
on foot, to search for the dwelling of the Baris. She was ever on
the alert to discover any trace of her mother's kindred; and it was
possible that some branch of her race had sunk to the peasant class,
and that the type which sometimes marks a long line of ancestry might
be repeated here. Antonia was not going to shut her eyes to such a
possibility, however humiliating it might be. Offshoots of the greatest
families may be found in humble circumstances.
She passed a few scattered houses along the crest of the hill, and
some women picking grapes in a vineyard close to the road told her the
way to Bari's house. His vineyard was on the slope of the hill facing
Lierna.
Less than half an hour's walk by steep and rugged paths, up and down
hill, brought her to a house with bright ochre walls and dilapidated
blue shutters, standing in a patch of garden, where great golden
pumpkins sprawled between rows of cabbages and celery, under fig-trees
covered with purple fruit, and apple and pear trees bent with age and
the weight of their rosy and russet crop. A straggling hedge of roses
and oleander divided the garden from the narrow lane, while beyond,
the vines joined hands in green alleys along the terraced slope of the
hill, sheltered by a little olive wood.
The girl with the blue necklace was digging in the garden. Antonia
could see her across the red roses where the hedge was lowest. A child
of three or four years old was sitting on a basket close by, and two
older children were on their knees, weeding a cabbage bed. They were
poorly clad, but they looked clean, healthy, and happy.
The girl heard the flutter of Antonia's muslin gown, and looked up,
with her foot upon her spade. She wiped the perspiration from her
forehead with a gaudy cotton handkerchief.
"May I take one of your roses?" Antonia asked, smiling at her across
the gap in the hedge.
"Si, si," cried Francesca, "as many as the signorina likes. There are
plenty of them."
She ran to the hedge and began to pluck the roses, in an eager
hospitality. She was dazzled by the vision of the beautiful face, the
yellow hat and snowy plumes, the diamond buckle flashing in the sun,
and something in the smile that puzzled her. Without being conscious of
the likeness between the stranger's face and that one she saw every
morning unflatteringly reflected in the dusky little glass under her
bedroom window, she had a feeling of familiarity with the violet eyes,
the sunny smile.
Antonia thanked her for her roses, admired her garden, questioned her
about her brother and sisters, and was at once on easy terms with her.
Yes, they were motherless, and she had taken care of them ever since
Etta, the baby, was a fortnight old. Yes, she worked hard every day;
but she loved work, and when the vintage was good they were all happy.
Grandfather had not been able to work for over a year; he was very
old--"_vecchio vecchio_"--and very weak.
"I hope you have relations who help you," said Antonia, "distant
relations, perhaps, who are richer than your grandfather?"
"No, there is no one. We had an aunt, but she is dead. She died before
I was born. Grandfather says I am like her. It makes him cry sometimes
to look at me, and to remember that he will never see her again! She
was his favourite daughter."
"And was your grandfather always poor--always living here, on this
little vineyard and garden?" Antonia asked, pale, and with an intent
look in her eyes.
Had she found them, the kindred for whom she had been looking, in these
simple peasants, these sons and daughters of toil, so humbly born,
without a history, the very off-scouring of the earth? Was this the end
of her father's fairy tale, this the lowly birthplace of the Italian
bride, the daughter of a noble house, who had fled with the English
tutor, who had stooped from her high estate to make a love match?
She remembered her father's reluctance to take her to her mother's
home, or even to tell her the locality. She remembered how he had
shuffled and prevaricated, and put off the subject, and she thought
with bitter shame of his falsehoods, his sophistications. Alas, why had
he feared to tell her the truth? Would she have thought less lovingly
of her dead mother because of her humble lineage? Surely not! But she
had been fooled by lies, had thought of herself as the daughter of a
patrician race, and had cherished romantic dreams of a line of soldiers
and statesmen, whose ambitions and aspirations, whose courage and
genius, were in her blood.
The dilapidated walls yonder, the painted shutters rotten with age,
the gaudy daub of Virgin and Child on the plastered façade, the garden
of cabbages and pumpkins, and the patch of tall Indian corn! What a
disillusion! How sorry an end of her dreams!
"Sicuro!" the girl answered, wondering at the fine lady's keen look.
