This eBook was produced by David Widger
BOOK NINTH.
INITIAL CHAPTER.
ON PUBLIC LIFE.
Now that I am fairly in the heart of my story, these preliminary chapters
must shrink into comparatively small dimensions, and not encroach upon
the space required by the various personages whose acquaintance I have
picked up here and there, and who are now all crowding upon me like poor
relations to whom one has unadvisedly given a general invitation, and who
descend upon one simultaneously about Christmas time. Where they are to
be stowed, and what is to become of them all, Heaven knows; in the mean
while, the reader will have already observed that the Caxton Family
themselves are turned out of their own rooms, sent a packing, in order to
make way for the new comers.
But to proceed: Note the heading to the present Chapter, "ON PUBLIC
LIFE,"--a thesis pertinent to this portion of my narrative; and if
somewhat trite in itself, the greater is the stimulus to suggest thereon
some original hints for reflection.
Were you ever in public life, my dear reader? I don't mean, by that
question, to ask whether you were ever Lord Chancellor, Prime Minister,
Leader of the Opposition, or even a member of the House of Commons. An
author hopes to find readers far beyond that very egregious but very
limited segment of the Great Circle. Were you ever a busy man in your
vestry, active in a municipal corporation, one of a committee for
furthering the interests of an enlightened candidate for your native
burgh, town, or shire,--in a word, did you ever resign your private
comforts as men in order to share the public troubles of mankind? If
ever you have so far departed from the Lucretian philosophy, just look
back--was it life at all that you lived? Were you an individual distinct
existence,--a passenger in the railway,--or were you merely an indistinct
portion of that common flaine which heated the boiler and generated the
steam that set off the monster train?--very hot, very active, very
useful, no doubt; but all your identity fused in flame, and all your
forces vanishing in gas.
And do you think the people in the railway carriages care for you? Do
you think that the gentleman in the worsted wrapper is saying to his
neighbour with the striped rug on his comfortable knees, "How grateful we
ought to be for that fiery particle which is crackling and hissing under
the boiler. It helps us on a fraction of an inch from Vauxhall to
Putney!" Not a bit of it. Ten to one but he is saying, "Not sixteen
miles an hour! What the deuce is the matter with the stoker?"
Look at our friend Audley Egerton. You have just had a glimpse of the
real being that struggles under the huge copper; you have heard the
hollow sound of the rich man's coffers under the tap of Baron Levy's
friendly knuckle, heard the strong man's heart give out its dull warning
sound to the scientific ear of Dr. F-----. And away once more vanishes
the separate existence, lost again in the flame that heats the boiler,
and the smoke that curls into air from the grimy furnace.
Look to it, O Public Man, whoever thou art, and whatsoever thy degree,--
see if thou canst not compound matters, so as to keep a little nook apart
for thy private life; that is, for thyself! Let the Great Popkins
Question not absorb wholly the individual soul of thee, as Smith or
Johnson. Don't so entirely consume thyself under that insatiable boiler,
that when thy poor little monad rushes out from the sooty furnace, and
arrives at the stars, thou mayest find no vocation for thee there, and
feel as if thou hadst nothing to do amidst the still splendours of the
Infinite. I don't deny to thee the uses of "Public Life;" I grant that
it is much to have helped to carry that Great Popkins Question; but
Private Life, my friend, is the life of thy private soul; and there may
be matters concerned with that which, on consideration, thou mayest allow
cannot be wholly mixed up with the Great Popkins Question, and were not
finally settled when thou didst exclaim, "I have not lived in vain,--the
Popkins Question is carried at last!" Oh, immortal soul, for one quarter
of an hour per diem de-Popkinize thine immortality!
CHAPTER II.
It had not been without much persuasion on the part of Jackeymo that
Riccabocca had consented to settle himself in the house which Randal had
recommended to him. Not that the exile conceived any suspicion of the
young man beyond that which he might have shared with Jackeymo, namely,
that Randal's interest in the father was increased by a very natural and
excusable admiration of the daughter; but the Italian had the pride
common to misfortune,--he did not like to be indebted to others, and he
shrank from the pity of those to whom it was known that he had held a
higher station in his own land. These scruples gave way to the strength
of his affection for his daughter and his dread of his foe. Good men,
however able and brave, who have suffered from the wicked, are apt to
form exaggerated notions of the power that has prevailed against them.
