given—I extorted it from Lord Reginald, though I saw his very heart
closed on me as he wrote the cheque. Worse had happened since I had left
him. Susan had used the twenty pounds I gave her to reach town, to throw
herself at my husband’s feet, and implore his compassion. Rendered
absolutely insane by the idea of having a lord for a brother-in-law,
Cooper had launched into a system of extravagance, incredible as it was
wicked. He was many thousand pounds in debt, and when at last Lord
Reginald wrote to refuse all further supply, the miserable man committed
forgery. Two hundred pounds prevented exposure, and preserved him from
an ignominious end. Five hundred more were advanced to send him and his
wife to America, to settle there, out of the way of temptation. I parted
from my dear sister—I loved her fondly; she had no part in her husband’s
guilt, yet she was still attached to him, and her child bound them
together; they went into solitary, miserable exile. “Ah! had we remained
in virtuous poverty,” cried my broken-hearted sister, “I had not been
forced to leave my dying mother.”
The thousand pounds given to my father was but a drop of water in the
ocean. Again I was appealed to; again I felt the slender thread of my
mother’s life depended on my getting a supply. Again, trembling and
miserable, I implored the charity of my husband.
“I am content,” he said, “to do what you ask, to do more than you ask;
but remember the price you pay—either give up your parents and your
family, whose rapacity and crimes deserve no mercy, or we part for ever.
You shall have a proper allowance; you can maintain all your family on
it if you please; but their names must never be mentioned to me again.
Choose between us—you never see them more, or we part for ever.”
Did I do right—I cannot tell—misery is the result—misery frightful,
endless, unredeemed. My mother was dearer to me than all the world. I
did not reply—I rushed to my room, and that night, in a delirium of
grief and horror, I set out for Margate—such was my reply to my husband.
Three years have passed since then; and during all this time I was
grateful to Heaven for being permitted to do my duty by my mother; and
though I wept over the alienation of my husband, I did not repent. But
she, my angelic support, is no more. My father survived my mother but
two months; remorse for all he had done, and made me suffer, cut short
his life. His family by his first wife are gathered round me; they
importune, they rob, they destroy me. Last week I wrote to Lord
Reginald. I communicated the death of my parents; I represented that my
position was altered; and that if he still cared for his unhappy wife
all might be well. Yesterday his answer came.—It was too late, he
said;—I had myself torn asunder the ties that united us—they never could
be knit together again.
By the same post came a letter from Susan. She is happy. Cooper,
awakened to a manly sense of the duties of life, is thoroughly reformed.
He is industrious and prosperous. Susan asks me to join her. I am
resolved to go. Oh! my home, and recollections of my youth, where are ye
now? envenomed by serpents’ stings, I long to close my eyes on every
scene I have ever viewed. Let me seek a strange land, a land where a
grave will soon be opened for me. I desire to die. I am told that Lord
Reginald loves another, a high-born girl; that he openly curses our
union as the obstacle to his happiness. The memory of this will poison
the oblivion I go to seek. He will soon be free. Soon will the hand he
once so fondly took in his and made his own, which, now flung away,
trembles with misery as it traces these lines, moulder in its last
decay.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIV.
_THE POLE._
IT was near the close of day that a travelling calèche, coming from
Rome, was seen approaching at full gallop towards Mola di Gaeta. The
road leading to the inn is rocky and narrow; on one side is an orange
grove, extending to the sea; on the other, an old Roman wall, overgrown
by blossoming shrubs, enormous aloes, floating tangles of vines, and a
thousand species of parasite plants peculiar to the South. Scarcely had
the calèche entered this defile, when the careless postillion drove one
of the wheels over a protruding ledge of rock, and overturned it; and,
in the next moment, a crowd of people came running to the spot. Not one
of them, however, thought of relieving the traveller within the fallen
vehicle; but, with violent gestures and loud outcries, began to examine
what damage the calèche had sustained, and what profit they might derive
from it. The wheelwright declared every wheel was shattered; the
carpenter that the shafts were splintered; whilst the blacksmith,
passing and repassing under the carriage, tugged at every clamp and
screw and nail, with all the violence necessary to ensure himself a
handsome job. The traveller it contained having quietly disengaged
himself from various cloaks, books, and maps, now slowly descended, and
for a moment the busy crowd forgot their restlessness, to gaze upon the
noble figure of the stranger. He seemed to be scarcely two-and-twenty.
