CHAPTER XXXI

EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR VITTORIA DISOBEYS HER LOVER

Countess d'Isorella's peculiar mission to Milan was over with the

victory of the city. She undertook personally to deliver Carlo's

injunction to Vittoria on her way to the king. Countess Ammiani deemed

it sufficient that her son's wishes should be repeated verbally; and

as there appeared to be no better messenger than one who was bound for

Turin and knew Vittoria's place of residence, she entrusted the duty to

Violetta.

The much which hangs on little was then set in motion:

Violetta was crossing the Ticino when she met a Milanese nobleman who

had received cold greeting from the king, and was returning to Milan

with word that the Piedmontese declaration of war against Austria had

been signed. She went back to Milan, saw and heard, and gathered

a burden for the royal ears. This was a woman, tender only to the

recollection of past days, who used her beauty and her arts as weapons

for influence. She liked kings because she saw neither master nor dupe

in a republic; she liked her early lover because she could see nothing

but a victim in any new one. She was fond of Carlo, as greatly occupied

minds may be attached to an old garden where they have aforetime sown

fair seed. Jealousy of a rival in love that was disconnected with

political business and her large expenditure, had never yet disturbed

the lady's nerves.

At Turin she found Vittoria singing at the opera, and winning marked

applause from the royal box. She thought sincerely that to tear a prima

donna from her glory would be very much like dismissing a successful

General to his home and gabbling family. A most eminent personage agreed

with her. Vittoria was carelessly informed that Count Ammiani had gone

to Brescia, and having regard for her safety, desired her to go to Milan

to be under the protection of his mother, and that Countess Ammiani was

willing to receive her.

Now, with her mother, and her maid Giacinta, and Beppo gathered about

her, for three weeks Vittoria had been in full operatic career, working,

winning fame, believing that she was winning influence, and establishing

a treasury. The presence of her lover in Milan would have called her

to the noble city; but he being at Brescia, she asked herself why she

should abstain from labours which contributed materially to the strength

of the revolution and made her helpful. It was doubtful whether Countess

Ammiani would permit her to sing at La Scala; or whether the city could

support an opera in the throes of war. And Vittoria was sending money

to Milan. The stipend paid to her by the impresario, the jewels, the

big bouquets--all flowed into the treasury of the insurrection.

Antonio-Pericles advanced her a large sum on the day when the news of

the Milanese uprising reached Turin: the conditions of the loan had

simply been that she should continue her engagement to sing in Turin.

He was perfectly slavish to her, and might be trusted to advance more.

Since the great night at La Scala, she had been often depressed by a

secret feeling that there was divorce between her love of her country

and devotion to her Art. Now that both passions were in union, both

active, each aiding the fire of the other, she lived a consummate life.

She could not have abandoned her path instantly though Carlo had

spoken his command to her in person. Such were her first spontaneous

seasonings, and Laura Piaveni seconded them; saying, “Money, money! we

must be Jews for money. We women are not allowed to fight, but we can

manage to contribute our lire and soldi; we can forge the sinews of

war.”

Vittoria wrote respectfully to Countess Ammiani stating why she declined

to leave Turin. The letter was poorly worded. While writing it she had

been taken by a sentiment of guilt and of isolation in presuming to

disobey her lover. “I am glad he will not see it,” she remarked to

Laura, who looked rapidly across the lines, and said nothing. Praise

of the king was in the last sentence. Laura's eyes lingered on it

half-a-minute.

“Has he not drawn his sword? He is going to march,” said Vittoria.

“Oh, yes,” Laura replied coolly; “but you put that to please Countess

Ammiani.”

Vittoria confessed she had not written it purposely to defend the king.

“What harm?” she asked.

“None. Only this playing with shades allows men to call us hypocrites.”

The observation angered Vittoria. She had seen the king of late; she had

breathed Turin incense and its atmosphere; much that could be pleaded

on the king's behalf she had listened to with the sympathetic pity which

can be woman's best judgement, and is the sentiment of reason. She had

also brooded over the king's character, and had thought that if the

Chief could have her opportunities for studying this little impressible,

yet strangely impulsive royal nature, his severe condemnation of him

would be tempered. In fact, she was doing what makes a woman excessively

tender and opinionated; she was petting her idea of the misunderstood

one: she was thinking that she divined the king's character by mystical

intuition; I will dare to say, maternally apprehended it. And it was

a character strangely open to feminine perceptions, while to masculine

comprehension it remained a dead blank, done either in black or in

white.

Vittoria insisted on praising the king to Laura.

“With all my heart,” Laura said, “so long as he is true to Italy.”

“How, then, am I hypocritical?”

“My Sandra, you are certainly perverse. You admitted that you did

something for the sake of pleasing Countess Ammiani.”

“I did. But to be hypocritical one must be false.”

“Oh!” went Laura.

“And I write to Carlo. He does not care for the king; therefore it is

needless for me to name the king to him; and I shall not.”

Laura said, “Very well.” She saw a little deeper than the perversity,

though she did not see the springs. In Vittoria's letter to her lover,

she made no allusion to the Sword of Italy.

Countess Ammiani forwarded both letters on to Brescia.

When Carlo had finished reading them, he heard all Brescia clamouring

indignantly at the king for having disarmed volunteers on Lago Maggiore

and elsewhere in his dominions. Milan was sending word by every post of

the overbearing arrogance of the Piedmontese officers and officials, who

claimed a prostrate submission from a city fresh with the ardour of the

glory it had won for itself, and that would fain have welcomed them as

brothers. Romara and others wrote of downright visible betrayal. It was

a time of passions;--great readiness for generosity, equal promptitude

for undiscriminating hatred. Carlo read Vittoria's praise of the king

with insufferable anguish. “You--you part of me, can write like this!”

he struck the paper vehemently. The fury of action transformed the

gentle youth. Countess Ammiani would not have forwarded the letter

addressed to herself had she dreamed the mischief it might do. Carlo

saw double-dealing in the absence of any mention of the king in his own

letter.

“Quit Turin at once,” he dashed hasty lines to Vittoria; “and no

'Viva il Re' till we know what he may merit. Old delusions are

pardonable; but you must now look abroad with your eyes. Your words

should be the echoes of my soul. Your acts are mine. For the sake

of the country, do nothing to fill me with shame. The king is a

traitor. I remember things said of him by Agostino; I subscribe to

them every one. Were you like any other Italian girl, you might cry

for him--who would care! But you are Vittoria. Fly to my mother's

arms, and there rest. The king betrays us. Is a stronger word

necessary? I am writing too harshly to you;--and here are the lines

of your beloved letter throbbing round me while I write; but till

the last shot is fired I try to be iron, and would hold your hand

and not kiss it--not be mad to fall between your arms--not wish for

you--not think of you as a woman, as my beloved, as my Vittoria; I

hope and pray not, if I thought there was an ace of work left to do

for the country. Or if one could say that you cherished a shred of

loyalty for him who betrays it. Great heaven! am I to imagine that

royal flatteries--My hand is not my own! You shall see all that

it writes. I will seem to you no better than I am. I do not tell

you to be a Republican, but an Italian. If I had room for myself in

my prayers--oh! one half-instant to look on you, though with chains

on my limbs. The sky and the solid ground break up when I think of

you. I fancy I am still in prison. Angelo was music to me for two

whole days (without a morning to the first and a night to the

second). He will be here to-morrow and talk of you again. I long

for him more than for battle--almost long for you more than for

victory for our Italy.

“This is Brescia, which my father said he loved better than his

wife.

“General Paolo Ammiani is buried here. I was at his tombstone this

morning. I wish you had known him.

“You remember, we talked of his fencing with me daily. 'I love the

fathers who do that.' You said it. He will love you. Death is the

shadow--not life. I went to his tomb. It was more to think of

Brescia than of him. Ashes are only ashes; tombs are poor places.

My soul is the power.

“If I saw the Monte Viso this morning, I saw right over your head

when you were sleeping.

“Farewell to journalism--I hope, for ever. I jump at shaking off

the journalistic phraseology Agostino laughs at. Yet I was right in

printing my 'young nonsense.' I did, hold the truth, and that was

felt, though my vehicle for delivering it was rubbish.

“In two days Corte promises to sing his song, 'Avanti.' I am at his

left hand. Venice, the passes of the Adige, the Adda, the Oglio are

ours. The room is locked; we have only to exterminate the reptiles

inside it. Romara, D'Arci, Carnischi march to hold the doors.

Corte will push lower; and if I can get him to enter the plains and

join the main army I shall rejoice.”

The letter concluded with a postscript that half an Italian regiment,

with white coats swinging on their bayonet-points, had just come in.

It reached Vittoria at a critical moment.

Two days previously, she and Laura Piaveni had talked with the king.

It was an unexpected honour. Countess, d'Isorella conducted them to

the palace. The lean-headed sovereign sat booted and spurred, his

sword across his knees; he spoke with a peculiar sad hopefulness of the

prospects of the campaign, making it clear that he was risking more than

anyone risked, for his stake was a crown. The few words he uttered of

Italy had a golden ring in them; Vittoria knew not why they had it. He

condemned the Republican spirit of Milan more regretfully than severely.

The Republicans were, he said, impracticable. Beyond the desire for

change, they knew not what they wanted. He did not state that he should

avoid Milan in his march. On the contrary, he seemed to indicate that he

was about to present himself to the people of Milan. “To act against the

enemy successfully, we must act as one, under one head, with one aim.”

He said this, adding that no heart in Italy had yearned more than his

own for the signal to march for the Mincio and the Adige.

Vittoria determined to put him to one test. She summoned her boldness to

crave grace for Agostino Balderini to return to Piedmont. The petition

was immediately granted. Alluding to the libretto of Camilla, the king

complimented Vittoria for her high courage on the night of the Fifteenth

of the foregoing year. “We in Turin were prepared, though we had only

then the pleasure of hearing of you,” he said.

“I strove to do my best to help. I wish to serve our cause now,” she

replied, feeling an inexplicable new sweetness running in her blood.

He asked her if she did not know that she had the power to move

multitudes.

“Sire, singing appears so poor a thing in time of war.”

He remarked that wine was good for soldiers, singing better, such a

voice as hers best of all.

For hours after the interview, Vittoria struggled with her deep blushes.

She heard the drums of the regiments, the clatter of horses, the

bugle-call of assembly, as so many confirmatory notes that it was a

royal hero who was going forth.

“He stakes a crown,” she said to Laura.

“Tusk! it tumbles off his head if he refuses to venture something,” was

Laura's response.

Vittoria reproached her for injustice.

“No,” Laura said; “he is like a young man for whom his mother has made a

match. And he would be very much in love with his bride if he were quite

certain of winning her, or rather, if she would come a little more than

halfway to meet him. Some young men are so composed. Genoa and Turin

say, 'Go and try.' Milan and Venice say, 'Come and have faith in us.' My

opinion is that he is quite as much propelled as attracted.”

“This is shameful,” said Vittoria.

