THE LAST MEETING IN MILAN
Barto Rizzo had silence about him without having to ask for it, when he
followed Violetta into Countess Ammiani's saloon of reception. Carlo was
leaning over his mother's chair, holding Vittoria's wrist across it, and
so enclosing her, while both young faces were raised to the bowed
forehead of the countess. They stood up. Violetta broke through the
formal superlatives of an Italian greeting. "Speak to me alone," she
murmured for Carlo's ear and glancing at Barto: "Here is a madman; a mild
one, I trust." She contrived to show that she was not responsible for
his intrusion. Countess Ammiani gathered Vittoria in her arms; Carlo
stepped a pace before them. Terror was on the venerable lady's face,
wrath on her son's. As he fronted Barto, he motioned a finger to the
curtain hangings, and Violetta, quick at reading signs, found his bare
sword there. "But you will not want it," she remarked, handing the hilt
to him, and softly eyeing the impression of her warm touch on the steel
as it passed.
"Carlo, thou son of Paolo! Countess Marcellina, wife of a true patriot!
stand aside, both of you. It is between the Countess Alessandra and
myself," so the man commenced, with his usual pomp of interjection.
"Swords and big eyes,--are they things to stop me?" Barto laughed
scornfully. He had spoken in the full roll of his voice, and the sword
was hard back for the thrust.
Vittoria disengaged herself from the countess. "Speak to me," she said,
dismayed by the look of what seemed an exaltation of madness in Barto's
visage, but firm as far as the trembling of her limbs would let her be.
He dropped to her feet and kissed them.
"Emilia Alessandra Belloni! Vittoria! Countess Alessandra Ammiani!
pity me. Hear this:--I hated you as the devil is hated. Yesterday I
woke up in prison to hear that I must adore you. God of all the pits of
punishment! was there ever one like this? I had to change heads."
It was the language of a distorted mind, and lamentable to hear when a
sob shattered his voice.
"Am I mad?" he asked piteously, clasping his temples.
"You are as we are, if you weep," said Vittoria, to sooth him.
"Then I have been mad!" he cried, starting. "I knew you a wicked virgin
--signora contessa, confess to me, marriage has changed you. Has it not
changed you? In the name of the Father of the Saints, help me out of it:
--my brain reels backwards. You were false, but marriage--It acts in
this way with you women; yes, that we know--you were married, and you
said, 'Now let us be faithful.' Did you not say that? I am forgiving,
though none think it. You have only to confess. If you will not,--oh!"
He smote his face, groaning.
Carlo spoke a stern word in an undertone; counselling him to be gone.
"If you will not--what was she to do?" Barto cut the question to
interrogate his strayed wits. "Look at me, Countess Alessandra. I was
in the prison. I heard that my Rosellina had a tight heart. She cried
for her master, poor heathen, and I sprang out of the walls to her.
There--there--she lay like a breathing board; a woman with a body like a
coffin half alive; not an eye to show; nothing but a body and a whisper.
She perished righteously, for she disobeyed. She acted without my
orders: she dared to think! She will be damned, for she would have
vengeance before she went. She glorified you over me--over Barto Rizzo.
Oh! she shocked my soul. But she is dead, and I am her slave. Every
word was of you. Take another head, Barto Rizzo your old one was mad:
she said that to my soul. She died blessing you above me. I saw the
last bit of life go up from her mouth blessing you. It's heard by this
time in heaven, and it's written. Then I have had two years of madness.
If she is right, I was wrong; I was a devil of hell. I know there's an
eye given to dying creatures, and she looked with it, and she said, the
soul of Rinaldo Guidascarpi, her angel, was glorifying you; and she
thanked the sticking of her heart, when she tried to stab you, poor
fool!"
Carlo interrupted: "Now go; you have said enough."
"No, let him speak," said Vittoria. She supposed that Barto was going to
say that he had not given the order for her assassination. "You do not
wish me dead, signore?"
"Nothing that is not standing in my way, signora contessa," said Barto;
and his features blazed with a smile of happy self-justification.
"I have killed a sentinel this night: Providence placed him there. I
wish for no death, but I punish, and--ah! the cursed sight of the woman
who calls me mad for two years. She thrusts a bar of iron in an engine
at work, and says, Work on! work on! Were you not a traitress? Countess
Alessandra, were you not once a traitress? Oh! confess it; save my head.
Reflect, dear lady! it's cruel to make a man of a saintly sincerity look
back--I count the months--seventeen months! to look back seventeen
months, and see that his tongue was a clapper,--his will, his eyes, his
ears, all about him, everything, stirred like a pot on the fire. I
traced you. I saw your treachery. I said--I, I am her Day of Judgement.
