“THOUGH LOVE, AND LIFE, AND DEATH SHOULD COME AND GO.”
Vansittart tore open the blank envelope under one of the lamps at the
back of the vestibule, while the crowd about the doors was gradually
melting away, and the question “Cab or carriage?” was being asked,
often with a sad want of discrimination on the part of the questioners.
The letter was from Lisa.
It was in English, mixed with little phrases in Italian, badly spelt
and badly written, but quite plain enough for him to read.
“I knew you directly,” she wrote, “and your face brought back the
past--that dreadful night, and all I suffered after the of him death.
Come to see me, I pray you. It must that we talk together. Come soon,
soon. I live with la Zia, in Stone Court, Bow Street, No. 24B, quite
near the Opera House. Come to-night if she can.--Her humble servant,
“FIORDELISA.”
He stood with the letter in his hand, pondering.
Should he do what the letter asked him? Yes, assuredly; although to
obey that summons was to place himself unreservedly in Lisa’s power. He
was in her power already, perhaps. She might have made her arrangements
promptly, so that he should be watched and followed when he left the
theatre, and his name and address discovered.
In any case, whatever risk there might be in going to Fiordelisa’s
lodging, he did not for a moment hesitate. In his remorseful thoughts
of the man he had killed, the bitterest pang of all had been the
thought of Fiordelisa and her shattered life, her dream of happiness
darkened for ever, her prosperity changed to desolation and bitter
want. Again and again he had told himself that the memory of his sin
would sit more easily upon him could he but secure Lisa’s comfort, dry
her tears for the lover who was to have been her husband, shelter her
from the chances of the downward road which the feet that have once
turned astray are but too ready to tread.
He had found her, which was more than he had hoped, and had found her
earning her bread in a legitimate manner, and living with the aunt who
was in some wise a protector, although, remembering that lady’s easy
manner of regarding her niece’s former position, there was perhaps not
overmuch security in such a duenna.
He walked across Bow Street, and speedily found Stone Court, which
seemed a quiet haven from the roar and roll of carriages in the street
outside; a highly respectable retreat, consisting for the most part
of private houses, one of which--wedged into an obscure corner, where
a narrow alley, like the neck of a bottle, cut through into another
street--proved to be 24B.
La Zia herself opened the door in answer to Vansittart’s knock, and
welcomed him with a cordiality which took his breath away.
“Welcome, Signor. She said you would come, but I was doubtful that you
would trouble about her or me,” she said, in Italian, and then, in very
tolerable English: “Do me the favour to walk upstairs; it is rather
high--il secondo piano. She knew you again in an instant. She has such
eyes.”
They ascended the narrow staircase, lighted only by the Zia’s candle.
The door of the front room on the second floor was open, and Fiordelisa
stood on the threshold, in the light of a paraffin lamp, dressed in a
shabby black gown, and with her splendid hair rolled up on the top of
her head in a roughened mass.
She held out both her hands to Vansittart, and welcomed him as if he
had been her dearest friend. The aunt had fairly astonished him, but
the niece was even more astounding.
“I knew you would come,” she exclaimed. “I knew you would not turn your
back upon the poor girl whose life you made desolate.”
And then she burst into a tempest of sobs. She flung herself on to
the little horsehair sofa, and sobbed as if her heart would break;
whereupon la Zia tumbled into an armchair, and sobbed in concert.
What could Vansittart do between two fountains of tears? He could only
patiently abide till this passionate grief should abate, so that he
might speak with the hope of being heard.
“I am deeply distressed,” he said at last, when these lamentations
had subsided. “I have never ceased to repent the act that bereaved
you--both--of a friend and protector. I dared not go back to
Venice--lest--lest the law should weigh heavily upon me. I had no means
of communicating with you. I knew neither your names nor your address,
remember. I had no means of helping you. I could do nothing to lighten
the load upon my conscience--nothing. You must have thought me an
arrant coward for running away and leaving you to suffer for my sin?”
“If you had stopped you would have been put in prison--perhaps for ever
so many years,” said la Zia, with a philosophical air.
Fiordelisa had dried her tears, and was looking at him graciously, with
almost a smile in the soft Italian eyes.