In stature he was tall, and his form was moulded in such perfect
proportions, that it presented a rare combination of youthful lightness
and manly strength. His countenance, had you taken from it its deep
thoughtfulness and its expression of calm intrepid bravery, might have
belonged to the most lovely woman, so transparently blooming was his
complexion, so regular his features, so blond and luxuriant his hair. Of
all those present, he seemed the least concerned at the accident; he
neither looked at the calèche, nor paid any attention to the offers of
service that were screamed from a dozen mouths; but, drawing out his
watch, asked his servant if the carriage was broken.
“Pann,[4] the shafts are snapped, two of the springs are injured, and
the linch-pin has flown.”
-----
Footnote 4:
My Lord, in Polish.
“How long will it take to repair them?”
“Twenty-four hours.”
“It is now four o’clock. See that everything be in order again by
to-morrow’s daybreak.”
“Pann, with these lazy Italians, I fear it will be impossible”—
“Ya paswalam,”[5] replied the traveller coldly, but decidedly. “Pay what
you will, but let all be ready for the hour I have mentioned.”
-----
Footnote 5:
I will it, in Polish.
Without another word, he walked towards the inn, followed by the crowd,
teasing for alms. A few seconds ago they had all been active and healthy
beings, so full of employment they could not afford to mend his calèche
unless tempted by some extraordinary reward; now the men declared
themselves cripples and invalids, the children were orphans, the women
helpless widows, and they would all die of hunger if his Eccellenza did
not bestow a few _grani_. “What a tedious race!” exclaimed the
traveller, casting a handful of coins upon the ground, which caused a
general scramble, and enabled him to proceed unmolested. At the inn new
torments awaited him; a fresh crowd, composed of the landlord, the
landlady, and their waiters and hostlers, gathered round, and assailed
him with innumerable questions. The landlord hoped none of his limbs
were broken, and begged him to consider himself master of the house; the
waiters desired to know at what hour he would sup, what fare he chose,
how long he intended to stay, where he came from, whither he was going;
and the landlady led him, ostentatiously, through all the rooms of the
inn, expatiating endlessly upon the peculiar and indescribable
advantages of each. Ineffably weary of their officiousness, the
traveller at last traversed a long and spacious hall, and took refuge in
a balcony that looked upon the bay of Gaeta.
The inn is built upon the site of Cicero’s Villa. Beneath the balcony,
and on each side, along the whole curve of the bay, stretched a thick
grove of orange-trees, which sloped down to the very verge of the
Mediterranean. Balls of golden fruit, and blossoms faint with odour, and
fair as stars, studded this amphitheatre of dark foliage; and at its
extremity the liquid light of the waves pierced the glossy leaves,
mingling their blue splendour with earth’s green paradise. Every rock
and mountain glowed with a purple hue, so intense and soft, they
resembled violet vapours dissolving into the pale radiance of the
evening sky. Far away in the deep broad flood of the ocean rose the two
mountain islands of Ischia and Procida, between which Vesuvius thrust in
his jagged form, and his floating banner of snow-white smoke. The
solitary heaven was without sun or moon, without a star or cloud, but
smiled in that tender vestal light which speaks of eternal, immutable
peace.
It would be difficult to define the feelings of the traveller as he
gazed on this scene: his countenance, uplifted to heaven, was animated
with a profound and impassioned melancholy, with an expression of an
earnest and fervid pleading against some vast and inevitable wrong. He
was thinking of his country; and whilst he contrasted its ruined
villages and devastated fields with the splendour and glow of the fair
land before him, was breathing inwardly a passionate appeal against that
blind and cruel destiny which had consigned Poland to the desolating
influence of Russian despotism. His reverie was interrupted by the sound
of a female voice singing in Polish among the orange-trees at his feet.
The singer was invisible; but the sweetness of her voice, and the
singular reference of the words (the following prose translation conveys
their meaning) to the thoughts of his own mind, filled the traveller
with surprise:—
“When thou gazest upon the azure heaven, so mighty in its calm, do not
say, O bright enchantment, hast thou no pity, that thou dawnest thus in
unattainable loveliness upon my world-wearied eyes.
