When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Shakespeare.
Zanoni followed the young Neapolitan into her house; Gionetta
vanished,--they were left alone.
Alone, in that room so often filled, in the old happy days, with the
wild melodies of Pisani; and now, as she saw this mysterious, haunting,
yet beautiful and stately stranger, standing on the very spot where
she had sat at her father’s feet, thrilled and spellbound,--she almost
thought, in her fantastic way of personifying her own airy notions,
that that spiritual Music had taken shape and life, and stood before her
glorious in the image it assumed. She was unconscious all the while of
her own loveliness. She had thrown aside her hood and veil; her hair,
somewhat disordered, fell over the ivory neck which the dress partially
displayed; and as her dark eyes swam with grateful tears, and her cheek
flushed with its late excitement, the god of light and music himself
never, amidst his Arcadian valleys, wooed, in his mortal guise, maiden
or nymph more fair.
Zanoni gazed at her with a look in which admiration seemed not unmingled
with compassion. He muttered a few words to himself, and then addressed
her aloud.
“Viola, I have saved you from a great peril; not from dishonour only,
but perhaps from death. The Prince di --, under a weak despot and a
venal administration, is a man above the law. He is capable of every
crime; but amongst his passions he has such prudence as belongs to
ambition; if you were not to reconcile yourself to your shame, you would
never enter the world again to tell your tale. The ravisher has no heart
for repentance, but he has a hand that can murder. I have saved you,
Viola. Perhaps you would ask me wherefore?” Zanoni paused, and smiled
mournfully, as he added, “You will not wrong me by the thought that he
who has preserved is not less selfish than he who would have injured.
Orphan, I do not speak to you in the language of your wooers; enough
that I know pity, and am not ungrateful for affection. Why blush, why
tremble at the word? I read your heart while I speak, and I see not
one thought that should give you shame. I say not that you love me yet;
happily, the fancy may be roused long before the heart is touched.
But it has been my fate to fascinate your eye, to influence your
imagination. It is to warn you against what could bring you but sorrow,
as I warned you once to prepare for sorrow itself, that I am now your
guest. The Englishman, Glyndon, loves thee well,--better, perhaps, than
I can ever love; if not worthy of thee, yet, he has but to know thee
more to deserve thee better. He may wed thee, he may bear thee to his
own free and happy land,--the land of thy mother’s kin. Forget me; teach
thyself to return and deserve his love; and I tell thee that thou wilt
be honoured and be happy.”
Viola listened with silent, inexpressible emotion, and burning blushes,
to this strange address, and when he had concluded, she covered her face
with her hands, and wept. And yet, much as his words were calculated to
humble or irritate, to produce indignation or excite shame, those were
not the feelings with which her eyes streamed and her heart swelled. The
woman at that moment was lost in the child; and AS a child, with all its
exacting, craving, yet innocent desire to be loved, weeps in unrebuking
sadness when its affection is thrown austerely back upon itself,--so,
without anger and without shame, wept Viola.
Zanoni contemplated her thus, as her graceful head, shadowed by its
redundant tresses, bent before him; and after a moment’s pause he drew
near to her, and said, in a voice of the most soothing sweetness, and
with a half smile upon his lip,--
“Do you remember, when I told you to struggle for the light, that I
pointed for example to the resolute and earnest tree? I did not tell
you, fair child, to take example by the moth, that would soar to the
star, but falls scorched beside the lamp. Come, I will talk to thee.
This Englishman--”
Viola drew herself away, and wept yet more passionately.
“This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine own rank.
Thou mayst share his thoughts in life,--thou mayst sleep beside him
in the same grave in death! And I--but THAT view of the future should
concern us not. Look into thy heart, and thou wilt see that till again
my shadow crossed thy path, there had grown up for this thine equal a
pure and calm affection that would have ripened into love. Hast thou
never pictured to thyself a home in which thy partner was thy young
wooer?”
“Never!” said Viola, with sudden energy,--“never but to feel that such
was not the fate ordained me. And, oh!” she continued, rising suddenly,
and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her face, she fixed her eyes
upon the questioner,--“and, oh! whoever thou art that thus wouldst read
my soul and shape my future, do not mistake the sentiment that, that--”
she faltered an instant, and went on with downcast eyes,--“that has
fascinated my thoughts to thee. Do not think that I could nourish a love
unsought and unreturned. It is not love that I feel for thee, stranger.
Why should I? Thou hast never spoken to me but to admonish,--and now, to
wound!” Again she paused, again her voice faltered; the tears trembled
on her eyelids; she brushed them away and resumed. “No, not love,--if
that be love which I have heard and read of, and sought to simulate
on the stage,--but a more solemn, fearful, and, it seems to me, almost
preternatural attraction, which makes me associate thee, waking or
dreaming, with images that at once charm and awe. Thinkest thou, if it
were love, that I could speak to thee thus; that,” she raised her looks
suddenly to his, “mine eyes could thus search and confront thine own?
Stranger, I ask but at times to see, to hear thee! Stranger, talk not to
me of others. Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not unworthy
gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not always to me as
an omen of grief and trouble. Sometimes have I seen thee in my dreams
surrounded by shapes of glory and light; thy looks radiant with a
celestial joy which they wear not now. Stranger, thou hast saved me, and
I thank and bless thee! Is that also a homage thou wouldst reject?”
With these words, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and inclined
lowlily before him. Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or abject, nor
that of mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a child to
its guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest. Zanoni’s
brow was melancholy and thoughtful. He looked at her with a strange
expression of kindness, of sorrow, yet of tender affection, in his eyes;
but his lips were stern, and his voice cold, as he replied,--
“Do you know what you ask, Viola? Do you guess the danger to
yourself--perhaps to both of us--which you court? Do you know that my
life, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one worship of the
Beautiful, from which I seek to banish what the Beautiful inspires in
most? As a calamity, I shun what to man seems the fairest fate,--the
love of the daughters of earth. At present I can warn and save thee from
many evils; if I saw more of thee, would the power still be mine?
You understand me not. What I am about to add, it will be easier to
comprehend. I bid thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, but
as one whom the Future cries aloud to thee to avoid. Glyndon, if thou
acceptest his homage, will love thee till the tomb closes upon both. I,
too,” he added with emotion,--“I, too, might love thee!”
“You!” cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of delight,
of rapture, which she could not suppress; but the instant after, she
would have given worlds to recall the exclamation.
“Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and what
change! The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart it grows. A
little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still endures,--the
snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit. Pause,--think well.
Danger besets thee yet. For some days thou shalt be safe from thy
remorseless persecutor; but the hour soon comes when thy only security
will be in flight. If the Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will
be dear to him as his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love
will be truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force. Farewell;
my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow. I know,
at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then, sweet flower,
that there are more genial resting-places than the rock.”
He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta
discreetly stood. Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm. With the gay
accent of a jesting cavalier, he said,--
“The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her. I know your love
for her. Disabuse her of any caprice for me. I am a bird ever on the
wing.”
He dropped a purse into Gionetta’s hand as he spoke, and was gone.