She had been questioned often about herself, often noticed by people of
quality, on account of her beauty; but this lady had such an earnest
air. "Si, si, signorina," she said; "grandfather has always lived here.
He was born in our cottage. His father was gardener to the Marchese"
(the grand seigneur of the district, name understood). "And he bought
the vineyard with his savings when he was an old man. He was a very
good gardener."
"May I see your grandfather?"
"Sicuro! He will be pleased to see the signorina," the girl answered
readily, accustomed to be patronized by wandering strangers, and to
receive little gifts from them.
Antonia followed her into the cottage. An old man was sitting in an
armchair by the hearth, where an iron pot hung over a few smouldering
sticks and a heap of grey ashes. He looked up at Antonia with eyes that
saw all things dimly. The sunshine streamed into the room from the
open door and window; but her face was in shadow as she went towards
him with outstretched hand, Francesca explaining that the English lady
wished to see him.
The patriarch tried to rise from his chair, but Antonia stopped him,
seating herself by his side.
"I saw your grand-daughter at the festa," she said, "and I wanted to
see more of her, if I could. Can you guess why I was anxious about her,
and anxious to be her friend?"
She took off her hat, while the old man looked at her with a slow
wonder, his worn-out eyes gradually realizing the lines in the splendid
face.
"I have been told that your Francesca is like me," she said. "Can you
see any resemblance?"
"_Santo e santissimo!_ Si, si, the signorina is like Francesca, as two
peaches side by side on the wall yonder; and she is like my daughter,
my Tonia, my beloved, who died more than twenty years ago. But she is
not dead to me--no, not to me. I see her face in my dreams. I hear her
voice sometimes as I wake out of sleep, and then I look round, and call
her, and she is not there; and I remember that I am an old man, and
that she left me many, many years ago."
"You had a daughter called Antonia?"
"_Si, signorina_. It was her mother's name also. I called her Tonia.
She was the handsomest girl between the two lakes. Everybody praised
her, a good girl, as industrious as she was virtuous. A good and
dutiful daughter till the Englishman stole her from us."
"Your Antonia married an Englishman?"
"Si, signorina! 'Twas thought a fine marriage for her. He wore a
velvet coat, and he called himself a gentleman; but he was only a
schoolmaster, and he came to Varenna in a coach and six with a young
English milord."
"What was the tutor's name?"
"_Non posso pronunziar' il suo nome._ Tonton, Tonton, Guilliamo."
"Thornton! William Thornton?"
"_Ecco!_" cried the old man, nodding assent. "We had a dairy then, my
wife and I," he continued, "and the young lord and his governor used
to leave their boat and walk up the hill to get a drink of milk. They
paid us handsomely, and we got to look for them every day, and they
would stop and talk and laugh with my two girls. The governor could
speak Italian almost like one of us; and the young milord was trying to
learn; and they used all of them to laugh at his mistakes, and make a
fool of him. Well, well, 'twas a merry time for us all."
"Did you consent to your daughter's marriage?"
"_Chi lo sa? Forse! Non diceva nè si nè no._ He was a gentleman, and
I was proud that she should marry above her station. But he told me a
bundle of lies. He pretended to be a rich man, and promised that he
would bring her to Italy once a year. And then he took her away, in
milord's coach, and they were married at Chiavenna, where he lied to
the priest, as he had lied to me, and swore he was a good Catholic. He
sent me the certificate of their marriage, so that I might know my
daughter was an honest woman; but he never let me see her again."
He paused in a tearful mood.
"Perhaps it was not his own fault that he did not keep his promise,"
Antonia pleaded. "He may have been too poor to make such a journey."
"Yes, he was as poor as Job. Tonia wrote to me sometimes, and she told
me they were very poor, and that she hated her English home, and pined
for the garden and the vineyard, and the hills and lakes. She was
afraid she would die without ever seeing us again. Her letters were
full of sorrow. I could see her tears upon the page. And then there
came a letter from him, with a great black seal. She was dead--_Ma non
si muove foglia che Iddio non voglia_. 'Tis not for me to complain!"
The feeble frame was shaken by the old man's sobs. Antonia knelt on the
brick floor by his chair, and soothed him with gentle touches and soft
words. She was full of tender pity; but there was the feeling that she
was stooping from her natural level to comfort a creature of a lower
race, another order of being, with whom she could have no sympathy.
