THROUGH THE WINTER
Weisspriess and Wilfrid made their way toward Milan together, silently
smoking, after one attempt at conversation, which touched on Vittoria's
marriage; but when they reached Monza the officer slapped his degraded
brother in arms upon the shoulder, and asked him whether he had any
inclination to crave permission to serve in Hungary. For his own part,
Weisspriess said that he should quit Italy at once; he had here to skewer
the poor devils, one or two weekly, or to play the mightily generous; in
short, to do things unsoldierly; and he was desirous of getting away from
the country. General Schoneck was at Monza, and might arrange the matter
for them both. Promotion was to be looked for in Hungary; the
application would please the General; one battle would restore the
lieutenant's star to Wilfrid's collar. Wilfrid, who had been offended
by his companion's previous brooding silence, nodded briefly, and they
stopped at Monza, where they saw General Schoneck in the morning, and
Wilfrid being by extraordinary favour in civilian's dress during his
leave of absence, they were jointly invited to the General's table at
noon, though not to meet any other officer. General Schoneck agreed with
Weisspriess that Hungary would be a better field for Wilfrid; said he
would do his utmost to serve them in the manner they wished, and
dismissed them after the second cigar. They strolled about the city,
glad for reasons of their own to be out of Milan as long as the leave
permitted. At night, when they were passing a palace in one of the dark
streets, a feather, accompanied by a sharp sibilation from above, dropped
on Wilfrid's face. Weisspriess held the feather up, and judged by its
length that it was an eagle's, and therefore belonging to the Hungarian
Hussar regiment stationed in Milan. "The bird's aloft," he remarked.
His voice aroused a noise of feet that was instantly still. He sent a
glance at the doorways, where he thought he discerned men. Fetching a
whistle in with his breath, he unsheathed his sword, and seeing that
Wilfrid had no weapon, he pushed him to a gate of the palace-court that
had just cautiously turned a hinge. Wilfrid found his hand taken by a
woman's hand inside. The gate closed behind him. He was led up to an
apartment where, by the light of a darkly-veiled lamp, he beheld a young
Hungarian officer and a lady clinging to his neck, praying him not to go
forth. Her Italian speech revealed how matters stood in this house. The
officer accosted Wilfrid: "But you are not one of us!" He repeated it to
the lady: "You see, the man is not one of us!"
She assured him that she had seen the uniform when she dropped the
feather, and wept protesting it.
"Louis, Louis! why did you come to-night! why did I make you come! You
will be slain. I had my warning, but I was mad."
The officer hushed her with a quick squeeze of her inter-twisted fingers.
"Are you the man to take a sword and be at my back, sir?" he said; and
resumed in a manner less contemptuous toward the civil costume:
"I request it for the sole purpose of quieting this lady's fears."
Wilfrid explained who and what he was. On hearing that he was General
Pierson's nephew the officer laughed cheerfully, and lifted the veil from
the lamp, by which Wilfrid knew him to be Colonel Prince Radocky, a most
gallant and the handsomest cavalier in the Imperial service. Radocky
laughed again when he was told of Weisspriess keeping guard below.
"Aha! we are three, and can fight like a pyramid."
He flourished his hand above the lady's head, and called for a sword.
The lady affected to search for one while he stalked up and down in the
jaunty fashion of a Magyar horseman; but the sword was not to be
discovered without his assistance, and he was led away in search of it.
The moment he was alone Wilfrid burst into tears. He could bear anything
better than the sight of fondling lovers. When they rejoined him,
Radocky had evidently yielded some point; he stammered and worked his
underlip on his moustache. The lady undertook to speak for him. Happily
for her, she said, Wilfrid would not compromise her; and taking her
lover's hand, she added with Italian mixture of wit and grace:
"Happily for me, too, he does. The house is surrounded by enemies; it is
a reign of terror for women. I am dead, if they slay him; but if they
recognize him, I am lost."
Wilfrid readily leaped to her conclusion. He offered his opera-hat and
civil mantle to Radocky, who departed in them, leaving his military cloak
in exchange. During breathless seconds the lady hung kneeling at the
window. When the gate opened there was a noise as of feet preparing to
rush; Weisspriess uttered an astonished cry, but addressed Radocky as "my
Pierson!" lustily and frequently; and was heard putting a number of
meaningless questions, laughing and rallying Pierson till the two passed
out of hearing unmolested. The lady then kissed a Cross passionately,
and shivered Wilfrid's manhood by asking him whether he knew what love
was. She went on:
"Never, never love a married woman! It's a past practice. Never!
