Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
CLARA VAUGHAN
_A NOVEL_
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL III.
R. D. Blackmore
London and Cambridge:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1864.
_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved._
LONDON:
R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.
CLARA VAUGHAN
BOOK IV. (_continued_).
CHAPTER X.
STORY OF EDGAR VAUGHAN.
Child Clara, for your own dear sake, as well as mine and my sweet
love's, I will not dwell on that tempestuous time. If you cannot
comprehend it without words, no words will enable you. If you can, and
I fear you do, no more words are wanted; and, as an old man weary of the
world, I know not whether to envy or to pity you.
Hither and thither I was flung, to the zenith star of ecstasy or the
nadir gulf of agony, according as my idol pet chose to smile or frown.
Though she was no silly child, but a girl of mind and feeling, she had a
store, I must confess, of clouds as well as dazzling sunlight in the
empyrean of her eyes. Her nature, like my love, was full of Southern
passion. It is like the air they breathe, the beauty they behold. One
minute of such love compresses in a thunder flood all the slow emotions
stealing through the drought-scrimped channel, where we dredge for gold
deposits, through ten years of Saxon courtship. Instead of Lily-bloom,
she should have been called the Passion-flower.
My life, my soul--how weak our English words are--she loved me from the
first, I can take my oath she did, although her glory was too great for
her to own it yet, though now and then her marvellous eyes proved
traitors. Sometimes when she was racking me most, feigning even, with
those eyes cast down, her pellucid fingers point to point, and her
little foot tapping the orchid bloom, feigning, I say, in cold blood, to
reckon her noble lovers--long names all and horribly hateful to
me--suddenly, while I trembled, and scowled like a true-born Briton,
suddenly up would leap the silky drooping lashes, and a spring of soft
electric light would flutter through them to the very core of my heart.
As for me, I abandoned myself. I made no pretence of waiting a moment.
I flung my heart wide open to her, and if she would not come in, desert
it should be for ever.
She did come. That life-blood of my soul came in, and would and could
live nowhere else for ever.
It was done like this. One August evening, when the sun was sinking,
and the air was full of warmth and wooing sounds, the cicale waking from
his early nap, the muffro leaping for the first dew-drop, the love-birds
whispering in the tamarind leaves, Fiordalisa sat with me, under a giant
cork-tree on the western slope. The tower was still in Vendetta siege,
and the grave and reverend Signor knew better than to come out, when the
Sbirri were gone to the town. Lily-bloom was sitting by me in a mass of
flowers; her light mandile was laid by, that her glorious hair might
catch the first waft of the evening breeze. All down her snow-white
shoulders fell the labyrinth of tresses, twined by me with red Tacsonia,
and two pale carnations. Her form was pillowed in rich fern, that
feathered round her waist; of all the fronds and plumes and stems, not
one so taper, light, and rich as that. The bloom upon her cheeks was
deepened by my playing with her hair, and her soft large eyes were
beaming with delicious wonder.
We knew, as well as He who made us, that we loved one another. None who
did not love for ever could interchange such looks. Suddenly, and
without a word, in an ecstasy of admiration, I passed my left arm round
her little waist, drew her close to me--she was very near before--and
looking full into her wondrous eyes, found no protest but a thrill of
light; then tried her lips and met her whole heart there. Darling, how
she kissed me! No English girl can do it. And then the terror of her
maiden thoughts. The recollection of her high-born pride, and higher
because God-born innocence. How she wept, and blushed, and trembled;
trembled, blushed, and wept again; and then vouchsafed one more
entrancing kiss, to atone for the unwitting treason. Even thus I would
not be content. I wanted words as well.
"Do you love me, my own Lily, with every atom of your heart?"
"I have not left one drop of blood for all the world besides."
And it was true. And so it was with me. I told her father that same
night. And now in the heaven of gladness and wild pleasure, beyond all
dreams of earth, opened the hell of my wickedness and crime; which but
for mercy and long repentance would sever me from my Lily in the world
to come. To some the crime may seem a light one, to me it is a most
atrocious sin, enhanced tenfold by its awful consequences.
By my crime, I do not mean my sinful adoration, as cold men may call it,
of a fellow mortal. Nature has no time to waste, and unless she meant
my Lily to be worshipped, she would not have lavished all her skill in
making her so divine. No, I mean my black deceit, in passing for my
brother. Oh, Clara, don't go from me.
Like many another ruinous sin, it was committed without thought, or
rather without deliberation. No scheme was laid, not even the least
intention cherished; but the moment brought it, and the temptation was
too great. Who could have that loving pet gazing at him so, and not
sell his soul almost to win her to his arms?
Laurence Daldy was a lazy ass. I do not want to shift my blame to him,
but merely state a fact. If he had not been a lazy ass, your father
would be living now--ay, and my Fiordalisa. When he chose, he could
write very good Italian, and a clear, round hand, and oh, rare
accomplishment for an officer, he could even spell. But his letter to
Signor Dezio, scrawled betwixt two games of pool, was a perfect magpie's
nest of careless zigzag, wattles, and sand slap-dash. In those days a
hasty writer used to flick his work with sand, which stanched but did
not dry the ink. The result was often a grimy dabble, like a child's
face blotched with blackberries.
Lily and I had quite arranged how we should present ourselves. Like two
children we rehearsed it under the twilight trees. "And then, you
know," my sweet love whispered, "I shall give you a regular kiss beneath
the dear father's beard, and you will see what an effect it will have.
Thence he will learn, oh sweetest mine, that there is no help for it;
because we Corsican girls are so chary of our lips."
"Are you indeed, my beautiful Lily? I must teach you liberality, to me,
and to me alone."
"Sweetest mine," she always called me from the moment she confessed her
love; and so, no doubt, she is calling me now in heaven.
The curtain hung in heavy folds across the narrow doorway of the long
dark room. The hospitable board was gay with wine and dainty fruit,
melons, figs, and peaches, plums of golden and purple hue, pomegranates,
pomi d'oro, green almonds, apricots, and muscatels from the ladders of
Cape Corso. Through them and upon them played the mellow light from a
single lamp, with dancing lustres round it. All the rest of the room
was dark. At the head of the table sat Signor Dezio Della Croce,
waiting for his guest and daughter. Posted high at the end window on a
ledge of rough-hewn board, stood the ancient warder, who had lived for
fifty years among them, and whose great fusil commanded the only
approach to the castle.
As we entered timidly, the maiden's right hand on my neck, my left arm
round her ductile waist, our other hands clasped firmly, I glanced
toward that noxious sentinel.
"Never mind him, sweetest mine. Don't believe that he is there.
Grandpapa, I call him, and he knows all my secrets."
Signor Dezio looked amazed, as we glided towards him. His life had been
one series of crushing blows from heaven. Three brave sons had been
barbarously murdered in Vendetta, and his graceful loving wife had
broken her heart and died. The sole hope of his house, his petling
Fiordalisa, though she called herself a woman and was full sixteen, he
looked upon her still in his trouble-torn chronology, as only ripe
enough to be dandled on his lap. Still he called her his "Ninnina," and
sang nannas to her, as he had been obliged to do after her mother's
death.
As he sat there, too astonished to smile, or frown, or say a word, Lily
dropped upon her knees before him, as a Grecian maiden would. We
English are not supple-jointed; but for Lily's sake, I could not stand
beside her. Then she placed her soft right hand in the centre of my
hard palm, flung the other arm round my neck, and with her eyes upon her
father's, gave me a long affectionate kiss. This done, she drew her
father's head down, and kissed his snow-white beard. Now, she told me,
after this, any father who is obdurate, must according to institution
blame himself and no one else, if harm befall the maiden.
All this time, I spoke not, and thought of nothing except to screen my
Lily. Signor Dezio kept a stately silence, but the tears were in his
eyes, and the long white beard was quivering. Lily bent her head, and
waited for his words.
"Mother of God! My little child, what are you thinking of?"
"Only thinking of being married, father."
"And set another Vendetta afoot, and be killed yourself!
Signor"--turning haughtily to me--"this lady is betrothed, from her
early infancy, to her cousin Lepardo Della Croce."
"Oh, I hate him," cried Fiordalisa, clasping her hands piteously. "Ah,
Madonna, I hate him so; and thank our Lady, no one has seen him for six
years. He is dead no doubt in some Cannibal Island. Saints of mercy,
keep him. I saw it in the Spalla, in the Shepherd's Spalla, and I saw
my own love there, the eve before he came."
"Grace of Holy Mary! Who read the Spalla for you?"
"The hoary goatherd from Ghidazzo." And up sprang Fiordalisa, flew to
an inner room, and fetched from the dark niche in the wall the box of
holy relics. With these she knelt before her father, and placed her
right hand on the box.
"My child, it is not needful. I believe you without an oath. Never yet
have you passed the boundary of truth."
The old chief bowed his head in thought. He had lost his last surviving
son by neglecting the Spalla's decree. The Spalla is the shoulder blade
of a goat, polished, and used for divination; upon it had been read
Sampiero's death, and the destiny of Napoleon. The old man who had
forecast the latter was still alive, and of immense renown, and
traversed the island now like an ancient prophet. He was the hoary
goatherd of Ghidazzo.
Lily saw that she was conquering; she leaped upon her father's knee and
hugged him; and her triumph was complete. While she wept upon his
breast, and told him all her little tale, and whispered in his ear, and
while he kissed, and comforted her, and thought of her dear mother, I
rushed out and leaped the Vinea, and wept beneath the olive-trees.
At last the old man rose and called me, he durst not venture from the
door; but he did what was far better, he sent my own love after me. At
length when we returned, and we found cause not to hurry,--
"Signor Vogheno," he began, "I have observed you well. I am a man of
very keen observation"--Lily's eyes gave me a twinkle full of fun--"or I
should not be alive this moment. I have observed you, sir, and I
approve your character. I cannot say as much, sir, of all the
Englishmen I have been privileged to meet. There is about them very much
of the nature of a dog. Forgive me, sir; pray interrupt me not. I only
judge by what I have seen. God forbid that I should say so to you,
while you were my guest. Now you are one of my family, and entitled to
the result of my observations. Of the little island itself I know
nothing at all, though I am informed that its institutions are of a
barbarous character."
"Vendetta for instance," was on my lips, but Lily's glance just saved
it. And I thought of his three brave sons.
"But, Signor beloved, you are different from them; indeed you have the
nobility of the Corsican nature. And what is most of all, my little
child has fixed her heart upon you. But she is very young, sir, quite a
child you see." I saw nothing of the sort, but a blooming maiden
figure, growing lovelier every day. Poor Lily dropped her long
eyelashes, and smiled through a glowing blush. So blushed Lavinia under
the eyes of Turnus.
"This darling child is now the heiress to these lands of mine. And if
her cousin Lepardo, whose death she has seen on the Spalla, be indeed
removed from us, she is the very last of all the Della Croce. I cannot
easily read the billet of your brother. He does not write good Corsican
of our side of the mountains, but some outlandish Tuscan. There is
something first which I cannot well decipher, and then I see your name
Signor Valentine Vogheno, and that you are the lord of very large
estates, in some district called Gloisterio?" He looked at me
inquiringly.
Instead of explaining that I was only the brother of the great Signor
Valentino, I bowed, alas I bowed with a hot flush on my cheeks. What
could it matter, and why should I interrupt him, if he chose to deceive
himself? Lily charmed away all hesitation, by clapping her little
hands, and crying, "Sweetest mine, I am so glad."
"Then, upon two conditions I will give you my daughter. The first, that
you leave this island, and do not see our Lily, write to, or even hear
from her, for a period of six months. If she has not outgrown her love,
she will then be almost old enough to wed. I mean, of course, if
Lepardo does not appear. The other condition is that you shall promise
on the holy relics, and you as well, my flower, never to part with these
old estates, but keep them for Lily while she lives, and transmit them
to her second child."
A load of terror was off my heart--I thought he was going to bind me to
the accursed Vendetta. Even for my Lily, I could hardly have taken that
pledge. So I assented readily to the last stipulation, though it was
based upon a virtual lie of mine. But with Lily's eyes upon me,
brimming as they were with tears at the first condition, and her round
arms trembling to enfold me, could I stick at anything short of
downright murder? The first proviso I fought against in vain. Even Lily
coaxed and cried, without any good effect.
When at last we yielded to the stern decree, the venerable father, as we
knelt before him, joined our hands together, and poured a blessing on
us, which I did not lack. He had given me my blessing.
After this we sat down to supper, and the trusty musketeer, who had
watched the whole scene grimly, and without hearing all, knew what the
result was, he, I say, upon his perch began to improvise, or haply to
adapt, and sing to a childish air, some little verses upon the glad
occasion. Having exhausted his stock, down he leaped without
permission, and drank our health in a bumper of Luri wine.
Lily was now in due course of promotion. No longer was she the
handmaid, whose eyes created and rejoiced in countless mistakes of mine.
Now she was sitting by my side, as she had good right to be, and was
lost in pretty raptures at my gallant attentions. They were very nice,
she owned, but thoroughly un-Corsican. How I wished her father and the
old fusileer away!
CHAPTER XI.
"Six long months to be away from Lily! And perhaps forget her, and find
some lovelier maiden."
"By Lily's side, all maids are burdocks. And yet what if I do?"
She showed a small stiletto toy with a cross upon the handle, and ground
her pearly teeth together.
"Will it be for me, or her?"
"Both; and Lily afterwards."
"Oh you wholesale little murderer! Three great kisses directly, one for
every murder."
"Only if you promise, on the relics, never to look twice at a pretty
maiden."
And so we spent the precious time,--ten days allowed me to prepare my
yacht--in talking utter nonsense, and conning fifty foolish schemes, to
make us seem together. I was for departing at once, that the period
might begin to run; but Lily was for keeping me to the last possible
moment, and of course she had her way. It was fixed that I should sail
on the 10th day of September. My little boat, now called the "Lily
flower," was brought from Calvi, and moored in a secluded cove, where my
love could see it from her bedroom window. It was no longer Corsican law
that I should live in the castle. The privileges of a guest were gone;
and the rigorous code of suitorship began. But to me and my own darling
it made very little difference. I never left Vendetta tower, as I
lightly named it, until my pet was ordered off to bed; and every morn I
climbed the heights, after a long swim in the sapphire ripple, and met
my own sweet Lily sparkling from the dew of her early toilet. How she
loved me, how I loved her; which more than other let angels say; for we
could not decide. That ancient Corsican her father, albeit little
versed in books, was as upright and downright a gentleman as ever knew
when his presence was not required. Therefore he took my word of honour
for his Lily's safety; and left her to her own sweet will; and her sweet
will was to spend with me all her waking hours. For her as yet there
was no fear of the blood-avenger. According to their etiquette they
cannot shoot the daughter, until they have shot the father. As to the
sons the restriction does not hold. The feud we were concerned in had
lasted now 120 years, and cost the lives of 130 people. It lay between
the ancient races of Della Croce, and De Gentili, and owed its origin to
the discovery of a dead mule on the road to church. The question was
which family should be exterminated first. For many years the house of
Della Croce had been in the ascendant, having produced a long succession
of good shots and clever bushmen. At one time all the hopes of the De
Gentili hung upon one infant life, which was not thought worth the
taking. Fatal error--that one life had proved a mighty trump. One
after one the Della Croce fell before that original artist, who invented
a patent method of trunking himself in olive bark and firing from a
knot-hole. Many a story Lily told me of his devilish wiles; and in
those stories I rejoiced, because she clung around my neck, and trembled
so that I must hold her. Happily now this olive-branch was dead, having
received his death-wound while he administered one to Lily's youngest
brother. Ever since that, the feud had languished, and strict etiquette
required that the Della Croce should perpetrate the next murder. But
her father, said my Lily, with her sweet head on my breast and her soft
eyes full of fire, her father did not seem to care even to shoot the
cousin of the man who had shot her brothers.
