WILFRID COMES FORWARD
An order for the immediate arrest of Vittoria was brought round to the
stage at the fall of the curtain by Captain Weisspriess, and delivered by
him on the stage to the officer commanding, a pothered lieutenant of
Croats, whose first proceeding was dictated by the military instinct to
get his men in line, and who was utterly devoid of any subsequent idea.
The thunder of the house on the other side of the curtain was enough to
disconcert a youngster such as he was; nor have the subalterns of Croat
regiments a very signal reputation for efficiency in the Austrian
Service. Vittoria stood among her supporters apart; pale, and 'only very
thirsty,' as she told the enthusiastic youths who pressed near her, and
implored her to have no fear. Carlo was on her right hand; Luciano on
her left. They kept her from going off to her room. Montini was
despatched to fetch her maid Giacinta with cloak and hood for her
mistress. The young lieutenant of Croats drew his sword, but hesitated.
Weisspriess, Wilfrid, and Major de Pyrmont were at one wing, between the
Italian gentlemen and the soldiery. The operatic company had fallen into
the background, or stood crowding the side places of exit. Vittoria's
name was being shouted with that angry, sea-like, horrid monotony of
iteration which is more suggestive of menacing impatience and the
positive will of the people, than varied, sharp, imperative calls.
The people had got the lion in their throats. One shriek from her would
bring them, like a torrent, on the boards, as the officers well knew; and
every second's delay in executing the orders of the General added to the
difficulty of their position. The lieutenant of Croats strode up to
Weisspriess and Wilfrid, who were discussing a plan of action vehemently;
while, amid hubbub and argument, De Pyrmont studied Vittoria's features
through his opera-glass, with an admirable simple languor.
Wilfrid turned back to him, and De Pyrmont, without altering the level of
his glass, said, 'She's as cool as a lemon-ice. That girl will be a
mother of heroes. To have volcanic fire and the mastery of her nerves at
the same time, is something prodigious. She is magnificent. Take a peep
at her. I suspect that the rascal at her right is seizing his occasion
to plant a trifle or so in her memory--the animal! It's just the moment,
and he knows it.'
De Pyrmont looked at Wilfrid's face.
'Have I hit you anywhere accidentally?' he asked, for the face had grown
dead-white.
'Be my friend, for heaven's sake!' was the choking answer. 'Save her!
Get her away ! She is an old acquaintance of mine--of mine, in England.
Do; or I shall have to break my sword.'
'You know her? and you don't go over to her?' said De Pyrmont.
'I--yes, she knows me.'
'Then, why not present yourself?'
'Get her away. Talk Weisspriess down. He is for seizing her at all
hazards. It 's madness to provoke a conflict. Just listen to the house!
I may be broken, but save her I will. De Pyrmont, on my honour, I will
stand by you for ever if you will help me to get her away.'
'To suggest my need in the hour of your own is not a bad notion,' said
the cool Frenchman. 'What plan have you?'
Wilfrid struck his forehead miserably.
'Stop Lieutenant Zettlisch. Don't let him go up to her. Don't--'
De Pyrmont beheld in astonishment that a speechlessness such as affects
condemned wretches in the supreme last minutes of existence had come upon
the Englishman.
'I'm afraid yours is a bad case,' he said; 'and the worst of it is, it's
just the case women have no compassion for. Here comes a parlementaire
from the opposite camp. Let's hear him.'
It was Luciano Romara. He stood before them to request that the curtain
should be raised. The officers debated together, and deemed it prudent
to yield consent.
Luciano stipulated further that the soldiers were to be withdrawn.
'On one wing, or on both wings?' said Captain Weisspriess, twinkling eyes
oblique.
'Out of the house,' said Luciano.
The officers laughed.
'You must confess,' said De Pyrmont, affably, 'that though the drum does
issue command to the horse, it scarcely thinks of doing so after a rent
in the skin has shown its emptiness. Can you suppose that we are likely
to run when we see you empty-handed? These things are matters of
calculation.'
'It is for you to calculate correctly,' said Luciano.
As he spoke, a first surge of the exasperated house broke upon the stage
and smote the curtain, which burst into white zigzags, as it were a
breast stricken with panic.
Giacinta came running in to her mistress, and cloaked and hooded her
hurriedly.
Enamoured; impassioned, Ammiani murmured in Vittoria's ear:
'My own soul!'
She replied: 'My lover!'
So their first love-speech was interchanged with Italian simplicity, and
made a divine circle about them in the storm.
Luciano returned to his party to inform them that they held the key of
the emergency.
'Stick fast,' he said. 'None of you move. Whoever takes the first step
takes the false step; I see that.'
'We have no arms, Luciano.'
'We have the people behind us.'
