The heart hath whispered in its bliss,
Who could be sad in scenes like this?
But, hist, a sound the night-wind bears,
A voice of love and sighs and tears!
_MS. Poem._
AN instant, but a single instant, the lady remained upon his breast, and
then Zanotti, removing her clinging arms, placed her upon the seat which
he had himself just occupied. She looked upon him, her full dark eyes
flowing with tears, and seemed struggling for utterance, but no words
came! At length, with an averted face, he spoke--
"Your highness forgets our relative positions, and"--
"Forgets!" said she wildly, interrupting him; "forgets! Ay! I did indeed
for a moment forget all but you; and you, Oh Carlo, is yours the voice to
bring back reality? Is it for you to whom every pulsation of my heart has
been dedicated; for whom in the long hours of night I have wept tears that
seemed of blood--is it for you to restore me to a reality which contains
no elements but those of despair, those that break hearts, those that
frenzy the exhausted brain?"
Alfieri's voice was sepulchrally hollow when he replied, and the quivering
of his manly frame showed the violence of the emotion within.
"Leonora," said he, "Leonora, four years ago we parted in Venice. I vowed
never to see you more till I had won a name you could not shame to wear;
and _you_ swore never to betray my deep devotion. I was then unacquainted
with life; I was young and trusting; I looked upon the flower and inhaled
its perfume, nor sought to analyze what hidden poisons lurked within
it; I looked not for a serpent or a viper in its folded leaves! I gazed
upon the diamond-sheeted waters, nor thought upon the noxious elements
that, uniting in malaria, might rise from their bosom to desolate many a
neighboring home. I turned my eyes upon the moonlit sky without a thought
of a possible hour when the same azure face of heaven would frown and the
live thunder launch its bolts to ruin and destroy! Ay! I _then_ looked but
at the fair _outside_ of all created things, and heeded not the motive or
the soul within! Leonora, I looked on _you_, and I believed you! I went
forth cheerfully to the hard fight I had before me; I kept my vow--I am a
field-marshal of Austria. Have you kept yours?"
She cast upon him an imploring, a piteous glance. The moon was beaming
through an interstice in the foliage and shone full upon his features,
making their paleness ghastly, but showing no _violent_ emotion--nothing
but a hushed, cold, haughty sorrow.
She trembled perceptibly as she replied to his concluding question.
"Yes, as truly as I have my faith in God; Alfieri, they told me you were
dead. Circumstances too complicated to explain placed my father in a
position with the government that involved his life. Prince Carlos saved
him, and, for the priceless service, asked but the poor repayment of my
hand. I told him my heart could not accompany the gift. He still urged his
suit. Could I refuse?"
"Ay, madam, the tale sounds well," was the bitter reply; "but your grief
seemed of a strangely merry sort; but now your laugh was as light as any
in the room, your jest as gay!"
"Zanotti!" said the lady, and there was something of indignation in her
tone, "I am not what the world in its cold carelessness deems me, and
_you_ judge me as the greatest stranger of them all would do! The face may
be wreathed in smiles, the lips may be musical with laughing jests, and
yet, in its unrevealed depths, the heart may writhe in anguish, the soul
sink with despair! But this recrimination is vain, all vain!"
She clasped her forehead as if in pain, and hot tears forced themselves
through the tightly pressed fingers. Her lover maintained a cold and
scornful silence. All the pride of his race had combined with a deep
sense of injury in a trusting and betrayed nature to make him stern and
apparently heartless in his resentment. Suddenly Leonora started to her
feet, the woman's pride within her revolted at what seemed the _silent
sarcasm_ of his look. Her eyes, with the tears checked suddenly within
them, emitted a wild, singular, startling light; there was something
of the Medusa in her aspect. She gazed at him with a strange mingling
of supplication and haughtiness in her look; her glance penetrated his
soul and softened it; he heard the panting throb of her heart, and knew
there could be no acting in that. Her breath came warm upon his cheek; he
trembled at the recollections that were crowding upon him. And then, too,
she spoke--
"You use me _too_ cruelly," she said; "I do not deserve this silent scorn!
