THE ESCAPE OF ANGELO
Vittoria knew better than Laura that the task was easy; she had but to
override her aversion to the show of trifling with a dead passion; and
when she thought of Angelo lying helpless in the swarm of enemies, and
that Wilfrid could consent to use his tragic advantage to force her to
silly love-play, his selfishness wrought its reflection, so that she
became sufficiently unjust to forget her marvellous personal influence
over him. Even her tenacious sentiment concerning his white uniform was
clouded. She very soon ceased to be shamefaced in her own fancy. At dawn
she stood at her window looking across the valley of Meran, and felt the
whole scene in a song of her heart, with the faintest recollection of
her having passed through a tempest overnight. The warm Southern glow
of the enfoliaged valley recalled her living Italy, and Italy her voice.
She grew wakefully glad: it was her nature, not her mind, that had
twisted in the convulsions of last night's horror of shame. The chirp
of healthy blood in full-flowing veins dispersed it; and as a tropical
atmosphere is cleared by the hurricane, she lost her depression and went
down among her enemies possessed by an inner delight, that was again of
her nature, not of her mind. She took her gladness for a happy sign that
she had power to rise buoyant above circumstances; and though aware that
she was getting to see things in harsh outlines, she was unconscious of
her haggard imagination.
The Lenkensteins had projected to escape the blandishments of Vienna by
residing during the winter in Venice, where Wilfrid and his sister were
to be the guests of the countess:--a pleasant prospect that was dashed
out by an official visit from Colonel Zofel of the Meran garrison,
through whom it was known that Lieutenant Pierson, while enjoying his
full liberty to investigate the charms of the neighbourhood, might not
extend his excursions beyond a pedestrian day's limit;--he was, in fact,
under surveillance. The colonel formally exacted his word of honour that
he would not attempt to pass the bounds, and explained to the duchess
that the injunction was favourable to the lieutenant, as implying
that he must be ready at any moment to receive the order to join his
regiment. Wilfrid bowed with a proper soldierly submission. Respecting
the criminal whom his men were pursuing, Colonel Zofel said that he was
sparing no efforts to come on his traces; he supposed, from what he
had heard in the Ultenthal, that Guidascarpi was on his back somewhere
within a short range of Meran. Vittoria strained her ears to the
colonel's German; she fancied his communication to be that he suspected
Angelo's presence in Meran.
The official part of his visit being terminated, the colonel addressed
some questions to the duchess concerning the night of the famous
Fifteenth at La Scala. He was an amateur, and spoke with enthusiasm of
the reports of the new prima donna. The duchess perceived that he was
asking for an introduction to the heroine of the night, and graciously
said that perhaps that very prima donna would make amends, to him for
his absence on the occasion. Vittoria checked a movement of revolt in
her frame. She cast an involuntary look at Wilfrid. “Now it begins,”
she thought, and went to the piano: she had previously refused to
sing. Wilfrid had to bend his head over his betrothed and listen to her
whisperings. He did so, carelessly swaying his hand to the measure of
the aria, with an increasing bitter comparison of the two voices.
Lena persisted in talking; she was indignant at his abandonment of
the journey to Venice; she reproached him as feeble, inconsiderate,
indifferent. Then for an instant she would pause to hear the voice, and
renew her assault. “We ought to be thankful that she is not singing
a song of death and destruction to us! The archduchess is coming to
Venice. If you are presented to her and please her, and get the writs
of naturalization prepared, you will be one of us completely, and your
fortune is made. If you stay here--why should you stay? It is nothing
but your uncle's caprice. I am too angry to care for music. If you stay,
you will earn my contempt. I will not be buried another week in such a
place. I am tired of weeping. We all go to Venice: Captain Weisspriess
follows us. We are to have endless Balls, an opera, a Court there--with
whom am I to dance, pray, when I am out of mourning? Am I to sit and
govern my feet under a chair, and gaze like an imbecile nun? It is too
preposterous. I am betrothed to you; I wish, I wish to behave like a
betrothed. The archduchess herself will laugh to see me chained to a
chair. I shall have to reply a thousand times to 'Where is he?' What can
I answer? 'Wouldn't come,' will be the only true reply.”