There was a fiercer tempest in the body of the house, and, on a sudden,
silence. Men who had invaded the stage joined the Italian guard
surrounding Vittoria, telling that the lights had been extinguished; and
then came the muffled uproar of universal confusion. Some were for
handing her down into the orchestra, and getting her out through the
general vomitorium, but Carlo and Luciano held her firmly by them. The
theatre was a rageing darkness; and there was barely a light on the
stage. 'Santa Maria!' cried Giacinta, 'how dreadful that steel does look
in the dark! I wish our sweet boys would cry louder.' Her mistress,
almost laughing, bade her keep close, and be still. 'Oh! this must be
like being at sea,' the poor creature whined, stopping her ears and
shutting her eyes. Vittoria was in a thick gathering of her defenders;
she could just hear that a parley was going on between Luciano and the
Austrians. Luciano made his way back to her. 'Quick!' he said; 'nothing
cows a mob like darkness. One of these officers tells me he knows you,
and gives his word of honour--he's an Englishman--to conduct you out:
come.'
Vittoria placed her hands in Carlo's one instant. Luciano cleared a
space for them. She heard a low English voice.
'You do not recognize me? There is no time to lose. You had another
name once, and I have had the honour to call you by it.'
'Are you an Austrian?' she exclaimed, and Carlo felt that she was
shrinking back.
'I am the Wilfrid Pole whom you knew. You are entrusted to my charge;
I have sworn to conduct you to the doors in safety, whatever it may cost
me.'
Vittoria looked at him mournfully. Her eyes filled with tears. 'The
night is spoiled for me!' she murmured.
'Emilia!'
'That is not my name.'
'I know you by no other. Have mercy on me. I would do anything in the
world to serve you.'
Major de Pyrmont came up to him and touched his arm. He said briefly:
'We shall have a collision, to a certainty, unless the people hear from
one of her set that she is out of the house.'
Wilfrid requested her to confide her hand to him.
'My hand is engaged,' she said.
Bowing ceremoniously, Wilfrid passed on, and Vittoria, with Carlo and
Luciano and her maid Giacinta, followed between files of bayonets through
the dusky passages, and downstairs into the night air.
Vittoria spoke in Carlo's ear: 'I have been unkind to him. I had a great
affection for him in England.'
'Thank him; thank him,' said Carlo.
She quitted her lover's side and went up to Wilfrid with a shyly extended
hand. A carriage was drawn up by the kerbstone; the doors of it were
open. She had barely made a word intelligible; when Major de Pyrmont
pointed to some officers approaching. 'Get her out of the way while
there's time,' he said in French to Luciano. 'This is her carriage.
Swiftly, gentlemen, or she's lost.'
Giacinta read his meaning by signs, and caught her mistress by the
sleeve, using force. She and Major de Pyrmont placed Vittoria,
bewildered, in the carriage; De Pyrmont shut the door, and signalled to
the coachman. Vittoria thrust her head out for a last look at her lover,
and beheld him with the arms of dark-clothed men upon him. La Scala was
pouring forth its occupants in struggling roaring shoals from every door.
Her outcry returned to her deadened in the rapid rolling of the carriage
across the lighted Piazza. Giacinta had to hold her down with all her
might. Great clamour was for one moment heard by them, and then a
rushing voicelessness. Giacinta screamed to the coachman till she was
exhausted. Vittoria sank shuddering on the lap of her maid, hiding her
face that she might plunge out of recollection.
The lightnings shot across her brain, but wrote no legible thing; the
scenes of the opera lost their outlines as in a white heat of fire. She
tried to weep, and vainly asked her heart for tears, that this dry
dreadful blind misery of mere sensation might be washed out of her, and
leave her mind clear to grapple with evil; and then, as the lurid breaks
come in a storm-driven night sky, she had the picture of her lover in the
hands of enemies, and of Wilfrid in the white uniform; the torment of her
living passion, the mockery of her passion by-gone. Recollection, when
it came back, overwhelmed her; she swayed from recollection to oblivion,
and was like a caged wild thing. Giacinta had to be as a mother with
her. The poor trembling girl, who had begun to perceive that the
carriage was bearing them to some unknown destination, tore open the
bands of her corset and drew her mistress's head against the full warmth
of her bosom, rocked her, and moaned over her, mixing comfort and
lamentation in one offering, and so contrived to draw the tears out from
her, a storm of tears; not fitfully hysterical, but tears that poured a
black veil over the eyeballs, and fell steadily streaming. Once subdued
by the weakness, Vittoria's nature melted; she shook piteously with
weeping; she remembered Laura's words, and thought of what she had done,
in terror and remorse, and tried to ask if the people would be fighting
now, but could not. Laura seemed to stand before her like a Fury
stretching her finger at the dear brave men whom she had hurled upon the
bayonets and the guns. It was an unendurable anguish. Giacinta was
compelled to let her cry, and had to reflect upon their present situation
unaided. They had passed the city gates. Voices on the coachman's box
had given German pass-words. She would have screamed then had not the
carriage seemed to her a sanctuary from such creatures as foreign
soldiers, whitecoats; so she cowered on. They were in the starry open
country, on the high-road between the vine-hung mulberry trees. She held
the precious head of her mistress, praying the Saints that strength
would soon come to her to talk of their plight, or chatter a little
comfortingly at least; and but for the singular sweetness which it
shot thrilling to her woman's heart, she would have been fretted when
Vittoria, after one long-drawn wavering sob, turned her lips to the bared
warm breast, and put a little kiss upon it, and slept.