“Your going to prison would not have brought him back to life,” she
said. “I am glad you got away. Poor fellow! he was so fond of me--and
so jealous! Ah, how jealous he was! It was foolish. I had done no harm.
A little pleasure at Carnival time, while he was away! What a pity that
he should come back to Venice that night, and find me at the Florian
with you! We ought not to have gone to that caffè. He always went
there--it was just the likeliest place for him to find us. But then I
did not know he was coming back to Venice so soon.”
The lightness of her tone, thus easily accepting the tragic past,
surprised him, so strangely did her speech contrast with her passionate
sobs of a few minutes ago. That she should threaten him with no
vengeance, that she should welcome him as a friend, was stranger still;
and he had to remember that this lightness was characteristic of the
Italian nature; he had to remember that in Rome a noble lady and her
daughter will go out to dine at a restaurant because it is so dull at
home where the husband and father lies dead, or a mother will take
her daughters to the opera to revive their spirits after a brother’s
untimely death.
It was a relief to him, naturally, to find a philosophical submission
to Fate where he had expected to find a thirst for his blood, a stern
resolve that the law should claim from him the uttermost atonement it
could exact. It was a tremendous relief to find himself sitting between
aunt and niece--while they eat their frugal supper from a tin box of
mortadello, a bundle of radishes, and a half quartern loaf--listening
to their account of their lives after his victim’s death.
“He was buried next day,” said la Zia; “a very pretty funeral. It was
a lovely day, and the gondola was full of flowers, though flowers are
dear in Venice. Lisa and I, and the Padrona from the house where we
lived, went with him to the cemetery, where it was all so still and
happy-looking in the sunlight. Lisa tried to throw herself into his
grave, but we would not let her. Poor child, she was so miserable, and
we thought of the day before when we were returning from the Lido in
your gondola----”
“And when the lagoons looked enchanted in the sunset,” said Lisa; “and
our dinner at the Cappello Nero, and the champagne, and the pastiti,
and the opera afterwards, and the beads you gave me. I have the beads
still. I wore the blue necklace to-night. Did you notice it?”
“Indeed, no, Poverina. I was too full of thoughts of you to notice your
necklace.”
“Ah, you were surprised to see me, weren’t you--after so long? And was
not I surprised to see you? I was looking at all the faces, the pretty
dresses, the jewels, like faces in a dream, for they are there every
night, and they never come any nearer, or seem any more real; and then
in an instant, out of the unreality, your face flashed upon me--your
face and the memory of that happy day and evening, that dreadful
midnight. Are you sorry to see us again?” she asked, naively, in
conclusion.
“Sorry, Lisa? no. I am glad, very glad; for now I hope I may be able to
make some atonement to you and your aunt.”
“Atonement! but how? You cannot bring him back to life. While we sit
here, he is lying in San Michele, where the gondolas with the black
flags are his only visitors, where nothing but sorrow and death ever
enters. You cannot bring him back to life.”
“Alas, no, Fiordelisa; but I may do much to make your life easier. I
can make sure that you and your aunt shall know no more poverty and
deprivation.”
“Ah,” sighed la Zia: “we knew both after that good Signor Smitz was
carried to San Michele. He had never been rich, mark you; but while he
lived there was always enough for the coffee and macaroni, and for a
stufato on Sundays, and a flask of Chiante that lasted all the week. We
did not waste his money, and he used to praise his little Lisa as the
cleverest manager and best wife a man ever had. And she would have been
his wife, mark you, had he lived. Oh, he had promised her again and
again, and he meant to keep his word. She would have been an English
gentleman’s wife--all in good time.”
“All in good time,” echoed Lisa; “and my son would not have been
fatherless.”
“Your son!” exclaimed Vansittart.
“Ah, you do not know,” said la Zia; “her baby was born half a year
after his father’s death. It was the late autumn when the bambino came.