During this tirade, Vittoria was singing one of her old songs, well
known to Wilfrid, which brought the vision of a foaming weir, and
moonlight between the branches of a great cedar-tree, and the lost love
of his heart sitting by his side in the noising stillness. He was sure
that she could be singing it for no one but for him. The leap taken by
his spirit from this time to that, was shorter than from the past back
to the present.
“You do not applaud,” said Lena, when the song had ceased.
He murmured: “I never do, in drawing-rooms.”
“A cantatrice expects it everywhere; these creatures live on it.”
“I'll tell her, if you like, what we thought of it, when I take her down
to my sister, presently.”
“Are you not to take me down?”
“The etiquette is to hand her up to you.”
“No, no!” Lena insisted, in abhorrence of etiquette; but Wilfrid said
pointedly that his sister's feelings must be spared. “Her husband is an
animal: he is a millionaire city-of-London merchant; conceive him!
He has drunk himself gouty on Port wine, and here he is for the
grape-cure.”
“Ah! in that England of yours, women marry for wealth,” said Lena.
“Yes, in your Austria they have a better motive” he interpreted her
sentiment.
“Say, in our Austria.”
“In our Austria, certainly.”
“And with our holy religion?”
“It is not yet mine.”
“It will be?” She put the question eagerly.
Wilfrid hesitated, and by his adept hesitation succeeded in throwing her
off the jealous scent.
“Say that it will be, my Wilfrid!”
“You must give me time”
“This subject always makes you cold.”
“My own Lena!”
“Can I be, if we are doomed to be parted when we die?”
There is small space for compunction in a man's heart when he is in
Wilfrid's state, burning with the revival of what seemed to him a
superhuman attachment. He had no design to break his acknowledged
bondage to Countess Lena, and answered her tender speech almost as
tenderly.
It never occurred to him, as he was walking down to Meran with Vittoria,
that she could suppose him to be bartering to help rescue the life of a
wretched man in return for soft confidential looks of entreaty; nor did
he reflect, that when cast on him, they might mean no more than the
wish to move him for a charitable purpose. The completeness of her
fascination was shown by his reading her entirely by his own emotions,
so that a lowly-uttered word, or a wavering unwilling glance, made him
think that she was subdued by the charm of the old days.
“Is it here?” she said, stopping under the first Italian name she saw in
the arcade of shops.
“How on earth have you guessed it?” he asked, astonished.
She told him to wait at the end of the arcade, and passed in. When she
joined him again, she was downcast. They went straight to Adela's hotel,
where the one thing which gave her animation was the hearing that Mr.
Sedley had met an English doctor there, and had placed himself in his
hands. Adela dressed splendidly for her presentation to the duchess.
Having done so, she noticed Vittoria's depressed countenance and
difficult breathing. She commanded her to see the doctor. Vittoria
consented, and made use of him. She could tell Laura confidently at
night that Wilfrid would not betray Angelo, though she had not spoken
one direct word to him on the subject.
Wilfrid was peculiarly adept in the idle game he played. One who is
intent upon an evil end is open to expose his plan. But he had none in
view; he lived for the luxurious sensation of being near the woman who
fascinated him, and who was now positively abashed when by his side.
Adela suggested to him faintly--she believed it was her spontaneous
idea--that he might be making his countess jealous. He assured her that
the fancy sprang from scenes which she remembered, and that she could
have no idea of the pride of a highborn Austrian girl, who was incapable
of conceiving jealousy of a person below her class. Adela replied
that it was not his manner so much as Emilia's which might arouse the
suspicion; but she immediately affected to appreciate the sentiments
of a highborn Austrian girl toward a cantatrice, whose gifts we regard
simply as an aristocratic entertainment. Wilfrid induced his sister to
relate Vittoria's early history to Countess Lena; and himself almost
wondered, when he heard it in bare words, at that haunting vision of the
glory of Vittoria at La Scala--where, as he remembered, he would have
run against destruction to cling to her lips. Adela was at first alarmed
by the concentrated wrathfulness which she discovered in the bosom of
Countess Anna, who, as their intimacy waxed, spoke of the intruding
opera siren in terms hardly proper even to married women; but it seemed
right, as being possibly aristocratic. Lena was much more tolerant.
