“SO, FULL CONTENT SHALL HENCEFORTH BE MY LOT.”
Allegra was not inexorable. There, in the ruins of the Imperial baths,
where Shelley dreamed the wonder-dream of his Prometheus, Captain
Hulbert pleaded his cause. Could love resist the pleading of so fond
a lover? Could art withstand the allurements of Venice--Titian and
Tintoret, the cathedral of St. Mark and the Palace of the Doges, the
birthplace of Desdemona and of Shylock, the home of Byron and of
Browning?
She consented to a Roman marriage.
“I can’t help wishing I could be a Papist just for that one day,” she
said lightly. “An Anglican marriage seems so dry and cold compared with
the pomps and splendours of Rome.”
“Dearest, the plainest Christian rites are enough, if they but make us
one.”
“I think we are that already, John,” she answered shyly; and then,
nestling by his side as they sat in the wide solitude of that
stupendous pile, she took his hand and held it in both her own, looking
down at it wonderingly--a well-formed hand, strong and muscular,
broadened a little by seafaring.
“And you are to be my husband,” she said. “Mine! I shall speak of
you to people as my own peculiar property. ‘My husband will do this
or that.’ ‘My husband has gone out, but he will be home soon.’ Home.
Husband. How strange it sounds!”
“Strange and wonderful now, love. Sweet and familiar before our
honeymoon is ended.”
They went out of the broad spaces that were once populous with the
teeming life of Imperial Rome, splendid with all that art could create
of beauty and of grandeur--wrapt in the glamour of their dream. They
walked all the way to the Piazza di Spagna in the same happy dream, as
unconscious of the ground they trod on as if they had been floating in
the air.
* * * * *
They were a very cheerful party at dinner that evening. Father Rodwell
dined with them, and was delighted at the idea of having to marry these
happy lovers. He took the arrangement of the ceremony into his own
hands. The English chaplain was his old friend, and would let him do
what he liked in his church.
“It is to be a very quiet wedding,” said the colonel, when the three
men were smoking together in a loggia, looking on the little garden
of orange trees and oleanders, in the grey dim beginning of night,
when the thin crescent moon was shining in a sky still faintly flushed
with sunset. “Isa could not stand anything like bustle or excitement.
Luckily we have no friends in Rome. There is no one belonging to us who
could be aggrieved at not being invited.”
“And there is no one except Lostwithiel on my side who has the
slightest claim to be present,” said Hulbert. “I am almost as well
off as the Flying Dutchman in that respect. I am not troubled with
relations. All the kinsfolk I have are distant, and I allow them to
remain so. My dear Disney, so far as I am concerned, our wedding cannot
be too quiet a business. It is the bride I want, mark you, not the fuss
and flowers, wedding-breakfast, and bridesmaids. Let us be married at
half-past ten, and drive from the church to the railway station in time
for the noonday train. I have given up my dream of taking Allegra round
Southern Italy to the Adriatic. We shall go to Florence first, and
spend a few days in the galleries, and thence to Venice, where we will
have the _Vendetta_ brought to us, and anchored near the arsenal, ready
to carry us away directly we are tired of the city of old memories.”
Father Rodwell left them and went into the drawing-room, where Isola
and her sister-in-law were sitting in the lamplight--Isola’s hands
occupied with that soft, fluffy knitting which seemed to exercise a
soothing influence upon her nerves; Allegra leaning over the table,
idly sketching random reminiscences of the Baths, the Tomb, the
grave-eyed oxen, with their great curving horns and ponderous foreheads.
The priest was interested in watching Isola this evening. He saw a
marked change in the expression of her countenance, a change which was
perceptible to him even in her voice and manner--a brightness which
might mean a lightened heart, or which might mean religious exaltation.
“Has she told him?” he wondered, studying her from his place in the
shadow as the lamplight shone full upon her wasted features and hectic
colouring. “Has she taken courage and confessed her sin to that loyal,
loving husband, and is the burden lifted from her heart?”