“No; for I am quite willing to suspend my judgement. I pray that fortune

may bless his arms. I do think that the stir of a campaign, and a

certain amount of success will make him in earnest.”

“Can you look on his face and not see pure enthusiasm?”

“I see every feminine quality in it, my dear.”

“What can it be that he is wanting in?”

“Masculine ambition.”

“I am not defending him,” said Vittoria hastily.

“Not at all; and I am not attacking him. I can excuse his dread of

Republicanism. I can fancy that there is reason for him just now to

fear Republicanism worse than Austria. Paris and Milan are two grisly

phantoms before him. These red spectres are born of earthquake, and are

more given to shaking thrones than are hostile cannonshot. Earthquakes

are dreadfuller than common maladies to all of us. Fortune may help

him, but he has not the look of one who commands her. The face is not

aquiline. There's a light over him like the ray of a sickly star.”

“For that reason!” Vittoria burst out.

“Oh, for that reason we pity men, assuredly, my Sandra, but not kings.

Luckless kings are not generous men, and ungenerous men are mischievous

kings.”

“But if you find him chivalrous and devoted; if he proves his noble

intentions, why not support him?”

“Dandle a puppet, by all means,” said Laura.

Her intellect, not her heart, was harsh to the king; and her heart was

not mistress of her intellect in this respect, because she beheld riding

forth at the head of Italy one whose spirit was too much after the

pattern of her supple, springing, cowering, impressionable sex,

alternately ardent and abject, chivalrous and treacherous, and not to be

confided in firmly when standing at the head of a great cause.

Aware that she was reading him very strictly by the letters of his past

deeds, which were not plain history to Vittoria, she declared that she

did not countenance suspicion in dealing with the king, and that

it would be a delight to her to hear of his gallant bearing on the

battle-field. “Or to witness it, my Sandra, if that were possible;--we

two! For, should he prove to be no General, he has the courage of his

family.”

Vittoria took fire at this. “What hinders our following the army?”

“The less baggage the better, my dear.”

“But the king said that my singing--I have no right to think it myself.”

Vittoria concluded her sentence with a comical intention of humility.

“It was a pretty compliment,” said Laura. “You replied that singing is

a poor thing in time of war, and I agree with you. We might serve as

hospital nurses.”

“Why do we not determine?”

“We are only considering possibilities.”

“Consider the impossibility of our remaining quiet.”

“Fire that goes to flame is a waste of heat, my Sandra.”

The signora, however, was not so discreet as her speech. On all sides

there was uproar and movement. High-born Italian ladies were offering

their hands for any serviceable work. Laura and Vittoria were not alone

in the desire which was growing to be resolution to share the hardships

of the soldiers, to cherish and encourage them, and by seeing, to have

the supreme joy of feeling the blows struck at the common enemy.

The opera closed when the king marched. Carlo Ammiani's letter was

handed to Vittoria at the fall of the curtain on the last night.

Three paths were open to her: either that she should obey her lover,

or earn an immense sum of money from Antonio-Pericles by accepting an

immediate engagement in London, or go to the war. To sit in submissive

obedience seemed unreasonable; to fly from Italy impossible. Yet the

latter alternative appealed strongly to her sense of duty, and as it

thereby threw her lover's commands into the background, she left it

to her heart to struggle with Carlo, and thought over the two final

propositions. The idea of being apart from Italy while the living

country streamed forth to battle struck her inflamed spirit like the

shock of a pause in martial music. Laura pretended to take no part

in Vittoria's decision, but when it was reached, she showed her

a travelling-carriage stocked with lint and linen, wine in jars,

chocolate, cases of brandy, tea, coffee, needles, thread, twine,

scissors, knives; saying, as she displayed them, “there, my dear, all my

money has gone in that equipment, so you must pay on the road.”

“This doesn't leave me a choice, then,” said Victoria, joining her

humour.

“Ah, but think over it,” Laura suggested.

“No! not think at all,” cried Vittoria.

“You do not fear Carlo's anger?”

“If I think, I am weak as water. Let us go.”

Countess d'Isorella wrote to Carlo: “Your Vittoria is away after the

king to Pavia. They tell me she stood up in her carriage on the Ponte

del Po-'Viva il Re d'Italia!' waving the cross of Savoy. As I have

previously assured you, no woman is Republican. The demonstration was

a mistake. Public characters should not let their personal preferences

betrumpeted: a diplomatic truism:--but I must add, least of all a

cantatrice for a king. The famous Greek amateur--the prop of failing

finances--is after her to arrest her for breach of engagement. You

wished to discover an independent mind in a woman, my Carlo; did you

not? One would suppose her your wife--or widow. She looked a superb

thing the last night she sang. She is not, in my opinion, wanting in

height. If, behind all that innocence and candour, she has any trained

artfulness, she will beat us all. Heaven bless your arms!”

The demonstration mentioned by the countess had not occurred.

Vittoria's letter to her lover missed him. She wrote from Pavia, after

she had taken her decisive step.

Carlo Ammiani went into the business of the war with the belief that his

betrothed had despised his prayer to her.

He was under Colonel Corte, operating on the sub-Alpine range of hills

along the line of the Chiese South-eastward. Here the volunteers, formed

of the best blood of Milan, the gay and brave young men, after marching

in the pride of their strength to hold the Alpine passes and bar Austria

from Italy while the fight went on below, were struck by a sudden

paralysis. They hung aloft there like an arm cleft from the body.

Weapons, clothes, provisions, money, the implements of war, were

withheld from them. The Piedmontese officers despatched to watch their

proceedings laughed at them like exasperating senior scholars examining

the accomplishments of a lower form. It was manifest that Count Medole

and the Government of Milan worked everywhere to conquer the people for

the king before the king had done a stroke to conquer the Austrians

for the people; while, in order to reduce them to the condition of

Piedmontese soldiery, the flame of their patriotic enthusiasm was

systematically damped, and instead of apprentices in war, who possessed

at any rate the elementary stuff of soldiers, miserable dummies were

drafted into the royal service. The Tuscans and the Romans had good

reason to complain on behalf of their princes, as had the Venetians and

the Lombards for the cause of their Republic. Neither Tuscans, Romans,

Venetians, nor Lombards were offering up their lives simply to obtain a

change of rulers; though all Italy was ready to bow in allegiance to a

king of proved kingly quality. Early in the campaign the cry of treason

was muttered, and on all sides such became the temper of the Alpine

volunteers, that Angelo and Rinaldo Guidascarpi were forced to join

their cousin under Corte, by the dispersion of their band, amounting to

something more than eighteen hundred fighting lads, whom a Piedmontese

superior officer summoned peremptorily to shout for the king. They

thundered as one voice for the Italian Republic, and instantly broke up

and disbanded. This was the folly of the young: Carlo Ammiani confessed

that it was no better; but he knew that a breath of generous confidence

from the self-appointed champion of the national cause would have

subdued his impatience at royalty and given heart and cheer to his

sickening comrades. He began to frown angrily when he thought of

Vittoria. “Where is she now?--where now?” he asked himself in the season

of his most violent wrath at the king. Her conduct grew inseparable in

his mind from the king's deeds. The sufferings, the fierce irony, the

very deaths of the men surrounding him in aims, rose up in accusation

against the woman he loved.

CHAPTER XXXI

EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR

THE TREACHERY OF PERICLES--THE WHITE UMBRELLA--THE DEATH OF RINALDO

GUIDASCARPI

The king crossed the Mincio. The Marshal, threatened on his left flank,

drew in his line from the farther Veronese heights upon a narrowed

battle front before Verona. Here they manoeuvred, and the opening

successes fell to the king. Holding Peschiera begirt, with one sharp

passage of arms he cleared the right bank of the Adige and stood on the

semicircle of hills, master of the main artery into Tyrol.

The village of Pastrengo has given its name to the day. It was a day of

intense heat coming after heavy rains. The arid soil steamed; the white

powder-smoke curled in long horizontal columns across the hazy ring of

the fight. Seen from a distance it was like a huge downy ball, kicked

this way and that between the cypresses by invisible giants. A pair of

eager-eyed women gazing on a battle-field for the first time could but

ask themselves in bewilderment whether the fate of countries were verily

settled in such a fashion. Far in the rear, Vittoria and Laura heard the

cannon-shots; a sullen dull sound, as of a mallet striking upon rotten

timber. They drove at speed. The great thumps became varied by musketry

volleys, that were like blocks of rockboulder tumbled in the roll of

a mountain torrent. These, then, were the voices of Italy and Austria

speaking the devilish tongue of the final alternative. Cannon, rockets,

musketry, and now the run of drums, now the ring of bugles, now the

tramp of horses, and the field was like a landslip. A joyful bright

black death-wine seemed to pour from the bugles all about. The women

strained their senses to hear and see; they could realize nothing of

a reality so absolute; their feelings were shattered, and crowded over

them in patches;--horror, glory, panic, hope, shifted lights within

their bosoms. The fascination and repulsion of the image of Force

divided them. They feared; they were prostrate; they sprang in praise.

The image of Force was god and devil to their souls. They strove to

understand why the field was marked with blocks of men who made a plume

of vapour here, and hurried thither. The action of their intellects

resolved to a blank marvel at seeing an imminent thing--an interrogation

to almighty heaven treated with method, not with fury streaming forward.

Cleave the opposing ranks! Cry to God for fire? Cut them through! They

had come to see the Song of Deborah performed before their eyes, and

they witnessed only a battle. Blocks of infantry gathered densely,

thinned to a line, wheeled in column, marched: blocks of cavalry changed

posts: artillery bellowed from one spot and quickly selected another.

Infantry advanced in the wake of tiny smokepuffs, halted, advanced

again, rattled files of shots, became struck into knots, faced half

about as from a blow of the back of a hand, retired orderly. Cavalry

curved like a flickering scimetar in their rear; artillery plodded to

its further station. Innumerable tiny smoke-puffs then preceded a fresh

advance of infantry. The enemy were on the hills and looked mightier,

for they were revealed among red flashes of their guns, and stood partly

visible above clouds of hostile smoke and through clouds of their own,

which grasped viscously by the skirts of the hills. Yet it seemed a

strife of insects, until, one by one, soldiers who had gone into yonder

white pit for the bloody kiss of death, and had got it on their faces,

were borne by Vittoria and Laura knelt in this horrid stream of mortal

anguish to give succour from their stores in the carriage. Their

natural emotions were distraught. They welcomed the sight of suffering

thankfully, for the poor blotted faces were so glad at sight of them.

Torture was their key to the reading of the battle. They gazed on the

field no longer, but let the roaring wave of combat wash up to them what

it would.

The hill behind Pastrengo was twice stormed. When the bluecoats first

fell back, a fine charge of Piedmontese horse cleared the slopes for a

second effort, and they went up and on, driving the enemy from hill to

hill. The Adige was crossed by the Austrians under cover of Tyrolese

rifleshots.

