A GOODLY HERITAGE.
"It is not best in an inglorious ease
To sink and dull content,
When wild revolts and hopeless miseries
The unquiet nations fill;
* * * * *
Nay, best it is indeed
To spend ourselves upon the general good;
And, oft misunderstood,
To strive to lift the knees and limbs that bleed.
This is the best, the fullest meed.
Let ignorance assail or hatred sneer
Who loves his race he shall not fear;
He suffers not for long,
Who doth his soul possess in loving, and grows strong."
LEWIS MORRIS.
The old singing-master had not exaggerated matters. Though inclined
to see everything connected with his favorite pupil through
rose-colored spectacles, his words were in this instance strictly
true. Carlo had passed scathless through all the temptations of
Neapolitan life; his history would bear the full light of day; it was
impossible to imagine any one more strictly honorable, more simple
and open-minded. But then, certainly, Nature had been to him almost
prodigal in her gifts. To begin with, he came of a good family, and
that not in the vulgar acceptation of the word. The Donati were not
of noble birth, but for five or six generations they had been well
educated, and had earned quite an unusual reputation in the various
learned professions which they had followed. Faults of temper or of
judgment they might have shown, but no Donati had ever been guilty of
an act of meanness, nor had there been in anyone of them a single
grain of insincerity. To belong to a family which has earned
well-deserved respect, to be able to look back upon forefathers who
have lived well and bravely, to know that before you existed your
father, and his father before him, spoke for freedom and pleaded the
cause of the people, this is indeed a birthright worth having. An
inheritance of money may or may not be a desirable thing, but an
inheritance of character, an ancestry of generous, true-hearted men,
who did justly, and loved mercy, and walked humbly with their God,
this is a thing that kings might covet.
Carlo had undoubtedly inherited a noble character, or rather had
inherited certain tendencies, and as yet, by his life, had helped to
develop, not to arrest, their growth.
At the close of the last century there had been born a certain Bruno
Donati. People had prophesied great things of him; he had
established, with almost unheard-of rapidity, a great reputation as
an advocate, he had married a beautiful heiress, he was assuredly a
man who would "rise"--so said the world. He did rise, but not in the
way predicted. Regardless of his reputation, regardless of self
altogether, he joined the patriot party who were struggling to
overthrow the hated tyranny of the Neapolitan Bourbons. Leaving his
home, and taking a tender farewell of his wife and his little
children, he set off one June morning for Cilento, the place which
had been chosen for a small rising. At first a certain measure of
success encouraged the patriots; they were able to take the little
fort of Palinuro, and to hoist the tricolored flag.
But those brave pioneers knew well that they were taking their lives
in their hands. They had achieved a success which must draw the
attention of the whole country upon them. In hot haste General
Delcaretto was sent down to attack them with six thousand men, and no
mercy was shown. Twenty of the patriots were shot without trial;
twenty-six others, and amongst them Bruno Donati, were executed. The
young advocate had, as it seemed, sacrificed his life for a hopeless
cause; he was never again to return to his beautiful home, but
General Delcaretto caused his head to be paraded in front of the
house before the eyes of his widow and his fatherless children.
Then, when the people had been ruined, a commune or two suppressed,
and the insurrection completely stamped out, the General returned to
Naples to be rewarded for his gallantry by receiving the title of
Marquis, a decoration of a knightly order, and a pension.
Bruno Donati's widow did not die until she had educated her two sons,
and had seen that the younger one, also Bruno, was likely to be just
such a man as his father. She did not realize how much alike the
story of the two Brunos would be.
Both sons followed their father's profession, but the younger one was
so much engrossed in the revolutionary movement of the time that he
did not make much way in it. Instead of so doing, he joined "Young
Italy," studied deeply under the guidance of Mazzini, and at length
enrolled himself in Garibaldi's gallant little army.