No; he could not believe that she had lifted the veil from the sad
secret of her past. Martin Disney’s unclouded brow to-night was not
that of a man who had lately discovered that the wife he loved had
betrayed him. There might be pardon--there might be peace between
husband and wife after such a revelation; but there could not be the
serenity which marked Martin Disney’s manner to his wife to-night. Such
a thunder-clap must leave its brand upon the man who suffered it. No;
her secret was still locked in her impenitent heart. Sorry--yes. She
had drunk the cup of remorse in all its bitterness; but she knew not
true penitence, the Christian’s penitence, which means self-abasement
and confession. And yet she seemed happier. There was a look of almost
holy resignation upon the pale and placid brow, and in the too-lustrous
eyes. Something had happened--some moral transformation which made her
a new being.
Father Rodwell drew his chair nearer to her, and looked at her
earnestly with his cordial, almost boyish smile. He was a remarkably
young-looking man, a man upon whom long years of toil in the dark
places of the earth had exercised no wasting or withering influence. He
had loved his work too well ever to feel the pressure of the burdens
he carried. His gospel had been always a cheerful gospel, and he had
helped to lighten sorrows, never to make them heavier. He was deeply
interested in Isola, and had been watchful of all her changes of mood
since their conversation in the shadow of the old Roman wall. He
had seen her impressed by the history and traditions of the church,
moved by the pathos of holy lives, touched almost to tears by sacred
pictures, and he saw in her character and disposition a natural bent
towards piety, exactly that receptive temperament which moves holy
women to lives of self-abnegation and heroic endeavour. He had lent
her some of those books which he loved best and read most himself,
and he had talked with her of religion, careful not to say too much
or with too strong an emphasis, and never by any word alluding to her
revelation of past guilt. He wanted to win her to perfect trustfulness
in him, to teach her to lean upon him in her helplessness; until the
hour should come when she would let him lead her to her husband, in the
self-abasement of the penitent sinner.
He knew that in this desire he exceeded the teaching of churchmen; that
another priest in his place might have bade her keep her sad secret to
the end, lie down with it in her early grave, be remembered as a saint,
yet die knowing herself a sinner. If he had thought of the husband’s
peace first, he would have counselled silence. But he thought most of
this stricken soul, with wings that spread themselves towards heaven,
held down to earth by the burden of an unpardoned sin.
He looked at her in the lamplight, and her eyes met his with a
straighter outlook than he had seen in them for a long time. She looked
actually happy, and that look of happiness in a face on which death
has set its seal has always something which suggests a life beyond the
grave.
“The excitement of this marriage question has brightened you
wonderfully, Mrs. Disney,” he said. “We shall have you in high health
by the wedding-day.”
“I am feeling better because I am so glad,” Isola answered naively,
putting her hand into Allegra’s.
“I consider it positively insulting to me as a sister,” exclaimed
Allegra, bending down to kiss the too-transparent hand--such a hand as
she had seen in many a picture of dying saint in the Roman galleries.
“You are most unaffectionately rejoiced to get rid of me. I have
evidently been a tyrannical nurse, and a dull companion, and you
breathe more freely at the prospect of release.”
“You have been all that is dear and good,” Isola answered softly, “and
I shall feel dreadfully lonely without you; but it won’t be for long.
And I shall be so comforted by the knowledge that nothing can come
between you and your life’s happiness.”
The two men came in from the loggia, bringing with them the cool breath
of night. Isola went to the piano and played one of those Adagios of
Mozart’s which came just within the limit of her modest powers, and
which she played to perfection, all her soul in the long lingering
phrases, the tender modulations, with their suggestions of shadowy
cathedral aisles, and the smoke of incense in the deepening dusk
of a vesper service. Those bits of Mozart, the slow movements from
the Sonatas, an Agnus Dei, or an Ave Maria from one of the Masses,
satisfied Captain Hulbert’s highest ideas of music. He desired nothing
grander or more scientific. The new learning of the Wagnerian school
had no charm for him.
“If you ask me about modern composers, I am for Verdi and Gounod,” he
said. “For gaiety and charm, give me Auber, Rossini, and Boieldieu--for
pathos, Weber--for everything, Mozart. There you have the whole of my
musical education.”