Then, with Beppo at their heels, bearing water, wine, and brandy, the

women walked in the paths of carnage, and saw the many faces of death.

Laura whispered strangely, “How light-hearted they look!” The wounded

called their comforters sweet names. Some smoked and some sang,

some groaned; all were quick to drink. Their jokes at the dead were

universal. They twisted their bodies painfully to stick a cigar between

dead lips, and besprinkle them with the last drops of liquor in their

cups, laughing a benediction. These scenes put grievous chains on

Vittoria's spirit, but Laura evidently was not the heavier for them.

Glorious Verona shone under the sunset as their own to come; Peschiera,

on the blue lake, was in the hollow of their hands. “Prizes worth any

quantity of blood,” said Laura. Vittoria confessed that she had seen

enough of blood, and her aspect provoked Laura to utter, “For God's

sake, think of something miserable;--cry, if you can!”

Vittoria's underlip dropped sickly with the question, “Why?”

Laura stated the physical necessity with Italian naivete.

“If I can,” said Vittoria, and blinked to get a tear; but laughter

helped as well to relieve her, and it came on their return to the

carriage. They found the spy Luigi sitting beside the driver. He

informed them that Antonio-Pericles had been in the track of the army

ever since their flight from Turin; daily hurrying off with whip of

horses at the sound of cannon-shot, and gradually stealing back to the

extreme rear. This day he had flown from Oliosi to Cavriani, and was,

perhaps, retracing his way already as before, on fearful toe-tips. Luigi

acted the caution of one who stepped blindfolded across hot iron plates.

Vittoria, without a spark of interest, asked why the Signor Antonio

should be following the army.

“Why, it's to find you, signorina.”

Luigi's comical emphasis conjured up in a jumbled picture the devotion,

the fury, the zeal, the terror of Antonio-Pericles--a mixture of

demoniacal energy and ludicrous trepidation. She imagined his long

figure, fantastical as a shadow, off at huge strides, and back, with

eyes sliding swiftly to the temples, and his odd serpent's head raised

to peer across the plains and occasionally to exclaim to the reasonable

heavens in anger at men and loathing of her. She laughed ungovernably.

Luigi exclaimed that, albeit in disgrace with the signor Antonio, he

had been sent for to serve him afresh, and had now been sent forward to

entreat the gracious signorina to grant her sincerest friend and adorer

an interview. She laughed at Pericles, but in truth she almost loved the

man for his worship of her Art, and representation of her dear peaceful

practice of it.

The interview between them took place at Oliosi. There, also, she met

Georgiana Ford, the half-sister of Merthyr Powys, who told her that

Merthyr and Augustus Gambier were in the ranks of a volunteer contingent

in the king's army, and might have been present at Pastrengo. Georgiana

held aloof from battle-fields, her business being simply to serve as

Merthyr's nurse in case of wounds, or to see the last of him in case

of death. She appeared to have no enthusiasm. She seconded strongly the

vehement persuasions addressed by Pericles to Vittoria. Her disapproval

of the presence of her sex on fields of battle was precise. Pericles had

followed the army to give Vittoria one last chance, he said, and drag

her away from this sick country, as he called it, pointing at the dusty

land from the windows of the inn. On first seeing her he gasped like

one who has recovered a lost thing. To Laura he was a fool; but Vittoria

enjoyed his wildest outbursts, and her half-sincere humility encouraged

him to think that he had captured her at last. He enlarged on the perils

surrounding her voice in dusty bellowing Lombardy, and on the ardour

of his friendship in exposing himself to perils as tremendous, that he

might rescue her. While speaking he pricked a lively ear for the noise

of guns, hearing a gun in everything, and jumping to the window with

horrid imprecations. His carriage was horsed at the doors below. Let

the horses die, he said, let the coachman have sun-stroke. Let

hundreds perish, if Vittoria would only start in an hour-in

two--to-night--to-morrow.

“Because, do you see,”--he turned to Laura and Georgiana, submitting to

the vexatious necessity of seeming reasonable to these creatures,--“she

is a casket for one pearl. It is only one, but it is ONE, mon Dieu! and

inscrutable heaven, mesdames, has made the holder of it mad. Her voice

has but a sole skin; it is not like a body; it bleeds to death at a

scratch. A spot on the pearl, and it is perished--pfoof! Ah, cruel

thing! impious, I say. I have watched, I have reared her. Speak to me

of mothers! I have cherished her for her splendid destiny--to see it go

down, heels up, among quarrels of boobies! Yes; we have war in Italy.

Fight! Fight in this beautiful climate that you may be dominated by a

blue coat, not by a white coat. We are an intelligent race; we are a

civilized people; we will fight for that. What has a voice of the very

heavens to do with your fighting? I heard it first in England, in

a firwood, in a month of Spring, at night-time, fifteen miles and a

quarter from the city of London--oh, city of peace! Sandra you will come

there. I give you thousands additional to the sum stipulated. You have

no rival. Sandra Belloni! no rival, I say”--he invoked her in English,

“and you hear--you, to be a draggle-tail vivandiere wiz a brandy-bottle

at your hips and a reputation going like ze brandy. Ah! pardon,

mesdames; but did mankind ever see a frenzy like this girl's? Speak,

Sandra. I could cry it like Michiella to Camilla--Speak!”

Vittoria compelled him to despatch his horses to stables. He had relays

of horses at war-prices between Castiglione and Pavia, and a retinue

of servants; nor did he hesitate to inform the ladies that, before

entrusting his person to the hazards of war, he had taken care to be

provided with safe-conduct passes for both armies, as befitted a prudent

man of peace--“or sense; it is one, mesdames.”

Notwithstanding his terror at the guns, and disgust at the soldiery and

the bad fare at the inn, Vittoria's presence kept him lingering in

this wretched place, though he cried continually, “I shall have

heart-disease.” He believed at first that he should subdue her; then it

became his intention to carry her off.

It was to see Merthyr that she remained. Merthyr came there the day

after the engagement at Santa Lucia. They had not met since the days at

Meran. He was bronzed, and keen with strife, and looked young, but spoke

not over-hopefully. He scolded her for wishing to taste battle, and

compared her to a bad swimmer on deep shores. Pericles bounded with

delight to hear him, and said he had not supposed there was so much

sense in Powys. Merthyr confessed that the Austrians had as good as

beaten them at Santa Lucia. The tactical combinations of the Piedmontese

were wretched. He was enamoured of the gallantly of the Duke of Savoy,

who had saved the right wing of the army from rout while covering the

backward movement. Why there had been any fight at all at Santa Lucia,

where nothing was to be gained, much to be lost, he was incapable of

telling; but attributed it to an antique chivalry on the part of the

king, that had prompted the hero to a trial of strength, a bout of

blood-letting.

“You do think he is a hero?” said Vittoria.

“He is; and he will march to Venice.”

“And open the opera at Venice,” Pericles sneered. “Powys, mon cher,

cure her of this beastly dream. It is a scandal to you to want a woman's

help. You were defeated at Santa Lucia. I say bravo to anything that

brings you to reason. Bravo! You hear me.”

The engagement at Santa Lucia was designed by the king to serve as an

instigating signal for the Veronese to rise in revolt; and this was the

secret of Charles Albert's stultifying manoeuvres between Peschiera

and Mantua. Instead of matching his military skill against the wary old

Marshal's, he was offering incentives to conspiracy. Distrusting the

revolution, which was a force behind him, he placed such reliance on its

efforts in his front as to make it the pivot of his actions.

“The volunteers North-east of Vicenza are doing the real work for us,

I believe,” said Merthyr; and it seemed so then, as it might have been

indeed, had they not been left almost entirely to themselves to do it.

These tidings of a fight lost set Laura and Vittoria quivering with

nervous irritation. They had been on the field of Pastrengo, and it was

won. They had been absent from Santa Lucia. What was the deduction? Not

such as reason would have made for them; but they were at the mercy of

the currents of the blood. “Let us go on,” said Laura. Merthyr refused

to convoy them. Pericles drove with him an hour on the road, and

returned in glee, to find Vittoria and Laura seated in their carriage,

and Luigi scuffling with Beppo.

“Padrone, see how I assist you,” cried Luigi.

Upon this Beppo instantly made a swan's neck of his body and trumpeted:

“A sally from the fortress for forage.”

“Whip! whip!” Pericles shouted to his coachman, and the two carriages

parted company at the top of their speed.

Pericles fell a victim to a regiment of bersaglieri that wanted horses,

and unceremoniously stopped his pair and took possession of them on the

route for Peschiera. He was left in a stranded carriage between a dusty

ditch and a mulberry bough. Vittoria and Laura were not much luckier.

They were met by a band of deserters, who made no claim upon the horses,

but stood for drink, and having therewith fortified their fine opinion

of themselves, petitioned for money. A kiss was their next demand. Money

and good humour saved the women from indignity. The band of rascals went

off with a 'Viva l'Italia.' Such scum is upon every popular rising, as

Vittoria had to learn. Days of rain and an incomprehensible inactivity

of the royal army kept her at a miserable inn, where the walls were

bare, the cock had crowed his last. The guns of Peschiera seemed to roam

over the plain like an echo unwillingly aroused that seeks a hollow for

its further sleep. Laura sat pondering for hours, harsh in manner, as if

she hated her. “I think,” she said once, “that women are those persons

who have done evil in another world:” The “why?” from Vittoria was

uttered simply to awaken friendly talk, but Laura relapsed into her

gloom. A village priest, a sleek gentle creature, who shook his head

to earth when he hoped, and filled his nostrils with snuff when he

desponded, gave them occasional companionship under the title of

consolation. He wished the Austrians to be beaten, remarking, however,

that they were good Catholics, most fervent Catholics. As the Lord

decided, so it would end! “Oh, delicious creed!” Laura broke out: “Oh,

dear and sweet doctrine! that results and developments in a world where

there is more evil than good are approved by heaven.” She twisted

the mild man in supple steel of her irony so tenderly that Vittoria

marvelled to hear her speak of him in abhorrence when they quitted

the village. “Not to be born a woman, and voluntarily to be a woman!”

ejaculated Laura. “How many, how many are we to deduct from the male

population of Italy? Cross in hand, he should be at the head of our

arms, not whimpering in a corner for white bread. Wretch! he makes the

marrow in my bones rage at him. He chronicled pig that squeaked.”

“Why had she been so gentle with him?”

“Because, my dear, when I loathe a thing I never care to exhaust my

detestation before I can strike it,” said the true Italian.

They were on the field of Goito; it was won. It was won against odds.

At Pastrengo they witnessed an encounter; this was a battle. Vittoria

perceived that there was the difference between a symphony and a lyric

song. The blessedness of the sensation that death can be light and easy

dispossessed her of the meaner compassion, half made up of cowardice,

which she had been nearly borne down by on the field of Pastrengo. At

an angle on a height off the left wing of the royal army the face of

the battle was plain to her: the movements of the troops were clear as

strokes on a slate. Laura flung her life into her eyes, and knelt and

watched, without summing one sole thing from what her senses received.