“I have just the same enthusiasm for soldiers that my Wilfrid has for
singers,” she said; and it afforded Adela exquisite pleasure to hear
her tell how that she had originally heard of the 'eccentric young
Englishman,' General Pierson's nephew, as a Lustspiel--a comedy; and of
his feats on horseback, and his duels, and his--“he was very wicked
over here, you know;” Lena laughed. She assumed the privileges of her
four-and-twenty years and her rank. Her marriage was to take place in
the Spring. She announced it with the simplicity of an independent woman
of the world, adding, “That is, if my Wilfrid will oblige me by not
plunging into further disgrace with the General.”
“No; you will not marry a man who is under a cloud,” Anna subjoined.
“Certainly not a soldier,” said Lena. “What it was exactly that he
did at La Scala, I don't know, and don't care to know, but he was then
ignorant that she had touched the hand of that Guidascarpi. I decide by
this--he was valiant; he defied everybody: therefore I forgive him. He
is not in disgrace with me. I will reinstate him.”
“You have your own way of being romantic,” said Anna. “A soldier who
forgets his duty is in my opinion only a brave fool.”
“It seems to me that a great many gallant officers are fond of fine
voices,” Lena retorted.
“No doubt it is a fashion among them,” said Anna.
Adela recoiled with astonishment when she began to see the light in
which the sisters regarded Vittoria; and she was loyal enough to hint
and protest on her friend's behalf. The sisters called her a very good
soul. “It may not be in England as over here,” said Anna. “We have to
submit to these little social scourges.”
Lena whispered to Adela, “An angry woman will think the worst. I have no
doubt of my Wilfrid. If I had!--”
Her eyes flashed. Fire was not wanting in her.
The difficulties which tasked the amiable duchess to preserve an outward
show of peace among the antagonistic elements she gathered together were
increased by the arrival at the castle of Count Lenkenstein, Bianca's
husband, and head of the family, from Bologna. He was a tall and courtly
man, who had one face for his friends and another for the reverse party;
which is to say, that his manners could be bad. Count Lenkenstein was
accompanied by Count Serabiglione, who brought Laura's children with
their Roman nurse, Assunta. Laura kissed her little ones, and sent them
out of her sight. Vittoria found her home in their play and prattle.
She needed a refuge, for Count Lenkenstein was singularly brutal in
his bearing toward her. He let her know that he had come to Meran to
superintend the hunt for the assassin, Angelo Guidascarpi. He attempted
to exact her promise in precise speech that she would be on the spot
to testify against Angelo when that foul villain should be caught. He
objected openly to Laura's children going about with her. Bitter talk
on every starting subject was exchanged across the duchess's table.
She herself was in disgrace on Laura's account, and had to practise
an overflowing sweetness, with no one to second her efforts. The two
noblemen spoke in accord on the bubble revolution. The strong hand--ay,
the strong hand! The strong hand disposes of vermin. Laura listened
to them, pallid with silent torture. “Since the rascals have taken
to assassination, we know that we have them at the dregs,” said Count
Lenkenstein. “A cord round the throats of a few scores of them, and the
country will learn the virtue of docility.”
Laura whispered to her sister: “Have you espoused a hangman?”
Such dropping of deadly shells in a quiet society went near to
scattering it violently; but the union was necessitous. Count
Lenkenstein desired to confront Vittoria with Angelo; Laura would not
quit her side, and Amalia would not expel her friend. Count Lenkenstein
complained roughly of Laura's conduct; nor did Laura escape her father's
reproof. “Sir, you are privileged to say what you will to me,” she
responded, with the humility which exasperated him.
“Yes, you bend, you bend, that you may be stiff-necked when it suits
you,” he snapped her short.
“Surely that is the text of the sermon you preach to our Italy!”
“A little more, as you are running on now, madame, and our Italy will be
froth on the lips. You see, she is ruined.”
“Chi lo fa, lo sa,” hummed Laura; “but I would avoid quoting you as that
authority.”
“After your last miserable fiasco, my dear!”
“It was another of our school exercises. We had not been good boys
and girls. We had learnt our lesson imperfectly. We have received our
punishment, and we mean to do better next time.”
“Behave seasonably, fittingly; be less of a wasp; school your tongue.”
“Bianca is a pattern to me, I am aware,” said Laura.
“She is a good wife.”
“I am a poor widow.”
“She is a good daughter.”
“I am a wicked rebel.”
