Riccabocca could not confine himself to the precincts within the walls to
which he condemned Violante. Resuming his spectacles, and wrapped in his
cloak, he occasionally sallied forth upon a kind of outwatch or
reconnoitring expedition—restricting himself, however, to the immediate
neighborhood, and never going quite out of sight of his house. His
favorite walk was to the summit of a hillock overgrown with stunted
brushwood. Here he would seat himself musingly, often till the hoofs of
Randal’s horse rang on the winding road, as the sun set, over fading
herbage, red and vaporous, in autumnal skies. Just below the hillock, and
not two hundred yards from his own house, was the only other habitation in
view—a charming, thoroughly English cottage, though somewhat imitated from
the Swiss—with gable ends, thatched roof, and pretty projecting casements,
opening through creepers and climbing roses. From his height he commanded
the gardens of this cottage, and his eye of artist was pleased, from the
first sight, with the beauty which some exquisite taste had given to the
ground. Even in that cheerless season of the year, the garden wore a
summer smile; the evergreens were so bright and various, and the few
flowers still left, so hardy and so healthful. Facing the south, a
colonnade, or covered gallery, of rustic woodwork had been formed, and
creeping plants, lately set, were already beginning to clothe its columns.
Opposite to this colonnade there was a fountain which reminded Riccabocca
of his own at the deserted Casino. It was, indeed, singularly like it: the
same circular shape, the same girdle of flowers around it. But the jet
from it varied every day—fantastic and multiform, like the sports of a
Naïad—sometimes shooting up like a tree, sometimes shaped as a
convolvulus, sometimes tossing from its silver spray a flower of
vermilion, or a fruit of gold—as if at play with its toy like a happy
child. And near the fountain was a large aviary, large enough to inclose a
tree. The Italian could just catch a gleam of rich color from the wings of
the birds, as they glanced to and fro within the net-work, and could hear
their songs, contrasting the silence of the free populace of air, whom the
coming winter had already stilled.
Riccabocca’s eye, so alive to all aspects of beauty, luxuriated in the
view of this garden. Its pleasantness had a charm that stole him from his
anxious fear and melancholy memories.
He never saw but two forms within the demesnes, and he could not
distinguish their features. One was a woman, who seemed to him of staid
manner and homely appearance; she was seen but rarely. The other a man,
often pacing to and fro the colonnade, with frequent pauses before the
playful fountain, or the birds that sang louder as he approached. This
latter form would then disappear within a room, the glass door of which
was at the extreme end of the colonnade, and if the door were left open,
Riccabocca could catch a glimpse of the figure bending over a table
covered with books.
Always, however, before the sun set, the man would step forth more
briskly, and occupy himself with the garden, often working at it with good
heart, as if at a task of delight; and, then, too, the woman would come
out, and stand by, as if talking to her companion. Riccabocca’s curiosity
grew aroused. He bade Jemima inquire of the old maid-servant who lived at
the cottage, and heard that its owner was a Mr. Oran—a quiet gentleman,
and fond of his book.
While Riccabocca thus amused himself, Randal had not been prevented,
either by his official cares or his schemes on Violante’s heart and
fortune, from furthering the project that was to unite Frank Hazeldean and
Beatrice di Negra. Indeed, as to the first, a ray of hope was sufficient
to fire the ardent and unsuspecting lover. And Randal’s artful
representation of Mrs. Hazeldean’s conversation with him, removed all fear
of parental displeasure from a mind always too disposed to give itself up
to the temptation of the moment. Beatrice, though her feelings for Frank
were not those of love, became more and more influenced by Randal’s
arguments and representations, the more especially as her brother grew
morose, and even menacing, as days slipt on, and she could give no clew to
the retreat of those whom he sought for. Her debts, too, were really
urgent. As Randal’s profound knowledge of human infirmity had shrewdly
conjectured, the scruples of honor and pride, that had made her declare
she would not bring to a husband her own incumbrances, began to yield to
the pressure of necessity. She listened already, with but faint
objections, when Randal urged her not to wait for the uncertain discovery
that was to secure her dowry, but by a private marriage with Frank escape
at once into freedom and security. While, though he had first held out to
young Hazeldean the inducement of Beatrice’s dowry as reason of
self-justification in the eyes of the Squire, it was still easier to drop
that inducement, which had always rather damped than fired the high spirit
and generous heart of the poor Guardsman. And Randal could conscientiously
say, that when he had asked the Squire if he expected fortune with Frank’s
bride, the Squire had replied, “I don’t care.” Thus encouraged by his
friend and his own heart, and the softening manner of a woman who might
have charmed many a colder, and fooled many a wiser man, Frank rapidly
yielded to the snares held out for his perdition. And though as yet he
honestly shrank from proposing to Beatrice or himself a marriage without
the consent, and even the knowledge of his parents, yet Randal was quite
content to leave a nature, however good, so thoroughly impulsive and
undisciplined, to the influences of the first strong passion it had ever
known. Meanwhile, it was so easy to dissuade Frank from even giving a hint
to the folks at home. “For,” said the wily and able traitor, “though we
may be sure of Mrs. Hazeldean’s consent, and her power over your father,
when the step is once taken, yet we can not count for certain on the
Squire—he is so choleric and hasty. He might hurry to town—see Madame di
Negra, blurt out some compassionate, rude expressions which would wake her
resentment, and cause her instant rejection. And it might be too late if
he repented afterward—as he would be sure to do.”