Vittoria said, “We are too far away to understand it.”

“No,” said Laura, “we are too far away to feel it.”

The savage soul of the woman was robbed of its share of tragic emotion

by having to hold so far aloof. Flashes of guns were but flashes of guns

up there where she knelt. She thirsted to read the things written by

them; thirsted for their mystic terrors, somewhat as souls of great

prophets have craved for the full revelation of those fitful underlights

which inspired their mouths.

Charles Albert's star was at its highest when the Piedmontese drums beat

for an advance of the whole line at Goito.

Laura stood up, white as furnace-fire. “Women can do some good by

praying,” she said. She believed that she had been praying. That was her

part in the victory.

Rain fell as from the forehead of thunder. From black eve to black dawn

the women were among dead and dying men, where the lanterns trailed a

slow flame across faces that took the light and let it go. They returned

to their carriage exhausted. The ways were almost impassable for

carriage-wheels. While they were toiling on and exchanging their

drenched clothes, Vittoria heard Merthyr's voice speaking to Beppo on

the box. He was saying that Captain Gambier lay badly wounded; brandy

was wanted for him. She flung a cloak over Laura, and handed out the

flask with a naked arm. It was not till she saw him again that she

remembered or even felt that he had kissed the arm. A spot of sweet fire

burned on it just where the soft fulness of a woman's arm slopes to the

bend. He chid her for being on the field and rejoiced in a breath, for

the carriage and its contents helped to rescue his wounded brother

in arms from probable death. Gambier, wounded in thigh and ankle by

rifle-shot, was placed in the carriage. His clothes were saturated with

the soil of Goito; but wounded and wet, he smiled gaily, and talked

sweet boyish English. Merthyr gave the driver directions to wind along

up the Mincio. “Georgiana will be at the nearest village--she has an

instinct for battle-fields, or keeps spies in her pay,” he said.

“Tell her I am safe. We march to cut them (the enemy) off from Verona,

and I can't leave. The game is in our hands. We shall give you Venice.”

Georgiana was found at the nearest village. Gambier's wounds had been

dressed by an army-surgeon. She looked at the dressing, and said that it

would do for six hours. This singular person had fully qualified herself

to attend on a soldier-brother. She had studied medicine for that

purpose, and she had served as nurse in a London hospital. Her nerves

were completely under control. She could sit in attendance by a sick-bed

for hours, hearing distant cannon, and the brawl of soldiery and

vagabonds in the street, without a change of countenance. Her dress

was plain black from throat to heel, with a skull cap of white, like

a Moravian sister. Vittoria reverenced her; but Georgiana's manner in

return was cold aversion, so much more scornful than disdain that it

offended Laura, who promptly put her finger on the blot in the fair

character with the word 'Jealousy;' but a single word is too broad a

mark to be exactly true. “She is a perfect example of your English,”

Laura said. “Brave, good, devoted, admirable--ice at the heart. The

judge of others, of course. I always respected her; I never liked her;

and I should be afraid of a comparison with her. Her management of the

household of this inn is extraordinary.”

Georgiana condescended to advise Vittoria once more not to dangle after

armies.

“I wish to wait here to assist you in nursing our friend,” said

Vittoria.

Georgiana replied that her strength was unlikely to fail.

After two days of incessant rain, sunshine blazed over 'the watery

Mantuan flats. Laura drove with Beppo to see whether the army was in

motion, for they were distracted by rumours. Vittoria clung to her

wounded friend, whose pleasure was the hearing her speak. She expected

Laura's return by set of sun. After dark a messenger came to her, saying

that the signora had sent a carriage to fetch her to Valeggio. Her

immediate supposition was that Merthyr might have fallen. She found

Luigi at the carriage-door, and listened to his mysterious directions

and remarks that not a minute must be lost, without suspicion. He said

that the signora was in great trouble, very anxious to see the signorina

instantly; there was but a distance of five miles to traverse.

She thought it strange that the carriage should be so luxuriously fitted

with lights and silken pillows, but her ideas were all of Merthyr, until

she by chance discovered a packet marked I chocolate, which told her at

once that she was entrapped by Antonio-Pericles. Luigi would not answer

her cry to him. After some fruitless tremblings of wrath, she lay back

relieved by the feeling that Merthyr was safe, come what might come to

herself. Things could lend to nothing but an altercation with Pericles,

and for this scene she prepared her mind. The carriage stopped while she

was dozing. Too proud to supplicate in the darkness, she left it to

the horses to bear her on, reserving her energies for the morning's

interview, and saying, “The farther he takes me the angrier I shall be.”

She dreamed of her anger while asleep, but awakened so frequently during

the night that morning was at her eyelids before they divided. To

her amazement, she saw the carriage surrounded by Austrian troopers.

Pericles was spreading cigars among them, and addressing them affably.

The carriage was on a good road, between irrigated flats, that flashed

a lively green and bright steel blue for miles away. She drew down the

blinds to cry at leisure; her wings were clipped, and she lost heart.

Pericles came round to her when the carriage had drawn up at an inn.

He was egregiously polite, but modestly kept back any expressions of

triumph. A body of Austrians, cavalry and infantry, were breaking

camp. Pericles accorded her an hour of rest. She perceived that he was

anticipating an outbreak of the anger she had nursed overnight, and

baffled him so far by keeping dumb. Luigi was sent up to her to announce

the expiration of her hour of grace.

“Ah, Luigi!” she said. “Signorina, only wait, and see how Luigi can

serve two,” he whispered, writhing under the reproachfulness of her

eyes. At the carriage-door she asked Pericles whither he was taking her.

“Not to Turin, not to London, Sandra Belloni!” he replied; “not to a

place where you are wet all night long, to wheeze for ever after it. Go

in.” She entered the carriage quickly, to escape from staring officers,

whose laughter rang in her ears and humbled her bitterly; she felt

herself bringing dishonour on her lover. The carriage continued in the

track of the Austrians. Pericles was audibly careful to avoid the border

regiments. He showered cigars as he passed; now and then he exhibited

a paper; and on one occasion he brought a General officer to the

carriage-door, opened it and pointed in. A white-helmeted dragoon rode

on each side of the carriage for the remainder of the day. The delight

of the supposition that these Austrians were retreating before the

invincible arms of King Carlo Alberto kept her cheerful; but she heard

no guns in the rear. A blocking of artillery and waggons compelled a

halt, and then Pericles came and faced her. He looked profoundly ashamed

of himself, ready as he was for an animated defence of his proceedings.

“Where are you taking me, sir?” she said in English.

“Sandra, will you be a good child? It is anywhere you please, if you

will promise--”

“I will promise nothing.”

“Zen, I lock you up in Verona.”

“In Verona!”

“Sandra, will you promise to me?”

“I will promise nothing.”

“Zen I lock you up in Verona. It is settled. No more of it. I come to

say, we shall not reach a village. I am sorry. We have soldiers for

a guard. You draw out a board and lodge in your carriage as in a bed.

Biscuits, potted meats, prunes, bon-bona, chocolate, wine--you shall

find all at your right hand and your left. I am desolate in offending

you. Sandra, if you will promise--”

“I will promise--this is what I will promise,” said Vittoria.

Pericles thrust his ear forward, and withdrew it as if it had been

slapped.

She promised to run from him at the first opportunity, to despise him

ever after, and never to sing again in his hearing. With the darkness

Luigi appeared to light her lamp; he mouthed perpetually, “To-morrow,

to-morrow.” The watch-fires of Austrians encamped in the fields

encircled her; and moving up and down, the cigar of Antonio-Pericles was

visible. He had not eaten or drunk, and he was out there sleepless; he

walked conquering his fears in the thick of war troubles: all for her

sake. She watched critically to see whether the cigar-light was

puffed in fretfulness. It burned steadily; and the thought of Pericles

supporting patience quite overcame her. In a fit of humour that was

almost tears, she called to him and begged him to take a place in the

carriage and have food. “If it is your pleasure,” he said; and threw off

his cloak. The wine comforted him. Thereupon he commenced a series of

strange gesticulations, and ended by blinking at the window, saying,

“No, no; it is impossible to explain. I have no voice; I am not, gifted.

It is,” he tapped at his chest, “it is here. It is, imprisoned in me.”

“What?” said Vittoria, to encourage him.

“It can never be explained, my child. Am I not respectful to you? Am I

not worshipful to you? But, no! it can never be explained. Some do call

me mad. I know it; I am laughed at. Oh! do I not know zat? Perfectly

well. My ancestors adored Goddesses. I discover ze voice of a Goddess:

I adore it. So you call me mad; it is to me what you call me--juste ze

same. I am possessed wiz passion for her voice. So it will be till I go

to ashes. It is to me ze one zsing divine in a pig, a porpoise world. It

is to me--I talk! It is unutterable--impossible to tell.”

“But I understand it; I know you must feel it,” said Vittoria.

“But you hate me, Sandra. You hate your Pericles.”

“No, I do not; you are my good friend, my good Pericles.”

“I am your good Pericles? So you obey me?”

“In what?”

“You come to London?”

“I shall not.”

“You come to Turin?”

“I cannot promise.”

“To Milan?”

“No; not yet.”

“Ungrateful little beast! minx! temptress! You seduce me into your

carriage to feed me, to fill me, for to coax me,” cried Pericles.

“Am I the person to have abuse poured on me?” Vittoria rejoined, and

she frowned. “Might I not have called you a wretched whimsical

money-machine, without the comprehension of a human feeling? You are

doing me a great wrong--to win my submission, as I see, and it half

amuses me; but the pretence of an attempt to carry me off from my

friends is an offence that I should take certain care to punish in

another. I do not give you any promise, because the first promise of

all--the promise to keep one--is not in my power. Shut your eyes and

sleep where you are, and in the morning think better of your conduct!”

“Of my conduct, mademoiselle!” Pericles retained this sentence in his

head till the conclusion of her animated speech,--“of my conduct I judge

better zan to accept of such a privilege as you graciously offer to me;”

and he retired with a sour grin, very much subdued by her unexpected

capacity for expression. The bugles of the Austrians were soon ringing.

There was a trifle of a romantic flavour in the notes which Vittoria

tried not to feel; the smart iteration of them all about her rubbed it

off, but she was reduced to repeat them, and take them in various keys.

This was her theme for the day.

They were in the midst of mulberries, out of sight of the army; green

mulberries, and the green and the bronze young vine-leaf. It was a

delicious day, but she began to fear that she was approaching Verona,

and that Pericles was acting seriously. The bronze young vine-leaf

seemed to her like some warrior's face, as it would look when beaten by

weather, burned by the sun. They came now to inns which had been visited

by both armies. Luigi established communication with the innkeepers

before the latter had stated the names of villages to Pericles, who

stood map in hand, believing himself at last to be no more conscious of

his position than an atom in a whirl of dust. Vittoria still refused to

give him any promise, and finally, on a solitary stretch of the road, he

appealed to her mercy. She was the mistress of the carriage, he said;

he had never meant to imprison her in Verona; his behaviour was simply

dictated by his adoration--alas! This was true or not true, but it was

certain that the ways were confounded to them. Luigi, despatched

to reconnoitre from a neighbouring eminence, reported a Piedmontese

encampment far ahead, and a walking tent that was coming on their route.

