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.