The leaves were all dying off the vines, the strangers were all leaving
Venice, the boats were bringing in the winter fuel, and the cold winds
were creeping up from the Adriatic and blowing round all the corners
of the Calle. We were very poor. There was a little money in the house
when he died--and there was more than enough in his purse when he fell
to pay for his funeral--but when the last lira was gone there was
nothing but to go back to the lace-making, both of us, and work for
the dish of polenta and the garret that lodged us. We did not want to
go back to Burano, to see the old faces and hear the old comrades talk
about us, after we had lived like ladies and worn velvet gowns, so we
went to work at the factory in Venice, and we lived in one little
room in the Rialto, right up in the roof of an old, old house, where
we could see nothing but the sky; and there Lisa’s baby was born, a
beautiful boy. Ah, how proud Signor Smitz would have been had he lived
to see that lovely infant!”
“Is the boy living?” asked Vansittart, gently.
“Living! Yes, he is in the next room; he is the joy of our lives,”
answered the aunt.
Lisa started up from the supper table, with her finger on her lips,
and went across the room, beckoning to Vansittart to follow. She
opened a door, cautiously, noiselessly, and led him into a bedroom,
where, by the faint glimmer of a night-light, he saw a boy lying in a
little cot beside the ancient four-post bed, a boy who was the image
of one of Guido’s child-angels--full round cheeks, with a crimson glow
upon their olive clearness, lips like Cupid’s bow, long dark lashes
fringing blue-veined eyelids, and dark brown hair waving in loose curls
about the broad forehead. Truly a beautiful boy! Vansittart could not
withhold his praises of that childish sleeper.
“You are very fond of him,” he said gently, as Lisa stooped to
rearrange the blanket over the child’s round and dimpled arm, pressing
a kiss upon the fat little hand before she covered it.
“Oh, I adore him. He is all in the world I have to love, except la Zia.”
“And you have had a hard time of it, through my fault,” said
Vansittart, gravely, as they went back to the sitting-room.
It was one o’clock by the little American clock on the chimney-piece--
one by the clock of the church in Covent Garden, which pealed its
single stroke with solemn sound as they resumed their seats by the
shabby round table, in the light of the paraffin lamp; but, late as it
was, neither Lisa nor her aunt seemed in any hurry to get rid of their
visitor, nor did he mean to go until he had made a compact with them--a
compact which should set his mind at rest as to the future.
“How did you come from the lace factory at Venice to the stage
of Covent Garden?” he asked. “This is a long way for you to have
travelled, without a friend to help you along.”
“We had a friend,” answered Lisa. “My good old music-master. We lost
sight of him when our troubles began; but he met me one day as I was
leaving the factory--it was when my baby was three months old--and he
stopped to talk to me. He was shocked to see me so thin and pale, and
when I told him how poor we were--la Zia and I--he asked me why I did
not turn my voice to account. He always used to praise my voice when
Signor Smitz asked him how I got on with my education. I had a voice
that was worth money, he said. And now in our poverty he was very good
to us. He gave me more lessons, without a sous, to be paid for only
when I should be earning plenty of money; and after he had taught me
a good many choruses in Verdi’s operas, he gave me a letter to the
Impresario at Milan, and he lent us the money for the journey to Milan,
and once there all went well with us. I was engaged to sing in the
chorus, and I sang there for two seasons, and la Zia and I were able
to live comfortably and to save money, until one day, when the Scala
was closed, an English Impresario came to Milan, to engage singers
for the London season, and I, who had always wanted to go to London,
went to him, and asked him to engage me, and it was all settled in a
few minutes. We have been a year and a half in England, la Zia and I,
sometimes travelling with the opera company, but mostly in London.”
“And you have made wonderful progress in our language, Signora.”
“Don’t call me Signora,” she said softly. “Call me Fiordelisa, as you
did that day at Venice.”
“Tell me how you both like our England.”
The elder woman shrugged her shoulders, elevated her eyebrows, and
flung up her hands in boundless admiration.
“Wonderfullissimo!” she exclaimed. “The streets, the long, broad
streets, and splendid, splendid shops; the carriages, the fine-dressed
people, the smoke, the roar of wheels, the everlasting noise. When I
look back, and think of Burano, it is like a dream of quiet; a tranquil
world set in the bosom of the waters; a cradle for sleep; life that is
half slumber. Here every one is awake.”