And he was her grandfather. His blood was in her veins. From him she
inherited some of the qualities of her heart and brain: not from
statesmen or heroes, but from a peasant, whose hands were gnarled and
roughened by a lifetime's drudgery, whose thoughts and desires had
never travelled beyond his vineyard and patch of Indian corn.
Her grandfather, living in this tumble-down old house, where the rotten
shutters offered so poor a defence against foul weather, the floods
and winds of autumn and winter, where the crumbling brick floor had
sunk below the level of the soil outside: living as peasants live,
and suffering all the deprivations and hardships of extreme poverty,
while she, his own flesh and blood, had squandered thousands upon the
caprices of a woman of fashion. And she found him worn out with toil,
old and weak, on the brink of the grave perhaps. Her wealth could do
but little for him.
She had no doubt of his identity. The story of his daughter's marriage
was her mother's story.
There was no room for doubt, yet she shrank with a curious restraint
from revealing the tie that bound her to him. She was full of generous
pity for a long life that had known so few of this world's joys; but
the feeling of caste was stronger than love or pity. She was ashamed
of herself for feeling such bitter mortification, such a cruel
disappointment. Oh, foolish pride which she had taken for an instinct
of good birth! Because she was beautiful and admired, high-spirited and
courageous, she must needs believe that she sprang from a noble line,
and could claim all the honour due to race. Her father had lied to her,
and she had believed the flattering fable. She could not reconcile
herself to the humiliating truth so far as to claim her new-found
kindred. But she was bent upon showing them all possible kindness
short of that revelation. They were so poor, so humble, that she might
safely play the part of benefactress. They had no pride to be crushed
by her favours. She questioned the old man about his health, while
the girl stood by the doorway listening, and the children's silvery
voices sounded in the garden outside. Had he been ill long; did he
suffer much; had he a doctor? He had been ailing a long time, but as
for suffering, well, he had pains in his limbs, the house was damp
in winter, but there was more weakness than suffering. "Also the ass
when he is tired lies down in the middle of the road, and can go no
farther," he said resignedly. As for a doctor; no, he had no need of
one. The doctor would only bleed him; and he had too little blood as
it was. One of his neighbours--an old woman that some folks counted a
witch, but a good Catholic for all that--had given him medicine of her
own making that had done him good.
"I think a doctor would do you more good, if you would see one. There
is a doctor at Bellagio who came to see my woman the other day when she
had a touch of fever. He seemed a clever man."
"_Si signorina, ma senza denari non si canta messa._ Clever men want to
be paid. Your doctor would cost me the eyes of the head."
"You shall have as much money as ever you want," answered Antonia,
pulling a long netted purse from her pocket.
The gold showed through the silken meshes, and the old man's eyes
glittered with greed as he looked at it. She filled his tremulous hands
with guineas, emptying both ends of the purse into his hollowed palms.
He had never seen so much gold. The strangers who came to sit under his
_pergola_, and drink great bowls of new milk from the fawn-coloured
cows that were his best source of income, thought themselves generous
if they gave him a _scudo_ at parting: but here was a visitor from
fairyland raining gold into his hands.
"They are English guineas, and you will gain by the exchange," she
said, "so you can have the physician to see you every day. He will not
want to bleed you when he sees how weak you are."
The old man shook his head doubtfully. They were so ready with the
lancet, those doctors! His eyes were fixed on the guineas, as he tried
to reckon them. The coins lay in too close a heap to be counted easily.
He broke into a rapture of gratitude, invoking every saint in the
calendar, and Antonia shivered with pain at the exaggeration of his
acknowledgments. He thanked her as a wayside beggar would have done.
His benedictions were the same as the professional mendicants, the
maimed and halt and blind, gave her when she dropped a coin into a
basket or a hat. He belonged to the race which is accustomed to taking
favours from strangers. He belonged to the sons of bondage, poverty's
hereditary slaves.
She appealed to Francesca.
"Would it not be better for your grandfather if he lived at Bellagio,
where he would have a comfortable house in a street, and plenty of
neighbours?" she asked.