Thrust a spike in the palm of your hands drink scalding oil, rather than
do that."
"The Prince Radocky is now safe," Wilfrid said.
"Yes, he is safe; and he is there, and I am here: and I cannot follow
him; and when will he come to me?"
The tones were lamentable. She struck her forehead, after she had mutely
thrust her hand to right and left to show the space separating her from
her lover.
Her voice changed when she accepted Wilfrid's adieux, to whose fate in
the deadly street she appeared quite indifferent, though she gave him one
or two prudent directions, and expressed a hope that she might be of
service to him.
He was set upon as soon as he emerged from the gateway; the cavalry cloak
was torn from his back, and but for the chance circumstance of his
swearing in English, he would have come to harm. A chill went through
his blood on hearing one of his assailants speak the name of Barto Rizzo.
The English oath stopped an arm that flashed a dagger half its length.
Wilfrid obeyed a command to declare his name, his country, and his rank.
It's not the prince! it's not the Hungarian!" went many whispers; and he
was drawn away by a man who requested him to deliver his reasons for
entering the palace, and who appeared satisfied by Wilfrid's ready
mixture of invention and fact. But the cloak! Wilfrid stated boldly
that the cloak was taken by him from the Duchess of Graatli's at Como;
that he had seen a tall Hussar officer slip it off his shoulders; that he
had wanted a cloak, and had appropriated it. He had entered the gate of
the palace because of a woman's hand that plucked at the skirts of this
very cloak.
"I saw you enter," said the man; "do that no more. We will not have the
blood of Italy contaminated--do you hear? While that half-Austrian
Medole is tip-toeing 'twixt Milan and Turin, we watch over his honour,
to set an example to our women and your officers. You have outwitted us
to-night. Off with you!"
Wilfrid was twirled and pushed through the crowd till he got free of
them. He understood very well that they were magnanimous rascals who
could let an accomplice go, though they would have driven steel into the
principal.
Nothing came of this adventure for some time. Wilfrid's reflections
(apart from the horrible hard truth of Vittoria's marriage, against which
he dashed his heart perpetually, almost asking for anguish) had leisure
to examine the singularity of his feeling a commencement of pride in the
clasping of his musket;--he who on the first day of his degradation had
planned schemes to stick the bayonet-point between his breast-bones: he
thought as well of the queer woman's way in Countess Medole's adjuration
to him that he should never love a married woman;--in her speaking, as it
seemed, on his behalf, when it was but an outcry of her own acute wound.
Did he love a married woman? He wanted to see one married woman for the
last time; to throw a frightful look on her; to be sublime in scorn of
her; perhaps to love her all the better for the cruel pain, in the
expectation of being consoled. While doing duty as a military machine,
these were the pictures in his mind; and so well did his routine drudgery
enable him to bear them, that when he heard from General Schoneck that
the term of his degradation was to continue in Italy, and from his sister
that General Pierson refused to speak of him or hear of him until he had
regained his gold shoulder-strap, he revolted her with an ejaculation of
gladness, and swore brutally that he desired to have no advancement;
nothing but sleep and drill; and, he added conscientiously, Havannah
cigars. "He has grown to be like a common soldier," Adela said to
herself with an amazed contemplation of the family tie. Still, she
worked on his behalf, having, as every woman has, too strong an instinct
as to what is natural to us to believe completely in any eccentric
assertion. She carried the tale of his grief and trials and his romantic
devotion to the Imperial flag, daily to Countess Lena; persisting, though
she could not win a responsive look from Lena's face.
One day on the review-ground, Wilfrid beheld Prince Radocky bending from
his saddle in conversation with Weisspriess. The prince galloped up to
General Pierson, and stretched his hand to where Wilfrid was posted as
marker to a wheeling column, kept the hand stretched out, and spoke
furiously, and followed the General till he was ordered to head his
regiment. Wilfrid began to hug his musket less desperately. Little
presents--feminine he knew by the perfumes floating round them,--gloves
and cigars, fine handkerchiefs, and silks for wear, came to his barracks.
He pretended to accuse his sister of sending them. She in honest delight
accused Lena. Lena then accused herself of not having done so.