Darling Lily, my blood runs cold, even with your beauty in my arms, to
hear you talk of murder so. Own pet, I shall change you. You heaven
meant for love, and softness, and delight: human devilry has tainted
even you. It was not an easy task to change her. Of all human passions
revenge is far the strongest. Clara, how your eyes flash. You ought to
have been a Corsican. It was not an easy task; but love loves
difficulties. In my ten short days of delicious wretchedness, almost I
taught Fiordalisa to despise revenge. And what do you think availed me
most? Not the Bible. No, her mind and soul were swathed by Popery in
the rags of too many saints. What helped me most, and the only thing
that helped me at all, except caresses, was the broad and free expanse
of the ever changing sea. Her nature was all poetry, her throbbing
breast an Idyl. Upon my little quarter-deck I had a cushioned niche for
her, and there we sat and steered ourselves while the sailors slept
below. Alone upon the crystal world, pledged for life or death
together, drinking deepest draughts of passion and thirsting still for
more, what cared we for petty hatreds, we whose all in all was love?
How she listened as I spoke, how her large eyes grew enlarged.
At last those eyes, pure wells of love, were troubled with hot tears.
The fatal day was come. Tokens we had interchanged, myriad vows, and
countless pledges, which even love could scarce remember. With all the
passion of her race, and all the fervour of the clime, she bared her
beautiful round arm, the part that lay most near the heart and touched
it with the keen stiletto, then she threw her breast on mine, and I laid
the crimsoned ivory on my lips. How the devil--excuse me, Clara--how
the devil I got away, only phlegmatic Englishmen can tell. No Frenchman,
or Italian, would have left that heavenly darling so. We put it off to
the last moment, till it was quite dangerous to pass the rocky jaws. As
my bad luck would have it, there was a purpling sunset breeze. My own
love on the furthest point, her white feet in the water, growing smaller
and smaller yet, and standing upon tiptoe to be seen for another yard;
my own darling love of ages, she loosed her black hair down her snowy
vest, for me to know her from the rocks behind; then she waved and waved
her sweet palm hat, fragrant of my Lily,--I had kissed every single inch
of it,--until she thought I could not see her; and then, as my telescope
showed me, back she fell upon a ledge of rocks, and I could see or fancy
her delicious bosom heaving to the fury of her tears. We glided past
the cavern mouth, and the silver beach beyond it, whence we had often
watched the sunset; and then a beetling crag took from me the last view
of Lily.
However long the schoolboy may have bled from some big coward's
bullying, or the sway of the rustling birch and the bosky thrill that
follows, however sore he may have wept while hung head-downwards through
the midnight hours, with a tallow candle between his teeth, or in the
pang of nouns heteroclite and brachycatalectic dinners; yet despite
these minor ills, his fond heart turns through after life to the scene
of foot-ball and I-spy, to the days when he could jump or eat any mortal
thing. And so it is with bygone love. Even the times of separation or
of bitter quarrel, the aching heart whereon the keepsake lies, the
spasms of jealousy, the tenterhooks of doubt; remembrance looks upon
them all as treasures of a golden age.
Over the darkening sea, we bore away for Sardinia. Hours and hours, I
gazed upon the cushions, where my own pet darling used to lean and love
me. To me they were fairer than all the stars, or the phosphorescent
sea. From time to time our Corsican pilot kept himself awake, by
chanting to strangely mournful airs some of the voceros or dirges, the
burden of many ages in that lamenting land. Fit home for Rachel, Niobe,
or Cassandra, where half a million gallant beings, twice the number of
the present population, have fallen victims to the blood-revenge. So
Corsican historians tell; a thousand violent deaths each year, for the
last five centuries. Sometimes the avenger waits for half a lifetime,
lurking till his moment comes. Before his victim has ceased to quiver,
or the shot to ring down the rocky pass, he is off for the bush or the
mountains, and leads thenceforth a bandit's life.
They tell me, Clara, that things are better now, and this black stain on
a chivalrous race is being purged by Christian civilization. Be it as
it may, I love the island of my Lily still; and hope, please God, to see
it once more, before I go to her.
Banished though I was, for the present, from the only place I cared for,
it seemed still greater severance to go further than I could help.
Therefore instead of returning to England, I spent the winter in
cruising along the western coast of Italy, and the south of Spain; and
coasted back to Genoa. To Seville, and other places famed for beautiful
women, I made especial trips, to search for any fit to compare with my
own maiden. Of course I knew none could be found; but it gave me some
employment, and bitter pleasure, to observe how inferior were all. To
my eyes, bright with one sweet image, no other form had grace enough to
be fit pillow for my charmer's foot. How I longed and yearned for some
fresh token of her: all her little gifts I carried ever in my bosom, but
never let another's eyes rest one moment on them. Not even would I tell
my friends one word about my love; it seemed as if it would grow common
by being talked about. To Peter Green I wrote, resigning my commission,
although I did not tell him that I had found the olives. No, friend
Peter, those olives are much too near my Lily; and I won't have you or
any other stranger there. I know she would not look at you; still I
would rather have you a thousand miles away. Free trade, if you like,
when I have made my fortune; which by the bye is somewhat the maxim of
that school. My fortune, not in olives, oil, or even guineas--all that
rubbish you are welcome to--but my fortune where my heart and soul are
all invested, and now, no more my fortune, but my certain fate in Lily.
At length and at last my calendar--like a homesick pair at school, we
had made one for each other, thanking God that it was not a
leap-year--my calendar so often counted, so punctually erased, began to
yield and totter to the stubborn sap of time. My patience long ago had
yielded, my blood was in a fever. Another thing began to yield, alas it
was my money. Green, Vowler, and Green had behaved most liberally; but
of course the expenses of my vessel had been heavy on me; and now my
salary had ceased. Peter Green wrote to me in the kindest and most
handsome manner, pressing me, if tired (as he concluded) of those
murderous Corsicans, to accept another engagement in Sardinia. Even
without imparting my last discovery, I had done good service to the
firm. I smiled at the idea of my being weary of Corsicans: even now the
mere word sends a warm tide to my heart.
It was not for the beauty of the scene, or the works of art, that I
remained in Genoa; but because it was the likeliest place to see the
Negro's head. As we lay at the end of the mole, my glass commanded all
that entered; and every lugger or xebec that bore the sacred emblem--off
my little dingy pushed from our raking stern, and with one man, now my
friend because a thorough Corsican, I boarded her, at all hazards of
imprisonment; and craved for tidings of the sacred land. Although, of
course, I would not show the nest of all my thoughts, yet by beating
about the bush, I got some scraps of news. The great Signor was
flourishing, and had harvested an enormous crop of olives: his lovely
daughter, now becoming the glory of the island, had been ill of
something like marsh-fever, but was now as blooming as the roses. They
did say, but the captain could not at all believe it, that she had been
betrothed to some foreign olive-merchant. What disgrace! The highest
blood and the sweetest maid in Corsica, to be betrayed to an oilman!
Plenty of other news I gathered--the good people are great gossips--but
this was all I cared for. Meanwhile your father, Clara dear, replied
most warmly to my letter, sending me a sum on loan, which quite relieved
me from cheese-paring. And now the wind was in the north, and it was
almost time to start for the arms of Lily. If I waited any longer, I
should be too mad to bear the voyage. At the break of day we left the
magnificent harbour, and the cold wind from the maritime Alps chilled
all but the fire of love. Up and down the little deck, up and down all
day and night; sleep I never would again, until I touched my Lily. On
the evening of the 8th of March, we were near Cape Corso; next day we
coasted down the west to the lively breeze of spring, and so upon the
9th we moored to the tongue of Calvi. At midnight we were under way, and
when the sun could reach the sea over the snowy peaks, we glided past
the mountain crescent that looks on the Balagna. In the early morning
still, when the dew was floating, we rounded the gray headland of Signor
Dezio's cove, and I climbed along the bowsprit to glance beyond the
corner.
What is that white dress I see fluttering at the water's edge? Whose is
that red-striped mandile tossed on high and caught again? And there the
flag-staff I erected, with my colours flying! Only one such shape on
earth--only two such arms--out with the boat or I must swim, or run the
yacht ashore. The boat has been towing alongside for the last six
hours: Lily can't wait for the boat any more than I can. From rock to
rock she is leaping; which is the nearest one? Into the water she runs,
then away in blushing terror--she forgot all about the other men. But I
know where to find her, she has dropped her little shoe, she must be in
my grotto.
There I press her to my heart of hearts, trembling, weeping, laughing,
all unable to get close enough to me.
"Sweetest mine, ten thousand times, I have been so wretched." Her voice
is like a silver bell.
"My own, I am so glad to hear it. But how well you look!"
If she were lovely when I left her, what shall I call her now? There is
not one atom of her but is pure perfection. I hold her from me for one
moment, to take in all her beauties. She has a most delicious fragrance
that steals upon my senses. Toilet bottles she never heard of; what she
has is nature's gift, and unperceived except by love. I have often told
her of it, but she won't believe it. It is not your breath, you
darling; your breath is only violets; it comes from every fibre of you,
even from your hair; it is as when the wind has kissed a lily of the
valley.
The ancient Signor being a man of very keen observation, did not delay
our wedding any longer than could be helped. That evening we hauled
down the family fusileer, gave him a goblet of wine, and sent him about
his business: for one night we would take our chance even of Vendetta.
At supper-time the Signor was in wonderful spirits, and drank our health
with many praises of our constancy and obedience. One little fact he
mentioned worth a thousand propinations; his daughter's fever had been
cured by some chance news of me. He even went away to fetch a bottle of
choicest Rogliano, when he saw how I was fidgetting to get my arm round
Lily. Then after making his re-entrance, with due clumsiness at the
door, he quite disgraced himself, while drawing the cork, by even
winking at me, as he said abruptly,
"Fiordalisa, when would you like to be married?"
My Lily blushed, I must confess, but did not fence with the question.
"As soon as ever you please, papa. That is, if my love wishes it." But
she would not look at me to ask. In the porch she whispered to me, that
it was only from her terror of the bad Lepardo coming. Did the loving
creature fancy that I would believe it?
Once more we sailed together over the amethyst sea; she was as fond of
the water as a true-born Briton. In her thoughts and glances was
infinite variety. None could ever guess the next thing she would say.
Thoroughly I knew her heart, because I lived therein, and sweeter
lodgings never man was blessed with. But of her mind she veiled as yet
the maiden delicacies, strictly as she would the glowing riches of her
figure. What amazed me more than all, was that while most Corsican
girls are of the nut-brown order, no sun ever burned the snowy skin of
Lily: she always looked so clear and clean, as if it were impossible for
anything to stain her. Clara, you are always talking of your lovely
Isola. I wonder where she got her name: it is no stranger to me.
Something in your description of her reminds me of my Lily. I long to
see the girl: and you must have some reason for so obstinately
preventing me.
CHAPTER XII.
Though Lily and I were most desirous to keep things as quiet as
possible, by this time our engagement was talked of in every house of
the Balagna. That paternal fusileer and my merry yachtsmen, although
they looked the other way whenever we approached, would not permit the
flower of Corsica, as she was now proclaimed, to blush with me unseen.
My sailors attended to her far more than to their business, and would
have leaped into the water for one smile of Lily.
It is the fashion of the island to make a wedding jubilee; and the
Signor was anxious to outdo all that had ever been done. We, absorbed
in one another, did our best to disappoint him; but he scorned the
notion of any private marriage. I never shall forget how he knit his
silver brows when I made a last attempt to bring him to our views.
"Signor Vogheno, to me you appear to forget whose daughter it is that
loves you. Perhaps in your remote, but well regarded island maidens may
be stolen before their fathers can look round. Indeed, I have heard
that they leap over a broomstick. That is not the custom here.
Fiordalisa Della Croce is my only child--the child of my old age; and
not altogether one to be ashamed of. I can afford to be hospitable, and
I mean to be so."
The Corsicans are a most excitable race, and, when affronted, seem to
lash their sides as they talk. By the time the good Signor had finished
his speech, every hair of his beard was curling with indignation. But
his daughter sprang into his arms and kissed away the tempest, and
promised, if it must be so, to make herself one mass of gold and coral.
So the Parolanti, or mediators, were invoked; an armistice for a week
was signed, and honour pledged on either side. Free and haughty was the
step of the Signor Dezio as he set forth for the town to order
everything he could see; and very wroth again he was, because I would
not postpone the day for him to get a shipload of trumpery from
Marseilles. This time I was resolved to have my way. Besides the
fervour of my passion and my dread of accidents, the one thing of all
others I detest is to be stared at anywhere. And it is far worse to be
stared at by a foreign race. The Corsicans are gentlemen by nature, but
they could not be expected to regard without some curiosity the lucky
stranger who had won their Lily.
I will not weary you, as I myself was wearied, with all the ceremonies
of the wedding-day. All I wanted was my bride, and she wanted none but
me: yet we could not help being touched by the hearty good-will of the
commune. The fame of Lily's beauty had spread even to Sardinia, and
many a handsome woman came to measure her own thereby. Clever as they
are at such things, not one of them could find a blemish or defect in
Lily, and our fair Balagnese told them to go home and break their
mirrors.
It was a sweet spring morning, and amid a fearful din of guns and
trumpets, mandolins and fiddles, I waited with a nervous smile under the
triumphal arch in front of my fictitious house. A sham house had been
made of boards, and boughs, and flowers, because it is most essential
that the bride should be introduced to the bridegroom's dwelling. Here
I was to receive the procession, which at last appeared. First came
fifty well-armed youths, crowned with leaves and ribbons; then
four-and-twenty maidens dressed alike, singing and scattering flowers,
and then a boy of noble birth, mounted on a pony, and carrying the
freno, symbol of many scions. None of them I looked at; only for my
Lily. On a noble snow-white palfrey, decked from head to foot with
flowers, her father walking at her side, came the bloom, the flower, the
lily of them all, arrayed in clear white muslin, self-possessed, and
smiling. One glorious wreath was round her head; it was her own black
hair by her own sweet fingers twined with sprigs of myrtle. A sash, or
fazoletto, of violet transparent crape, looped at the crown of her head,
fell over the shy lift of her bosom, parting like a sunset cloud, where
the boddice opened below the pear-like waist. To me she looked like a
white coralline rising through an amethyst sea. Behind her came the
authorities of the commune. The sham keys were already hanging at her
slender zone. It was my place to lift her down and introduce her
formally. This I did with excellent grace, feeling the weight of eyes
upon me. But when I got her inside, I spoiled the folds of the
fazoletto. I heard the old man shouting, "Who are ye gallant sons of
the mountain, who have carried off my daughter? To me, indeed, ye seem
to be brave and noble men, yet have ye taken her rather after the manner
of bandits. Know ye not that she is the fairest flower that ever was
reared in Corsica?"