“And you are scheming at something now,” said the little nobleman,
sagacious so far; but he was too eager to read the verification of the
tentative remark in her face, and she perceived that it was a guess
founded on her show of spirit.
“Scheming to contain my temper, which is much tried,” she said. “But I
suppose it supports me. I can always keep up against hostility.”
“You provoke it; you provoke it.”
“My instinct, then, divines my medicine.”
“Exactly, my dear; your personal instinct. That instigates you all. And
none are so easily conciliated as these Austrians. Conciliate them, and
you have them.” Count Serabiglione diverged into a repetition of his
theory of the policy and mission of superior intelligences, as regarded
his system for dealing with the Austrians.
Nurse Assunta's jealousy was worked upon to separate the children from
Vittoria. They ran down with her no more to meet the vast bowls of
grapes in the morning and feather their hats with vine leaves. Deprived
of her darlings, the loneliness of her days made her look to Wilfrid
for commiseration. Father Bernardus was too continually exhortative, and
fenced too much to “hit the eyeball of her conscience,” as he phrased
it, to afford her repose. Wilfrid could tell himself that he had already
done much for her; for if what he had done were known, his career,
social and military, was ended. This idea being accompanied by a sense
of security delighted him; he was accustomed to inquire of Angelo's
condition, and praise the British doctor who was attending him
gratuitously. “I wish I could get him out of the way,” he said, and
frowned as in a mental struggle. Vittoria heard him repeat his “I wish!”
It heightened greatly her conception of the sacrifice he would be making
on her behalf and charity's. She spoke with a reverential tenderness,
such as it was hard to suppose a woman capable of addressing to other
than the man who moved her soul. The words she uttered were pure thanks;
it was the tone which sent them winged and shaking seed. She had spoken
partly to prompt his activity, but her self-respect had been sustained
by his avoidance of the dreaded old themes, and that grateful feeling
made her voice musically rich.
“I dare not go to him, but the doctor tells me the fever has left him,
Wilfrid; his wounds are healing; but he is bandaged from head to
foot. The sword pierced his side twice, and his arms and hands are cut
horribly. He cannot yet walk. If he is discovered he is lost. Count
Lenkenstein has declared that he will stay at the castle till he has him
his prisoner. The soldiers are all round us. They know that Angelo is
in the ring. They have traced him all over from the Valtellina to this
Ultenthal, and only cannot guess where he is in the lion's jaw. I rise
in the morning, thinking, 'Is this to be the black day?' He is sure to
be caught.”
“If I could hit on a plan,” said Wilfrid, figuring as though he had a
diorama of impossible schemes revolving before his eyes.
“I could believe in the actual whispering of an angel if you did. It was
to guard me that Angelo put himself in peril.”
“Then,” said Wilfrid, “I am his debtor. I owe him as much as my life is
worth.”
“Think, think,” she urged; and promised affection, devotion, veneration,
vague things, that were too like his own sentiments to prompt him
pointedly. Yet he so pledged himself to her by word, and prepared his
own mind to conceive the act of service, that (as he did not reflect)
circumstance might at any moment plunge him into a gulf. Conduct of this
sort is a challenge sure to be answered.
One morning Vittoria was gladdened by a letter from Rocco Ricci, who had
fled to Turin. He told her that the king had promised to give her a warm
welcome in his capital, where her name was famous. She consulted with
Laura, and they resolved to go as soon as Angelo could stand on his
feet. Turin was cold--Italy, but it was Italy; and from Turin the
Italian army was to flow, like the Mincio from the Garda lake. “And
there, too, is a stage,” Vittoria thought, in a suddenly revived thirst
for the stage and a field for work. She determined to run down to Meran
and see Angelo. Laura walked a little way with her, till Wilfrid, alert
for these occasions, joined them. On the commencement of the zig-zag
below, there were soldiers, the sight of whom was not confusing.
Military messengers frequently came up to the castle where Count
Lenkenstein, assisted by Count Serabiglione, examined their depositions,
the Italian in the manner of a winding lawyer, the German of a gruff
judge. Half-way down the zig-zag Vittoria cast a preconcerted signal
back to Laura. The soldiers had a pair of prisoners between their ranks;
Vittoria recognized the men who had carried Captain Weisspriess from the
ground where the duel was fought. A quick divination told her that they
held Angelo's life on their tongues. They must have found him in the
mountain-pass while hurrying to their homes, and it was they who had
led him to Meran. On the Passeyr bridge, she turned and said to Wilfrid,
“Help me now. Send instantly the doctor in a carriage to the place where
he is lying.”