Meanwhile Randal Leslie gave a dinner at the Clarendon Hotel (an
extravagance most contrary to his habits), and invited Frank, Mr.
Borrowwell, and Baron Levy.
But this house-spider, which glided with so much ease after its flies,
through webs so numerous and mazy, had yet to amuse Madame di Negra with
assurances that the fugitives sought for would sooner or later be
discovered. Though Randal baffled and eluded her suspicion that he was
already acquainted with the exiles (“the persons he had thought of were,”
he said, “quite different from her description;” and he even presented to
her an old singing-master, and a sallow-faced daughter, as the Italians
who had caused his mistake), it was necessary for Beatrice to prove the
sincerity of the aid she had promised to her brother, and to introduce
Randal to the Count. It was no less desirable to Randal to know, and even
win the confidence of this man—his rival.
The two met at Madame di Negra’s house. There is something very strange,
and almost mesmerical, in the _rapport_ between two evil natures. Bring
two honest men together, and it is ten to one if they recognize each other
as honest; differences in temper, manner, even politics, may make each
misjudge the other. But bring together two men, unprincipled and
perverted—men who, if born in a cellar, would have been food for the hulks
or gallows—and they recognize each other by instant sympathy. The eyes of
Franzini, Count of Peschiera, and Randal Leslie no sooner met, than a
gleam of intelligence shot from both. They talked on indifferent
subjects—weather, gossip, politics—what not. They bowed and they smiled;
but, all the while, each was watching, plumbing the other’s heart; each
measuring his strength with his companion; each inly saying, “This is a
very remarkable rascal; am I a match for him?” It was at dinner they met;
and, following the English fashion, Madame di Negra left them alone with
their wine.
Then, for the first time, Count di Peschiera cautiously and adroitly made
a covered push toward the object of the meeting.
“You have never been abroad, my dear sir? You must contrive to visit me at
Vienna. I grant the splendor of your London world; but, honestly speaking,
it wants the freedom of ours—a freedom which unites gayety with polish.
For as your society is mixed, there are pretension and effort with those
who have no right to be in it, and artificial condescension and chilling
arrogance with those who have to keep their inferiors at a certain
distance. With us, all being of fixed rank and acknowledged birth,
familiarity is at once established. Hence,” added the Count, with his
French lively smile—“hence, there is no place like Vienna for a young
man—no place like Vienna for _bonnes fortunes_.”
“Those make the paradise of the idle,” replied Randal, “but the purgatory
of the busy. I confess frankly to you, my dear Count, that I have as
little of the leisure which becomes the aspirer to _bonnes fortunes_ as I
have the personal graces which obtain them without an effort;” and he
inclined his head as in compliment.
“So,” thought the Count, “woman is not his weak side. What is?”
“_Morbleu!_ my dear Mr. Leslie—had I thought as you do some years since, I
had saved myself from many a trouble. After all, Ambition is the best
mistress to woo; for with her there is always the hope, and never the
possession.”
“Ambition, Count,” replied Randal, still guarding himself in dry
sententiousness, “is the luxury of the rich, and the necessity of the
poor.”
“Aha,” thought the Count, “it comes, as I anticipated from the first—comes
to the bribe.” He passed the wine to Randal, filling his own glass, and
draining it carelessly: “_Sur mon âme, mon cher_,” said the Count, “luxury
is ever pleasanter than necessity; and I am resolved at least to give
ambition a trial—_je vais me réfugier dans le sein du bonheur
domestique_—a married life and a settled home. _Peste!_ If it were not for
ambition, one would die of ennui. Apropos, my dear sir, I have to thank
you for promising my sister your aid in finding a near and dear kinsman of
mine, who has taken refuge in your country, and hides himself even from
me.”
“I should be most happy to assist in your search. As yet, however, I have
only to regret that all my good wishes are fruitless. I should have
thought, however, that a man of such rank had been easily found, even
through the medium of your own embassador.”
“Our own embassador is no very warm friend of mine; and the rank would be
no clew, for it is clear that my kinsman has never assumed it since he
quitted his country.”