"Yes, old fellow, I know that well enough; and that's the very reason
why I have got her here." One more virgin kiss, and with Lily on my
arm, forth I sally to respond.
"Friends we are, who claim some hospitality. We have plucked the
fairest flower on all the strands of Corsica, and we bear her to the
priest, fit offering for Madonna."
"Bide on, my noble friends; then come and enjoy my feast."
No more delay. The maids have got all they can do to keep in front of
us with their flowers. The armed youths stand on either side at the
entrance to the church. The tapers are already lit, the passage up the
little church is strewed with flowering myrtle. Lily, holding her veil
around her, walks hand in hand with me.
Fiordalisa Della Croce now is Lily Vaughan; amidst a world of shouting,
shooting, and cornamusas, we are led to the banqueting-room; there they
seat us in two chairs, and a fine fat baby is placed on Lily's lap, to
remind her of her duties. She dandles it, and kisses it as if she
understood the business, and then presents it with a cap of corals and
gay ribbons. Now Lily Vaughan throws off her fazoletto, and gives me
for a keepsake the myrtles in her hair. Then all who can claim kin with
her, to the fortieth generation, hurry up and press her hand, and wish
the good old wish. "Long life and growing pleasure, sons like him, and
daughters like yourself."
After the banquet, we were free to go, having first led off the ballo in
the Cerca dance. Thank God, my Lily is at last my own; she falls upon
my bosom weary and delighted. Clara, remember this: the little church
in which we were married is called St. Katharine's on the cliff; and I
signed the record in my proper name, Edgar Malins Vaughan: the Malins,
very likely, they did not know from Valentine, for I always wrote it
with a flourish at the end. The Signor, with all his friends, escorted
us to the limits of his domain; there we bade them heartily farewell,
and they returned to renew the feast. My little yacht was in the bay,
and we saw the boat push off to fetch us as had been arranged. We were
to sail for Girolata, where the Signor had a country-house, lonely
enough even for two such lovers. Three or four hours would take us
thither, and the sun was still in the heavens. As no one now could see
us, Lily performed a little dance for my especial delight. How beaming
she looked, how full of spirits, now all the worry was over. Then she
tripped roguishly at my side to the winding rocky steps that lead to St.
Katharine's cove. The cove was like a well scooped in the giant cliffs.
As we descended the steep and narrow stairs, my Lily trembled on my arm.
The house and all the merry-makers were out of sight and hearing. Of
course we stopped every now and then, for the boat could not be at the
landing yet, and we had much to tell each other.
As we stepped upon the beach, and under the eaves of a jutting rock, a
tall man stood before us. His eyes and beard were black as jet, and he
wore the loose dress of a Southern seaman. Three sailors, unmistakeably
English, were smoking and playing cards in the corner shade of the
cliff. Lily started violently, turned pale, and clung to me, but faced
the intruder bravely. He was quite amazed at her beauty, I at his
insolent gaze.
"Fiordalisa Della Croce," he said with a pure Tuscan accent, "behold me!
I am come to claim you."
He actually laid his small, but muscular hand upon my Lily's shoulder.
She leaped back as from a snake. I knew it must be Lepardo.
"Sir," I said, as calmly as I could, "oblige me by allowing my wife to
pass."
The sneering, supercilious look which he hardly deigned to spare me, was
honest, compared to his foul stare at her.
"Signor, she is too beautiful. I must have my rights. Come for her
when I am tired, if any can tire of her."
And he thrust his filthy, hairy lips under my own pet's hat. My muscles
leaped, and my soul was in the blow. Down he went like a flail, and I
thought he was stunned for an hour; but while I was bearing my pet to
the boat, which now was close to the beach, up he leaped, and rushed at
me with a dagger--a dagger like one which you know. I did not see him,
but Lily did over my shoulder; she sprang from my arms and flung herself
between us. He thrust her aside, and leaped at me like a panther,
aiming straight at my heart. How he missed me I cannot tell, but think
it was through Lily. Before he recovered, I closed with him, wrested
away the weapon and flung it far into the sea. But one main thing I
omitted; I ought to have stunned him thoroughly. Into the boat with
Lily--I caught up an oar, and away we dashed. The three English sailors
were running up. As a wave took the boat about, one of them grasped the
stern; down on his knuckles crashed my oar, and with a curse he let go.
All right, all clear, off for the yacht for your lives. I would show
fight, for my blood is up, but what would become of Lily? And we are
but three against four, and none of us have arms.
Meanwhile, that black Italian, I can never call him a Corsican, sneaked
away to a tuft of sea-grass for his double-barrelled fusil. Bowing with
all my might, I saw him examine the priming, lay his red cap on a rock,
and the glistening gun on the cap, and, closing one eye, take steady
aim, not at me, but at Lily. Poor Lily sat on the thwart at my side,
faintly staring with terror. No time to think; oar and all I dashed in
front of my darling. A ping in the air, a jar on my wrist, a slight
blow on my breast, and at my feet dropped the bullet. It had passed
through the tough ash handle. Down, Lily, down, for God's sake; he is
firing the other barrel. I flung her down in the bilge water; the brute
cannot see her now. Not quite so easily off. Up a steep rock he
climbed like a cat, the cursed gun still in his hand. He won fifty feet
of vantage, and commanded the whole of the boat. We were not eighty
yards away. There he coolly levelled at my prostrate Lily. I had grey
hairs next morning. Forward, I threw myself, over my wife; me he might
kill if he chose. One lurch of the boat--a short sea was running--and
my darling's head was shown. He saw his chance and fired. Thank God,
he had too little powder in; my own love is untouched. The ball fell
short of Lily, and passed through my left foot, in at the sole and out
below the instep. Luckily I had retained my dancing shoes, or my thick
boots would have kept the ball in my foot. The brute could not see that
he had hit any one, and he cursed us in choice Italian.
Poor Lily had quite swooned away, and knew nothing of my wound. Over
the side of the yacht I lifted her myself, standing upon one leg. No
one else should touch her. So furious I was with that cold-blooded
miscreant, that if I could only have walked, I would have returned to
fight him. My men, too, were quite up for it. But when Lily came to
herself, and threw her arms round me and wept, and thanked God and her
saints, I found my foot quite soaked in a pool of blood, and stiffening.
Poor little dear! what a fuss she did make about it! I would have borne
ten times the pain for the smiles and tears she gave me. One thing was
certain--under the mercy of God, we owed our lives to each other, and
held them henceforth in common.
As, with a flowing sheet, we doubled the craggy point, concealed close
under the rocks we saw a low and snake-like vessel, of the felucca
build. She was banked for three pair of sweeps, and looked a thorough
rover. This was, of course, Lepardo's boat. We now bore away for
Ajaccio, dear Lily having implored me not to think of Girolata, where no
medical aid could anyhow be procured. Moreover, she wanted to fly from
that dark Lepardo; and I am quite willing to own that, despite my
delicious nursing, I was not ambitious to stand as target again during
our honeymoon.
CHAPTER XIII.
At first I thought a great deal more of the pain than the danger of my
wound; but when I showed it to the French surgeon at Ajaccio, he
surprised me by shrugging his shoulders formidably, and declaring that
it was the good God if I kept my foot. Being of a somewhat sceptical
turn, I thought at first that he only wanted to gild the frame of his
work; but when I began to consider it, I found that he was quite right.
The fact was, that I had thought much more of my bride than of my
metatarsals. Two of these were splintered where the bullet passed
between them, and it was a question whether it had not been poisoned.
Many of the mountaineers are skilled in deadly drugs, and use them
rarely for the bowl, not so rarely for the sword and gun.
At one time there were symptoms even of mortification, and my wife, who
waited hand and foot upon me, joined the surgeon in imploring me to
submit to amputation.
"Sweetest mine! do you suppose that I shall love you any the less
because you walk on crutches, and all through your love of me? And what
other difference can it make to either of us? I shall cry a great deal
at first, for I love your little toe-nails more than I do my own eyes;
but, darling, we shall get over it."
As she loved my toes so much, I resolved to keep them, if it was only
for her sake; and, after a narrow crisis, my foot began to get better.
To her care and tenderness I owed my recovery, far more than to the
skill of the clever surgeon. Six months elapsed before I could walk
again, and our little yacht was sent to Calvi to explain the long delay.
Fond as I was of the "Lily-flower," I was anxious now to sell her; but
my darling nurse, although she knew before our marriage that I was not a
wealthy man, would not listen to the scheme at all; for the doctor
ordered me, as I grew stronger, to be constantly on the water.
"Not by any means, my own, will we sell our little love-boat. I should
cry after it like a baby; and another thing, far more important, you can
bear no motion except on board our _Lily_. Papa has got great heaps of
money, and he never can refuse me anything when I coax in earnest."
Conscious as I was of my vile deceit, I would rather have died than
apply to Signor Dezio, albeit I am quite sure that he would soon have
forgiven me. So I wrote again to my good-natured brother and banker,
and told him all that had happened, but begged him not to impart it even
to your mother. I have strong reason for suspecting that he did not
conceal it from her; but as I never alluded to the subject before her,
she was too much a lady ever to lead me towards it. My motive for this
reserve was at first some ill-defined terror lest my fraud upon Signor
Dezio should come to light prematurely. Also I hate to be talked about
among people whom I despise. Afterwards, as you will perceive, I had
other and far more cogent reasons.
I need not say that your father--dear Clara, I ought to love you, if
only on his account!--your father wrote me a kind and most warm-hearted
letter, accompanied by a most handsome gift--no loan this time, but a
wedding-gift, and a very noble one. Also he pressed me to come home
with my bride the moment I could endure the voyage. Ah! if I had only
obeyed him, not Lily and Henry, but myself would have been the victim.
We returned as soon as possible to Vendetta tower, and found the good
Signor in excellent spirits, delighted to see his sweet daughter again,
and still more delighted by hope of a little successor to the gray walls
and the olive groves. When this hope was realized, and a lusty young
grandson was laid in his arms, he became so wild in his glory, that he
went about boasting all over the commune, feasting all who came near
him, forgetting the very name of the blood-revenge. Many a time we
reminded and implored him to be more careful. He replied, that his life
was of no importance now; he had come to his haven among his own dear
ones, and was crowning the old ship with flowers. Moreover, he knew
that the De' Gentili were of a nobler spirit than to shed the blood of a
gray-haired man, when institution did not very loudly demand it. And so
I believe they were.
Alas! the poor old man!--a thorough and true gentleman as one need wish
to see--choleric albeit, and not too wide of mind; but his heart was in
the right place, and made of the right material, and easy enough to get
at. He was free to confess his own failings, and could feel for a man
who was tempted. Deeply thankful I am that, before his white beard was
laid low, I acknowledged to him my offence, and obtained his hearty
forgiveness. Little Henry was on his lap, going off into smiles of
sleep, with his mother's soft finger in his mouth. At first my
confession quite took the poor Signor aback; for I did not attempt to
gloss the dishonour of what I had done; but I told him truly that the
meanness was not in my nature, and although I had won my pet Lily, the
road ran through hemlock and wormwood. And now I perceived how
uncalled-for and stupid the fraud had been.
When the old man recovered a little from the shock caused by the
dishonesty--towards which recovery the tears of his daughter and the
smiles of his grandson contributed--he was really glad to find that I
was not a landed Signor. He rubbed his hands and twitched his beard
with delight, for now his little Enrico would never be taken away to the
barbarous English island. Was he not rightful successor to the lands of
the Della Croce? and what more could he possibly want? What could he
care for the property in Gloisterio? However, he made us promise that
if the present remarkable baby, Master Henry Vaughan, should ever enjoy
the property in the unpronounceable county, Lily's second child, if she
had one, should take the Corsican lordships; for his great fear was,
that the Malaspina and Della Croce estates should become a servient
tenement to the frozen fields of the North. To express and ensure his
wishes, he had a deed-poll prepared according to his own fancy, read it
to us and some witnesses, then signed, sealed, and enrolled it. This
was one of the documents which you, my brave Clara, rescued from that
vile, stealthy ghost.
And now, for a short time, we enjoyed deep, quiet, delicious happiness.
The crime which had haunted me was confessed and forgiven. Amply
possessed of the means, and even the abundance of life, I was blessed
with strong health again, and freedom among the free. Richest and best
of all blessings, I had a sweet, most lovely, and most loving wife, and
loved her once and for all. No more beautiful vision has any poet
imagined than young Lily Vaughan sitting under the vine-leaves, her form
more exquisite than ever, her soft-eyed infant in her lap wondering at
his mother's beauty, while her own deep-lustred eyes carried to her
husband's, without the trouble of thinking, all that flowed into her
heart--joy at belonging to him, hope of bliss to come, fear of
over-happiness, pride in all the three of us, and shame at feeling
proud. Then a gay coquettish glance, as quick youth warms the veins,
and some humorous thought occurs, a tickle for the baby, and a feint of
cold-shouldering me. But, jealous as I was, desperately jealous, for my
love was more passionate than ever, I can honourably state that Lily's
one and only trial to arouse my jealousy was an ignominious failure,
recoiling only on the person of the dear designer. However exacting
little Harry might be, I never grudged him his double share of
attention. In the first place I looked upon him as a piece of me, still
holding on; and, in the next place, I knew that all he laid claim to was
only a loan to him, and belonged in fee simple to his father.
At this time I wrote to my brother again, announcing the birth of our
boy, and that we had made him his namesake; dispensing, too, with all
further reserve on the subject of our marriage. This letter was never
delivered to your dear father. That much I know, for certain; and at
one time I strongly suspected that our cold-blooded, crafty foe
contrived to intercept it. But no; if he had, he would have known
better afterwards.
After that cowardly onslaught upon my bride and myself, I had of course
learned all I could of the history of this Lepardo. He was the only son
of the Signor's only brother, but very little was known of him in the
neighbourhood, as he came from Vescovato on the east side of the island.