Wilfrid was intent on her flushed beauty and the half-compressed quiver
of her lip.
She quitted him and hurried to Angelo. Her joy broke out in a cry of
thankfulness at sight of Angelo; he had risen from his bed; he could
stand, and he smiled.
“That Jacopo is just now the nearest link to me,” he said, when she
related her having seen the two men guarded by soldiers; he felt
helpless, and spoke in resignation. She followed his eye about the room
till it rested on the stilet. This she handed to him. “If they think of
having me alive!” he said softly. The Italian and his wife who had given
him shelter and nursed him came in, and approved his going, though they
did not complain of what they might chance to have incurred. He offered
them his purse, and they took it. Minutes of grievous expectation went
by; Vittoria could endure them no longer; she ran out to the hotel,
near which, in the shade of a poplar, Wilfrid was smoking quietly.
He informed her that his sister and the doctor had driven out to meet
Captain Gambier; his brother-in-law was alone upstairs. Her look of
amazement touched him more shrewdly than scorn, and he said, “What on
earth can I do?”
“Order out a carriage. Send your brother-in-law in it. If you tell him
'for your health,' he will go.”
“On my honour, I don't know where those three words would not send him,”
said Wilfrid; but he did not move, and was for protesting that he
really could not guess what was the matter, and the ground for all this
urgency.
Vittoria compelled her angry lips to speak out her suspicions
explicitly, whereupon he glanced at the sun-glare in a meditation,
occasionally blinking his eyes. She thought, “Oh, heaven! can he be
waiting for me to coax him?” It was the truth, though it would have been
strange to him to have heard it. She grew sure that it was the truth;
never had she despised living creature so utterly as when she murmured,
“My best friend! my brother! my noble Wilfrid! my old beloved! help me
now, without loss of a minute.”
It caused his breath to come and go unevenly.
“Repeat that--once, only once,” he said.
She looked at him with the sorrowful earnestness which, as its meaning
was shut from him, was so sweet.
“You will repeat it by-and-by?--another time? Trust me to do my
utmost. Old beloved! What is the meaning of 'old beloved'? One word in
explanation. If it means anything, I would die for you! Emilia, do you
hear?--die for you! To me you are nothing old or by-gone, whatever I
may be to you. To me--yes, I will order the carriage you are the
Emilia--listen! listen! Ah! you have shut your ears against me. I am
bound in all seeming, but I--you drive me mad; you know your power.
Speak one word, that I may feel--that I may be convinced,... or not a
single word; I will obey you without. I have said that you command my
life.”
In a block of carriages on the bridge, Vittoria perceived a lifted hand.
It was Laura's; Beppo was in attendance on her. Laura drove up and said:
“You guessed right; where is he?” The communications between them were
more indicated than spoken. Beppo had heard Jacopo confess to his having
conducted a wounded Italian gentleman into Meran. “That means that the
houses will be searched within an hour,” said Laura; “my brother-in-law
Bear is radiant.” She mimicked the Lenkenstein physiognomy spontaneously
in the run of her speech. “If Angelo can help himself ever so little, he
has a fair start.” A look was cast on Wilfrid; Vittoria nodded--Wilfrid
was entrapped.
“Englishmen we can trust,” said Laura, and requested him to step into
her carriage. He glanced round the open space. Beppo did the same, and
beheld the chasseur Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz crossing the bridge on
foot, but he said nothing. Wilfrid was on the step of the carriage, for
what positive object neither he nor the others knew, when his sister and
the doctor joined them. Captain Gambier was still missing.
“He would have done anything for us,” Vittoria said in Wilfrid's
hearing.
“Tell us what plan you have,” the latter replied fretfully.
She whispered: “Persuade Adela to make her husband drive out. The doctor
will go too, and Beppo. They shall take Angelo. Our carriage will follow
empty, and bring Mr. Sedley back.”
Wilfrid cast his eyes up in the air, at the monstrous impudence of the
project. “A storm is coming on,” he suggested, to divert her reading of
his grimace; but she was speaking to the doctor, who readily answered
her aloud: “If you are certain of what you say.” The remark incited
Wilfrid to be no subordinate in devotion; handing Adela from the
carriage, while the doctor ran up to Mr. Sedley, he drew her away. Laura
and Vittoria watched the motion of their eyes and lips.