“When the southern wind softly breathes, do not say reproachfully, Thy
cradle is the ether of the morning sun, thou drinkest the odorous
essence of myrtle and lemon blossoms; thou shouldst bear upon thy wings
all sweet emotions, all soft desires; why bringest thou then no healing
to the anguish I endure?
“Neither in the dark hour, when thou thinkest upon thy country and thy
friends, say not with grief, They are lost! They are not! Say rather
with joy, They were illustrious! and it is bliss to know that they have
been!”
It were wise in me to obey thy lesson, sweet songstress, thought the
traveller; and revolving in his mind the singularity of the serenade, he
continued to gaze upon the trees below. There was no rustling amid their
branches, no sound which told a human being was concealed beneath their
foliage; nothing was heard beyond the almost imperceptible breathings of
the evening air. Did such things exist anywhere but in the imagination
of the poet? He could almost have believed that the spirit of that
divine scene had assumed a human voice and human words to soothe his
melancholy, so floating and airy had been the strain, so deep the
silence that succeeded it. One moment more, and there arose from the
same spot cries for help uttered in Italian, and shrieks of distress so
piercing, they made the traveller fly with the speed of lightning
through the great hall, down the staircase into the garden. The first
object that met his eyes was the figure of a girl about sixteen, her one
arm tightly embracing the stem of a tree, her other angrily repelling a
young man who was endeavouring to drag her away.
“I will not go with you—I love you no longer, Giorgio—and go with you, I
will not,” shrieked the girl, in tones of mingled violence and fear.
“You must—you shall,” retorted her aggressor in a voice of thunder.
“I have found you again, and I won’t be duped by your fooleries,
Marietta.—And who are you, and who begged you to interfere?” added he,
turning fiercely upon the traveller, whose strong grasp had torn him
from Marietta.
“An officer, as it should seem by your dress;—be pleased to know that I
am also an officer, and risk my displeasure no further.”
“No officer would ill-treat a defenceless girl,” the Pole replied with
quiet contempt.
At this taunt Giorgio quivered with rage. His features, handsome and
regular as those of Italians generally are, became quite distorted. His
hands with convulsive movements sought about his breast for the dagger
that was concealed there, his dark flashing eyes fixed intently at the
same time upon his adversary, as if he hoped the fiendish spirit that
burned within them might previously annihilate him.
“Be on your guard—he is a perfect wretch,” cried Marietta, rushing
towards her protector.
The arrival of several servants from the inn dispelled all idea of
present danger: they dragged off Giorgio, telling him that, although the
girl was his sister, he had no right to separate her from the _corps
d’opera_, with whom she was travelling through Gaeta.
“_E vero è verissimo_,” cried Marietta with joyful triumph.
“What is it to him if I like my liberty, and prefer wandering about,
singing here and there.”
“Marietta! beware! dare not to speak ill of me!” screamed the retiring
Giorgio, looking back over his shoulder, and accompanying his words with
a look of such frightful menace as completely subdued his sister.
She watched in anxious silence till he had disappeared, and then, with
affectionate humility and a graceful quickness that allowed not of its
prevention, knelt lightly down, and pressed the stranger’s hand to her
lips.
“You have more than repaid me for the song I sang to you,” she said,
rising and leading the way to the inn; “and, if you like it, I will sing
others to you whilst you sup.”
“Are you a Pole?” inquired the traveller.
“A fine demand! how can I be a Pole? Did you not say yourself there was
no longer any such country as Poland?”
“I? not that I recollect.”
“If you did not say it, confess at least that you thought it. The Poles
are all become Russians, and for nothing in the world, Signor, would I
be a Russian. Why in all their language they have no word that expresses
_honour_.[6] No! rather than be a Russian, much as I hate it, I would go
with Giorgio.”
-----
Footnote 6:
This is true. The Russian language is without that word.
“Are you an Italian?”
“No—not exactly.”
“What are you, then?”
“Um! I am what I am; who can be more? But, Signor, one thing I must beg
of you, do not ask me any questions about myself, nor any about Giorgio.
I will sing to you, talk to you, wait upon you—anything of that kind you
please, but I will not answer questions on those subjects.”