It was winter: Vittoria had been seen in Milan. Both Lena and Wilfrid
spontaneously guessed her to be the guilty one. He made a funeral pyre
of the gifts and gave his sister the ashes, supposing that she had
guessed with the same spirited intuition. It suited Adela to relate this
lover's performance to Lena. "He did well!" Lena said, and kissed Adela
for the first time. Adela was the bearer of friendly messages to the
poor private in the ranks. From her and from little Jenna, Wilfrid heard
that he was unforgotten by Countess Lena, and new hopes mingled with
gratitude caused him to regard his situation seriously. He confessed to
his sister that the filthy fellows, his comrades, were all but too much
for him, and asked her to kiss him, that he might feel he was not one of
them. But he would not send a message in reply to Lena. "That is also
well!" Lena said. Her brother Karl was a favourite with General
Pierson. She proposed that Adela and herself should go to Count Karl,
and urge him to use his influence with the General. This, however, Adela
was disinclined to do; she could not apparently say why. When Lena went
to him, she was astonished to hear that he knew every stage of her
advance up to the point of pardoning her erratic lover; and even knew as
much as that Wilfrid's dejected countenance on the night when Vittoria's
marriage was published in the saloon of the duchess on Lake Como, had
given her fresh offence. He told her that many powerful advocates were
doing their best for the down-fallen officer, who, if he were shot, or
killed, would still be gazetted an officer. "A nice comfort!" said
Lena, and there was a rallying exchange of banter between them, out of
which she drew the curious discovery that Karl had one of his strong
admirations for the English lady. "Surely!" she said to herself;
"I thought they were all so cold." And cold enough the English lady
seemed when Lena led to the theme. "Do I admire your brother, Countess
Lena? Oh! yes;--in his uniform exceedingly."
Milan was now full. Wilfrid had heard from Adela that Count Ammiani and
his bride were in the city and were strictly watched. Why did not
conspirators like these two take advantage of the amnesty? Why were they
not in Rome? Their Chief was in Rome; their friends were in Rome. Why
were they here? A report, coming from Countess d'Isorella, said that
they had quarrelled with their friends, and were living for love alone.
As she visited the Lenkensteins--high Austrians--some believed her; and
as Count Ammiani and his bride had visited the Duchess of Graatli, it was
thought possible. Adela had refused to see Vittoria; she did not even
know the house where Count Ammiani dwelt; so Wilfrid was reduced to find
it for himself. Every hour when off duty the miserable sentimentalist
wandered in that direction, nursing the pangs of a delicious tragedy of
emotions; he was like a drunkard going to his draught. As soon as he had
reached the head of the Corso, he wheeled and marched away from it with a
lofty head, internally grinning at his abject folly, and marvelling at
the stiff figure of an Austrian common soldier which flashed by the
windows as he passed. He who can unite prudence and madness, sagacity
and stupidity, is the true buffoon; nor, vindictive as were his
sensations, was Wilfrid unaware of the contrast of Vittoria's soul to his
own, that was now made up of antics. He could not endure the tones of
cathedral music; but he had at times to kneel and listen to it, and be
overcome.
On a night in the month of February, a servant out of livery addressed
him at the barrack-gates, requesting him to go at once to a certain
hotel, where his sister was staying. He went, and found there, not his
sister, but Countess Medole. She smiled at his confusion. Both she and
the prince, she said, had spared no effort to get him reinstated in his
rank; but his uncle continually opposed the endeavours of all his friends
to serve him. This interview was dictated by the prince's wish,
so that he might know them to be a not ungrateful couple. Wilfrid's
embarrassment in standing before a lady in private soldier's uniform,
enabled him with very peculiar dignity to declare that his present
degradation, from the General's point of view, was a just punishment, and
he did not crave to have it abated. She remarked that it must end soon.
He made a dim allusion to the littleness of humanity. She laughed.
"It's the language of an unfortunate lover," she said, and straightway,
in some undistinguished sentence, brought the name of Countess Alessandra
Ammiani tingling to his ears. She feared that she could not be of
service to him there; "at least, not just yet," the lady astonished him
by remarking. "I might help you to see her. If you take my advice you
will wait patiently. You know us well enough to understand what patience
will do. She is supposed to have married for love. Whether she did or
not, you must allow a young married woman two years' grace."
The effect of speech like this, and more in a similar strain of frank
corruptness, was to cleanse Wilfrid's mind, and nerve his heart, and he
denied that he had any desire to meet the Countess Ammiani, unless he
could perform a service that would be agreeable to her.