“Will he tell her the purpose?” said Laura.
Vittoria smiled nervously: “He is fibbing.”
Marking the energy expended by Wilfrid in this art, the wiser woman
said: “Be on your guard the next two minutes he gets you alone.”
“You see his devotion.”
“Does he see his compensation? But he must help us at any hazard.”
Adela broke away from her brother twice, and each time he fixed her
to the spot more imperiously. At last she ran into the hotel; she was
crying. “A bad economy of tears,” said Laura, commenting on the dumb
scene, to soothe her savage impatience. “In another twenty minutes we
shall have the city gates locked.”
They heard a window thrown up; Mr. Sedley's head came out, and peered at
the sky. Wilfrid said to Vittoria: “I can do nothing beyond what I have
done, I fear.”
She thought it was a petition for thanks, but Laura knew better; she
said: “I see Count Lenkenstein on his way to the barracks.”
Wilfrid bowed: “I may be able to serve you in that quarter.”
He retired: whereupon Laura inquired how her friend could reasonably
suppose that a man would ever endure being thanked in public.
“I shall never understand and never care to understand them,” said
Vittoria.
“It is a knowledge that is forced on us, my dear. May heaven make the
minds of our enemies stupid for the next five hours!--Apropos of what
I was saying, women and men are in two hostile camps. We have a sort
of general armistice and everlasting strife of individuals--Ah!” she
clapped hands on her knees, “here comes your doctor; I could fancy I see
a pointed light on his head. Men of science, my Sandra, are always the
humanest.”
The chill air of wind preceding thunder was driving round the head of
the vale, and Mr. Sedley, wrapped in furs, and feebly remonstrating with
his medical adviser, stepped into his carriage. The doctor followed him,
giving a grave recognition of Vittoria's gaze. Both gentlemen raised
their hats to the ladies, who alighted as soon as they had gone in the
direction of the Vintschgau road.
“One has only to furnish you with money, my Beppo,” said Vittoria,
complimenting his quick apprehensiveness. “Buy bread and cakes at one of
the shops, and buy wine. You will find me where you can, when you
have seen him safe. I have no idea of where my home will be. Perhaps
England.”
“Italy, Italy! faint heart,” said Laura.
Furnished with money, Beppo rolled away gaily.
The doubt was in Laura whether an Englishman's wits were to be relied on
in such an emergency; but she admitted that the doctor had looked full
enough of serious meaning, and that the Englishman named Merthyr Powys
was keen and ready. They sat a long half-hour, that thumped itself
out like an alarm-bell, under the poplars, by the clamouring Passeyr,
watching the roll and spring of the waters, and the radiant foam, while
band-music played to a great company of visitors, and sounds of thunder
drew near. Over the mountains above the Adige, the leaden fingers of
an advance of the thunder-cloud pushed slowly, and on a sudden a mighty
gale sat heaped blank on the mountain-top and blew. Down went the heads
of the poplars, the river staggered in its leap, the vale was shuddering
grey. It was like the transformation in a fairy tale; Beauty had taken
her old cloak about her, and bent to calamity. The poplars streamed
their length sideways, and in the pauses of the strenuous wind nodded
and dashed wildly and white over the dead black water, that waxed in
foam and hissed, showing its teeth like a beast enraged. Laura
and Vittoria joined hands and struggled for shelter. The tent of a
travelling circus from the South, newly-pitched on a grassplot near the
river, was caught up and whirled in the air and flung in the face of
a marching guard of soldiery, whom it swathed and bore sheer to earth,
while on them and around them a line of poplars fell flat, the wind
whistling over them. Laura directed Vittoria's eyes to the sight. “See,”
she said, and her face was set hard with cold and excitement, so that
she looked a witch in the uproar; “would you not say the devil is loose
now Angelo is abroad?” Thunder and lightning possessed the vale, and
then a vertical rain. At the first gleam of sunlight, Laura and Vittoria
walked up to the Laubengasse--the street of the arcades, where they
made purchases of numerous needless articles, not daring to enter the
Italian's shop. A woman at a fruitstall opposite to it told them that no
carriage could have driven up there. During their great perplexity, mud
and rain-stained soldiers, the same whom they had seen borne to earth by
the flying curtain, marched before the shop; the shop and the house were
searched; the Italian and his old liming wife were carried away.