Jackeymo had conceived a superstitious terror of Peschiera; and
Riccabocca, though by no means addicted to superstition, still had a
certain creep of the flesh whenever he thought of his foe.
But Riccabocca--than whom no man was more physically brave, and no man,
in some respects, more morally timid--feared the count less as a foe than
as a gallant. He remembered his kinsman's surpassing beauty, the power
he had obtained over women. He knew him versed in every art that
corrupts, and wholly void of the conscience that deters. And
Riccabocca had unhappily nursed himself into so poor an estimate of the
female character, that even the pure and lofty nature of Violante did not
seem to him a sufficient safeguard against the craft and determination of
a practised and remorseless intriguer. But of all the precautions he
could take, none appeared more likely to conduce to safety than his
establishing a friendly communication with one who professed to be able
to get at all the count's plans and movements, and who could apprise
Riccabocca at once should his retreat be discovered. "Forewarned is
forearmed," said he to himself, in one of the proverbs common to all
nations. However, as with his usual sagacity he came to reflect upon the
alarming intelligence conveyed to him by Randal, namely, that the count
sought his daughter's hand, he divined that there was some strong
personal interest under such ambition; and what could be that interest
save the probability of Riccabocca's ultimate admission to the Imperial
grace, and the count's desire to assure himself of the heritage to an
estate that he might be permitted to retain no more? Riccabocca was not
indeed aware of the condition (not according to usual customs in Austria)
on which the count held the forfeited domains. He knew not that they had
been granted merely on pleasure; but he was too well aware of Peschiera's
nature to suppose that he would woo a bride without a dower, or be moved
by remorse in any overture of reconciliation. He felt assured too--and
this increased all his fears--that Peschiera would never venture to seek
an interview with himself; all the count's designs on Violante would be
dark, secret, and clandestine. He was perplexed and tormented by the
doubt whether or not to express openly to Violante his apprehensions of
the nature of the danger to be apprehended. He had told her vaguely that
it was for her sake that he desired secrecy and concealment. But that
might mean anything: what danger to himself would not menace her? Yet to
say more was so contrary to a man of his Italian notions and
Machiavellian maxims! To say to a young girl, "There is a man come over
to England on purpose to woo and win you. For Heaven's sake take care of
him; he is diabolically handsome; he never fails where he sets his
heart.--/Cospetto!/" cried the doctor, aloud, as these admonitions shaped
themselves to speech in the camera obscura of his brain; "such a warning
would have undone a Cornelia while she was yet an innocent spinster."
No, he resolved to say nothing to Violante of the count's intention, only
to keep guard, and make himself and Jackeymo all eyes and all ears.
The house Randal had selected pleased Riccabocca at first glance. It
stood alone, upon a little eminence; its upper windows commanded the high
road. It had been a school, and was surrounded by high walls, which
contained a garden and lawn sufficiently large for exercise. The garden
doors were thick, fortified by strong bolts, and had a little wicket
lattice, shut and opened at pleasure, from which Jackeymo could inspect
all visitors before he permitted them to enter.
An old female servant from the neighbourhood was cautiously hired;
Riccabocca renounced his Italian name, and abjured his origin. He spoke
English sufficiently well to think he could pass as an Englishman. He
called himself Mr. Richmouth (a liberal translation of Riccabocca). He
bought a blunderbuss, two pairs of pistols, and a huge housedog. Thus
provided for, he allowed Jackeymo to write a line to Randal and
communicate his arrival.
Randal lost no time in calling. With his usual adaptability and his
powers of dissimulation, he contrived easily to please Mrs. Riccabocca,
and to increase the good opinion the exile was disposed to form of him.
He engaged Violante in conversation on Italy and its poets. He promised
to bring her books. He began, though more distantly than he could have
desired,--for her sweet stateliness awed him,--the preliminaries of
courtship. He established himself at once as a familiar guest, riding
down daily in the dusk of evening, after the toils of office, and
returning at night. In four or five days he thought he had made great
progress with all. Riccabocca watched him narrowly, and grew absorbed
in thought after every visit. At length one night, when he and Mrs.
Riccabocca were alone in the drawing-room, Violante having retired to
rest, he thus spoke as he filled his pipe,--
"Happy is the man who has no children! Thrice happy he who has no
girls!"