The lady shrugged. "Well, that is one way. She has enemies, of course."
Wilfrid begged for their names.
"Who are they not?" she replied. "Chiefly women, it is true."
He begged most earnestly for their names; he would have pleaded
eloquently, but dreaded that the intonation of one in his low garb might
be taken for a whine; yet he ventured to say that if the countess did
imagine herself indebted to him in a small degree, the mention of two or
three of the names of Countess Alessandra Ammiani's enemies would satisfy
him.
"Countess Lena von Lenkenstein, Countess Violetta d'Isorella, signorina
Irma di Karski."
She spoke the names out like a sum that she was paying down in gold
pieces, and immediately rang the bell for her servant and carriage,
as if she had now acquitted her debt. Wilfrid bowed himself forth.
A resolution of the best kind, quite unconnected with his interests or
his love, urged him on straight to the house of the Lenkensteins, where
he sent up his name to Countess Lena. After a delay of many minutes,
Count Lenkenstein accompanied by General Pierson came down, both
evidently affecting not to see him. The General barely acknowledged his
salute.
"Hey! Kinsky!" the count turned in the doorway to address him by the
title of his regiment; "here; show me the house inhabited by the Countess
d'Isorella during the revolt."
Wilfrid followed them to the end of the street, pointing his finger to
the house, and saluted.
"An Englishman did me the favour--from pure eccentricity, of course--to
save my life on that exact spot, General," said the count. "Your
countrymen usually take the other side; therefore I mention it."
As Wilfrid was directing his steps to barracks (the little stir to his
pride superinduced by these remarks having demoralized him), Count
Lenkenstein shouted: "Are you off duty? "Wilfrid had nearly replied that
he was, but just mastered himself in time. "No, indeed!" said the
count, "when you have sent up your name to a lady." This time General
Pierson put two fingers formally to his cap, and smiled grimly at the
private's rigid figure of attention. If Wilfrid's form of pride had
consented to let him take delight in the fact, he would have seen at once
that prosperity was ready to shine on him. He nursed the vexations much
too tenderly to give prosperity a welcome; and even when along with Lena,
and convinced of her attachment, and glad of it, he persisted in driving
at the subject which had brought him to her house; so that the veil of
opening commonplaces, pleasant to a couple in their position, was plucked
aside. His business was to ask her why she was the enemy of Countess
Alessandra Ammiani, and to entreat her that she should not seek to harm
that lady. He put it in a set speech. Lena felt that it ought to have
come last, not in advance of their reconciliation. "I will answer you,"
she said. "I am not the Countess Alessandra Ammiani's enemy."
He asked her: "Could you be her friend?"
"Does a woman who has a husband want a friend?"
"I could reply, countess, in the case of a man who has a bride."
By dint of a sweet suggestion here and there, love-making crossed the
topic. It appeared that General Pierson had finally been attacked, on
the question of his resistance to every endeavour to restore Wilfrid to
his rank, by Count Lenkenstein, and had barely spoken the words--that if
Wilfrid came to Countess Lena of his own free-will, unprompted, to beg
her forgiveness, he would help to reinstate him, when Wilfrid's name was
brought up by the chasseur. All had laughed, "Even I," Lena confessed.
And then the couple had a pleasant petitish wrangle;--he was requested to
avow that he had came solely, or principally, to beg forgiveness of her,
who had such heaps to forgive. No; on his honour, he had come for the
purpose previously stated, and on the spur of his hearing that she was
Countess Alessandra Ammiani's deadly enemy. "Could you believe that I
was?" said Lena; "why should I be?" and he coloured like a lad, which
sign of an ingenuousness supposed to belong to her set, made Lena bold to
take the upper hand. She frankly accused herself of jealousy, though she
did not say of whom. She almost admitted that when the time for
reflection came, she should rejoice at his having sought her to plead for
his friend rather than for her forgiveness. In the end, but with a
drooping pause of her bright swift look at Wilfrid, she promised to
assist him in defeating any machinations against Vittoria's happiness,
and to keep him informed of Countess d'Isorella's movements. Wilfrid
noticed the withdrawing fire of the look. "By heaven! she doubts me
still," he ejaculated inwardly.