“Tell me now, that storm was not Angelo's friend!” Laura muttered.
“Can he have escaped?” said Vittoria.
“He is 'on horseback.'” Laura quoted the Italian proverb to signify that
he had flown; how, she could not say, and none could inform her. The joy
of their hearts rose in one fountain.
“I shall feel better blood in my body from this moment,” Laura said; and
Vittoria, “Oh! we can be strong, if we only resolve.”
“You want to sing?”
“I do.”
“I shall find pleasure in your voice now.”
“The wicked voice!”
“Yes, the very wicked voice! But I shall be glad to hear it. You can
sing to-night, and drown those Lenkensteins.”
“If my Carlo could hear me!”
“Ah!” sighed the signora, musing. “He is in prison now. I remember him,
the dearest little lad, fencing with my husband for exercise after they
had been writing all day. When Giacomo was imprisoned, Carlo sat outside
the prison walls till it was time for him to enter; his chin and upper
lip were smooth as a girl's. Giacomo said to him, 'May you always have
the power of going out, or not have a wife waiting for you.' Here they
come.” (She spoke of tears.) “It's because I am joyful. The channel for
them has grown so dry that they prick and sting. Oh, Sandra! it would be
pleasant to me if we might both be buried for seven days, and have one
long howl of weakness together. A little bite of satisfaction makes
me so tired. I believe there's something very bad for us in our always
being at war, and never, never gaining ground. Just one spark of triumph
intoxicates us. Look at all those people pouring out again. They are
the children of fair weather. I hope the state of their health does not
trouble them too much. Vienna sends consumptive patients here. If you
regard them attentively, you will observe that they have an anxious air.
Their constitutions are not sound; they fear they may die.”
Laura's irony was unforced; it was no more than a subtle discord
naturally struck from the scene by a soul in contrast with it.
They beheld the riding forth of troopers and a knot of officers hotly
conversing together. At another point the duchess and the Lenkenstein
ladies, Count Lenkenstein, Count Serabiglione, and Wilfrid paced up and
down, waiting for music. Laura left the public places and crossed an
upper bridge over the Passeyr, near the castle, by which route she
skirted vines and dropped over sloping meadows to some shaded boulders
where the Passeyr found a sandy bay, and leaped in transparent green,
and whitened and swung twisting in a long smooth body down a narrow
chasm, and noised below. The thundering torrent stilled their
sensations: and the water, making battle against great blocks of
porphyry and granite, caught their thoughts. So strong was the
impression of it on Vittoria's mind, that for hours after, every image
she conceived seemed proper to the inrush and outpour; the elbowing, the
tossing, the foaming, the burst on stones, and silvery bubbles under and
silvery canopy above, the chattering and huzzaing; all working on to the
one-toned fall beneath the rainbow on the castle-rock.
Next day, the chasseur Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz deposed in full
company at Sonnenberg, that, obeying Count Serabiglione's instructions,
he had gone down to the city, and had there seen Lieutenant Pierson with
the ladies in front of the hotel; he had followed the English carriage,
which took up a man who was standing ready on crutches at the corner
of the Laubengasse, and drove rapidly out of the North-western gate,
leading to Schlanders and Mals and the Engadine. He had witnessed the
transfer of the crippled man from one carriage to another, and had
raised shouts and given hue and cry, but the intervention of the storm
had stopped his pursuit.
He was proceeding to say what his suppositions were. Count Lenkenstein
lifted his finger for Wilfrid to follow him out of the room. Count
Serabiglione went at their heels. Then Count Lenkenstein sent for his
wife, whom Anna and Lena accompanied.
“How many persons are you going to ruin in the course of your crusade,
my dear?” the duchess said to Laura.
“Dearest, I am penitent when I succeed,” said Laura.
“If that young man has been assisting you, he is irretrievably ruined.”
“I am truly sorry for him.”
“As for me, the lectures I shall get in Vienna are terrible to think
of. This is the consequence of being the friend of both parties, and a
peace-maker.”