She shall look on me and perish, struck down by her own treachery. Were
my senses false to me? I had lived in virtuous fidelity to my
principles. None can accuse me. Why were my senses false, if my
principles were true? I said you were a traitress. I saw it from the
first. I had the divine contempt for women. My distrust of a woman was
the eye of this brain, and I said--Follow her, dog her, find her out!
I proved her false; but her devilish cunning deceived every other man
in the world. Oh! let me bellow, for it's me she proves the mass of
corruption! Tomorrow I die, and if I am mad now, what sort of a curse is
that?
"Now to-morrow is an hour--a laugh! But if I've not been shot from a true
bow--if I've been a sham for two years--if my name, and nature, bones,
brains, were all false things hunting a shadow, Countess Alessandra, see
the misery of Barto Rizzo! Look at those two years, and say that I had
my head. Answer me, as you love your husband: are you heart and soul
with him in the fresh fight for Lombardy?" He said this with a look
penetrating and malignant, and then by a sudden flash pitifully
entreating.
Carlo feared to provoke, revolted from the thought of slaying him. "Yes,
yes," he interposed, "my wife is heart and soul in it. Go."
Barto looked from him to her with the eyes of a dog that awaits an order.
Victoria gathered her strength, and said: "I am not."
"It is her answer!" Barto roared, and from deep dejection his whole
countenance radiated. "She says it--she might give the lie to a saint!
I was never mad. I saw the spot, and put my finger on it, and not a
madman can do that. My two years are my own. Mad now, for, see!
"I worship the creature. She is not heart and soul in it. She is not in
it at all. She is a little woman, a lovely thing, a toy, a cantatrice.
Joy to the big heart of Barto Rizzo! I am for Brescia!"
He flung his arm like a banner, and ran out.
Carlo laid his sword on a table. Vittoria's head was on his mother's
bosom.
The hour was too full of imminent grief for either of the three to regard
this scene as other than a gross intrusion ended.
"Why did you deny my words?" Carlo said coldly.
"I could not lie to make him wretched," she replied in a low murmur.
"Do you know what that 'I am for Brescia' means? He goes to stir the
city before a soul is ready."
"I warned you that I should speak the truth of myself to-night, dearest."
"You should discern between speaking truth to a madman, and to a man."
Vittoria did not lift her eyes, and Carlo beckoned to Violetta, with whom
he left the room.
"He is angry," Countess Ammiani murmured. "My child, you cannot deal
with men in a fever unless you learn to dissemble; and there is exemption
for doing it, both in plain sense, and in our religion. If I could
arrest him, I would speak boldly. It is, alas! vain to dream of that;
and it is therefore an unkindness to cause him irritation. Carlo has
given way to you by allowing you to be here when his friends assemble.
He knows your intention to speak. He has done more than would have been
permitted by my husband to me, though I too was well-beloved."
Vittoria continued silent that her head might be cherished where it lay.
She was roused from a stupor by hearing new voices. Laura's lips came
pressing to her cheek. Colonel Corte, Agostino, Marco Sana, and Angelo
Guidascarpi, saluted her. Angelo she kissed.
"That lady should be abed and asleep," Corte was heard to say.
The remark passed without notice. Angelo talked apart with Vittoria. He
had seen the dying of the woman whose hand had been checked in the act of
striking by the very passion of animal hatred which raised it. He spoke
of her affectionately, attesting to the fact that Barto Rizzo had not
prompted her guilt. Vittoria moaned at a short outline that he gave of
the last minutes between those two, in which her name was dreadfully and
fatally, incomprehensibly prominent.
All were waiting impatiently for Carlo's return.
When he appeared he informed his mother that the Countess d'Isorella
would remain in the house that night, and his mother passed out to her
abhorred guest, who, for the time at least, could not be doing further
mischief.
It was a meeting for the final disposition of things before the outbreak.
Carlo had begun to speak when Corte drew his attention to the fact that
ladies were present, at which Carlo put out his hand as if introducing
them, and went on speaking.
"Your wife is here," said Corte.
"My wife and signora Piaveni," Carlo rejoined. "I have consented to my
wife's particular wish to be present."
"The signora Piaveni's opinions are known: your wife's are not."
"Countess Alessandra shares mine," said Laura, rather tremulously.
Countess Ammiani at the same time returned and took Vittoria's hand and
pressed it with force. Carlo looked at them both.