He was said to have great abilities and very great perseverance, and
under the guardianship of his uncle had been intended and partly
educated for the French Bar. But his disposition was most headstrong
and sullen; and at an early age he displayed a ferocity unusual even in
a Corsican. Neither had he the great redeeming trait of the islanders,
I mean their noble patriotism. One good quality, however, he did
possess, and that was fidelity to his word. With one of the
contradictions so common in human nature, he would even be false in
order to be true: that is, he would be treacherous wherever he was
unpledged, if it assisted him towards a purpose to which he was
committed. While he was yet a boy, his intended career was cut short by
an act of horrible violence. He disliked all the lower animals, horses
and mules especially; and one day he was detected by a master of the
Paoli College, screaming, and yelling at, and lashing, from a safe
distance, a poor little pony whom he had tied to a fence. The master,
an elderly man, very humane and benevolent, rebuked him in the most
cutting manner, and called him a low coward. The young villain ran off,
with his eyes flashing fire, procured a stiletto, and stabbed the poor
man in the back. Then he leaped on the horse he had been ill-treating,
and pricking him with the dagger, rode away furiously in the direction
of Bastia. The pursuers could not trace him through the wild mountain
district, but it was believed that he reached the town and took refuge
in an English brig, which was lying off the harbour, and sailed for
Genoa that evening. The pony was found dead, lying by the roadside with
the brute's dagger in its throat. No wonder Lily, who told me all this,
with true Corsican rage in her eyes, no wonder my Lily hated him. Even
as a little girl, for she was but ten years old when he disappeared, she
always felt a strong repugnance towards him. He was about six years
older than Fiordalisa, and four years younger than I; so when he shot at
Lily, he must have been three-and-twenty. It was reported that after
his disappearance he took to a sea-faring life, and made himself very
useful, by his knowledge of languages, in the English merchant service.
Quarrelling with his employers, he was said to have resorted to
smuggling in the Levant, if not to downright piracy.
Clara, for reasons I cannot explain, I wish you to follow my story step
by step in its order, noting each landing-place. To do this with
advantage, you must have the dates carved upon each of the latter:
therefore I beg you to copy them as you pass.
I arrived in Corsica, as you heard, during the month of May, 1829. On
the 12th of August in that same year I first beheld my Lily. That day I
remember, beside other reasons, because I had wondered, as I rode idly
along, whether my brother was opening his usual Highland campaign, and
whether he would like to shoot the muffrone. Lily and I were married on
the 21st of March, 1830, when I was twenty-seven years old: and our
little Henry first saw the light on the 24th of December following, more
than two years before your birth. Your father having no children as
yet, I looked upon my Harry as heir presumptive to these estates.
Although your birth appeared to divest him of the heirship, it has
since, through causes then unknown to me, proved otherwise; and if he
were living now, he would in strict law be entitled to this property
after my death. But if he were alive, he never should have an inch of
it, that is if I could prevent it; because in strict righteousness all
belongs to you. And now I hold the property in fee simple, under an Act
which abolishes fines and recoveries; for I have suffered so much from
remorse, ever since your dear mother's death, that even before you saved
my life, dearest child, I enrolled a deed in Chancery, which gives me
disposing powers; and as I think you know, I made thereupon a will
devising the lands to you. This also was one of the documents you
caught that vile hypocrite stealing.
To return to the old Signor. He was now as happy as the day was long,
and desirous, as an old man often is, to set on foot noteworthy schemes,
which might survive his time. Of this desire I took advantage to
inoculate him with some English views. It was rather late to learn
another catechism, at threescore years and five; but a green old age was
his, hale and hearty as could be. "Why should all those noble olives
shed, and rot upon the ground, all those grapes of divers colours be of
no more use than rainbows? Why should all the dazzling marbles slumber
in the quarry, the porphyry of Molo, the verde antique of Orezza, the
Parian of Cassaconi, the serpentine near Bastia, and the garnets of
Vizzavona--nay even the matchless white alabaster--
"Mother of our Lord, I have got such pretty stuff in my cavern on the
gulf of Porto. Some one told me it was the very finest alabaster. But
then it would require cutting out." The last thought seemed a poser.
"Well, father"--so I called him now--"when Harry has finished his tooth,
suppose we go all together in the yacht and see it."
And so we did; and it was worth a voyage all the way from London only to
look at it. Pillars of snow, pellucid, and fancifully veined, like a
glacier shot with sea-weed; clean-working moreover, and tough, and of
even texture, as I proved to my Lily's delight. There is now a small
piece in the drawer of my walnut-wood desk. But I took home a square
block with me, and under my wife's most original criticisms, worked it
into a rough resemblance of the baby Henry. Perhaps I have a natural
turn for sculpture, perhaps it was a wife's flattery; but at any rate
the young mother was so charmed with it, that in one of her pensive
moments she even made me promise, that if she died soon and alone, I
would have the little recumbent figure laid upon her breast.
Meanwhile the Signor was gayer than ever: he told us to have no anxiety
about anything less than a score of children; to such effect would he
work his great olive grounds, quarries, and vineyards. Some ingenious
plan he formed, which delighted him hugely, but was past my
comprehension. As fast as he quarried his alabaster, he would plant
young vines in the holes, and every one knew how the vine delighted to
run away over the rocks. So at once he must set off for Corte, the
central town of the island, to procure a large stock of tools
well-tempered in the Restonica. That turbulent little river possesses a
magic power. Its water is said to purify steel so highly that it never
can rust again. I have even heard that the cutlers of Northern Italy
import it, for the purpose of annealing their choicest productions. For
my part, little as I knew of commerce, I strongly recommended that
arrangements for shipping and selling the alabaster should be made,
before it was quarried. But the Signor scorned the idea.
Having in prospect all the riches of Croesus, and in possession enough
to make us happy, and having worked, as we thought, uncommonly hard, we
all four indulged in a tour through Sicily and Italy, proposing to visit
and criticise the principal marble quarries. By the time we had done
all this and enjoyed it thoroughly--dear me, how my wife was admired in
the sculptor's studio!--and by the time we had fallen to work again,
surveyed and geologised all the estates, taken, or rather listened to,
long earfuls of advice, settled all our plans summarily over the
Rogliano, and reopened them all the next morning, by this time, I say,
nearly three years of bliss had slipped by, since my recovery from the
lingering wound; and it was now the summer of 1833. My loving wife was
twenty years old, and we were looking forward to the birth of a brother
or sister for Harry. Meanwhile we had heard of your birth, which
delighted us all, especially my Lily. She used to talk, in the fond way
mothers discover, to Harry, now gravely perched up on a stool, about his
little sweetheart away in the dark north country.
It was in the month of July 1833 that the Signor found he could no
longer postpone his visit to Corte. Alone he would go, riding his
favourite jennet, as sure-footed as a mule, and as hardy as a mustang.
Behind him he slung his trusty fusil, with both barrels loaded, for he
had to traverse a desert and mountainous district haunted by banditti.
He was to travel through by-ways to Novella, and so on to the bridge
where the roads from Calvi and Bastia meet, put up in rude quarters
there for the night, and follow the steep descent to the town of Corte
next day. In vain we begged him to take some escort, or at least to let
me go with him. No, I must stop to guard the Lily and the little
snow-drop; could he possibly take me at such a time from home, and did I
think a Della Croce was afraid of bandits? It was a Monday morning when
he left the tower, and he would be back on Saturday in good time for
supper. He kissed and blessed his Lily, and the little snow-drop as he
called young Harry, who cried at his departure; and then he gave me too
an earnest trembling blessing. By this time he and I had come to love
each other, as a father and a son.
I went with him quite to the borders of the commune; and there, in a
mountain defile, I lit for him his cigar. With some dark foreboding, I
waited till I saw him reach and pass the gap at the summit of the rise.
There he turned in the saddle to wave his last adieu, and his beard,
like a white cloud, floated on the morning sky.
CHAPTER XIV.
On the Saturday night, an excellent supper was ready: the Signor's own
particular plate was at the head of the table, and by it gleamed, in a
portly bottle, his favourite Rogliano. Little Harry, who could say
anything he was told, and knew right well what was good, or at least
what tasted good--that beloved child was allowed to stop up, that
grandpapa might kiss him; this was a sovereign specific, believed in the
nursery creed, to ensure sweet sleep for both.
That silver beard never kissed the chubby cheek again. All night we
waited and wondered: Harry was sent to bed roaring; no grandpapa
appeared. The olives rustled at midnight, and out I ran; the doors
creaked afterwards, and I opened them, all in vain; the sound of hoofs
came up the valley before the break of day; but no step or voice of man,
no bark of his favourite mountain hound, no neigh of the jennet to her
sleepy brother-horses.
All Sunday we remained in terrible uneasiness, trying to cheer each
other with a hundred assurances that the dear old man must have turned
aside to see an ancient friend living now at Prato. When Monday morning
came, but brought no tidings of him, I set off, amid a shower of tears,
to seek the beloved father. The old fusileer was left on guard, and I
took two young and active men, well acquainted with the mountain passes.
All well mounted, and well armed, we purposed to ride hard, and search
the track quite up to the town of Corte. There, if indeed he had ever
arrived, we should be sure to hear of him. But it proved unnecessary to
go so far from home.
Along that dreary mountain road, often no more than a shepherd's walk
difficult to descry, we found no token of any traveller either living or
dead, until we came to the Ponte Leccia, where the main roads meet.
Here our fears were doubled, and the last hope nearly quenched; for on
asking at the shepherd's hut, where Signor Dezio meant to put up, we
found that he had slept there on the Friday night, as he was returning
from the town. The shepherd's wife, who had known him for years,
assured us that he was in wonderful spirits and health, insisted upon
her supping with them--which is contrary to Corsican usage--and boasted
much of the great things he would do, and still more of his beautiful
grandson. His goatskin wallet was full of sample tools, which were to
astonish his English son, and he had a toy gun no bigger than the tail
of a dog, with which he intended to teach the baby to shoot. Telling us
all these little things, and showing us her presents, the poor woman
cried at the thought of what must have happened to him. Right early on
Saturday morning he set off, as impatient as a child, to see his beloved
ones again, and exhibit all his treasures. For love of the Della Croce
her husband had groomed the mare thoroughly, and she neighed merrily
down the hill at thought of her stable friends. Moreover, the
shepherd's wife told us that there had been in those parts no bandit
worth the name, since the death of the great Teodoro, king of the
mountains, whose baby still received tribute.
After resting our horses awhile, with heavy hearts we began to retrace
our steps through that awful wilderness. Instead of keeping together,
as we had done in the morning, we now rode in parallel lines, right and
left of the desert track, wherever the ground permitted it. All this
district is very barren and rugged, and the way winds up and down, often
along the brink of crags, or through narrow mountain gorges. The
desolation and loneliness grew more oppressive, as the shadows
lengthened.
We had thoroughly searched two-thirds of the distance homeward, and had
crossed some granite heights whence the sea was visible; the sun was low
over Cape Bevellata, and the vapours from the marsh were crouching at
the mountain's foot. Here as I rode to the left of my two companions, I
heard the faint bay of a dog far down a deep ravine, that trended
leftward from our course. Putting my jaded animal to his utmost speed,
I made for the hollow which echoed the dismal sound--a feeble bark
prolonged into a painful howl. Turning the corner sharply I scared two
monstrous vultures, who were hovering over and craning at a dog. The
dog so gaunt and starved, that at every bark the ribs seemed bursting
the skin, still was fighting past despair with his loathsome enemies. He
stood across the breast of the noble Signor Dezio. There lay that
gallant cavalier, stark and rigid, with his eyes wide open, and his
white beard tipped with crimson. There he lay upon his back, his kingly
head against a rock, his left hand on his clotted breast and glued
thereto with blood; his right hand hung beside his chin whence it had
slipped in death, and in it still securely grasped was a trinket newly
made, containing a little sheaf of the baby's flossy hair tied with a
black wisp of the mother's. The poor old man had dragged himself
thither to die, and died with that keepsake on his lips. The fatal shot
had been fired from above, and passed completely through his body. It
pierced his lungs, and I believe that he felt little pain, but gasped
his simple life away. Near him was his wallet, with the tools still in
it; I think he had been playing with the toy gun when he received the
wound; at any rate it lay separate from the rest, and at the old man's
side.
Examining by the waning light, with icy awe upon me, the scene of this
damned atrocity, I found that the hoary traveller must have dismounted
here, to eat his frugal dinner. A horn cup and a crust of bread were on
a rocky shelf, and a little spring welled down the dingle, with the mark
of the dog's feet here and there. The craven foe had been sneaking along
behind, and took advantage of the old man's position, as he sat upon a
stone to make certain of him from the granite loophole. We found the
very place where the murderer must have crouched, but the cliff-side
kept no footprint. The victim's gun was gone, and so was the Spanish
mare: no other robbery seemed to have been committed.
This glen led to a shorter but more difficult track towards home, which
the Signor, in his impatience, must have resolved to try. Reverently we
laid him on the freshest horse; while I with the faithful mountain dog
on my saddle--for he was too exhausted to walk--rode on to break the
melancholy news, and send assistance back.
To break bad news--the phrase is a failure, the attempt it implies a
much worse one. Lily knew all in a moment, and in her delicate state
she received so appalling a shock, that for a week she lay on the very
threshold of death. At the end of that time, and three days after the
old man's funeral--at which for his daughter's sake I allowed no
wailings or voceros--a lively little girl was born, who seemed to be
none the worse for her mother's bitter sufferings. Her innocent
caresses, or some baby doings optimised by her mother--though even as a
new-born babe she seemed a most loving creature--all those soft
endearing ways, which I could not understand, did more to bring my
Lily's spirit back than even my fond attentions.
But as yet, though able to walk again, and nurse her child, whom she
would not commit to another, my wife remained in a fearfully sensitive
and tremulous condition. The creak of a door, the sound of a foot, the
rustle of the wind--and she, so brave and proud of yore, started like a
cicale, and shook like a forest shadow. In everything she feared the
ambush of that sleuth cold-blooded reptile, on whom alone, truly or not
God knows, she charged the blood of her venerable father. But still she
had the comfort of a husband's love, a husband even fonder than when the
flowers fell on his path; and still she had the joy of watching, with a
mother's tender insight, the budding promise of two sweet infants.
Infants I call them, why Master Harry was now a thorough chatterbox!
With all this love around her, she by far the loveliest, the pride and
glory of all, was sure to find her comfort soon upon the breast of time,
even as small Lily found it in her own sweet bosom. Deeply and long we
mourned that ancient Signor, chivalrous and true gentleman, counsellor
of all things. Every day we missed him; but could talk of it more as
time flowed on. Rogliano had no sparkle, Luri not the tint of old:
never could I pour out either from his favourite flagon, without a
thought of him who taught us the proper way to do it; who ought to be
teaching us still, but was lying foully murdered in his lonely grave at
St. Katharine's on the Cliff.
We had done our utmost to avenge him: soon as I could leave my wife, I
had scoured all the neighbourhood. The Sbirri too had done their best,
but discovered nothing. Brave fellows they are, when it comes to
fighting, but very poor detectives. Only two things we heard that
seemed at all significant. One of these was that a Spanish jennet, like
the Signor's favourite "Marana," but dreadfully jaded and nearly
starved, had been sold on the Friday after the murder, being the very
day of the funeral, at the town of Porto Vecchio on the south-eastern
coast. I sent my coxswain Petro, an intelligent and trusty Corsican, to
follow up this clue; for I durst not leave my wife as yet. Petro
discovered the man who had bought the mare, and re-purchased her from
him, as I had directed: but the description of the first seller did not
tally with my recollections of Lepardo. However, it proved to be the
true Marana; and glad she was to get home once more.