These half-comic little people have their place in the history of higher
natures and darker destinies. Wilfrid met Pericles, from whom he heard
that Vittoria, with her husband's consent, had pledged herself to sing
publicly. "It is for ze Lombard widows," Pericles apologized on her
behalf; "but, do you see, I onnly want a beginning. She thaerst for ze
stage; and it is, after marriage, a good sign. Oh! you shall hear, my
friend; marriage have done her no hurt--ze contrary! You shall hear
Hymen--Cupids--not a cold machine; it is an organ alaif! She has privily
sung to her Pericles, and ser, and if I wake not very late on Judgement.
Day, I shall zen hear--but why should I talk poetry to you, to make you
laugh? I have a divin' passion for zat woman. Do I not give her to a
husband, and say, Be happy! onnly sing! Be kissed! be hugged! onnly give
Pericles your voice. By Saint Alexandre! it is to say to ze heavens,
Move on your way, so long as you drop rain on us r--you smile--you look
kind."
Pericles accompanied him into a caffe, the picture of an enamoured happy
man. He waived aside contemptuously all mention of Vittoria's having
enemies. She had them when, as a virgin, she had no sense. As a woman,
she had none, for she now had sense. Had she not brought her husband to
be sensible, so that they moved together in Milanese society, instead of
stupidly fighting at Rome? so that what he could not take to himself--the
marvellous voice--he let bless the multitude! "She is the Beethoven of
singers," Pericles concluded. Wilfrid thought so on the night when she
sang to succour the Lombard widows. It was at a concert, richly
thronged; ostentatiously thronged with Austrian uniforms. He fancied
that he could not bear to look on her. He left the house thinking that
to hear her and see her and feel that she was one upon the earth, made
life less of a burden.
This evening was rendered remarkable by a man's calling out, "You are a
traitress!" while Vittoria stood before the seats. She became pale, and
her eyelids closed. No thinness was subsequently heard in her voice.
The man was caught as he strove to burst through the crowd at the
entrance-door, and proved to be a petty bookseller of Milan, by name
Sarpo, known as an orderly citizen. When taken he was inflamed with
liquor. Next day the man was handed from the civil to the military
authorities, he having confessed to the existence of a plot in the city.
Pericles came fuming to Wilfrid's quarters. Wilfrid gathered from him
that Sarpo's general confession had been retracted: it was too foolish to
snare the credulity of Austrian officials. Sarpo stated that he had
fabricated the story of a plot, in order to escape the persecutions of
a terrible man, and find safety in prison lodgings vender Government.
The short confinement for a civic offence was not his idea of safety;
he desired to be sheltered by Austrian soldiers and a fortress, and said
that his torments were insupportable while Barto Rizzo was at large.
This infamous Republican had latterly been living in his house, eating
his bread, and threatening death to him unless he obeyed every command.
Sarpo had undertaken his last mission for the purpose of supplying his
lack of resolution to release himself from his horrible servitude by any
other means; not from personal animosity toward the Countess Alessandra
Ammiani, known as la Vittoria. When seized, fear had urged him to
escape. Such was his second story. The points seemed irreconcilable
to those who were not in the habit of taking human nature into their
calculations of a possible course of conduct; even Wilfrid, though he was
aware that Barto Rizzo hated Vittoria inveterately, imagined Sarpo's
first lie to have necessarily fathered a second. But the second story
was true: and the something like lover's wrath with which the outrage to
Vittoria fired Pericles, prompted him to act on it as truth. He told
Wilfrid that he should summon Barto Rizzo to his presence. As the
Government was unable to exhibit so much power, Wilfrid looked sarcastic;
whereupon Pericles threw up his chin crying: "Oh! you shall know my
resources. Now, my friend, one bit of paper, and a messenger, and zen
home to my house, to Tokay and cigarettes, and wait to see." He remarked
after pencilling a few lines, "Countess d'Isorella is her enemy? hein!"
"Why, you wouldn't listen to me when I told you," said Wilfrid.
"No," Pericles replied while writing and humming over his pencil; "my ear
is a pelican-pouch, my friend; it--and Irma is her enemy also?--it takes
and keeps, but does not swallow till it wants. I shall hear you, and I
shall hear my Sandra Vittoria, and I shall not know you have spoken, when
by-and-by I tinkle, tinkle, a bell of my brain, and your word walks in,--
'quite well?'--'very well! '--sit down'--'if it is ze same to you, I
prefer to stand'--'good; zen I examine you.' My motto:--'Time opens ze
gates: my system: 'it is your doctor of regiment's system when your
twelve, fifteen, forty recruits strip to him:--'Ah! you, my man, have
varicose vein: no soldier in our regiment, you!' So on. Perhaps I am
not intelligible; but, hear zis. I speak not often of my money; but I
say--it is in your ear--a man of millions, he is a king!" The Greek
jumped up and folded a couple of notes. "I will not have her disturbed.