The walking tent was an enormous white umbrella. Pericles advanced to

meet it; after an interchange of opening formalities, he turned about

and clapped hands. The umbrella was folded. Vittoria recognized the last

man she would then have thought of meeting; he seemed to have jumped out

of an ambush from Meran in Tyrol:--it was Wilfrid. Their greeting was

disturbed by the rushing up of half-a-dozen troopers. The men claimed

him as an Austrian spy. With difficulty Vittoria obtained leave to drive

him on to their commanding officer. It appeared that the white umbrella

was notorious for having been seen on previous occasions threading the

Piedmontese lines into and out of Peschiera. These very troopers swore

to it; but they could not swear to Wilfrid, and white umbrellas were not

absolutely uncommon. Vittoria declared that Wilfrid was an old English

friend; Pericles vowed that Wilfrid was one of their party. The prisoner

was clearly an Englishman. As it chanced, the officer before whom

Wilfrid was taken had heard Vittoria sing on the great night at La

Scala. “Signorina, your word should pass the Austrian Field-Marshal

himself,” he said, and merely requested Wilfrid to state on his word

of honour that he was not in the Austrian service, to which Wilfrid

unhesitatingly replied, “I am not.”

Permission was then accorded to him to proceed in the carriage.

Vittoria held her hand to Wilfrid. He took the fingers and bowed over

them.

He was perfectly self-possessed, and cool even under her eyes. Like

a pedlar he carried a pack on his back, which was his life; for his

business was a combination of scout and spy.

“You have saved me from a ditch to-day,” he said; “every fellow has some

sort of love for his life, and I must thank you for the odd luck of your

coming by. I knew you were on this ground somewhere. If the rascals had

searched me, I should not have come off so well. I did not speak falsely

to that officer; I am not in the Austrian service. I am a volunteer spy.

I am an unpaid soldier. I am the dog of the army--fetching and carrying

for a smile and a pat on the head. I am ruined, and I am working my way

up as best I can. My uncle disowns me. It is to General Schoneck that

I owe this chance of re-establishing myself. I followed the army out

of Milan. I was at Melegnano, at Pastrengo, at Santa Lucia. If I get

nothing for it, the Lenkensteins at least shall not say that I abandoned

the flag in adversity. I am bound for Rivoli. The fortress (Peschiera)

has just surrendered. The Marshal is stealing round to make a dash on

Vicenza.” So far he spoke like one apart from her, but a flush crossed

his forehead. “I have not followed you. I have obeyed your brief

directions. I saw this carriage yesterday in the ranks of our troops. I

saw Pericles. I guessed who might be inside it. I let it pass me. Could

I do more?”

“Not if you wanted to punish me,” said Vittoria.

She was afflicted by his refraining from reproaches in his sunken state.

Their talk bordered the old life which they had known, like a rivulet,

coming to falls where it threatens to be e, torrent and a flood; like

flame bubbling the wax of a seal. She was surprised to find herself

expecting tenderness from him: and, startled by the languor in her

veins, she conceived a contempt for her sex and her own weak nature. To

mask that, an excessive outward coldness was assumed. “You can serve as

a spy, Wilfrid!”

The answer was ready: “Having twice served as a traitor, I need not be

particular. It is what my uncle and the Lenkensteins call me. I do my

best to work my way up again. Despise me for it, if you please.”

On the contrary, she had never respected him so much. She got herself

into opposition to him by provoking him to speak with pride of his army;

but the opposition was artificial, and she called to Carlo Ammiani in

heart. “I will leave these places, cover up my head, and crouch till the

struggle is decided.”

The difficulty was now to be happily rid of Wilfrid by leaving him in

safety. Piedmontese horse scoured the neighbourhood, and any mischance

that might befall him she traced to her hand. She dreaded at every

instant to hear him speak of his love for her; yet how sweet it would

have been to hear it,--to hear him speak of passionate love; to shape

it in deep music; to hear one crave for what she gave to another! “I am

sinking: I am growing degraded,” she thought. But there was no other way

for her to quicken her imagination of her distant and offended lover.

The sights on the plains were strange contrasts to these conflicting

inner emotions: she seemed to be living in two divided worlds.

Pericles declared anew that she was mistress of the carriage. She issued

orders: “The nearest point to Rivoli, and then to Brescia.”

Pericles broke into shouts. “She has arrived at her reason! Hurrah for

Brescia! I beheld you,” he confessed to Wilfrid,--“it was on ze right

of Mincio, my friend. I did not know you were so true for Art, or what

a hand I would have reached to you! Excuse me now. Let us whip on. I

am your banker. I shall desire you not to be shot or sabred. You are

deserving of an effigy on a theatral grand stair-case!” His gratitude

could no further express itself. In joy he whipped the horses on. Fools

might be fighting--he was the conqueror. From Brescia, one leap took

him in fancy to London. He composed mentally a letter to be forwarded

immediately to a London manager, directing him to cause the appearance

of articles in the journals on the grand new prima donna, whose singing

had awakened the people of Italy.

Another day brought them in view of the Lago di Garda. The flag of

Sardinia hung from the walls of Peschiera. And now Vittoria saw the

Pastrengo hills--dear hills, that drove her wretched languor out of her,

and made her soul and body one again. The horses were going at a gallop.

Shots were heard. To the left of them, somewhat in the rear, on higher

ground, there was an encounter of a body of Austrians and Italians:

Tyrolese riflemen and the volunteers. Pericles was raving. He refused

to draw the reins till they had reached the village, where one of the

horses dropped. From the windows of the inn, fronting a clear space,

Vittoria beheld a guard of Austrians surrounding two or more prisoners.

A woman sat near them with her head buried in her lap. Presently an

officer left the door of the inn and spoke to the soldiers. “That is

Count Karl von Lenkenstein,” Wilfrid said in a whisper. Pericles had

been speaking with Count Karl and came up to the room, saying, “We

are to observe something; but we are safe; it is only fortune of war.”

Wilfrid immediately went out to report himself. He was seen giving his

papers, after which Count Karl waved his finger back to the inn, and he

returned. Vittoria sprang to her feet at the words he uttered. Rinaldo

Guidascarpi was one of the prisoners. The others Wilfrid professed not

to know. The woman was the wife of Barto Rizzo.

In the great red of sunset the Tyrolese riflemen and a body of Italians

in Austrian fatigue uniform marched into the village. These formed in

the space before the inn. It seemed as if Count Karl were declaiming an

indictment. A voice answered, “I am the man.” It was clear and straight

as a voice that goes up in the night. Then a procession walked some

paces on. The woman followed. She fell prostrate at the feet of Count

Karl. He listened to her and nodded. Rinaldo Guidascarpi stood alone

with bandaged eyes. The woman advanced to him; she put her mouth on his

ear; there she hung.

Vittoria heard a single shot. Rinaldo Guidascarpi lay stretched upon the

ground and the woman stood over him.

CHAPTER XXXIII

EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR

COUNT KARL LENKENSTEIN--THE STORY OF THE GUIDASCARPI--THE VICTORY OF THE

VOLUNTEERS

The smoke of a pistol-shot thinned away while there was yet silence.

“It is a saving of six charges of Austrian ammunition,” said Pericles.

Vittoria stared at the scene, losing faith in her eyesight. She could in

fact see no distinct thing beyond what appeared as an illuminated copper

medallion, held at a great distance from her, with a dead man and a

towering female figure stamped on it.

The events following were like a rush of water on her senses. There was

fighting up the street of the village, and a struggle in the space

where Rinaldo had fallen; successive yellowish shots under the rising

moonlight, cries from Italian lips, quick words of command from German

in Italian, and one sturdy bull's roar of a voice that called across

the tumult to the Austro-Italian soldiery, “Venite fratelli!--come,

brothers, come under our banner!” She heard “Rinaldo!” called.

This was a second attack of the volunteers for the rescue of their

captured comrades. They fought more desperately than on the hill outside

the village: they fought with steel. Shot enfiladed them; yet they bore

forward in a scattered body up to that spot where Rinaldo lay, shouting

for him. There they turned,--they fled.

Then there was a perfect stillness, succeeding the strife as quickly,

Vittoria thought, as a breath yielded succeeds a breath taken.

She accused the heavens of injustice.

Pericles, prostrate on the floor, moaned that he was wounded. She said,

“Bleed to death!”

“It is my soul, it is my soul is wounded for you, Sandra.”

“Dreadful craven man!” she muttered.

“When my soul is shaking for your safety, Sandra Belloni!” Pericles

turned his ear up. “For myself--not; it is for you, for you.”

Assured of the cessation of arms by delicious silence he jumped to his

feet.

“Ah! brutes to fight. It is 'immonde;' it is unnatural!”

He tapped his finger on the walls for marks of shot, and discovered a

shot-hole in the wood-work, that had passed an arm's length above

her head, into which he thrust his finger in an intense speculative

meditation, shifting eyes from it to her, and throwing them aloft.

He was summoned to the presence of Count Karl, with whom he found

Captain Weisspriess, Wilfrid, and officers of jagers and the Italian

battalion. Barto Rizzo's wife was in a corner of the room. Weisspriess

met him with a very civil greeting, and introduced him to Count Karl,

who begged him to thank Vittoria for the aid she had afforded to General

Schoneck's emissary in crossing the Piedmontese lines. He spoke in

Italian. He agreed to conduct Pericles to a point on the route of his

march, where Pericles and his precious prima donna--“our very good

friend,” he said, jovially--could escape the risk of unpleasant mishaps,

and arrive at Trent and cities of peace by easy stages. He was marching

for the neighbourhood of Vicenza.

A little before dawn Vittoria came down to the carriage. Count Karl

stood at the door to hand her in. He was young and handsome, with a soft

flowing blonde moustache and pleasant eyes, a contrast to his brother

Count Lenkenstein. He repeated his thanks to her, which Pericles had not

delivered; he informed her that she was by no means a prisoner, and was

simply under the guardianship of friends--“though perhaps, signorina,

you will not esteem this gentleman to be one of your friends.” He

pointed to Weisspriess. The officer bowed, but kept aloof. Vittoria

perceived a singular change in him: he had become pale and sedate. “Poor

fellow! he has had his dose,” Count Karl said. “He is, I beg to assure

you, one of your most vehement admirers.”

A piece of her property that flushed her with recollections, yet made

her grateful, was presently handed to her, though not in her old

enemy's presence, by a soldier. It was the silver-hilted dagger,

Carlo's precious gift, of which Weisspriess had taken possession in

the mountain-pass over the vale of Meran, when he fought the duel

with Angelo. Whether intended as a peace-offering, or as a simple

restitution, it helped Vittoria to believe that Weisspriess was no

longer the man he had been.