Carlo's earliest recollections were of a hot August day in the year
1862. He, as a little fellow, had sat beside his mother in a
carriage outside the post-office at Pozzuoli, and some one had
brought them the news of Garibaldi's defeat at Aspromonte, and with
that the tidings that Bruno Donati was dangerously wounded. Carlo
could even now see vividly his mother's deathly face as she read the
news, could remember his puzzled wonder as to what it all meant, and
whether it could possibly be that his father would never return.
But the second Bruno Donati was in some ways happier than his father;
he was brought back from Aspromonte to his own home, where he
lingered for a month--a month which proved of extraordinary value in
his son's education. The child was too young to feel his father's
death as a life-long grief, but he was just old enough to carry away
from that death-bed a beautiful and unfading memory. Upon his
childish brain was stamped the conviction that to die for "_La
Patria_" was a very happy thing, that the sacrifice of self for
others was the only true greatness, and that even such a failure as
Aspromonte was not to be accounted failure--that right could not fail
in the long run. "_Pazienza! pazienza!_" was the word constantly on
the lips of the dying patriot--the word which always connected itself
with his memory in the mind of his son. On Bruno Donati's dying face
there had been that "look of faith in renunciation" which was stamped
upon the face of his teacher, Mazzini, and the look lived on in the
child's heart.
"Carlino," his father had said tenderly, on the very last day of his
life--"Carlino _mio_, thou wilt be a man one day."
"How nice it will be when I am a man like you, father?" cried the boy
eagerly.
The dying man smiled sadly.
"Remember always to comfort and shield thy mother; and Nita--take
good care of Nita."
"Why, father, Nita is older than I am, a whole year older!" exclaimed
the child.
"But Nita is a woman, and my Carlo must be her brave protector;
promise me that, my son."
"I promise, father," said the little fellow, squeezing the cold hand
that clasped his. "And father, dear father, I may have your sword,
may I not? You'll not leave it to Uncle Guido, who has one already?
For if I have it, father, then I could fight the brigands if they
took Nita; could I not?"
The dying man smiled, touched by the innocent literalness of the
reply. He caught Carlo to his breast, holding him in a long, close
embrace.
"Why, father, I do believe you'll soon be well!" cried the boy,
gleefully, feeling the power of those strong arms round him. He did
not know that a sudden strength is often death's forerunner.
And in a sense he little meant his words came true, for by the next
morning the second Bruno Donati had entered into the martyr's rest,
and it was "well" with him.
After this Carlo's life had been uneventful; the recollection of his
father did not sadden him, on the contrary, it raised and stimulated
him. For an Italian boy he had an unusually free and healthy life;
his mother could never make up her mind to leave the country-house
where they had been passing their _villeggiatura_ during that summer
of 1862, and in which her husband had died. They lived all the year
round at the Villa Bruno, and a kindly old priest at Pozzuoli taught
the boy until he was old enough to go in every day to the _Ginnasio_
at Naples.
Here he entered into his lifelong friendship with Enrico Ritter, and
learnt much through his intercourse with the German family, whose
house became his headquarters when he was in Naples. The Ritters,
deeming the country life dull for the boy, were constantly inviting
him to stay with them, and giving him brief snatches of gayety.
Nominally Lutherans, the worthy Germans were practically
materialists, and it was largely owing to his visits at the Ritters
that Carlo first became dissatisfied with the religion in which his
mother had educated him. Equally was he dissatisfied with the
conventional acceptance of Christianity and the real scepticism which
prevailed in the Ritter household. For a year or two he puzzled his
brain over the vexed question; finally he took the decisive step and
resolved to go no more to church. This caused much pain to his
mother and to his old friend, Father Cristoforo; and though plunging
deeply into that sort of worship at the shrine of beautiful Nature
which is the reaction from formalism, he felt a want in his life.
Shortly before this a house close to the Villa Bruno, which for some
years had been untenanted, had been taken by an Englishman named
Captain Britton. He had just lost his wife; and the home at San
Remo, where his children had been born, and to which he had returned
year by year when off duty, had grown intolerable to him. He retired
from the service, and, taking a fancy to the neighborhood of Naples,
settled down at Casa Bella, and made up his mind to live and die
there. He had only two children--Francesca, a beautiful girl about a
year younger than Carlo--so named after an Italian friend of the
family--and Sibyl, a fairy-like little child of two years old. Miss
Claremont, Francesca's governess, or, as everyone called her,
"Clare," had the management of the house, and it was largely owing to
her that a very close intimacy soon sprang up between the two
neighboring families.