"I don't think he would like to leave the vineyard, Signorina; though
it would be very pleasant to live in the town," answered Francesca.
Her dark eyes sparkled at the thought. It was lonely on the hill,
where she had only the children to talk to, and her grandfather, whose
conversation was one long lamentation.
The old man looked up with a scared expression.
"_Ohime! Non posso!_" he exclaimed, "I could not leave the villino. I
shall die as I have lived, in the villino!"
"Well, you must do what is best pleasing to yourself," Antonia said.
"All I desire is that you should be happy, and enjoy every comfort that
money can buy."
She bent down and kissed the sunburnt forehead, so wrinkled and
weather-beaten after the long life of toil. She asked Francesca to walk
a little way with her; and they went out into the lane together.
"Your house looks comfortless even in sunshine," Antonia said. "It must
be worse in winter!"
"_Si, signorina._ It is very cold in bad weather, but grandfather loves
the villino."
"You might get a carpenter to mend the windows and put new hinges on
the shutters. They look as if they would hardly shut."
"Indeed, signorina, 'tis long since our shutters have been shut.
Grandfather is too poor to pay a carpenter. Nothing in the house has
been mended since I can remember."
"But you have your cows and your vineyard. How is it that he is so
poor?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders. She knew nothing.
"Is it you who keeps the purse?"
"No, no, _signorina, non so niente_. Grandfather gives me money to pay
the baker----"
"And the butcher?"
"We do not buy meat. I kill a fowl sometimes, or a rabbit; but for the
most part we have cabbage soup and polenta."
"Well, you will have plenty of money in future. I shall see to that;
and you must take care that your grandfather has good food every day,
and a doctor when he is ailing, and warm blankets for winter. I want
you both to be happy and well cared for. And you must get a man to dig
in the garden and carry water for you. I don't like to see a girl work
as you do."
Francesca stared at the beautiful lady in open wonder. She was
doubtless mad as a March hare, la Poverina; but what a delightful form
her madness had taken. It might be that the Blessed Virgin had inspired
this madness, and sent this lovely lunatic wandering from house to
house among the deserving poor, scattering gold wherever she found want
and piety. It was almost a miracle. Indeed, who could be sure that
this benign lady was not the Blessed One herself, who could appear in
any manner she pleased, even arrayed in the latest fashion of plumed
hats and India muslin _négligées?_
Antonia left the girl a little way from the villino, and walked slowly
down the hill to Bellagio, deep in thought. Alas, alas, to have found
her mother's kindred, and to feel no thrill of love, no yearning to
take them to her heart, only the same kind of pity she had felt for
those poor wretches in Lambeth Marsh, only an eager desire to make
their lot happier, to give them all good things that money can buy.
"Should I grow to love that old man if I knew him better?" she
wondered. "Is there some dormant affection in my heart, some hereditary
love that needs but to be warmed into life by time and custom? God
knows what I am made of. I do not feel as if I could ever care for that
poor old man as grandfathers are cared for. My mother's father, and he
loved her dearly! It is base ingratitude in me not to love him."
She recalled the greedy look that came into the withered old face
at sight of the gold. A painter need have asked no better model for
Harpagon. She would have given much not to have seen that look.
She would visit them often, she thought, and would win him to softer
moods. She would question him about her mother's girlhood, beguile him
into fond memories of the long-lost daughter, memories of his younger
days, before grinding poverty had made him so eager for gold. She would
make herself familiar with Bari and his granddaughter, find out all
their wants, all their desires, and provide for the welfare of the old
life that was waning, and the young life with a long future before it.
She would make age and youth happy, if it were possible. But she would
not tell them of the relationship that made it her duty to care for
them. She would let them remember her as the eccentric stranger, who
had found them in poverty, and left them in easy circumstances; the
benefactress dropped from the clouds.
To what end should she tell them of kinship if she could not give
them a kinswoman's love? And she could not. The girl was a beautiful
creature, kindly, gentle, caressing; but she was a peasant, a peasant
whose thoughts had never travelled beyond the narrow circle of her
hills, whose rough knuckles and thick fingers told of years of toil,
who had not one feeling in common with the cousin bred upon books,
and plunged in the morning of youth into the most enlightened society
in Christendom, the London of Walpoles and Herveys, Carterets and St.