“He quitted it, I understand, not exactly from choice,” said Randal,
smiling. “Pardon my freedom and curiosity, but will you explain to me a
little more than I learn from English rumor (which never accurately
reports upon foreign matters still more notorious), how a person who had
so much to lose, and so little to win, by revolution, could put himself
into the same crazy boat with a crew of hare-brained adventurers and
visionary professors.”
“Professors!” repeated the Count; “I think you have hit on the very answer
to your question; not but what men of high birth were as mad as the
_canaille_. I am the more willing to gratify your curiosity, since it will
perhaps serve to guide your kind search in my favor. You must know, then,
that my kinsman was not born the heir to the rank he obtained. He was but
a distant relation to the head of the house which he afterward
represented. Brought up in an Italian university, he was distinguished for
his learning and his eccentricities. There, too, I suppose, brooding over
old wives’ tales about freedom, and so forth, he contracted his
_carbonaro_, chimerical notions for the independence of Italy. Suddenly,
by three deaths, he was elevated, while yet young, to a station and honors
which might have satisfied any man in his senses. _Que diable!_ what could
the independence of Italy do for _him_! He and I were cousins; we had
played together as boys; but our lives had been separated till his
succession to rank brought us necessarily together. We became exceedingly
intimate. And you may judge how I loved him,” said the Count, averting his
eyes slightly from Randal’s quiet, watchful gaze, “when I add, that I
forgave him for enjoying a heritage that, but for him, had been mine.”
“Ah, you were next heir?”
“And it is a hard trial to be very near a great fortune, and yet just to
miss it.”
“True,” cried Randal, almost impetuously. The Count now raised his eyes,
and again the two men looked into each other’s souls.
“Harder still, perhaps,” resumed the Count, after a short pause—“harder
still might it have been to some men to forgive the rival as well as the
heir.”
“Rival! How?”
“A lady, who had been destined by her parents to myself, though we had
never, I own, been formally betrothed, became the wife of my kinsman.”
“Did he know of your pretensions?”
“I do him the justice to say he did not. He saw and fell in love with the
young lady I speak of. Her parents were dazzled. Her father sent for me.
He apologized—he explained; he set before me, mildly enough, certain
youthful imprudences or errors of my own, as an excuse for his change of
mind; and he asked me not only to resign all hope of his daughter, but to
conceal from her new suitor that I had ever ventured to hope.”
“And you consented?”
“I consented.”
“That was generous. You must indeed have been much attached to your
kinsman. As a lover I can not comprehend it; perhaps, my dear Count, you
may enable me to understand it better—as a man of the world.”
“Well,” said the Count, with his most _roué_ air, “I suppose we _are_ both
men of the world?”
“_Both!_ certainly,” replied Randal, just in the tone which Peachum might
have used in courting the confidence of Lockit.
“As a man of the world, then, I own,” said the Count, playing with the
rings on his fingers, “that if I could not marry the lady myself (and that
seemed to me clear), it was very natural that I should wish to see her
married to my wealthy kinsman.”
“Very natural; it might bring your wealthy kinsman and yourself still
closer together.”
“This is really a very clever fellow!” thought the Count, but he made no
direct reply.
“_Enfin_, to cut short a long story, my cousin afterward got entangled in
attempts, the failure of which is historically known. His projects were
detected—himself denounced. He fled, and the Emperor, in sequestrating his
estates, was pleased, with rare and singular clemency, to permit me, as
his nearest kinsman, to enjoy the revenues of half those estates during
the royal pleasure; nor was the other half formally confiscated. It was no
doubt his Majesty’s desire not to extinguish a great Italian name; and if
my cousin and his child died in exile, why, of that name, I, a loyal
subject of Austria—I, Franzini, Count di Peschiera, would become the
representative. Such, in a similar case, has been sometimes the Russian
policy toward Polish insurgents.”
“I comprehend perfectly; and I can also conceive that you, in profiting so
largely, though so justly, by the fall of your kinsman, may have been
exposed to much unpopularity—even to painful suspicion.”
“_Entre nous, mon cher_, I care not a stiver for popularity; and as to
suspicion, who is he that can escape from the calumny of the envious? But,
unquestionably, it would be most desirable to unite the divided members of
our house; and this union I can now effect, by the consent of the Emperor
to my marriage with my kinsman’s daughter. You see, therefore, why I have
so great an interest in this research?”
“By the marriage articles you could no doubt secure the retention of the
half you hold; and if you survive your kinsman, you would enjoy the whole.
A most desirable marriage; and, if made, I suppose that would suffice to
obtain your cousin’s amnesty and grace?”
“You say it.”
“But even without such marriage, since the Emperor’s clemency has been
extended to so many of the proscribed, it is perhaps probable that your
cousin might be restored?”