Let her sing now and awhile to Pericles and his public: and to ze
Londoners, wiz your permission, Count Ammiani, one saison. I ask no
more, and I am satisfied, and I endow your oldest child, signor Conte--it
is said! For its mama was a good girl, a brave girl; she troubled
Pericles, because he is an intellect; but he forgives when he sees
sincerity--rare zing! Sincerity and genius: it may be zey are as man and
wife in a bosom. He forgives; it is not onnly voice he craves, but a
soul, and Sandra, your countess, she has a soul--I am not a Turk. I say,
it is a woman in whom a girl I did see a soul! A woman when she is
married, she is part of ze man; but a soul, it is for ever alone, apart,
confounded wiz nobody! For it I followed Sandra, your countess. It was
a sublime devotion of a dog. Her voice tsrilled, her soul possessed me,
Your countess is my Sandra still. I shall be pleased if child-bearing
trouble her not more zan a very little; but, enfin! she is married, and
you and I, my friend Wilfrid, we must accept ze decree, and say, no harm
to her out of ze way of nature, by Saint Nicolas! or any what saint you
choose for your invocation. Come along. And speed my letters by one of
your militaires at once off. Are Pericles' millions gold of bad mint?
If so, he is an incapable. He presumes it is not so. Come along; we
will drink to her in essence of Tokay. You shall witness two scenes.
Away!"
Wilfrid was barely to be roused from his fit of brooding into which
Pericles had thrown him. He sent the letters, and begged to be left to
sleep. The image of Vittoria seen through this man's mind was new, and
brought a new round of torments. "The devil take you," he cried when
Pericles plucked at his arm, "I've sent the letters; isn't that enough?"
He was bitterly jealous of the Greek's philosophic review of the
conditions of Vittoria's marriage; for when he had come away from the
concert, not a thought of her being a wife had clouded his resignation
to the fact. He went with Pericles, nevertheless, and was compelled to
acknowledge the kindling powers of the essence of Tokay. "Where do you
get this stuff?" he asked several times. Pericles chattered of England,
and Hagar's 'Addio,' and 'Camilla.' What cabinet operas would he not
give! What entertainments! Could an emperor offer such festivities to
his subjects? Was a Field Review equal to Vittoria's voice? He stung
Wilfrid's ears by insisting on the mellowed depth, the soft human warmth,
which marriage had lent to the voice. At a late hour his valet announced
Countess d'Isorella. "Did I not say so?" cried Pericles, and corrected
himself: "No, I did not say so; it was a surprise to you, my friend. You
shall see; you shall hear. Now you shall see what a friend Pericles can
be when a person satisfy him." He pushed Wilfrid into his dressing-room,
and immediately received the countess with an outburst of brutal
invectives--pulling her up and down the ranked regiment of her misdeeds,
as it were. She tried dignity, tried anger, she affected amazement, she
petitioned for the heads of his accusations, and, as nothing stopped him,
she turned to go. Pericles laughed when she had left the room. Irma di
Karski was announced the next minute, and Countess d'Isorella re-appeared
beside her. Irma had a similar greeting. "I am lost," she exclaimed.
"Yes, you are lost," said Pericles; "a word from me, and the back of the
public is humped at you--ha! contessa, you touched Mdlle. Irma's hand?
She is to be on her guard, and never to think she is lost till down she
goes? You are a more experienced woman! I tell you I will have no
nonsense. I am Countess Alessandra Ammiani's friend. You two, you
women, are her enemies. I will ruin you both. You would prevent her
singing in public places--you, Countess d'Isorella, because you do not
forgive her marriage to Count Ammiani; you, Irma, to spite her for her
voice. You would hiss her out of hearing, you two miserable creatures.
Not another soldo for you! Not one! and to-morrow, countess, I will see
my lawyer. Irma, begone, and shriek to your wardrobe!"
"Countess d'Isorella, I have the extreme honour."
Wilfrid marvelled to hear this titled and lovely woman speaking almost
in tones of humility in reply to such outrageous insolence. She craved
a private interview. Irma was temporarily expelled, and then Violetta
stooped to ask what the Greek's reason for his behaviour could be. She
admitted that it was in his power to ruin her, as far as money went.
