Harley had made one notable oversight in that appeal to Beatrice's better
and gentler nature, which he entrusted to the advocacy of Leonard,--a
scheme in itself very characteristic of Harley's romantic temper, and
either wise or foolish, according as his indulgent theory of human
idiosyncrasies in general, and of those peculiar to Beatrice di Negra in
especial, was the dream of an enthusiast, or the inductive conclusion of
a sound philosopher.
Harley had warned Leonard not to fall in love with the Italian,--he had
forgotten to warn the Italian not to fall in love with Leonard; nor had
he ever anticipated the probability of that event. This is not to be
very much wondered at; for if there be anything on which the most
sensible men are dull-eyed, where those eyes are not lighted by jealousy,
it is as to the probabilities of another male creature being beloved.
All, the least vain of the whiskered gender, think it prudent to guard
themselves against being too irresistible to the fair sex; and each says
of his friend, "Good fellow enough, but the last man for that woman to
fall in love with!"
But certainly there appeared on the surface more than ordinary cause for
Harley's blindness in the special instance of Leonard.
Whatever Beatrice's better qualities, she was generally esteemed worldly
and ambitious. She was pinched in circumstances, she was luxuriant and
extravagant; how was it likely that she could distinguish any aspirant of
the humble birth and fortunes of the young peasant-author? As a
coquette, she might try to win his admiration and attract his fancy; but
her own heart would surely be guarded in the triple mail of pride,
poverty, and the conventional opinions of the world in which she lived.
Had Harley thought it possible that Madame di Negra could stoop below her
station, and love, not wisely, but too well, he would rather have thought
that the object would be some brilliant adventurer of fashion, some one
who could turn against herself all the arts of deliberate fascination,
and all the experience bestowed by frequent conquest. One so simple as
Leonard, so young and so new! Harley L'Estrange would have smiled at
himself, if the idea of that image subjugating the ambitious woman to the
disinterested love of a village maid had once crossed his mind.
Nevertheless, so it was, and precisely from those causes which would have
seemed to Harley to forbid the weakness.
It was that fresh, pure heart, it was that simple, earnest sweetness, it
was that contrast in look, in tone, in sentiment, and in reasonings, to
all that had jaded and disgusted her in the circle of her admirers,--it
was all this that captivated Beatrice at the first interview with
Leonard. Here was what she had confessed to the sceptical Randal she had
dreamed and sighed for. Her earliest youth had passed into abhorrent
marriage, without the soft, innocent crisis of human life,--virgin love.
Many a wooer might have touched her vanity, pleased her fancy, excited
her ambition--her heart had never been awakened; it woke now. The world,
and the years that the world had wasted, seemed to fleet away as a cloud.
She was as if restored to the blush and the sigh of youth,--the youth of
the Italian maid. As in the restoration of our golden age is the spell
of poetry with us all, so such was the spell of the poet himself on her.
Oh, how exquisite was that brief episode in the life of the woman palled
with the "hack sights and sounds" of worldly life! How strangely happy
were those hours, when, lured on by her silent sympathy, the young
scholar spoke of his early struggles between circumstance and impulse,
musing amidst the flowers, and hearkening to the fountain; or of his
wanderings in the desolate, lamp-lit streets, while the vision of
Chatterton's glittering eyes shone dread through the friendless shadows.
And as he spoke, whether of his hopes or his fears, her looks dwelt
fondly on the young face, that varied between pride and sadness,--pride
ever so gentle, and sad ness ever so nobly touching. She was never weary
of gazing on that brow, with its quiet power; but her lids dropped before
those eyes, with their serene, unfathomable passion. She felt, as they
haunted her, what a deep and holy thing love in such souls must be.
Leonard never spoke to her of Helen--that reserve every reader can
comprehend. To natures like his, first love is a mystery; to confide it
is to profane. But he fulfilled his commission of interesting her in the
exile and his daughter, and his description of them brought tears to her
eyes. She inly resolved not to aid Peschiera in his designs on Violante.
She forgot for the moment that her own fortune was to depend on the
success of those designs. Levy had arranged so that she was not reminded
of her poverty by creditors,--she knew not how. She knew nothing of
business. She gave herself up to the delight of the present hour, and to
vague prospects of a future associated with that young image,--with that
face of a guardian angel that she saw before her, fairest in the moments
of absence; for in those moments came the life of fairy-land, when we
shut our eyes on the world, and see through the haze of golden revery.
Dangerous, indeed, to Leonard would have been the soft society of
Beatrice di Negra, had not his heart been wholly devoted to one object,
and had not his ideal of woman been from that object one sole and
indivisible reflection. But Beatrice guessed not this barrier between
herself and him. Amidst the shadows that he conjured up from his past
life, she beheld no rival form. She saw him lonely in the world, as she
was herself. And in his lowly birth, his youth, in the freedom from
presumption which characterized him in all things (save that confidence
in his intellectual destinies which is the essential attribute of
genius), she but grew the bolder by the belief that, even if he loved
her, he would not dare to hazard the avowal.
And thus, one day, yielding, as she had ever been wont to yield, to the
impulse of her quick Italian heart--how she never remembered, in what
words she could never recall--she spoke, she owned her love, she pleaded,
with tears and blushes, for love in return. All that passed was to her
as a dream,--a dream from which she woke with a fierce sense of agony,
of humiliation,--woke as the woman "scorned." No matter how gratefully,
how tenderly Leonard had replied, the reply was refusal.
For the first time she learned she had a rival; that all he could give of
love was long since, from his boyhood, given to another. For the first
time in her life, that ardent nature knew jealousy, its torturing stings,
its thirst for vengeance, its tempest of loving hate. But, to outward
appearance, silent and cold she stood as marble. Words that sought to
soothe fell on her ear unheeded: they were drowned by the storm within.
Pride was the first feeling which dominated the warring elements that
raged in her soul. She tore her hand from that which clasped hers with
so loyal a respect. She could have spurned the form that knelt at her
feet, not for love, but for pardon. She pointed to the door with the
gesture of an insulted queen. She knew no more till she was alone. Then
came that rapid flash of conjecture peculiar to the storms of jealousy;
that which seems to single from all nature the one object to dread and
to destroy; the conjecture so often false, yet received at once by our
convictions as the revelation of instinctive truth. He to whom she had
humbled herself loved another; whom but Violante,--whom else, young and
beautiful, had he named in the record of his life?--None! And he had
sought to interest her, Beatrice di Negra, in the object of his love;
hinted at dangers which Beatrice knew too well; implied trust in
Beatrice's will to protect. Blind fool that she had been! This, then,
was the reason why he had come, day after day, to Beatrice's house; this
was the charm that had drawn him thither; this--she pressed her hands to
her burning temples, as if to stop the torture of thought. Suddenly a
voice was heard below, the door opened, and Randal Leslie entered.