Count Serabiglione returned alone from the scene at the examination,
rubbing his hands and nodding affably to his daughter. He maliciously
declined to gratify the monster of feminine curiosity in the lump, and
doled out the scene piecemeal. He might state, he observed, that it was
he who had lured Beppo to listen at the door during the examination
of the prisoners; and who had then planted a spy on him--following
the dictation of precepts exceedingly old. “We are generally beaten,
duchess; I admit it; and yet we generally contrive to show the brain. As
I say, wed brains to brute force!--but my Laura prefers to bring about
a contest instead of an union, so that somebody is certain to be struck,
and”--the count spread out his arms and bowed his head--“deserves the
blow.” He informed them that Count Lenkenstein had ordered Lieutenant
Pierson down to Meran, and that the lieutenant might expect to be
cashiered within five days. “What does it matter?” he addressed
Vittoria. “It is but a shuffling of victims; Lieutenant Pierson in the
place of Guidascarpi! I do not object.”
Count Lenkenstein withdrew his wife and sisters from Sonnenberg
instantly. He sent an angry message of adieu to the duchess, informing
her that he alone was responsible for the behaviour of the ladies of his
family. The poor duchess wept. “This means that I shall be summoned to
Vienna for a scolding, and have to meet my husband,” she said to Laura,
who permitted herself to be fondled, and barely veiled her exultation in
her apology for the mischief she had done. An hour after the departure
of the Lenkensteins, the castle was again officially visited by Colonel
Zofel. Vittoria and Laura received an order to quit the district of
Meran before sunset. The two firebrands dropped no tears. “I really am
sorry for others when I succeed,” said Laura, trying to look sad upon
her friend.
“No; the heart is eaten out of you both by excitement,” said the
duchess.
Her tender parting, “Love me,” in the ear of Vittoria, melted one heart
of the two.
Count Serabiglione continued to be buoyed up by his own and his
daughter's recent display of a superior intellectual dexterity until the
carriage was at the door and Laura presented her cheek to him. He
said, “You will know me a wise man when I am off the table.” His
gesticulations expressed “Ruin, headlong ruin!” He asked her how she
could expect him to be for ever repairing her follies. He was going
to Vienna; how could he dare to mention her name there? Not even in a
trifle would she consent to be subordinate to authority. Laura checked
her replies--the surrendering, of a noble Italian life to the Austrians
was such a trifle! She begged only that a poor wanderer might depart
with a father's blessing. The count refused to give it; he waved her
off in a fury of reproof; and so got smoothly over the fatal moment
when money, or the promise of money, is commonly extracted from parental
sources, as Laura explained his odd behaviour to her companion. The
carriage-door being closed, he regained his courtly composure; his fury
was displaced by a chiding finger, which he presently kissed. Father.
Bernardus was on the steps beside the duchess, and his blessing had not
been withheld from Vittoria, though he half confessed to her that she
was a mystery in his mind, and would always be one.
“He can understand robust hostility,” Laura said, when Vittoria recalled
the look of his benevolent forehead and drooping eyelids; “but robust
ductility does astonish him. He has not meddled with me; yet I am the
one of the two who would be fair prey for an enterprising spiritual
father, as the destined roan of heaven will find out some day.”
She bent and smote her lap. “How little they know us, my darling! They
take fever for strength, and calmness for submission. Here is the world
before us, and I feel that such a man, were he to pounce on me now,
might snap me up and lock me in a praying-box with small difficulty. And
I am the inveterate rebel! What is it nourishes you and keeps you always
aiming straight when you are alone? Once in Turin, I shall feel that I
am myself. Out of Italy I have a terrible craving for peace. It seems
here as if I must lean down to him, my beloved, who has left me.”
Vittoria was in alarm lest Wilfrid should accost her while she drove
from gate to gate of the city. They passed under the archway of the gate
leading up to Schloss Tyrol, and along the road bordered by vines. An
old peasant woman stopped them with the signal of a letter in her hand.
“Here it is,” said Laura, and Vittoria could not help smiling at her
shrewd anticipation of it.
“May I follow?”
Nothing more than that was written.
But the bearer of the missive had been provided with a lead pencil to
obtain the immediate reply.
“An admirable piece of foresight!” Laura's honest exclamation burst
forth.
Vittoria had to look in Laura's face before she could gather her will
to do the cruel thing which was least cruel. She wrote firmly:--“Never
follow me.”