The other report, that seemed to bear upon the bloody mystery, was that
a swift felucca, flush-built and banked for triple sweeps, had been seen
lying close in shore near point Girolata, during the early part of the
week in which the Signor left home. And it was even said that two
Maltese sailors, belonging to this felucca, had encamped on shore in a
lonely place near Otta, and were likely to be found there still.
Lily being stronger now, I determined to follow this last clue myself;
and so I put the little yacht into commission again, and manned her with
Calvi men, for all my English crew had been dismissed long ago. Leaving
my wife and children under the care of the old fusileer, away I sailed
from St. Katharine's, intending to return in three days' time. All this
coast I now knew thoroughly, and Otta was not far beyond the poor
Signor's cave of alabaster. It is a wild and desert region, far away
from any frequented road, and little visited except by outlaws.
We found no trace of any tent, no sign of any landing, and an aged
fisherman, whom we met, declared that no felucca or vessel of any sort
had lately been near the bay. I began to fear that, for some dark
purpose, I had been beguiled from home, and despatched upon a fool's
errand. The dreary coast was still the home of solitude, the alabaster
cave untouched since our pic-nic survey; the marks of which were
undisturbed except by wind and weather. So I crowded sail, and hurried
back to St. Katharine's, with a strange weight on my heart. To add to
my vexation, a strong north wind set in, and smartly as our cutter
sailed, we were forced to run off the land. When at last we made the
cove, it was unsafe for the yacht to anchor, and so I was compelled to
send her on to Calvi.
It was nearly midnight on the 2d of October, when Petro and myself
plodded up the wooded hill on which the old tower stands. Weary and
dispirited, though glowing every now and then with the thought of all my
darlings, in vain I called myself a fool for fearing where no fear was.
When we reached the brow of the hill, my vague alarm was doubled. The
rude oil-lamps that marked the entrance, why were they unlighted? I had
especially ordered that they should be kindled every night, and Lily had
promised to see to it herself. No challenge from the watchman, no click
of the musket hammer, even the vinea was not in its place. In vain we
knocked and knocked at the old chesnut doors; no one answered, no one
came to open. None of the loopholes showed a light; the house was dark
and silent as the ivy. Wild with terror I ran to the little side-door,
whence first my Lily met me. This too was locked, or fastened somehow;
and only the echo of my knock was heard. Petro and I caught up a great
bough of ilex, which myself had lopped last week, rushed at the door
with the butt, and broke it in with one blow. Shrieking for Lily, Lily,
I flew from room to room, tumbling over the furniture, blundering at the
doorways. No voice of wife, no cry of child, no answer of domestic; all
as silent as if ten fathoms under water.
Having dashed through every room, I turned to rush off to the hamlet,
when my foot struck something--something soft and yielding; was it a
sack or bolster? I stooped to feel it; it was Lily, laid out, stiff and
cold Dead, my Lily dead! Oh, God can never mean it; would He let me
love her so?
For all intents of actual life, for all that we are made for, for all
the soul's loan of this world, I died that very moment; and yet a mad
life burned within me, the flare of hope that will not die. How I
forced her clenched hands open, bowed her rigid arms around me, threw
myself upon her, breathed between her lips and listened, tore her simple
dress asunder and laid my cheek upon her heart; feeling not a single
throb, flooded her cold breast with tears, and lay insensible awhile.
Then, as if awaking, felt that she was with me, but somehow not as
usual; called her all our names of love, and believed we were in heaven.
But there stood Petro with a light, sobbing, and how his beard
shook!--What right had he in heaven? Would they let him in without
shaving? I rose to order him out; when he restored my wits awhile by
pointing with his finger.
"Look, look, Signor! She is not dead, I saw her eyelid tremble."
Wide she opened those glorious eyes, looked at me with no love in them,
shuddered, and closed them again.
Mad with rapture, I caught her up, sent Petro headlong lamp and all, and
kissed her enough to kill her. She was not dead, my Lily, my pet of
eternal ages. There she fell trembling, fluttering, nestling in my arms,
her pale cheek on my breast, her white hand on my shoulder; then
frightened at her nest shrunk back, and gazed with unutterable reproach,
where love like the fallen lamp was flickering: then clung to me once
more, as if she ought to hate, but could not yet help loving. She died
the next morning. Clara, I can't tell you any more now.
CHAPTER XV.
Before my own and only love departed, she knew, thank God, she knew as
well as I did, that I had never wronged her pure and true affection.
But it was long before I learned what had so distressed her. Though she
appeared quite sensible, and looked at me, every now and then, with the
same reproachful harrowing gaze, it seemed to me ages, it must have been
hours, before she could frame her thoughts in words. In an agony of
suspense for her, for our children, for our love, I could hardly repress
my impatience even at her debility. Many a time she opened her
trembling lips, but the words died on them. At last I caught her
meaning from a few broken sentences.
"How could he do it? How could he so betray her? And his own Lily that
loved him so--no, she must not be Lily any more, she was only Fiordalisa
Della Croce. How could he come and pretend to love her, and pretend to
marry her, when all the while he had a young wife at home in England?
Never would she have believed it but for the proofs, the proofs that
hateful man had shown her. How could he shame his own love so, and his
children, and the aged father--there was no hope for her but to die--to
die and never see him more; and then perhaps he would be sorry, for he
must care about her a little."
Then she burst into such a torrent of tears, and pressed both hands on
her bounding heart, and grew white with terror. Then as the palpitation
passed, she looked at me and knew me, and crept close to me, forgetting
all the evil,--and seemed to sleep awhile. Of course I saw what it was;
dazed as I was and wild at her sorrow and danger, I slowly perceived
what it was. The serpent-like foe had been there, and had hissed in her
ear what he thought to be true--that I had done her a dastard's wrong;
had won her passionate maiden love, and defiled her by a sham marriage,
while my lawful wife was living.
When once I knew my supposed offence, it did not take long to explain
the murderer's error, an error which had sprung from my own deceit. But
my children, where are my children, Lily?
In her ecstatic joy, she could not think for the moment even of her
children; but pressed me to her tumultuous heart, as if I were all she
wanted. Then she began to revile herself, for daring to believe any ill
of her noble husband.
"And even if it had been true, which you know it never could be,
dear,--I must have forgiven you, sweetest darling, because you couldn't
have helped it, you did love me so, didn't you?"
This sweet womanly logic, you, Clara, may comprehend--But where are the
children, my Lily?
"Oh, in bed I suppose, dear: let me get up, we must go and kiss the
darlings. When I first came in, I could not bear to go near them, poor
pets; but now--Oh my heart, holy Madonna, my heart!"
She leaped up as if she were shot, and a choking sound rose in her
throat.. Her fresh youth fought hard in the clutches of death. "Oh
save me, my own husband, save me. Hold me tighter; I cannot die yet.
So young and so happy with you. It is gone; but the next pang is death.
Hold me so till it comes again. God bless you, my own for ever. You
will find me in heaven, won't you? You can never forget your own Lily."
Her large eyes rested on mine, as they did when she first owned her
love; and her soul seemed trying to spring into the breast of mine.
Closer to me she clung, but with less and less of strength. Her smooth,
clear cheek was on mine, her exhausted heart on my wild one. I felt its
last throb, as the death-pang came, and she tried to kiss me to show
that it was not violent. Frantic, I opened my lips, and received the
last breath of hers.
The crush of its anguish her heart might have borne, but not the rebound
of its joy.
Her body, the fairest the sun ever saw, was laid beside her father's in
the little churchyard at St. Katharine's, with the toy baby on her
breast; her soul, the most loving and playful that ever the angels
visited, is still in attendance upon me, and mourns until mine rejoins
it.
You have heard my greatest but not my only distress. For more than three
months, my reason forsook me utterly. I recognised no one, not even
myself, but sought high and low for my Lily. At night I used to wander
forth and search among the olive-trees, where we so often roved:
sometimes the form I knew so well would seem to flit before me, tempting
me on from bole to bole, and stretching vain hands towards me. Then as
I seemed to have overtaken and brought to bay her coyness, with a faint
shriek she would vanish into hazy air. Probably I owed these visions to
capricious memory, gleaming upon old hexameters of the Eton clink. True
from false I knew not, neither cared to know: everything I did seemed to
be done in sleep, with all the world around me gone to sleep as well.
One vague recollection I retain of going somewhere, to do something that
made me creep with cold. This must have been the funeral of my lost
one; when the Corsicans, as I am told, fled from my ghastly stare, and
would only stand behind me. They are a superstitious race, and they
feared the "evil eye."
All the time I was in this state, faithful Petro waited on me, and
watched me like a father. He sent for his wife, old Marcantonia, who
was famed for her knowledge of herbs and her power over the witches, who
now beyond all doubt had gotten me in possession. Decoctions manifold
she gave me at the turn of the moon, and hung me all over with amulets,
till I rang like a peal of cracked bells. In spite of all these
sovereign charms, Lepardo might at any time have murdered me, if he had
thought me happy enough to deserve it. Perhaps he was in some other
land, making sure of my children's lives.
Poor helpless darlings, all that was left me of my Lily, as yet I did
not know that even they were taken. Petro told me afterwards that I had
asked for them once or twice, in a vacant wondering manner, but had been
quite content with some illusory answer.
It was my Lily, and no one else, who brought me back to conscious life.
What I am about to tell may seem to you a feeble brain's chimera; and so
it would appear to me, if related by another. But though my body was
exhausted by unsleeping sorrow, under whose strain the mental chords had
yielded, yet I assure you that what befell me did not flow from but
swept aside both these enervations.
It is the Corsican's belief, that those whom he has deeply mourned, and
desolately missed, are allowed to hover near him in the silent night.
Then sometimes, when he is sleeping, they will touch his lids and say,
"Weep no more, beloved one: in all, except thy sorrow, we are blessed as
thou couldst wish." Or sometimes, if the parting be of still more
tender sort, (as between two lovers, or a newly wedded couple) in the
depth of darkness when the lone survivor cannot sleep for trouble,
appears the lost one at the chamber door, holds it open, and calls
softly; "Dearest, come; for I as well am lonely." Having thrice
implored, it waves its cerements like an angel's wing, and awaits the
answer. Answer not, if you wish to live; however the sweet voice thrills
your heart, however that heart is breaking. But if you truly wish to
die, and hope is quenched in memory; make answer to the well-known
voice. Within three days you will be dead, and flit beside the invoking
shadow.
Perhaps old Marcantonia had warned me of this appeal, and begged me to
keep silence, which for my children's sake I was bound to do. All I
know is that one night towards the end of January, I lay awake as usual,
thinking--if a mind distempered thus can think--of my own sweet Lily.
All the evening I had sought her among the olive-trees, and at St.
Katharine's Church, and even on the sad sea-shore by the moaning of the
waves. Now the winter moon was high, and through the embrasured window,
the far churchyard that held my wife, and the silver sea beyond it,
glimmered like the curtain of another world. Sitting up in the widowed
bed, with one hand on my aching forehead--for now I breathed perpetual
headache--I called in question that old church of one gay wedding and
two dark funerals. Was there any such church at all; was it not a dream
of moonlight and the phantom love?
Even as I sat gazing now, so on many a moonlight night sat my Lily
gazing with me, whispering of her father's grave, and looking for it in
the shrouded distance. Her little hand used to quiver in mine, as she
declared she had found it; and her dark eyes had so wondrous a gift of
sight, that I never would dare to deny, though I could not quite believe
it. Had she not in the happy days, when we roamed on the beach
together, waiting for the yacht and pretending to seek shells, had she
not then told me the stripes and colours of the sailors' caps, and even
the names of the men on deck, when I could hardly see their figures?
Ah, could she tell my own name now, could she descry me from that shore
which mocks the range of telescope, and the highest lens of thought; was
she permitted one glimpse of him from whom in life she could hardly bear
to withdraw those gentle eyes? Answer me, my own, in life and death my
own one; tell me that you watch and love me, though it be but now and
then, and not enough to break the by-laws of the disembodied world.
Calmly as I now repeat it, but in a low melodious tone, sweeter than any
mortal's voice, a tone that dwelt I knew not where, like the sighing of
the night-wind, came this answer to me:
"True love, for our children's sake, and mine who watch and love you
still, quit this grief, the spirit's grave. All your sorrow still is
mine, and would you vex your darling, when you cannot comfort her?
Though you see me now no more, I am with you more than ever; I am your
image and your shadow. At every sigh of yours, I shiver; your smiles are
all my sunshine. Let me feel some sunshine, sweetest; you know how I
used to love it, and as yet you have sent me none. I shall look for
some to-morrow. Lo I, for ever yours, am smiling on you now."
And a golden light, richer than any sunbeam, rippled through the room.
I knew the soft gleam like the sunset on a harvest-field. It was my
Lily's smile. A glow of warmth was shed on me, and I fell at once into
a deep and dreamless sleep. You, my child, who have never known such
loss--pray God you never may--very likely you regard all this incident
as a dream. Be it so: if it were a dream, Lily's angel brought it.
CHAPTER XVI.
The next day I was a different man. All my energy had returned, and all
my reasoning power; but not, thank God, the rigour of my mind, the petty
contempt of my fellow-men. Nothing is more hard to strip than that coat
of flinty closeness formed upon Deucalion's offcast in the petrifying
well of self. Though I have done my utmost, and prayed of late for help
in doing it, never have I quite scaled off this accursed deposit. This
it was that so estranged your warm nature, Clara; a nature essentially
like your father's, but never allowed free scope. You could not tell
the reason, children never can; but somehow it made you shiver to be in
contact with me.
Petro and Marcantonia would have been astonished at my sudden change,
but they had lately dosed me with some narcotic herb, procured, by a
special expedition, from the Monte Rotondo, and esteemed a perfect
Stregomastix; so of course the worthy pair expected my recovery. No
longer did they attempt to conceal from me the truth as to my poor
infants, who had been carried off on the day of my return. What I
learned of the great calamity, which then befell me, was this.
Towards sunset, my dear wife, with her usual fondness, went forth to
look for the little yacht returning from the gulf of Porto. Our darling
Harry, then in his third year, was with her, and the young nurse from
Muro. Lily sat upon the cliff, watching a sail far in the offing,
probably our vessel. Then as she turned towards the tower, a man from
the shrubbery stood before her, and called her by her maiden name. She
knew her cousin Lepardo, and supposed that he was come to kill her.
Nevertheless she asked him proudly how he dared to insult her so, in the
presence of her child and servant. He answered that it was her name,
and she was entitled to no other. Then he promised not to harm her, if
she would send the maid away, for he had important things to speak of.
And thereupon he laid before her documents and letters.