Seating herself upon a stool, in a dark corner of the traveller’s
apartment, as far removed as possible from him, and all other
interruptions, Marietta passed the evening in playing on her guitar and
singing. She was a most accomplished singer, possessing and managing all
the intricacies of the art with perfect ease, but this scarcely excited
admiration in comparison with the natural beauty of her voice. There was
a profound melancholy in its intense sweetness, that dissolved the soul
of the traveller in grief. All that was dear to him in the memory of the
past,—the joys of home and childhood, the tenderness and truth of his
first friendships, the glow of patriotism; every cherished hour, every
endeared spot, all that he had loved, and all that he had lost upon
earth, seemed again to live and again to fade, as he listened to her
strains. Without paying any attention to him, and apparently without any
effort to herself, she breathed forth melody after melody for her own
pleasure, like some lone nightingale, that, in a home of green leaves,
sings to cheer its solitude with sweet sounds. Her countenance and
figure would have been beautiful had they been more fully developed.
They resembled those sketches of a great artist in which there are only
a few lightly-traced lines, but those so full of spirit and meaning,
that you easily imagine what a masterpiece it would have been when
finished.
The first visit of our traveller, on arriving, next day, at Naples was
to the Princess Dashkhoff. She was a Russian lady, whose high birth,
immense wealth, and talents for intrigue, had procured for her the
intimacy of half the crowned heads of Europe, and had made her
all-powerful at the Court of St. Petersburg. Detesting the cold
barbarism of her native country, she had established herself at Naples,
in a splendid mansion, near the Strada Nuova; and affecting an
extravagant admiration for Italy, by her munificent patronage of the
arts and artists, and by perpetual exhibitions of her own skill, in
drawing and singing, dancing and acting, had obtained the name of the
Corinna of the North. Her _salon_ was the evening resort of the wise,
the idle, the witty, and the dissipated. Not to know Corinna was to be
yourself unknown; and not to frequent her _conversazioni_ was, as far as
society was concerned, to be banished from all that was fashionable or
delightful in Naples.
It was the hour of evening reception. The Pole burned with impatience to
speak to the Princess, for on her influence, at Petersburg, depended the
fate of his only brother. A splendid suite of apartments, blazing with
lights, crowded with company, lay open before him; without allowing
himself to be announced, he entered them. When a highly imaginative mind
is absorbed by some master feeling, all opposing contrasts, all glowing
extremes, serve but to add depth and intensity to that feeling. The
festal scene of marble columns garlanded by roses, the walls of Venetian
mirror, reflecting the light of innumerable tapers, and the forms of
lovely women and gay youths floating in the mazy dance, seemed to him
deceitful shows that veiled some frightful sorrow; and with eager, rapid
steps, as if borne along by the impulse of his own thoughts, he hurried
past them. Scarcely knowing how he had arrived there, he at length found
himself standing beside the Princess, in a marble colonnade, open above
to the moonlight and the stars of heaven, and admitting at its sides the
odours of the blossoming almond trees of the adjacent gardens.
“Ladislas!” exclaimed the lady, starting; “is it possible—to see you
here almost exceeds belief.”
After remaining some moments in deep silence, collecting and arranging
his thoughts, the Pole replied. A conversation ensued, in so low a voice
as to be only audible to themselves; from their attitudes and gestures
it might be inferred that Ladislas was relating some tale of deep
anguish, mixed with solemn and impressive adjurations, to which the
Princess listened with a consenting tranquillizing sympathy.
They issued from the recess, walked up the colonnade, and entered a
small temple that terminated it. From the centre of its airy dome hung a
lighted alabaster lamp of a boat-like shape, beneath which a youthful
female was seated alone sketching a range of moonlight hills that
appeared between the columns. “Idalie,” said the Princess, “I have
brought you a new subject for your pencil—and such a subject, my
love—one whose fame has already made him dear to your imagination; no
less a person than the hero of Ostrolenka[7] and the Vistula. So call up
one of those brightest, happiest moods of your genius, in which all
succeeds to you, and enrich my album with his likeness,” spreading it
before her.
-----
Footnote 7:
At Ostrolenka, the Russian and Polish armies were in sight of one
another. The destruction of the Poles seemed inevitable; not expecting
the attack, their lines were not formed, and the Russians were triple
in number, and advancing in the most perfect order. In this emergency,
three hundred students from the University of Warsaw drew hastily up
in a body, and, devoting themselves willingly to death, marched
forward to meet the onset of the enemy. They were headed by a young
man, who distinguished himself by the most exalted courage, and was
the only one of their numbers who escaped. He stationed his band in a
small wood that lay directly in the path of the Russians, and checked
their progress for the space of three hours. Every tree of that wood
now waves above a patriot’s grave. In the meantime the Polish army
formed, bore down, and gained a brilliant victory.