The march was ready, but Barto Rizzo's wife refused to move a foot. The

officers consulted. She, was brought before them. The soldiers swore

with jesting oaths that she had been carefully searched for weapons, and

only wanted a whipping. “She must have it,” said Weisspriess. Vittoria

entreated that she might have a place beside her in the carriage. “It is

more than I would have asked of you; but if you are not afraid of her,”

said Count Karl, with an apologetic shrug.

Her heart beat fast when she found herself alone with the terrible

woman.

Till then she had never seen a tragic face. Compared with this tawny

colourlessness, this evil brow, this shut mouth, Laura, even on the

battle-field, looked harmless. It was like the face of a dead savage.

The eyeballs were full on Vittoria, as if they dashed at an obstacle,

not embraced an image. In proportion as they seemed to widen about her,

Vittoria shrank. The whole woman was blood to her gaze.

When she was capable of speaking, she said entreatingly:

“I knew his brother.”

Not a sign of life was given in reply.

Companionship with this ghost of broad daylight made the flattering

Tyrolese feathers at both windows a welcome sight.

Precautions had been taken to bind the woman's arms. Vittoria offered to

loosen the cords, but she dared not touch her without a mark of assent.

“I know Angelo Guidascarpi, Rinaldo's brother,” she spoke again.

The woman's nostrils bent inward, as when the breath we draw is keen as

a sword to the heart. Vittoria was compelled to look away from her.

At the mid-day halt Count Karl deigned to justify to her his intended

execution of Rinaldo--the accomplice in the slaying of his brother Count

Paula. He was evidently eager to obtain her good opinion of the Austrian

military. “But for this miserable spirit of hatred against us,” he said,

“I should have espoused an Italian lady;” and he asked, “Why not? For

that matter, in all but blood we Lenkensteins are half Italian, except

when Italy menaces the empire. Can you blame us for then drawing the

sword in earnest?”

He proffered his version of the death of Count Paul. She kept her own

silent in her bosom.

Clelia Guidascarpi, according to his statement, had first been slain by

her brothers. Vittoria believed that Clelia had voluntarily submitted to

death and died by her own hand. She was betrothed to an Italian nobleman

of Bologna, the friend of the brothers. They had arranged the marriage;

she accepted the betrothal. “She loved my brother, poor thing!” said

Count Karl. “She concealed it, and naturally. How could she take a

couple of wolves into her confidence? If she had told the pair of

ruffians that she was plighted to an Austrian, they would have quieted

her at an earlier period. A woman! a girl--signorina! The intolerable

cowardice amazes me. It amazes me that you or anyone can uphold the

character of such brutes. And when she was dead they lured my brother to

the house and slew him; fell upon him with daggers, stretched him at the

foot of her coffin, and then--what then?--ran! ran for their lives. One

has gone to his account. We shall come across the other. He is among

that volunteer party which attacked us yesterday. The body was carried

off by them; it is sufficient testimony that Angelo Guidascarpi is

in the neighbourhood. I should be hunting him now but that I am under

orders to march South-east.”

The story, as Vittoria knew it, had a different, though yet a dreadful,

colour.

“I could have hanged Rinaldo,” Count Karl said further. “I suppose the

rascals feared I should use my right, and that is why they sent their

mad baggage of a woman to spare any damage to the family pride. If I

had been a man to enjoy vengeance, the rope would have swung for him. In

spite of provocation, I shall simply shoot the other; I pledge my word

to it. They shall be paid in coin. I demand no interest.”

Weisspriess prudently avoided her. Wilfrid held aloof. She sat in garden

shade till the bugle sounded. Tyrolese and Italian soldiers were gibing

at her haggard companion when she entered the carriage. Fronting this

dumb creature once more, Vittoria thought of the story of the brothers.

She felt herself reading it from the very page. The woman looked that

evil star incarnate which Laura said they were born under.

This is in brief the story of the Guidascarpi.

They were the offspring of a Bolognese noble house, neither wealthy

nor poor. In her early womanhood, Clelia was left to the care of her

brothers. She declined the guardianship of Countess Ammiani because of

her love for them; and the three, with their passion of hatred to the

Austrians inherited from father and mother, schemed in concert to throw

off the Austrian yoke. Clelia had soft features of no great mark; by her

colouring she was beautiful, being dark along the eyebrows, with dark

eyes, and a surpassing richness of Venetian hair. Bologna and Venice

were married in her aspect. Her brothers conceived her to possess such

force of mind that they held no secrets from her. They did not know that

the heart of their sister was struggling with an image of Power when she

uttered hatred of it. She was in truth a woman of a soft heart, with a

most impressionable imagination.

There were many suitors for the hand of Clelia Guidascarpi, though her

dowry was not the portion of a fat estate. Her old nurse counselled

the brothers that they should consent to her taking a husband. They

fulfilled this duty as one that must be done, and she became sorrowfully

the betrothed of a nobleman of Bologna; from which hour she had no

cheerfulness. The brothers quitted Bologna for Venice, where there was

the bed of a conspiracy. On their return they were shaken by rumours of

their sister's misconduct. An Austrian name was allied to hers in

busy mouths. A lady, their distant relative, whose fame was light, had

withdrawn her from the silent house, and made display of her. Since she

had seen more than an Italian girl should see, the brothers proposed to

the nobleman her betrothed to break the treaty; but he was of a mind to

hurry on the marriage, and recollecting now that she was but a woman,

the brothers fixed a day for her espousals, tenderly, without reproach.

She had the choice of taking the vows or surrendering her hand. Her old

nurse prayed for the day of her espousals to come with a quicker step.

One night she surprised Count Paul Lenkenstein at Clelia's window.

Rinaldo was in the garden below. He moved to the shadow of a cypress,

and was seen moving by the old nurse. The lover took the single kiss he

had come for, was led through the chamber, and passed unchallenged

into the street. Clelia sat between locked doors and darkened windows,

feeling colder to the brothers she had been reared with than to all

other men upon the earth. They sent for her after a lapse of hours. Her

old nurse was kneeling at their feet. Rinaldo asked for the name of her

lover. She answered with it. Angelo said, “It will be better for you

to die: but if you cannot do so easy a thing as that, prepare widow's

garments.” They forced her to write three words to Count Paul, calling

him to her window at midnight. Rinaldo fetched a priest: Angelo laid out

two swords. An hour before the midnight, Clelia's old nurse raised the

house with her cries. Clelia was stretched dead in her chamber. The

brothers kissed her in turn, and sat, one at her head, one at her feet.

At midnight her lover stood among them. He was gravely saluted, and

bidden to look upon the dead body. Angelo said to him, “Had she lived

you should have wedded her hand. She is gone of her own free choice, and

one of us follows her.” With the sweat of anguish on his forehead,

Count Paul drew sword. The window was barred; six male domestics of the

household held high lights in the chamber; the priest knelt beside one

corpse, awaiting the other.

Vittoria's imagination could not go beyond that scene, but she looked

out on the brother of the slain youth with great pity, and with a

strange curiosity. The example given by Clelia of the possible love

of an Italian girl for the white uniform, set her thinking whether so

monstrous a fact could ever be doubled in this world. “Could it happen

to me?” she asked herself, and smiled, as she half-fashioned the words

on her lips, “It is a pretty uniform.”

Her reverie was broken by a hiss of “Traitress!” from the woman

opposite.

She coloured guiltily, tried to speak, and sat trembling. A divination

of intense hatred had perhaps read the thought within her breast: or it

was a mere outburst of hate. The woman's face was like the wearing away

of smoke from a spot whence shot has issued. Vittoria walked for the

remainder of the day. That fearful companion oppressed her. She felt

that one who followed armies should be cast in such a frame, and now

desired with all her heart to render full obedience to Carlo, and abide

in Brescia, or even in Milan--a city she thought of shyly.

The march was hurried to the slopes of the Vicentino, for enemies were

thick in this district. Pericles refused to quit the soldiers, though

Count Karl used persuasion. The young nobleman said to Vittoria, “Be

on your guard when you meet my sister Anna. I tell you, we can be as

revengeful as any of you: but you will exonerate me. I do my duty; I

seek to do no more.”

At an inn that they reached toward evening she saw the innkeeper shoot a

little ball of paper at an Italian corporal, who put his foot on it and

picked it up. The soldier subsequently passed through the ranks of his

comrades, gathering winks and grins. They were to have rested at the

inn, but Count Karl was warned by scouts, which was sufficient to make

Pericles cling to him in avoidance of the volunteers, of whom mainly he

was in terror. He looked ague-stricken. He would not listen to her, or

to reason in any shape. “I am on the sea--shall I trust a boat? I stick

to a ship,” he said. The soldiers marched till midnight. It was arranged

that the carriage should strike off for Schio at dawn. The soldiers

bivouacked on the slope of one of the low undulations falling to the

Vicentino plain. Vittoria spread her cloak, and lay under bare sky, not

suffering the woman to be ejected from the carriage. Hitherto Luigi had

avoided her. Under pretence of doubling Count Karl's cloak as a pillow

for her head, he whispered, “If the signorina hears shots let her lie on

the ground flat as a sheet.” The peacefulness surrounding her precluded

alarm. There was brilliant moonlight, and the host of stars, all dim;

and first they beckoned her up to come away from trouble, and then,

through long gazing, she had the fancy that they bent and swam about

her, making her feel that she lay in the hollows of a warm hushed sea.

She wished for her lover.

Men and officers were lying at a stone's-throw distant. The Tyrolese

had lit a fire for cooking purposes, by which four of them stood, and,

lifting hands, sang one of their mountain songs, that seemed to her to

spring like clear water into air, and fall wavering as a feather falls,

or the light about a stone in water. It lulled her to a half-sleep,

during which she fancied hearing a broad imitation of a cat's-call from

the mountains, that was answered out of the camp, and a talk of officers

arose in connection with the response, and subsided. The carriage was

in the shadows of the fire. In a little while Luigi and the driver began

putting the horses to, and she saw Count Karl and Weisspriess go up

to Luigi, who declared loudly that it was time. The woman inside was

aroused. Weisspriess helped to drag her out. Luigi kept making much

noise, and apologized for it by saying that he desired to awaken

his master, who was stretched in a secure circle among the Tyrolese.

Presently Vittoria beheld the woman's arms thrown out free; the next

minute they were around the body of Weisspriess, and a shrewd cry issued

from Count Karl. Shots rang from the outposts; the Tyrolese sprang to

arms; “Sandra!” was shouted by Pericles; and once more she heard the

'Venite fratelli!' of the bull's voice, and a stream of volunteers

dashed at the Tyrolese with sword and dagger and bayonet. The

Austro-Italians stood in a crescent line--the ominous form of incipient

military insubordination. Their officers stormed at them, and called for

Count Karl and for Weisspriess. The latter replied like a man stifling,

but Count Karl's voice was silent.