Carlo and Francesca were at first not of an age for falling in love.
They became fast friends, and Carlo in his rather lonely life was
enchanted to find that the English girl was allowed almost unlimited
freedom. She was wholly unlike his convent-bred sister, who, since
her mother was an invalid, was allowed to come home now and then for
a day or two. Nita was beautiful, and sang like an angel, and was a
devout little Catholic, and did her best to teach him the error of
his ways. But, to save her life, Nita could not have been a
companion in his games. Now Francesca, though no hoyden, was in the
matter of games as good as a boy. She was not above climbing trees
or running races, she excelled at rounders, she even initiated him
into the mysteries of cricket, enlisting the services of Clare and
the gardeners.
Then nothing would do but he must teach her to row, and many were the
happy hours they spent on the sea together, sometimes with Clare in
the stern, sometimes with little Sibyl and her nurse, sometimes with
old Florestano, the fisherman, who would tell them quaint legends of
saints, or mermaids, or ghosts, in all of which he believed equally.
Sometimes they would go oyster-catching in Lake Fusaro, or, with
Clare as a delightful third, would scramble about in the Acropolis at
Cumas, seeking to make fresh discoveries. Or they would play
hide-and-seek in the Grotto della Pace, or act thrilling brigand
stories, or dig and search in field or vineyard, and perhaps stumble
across the remains of an old Roman villa or the ruins of a temple,
hidden away by the straggling green growth.
Those were happy days for all of them. Carlo before long formed for
Miss Claremont that sort of reverential, half-worshipping friendship
and admiration which is not uncommon between boys of his age and
middle-aged women. And Clare was a friend worth having. She
influenced people chiefly by loving them; you never felt with her
that she was trying to doctor you, or to improve your moral or
spiritual health. She discussed many things with Carlo, listened to
his crude, half-fledged ideas with the utmost patience, and would no
more have smiled at them or treated them contemptuously than a woman
would smile with contempt as she watches the staggering steps of a
baby beginning to walk alone.
Clare sympathized much with the difficulties of his position; she saw
that his deeply religious Italian nature would never rest content in
its present isolation.
"Do you never feel the need of worshipping?" she asked him one day.
"Yes," he replied, "but one need not be within the walls of a church
to do that; a boat at sea, or an olive-grove, are more to my taste."
Just at that time he was the least bit proud of having shaken himself
free from the bondage of Romanism, a fact which was quite patent to
Clare, and proved to her how perilous was his state.
"And yet," she urged, "I should have thought that you--a follower of
Mazzini--would have had a strong faith in Association."
The words struck home, unpleasantly convincing Carlo that he had been
rapturously hugging a thing which he called Freedom, and that it was
but an illusion more worthy to be called Isolation.
"I don't know where to turn to!" he exclaimed, chafed by a remark
which had disturbed his peace, and proved it to be false.
"Are you trying to find out the best place?" she asked quietly.
He was silent, and Clare, who had the rare tact to know when she had
said enough, changed the subject.
But the very next Sunday he astonished her by asking leave to join
their party and drive in to the English church at Naples with them.
His total absence of false shame, and the ingenuous humility which
could thus tacitly own itself in the wrong, promptly and publicly
following the suggestion of a woman, were thoroughly Italian. Clare
reflected that an Englishman would have allowed a week or two to pass
by, in order to prove that he came of his own free will and not at
the instigation of another; or would, perhaps, have toiled over on
foot in the early morning, slinking in at the back of the church, in
terror lest people should comment on the amendment of his ways.
After a time he formally joined the English Church. Of course he had
some opposition to encounter; but though his old friend the priest
shook his head sorrowfully, and though his mother shed tears, and
though the Ritters chaffed him good-humoredly, his happiness was too
great to be marred by such things; besides, they all loved him so
well that they soon pardoned the obnoxious step which he had taken,
and did their best to forget that he was not as they were.