The question of settlements was opened seriously between Martin Disney
and his future brother-in-law, early on the following morning. Hulbert
wanted to settle all the money he had in the world upon Allegra.
“She is ever so much wiser than I am,” he said. “So she had better be
my treasurer. My property is all in stocks and shares. My grandfather
was fond of stock-jobbing, and made some very lucky investments which
he settled upon my mother, with strict injunctions that they should
not be meddled with by her trustees. My share of her fortune comes to
a little over nine hundred a year. I came into possession of it when I
came of age, and it is mine to dispose of as I like, trusts expired,
trustees cleared off--in point of fact, both gone over to the majority,
poor old souls, after having had many an anxious hour about those South
American railway bonds, and Suez Canal shares, which turned up trumps
after all. I’ve telegraphed to the family lawyer for a schedule of the
property, and when that comes, just tie it all up in as tight a knot as
the law can tie, and let it belong to Allegra and her children after
her. Consider me paid off.”
Martin Disney laughed at the lover’s impetuosity--and told him that
he should be allowed to bring so much and no more into settlement.
Allegra’s income was less than two hundred a year, a poor little income
upon which she had fancied herself rich, so modest is woman’s measure
of independence as compared with man’s. It would be for the lawyer to
decide what proportion the husband’s settlements should bear to the
wife’s income. Father Rodwell had given Colonel Disney an introduction
to a solicitor of high character, a man who had occupied an excellent
position in London until damaged lungs obliged him to seek a home in
the south.
With this gentleman’s aid, matters were soon put in train, and while
the men were in the lawyer’s office, the two women were choosing
Allegra’s wedding-gown.
The young lady had exhibited a rare indifference upon the great
trousseau question. She was not one of those girls whose finery is all
external, and who hide rags and tatters under æsthetic colouring and
Raffaelle draperies. She was too much of an artist to endure anything
unseemly in her belongings, and her everyday clothes, just as they
were, might have been exhibited, like a Royal trousseau, without
causing any other comment than, “How nice!” “What good taste!” “What
exquisite needlework!”
The hands which painted such clever pictures were as skilful with
the needle as with the brush, and Allegra had never considered that
a vocation for art meant uselessness in every feminine industry. She
had attended to her own wardrobe from the time she learnt plain sewing
at her first school; and now, as she and Isola looked over the ample
array of under-linen, the pretty cambric peignoirs, and neatly trimmed
petticoats, they were both of one mind, that there was very little need
of fuss or expenditure.
“I have plenty of summer frocks,” said Allegra. “So really there is
only my travelling gown to see about, that is to say, the gown I am to
be married in.”
“But you must have a real wedding-gown, all the same, a white
satin gown, with lace and pearls,” pleaded Isola. “When you go to
dinner-parties, by-and-by, you will be expected to look like a bride.”
“Dinner-parties! Oh, those are a long way off. We are not likely to be
asked to any parties while we are wandering about Italy. I can get a
gown when I go home.”
* * * * *
Allegra’s wedding-day had dawned--a glorious day--a day to make one
drunken with the beauty of sky and earth; a day when the vetturini in
the Piazza di Spagna sat and dreamt on their coach-boxes--narcotized by
the sun--when the reds and blues in the garments of the flower-women
were almost too dazzling for the eye to look upon, and when every
garden in the city sent forth tropical odours of roses steeped in
sunlight.
The church in which the lovers were to be made one was a very homely
temple as compared with the basilicas yonder on the hills of Rome. But
what did that matter to Allegra this morning as she stood before the
altar and spoke the words which gave her to the man she loved? A flood
of sunshine streamed upon the two figures of bride and bridegroom, and
touched the almost spectral face of the bride’s sister-in-law, a face
which attracted as much attention as the bride’s fresh bloom and happy
smile. It was a face marked for death, yet beautiful in decay. The
large violet eyes were luminous with the light of worlds beyond the
world we know. There was something loftier than happiness in that vivid
look, something akin to exaltation--the smile of the martyr at the
stake--the martyr for whom Heaven’s miraculous intervention changes the
flames of the death-pile into the soft fanning of seraphic wings; the
martyr unconscious of earthly pains and earthly cruelties; who sees the
skies opening and the glorious company of saints and angels gathered
about the great white throne.