Meanwhile the tower was surrounded by his comrades; but they durst not
enter, for the trusty fusileer kept the one approach up the steep
hillside; and his grandson, a brave boy, stood at the loop-hole with
him. The maid, however, with her little charge, was allowed to pass, and
she joined the two other women in weak preparations for defence. The
period of attack had been chosen skilfully. So simple and patriarchal
is the Corsican mode of life, that very few servants are kept, even by
men of the highest station; and those few are not servants in our sense
of the word. It happened this night that the only two men employed upon
the premises, beside the old fusileer, had been sent into the town for
things wherewith to welcome me.
However, the faithful gunner, with his eye along the barrels, kept the
foe at bay, and seemed likely to keep them there, until the return of
the men; while his sturdy grandson split his red cheeks at the warder's
conch. But they little knew their enemy. Lepardo Della Croce was not
to be baulked by an old man and a boy. At the narrow entrance a lady's
dress came fluttering in the brisk north wind. Poor Lily tottered
across the line of fire, her life she never thought of; what use to live
after all that she had heard? Close behind her, and in the dusk
invisible past her wind-tossed drapery, stole her scoundrel cousin;
whom, like trees set in a row, or feather-edged boards seen lengthwise,
a score of lithe and active sailors followed. No chance for the
marksman; like tiles they overlapped one another, and poor Lily, upright
in her outraged pride, covered the stooping graduated file. French and
English, Moorish and Maltese, a motley band as ever swore, they burst
into a hearty laugh at the old gunner's predicament, the moment they had
passed his range. All within was at their mercy. True he kept the main
gate still, and all the doors were barred; but gates and doors were
lubber's holes for seamen such as they. Up the ivy they clambered,
along the chesnut branches, or the mere coignes of the granite, and into
the house they poured at every loop-hole and window. One thing must be
said in their favour--they did very little mischief. They were kept
thoroughly under command, and a wave of their captain's hand drove them
anywhither. All he wanted was possession of my children, and of some
valuable property which he claimed in right of his father.
Having secured both objects, he ordered his men to depart, allowing them
only to carry what wine and provisions they found. But the three
domestics, and the ancient sentinel and his boy, were bound hand and
foot, and concealed in a cave on the beach, to prevent any stir in the
neighbouring hamlet. Poor Lily was left where she fell, to recover or
not, as might be. My own darling was not insulted or touched; the men
were afraid, and Lepardo too proud to outrage one of his kin. Moreover,
his word was pledged; and they say that he always keeps it. Soon after
dark the robbers set sail, and slipped away down the coast, before that
strong north wind which had so baffled me. But for me a letter was
left, full of triumph and contumely. It was addressed to "Valentine
Vaughan, the Englishman;" "Signor Valentine" was the title conferred on
me by the fusileer, and adopted by the neighbourhood. To my surprise
that letter was written in English, and English as good as a foreigner
ever indites: I can repeat it word for word:--
"SIR,--I am reluctant to obtrude good counsel, but with the obtuseness
of your nation you are prone to the undervaluing of others. It is my
privilege to amend this error, while meekly I revindicate my own
neglected rights. From me you have stolen my bride and my good
inheritance, and in a manner which the persons unversed in human nature
would be inclined to characterise as dastardly and dissolute.
Furthermore, you have rendered the heiress of the noblest house in
Corsica a common Englishman's adulteress. If I had heard this on the
day of your mocking marriage, not the poor victim but you, you, would
have been my direction. Now I will punish you more gradually, and
longer, as you deserve. Your unhappy adulteress knows the perfidy of
your treachery, and your two poor bastards shall take refuge with me.
The inquiry with respect to my drowning them to-night is dependent upon
the stars. But if I shall spare them, as I may, because they cannot
come between me and my property, I will teach them, when they are old
enough, to despise and loathe your name. They shall know that in the
stead of a father's love they have only had a vagabond's lust, and they
shall know how you seduced and then slew their mother; for death, in my
humble opinion, appears in her face to-night. Although she has betrayed
me, I am regretful for her: but to you who have disgraced my name and
plundered me, as a man of liberal and exalted views I grant a
contemptuous forbearance; so long, that is to say, as you remain
unhappy, which the wicked ought to be. Of one thing, however, I bid you
to take admonishment. If I hear that you ever forget this episode of
debauchery, and return to your English wife and property, no house, no
castle that ever was edified, shall protect you from my dagger.
Remember the one thing, as your proverb tells, I am slow and sure.
LEPARDO DELLA CROCE."
CHAPTER XVII.
Instead of enraging or maddening me, as the writer perhaps expected,
this execrable letter did me a great deal of good. I determined to
lower that insufferable arrogance; and brought all my thoughts to bear
upon one definite object, the recovery of my darlings and the punishment
of that murderer. I did not believe that he had destroyed them, or was
likely to do so; for had not their mother's spirit referred to them as
living?
Without delay, my yacht was prepared for a lengthened cruise; the tower
committed to Marcantonia and the gray sentinel; and with Petro for my
skipper, I sailed on the following day. Alas, the three months now
elapsed during my delirium, had they not like the sea itself closed
across the track? All the neighbours knew was this, the felucca had
passed Point Girolata, and had been seen in the early morning, standing
away due south. All the villagers, and even the men from the mountain,
thronged the shore as I embarked, and there invoked Madonna's blessing
on poor Signor Valentine, so basely robbed of wife and children.
When we had rounded Girolata, we bore away due south, and in less than
fifteen hours made the Sardinian shore in the gulf of Asinara. Here we
coasted along the curve, inquiring at every likely place whether any
such vessel had been sighted as that which we were seeking. But we could
learn nothing of her until we were off the Gypsum Cape; where some
fishermen told us, that at or about the time we spoke of, a swift
felucca, built and manned exactly as we had described, glided by them
and bore up for the town of Alghero. We too bore up for Alghero, and
soon discovered that the roving vessel had undoubtedly been there: even
Lepardo, the captain, was described by the keen Sardinians. But she had
only lain to for a few hours, and cleared again for Cagliari. For
Cagliari we made sail as hard as the sticks could carry, and arrived
there on the fourth day from Cape Girolata.
The pirates, if such they were, had offered their vessel for sale at
Cagliari; but, failing of a satisfactory price had sailed away again,
and after much trouble I found out that their destination was Valetta.
To Valetta also we followed, feeling like a new boy at school who is
mystified by the experts--innocent of much Greek themselves--with a game
which means in English, "send the fool on further."
When at length we reach the Maltese capital--where I was not sorry to
hear once more my native tongue--we found the felucca snugly moored near
the "Merchant's Yard," and being refitted as a pleasure-boat for a
wealthy Englishman. This gentleman knew a good deal about ships, but
not quite enough. Pleased with the graceful lines and clean run of the
felucca, he had given nearly twice her value for her; as he soon
perceived when the ship-carpenters set to work. He was in the vein to
afford all possible information, being thoroughly furious with the
condemnable pirates--as he called them, without the weakness of the
composite verb--who had robbed him so shamefully of his money. He told
me that my children had been ashore, and Harry was much admired and
kissed in the Floriana. One thing the sailors did which would have
surprised a man unacquainted with the Corsicans, or perhaps I should say
the islanders of the Mediterranean. They decked my little babe with
flowers and ribands, and bore her in procession to the church of St.
John of Jerusalem; and there they had her baptized, for Lepardo had
found out that she had never undergone the ceremony. I was anxious to
see the record, but was not allowed to do so; therefore I do not know
what the little darling's name is, if she be still alive: but they told
me that the surname entered was not Vaughan, but Della Croce. It was
said that the sailors had become very fond of her, the little creature
being very sweet-tempered and happy, and a pleasing novelty to them.
Very likely they named her after their own felucca.
The crew being now dispersed, some to their homes, and some on board
ships which had sailed, I was thrown completely off the scent. All I
could learn, at a house which they had frequented, was that Lepardo, the
commander, had long ago left the island. Whither, or in what ship, he
had sailed, they could not or would not tell me: he had always plenty of
money, they said, and he spent it like a prince. But Petro, who was a
much better ferret than I, discovered, or seemed to have done so, that
the kidnapper and murderer had taken passage for Naples. My heart fell
when I heard it; almost as easily might I have tracked him in London.
At Naples I had spent a month, and knew the lying ingenuity, the
laziness in all but lies, of its swarming thousands. However, the
little yacht was again put under way, and, after a tedious passage, we
saw the Queen of cities. Here, as I expected, the pursuit was baffled.
I will not weary you with my wanderings, off more often than on the
track, up and down the Mediterranean, and sometimes far inland. If I
marked them on a map, however large the scale, you would have what
children call a crinkly crankly puzzle, like Lancashire in Bradshaw.
Once, indeed, I rested at the ancient tower, near my Lily's grave, which
I always visited twice in every year. I have some vague idea, now in my
old age, that though we Vaughans detest any display of feeling--except
indeed at times when the heart is too big for the skin--we are in
substance, without knowing it, a most romantic race. Whether we are
that, or not, is matter of small moment; one thing is quite certain, we
are strutted well and stable. We are not quick of reception, but we are
most retentive. Never was there man of us who ever loved a woman and
cast her off through weariness; never was there woman of our house who
played the jilt, when once she had passed the pledge of love. And after
all I have seen of the world, and through my dark misfortune few men
have seen more, it is my set conclusion that strong tenacity is the
foremost of all the virtues. My enemy has it, I freely own, and through
all his wickedness it saves him from being contemptible.
For a time, as I said before, I paused from my continual search, and
abode in the old gray tower. That search now appeared so hopeless, that
I was half inclined to believe no better policy could be found than
this. Some day or other the robber would surely return and lay claim to
the lands of the Della Croce. At present he durst not do it, while under
the ban of piracy and the suspicion of his uncle's murder. Moreover, I
thought it my duty to see to the welfare of my children's property.
Under the deed-poll of the old Signor, his friend at Prato and myself
were trustees and guardians. But I could not live there long: it was
too painful for me to sit alone in the desolate rooms where my children
ought to be toddling, or to wander through the shrubberies and among the
untended flowers, every one of them whispering "Lily." Formerly I had
admired and loved that peculiar stillness, that rich deep eloquent
solitude, which mantles in bucolic gray the lawns and glades of Corsica.
But when I so admired and loved, I was a happy man, a man who had
affection near him, and could warm himself when he pleased. Now though
I had no friends or friendship, neither cared for any, solitude struck
me to the bones, because it seemed my destiny.
After striving for half a year to do my duty as a hermit Signor, I found
myself, one dreary morning, fingering my pistols gloomily, and fitting a
small bullet into my ear. My thumb caught in the guard of the Signor's
locket, and jerked it up my waistcoat. It was the same which the poor
old man had pressed to his dying lips. There was Lily's hair and
Harry's, and a tiny wisp of down since added, belonging to baby--name
unknown. Looking at them and seeing how Lily's bound them together and
to me, I felt ashamed of my cowardly gloom, and resolved to quit myself
like a man in my duty towards the three. I rode at once to Prato, and
persuaded Count Gaffori to come and live at the tower. Like his old
friend the Signor, he had only himself and his lovely daughter to think
of; but unlike Signor Dezio he had lost nearly all his paternal
property, through political troubles. Therefore it was for him no
little comfort and advantage to be placed at the head of a household
again, and restored to some worldly importance. Nevertheless, his sense
of honour was so nice and exacting, that I thought I should never
succeed in bringing him to my views; and indeed I must have failed but
for his daughter's assistance. A very sweet elegant girl she was, and
she had been a great friend of my Lily's. If I could ever have loved
again, I should have loved that maiden: but the thing was impossible.
The old Count promised to come and settle at Veduta tower--which name,
in light days, I had corrupted into "Vendetta"--and living there to
assume the management of the estates, in trust for my lost infants, as
soon as his arrangements could be made. I saw nothing that need have
delayed him a day; however, he declared that he must have a month to get
ready, and he was plainly a man whom nature meant not to be pushed. So
I employed the interval in having my dear old "Lilyflower" overhauled at
Marseilles, coppered, and thoroughly painted. I could not bear to alter
our little love-boat, as my darling called it, even in outward
appearance; but like our love she had laboured through many a tempest;
unlike it, she needed repairs. However, I saved from the painter's
brush our favourite quarter-deck bench, whereon through the moonlight
watches my Lily seemed still to recline.
And so my life for some years wandered on, a worthless, unsettled,
forlorn existence, only refreshed at intervals by return to the scenes
of past happiness. If I had really wronged Lepardo Della Croce, he
could hardly have wished for a better revenge. But in truth I had never
wronged him. Even if I had never come near his betrothed, it is quite
certain she would not have accepted him. And he, by his own desertion,
had left her free to choose.
Late in the autumn of 1812, when I had abandoned all hope of ever
recovering my little ones, except by one of those eddies of Providence,
which we men call accidents, and in which I place my confidence to this
hour, at that season, I say, I landed at Gibraltar, being wind-bound in
the straits. We were making for Lisbon, where I was to ship some
English watches, guns, and fine cutlery for Ajaccio. What a loss of
rank for the "Lilyflower," to turn her into a trading smack! Well, I
could not see it so; and I am sure her late mistress, who with all her
sweet romance was an excellent hand at a bargain, would have thought it
far more below my dignity for me to sponge on our children. There was
plenty of money in hand at Veduta tower; but having retired from
stewardship, I did not feel myself justified in drawing upon my
children. Therefore, and for the sake of the large acquaintance and
great opportunities gained, I had renewed my connection with the firm of
Green, Vowler, and Green. Somehow, I could not bear to revisit the
shores of England; otherwise I am sure that with the knowledge I now
possessed of the Mediterranean ports, and a house of such standing and
enterprise to back me, I should quickly have made my fortune. My
vessel, moreover, was much too small for the fruit-trade, even if I
could have lowered her to an uncleanly freight; but she was just the
craft for valuable goods in small compass. I knew the Corsican fondness
for arms and first-rate cutlery; and the tools the poor Signor Dezio
meant to astonish me with, certainly did astonish me by their wonderful
badness. True, the material was good, but all the waters of the
Restonica will not convert a hammer into a handsaw. Although hardware
was not at all in his line of business, Peter Green most kindly
undertook to send me a cargo of first-rate Sheffield and Birmingham
goods, by a return fruit-schooner. These, consigned to his Lisbon
agent, I could fetch away, as I pleased, or wanted them. Having
arranged with a shrewd merchant of Ajaccio to take my goods wholesale,
and save the dignity of all the Vogheni from haggling, I had already
made six trips, and in spite of the most tyrannical douane perhaps in
all the world, I as a Corsican, importing goods in a Corsican bottom,
had cleared very nearly three hundred per cent. on my outlay. We were
now on our seventh voyage, to reship the last of the second English
consignment, when a violent gale from the west met us right in the
teeth, and we were forced to bear up for the anchorage. A first-rate
sea-boat the "Lilyflower" was, although she had been built for racing,
and for two or three years had beaten all competitors, whenever there
was wind enough for a cat to stand on the sheets. But one hot June day
she got beaten in a floating match, when the lightest bung went fastest,
and her prig of a "noble owner" sold her in disgust, and built a thing
that drew as much water as a nautilus. In her he was happily upset, and
could hardly find a sheet of paper to hold on by. Knowing some little
about yachts, from my pool and reach experiences, I bought the famous
racing cutter at about a quarter her value; and even in these, her olden
days, she could exhibit her taffrail to the smartest fruit-clipper--the
name was then just invented--that ever raced for the Monument. Her
register was fifty tons, but she carried eighty.