Johns, Pitts and Foxes.
She would not tell them. She could not imagine her lips framing the
words. She could not say to Francesca, "We are first cousins, the next
thing to sisters." But she could make them happy. That was possible.
She could take all needful measures to provide them with a substantial
income; a competence which should enable them to rebuild the rotten old
villa, and spend the rest of their days in ease and plenty.
Lord Dunkeld called on her in the evening, and took a dish of tea with
the two ladies in their garden betwixt sunset and moonrise. He found
Antonia looking pale and tired.
"She started on one of her solitary rambles early this morning," Sophy
said; "as if any one ought to walk in this climate, and she was as
white as her muslin gown when she came home. She had much better have
idled with me in the boat."
"I did not go far," Antonia said, "but I found some interesting
people--only peasants. The girl your lordship noticed yesterday in the
procession."
"The girl who is so like you?" exclaimed Dunkeld. "I thought your
ladyship was a stranger to at least one of the deadly sins, and knew no
touch of vanity. But I find you are mortal, and that you had a fancy to
see a face like your own."
"Yes, I had a fancy to see the girl. And now I want to help her, if I
can. She is desperately poor."
"Is anybody poor in Italy? I have always thought that Italian peasants
live upon sunshine and a few ripe figs, and have no use for money."
"They are very poor. The grandfather is old, and ailing. Can you find
me an honest lawyer here, or at Varenna?"
"For your ladyship I would attempt miracles. I will do my best."
"And as quickly as you can, my lord, for I want to go back to England."
"Grant me the felicity of escorting you when you go, and make me your
slave in the mean time; though, as I am always that, madam, 'tis a
one-sided bargain."
"Oh, pray come in our coach with us, my lord," cried Sophy. "I was in a
panic all the way here, on account of the brigands."
"Heavens! Was your coach attacked?"
"No, no, sir," said Antonia, laughing. "The brigands came no nearer
than a vague rumour that some of their calling had been heard of above
Andermatt."
"But who knows what may happen when we are going home, now that the
days are so much shorter?" protested Sophy.
"If one strong arm and a pair of pistols can help you, Miss Potter----"
"Oh, I shall feel ever so much safer with your lordship in our coach. I
know if those wretches came--with black masks, perhaps--Giuseppe would
run away."
Giuseppe was the Italian footman, whom Sophy suspected of being a
poor-spirited creature, in spite of a figure which would have delighted
the late King of Prussia.
Antonia went to the villino on the following afternoon, and being
unable to shake off Lord Dunkeld, allowed him to accompany her. She
liked his conversation, which diverted her thoughts from brooding
upon the past, and on George Stobart's peril in the wild world across
the Atlantic. He filled the place of that brilliant society which had
been her anodyne for every grief; and she was grateful to him for a
steadfastness in friendship which promised to last for a lifetime. His
colder temperament had allowed him to put off the lover and assume the
friend. He had been strong as a granite pillar where George Stobart had
proved a broken reed.
They found the girl tying up the vine branches in a long berceau, and
the old man sitting by the smouldering ashes as he had sat yesterday,
in a monotony of idleness. The windows had not been mended, and the
shutters still hung forlornly upon broken hinges.
Antonia asked the girl if she had not been able to find a carpenter to
do the work.
"Grandfather would not let a carpenter come. He is afraid of the noise."
"And when bad weather comes the rain will come in."
"_Si, signorina;_ the rain always comes in."
"And your broken shutters cannot keep out the cold winds."
"No, signorina; the wind almost blows grandfather out of his chair
sometimes."
"Then he really ought to let a carpenter come."
The old man was listening intently, and Dunkeld was watching his face.
"They are brigands, those carpenters," he said. "'Tis a waste of money
to employ them. I don't mind the wind, signorina. Francia can hang up a
curtain."
"Oh, grandfather, the curtain is an old rag! And the signorina gave you
money to pay the carpenter."
"_Andiamo adagio, carissima._ I am not going to waste the signorina's
money on idlers and cheats, nor yet upon doctors. I hate doctors! They
are knaves, bloodthirsty rogues that want to be paid for sticking a
knife into a man as if he were a pig!"