"My dear Alphonso!" said the wife, looking up from the waistband to which
she was attaching a neat mother-o'-pearl button. She said no more; it
was the sharpest rebuke she was in the custom of administering to her
husband's cynical and odious observations. Riccabocca lighted his pipe
with a thread paper, gave three great puffs, and resumed,
"One blunderbuss, four pistols, and a house-dog called Pompey, who would
have made mincemeat of Julius Caesar!"
"He certainly eats a great deal, does Pompey!" said Mrs. Riccabocca,
simply. "But if he relieves your mind!"
"He does not relieve it in the least, ma'am," groaned Riccabocca; "and
that is the point I am coming to. This is a most harassing life, and a
most undignified life. And I who have only asked from Heaven dignity and
repose! But if Violante were once married, I should want neither
blunderbuss, pistol, nor Pompey. And it is that which would relieve my
mind, cara mia,--Pompey only relieves my larder."
Now Riccabocca had been more communicative to Jemima than he had been to
Violante. Having once trusted her with one secret, he had every motive
to trust her with another; and he had accordingly spoken out his fears of
the Count di Peschiera. Therefore she answered, laying down the work,
and taking her husband's hand tenderly,
"Indeed, my love, since you dread so much (though I own that I must think
unreasonably) this wicked, dangerous man, it would be the happiest thing
in the world to see dear Violante well married; because, you see, if she
is married to one person she cannot be married to another; and all fear
of this count, as you say, would be at an end."
"You cannot express yourself better. It is a great comfort to unbosom
one's-self to a wife, after all," quoth Riccabocca.
"But," said the wife, after a grateful kiss,--"but where and how can we
find a husband suitable to the rank of your daughter?"
"There! there! there!" cried Riccabocca, pushing back his chair to the
farther end of the room, "that comes of unbosoming one's-self! Out flies
one secret; it is opening the lid of Pandora's box; one is betrayed,
ruined, undone!"
"Why, there's not a soul that can hear us!" said Mrs. Riccabocca,
soothingly.
"'That's chance, ma'am! If you once contract the habit of blabbing out a
secret when nobody's by, how on earth can you resist it when you have the
pleasurable excitement of telling it to all the world? Vanity, vanity,--
woman's vanity! Woman never could withstand rank,--never!" The doctor
went on railing for a quarter of an hour, and was very reluctantly
appeased by Mrs. Riccabocca's repeated and tearful assurances that she
would never even whisper to herself that her husband had ever held any
other rank than that of doctor. Riccabocca, with a dubious shake of the
head, renewed,
"I have done with all pomp and pretension. Besides, the young man is a
born gentleman: he seems in good circumstances; he has energy and latent
ambition; he is akin to L'Estrange's intimate friend: he seems attached
to Violante. I don't think it probable that we could do better. Nay, if
Peschiera fears that I shall be restored to my country, and I learn the
wherefore, and the ground to take, through this young man--why,
gratitude is the first virtue of the noble!"
"You speak, then, of Mr. Leslie?"
"To be sure--of whom else?"
Mrs. Riccabocca leaned her cheek on her hand thoughtfully. "Now you have
told me that, I will observe him with different eyes."
"Anima mia, I don't see how the difference of your eyes will alter the
object they look upon!" grumbled Riccabocca, shaking the ashes out of his
pipe.
"The object alters when we see it in a different point of view!" replied
Jemima, modestly. "This thread does very well when I look at it in order
to sew on a button, but I should say it would never do to tie up Pompey
in his Kennel."
"Reasoning by illustration, upon my soul!" ejaculated Riccabocca, amazed.
"And," continued Jemima, "when I am to regard one who is to constitute
the happiness of that dear child, and for life, can I regard him as I
would the pleasant guest of an evening? Ah, trust me, Alphonso; I don't
pretend to be wise like you; but when a woman considers what a man is
likely to prove to woman,--his sincerity, his honour, his heart,--oh,
trust me, she is wiser than the wisest man!"
Riccabocca continued to gaze on Jemima with unaffected admiration and
surprise. And certainly, to use his phrase, since he had unbosomed
himself to his better half, since he had confided in her, consulted with
her, her sense had seemed to quicken, her whole mind to expand.
"My dear," said the sage, "I vow and declare that Machiavelli was a fool
to you. And I have been as dull as the chair I sit upon, to deny myself
so many years the comfort and counsel of such a--But, /corpo di Bacco!/
forget all about rank; and so now to bed.--One must not holloa till one's
out of the wood," muttered the ungrateful, suspicious villain, as he
lighted the chamber candle.