I have wronged myself by giving way to emotions for which you but mock and
despise me!"
He started--were not her words true? Had he not been unjust in his grief?
"Leonora," said he, abruptly, "hear me! From my earliest youth--ever
since remembrance avails me to recall events--rash, impetuous feeling (my
inheritance from a long line of hot-headed ancestors) made me in every
feeling extreme and violent. I rushed to my studies as to a conflict
with a foe, and rested not till I had conquered every difficulty. The
same in pleasure, obstacles were but the stones that made the stream of
life sparkle brightly in its sun, and I leaped over them, or cast them
aside with an exulting sense of power. My love for _you_ concentrated
all this vagrant impetuosity into one earnest and undying passion. It
subdued and soothed the sinuosities of my outward nature; it checked the
headlong restlessness that was before apparent in all I did, and turned
all the various bubbling springs within me into one noiseless, but deep,
resistless stream. It made an ocean of the rivers of my being; that ocean
rose and fell, tinted with the sun's glorious beams for a brief space! Oh!
how brief! and then storms arose; and now, when I know the tempest is
to last forever, is it strange if I am indignant when I look on her who
wrought all this misery, this fearful misery?"
He had spoken without looking up at her. He now raised his eyes, and found
her again weeping bitterly.
"And do I not share that misery, with all the aggravation of a fruitless
remorse? Oh, you know not," she added, her voice assuming a tone of
beseeching earnestness, "the days and nights of intense anguish that
dragged their slow length along, when thinking you lay beneath the deep
sea (for they said your grave was there). When tears would flow, I wept
for you, and mourned in silent anguish when they were refused me! You
know not how stronger than a woman's that heart must be that can resist
the appeal, continued day after day, when it comes from the lips of 'all,
whom we believe to be in the wide world, whom we would bless.' _Words_ may
be met and combated; but the mute lip and imploring eye--_they_ cannot
be resisted; the tenderness that _veils_ its dearest wish for fear of
grieving us; the grief unspoken, and the more bitter from concealment!
Who can see this, _and in a father_, every day, every hour, every minute,
and nerve their hearts to deny the relief they can bestow? But all this
avails nothing; the tie is irrevocable that binds me to misery and severs
us forever. For you, Zanotti, you will go forth into the world; excitement
is an antidote provided for the grief of man. You will win admiration and
applause; your fame as a scholar and a poet, your renown as a soldier,
will secure you a high position among men, higher than your rank alone
would give. You will be loved, you will love again, and _our_ hours of
rapture will linger in your mind but as the recollection of a dream! I
ask but a kindly remembrance and forgiveness of my unintentional sin.
Farewell!"
"And is it thus we part!" There was a proud repelling sorrow in the
lover's tone as he thus replied: "Is this, then, the end of our golden
dream!" He paused, and, suddenly advancing, bent his head close to her
ear, "_Leonora, do you love me still?_" The question was in a whisper. She
started, a singular, a terrified expression mounting into her face. She
was about to speak, but even as the words seemed on the eve of utterance,
a crashing sound, as of some one forcing his way through the thickly
intertwined branches of the neighboring vines, caught the attention of
both herself and her companion, and, with a stifled shriek, she looked
round as if seeking an opposite path by which to escape. Her intention
was frustrated, however, for in an instant after the intruder made his
appearance.
"My husband!"
Leonora said but these two simple words, but there was a desperate
impassibility in the tone in which they were spoken, that told of a heart
whose terror was frozen into despair.
Zanotti, whose face had flushed crimson on the first appearance of the
prince, was again as pale as death. The moon looked calmly down upon all,
and God knows she had seldom shone on three persons whose hearts, in
their agony, came nearer epitomes of hell than the group assembled there.
Leonora seemed rooted to the spot, bound by a spell, a charm. Her small,
beautiful hands were clenched convulsively together; her breath came with
quick and labored gasps; her form seemed convulsed with a terrible and
racking agony! She looked from her lover to her husband--a look beseeching
their mutual forbearance--made a step forward, seemed struggling to
articulate, and fell heavily to the earth.
* * * * *