Antonia did not argue the point, and left the old man after a few
kindly words. She was disgusted at his obstinacy, which made it so hard
a matter to improve his circumstances. She walked some way in silence,
Dunkeld at her side.
"I fear your new _protégé_ is a troublesome subject," he said, "and
that you will find a difficulty in helping him."
"I cannot understand his objection to having that wretched old barn
made wind and weather tight."
"I can. The man is a miser. You have given him money, and he wants to
keep it, to hide it under his mattress, perhaps, and gloat over it in
the dead of the night. The miser has a keener joy in the touch of a
guinea than in any indulgence of meat or drink, warmth and comfort,
that money can buy."
"I fear your lordship has guessed the riddle," Antonia answered,
wounded to the quick. "I gave him all the gold in my purse yesterday.
'Twas at least twenty guineas. Well, I must take other means. I will
send a carpenter to do all the work that is wanted, and take the
Bellagio doctor to the villino to-morrow morning."
"Will your ladyship be offended if I presume to advise?"
"Offended! I shall think you vastly kind."
"Leave these people alone. The old man is unworthy of your protection.
The girl is happy in her present condition. Your bounty will but
administer to her grandfather's avarice, and will not better her life."
"But I must help them--I must, I must," Antonia protested. "It is my
duty. I cannot let them suffer the ills of poverty while I am rich. I
must find some way to make their lives easy."
Dunkeld wondered at her vehemence, and pursued the argument no further.
This passion of charity was but an instinct of her generous nature, the
desire to share fortune's gifts with the unfortunate.
She returned from this second visit dispirited and unhappy. Was she
doomed never to be able to esteem those whom she was bound to love?
She had loved her father fondly, though she had known him unprincipled
and shifty; but what affection could she feel for this old man against
whom her class instinct revolted, unless she could find in him humble
virtues that could atone for humble birth? And she found him sordid,
untruthful, avaricious.
She called on the local doctor next morning, and went with him to the
villino, where he diagnosed the old man's ailments as only old age, the
weakness induced by poor food, and the rheumatic symptoms that were the
natural result of living in a draughty house. He recommended warmth and
a generous diet, and promised to call once a week through the coming
winter, his fee for each visit being something less than an English
shilling.
After he had gone Antonia sat in the garden with Baptisto Bari and
his granddaughter for an hour. She had his chair carried into the
sunshine, and out of the way of the noise, while a couple of workmen
mended the windows and shutters. She had found a builder in Bellagio,
and had instructed him to do all that could be done to make the house
comfortable before winter. He was to get the work done with the least
possible inconvenience to the family.
Sitting in the quiet garden, while Francesca gathered beans for the
soup, and while the children sprawled in the sun, playing with some
toys Antonia had brought them, Bari was easily lured into talking
of the past, and of the daughter he had loved. All that was best in
his nature revealed itself when he talked of his sorrow; and Antonia
thought that the miser's despicable passion had only grown upon him
after the loss that had, perhaps, blighted his life. And then, when he
was an old man, death had taken his remaining daughter; and he had been
left, lonely and heart-broken, with his orphan grandchildren. He had
begun to scrape and pinch for their support, most likely; and then the
miser's insane love of money had grown upon him, like some insidious
disease.
Antonia tried to interest him, and to make excuses for him, and she
spoke to him very plainly upon the money question. She appealed even to
his selfishness.
"When I give you money, it is that you may have all the good things
that money can buy," she said; "good wine and strengthening food,
warm clothes, a comfortable bed. What is the use of a few guineas in
a cracked teacup, or hidden in a corner of your mattress?"--Baptisto
almost jumped out of his chair, and she knew she had hit upon the place
of his treasure. "What is the use of hoarding money that other people
will spend and waste, perhaps, when you are dead?"
"No, no, she will not waste it. _Che Diavolo!_ She will give me a
handsome funeral, and spend all the rest on masses for the good of my
soul. That is what she will have to do."
"You need not save money for that. If you live comfortably your life
will be prolonged, most likely; and I promise that you shall have a
handsome funeral, and the--the masses."