"Perhaps a little farther," said Pericles; "say two steps. If one is on
a precipice, two steps count for something." But, what had she done?
Pericles refused to declare it. This set her guessing with a charming
naivete. Pericles called Irma back to assist her in the task, and
quitted them that they might consult together and hit upon the right
thing. His object was to send his valet for Luigi Saracco. He had seen
that no truth could be extracted from these women, save forcibly.
Unaware that he had gone out, Wilfrid listened long enough to hear Irma
say, between sobs: "Oh! I shall throw myself upon his mercy. Oh,
Countess d'Isorella, why did you lead me to think of vengeance! I am
lost! He knows everything. Oh, what is it to me whether she lives with
her husband! Let them go on plotting. I am not the Government. I am
sure I don't much dislike her. Yes, I hate her, but why should I hurt
myself? She will wear those jewels on her forehead; she will wear that
necklace with the big amethysts, and pretend she's humble because she
doesn't carry earrings, when her ears have never been pierced! I am
lost! Yes, you may say, lookup! I am only a poor singer, and he can
ruin me. Oh! Countess d'Isorella, oh! what a fearful punishment. If
Countess Anna should betray Count Ammiani to-night, nothing, nothing,
will save me. I will confess. Let us both be beforehand with her--or
you, it does not matter for a noble lady."
"Hush!" said Violetta. "What dreadful fool is this I sit with? You may
have done what you think of doing already."
She walked to the staircase door, and to that of the suite. An
honourable sentiment, conjoined to the knowledge that he had heard
sufficient, induced Wilfrid to pass on into the sleeping apartment a
moment or so before Violetta took this precaution. The potent liquor of
Pericles had deprived him of consecutive ideas; he sat nursing a thunder
in his head, imagining it to be profound thought, till Pericles flung the
door open. Violetta and Irma had departed. "Behold! I have it; ze
address of your rogue Barto Rizzo," said Pericles, in the manner of one
whose triumph is absolutely due to his own shrewdness. "Are two women a
match for me? Now, my friend, you shall see. Barto Rizzo is too clever
for zis government, which cannot catch him. I catch him, and I teach him
he may touch politics--it is not for him to touch Art. What! to hound
men to interrupt her while she sings in public places? What next! But
I knew my Countess d'Isorella could help me, and so I sent for her to
confront Irma, and dare to say she knew not Barto's dwelling--and why?
I will tell you a secret. A long-flattered woman, my friend, she has
had, you will think, enough of it; no! she is like avarice. If it is
worship of swine, she cannot refuse it. Barto Rizzo worships her; so it
is a deduction--she knows his abode--I act upon that, and I arrive at my
end. I now send him to ze devil."
Barto Rizzo, after having evaded the polizia of the city during a three
months' steady chase, was effectually captured on the doorstep of
Vittoria's house in the Corso Francesco, by gendarmes whom Pericles had
set on his track. A day later Vittoria was stabbed at about the same
hour, on the same spot. A woman dealt the blow. Vittoria was returning
from an afternoon drive with Laura Piaveni and the children. She saw a
woman seated on the steps as beggarwomen sit, face in lap. Anxious to
shield her from the lacquey, she sent the two little ones up to her with
small bits of money. But, as the woman would not lift her head, she and
Laura prepared to pass her, Laura coming last. The blow, like all such
unexpected incidents, had the effect of lightning on those present; the
woman might have escaped, but after she had struck she sat down impassive
as a cat by the hearth, with a round-eyed stare.
The news that Vittoria had been assassinated traversed the city. Carlo
was in Turin, Merthyr in Rome. Pericles was one of the first who reached
the house; he was coming out when Wilfrid and the Duchess of Graatli
drove up; and he accused the Countess d'Isorella flatly of having
instigated the murder. He was frantic. They supposed that she must have
succumbed to the wound. The duchess sent for Laura. There was a press
of carriages and soft-humming people in the street; many women and men
sobbing. Wilfrid had to wait an hour for the duchess, who brought
comfort when she came. Her first words were reassuring. "Ah!" she
said, "did I not do well to make you drive here with me instead of with
Lena? Those eyes of yours would be unpardonable to her. Yes, indeed;
though a corpse were lying in this house; but Countess Alessandra is
safe. I have seen her. I have held her hand."
Wilfrid kissed the duchess's hand passionately.