A few months after this the first shadow fell upon Carlo's perfect
felicity. It was suddenly arranged that the Britton household should
migrate to England for a year. An aunt of Francesca's had just died,
and some one was urgently needed to look after the motherless
children. Who was so fit for such a task as Clare? and though she
would fain have lived on in that happy Italian home, she could not
linger there when needed in another place, and at any rate she should
have her children for yet another year. That helped to break the
parting. Captain Britton was glad for a time to be with his brother,
and a year of English life, in which to finish Francesca's rather
unconventional education, was deemed a good idea by all. So once
more Casa Bella was silent and deserted, and Carlo was left to his
own devices.
It was just at this time that Nita returned from her convent. A
great change was at once effected in the peacefulness of the Villa
Bruno, for the girl, while retaining enough of her religious
education to make her persecute her heretic brother with endless
arguments and remonstrances, was yet so wearied of its strict
restraint that she broke out into violent reaction and tyrannized
over her mother, much as she herself had till now been tyrannized
over.
The Signora Donati was an invalid; she had never recovered from the
cruel shock of her husband's death, nor had she at any time been
noted for strength of character. Carlo had been too loyal ever to
take advantage of this; her slightest wish had been to him a command,
and the two had idolized each other. But somehow it happened that
Nita coming home from her convent felt like an intruder; she could
not find a niche for herself in the home, and, measuring the hearts
of other people by her own, fancied she was not cared for. Perhaps
her mother did show a little too markedly that Carlo was her
favorite; but then it really was difficult not to love the son who
treated her with such tenderness, such respectful devotion, somewhat
better than the daughter, who sought for nothing but her own
amusement, and never voluntarily performed for her the slightest
service.
It was also, perhaps, true that Carlo did not greatly care for his
sister, at any rate she tried his temper severely. He was impatient
with her aggravating little displays of piety, her deep genuflexions,
her paraded fasts. He was constantly detecting her in petty deceits,
and once, after some worse specimens of publicity than usual, he had
angrily upbraided her.
"You are not fit to bear the name of Donati!" he cried hotly, his
boyish sense of honor deeply wounded, and his family pride hurt to
find that Nita was no better than the rest of the world.
"Perhaps I shall not bear it much longer!" she retorted, angrily.
And those words haunted poor Carlo for many a year. For, not long
after, all Naples rang with the news that Anita Donati had eloped
with her singing-master, a certain basso who had been engaged that
winter at the San Carlo.
Fortunately, the Villa Bruno was far away in the country, and the
Signora too great an invalid to go into society. She could bear her
agony in solitude, and was not obliged to wear a mask and go about as
though nothing had happened.
But Carlo was in the thick of the fray, he had to listen to Uncle
Guido's indignant denunciations, he had to bear the brunt of the
endless questions of the outsiders, had to endure the bitter
consciousness that his sister's name was being bandied about in the
city, and that, for the first time, a Donati had incurred
well-merited blame.
Since then nothing had been heard of Anita, except that about a week
after her flight she had forwarded to her mother a newspaper with the
announcement of her marriage. But the Signora Donati never recovered
from the shock, nor could she ever forgive herself, for she rightly
felt that had her relations with her daughter been happier such a
thing could never have happened.
Five years had gone by since then, and Time had passed his quieting
hand over both grief and disgrace. Certainly Carlo felt nothing but
happiness--unalloyed happiness--as he rode home from Naples that
sunny spring day. He knew nothing of that ominous little paragraph
torn out of the _Piccolo_, but galloped on over the white, dusty
road, past fields of Indian corn, past olive-gardens and vineyards,
through the long, dark grotto of Posilipo, and on towards the
picturesque little southern town of Pozzuoli. He scarcely noticed
all the beauty round him; he could see nothing but the face of his
dreams; and the very horse-hoofs flying over the road seemed to
repeat, again and again, the word, "Francesca! Francesca! Francesa!"