She went again next day, and on the day after, always alone; and the
old man became more and more at his ease with her; but all that she did
was done for duty's sake, and she found it harder work to talk to him
than it had been to talk with poor dying Sally Dormer, by whose bedside
she had spent many quiet hours. The abyss between them was wider. But
she felt more affectionately towards Francesca, who adored her almost
as if she were indeed the celestial lady whose miraculous presence
every good Catholic is prepared to meet at any solemn crisis of life.
Antonia did not rest till, with the assistance of a banker and lawyer
at Varenna, she had settled an income of three hundred pounds a year
upon Baptisto, with reversion to his grandchildren, she herself acting
as trustee in conjunction with the banker, who was partner in an
old-established banking house at Milan, of which the Varenna bank--in a
pavilion in an angle of a garden wall--was a branch.
This done, her mind was at ease, and she prepared for her journey to
England. She would return, as she had come, by the Low Countries,
avoiding France on account of the war.
Lord Dunkeld had advised and assisted her in making the settlement on
the Baris, but she knew that he thought her foolish and quixotic in her
determination to provide for this particular family.
"I could find you a score of claimants for your bounty, far more
pathetic cases than Baptisto, if you are so set upon playing the good
angel," he said. "'Tis a mercy you do not want to provide for the whole
pauper population upon the same magnificent scale. Three hundred a
year for an Italian peasant! But a woman's charity is ever a romantic
impulse; and one can but admire her tenderness, though one may question
her discretion."
"I may have a reason you cannot fathom," Antonia said gravely.
"Oh, 'tis the heart moves you to this act, not the reason! This world
would be happier if all women were as unreasonable."
She despised herself for suppressing the motive of her bounty. To be
praised for generosity, while she was ashamed to acknowledge her own
kindred, ashamed of her own lowly origin! What could be meaner or more
degrading? But she thought of Dunkeld's thousand years' pedigree, the
pride of birth, the instinct of race, which he had so often revealed
unconsciously in their familiar talk; and it was difficult to sink her
own pride before so proud a man.
The last day came, and he insisted on accompanying her in her farewell
visit. She had given him the privileges of a trusted friend, and had
no excuse for refusing his company.
She told Baptisto Bari what she had done for him.
"You will have seventy-five pounds paid you every quarter," she
said; "and all you have to do is to spend your money freely, and let
Francesca buy everything that is wanted for you, and the children, and
herself. I shall come back next year, and I shall be very sorry and
very angry if I do not find you living in comfort, and the villino
looking as handsome as a nobleman's villa."
The old man protested his gratitude, with tears. Yes, he would spend
his money. He had been spending it. See, there was the magnificent new
curtain; and he had a pillow for his bed; and a barrel of oil for the
lamp. They had the lamp lighted every night. And he had coffee--a dish
of coffee on Sunday--and they had been drinking their milk, and making
butter for themselves, instead of selling all the milk to the _negozio_
in Bellagio. Indeed, he had discovered that money was a very useful
thing when one spent it; though it was also useful to keep it against
the day of misfortune or death.
"True, m'amico; but it is bad economy to keep your money under your
pillow, and let your house fall over your ears for want of mending,"
answered Antonia; and then she bade him good-bye--good-bye till
next year, and bent down to kiss the withered forehead, above white
pent-house eyebrows.
The keen old eyes clouded over with tears as her lips touched him, and
the tremulous old hands were joined in prayer that God and the Saints
might reward her piety.
She opened her arms to Francesca, who fell upon her breast, sobbing.
"Ah, sweetest lady, had the poor ever such a friend, ever such a
benefactor? Heaven sent you to us. We pray for you night and day, for
your happiness on earth, for your soul's bliss in heaven," cried the
girl, in her melodious Italian.
Antonia could scarcely drag herself away from the clinging arms, the
tears and benedictions; but she left Francesca at the garden gate,
and amid all those tears and kisses had not revealed herself to her
kindred.
She crossed the hill in silence, Dunkeld at her side, watching her
thoughtful countenance, and perplexed by its almost tragic gloom.
"You are a wonderful woman," he said lightly, by-and-by, to break the
spell of silence. "You take these Italian peasants to your heart as if
they were your own flesh and blood. Is it the Italian blood in your
veins that opens your heart to beings of so different a race?"
"Perhaps."