What she had said of Lena was true: Lena could only be generous upon the
after-thought; and when the duchess drove Wilfrid back to her, he had to
submit to hear scorn: and indignation against all Italians, who were
denounced as cut-throats, and worse and worse and worse, males and
females alike. This way grounded on her sympathy for Vittoria. But
Wilfrid now felt toward the Italians through his remembrance of that
devoted soul's love of them, and with one direct look he bade his
betrothed good-bye, and they parted.
It was in the early days of March that Merthyr, then among the
Republicans of Rome, heard from Laura Piaveni. Two letters reached him,
one telling of the attempted assassination, and a second explaining
circumstances connected with it. The first summoned him to Milan; the
other left it to his option to make the journey. He started, carrying
kind messages from the Chief to Vittoria, and from Luciano Ramara the
offer of a renewal of old friendship to Count Ammiani. His political
object was to persuade the Lombard youth to turn their whole strength
upon Rome. The desire of his heart was again to see her, who had been so
nearly lost to all eyes for ever.
Laura's first letter stated brief facts. "She was stabbed this
afternoon, at half-past two, on the steps of her house, by a woman called
the wife of Barto Rizzo. She caught her hands up under her throat when
she saw the dagger. Her right arm was penetrated just above the wrist,
and half-an-inch in the left breast, close to the centre bone. She
behaved firmly. The assassin only struck once. No visible danger; but
you should come, if you have no serious work."
"Happily," ran the subsequent letter, of two days' later date, "the
assassin was a woman, and one effort exhausts a woman; she struck only
once, and became idiotic. Sandra has no fever. She had her wits ready
--where were mine?--when she received the wound. While I had her in my
arms, she gave orders that the woman should be driven out of the city in
her carriage. The Greek, her mad musical adorer, accuses Countess
d'Isorella. Carlo has seen this person--returns convinced of her
innocence. That is not an accepted proof; but we have one. It seems
that Rizzo (Sandra was secret about it and about one or two other things)
sent to her commanding her to appoint an hour detestable style! I can
see it now; I fear these conspiracies no longer:--she did appoint an
hour; and was awaiting him when the gendarmes sprang on the man at her
door.
"He had evaded them several weeks, so we are to fancy that his wife
charged Countess Alessandra with the betrayal. This appears a reasonable
and simple way of accounting for the deed. So I only partly give credit
to it. But it may be true.
"The wound has not produced a shock to her system--very, very
fortunately. On the whole, a better thing could not have happened.
Should I be more explicit? Yes, to you; for you are not of those who see
too much in what is barely said. The wound, then, my dear good friend,
has healed another wound, of which I knew nothing. Bergamasc and
Brescian friends of her husband's, have imagined that she interrupted or
diverted his studies. He also discovered that she had an opinion of her
own, and sometimes he consulted it; but alas! they are lovers, and he
knew not when love listened, or she when love spoke; and there was grave
business to be done meanwhile. Can you kindly allow that the case was
open to a little confusion? I know that you will. He had to hear many
violent reproaches from his fellow-students. These have ceased. I send
this letter on the chance of the first being lost on the road; and it
will supplement the first pleasantly to you in any event. She lies here
in the room where I write, propped on high pillows, the right arm bound
up, and says: 'Tell Merthyr I prayed to be in Rome with my husband, and
him, and the Chief. Tell him I love my friend. Tell him I think he
deserves to be in Rome. Tell him--' Enter Countess Ammiani to reprove
her for endangering the hopes of the house by fatiguing herself. Sandra
sends a blush at me, and I smile, and the countess kisses her. I send
you a literal transcript of one short scene, so that you may feel at home
with us.
"There is a place called Venice, and there is a place called Rome, and
both places are pretty places and famous places; and there is a thing
called the fashion; and these pretty places and famous places set the
fashion: and there is a place called Milan, and a place called Bergamo,
and a place called Brescia, and they all want to follow the fashion, for
they are giddy-pated baggages. What is the fashion, mama? The fashion,
my dear, is &c. &c. &c.:--Extract of lecture to my little daughter,
Amalia, who says she forgets you; but Giacomo sends his manly love. Oh,
good God! should I have blood in my lips when I kissed him, if I knew
that he was old enough to go out with a sword in his hand a week hence?
I seem every day to be growing more and more all mother. This month in
front of us is full of thunder. Addio!"
When Merthyr stood in sight of Milan an army was issuing from the gates.