“Weisspriess! here, to me!” the captain sang out in Italian.

“Ammiani! here, to me!” was replied.

Vittoria struck her hands together in electrical gladness at her lover's

voice and name. It rang most cheerfully. Her home was in the conflict

where her lover fought, and she muttered with ecstasy, “We have met!

we have met!” The sound of the keen steel, so exciting to dream of,

paralyzed her nerves in a way that powder, more terrible for a woman's

imagination, would not have done, and she could only feebly advance. It

was a spacious moonlight, but the moonlight appeared to have got of a

brassy hue to her eyes, though the sparkle of the steel was white; and

she felt too, and wondered at it, that the cries and the noise went to

her throat, as if threatening to choke her. Very soon she found herself

standing there, watching for the issue of the strife, almost as dead as

a weight in scales, incapable of clear vision.

Matched against the Tyrolese alone, the volunteers had an equal fight

in point of numbers, and the advantage of possessing a leader; for Count

Karl was down, and Weisspriess was still entangled in the woman's arms.

When at last Wilfrid got him free, the unsupported Tyrolese were giving

ground before Carlo Ammiani and his followers. These fought with stern

fury, keeping close up to their enemy, rarely shouting. They presented

something like the line of a classic bow, with its arrow-head; while the

Tyrolese were huddled in groups, and clubbed at them, and fell back for

space, and ultimately crashed upon their betraying brothers in arms,

swinging rifles and flying. The Austro-Italians rang out a Viva for

Italy, and let them fly: they were swept from the scene.

Vittoria heard her lover addressing his followers. Then he and Angelo

stood over Count Karl, whom she had forgotten. Angelo ran up to her, but

gave place the moment Carlo came; and Carlo drew her by the hand swiftly

to an obscure bend of the rolling ground, and stuck his sword in the

earth, and there put his arms round her and held her fast.

“Obey me now,” were his first words.

“Yes,” she answered.

He was harsh of eye and tongue, not like the gentle youth she had been

torn from at the door of La Scala.

“Return; make your way to Brescia. My mother is in Brescia. Milan is

hateful. I throw myself into Vicenza. Can I trust you to obey?”

“Carlo, what evil have you heard of me?”

“I listen to no tales.”

“Let me follow you to Vicenza and be your handmaid, my beloved.”

“Say that you obey.”

“I have said it.”

He seemed to shut her in his heart, so closely was she enfolded.

“Since La Scala,” she murmured; and he bent his lips to her ear,

whispering, “Not one thought of another woman! and never till I die.”

“And I only of you, Carlo, and for you, my lover, my lover!”

“You love me absolutely?”

“I belong to you.”

“I could be a coward and pray for life to live to hear you say it.”

“I feel I breathe another life when you are away from me.”

“You belong to me; you are my own?”

“You take my voice, beloved.”

“And when I claim you, I am to have you?”

“Am I not in your hands?”

“The very instant I make my claim you will say yes?”

“I shall not have strength for more than to nod.”

Carlo shuddered at the delicious image of her weakness.

“My Sandra! Vittoria, my soul! my bride!”

“O my Carlo! Do you go to Vicenza? And did you know I was among these

people?”

“You will hear everything from little Leone Rufo, who is wounded and

accompanies you to Brescia. Speak of nothing. Speak my name, and look at

me. I deserve two minutes of blessedness.”

“Ah! my dearest, if I am sweet to you, you might have many!”

“No; they begin to hum a reproach at me already, for I must be marching.

Vicenza will soon bubble on a fire, I suspect. Comfort my mother; she

wants a young heart at her elbow. If she is alone, she feeds on every

rumour; other women scatter in emotions what poisons her. And when my

bride is with her, I am between them.”

“Yes, Carlo, I will go,” said Vittoria, seeing her duty at last through

tenderness.

Carlo sprang from her side to meet Angelo, with whom he exchanged some

quick words. The bugle was sounding, and Barto Rizzo audible. Luigi came

to, her, ruefully announcing that the volunteers had sacked the carriage

behaved worse than the Austrians; and that his padrone, the signor

Antonio-Pericles, was off like a gossamer. Angelo induced her to remain

on the spot where she stood till the carriage was seen on the Schio

road, when he led her to it, saying that Carlo had serious work to do.

Count Karl Lenkenstein was lying in the carriage, supported by Wilfrid

and by young Leone Rufo, who sat laughing, with one eye under a

cross-bandage and an arm slung in a handkerchief. Vittoria desired to

wait that she might see her lover once more; but Angelo entreated her

that she should depart, too earnestly to leave her in doubt of there

being good reason for it and for her lover's absence. He pointed to

Wilfrid: “Barto Rizzo captured this man; Carlo has released him. Take

him with you to attend on his superior officer.” She drew Angelo's

observation to the first morning colours over the peaks. He looked up,

and she knew that he remembered that morning of their flight from the

inn. Perhaps he then had the image of his brother in his mind, for the

colours seemed to be plucking at his heart, and he said, “I have lost

him.”

“God help you, my friend!” said Vittoria, her throat choking.

Angelo pointed at the insensible nobleman: “These live. I do not grudge

him his breath or his chances; but why should these men take so much

killing? Weisspriess has risen, as though I struck the blow of a babe.

But we one shot does for us! Nevertheless, signorina,” Angelo smiled

firmly, “I complain of nothing while we march forward.”

He kissed his hand to her, and turned back to his troop. The carriage

was soon under the shadows of the mountains.

CHAPTER XXXIV

EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR THE DEEDS OF BARTO RIZZO--THE MEETING

AT ROVEREDO

At Schio there was no medical attendance to be obtained for Count Karl,

and he begged so piteously to be taken on to Roveredo, that, on his

promising to give Leone Rufo a pass, Vittoria decided to work her way

round to Brescia by the Alpine route. She supposed Pericles to have gone

off among the Tyrolese, and wished in her heart that Wilfrid had gone

likewise, for he continued to wear that look of sad stupefaction which

was the harshest reproach to her. Leone was unconquerably gay in spite

of his wounds. He narrated the doings of the volunteers, with proud

eulogies of Carlo Ammiani's gallant leadership; but the devices of Barto

Rizzo appeared to have struck his imagination most. “He is positively a

cat--a great cat,” Leone said. “He can run a day; he can fast a week;

he can climb a house; he can drop from a crag; and he never lets go his

hold. If he says a thing to his wife, she goes true as a bullet to the

mark. The two make a complete piece of artillery. We are all for Barto,

though our captain Carlo is often enraged with him. But there's no

getting on without him. We have found that.”

Rinaldo and Angelo Guidascarpi and Barto Rizzo had done many daring

feats. They had first, heading about a couple of dozen out of a force

of sixty, endeavoured to surprise the fortress Rocca d'Anfo in Lake

Idro--an insane enterprise that touched on success, and would have been

an achievement had all the men who followed them been made of the same

desperate stuff. Beaten off, they escaped up the Val di Ledro, and

secretly entered Trent, where they hoped to spread revolt, but the

Austrian commandant knew what a quantity of dry wood was in the city,

and stamped his heel on sparks. A revolt was prepared notwithstanding

the proclamation of imprisonment and death. Barto undertook to lead

a troop against the Buon Consiglio barracks, while Angelo and

Rinaldo cleared the ramparts. It chanced, whether from treachery or

extra-vigilance was unknown, that the troops paid domiciliary visits an

hour before the intended outbreak, and the three were left to accomplish

their task alone. They remained in the city several days, hunted from

house to house, and finally they were brought to bay at night on the

roof of a palace where the Lenkenstein ladies were residing. Barto

took his dagger between his teeth and dropped to the balcony of Lena's

chamber. The brothers soon after found the rooftrap opened to them, and

Lena and Anna conducted them to the postern-door. There Angelo asked

whom they had to thank. The terrified ladies gave their name; upon

hearing which, Rinaldo turned and said that he would pay for a

charitable deed to the extent of his power, and would not meanly allow

them to befriend persons who were to continue strangers to them. He gave

the name of Guidascarpi, and relieved his brother, as well as himself,

of a load of obligation, for the ladies raised wild screams on the

instant. In falling from the walls to the road, Rinaldo hurt his foot.

Barto lifted him on his back, and journeyed with him so till at the

appointed place he met his wife, who dressed the foot, and led them

out of the line of pursuit, herself bending under the beloved load. Her

adoration of Rinaldo was deep as a mother's, pure as a virgin's, fiery

as a saint's. Leone Rufo dwelt on it the more fervidly from seeing

Vittoria's expression of astonishment. The woman led them to a cave in

the rocks, where she had stored provision and sat two days expecting the

signal from Trent. They saw numerous bands of soldiers set out along the

valleys--merry men whom it was Barto's pleasure to beguile by shouts, as

a relief for his parched weariness upon the baking rock. Accident made

it an indiscretion. A glass was levelled at them by a mounted officer,

and they had quickly to be moving. Angelo knew the voice of Weisspriess

in the word of command to the soldiers, and the call to him to

surrender. Weisspriess followed them across the mountain track,

keeping at their heels, though they doubled and adopted all possible

contrivances to shake him off. He was joined by Count Karl Lenkenstein

on the day when Carlo Ammiani encountered them, with the rear of

Colonel Corte's band marching for Vicenza. In the collision between

the Austrians and the volunteers, Rinaldo was taken fighting upon his

knee-cap. Leone cursed the disabled foot which had carried the hero in

action, to cast him at the mercy of his enemies; but recollection of

that sight of Rinaldo fighting far ahead and alone, half-down-like a

scuttled ship, stood like a flower in the lad's memory. The volunteers

devoted themselves to liberate or avenge him. It was then that Barto

Rizzo sent his wife upon her mission. Leone assured Vittoria that Angelo

was aware of its nature, and approved it--hoped that the same might

be done for himself. He shook his head when she asked if Count Ammiani

approved it likewise.

“Signorina, Count Ammiani has a grudge against Barto, though he can't

help making use of him. Our captain Carlo is too much of a mere soldier.

He would have allowed Rinaldo to be strung up, and Barto does not owe

him obedience in those things.”

“But why did this Barto Rizzo employ a woman's hand?”

“The woman was capable. No man could have got permission to move freely

among the rascal Austrians, even in the character of a deserter. She

did, and she saved him from the shame of execution. And besides, it was

her punishment. You are astonished? Barto Rizzo punishes royally. He

never forgives, and he never persecutes; he waits for his opportunity.

That woman disobeyed him once--once only; but once was enough.

It occurred in Milan, I believe. She released an Austrian, or did

something--I don't know the story exactly--and Barto said to her, 'Now

you can wash out your crime and send your boy to heaven unspotted, with

one blow.' I saw her set out to do it. She was all teeth and eyes, like

a frightened horse; she walked like a Muse in a garden.”