Landing at Gibraltar, I kept clear of my countrymen, not that I dislike
them, but because--well I cannot tell why; and strolled away to the
Spanish and Moorish quarters.
It was a windy evening, and in front of a low refreshment house some
sailors and Spanish girls were dancing. A squabble arose among them;
something I think it was about a young girl's dress. Knives were drawn,
and two men were stabbed in less than the time I am speaking. I just
saved the life of one, just saved it by half an inch. A fine-looking
Spaniard lay under a Moor, who had tripped him up in their quick way.
The point of the knife had flashed through the Spaniard's shirt and his
flesh was cut, before the swing of my stick--upwards luckily--had jerked
the Moor off his body. If I had struck downwards, or a millionth part
of a second later, the blade would have stood in the heart. But I knew
those fellows by this time. The Moor lay senseless from the quick
upper-cut on his temples, and the knife was quivering where the impulse
had failed it.
Now if Petro and I held deliberate choice--"proairesis" Oxford calls
it--not to be turned into knife-sheaths, our only chance of developing
into action that undeniable process of "nous," was to be found in the
policy, vulgarly called "cut and run." At a shrill signal, from ship
and from shore, the Moors came swarming silently and swiftly. Their
yellow slippers and coffee-coloured legs seemed set upon springs by
excitement. Some of the Spaniards stood bravely by us, and with their
aid we hurried the wounded man into our boat, and pushed off just in
time. Unlike the Corsican peasants, our pursuers carried no fire-arms,
and before they could get any, we were at safe distance.
Having sent for an English surgeon, we kept the poor sailor on board the
yacht, until he was quite out of danger. We Britons are not, as a
general rule, an over-grateful race; we hate to be under an obligation,
and too often illustrate the great philosopher's saying, that the doer
feels more good will than the receiver of a kindness. Moreover, the
Spaniards, in the neighbourhood of the Rock, could hardly be expected to
love us, even if we were accustomed, which it is needless to say we are
not, to treat them with decent courtesy. Therefore I was surprised at
the deep and warm gratitude of this wounded man. A thing that enhanced
his debt to me--for life, in my opinion, is very little to owe--was that
he loved a young girl, the one over whom they had quarrelled, and he was
about to marry her.
Discovering who I was, for he knew nothing of me at first, he saw that
he could be of no little service to me. The only obstacle was a solemn
oath; but from this, he believed, he could soon obtain release. With an
Englishman's honest and honourable repugnance to any breach of faith, I
was long reluctant to encourage this absolution. But the thought of my
helpless children, robbed of their inheritance, and, still worse, of a
father's love, and dependant on the caprice of a superstitious villain,
this, and the recollection of my desolating wrongs, overpowered all
scruples. And is it not a wiser course, and more truly Christian, to
port the helm than to cross the bows of another man's religion, at any
rate so long as it be Christian also, though frogged in a pensioner's
coat?
Being duly absolved--for which he would not allow me to pay--the Spanish
sailor told me all he knew. He had been Lepardo's mate, on many a
smuggling run, and in many an act of piracy off the coast of Barbary.
But he had never liked his captain, no one ever did; though all the crew
admired him as the cleverest man in the world. After the felucca was
sold and her crew dispersed, the mate had followed for a while the
fortunes of Lepardo. He told me things about him which I knew not how
to believe. However, I will not repeat them, because they do not seem
to bear upon my story. The name of my little girl he could not
remember, for he was not at the christening, and she was always called
the baby. Being a good-natured man he took kindly to the children, and
told me anecdotes of them which brought the tears to my eyes.
After two or three months spent at Naples, they all left suddenly for
Palermo, on account, as the mate believed, of my unexpected arrival; and
here he lost sight of his commander, for tired by this time of an idle
life, and seeing no chance of any more roving adventures, he accepted a
berth in a brig bound for the Piraeus, and now after many shifts and
changes was first mate of a fruit vessel sailing from Zante to London.
The most important part to me of all his communication was that, on
their previous voyage, they had carried to England Lepardo Della Croce
and my two dear children. That murderer and kidnapper had taken the
lead in some conspiracy against the government of the Two Sicilies, and
through the treachery of an accomplice had been obliged to fly for his
life. Disguising himself he contrived to reach Gibraltar, and took
refuge on English ground. He was now very poor and in great distress,
but still clung to the children, of whom he appeared to be fond, and who
believed him to be their father. The "Duo Brachiones" touching there,
as usual, for supplies, Lepardo met his old mate ashore; and begged for
a passage to England. They took him to London, and there of course lost
sight of him. He was greatly altered, the mate said, from the Lepardo
of old. Morose and reserved he had always been; but now misfortune had
covered him with a skin-deep philosophy. But his eyes contracted and
sparkled as of yore, whenever my name was mentioned; and the mate knew
what his intention was, in case he should find me a happy man. The
simple mate was still more surprised at the alteration in my children;
as pretty a pair, he said, as ever he set eyes on. But they were kept
most jealously from the notice of the crew, and even from their ancient
friend's attentions; they were never allowed to be on the deck, except
when the berths were being cleaned. They seemed to fear their reputed
father, a great deal more than they loved him.
Upon hearing this last particular I seized the mate by the hand, and
felt something rise in my throat: I was so delighted to learn that the
pirate had not succeeded in carrying nature by boarding. The next day I
left Petro to see to the hardware business--to which we were bound by
charter--while I set sail in the "Duo Brachiones" for the arms of my
darling little ones.
CHAPTER XVIII.
They put me in the very hammock where that murderer of all my happiness
had slept, and no wonder that I could find no rest there. Soon as I
knew the reason, I was allowed to change, and crept into the little
berth where my innocent pets had lain in each other's arms. Here I slept
much better than a king, for I even fancied that it smelt of Lily. If
little Lily, as she shall be called, whatever the rogues have christened
her, if my little beauty--for that I am sure she must be--ever comes to
light, when I am in my grave, remember one thing, Clara, you will find
her breath and general fragrance just as her mother's were. Such things
are hereditary, especially among women.
After a long and stormy passage, and a fortnight spent in repairing at
Bordeaux, we passed the familiar Essex marshes by night, and were off
the Custom House by the last day of the year. When that tedious work
was over--talk as we please of the douane, our own is as bad as most of
them--feeling quite out of my latitude, and not a bit like an
Englishman, I betook myself to a tavern near London Bridge. There
everything seemed new, and I could not walk the streets without yawing
into the wrong tide. But one old London custom held its ground with
time. Papers a week and a fortnight old still strayed about in the
coffee-room. Being told that the journals of that day were "in hand,"
as they always are, I took up a weekly paper of some ten days back to
yawn over it till supper time. It was too late for me to think of
disturbing Peter Green by a sudden arrival, and so I had ordered a bed
at this hotel.
The weekly gazette in my hand was one of those which use the shears with
diligence and method. Under the heading "Provincial News," I found the
following paragraph:--
"SEASONABLE BENEVOLENCE.--We understand that in these times of severe
and unmerited pressure upon the agricultural interest--the true
back-bone of old England--the head of one of our most ancient and
respected county families has announced his intention of remitting to
all his tenantry no less than twenty per cent. upon their rentals. He
has also bespoken a lavish and most princely repast--shall we say
dinner--to be provided on Christmas eve for every man, woman, and child
upon his large domain. When we announce that mine host of the Elephant
is to be major domo, and our respected townsman George Jenkins, who
purchased as our readers are aware the gold medal ox at Smithfield, is
to cater for the occasion, need we say anything more? At the risk of
gratuitous insult to the intelligence of the county, we must subjoin
that the honoured gentleman to whom we allude is Henry Valentine
Vaughan, Esquire, of Vaughan Park. Is not such a man, the
representative of time-honoured sentiments, and who to a distinguished
degree adds the experience of continental travel, is not such a man, we
ask, a thousand times fitter to express in the Senate the opinions and
wishes of this great county, than the scion, we had almost said spawn,
of the Manchester mushrooms, whom a Castle that shall be nameless is
attempting to foist on the county? We pause for a reply.--_Gloucester
Argus_."
My dear brother's distinguished degree was that of B.A. after a narrow
escape from pluck. Clara, don't look offended. Your father had very
good abilities, but spent most of his Oxford time in pigeon matches at
the Weirs, and expeditions to Bagley wood, which later in life he would
have looked upon as felonious.
This paltry puff would never have been reprinted by a London journal of
eminence and influence, but for the suggestion at the end, which
happened just to hit the sentiments of the more exalted editor. Now
this weekly paper was sure to circulate among refugees from the
continent, by reason of its well-known antipathy towards them; and there
happened to be in this very number a violent tirade against our
Government for displaying what we delight to call the mighty AEgis of
England. I saw the danger at once, and my heart turned sick within me.
My gay and harmless brother in the midst of his Christmas rejoicings,
and a stealthy murderer creeping perhaps at that very moment towards
him.
But even if it were so, was there not some chance of Lepardo discovering
his mistake, when in the neighbourhood where the Vaughans were so well
known? Yes, some chance there was, but very little. Bound upon such an
errand he would not dare to show himself, or to make any inquiries, even
if they seemed needful. And the mention by that cursed gossip of what he
called "continental travel"--your father's wedding tour--would banish
all doubt of identity, had any been entertained. Even supposing that
cold-blooded fiend should meet my poor brother, face to face, in the
open daylight, it was not likely that he would be undeceived. Lepardo
and I had met only once, and then in hot encounter. My brother was like
me in figure, in face, and in voice; and though I was somewhat taller
and much darker of complexion, the former difference would not attract
attention, unless we stood side by side; the latter would of course be
attributed to the effects of climate. From the gamekeeper's evidence, I
am now inclined to believe that Lepardo, while lurking in the lower
coppice, among the holly bushes, must have cast his evil eyes on your
poor father's face, and convinced himself that he beheld his enemy.
Flurried and frightened, I looked at the date of the paper. It was
twelve days old. Possibly I might yet be in time, for most likely the
murderer would set out on foot, according to Corsican practice, with the
travel-stone bound on his knee. Even if he had travelled in modern
fashion, he would probably lurk and lie in ambush about the house,
enduring hunger and cold and privation, until his moment came. Could I
leave for Gloucester that night? No, the last train would have started,
before I could get to Paddington. So I resolved to go by the morning
express, which would take me to Gloucester by middle day.
After a sleepless night, I was up betimes in the morning, and went
through the form of breakfast while the cab was sent for. Presently a
waiter came in with the morning papers, the papers of New Year's-day,
1843. What I saw and what my feelings were, you, my poor child, can too
well imagine. That day I could not bear to go. It was cowardly of me,
and perhaps unmanly; but I could not face your mother's grief and the
desolate household. Therefore I persuaded myself that I had discharged
my duty, by visiting all the London police stations, and leaving the
best description I could give of Lepardo. The following day I left
London, and arrived, as perhaps you remember, long after dark, and
during a heavy fall of snow. There at the very threshold I began amiss
with you, for I outraged your childish pride by mistaking you for the
housekeeper's daughter. With a well-born child's high self-esteem, and
making no allowance for the dim light, you believed it to be a sham
intended to mortify you; and it poisoned your heart towards me. But you
were wholly mistaken. My mind was full of your mother and of the
terrible blow to her; to you, whom I had never seen, and scarcely even
heard of, I never gave a thought; except the mistaken one that you were
not old enough to be sensible of your loss. Little did I imagine what a
fount of resolute will, and deep feeling, found a vent in the kicks and
screams of the large-eyed minnikin, that would not be ordered away.
You are entitled, Clara, to know all that I have done towards the
discovery of your father's assassin, and all that I can tell to aid your
own pursuit. The hair found in your mother's grasp was beyond a doubt
Lepardo's; that laid upon your father's bosom was, of course, my Lily's.
It was to show that her supposed seduction had been expiated. The one
thing that most surprised me was that the murderer left no token, no
symbol of himself. In a Vendetta murder they almost always do, as a
mark of triumph and a gage to the victim's family. Hence I believed that
Signor Dezio was not killed in Vendetta, but by his nephew for gain.
How Lepardo got into the house I have no idea, or rather I had none,
until you told me of the secret passage, and Mrs. Daldy's entrance.
Till then I always thought that he had clambered up, as he did at Veduta
tower. But unless there was a traitor in the household, he must have
been there more than once, to have known so well your father's sleeping
room.
It would have been waste of time for me to concern myself about the
county police. That body of well-conducted navvies--Lepardo would have
outwitted them, when he was five years old. Neither did I meddle with
the coroner and his jury, but left them to their own devices and
indigenous intellect. These displayed themselves in much puzzle-headed
cross-questioning, sagacious looks, and nods, and winks of acute
reservation. It was, as most often it is, a bulldog after a hare.
Lepardo might safely have been in the midst of them, asked for a chair,
and made suggestions. as "amicus curiae."
But with the London police it was somewhat different. They showed some
little acumen, but their fundamental error is this--they pride
themselves on their intelligence. No man of any real depth ever does
such a thing as this. He knows very well that whatever he is, there are
half a million more so; that the age of exceptional intellects expired,
at least in this country, with Mr. Edmund Burke, and is not likely to
rise from the dead. Now we are all pretty much good useful clods on a
level: education, like all good husbandry, tends to pulverisation; and
if the collective produce is greater, let us be at once thankful and
humble.
The London police, being proud of their intelligence, declared that
there could be no doubt about their catching the criminal. They laughed
at my belief that he might walk through the midst of them, while they
would touch their hats to him, and beg him to look after his
handkerchief. At one time, I think, they were really on his track, and
I went to London, and stayed there, and did my best to help them. But
they were all too late; Lepardo, if he it were, had left for Paris the
week before. To Paris I followed, but found no trace of him there.
Then I went on to Corsica, thinking it likely that he would return to
his old piratical ways. Moreover, I wanted to see how my children's
estates were managed, and to revisit St. Katharine's.
All was calm and peaceful. Lily's grave and her father's were blended
in one rich herbage. There all the bloom of my life was drooping, like
the yellow mountain-rose, whence if a single flower be plucked, all the
other blossoms fall.
Count Gaffori received me kindly. His daughter was married and had two
children, who played where Lily's boy and girl should by rights be
playing. I could not bear it, and came away, having nothing now to care
for. Wherever I went the world seemed much of a muchness to me; and to
my own misfortunes the blood of my brother was added. I found the
"Lilyflower" still under worthy Petro, and returned in her to England,
and she still is mine. Petro would not come; he was too true a Corsican
to leave the beloved island now his hair was grey. So I set him up at
Calvi with a vessel of his own, and now and then I receive a letter from
good Marcantonia. They have promised to watch for the reappearance of
our fearful enemy; and Petro has sworn to shoot him, if ever he gets a
chance.