“It once seemed to me possible,” said the Count, reluctantly, “but since I
have been in England, I think not. The recent revolution in France, the
democratic spirit rising in Europe, tend to throw back the cause of a
proscribed rebel. England swarms with revolutionists; my cousin’s
residence in this country is in itself suspicious. The suspicion is
increased by his strange seclusion. There are many Italians here who would
aver that they had met with him, and that he was still engaged in
revolutionary projects.”
“Aver—untruly.”
“_Ma foi_—it comes to the same thing; _les absents ont toujours tort_. I
speak to a man of the world. No; without some such guarantee for his
faith, as his daughter’s marriage with myself would give, his recall is
improbable. By the heaven above us, it shall be _impossible_!” The Count
rose as he said this—rose as if the mask of simulation had fairly fallen
from the visage of crime—rose tall and towering, a very image of masculine
power and strength, beside the slight bended form and sickly face of the
intellectual schemer. Randal was startled; but, rising also, he said,
carelessly,
“What if this guarantee can no longer be given? what if, in despair of
return, and in resignation to his altered fortunes, your cousin has
already married his daughter to some English suitor?”
“Ah, that would indeed be, next to my own marriage with her, the most
fortunate thing that could happen to myself.”
“How? I don’t understand!”
“Why, if my cousin has so abjured his birthright, and forsworn his rank—if
this heritage, which is so dangerous from its grandeur, pass, in case of
his pardon, to some obscure Englishman—a foreigner—a native of a country
that has no ties with ours—a country that is the very refuge of levelers
and Carbonari—_mort de ma vie_—do you think that such would not annihilate
all chance of my cousin’s restoration, and be an excuse even to the eyes
of Italy for formally conferring the sequestrated estates on an Italian?
No; unless, indeed, the girl were to marry an Englishman of such name and
birth and connection as would in themselves be a guarantee (and how in
poverty is this likely?), I should go back to Vienna with a light heart,
if I could say, ‘My kinswoman is an Englishman’s wife—shall her children
be the heirs to a house so renowned for its lineage, and so formidable for
its wealth?’ _Parbleu!_ if my cousin were but an adventurer, or merely a
professor, he had been pardoned long ago. The great enjoy the honor not to
be pardoned easily.”
Randal fell into deep but brief thought. The Count observed him, not face
to face, but by the reflection of an opposite mirror. “This man knows
something; this man is deliberating; this man can help me,” thought the
Count.
But Randal said nothing to confirm these hypotheses. Recovering from his
abstraction, he expressed courteously his satisfaction at the Count’s
prospects either way. “And since, after all,” he added, “you mean so well
to your cousin, it occurs to me that you might discover him by a very
simple English process.”
“How?”
“Advertise that if he will come to some place appointed, he will hear of
something to his advantage.”
The Count shook his head. “He would suspect me, and not come.”
“But he was intimate with you. He joined an insurrection; you were more
prudent. You did not injure him, though you may have benefited yourself.
Why should he shun you?”
“The conspirators forgive none who do not conspire; besides, to speak
frankly, he thought I injured him.”
“Could you not conciliate him through his wife—whom—you resigned to him.”
“She is dead—died before he left the country.”
“Oh, that is unlucky! Still, I think an advertisement might do good. Allow
me to reflect on that subject. Shall we now join Madame la Marquise?”
On re-entering the drawing-room, the gentlemen found Beatrice in full
dress, seated by the fire, and reading so intently that she did not remark
them enter.
“What so interests you, _ma sœur_?—the last novel by Balzac, no doubt?”
Beatrice started, and, looking up, showed eyes that were full of tears.
“Oh, no! no picture of miserable, vicious Parisian life. This is
beautiful; there is _soul_ here.”
Randal took up the book which the Marchesa laid down; it was the same that
had charmed the circle at Hazeldean—charmed the innocent and
fresh-hearted—charmed now the wearied and tempted votaress of the world.
“Hum,” murmured Randal; “the Parson was right. This is power—a sort of a
power.”
“How I should like to know the author! Who can he be—can you guess?”
“Not I. Some old pedant in spectacles.”
“I think not—I am sure not. Here beats a heart I have ever tried to find,
and never found.”
“Oh, _la naïve enfant_!” cried the Count; “_comme son imagination s’égare
en rêves enchantés_. And to think that, while you talk like an Arcadian,
you are dressed like a princess.”
“Ah, I forgot—the Austrian embassador’s. I shall not go to-night. This
book unfits me for the artificial world.”
“Just as you will, my sister. I shall go. I dislike the man, and he me;
but ceremonies before men!”
“You are going to the Austrian Embassy?” said Randal. “I too shall be
there. We shall meet.” And he took his leave.
“I like your young friend prodigiously,” said the Count, yawning. “I am
sure that he knows of the lost birds, and will stand to them like a
pointer, if I can but make it his interest to do so. We shall see.”