It is difficult to refuse any request to a person who has just granted
us an important favour. Ladislas suffered himself to be seated, and as
soon as the Princess had quitted them, the gloom which had shadowed his
brow at the names of Ostrolenka and the Vistula vanished. The surpassing
beauty of the young artist would have changed the heaviest penance into
a pleasure. She was lovely as one of Raffaelle’s Madonnas; and, like
them, there was a silent beauty in her presence that struck the most
superficial beholder with astonishment and satisfaction. Her hair, of a
golden and burnished brown (the colour of the autumnal foliage
illuminated by the setting sun), fell in gauzy wavings round her face,
throat, and shoulders. Her small, clear forehead, gleaming with gentle
thought; her curved, soft, and rosy lips; the delicate moulding of the
lower part of the face, expressing purity and integrity of nature, were
all perfectly Grecian. Her hazel eyes, with their arched lids and dark
arrowy lashes, pierced the soul with their full and thrilling softness.
She was clad in long and graceful drapery, white as snow; but, pure as
this garment was, it seemed a rude disguise to the resplendent softness
of the limbs it enfolded. The delicate light that gleamed from the
alabaster lamp above them was a faint simile of the ineffable spirit of
love that burned within Idalie’s fair, transparent frame; and the one
trembling, shining star of evening that palpitates responsively to happy
lovers, never seemed more divine or more beloved than she did to
Ladislas, as she sat there, now fixing a timid but attentive gaze upon
his countenance, and then dropping it upon the paper before her. And not
alone for Ladislas was this hour the dawn of passionate love. The same
spell was felt in the heart of Idalie. One moment their eyes met and
glanced upon each other, the look of exalted, eternal love—mute,
blessed, and inexpressible. Their lids fell and were raised no more.
Rapture thrilled their breasts and swelled their full hearts; for,
motionless, and in deep silence, as if every outward faculty were
absorbed in reverence, they continued, each inwardly knowing, hearing,
seeing nothing but the divine influence and attraction of the other.
I know not if the portrait was finished. I believe it was not.
Noiselessly Idalie arose and departed to seek the Princess, and Ladislas
followed. “Who is that lovely being!” inquired an English traveller some
time afterward, pointing out Idalie from a group of ladies.
“A Polish girl—a protégée of mine,” was the reply of the Princess; “a
daughter of one of Kosciusko’s unfortunate followers, who died here,
poor and unknown. She has a great genius for drawing and painting, but
she is so different in her nature from the generality of people, that I
am afraid she will never get on in the world. All the family are wild
and strange. There is a brother who they say is a complete ruffian;
brave as a Pole and as unprincipled as an Italian! a villain quite
varnished in picturesque, like one of your Lord Byron’s corsairs and
giaours. Then there is a younger sister; the most uncontrollable little
creature, who chose to pretend my house was insupportable, and ran away
into Calabria or Campagna, and set up as a _prima donna_. But these, to
be sure, are the children of a second wife, an Italian; and Idalie, I
must confess, has none of their lawlessness, but is remarkably gentle
and steady.”
Disgusted with this heartless conversation, which disturbed his ecstasy,
Ladislas hastily quitted the Dashkhoff palace, and entered the Villa
Reale, whose embowering trees promised solitude. Not one straggler of
the gay crowds that frequent this luxurious garden from morning till
midnight was now to be seen. With its straight walks buried in gloom and
shadow; its stone fonts of sleeping water; its marble statues, its
heaven-pointing obelisks, and its midnight air, it was silent as a
deserted oratory, when the last strain of the vesper hymn has died away,
the last taper has ceased to burn, the last censer has been flung, and
both priests and worshippers have departed. Ladislas cast himself upon a
stone seat in the ilex grove that skirts the margin of the bay. “I
dreamt not of love,” he exclaimed; “I sought her not! I had renounced
life and all its train of raptures, hopes, and joys. Cold, and void of
every wish, the shadow of death lay upon my heart; suddenly she stood
before me, lovely as an angel that heralds departed spirits to the
kingdom of eternal bliss. Fearless, but mild, she poured the magic of
her gaze upon my soul. I speak the word of the hour. She shall be
mine—or I will die!”