After my return to England, I set to work with all my energy to improve
this property. In this, if in nothing else, I have thoroughly
succeeded. Much opposition I had to encounter; for the tenants regarded
me as a mere interloper, and their hearts were with you and your mother.
When I call them together to-morrow, as I intend to do, abandon all my
right, title, and interest, and declare you their Signora, it is my firm
belief that they will hardly think me worth cursing before they worship
you. This old retainership is a thing to be proud and yet ashamed of.
It is a folly that makes one glory in being a fool. Why, after you left
for Devonshire (much, as you know, against my will), I could not ride
out without being insulted, and even the boys called me "Jonathan Wild."
But this was due, in some measure, to your father's gay geniality, and
hearty good-will to all men, contrasted with my satiric and moody
reserve. Neither were your youth, and sex, and helplessness, lost upon
that chivalrous being--if he only knew his chivalry--the sturdy English
yeoman.
Why did I let you go? Well, I believe it was one of the many mistakes
of my life; but I had a number of reasons, though personal dislike of
you was not, as you thought, one of them. No, my child, I have never
disliked you; not even on the night when you came and denounced me, with
the dagger in your hand. I must indeed have been worse than I am, if I
could have nourished ill-will against a young thing, whom I had made an
orphan. By some instinct, you knew from the first that the deed was
mine, although I was not the doer. I would have loved you, if you would
have let me, my heart yearned so over children. But of my reason for
letting you go, the chiefest perhaps--setting aside that I could not
stop you--was this consideration. For years I had longed, and craved in
my heart of hearts, to tell your mother all, and obtain her gentle
forgiveness. But any allusion--no matter how veiled and mantled--to the
story of her loss threw her, as you know well, into a most peculiar
state, wherein all the powers of mind and body seemed to be quite
suspended. With a man's usual roughness of prescription for the more
delicate sex, I believed firmly that total change of living, and air,
and place, and habits, would relax this wonderful closure, secure my
forgiveness, and re-establish her health. The shock I received at her
death was almost as terrible as when my brother died. When I stood
beside you at her grave, I was come with the full intention of telling
you all my story, and begging you to return with me, and live once more
in your father's house. But your behaviour to me was so cold and
contemptuous, that I forgot my crushing debt to you; and humiliation
became, for the moment, impossible. I meant, however, to have written
to you that evening, before you should leave the village; but (as you
now are aware) that very evening, I was smitten helpless. Partially
recovering, after months of illness, I was deeply distressed to find
that you had left your good friends in Devonshire, and were gone, my
informants could not say whither. Neither had I learned your
whereabouts up to the time of my last illness, when I was making
inquiries, of which your enemy reaped the benefit. For the rest, you
know that I never meant to rob you of your inheritance, though bigoted
nonsense enables me. To-morrow, please God, I will put it out of my
power to do so. Mrs. Daldy's motive you have long since perceived.
Failing my children, and the attainted Lepardo, her son is the heir to
all the lands of the Della Croce. She has held me much in her power, by
her knowledge of parts of my history. Henry's baptismal entry, as well
as that of my marriage, was in the packet she stole. One word more, my
darling--and from an old man, who has wandered and suffered much, you
will not think it impertinent. Leave your revenge to God. In His
way--which we call wonderful, because the steps are unseen--He will
accomplish it for you, as righteousness demands. Any interference of
ours is a worm-cast in His avenue. Though I am stricken and dying, He,
if so pleases Him, will bring me my children before I die, that I may
bless Him, and tell my Lily."
I fell upon the old man's neck--old he was, though not in years--and as
I wept I kissed him. How could I have wronged him so, and how could I
keep myself from loving one so long unhappy? If sorrow be the sponge of
sin, his fault was wiped away.
CLARA VAUGHAN
BOOK V.
CHAPTER I.
At this time and place, I, Clara Vaughan, leap from the pillion of my
Uncle's pensive mule, and am upon the curb-stone of my own strange life
again. How I wandered with him through the olive groves of Corsica, how
I wept for his loving Lily, that ancient Signor, and the stolen babes;
and how, beyond the vomito of words, I loathed that fiend who had
injured whom or what most I know not, unless it were his own soul, if he
had any, and for God's sake I hope he had--all this, though I am too
weak of language, will, perhaps, be understood.
To myself I would hardly confess the interest I could not discard in the
pure and constant love of that impassioned pair; for what had I any
longer to do with Pyramus and Thisbe? No more of love for me. You will
not see me droop, and fret, and turn to a mossy green. No nonsense of
that sort for me: I have a loop at either side entitled self-respect,
which will keep my skirt from draggling. Neither will I rush into the
opposite extreme, pronounce all love a bubble because my own has burst,
take to low-necked dresses, and admire cats more than babies. No; I am
only eighteen, not yet eighteen and a half; I have loved with all my
heart, and a free true heart it is, albeit a hot and haughty one; if it
be despised, outraged, and made nothing of, though I can never transfer,
I will not turn it sour. The world is every whit as fair, children are
quite as pretty, flowers have as rich a scent, and goodness as pure a
charm, as if that silly maiden Clara had not leaped before she looked.
And yet how I wish that I could only think so.
Before I go on with my tale, I must recur to one or two little matters,
that everything may be as clear as it lies in my power to make it. For
although I am but a "female," as Inspector Cutting observed, I am doing
my best to make everything as clear as if told by a male.
In the first place then, when my Uncle had recovered from the exertion
of telling his tale, I acquainted him with my discovery of the letters
upon the bed-hangings. They confirmed his account of the fearful
Vendetta usages, and explained the point which had been to him most
mysterious.
Secondly, as to the anonymous letter which had led me first to London;
like the detective policeman, he now attached but little importance to
it. He had done his best, at the time, to trace the writer and follow
the clue, if there were any. But he had met with no success. His
reason for passing it on to me, was that he hoped to create some
diversion of my thought, some break in the clouds of my sorrow.
Next, to show the full meaning of Mrs. Daldy's manoeuvres. Through her
connexion--which she had carefully cultivated, when it began to seem
worth her while--with her husband's kindred near Genoa, she had learned
some portions of my poor Uncle's history; for, as he himself observed,
the islanders are much addicted to gossip, as indeed all islanders are,
and continentals too for that matter, especially in hot climates. Now
there is no lack of intercourse between the Balagna and Genoa. Of
course our chastened hypocrite made the most of her knowledge in a
hundred ways, and by her sham sympathy and pretended aid--for up to the
time of his illness the desolate father still sought and sought--she
even secured some little influence over her brother-in-law. How often
is it so: though we know people to be false, we do not believe, when our
hearts are concerned, that they are so false to us. Moreover, when she
found him shattered in body and mind by paralysis, she commenced an
active bombardment, pulling out the tompions from every gun of mock
religion. But, as in her treatment of me, she displayed, in spite of
all her experience and trials, a sad ignorance of unregenerate human
nature. My Uncle was not the man, palsied or no, to be terrified by a
Calvinist: and he knew too much of her early days, and certain doings at
Baden, to identify her at present with the angel that stands in the sun.
And this prison-eyed mole made another mistake. Not content with one
good gallery, she must needs work two runs, side by side, in a very
mealy soil. The result was of course that they ran into one, and she
had to dig her way out. If she had worked, heart and soul, for my
Uncle's money only, which he rightly regarded as his own, and at his own
disposal, I believe she might have got most of it. At any rate, under
the will which I caught her carrying off, she was to take half of the
large sum which he had laid by; I mean if his children did not come to
light, and prove their legitimacy. But twenty-five thousand pounds
would be nothing to her dear son, who had inherited his father's
extravagance, or to herself, who loved high play. Therefore, believing
me out of the field, she began to plot for the Vaughan estate as well,
and furthermore for the magnificent property in Corsica. Of the Vaughan
estates she had no chance--albeit she had the impudence to propose a
compromise with me--of Veduta tower she had some prospect, if the right
heirs, the poor children, should never appear, or establish their claim,
and if she could procure the outlawry of Lepardo.
Believing my Uncle to be dying by inches, she made a bold stroke for
possession of the most important documents; and, but for Giudice and me,
no doubt she would have succeeded. But she had dashed far out of her
depth, and had little chance now of reaching the coveted land. I hope
she felt that everything was ordered for her good.
Another point which seems to require some explanation, is the discovery
by the assassin of the secret entrance, an access quite unknown to the
family, the servants, or any other person, except, at a later time, Mrs.
Daldy. The house, as I said before, was built upon the site and partly
embodied the fabric of a still more ancient structure. Probably these
narrow stairs, now enclosed in the basement of the eastern wall, had
saved many a ripe priest from reeling, in the time of the Plantagenets.
They led, I think, from the ancient chapel, long since destroyed, to the
chaplain's room, and perhaps had been reopened secretly during the great
rebellion, when the Vaughans were in hot trouble. Beatrice Vaughan, the
cavalier's child, who was now supposed to begin her ghost walk at the
eastern window, glided probably down this staircase, when, as the legend
relates, she escaped mysteriously from the house, in her father's
absence, roused the tenants, and surprised the Roundhead garrison in
their beds. The house was soon retaken, and Beatrice, in her youthful
beauty, given up to the brutal soldiers. She snapped a pistol at the
Puritan officer, and flew like a bird along this corridor. At the end,
while trying perhaps to draw the old oak slide--though nothing was said
of this--she was caught by the gloating fanatics, and stabbed herself on
the spot rather than yield to dishonour. The poor maiden's tomb is in
the church, not far from the chancel arch, with some lines of quaint
Latin upon it. Her lover, Sir William Desborough, slit that Puritan
officer's nose and cut off both his ears. I wonder that he let him off
so lightly; but perhaps it was all he was worth. Major Cecil Vaughan
married again, and the direct line was re-established.
The chapel well, as it was called, dark and overhung with ivy, was a
spring of limpid icy crystal, spanned by and forming a deep alcove in
the ancient chapel wall, which, partly for its sake, and partly as a
buttress for the east end of the house, had been left still standing.
This old well had long time been disused, hiding, as it did, in a wild
and neglected corner out of sight from the terrace walk; and the
gardeners, who found the pump less troublesome, had condemned the water
as too cold for their plants. The mouth, with its tangled veil of ivy
and periwinkle, was also masked by a pile of the chapel ruins, now
dignified with the name of a rockwork. Some steps of jagged stone led
through the low black archway to the crouching water, which was so clear
that it seemed to doubt which was itself and which was stone.
This peaceful, cold, unruffled well, formed the antechamber to the
murderer's passage. For on the right-hand side, not to be seen in the
darkness, and the sublustrous confusion, by any common eye, was a small
niche and footing-place not a yard above the water. It needed some
nerve and vigour to spring from the lowest stepping-stone sideways to
this scarcely visible ledge. None, of the few whose eyes were good
enough to espy it, would be tempted to hazard the leap, unless they knew
or suspected that the facing would yield to the foot, that it was in
fact a small door purposely coloured and jointed like the slimy green of
the masonry. In this well the murderer must have lurked; and he might
have done so from one year's end to another. There with the craft of
his devilish race--my Uncle may admire them, but not I--and with their
wonderful powers of sight, he must have found this entrance, and
rejoiced in his hellish heart.
As for Mrs. Daldy, she found it out at the other end, most likely.
Unless my memory fails me, I spoke long ago of some boards which sounded
hollow to the ring of my childish knuckles. These were in the
skirting--if that be the proper name for it--under the centre of the
great oriel window. The oak slides, when pressed from below, ran in a
groove with but little noise, and without much force being used: but it
required some strength to move them on the side of the corridor. It was
the sound of these sliding boards which had first drawn Judy's notice:
but as they were in deep shadow, I neither perceived the opening, nor
gave him the opportunity. That woman would never have dreamed of the
thing, if she had not surprised me one day when I was prying about
there; she must have returned alone, and being, as we have seen, a
superior cabinet-maker, discovered the secret which baffled me. As I
did not want Judy to catch cold by watching there any longer, I had this
horrible passage walled up at either end, and built across in the
middle.
Having thus made good my arrears, I am at liberty to proceed. When my
Uncle had paused from his many sorrows, which he did with a mellow
dignity not yet understood by me; and when I, in the fervour of youth,
had offered much comfort kindly received, but far better let alone, I
asked him for one thing only:--the most minute and accurate description
he could give of that Lepardo Della Croce. His answer was as follows:--
"My dear, I have seen him once only, and that more than twenty years
ago, and in an interview of some excitement"--I should think so indeed,
when one tried to kill the other--"but I will describe him to the best
of my recollection. He is rather a tall man, at least of about my own
height, but more lightly built than myself. His hands and feet are
remarkably small and elegant. His face is of the true Italian type, a
keen oval with a straight nose, and plenty of width between the eyes,
which are large and very dark. His forehead is not massive, but
well-formed, and much whiter than the rest of his face. The expression
of his countenance is that of shrewdness and versatility, with a
quickness eager to save both you and himself from the trouble of
completing your sentence. But all this is common enough. One thing I
saw, or fancied, which is not quite so common. As I dealt him that blow
with my fist, my eyes for one flash met his, and his leaped towards one
another, as if he had a strong cast in them. Before that, and
afterwards too, there was no appearance of any distortion: if there were
any at that moment, it arose from the start of terror or fury jerking
the muscles awry. His voice is flexible and persuasive, and soft as a
serpent-charmer's. I think he must be a most arrogant man; profoundly
convinced of his own abilities, but seldom caring to vindicate them.
Just the man to get on in the world, if he were only what is called
respectable. Just the man to break a woman's heart, and crush the
spirit of a meek and humble child. Ah, I would forgive him his sins
against me, though not his wrongs towards you, if I could only learn
that he had been kind to my children."
This description dwelt on my mind for days and days of thinking. It did
not altogether apply to the man whom I had observed so closely at the
meeting of the conspirators. That man was of middle height, and though
his face was oval, there was scarcely the average width between the
eyes. And he did not seem to me like an arrogant man, cold except when
excited; but rather of a hasty, impassioned nature, sure to do its
utmost in trifles. Could it be that I had watched and hated the wrong
man? It might be so; and it was not unlikely that Mr. Cutting himself
knew not which was the guilty one. Like most of the London
policemen--my Uncle had taught me this--he was too proud of his sagacity
to be in truth very sagacious. Experience he had, and all that; but he
would not have done in Paris. The real depth, that goes below, and yet
allows for the depth of another, must be in the nature, can rarely exist
in a small one, and in a large one is seldom worked but for theoretical
purposes. Therefore shallow men overreach in daily life, and fancy they
have blinded those who know them thoroughly, and know themselves as
well.
So far as my experience goes, large-natured men abhor cunning so much,
that they fear to work the depth of their own intelligence, because it
seems akin to it. So they are cheated every day, as a strong man yields
to the push of a child; and the fools who cheat them chuckle in the idea
that they have done it by fine sagacity, and without the victim's
knowledge.