"I have to ask your excuses, gentlemen. My wife, my mother, and signora
Piaveni, have served the cause we worship sufficiently to claim a right--
I am sorry to use such phrases; you understand my meaning. Permit them
to remain. I have to tell you that Barto Rizzo has been here: he has
started for Brescia. I should have had to kill him to stop him--a
measure that I did not undertake."
"Being your duty!" remarked Corte.
Agostino corrected him with a sarcasm.
"I cannot allow the presence of ladies to exclude a comment on manifest
indifference," said Corte. "Pass on to the details, if you have any."
"The details are these," Carlo resumed, too proud to show a shade of
self-command; "my cousin Angelo leaves Milan before morning. You,
Colonel Corte, will be in Bergamo at noon to-morrow. Marco and Angelo
will await my coming in Brescia, where we shall find Giulio and the rest.
I join them at five on the following afternoon, and my arrival signals
the revolt. We have decided that the news from the king's army is good."
A perceptible shudder in Vittoria's frame at this concluding sentence
caught Corte's eye.
"Are you dissatisfied with that arrangement?" he addressed her boldly.
"I am, Colonel Corte," she replied. So simple was the answering tone of
her voice that Corte had not a word.
"It is my husband who is going," Vittoria spoke on steadily; "him I am
prepared to sacrifice, as I am myself. If he thinks it right to throw
himself into Brescia, nothing is left for me but to thank him for having
done me the honour to consult me. His will is firm. I trust to God that
he is wise. I look on him now as one of many brave men whose lives
belong to Italy, and if they all are misdirected and perish, we have no
more; we are lost. The king is on the Ticino; the Chief is in Rome. I
desire to entreat you to take counsel before you act in anticipation of
the king's fortune. I see that it is a crushed life in Lombardy. In
Rome there is one who can lead and govern. He has suffered and is calm.
He calls to you to strengthen his hands. My prayer to you is to take
counsel. I know the hour is late; but it is not too late for wisdom.
Forgive me if I am not speaking humbly. Brescia is but Brescia; Rome is
Italy. I have understood little of my country until these last days,
though I have both talked and sung of her glories. I know that a deep
duty binds you to Bergamo and to Brescia--poor Milan we must not think
of. You are not personally pledged to Rome: yet Rome may have the
greatest claims on you. The heart of our country is beginning to beat
there. Colonel Corte! signor Marco! my Agostino! my cousin Angelo! it is
not a woman asking for the safety of her husband, but one of the blood of
Italy who begs to offer you her voice, without seeking to disturb your
judgement."
She ceased.
"Without seeking to disturb their judgement!" cried Laura. "Why not,
when the judgement is in error?"
To Laura's fiery temperament Vittoria's speech had been feebleness. She
was insensible to that which the men felt conveyed to them by the absence
of emotion in the language of a woman so sorrowfully placed. "Wait," she
said, "wait for the news from Carlo Alberto, if you determine to play at
swords and guns in narrow streets." She spoke long and vehemently, using
irony, coarse and fine, with the eloquence which was her gift. In
conclusion she apostrophized Colonel Corte as one who had loved him might
have done. He was indeed that figure of indomitable strength to which
her spirit, exhausted by intensity of passion, clung more than to any
other on earth, though she did not love him, scarcely liked him.
Corte asked her curiously--for she had surprised and vexed his softer
side--why she distinguished him with such remarkable phrases only to
declare her contempt for him.
"It's the flag whipping the flag-pole," murmured Agostino; and he now
spoke briefly in support of the expedition to Rome; or at least in favour
of delay until the King of Sardinia had gained a battle. While he was
speaking, Merthyr entered the room, and behind him a messenger who
brought word that Bergamo had risen.
The men drew hurriedly together, and Countess Ammiani, Vittoria and Laura
stood ready to leave them.
"You will give me, five minutes?" Vittoria whispered to her husband, and
he nodded.
"Merthyr," she said, passing him, "can I have your word that you will not
go from me?"
Merthyr gave her his word after he had looked on her face.
"Send to me every two hours, that I may know you are near," she added;
"do not fear waking me. Or, no, dear friend; why should I have any
concealment from you? Be not a moment absent, if you would not have me
fall to the ground a second time: follow me."
Even as he hesitated, for he had urgent stuff to communicate to Carlo, he
could see a dreadful whiteness rising on her face, darkening the circles
of her eyes.
"It's life or death, my dearest, and I am bound to live," she said. Her
voice sprang up from tears.
Merthyr turned and tried in vain to get a hearing among the excited,
voluble men. They shook his hand, patted his shoulder, and counselled
him to leave them. He obtained Carlo's promise that he would not quit
the house without granting him an interview; after which he passed out to
Vittoria, where Countess Ammiani and Laura sat weeping by the door.