"I could understand your letting the girl hug you--a creature so
lovely, and in the bloom and freshness of youth. But that wrinkled old
miser! Well, 'twas a divine charity that moved you to squander a kiss
upon that parchment brow."
Antonia turned to him in a sudden tumult of feeling, remorse, shame,
self-disparagement.
"Oh, stop, stop!" she cried. "Your words scald me like molten lead.
Divine charity! Why, I am the most despicable of women. I hate myself
for my paltry pride. I can bear the shame of it no longer. 'Twill be
your lordship's turn to scorn me as I scorn myself. That old man is
my mother's father. I came to Italy to hunt for her kindred, to find
in what palace she was reared, from what princely race I inherited my
haughty spirit. And a chance, the chance likeness between Francesca
and me, resulted in the discovery that I came of a long line of
peasants, servants, the tillers of the ground, the race that lives by
submissive toil, that has never known independence. And I was ashamed
of them--bitterly ashamed. It was anguish to me to know that I sprang
from that humble stock, most of all when I thought of you, your
warriors, and statesmen, bishops, judges--all the long line of rulers
and master minds, stretching back into the dark night of history, part
of yourself; for if they had never lived you could not be what you are."
"Oh, madam, you own a more noble lineage than Scottish Thanes can boast
of. The seaborn Venus had no ancestors, but was queen of the earth by
the divine right of beauty. You are a daughter of the gods, and may
easily dispense with a parchment pedigree."
"Oh, pray, sir, no idle compliments! I would rather suffer your
contempt than your mocking praise. I can scarcely be more despicable in
your esteem than I am in my own."
"I could never think ill of you, my sweet friend; never doubt the
nobility of your heart and mind. The test has been a severe one; for to
a woman the death of a romantic dream means much; but the gold rings
true. You had a right to keep this secret from me if you pleased."
"And from them?"
"That is a nicer question. I doubt it is your duty to make them happier
by the knowledge that they have a legitimate claim to your bounty. I
think you would do well to disclose your relationship to them before
you leave Italy. The old man may not live till your return; and the
thought that pride had come between you and one so near in blood might
be a lasting regret."
"Yes, yes, your lordship is right. I will see them again this evening.
I will tell my grandfather who and what I am. Yes, it was odious of me
to play the Lady Bountiful, to let him praise me for generosity--me,
his daughter's child. Sure I am glad I made my confession to you, for
now I know that you are my true friend."
"I will never advise you ill, if I can help it, madam," he said,
stooping to kiss her hand. "And doubt not that you can trust me with
every secret of your heart and mind, for there can exist no feeling or
thought in either that is not common to generous natures."
* * * * *
Lady Kilrush spent the sunset hour with her kindred, and was touched
by the old man's delight when he clasped to his heart the child of
that daughter he had loved and mourned. She knelt beside him with
uncovered head as she told him the story of her childhood, her love
for the mother she had lost before memory began. He turned her face to
the sunset glow, and gazed at her with eyes drowned in tears. He was
no longer the money-grubber, keenly expectant of a stranger's bounty.
The whole nature of the man seemed changed by the awakening of an
unforgotten love.
"Yes, it is Tonia's face," he cried. "I knew you were beautiful; I knew
you were like her; but not how like. Your brow has the same lines, your
lips have the same curves. Yes, now, as you smile at me, I see my
beloved one again."
There was nothing sordid or vulgar in the peasant now. His countenance
shone with the pure light of love, and Antonia's heart went out to him
with some touch of filial affection.
Before they parted he gave her a letter--the ink dim with age--her
mother's last letter, written from the Lincolnshire homestead where she
died; and Antonia read of the love that had hung over her cradle, that
tender maternal love she had been fated never to know.
She deferred her journey for a few days, at her grandfather's entreaty,
and spent many hours at the villino. She encouraged Baptisto and
Francesca to talk to her of all the details of their lives. She drew
nearer to them in thought and feeling, and made new plans for their
happiness, promising to come to Bellagio every autumn, and offering to
build them a new house next year at the other end of their garden where
the view was finer. But the old man protested that the villino would
last his time, and that he would never like any house as well.
"Then the new house must be built for Francesca when she marries,"
Antonia told him gaily. "We will wait till she has a suitor she loves."