Vittoria discovered that her presence among the Austrians had been known

to Carlo. Leone alluded slightly to Barto Rizzo's confirmed suspicion

of her, saying that it was his weakness to be suspicious of women. The

volunteers, however, were all in her favour, and had jeered at Barto on

his declaring that she might, in proof of her willingness to serve the

cause, have used her voice for the purpose of subjugating the wavering

Austro-Italians, who wanted as much coaxing as women. Count Karl had

been struck to earth by Barto Rizzo. “Not with his boasted neatness, I

imagine,” Leone said. In fact, the dagger had grazed an ivory portrait

of a fair Italian head wreathed with violets in Count Karl's breast.

Vittoria recognized the features of Violetta d'Isorella as the original

of the portrait.

They arrived at Roveredo late in the evening. The wounded man again

entreated Vittoria to remain by him till a messenger should bring one

of his sisters from Trent. “See,” she said to Leone, “how I give grounds

for suspicion of me; I nurse an enemy.”

“Here is a case where Barto is distinctly to blame,” the lad replied.

“The poor fellow must want nursing, for he can't smoke.”

Anna von Lenkenstein came from Trent to her brother's summons. Vittoria

was by his bedside, and the sufferer had fallen asleep with his head

upon her arm. Anna looked upon this scene with more hateful amazement

than her dull eyelids could express. She beckoned imperiously for her

to come away, but Vittoria would not allow him to be disturbed, and Anna

sat and faced her. The sleep was long. The eyes of the two women met

from time to time, and Vittoria thought that Barto Rizzo's wife, though

more terrible, was pleasanter to behold, and less brutal, than Anna.

The moment her brother stirred, Anna repeated her imperious gesture,

murmuring, “Away! out of my sight!” With great delicacy of touch she

drew the arm from the pillow and thrust it back, and then motioning in

an undisguised horror, said, “Go.” Vittoria rose to go.

“Is it my Lena?” came from Karl's faint lips.

“It is your Anna.”

“I should have known,” he moaned.

Vittoria left them.

Some hours later, Countess Lena appeared, bringing a Trentino doctor.

She said when she beheld Vittoria, “Are you our evil genius, then?”

Vittoria felt that she must necessarily wear that aspect to them.

Still greater was Lena's amazement when she looked on Wilfrid. She

passed him without a sign.

Vittoria had to submit to an interview with both sisters before her

departure. Apart from her distress on their behalf, they had always

seemed as very weak, flippant young women to her, and she could have

smiled in her heart when Anna pointed to a day of retribution in the

future.

“I shall not seek to have you assassinated,” Anna said; “do not suppose

that I mean the knife or the pistol. But your day will come, and I can

wait for it. You murdered my brother Paul: you have tried to murder

my brother Karl. I wish you to leave this place convinced of one

thing:--you shall be repaid for it.”

There was no direct allusion either to Weisspriess or to Wilfrid.

Lena spoke of the army. “You think our cause is ruined because we have

insurrection on all sides of us: you do not know our army. We can fight

the Hungarians with one hand, and you Italians with the other--with a

little finger. On what spot have we given way? We have to weep, it is

true; but tears do not testify to defeat; and already I am inclined to

pity those fools who have taken part against us. Some have experienced

the fruits of their folly.”

This was the nearest approach to a hint at Wilfrid's misconduct.

Lena handed Leone's pass to Vittoria, and drawing out a little pocket

almanac, said, “You proceed to Milan, I presume. I do not love your

society; mademoiselle Belloni or Campa: yet I do not mind making an

appointment--the doctor says a month will set my brother on his feet

again,--I will make an appointment to meet you in Milan or Como, or

anywhere in your present territories, during the month of August. That

affords time for a short siege and two pitched battles.”

She appeared to be expecting a retort.

Vittoria replied, “I could beg one thing on my knees of you, Countess

Lena.”

“And that is--?” Lena threw her head up superbly.

“Pardon my old friend the service he did me through friendship.”

The sisters interchanged looks. Lena flushed angrily.

Anna said, “The person to whom you allude is here.”

“He is attending on your brother.”

“Did he help this last assassin to escape, perchance?”

Vittoria sickened at the cruel irony, and felt that she had perhaps done

ill in beginning to plead for Wilfrid.

“He is here; let him speak for himself: but listen to him, Countess

Lena.”

“A dishonourable man had better be dumb,” interposed Anna.

“Ah! it is I who have offended you.”

“Is that his excuse?”

Vittoria kept her eyes on the fiercer sister, who now declined to speak.

“I will not excuse my own deeds; perhaps I cannot. We Italians are in a

hurricane; I cannot reflect. It may be that I do not act more thinkingly

than a wild beast.”

“You have spoken it,” Anna exclaimed.

“Countess Lena, he fights in your ranks as a common soldier. He

encounters more than a common soldier's risks.”

“The man is brave,--we knew that,” said Anna.

“He is more than brave, he is devoted. He fights against us, without

hope of reward from you. Have I utterly ruined him?”

“I imagine that you may regard it as a fact that you have utterly ruined

him,” said Anna, moving to break up the parting interview. Lena turned

to follow her.

“Ladies, if it is I who have hardened your hearts, I am more guilty than

I thought.” Vittoria said no more. She knew that she had been speaking

badly, or ineffectually, by a haunting flatness of sound, as of

an unstrung instrument, in her ears: she was herself unstrung and

dispirited, while the recollection of Anna's voice was like a sombre

conquering monotony on a low chord, with which she felt insufficient to

compete.

Leone was waiting in the carriage to drive to the ferry across the

Adige. There was news in Roveredo of the king's advance upon Rivoli;

and Leone sat trying to lift and straighten out his wounded arm, with

grimaces of laughter at the pain of the effort, which resolutely refused

to acknowledge him to be an able combatant. At the carriage-door Wilfrid

bowed once over Vittoria's hand.

“You see that,” Anna remarked to her sister.

“I should have despised him if he had acted indifference,” replied Lena.

She would have suspected him--that was what her heart meant; the artful

show of indifference had deceived her once. The anger within her

drew its springs much more fully from his refusal to respond to her

affection, when she had in a fit of feminine weakness abased herself

before him on the night of the Milanese revolt, than from the

recollection of their days together in Meran. She had nothing of her

sister's unforgivingness. And she was besides keenly curious to discover

the nature of the charm Vittoria threw on him, and not on him solely.

Vittoria left Wilfrid to better chances than she supposed. “Continue

fighting with your army,” she said, when they parted. The deeper shade

which traversed his features told her that, if she pleased, her sway

might still be active; but she had no emotion to spare for sentimental

regrets. She asked herself whether a woman who has cast her lot in

scenes of strife does not lose much of her womanhood and something of

her truth; and while her imagination remained depressed, her answer

was sad. In that mood she pitied Wilfrid with a reckless sense of her

inability to repay him for the harm she had done him. The tragedies

written in fresh blood all about her, together with that ever-present

image of the fate of Italy hanging in the balance, drew her away from

personal reflections. She felt as one in a war-chariot, who has not time

to cast more than a glance on the fallen. At the place where the ferry

is, she was rejoiced by hearing positive news of the proximity of the

Royal army. There were none to tell her that Charles Albert had here

made his worst move by leaving Vicenza to the operations of the enemy,

that he might become master of a point worthless when Vicenza fell into

the enemy's hands. The old Austrian Field-Marshal had eluded him at

Mantua on that very night when Vittoria had seen his troops in motion.

The daring Austrian flank-march on Vicenza, behind the fortresses of the

Quadrilateral, was the capital stroke of the campaign. But the presence

of a Piedmontese vanguard at Rivoli flushed the Adige with confidence,

and Vittoria went on her way sharing the people's delight. She reached

Brescia to hear that Vicenza had fallen. The city was like a landscape

smitten black by the thunder-cloud. Vittoria found Countess Ammiani at

her husband's tomb, stiff, colourless, lifeless as a monument attached

to the tomb.

CHAPTER XXXV

CLOSE OF THE LOMBARD CAMPAIGN--VITTORIA'S PERPLEXITY

The fall of Vicenza turned a tide that had overflowed its barriers with

force enough to roll it to the Adriatic. From that day it was as if a

violent wind blew East over Lombardy; flood and wind breaking here

and there a tree, bowing everything before them. City, fortress, and

battle-field resisted as the eddy whirls. Venice kept her brave colours

streaming aloft in a mighty grasp despite the storm, but between Venice

and Milan there was this unutterable devastation,--so sudden a change,

so complete a reversal of the shield, that the Lombards were at first

incredulous even in their agony, and set their faces against it as at a

monstrous eclipse, as though the heavens were taking false oath of its

being night when it was day. From Vicenza and Rivoli, to Sommacampagna,

and across Monte Godio to Custozza, to Volta on the right of the Mincio,

up to the gates of Milan, the line of fire travelled, with a fantastic

overbearing swiftness that, upon the map, looks like the zig-zag

elbowing of a field-rocket. Vicenza fell on the 11th of June; the

Austrians entered Milan on the 6th of August. Within that short time the

Lombards were struck to the dust.

Countess Ammiani quitted Brescia for Bergamo before the worst had

happened; when nothing but the king's retreat upon the Lombard capital,

after the good fight at Volta, was known. According to the king's

proclamation the Piedmontese army was to defend Milan, and hope was not

dead. Vittoria succeeded in repressing all useless signs of grief in

the presence of the venerable lady, who herself showed none, but simply

recommended her accepted daughter to pray daily. “I can neither confess

nor pray,” Vittoria said to the priest, a comfortable, irritable

ecclesiastic, long attached to the family, and little able to deal with

this rebel before Providence, that would not let her swollen spirit

be bled. Yet she admitted to him that the countess possessed resources

which she could find nowhere; and she saw the full beauty of such

inimitable grave endurance. Vittoria's foolish trick of thinking for

herself made her believe, nevertheless, that the countess suffered

more than she betrayed, was less consoled than her spiritual comforter

imagined. She continued obstinate and unrepentant, saying, “If my

punishment is to come, it will at least bring experience with it, and I

shall know why I am punished. The misery now is that I do not know, and

do not see, the justice of the sentence.”

Countess Ammiani thought better of her case than the priest did; or

she was more indulgent, or half indifferent. This girl was Carlo's

choice;--a strange choice, but the times were strange, and the girl was

robust. The channels of her own and her husband's house were drying on

all sides; the house wanted resuscitating. There was promise that the

girl would bear children of strong blood. Countess Ammiani would not for

one moment have allowed the spiritual welfare of the children to hang

in dubitation, awaiting their experience of life; but a certain

satisfaction was shown in her faint smile when her confessor lamented

over Vittoria's proud stony state of moral revolt. She said to her

accepted daughter, “I shall expect you to be prepared to espouse my son

as soon as I have him by my side;” nor did Vittoria's silent bowing of

her face assure her that strict obedience was implied. Precise words--“I

will,” and “I will not fail”--were exacted. The countess showed some

emotion after Vittoria had spoken. “Now, may God end this war quickly,

if it is to go against us,” she exclaimed, trembling in her chair

visibly a half-minute, with dropped eyelids and lips moving.