Father Rodwell saw that spiritual expression in the pale, wasted face,
and he told himself that a lost soul could not look out of eyes like
those. If death were near, as he feared, the true repentance for which
he had prayed many an earnest prayer was not far off.
* * * * *
Bride and bridegroom were to leave Rome by the mid-day train. Colonel
Disney was going to see the last of them at the station, but Isola and
her sister-in-law were to say good-bye in the vestry, and to part at
the church door. And now Father Rodwell’s brief, but fervent, address
had been spoken, the Wedding March pealed from the organ, and the small
wedding-party went into the vestry to sign the registers.
Isola was called upon for her signature as one of the witnesses. She
signed in a bold, clear hand, without one tremulous line, her husband
looking over her shoulder as she wrote.
“That doesn’t look like an invalid’s autograph, does it, Hulbert?” he
asked, snatching at every token of hope, unwilling to believe what his
doctors and his own convictions told him--expecting a miracle.
They had warned him that he could not keep her long. They had advised
him to humour her fancies, to let her be present at the wedding,
even at the hazard of her suffering afterwards for that exertion and
excitement. She would suffer more perhaps--physically as well as
mentally--if she were thwarted in her natural wish to be by Allegra’s
side on that day.
All was finished. Neither Church nor law could do anything more towards
making the lovers man and wife. The law might undo the bond for them in
the time to come, but the part of the Church was done for ever. In the
eye of the Church their union was indissoluble.
Isola clung with her arms round the bride’s neck.
“Think of me sometimes, dearest, in the years to come. Think that I
loved you fondly. Be sure that I was grateful for all your goodness to
me,” she said tearfully.
“My own love, I shall think of you every day till we meet again.”
“And if we never meet again on earth--will you remember me kindly?”
“Isa, how can you?” cried Allegra, silencing the pale lips with kisses.
“You may be glad to think how much you did towards making my life
happy--happier than it ought to have been.” Isola went on in a low
voice. “Dearest, I am more glad of your marriage than words can say;
and, Allegra, love him with all your heart, and never let your lives be
parted--remember, dearest, never, never let anything upon this earth
part you from him.”
Her voice was choked with sobs, and then came a worse fit of coughing
than she had suffered for some time; a fit which left her exhausted and
speechless. Her husband looked at her in an agony of apprehension.
“Let me take you home, Isa,” he said. “You’ll be better at home, lying
down by your sunny window. This vestry is horribly cold. Hulbert, if
you and Allegra will excuse me, I won’t see you off at the station.
Father Rodwell will go with you, perhaps. He’ll be of more use than I
could be; and we shall see each other very soon again in Switzerland,
please God.”
“Yes, yes, There is no need for you to go,” Hulbert answered, grasping
his hand, distressed for another man’s pain in the midst of his own
happiness. There death, and the end of all joy--here the new life with
its promises of gladness just opening before him. Such contrasts must
needs seem hard.
They all went to the church door, where the carriages were waiting.
Only a few idlers loitered about the pavement, faintly interested in
so shabby a wedding--a poor array of one landau and one brougham, the
brougham to take the travellers to the station, where their luggage had
been sent by another conveyance.
The two women kissed each other once more before Allegra stepped into
the carriage, Isola too weak for speech, and able only to clasp the
hands that had waited on her in so many a weary hour; the clever hands,
the gentle hands, to which womanly instinct and womanly love had given
all the skilfulness of a trained nurse.
Disney lifted his wife into the landau, Father Rodwell helping him,
full of sympathy.
“You’ll dine with us to-night, I hope,” said the colonel. “We shall be
very low if we are left to ourselves.”
“I’ve an engagement for this evening--but--yes, I’ll get myself
excused, and spend the evening with you, if you really want me.”
“Indeed we do,” answered Disney, heartily; but Isola was dumb. Her eyes
were fixed upon the distant point at which the brougham had disappeared
round a corner, on its way to the station.