“But your London is not beautiful,” said Lisa. “This court is not like
Venice. It is liker than your big, noisy streets; but when one looks up
the sky is murky and grey--not like the strip of blue above the Calle.
If I could live where I could see water from my window--even your dull,
dark river--I should be happier; but to be away from the sound and the
sight of waters! That was hard even at Milan, which was still Italy.”
“There are places in London where you might live in sight and sound of
the river,” said Vansittart. “We cannot offer you anything like your
lagoons; we have no mountains like the Friuli range for our sunsets to
glorify; but we have a river by which people can live if they like.”
“Not if they like, but if they are rich enough,” argued Lisa. “We
asked if we could have a lodging near the river; but the people at the
theatre told us such lodgings are dear--they are not for such as us.”
“We will see about that,” said Vansittart; and then he went on more
seriously, “I want to make a compact with you and your aunt. I want to
come to a clear understanding of what we are to be to each other in the
future. Are we to be friends, Lisa?”
“Yes, yes, friends, true friends,” she answered eagerly.
“And you forgive me for--what was done that night?”
“Yes, I forgive you. The fault was not all yours. He insulted you--he
struck you--and you were maddened--and the dagger was there. It was a
fatality. Let us think of it no more. We cannot bring him back. It is
best to forget.”
“You know, Lisa, that you have it in your power to blight my life--to
tell the world what I did that night--to give me up to the strong arm
of the law to answer for the life I destroyed. You could do that if you
liked. Do you mean to do it?”
“No,” she said resolutely.
“And you, Signora,” to the aunt, “are you of the same mind as your
niece?”
“In all things. Lisa is much cleverer than her poor old aunt. I do as
she does.”
“But some day, Fiordelisa, you might change your mind,” urged
Vansittart. “Women are capricious. You might take it into your head to
betray me--to tell people of that tragedy in Venice, and that I was the
chief actor in it.”
“Not for the world would I tell anything that would injure you,” she
said.
“Do you mean that, Lisa?”
“A thousand times yes.”
“Promise then, thus, with your hand in mine,” taking her hand as he
spoke, “promise by the Mother of God and by His Saints that, come what
may, you will never tell how I stabbed an unarmed man in the Caffè
Florian. Promise that as I am frank and true with you, so you will deal
frankly and fairly by me, and will do no act and will say no word to my
injury.”
“I promise,” she said, “by the Mother of God and by His Saints. I
promise to be loyal and true to you all the days of my life.”
“And you, Signora?” to the aunt.
“What she promises I promise.”
“Why, then, thank God for the chance that brought us three together
again,” said Vansittart, earnestly, “for now I can make my atonement
to you both with an easy mind. There is nothing I will not do, Lisa,
to prove that my remorse is a reality, and not a pretence. You would
like to live by the river, child? Well, it shall be my business to find
you a home from which you shall look upon running water, and hear the
splash of the tide. Your voice is your fortune. Well, it shall be my
business to find you a master who can train you for something better
than singing in a chorus. As you are loyal to me, Lisa, so, by the
heaven above us, will I be loyal to you. All that a brother could do
for a sister will I do for you, and deem it nothing more than my duty
when it is done.”
“Ah, what a noble gentleman,” cried la Zia, wiping her tearful eyes,
“and how gracious of the blessed Mary to give us so generous a friend!
Little did I expect such fortune when I rose from my bed this morning.”
“And now, ladies, I must bid you good night,” said Vansittart. “I hope
to call on you to-morrow afternoon with some news of your future home.
You will not mind living two or three miles from your theatre. There
are trams and omnibuses, and a railway to carry you backwards and
forwards,” he added.
“We should not mind even if we had to walk to and fro. We are good
walkers,” answered Lisa. “We lived a long way from la Scala. Ever so
far off, on the other side of Milan.”
“To-morrow, then. A rivederci.”
Two o’clock struck while he was walking to Charles Street, happier
than he had felt for a long time. It seemed to him that his burden was
lightened almost to a feather-weight now that he knew the fate of these
women. They were not destitute, as he had often pictured them. They had
suffered a little poverty, but no more than was the common lot of the
class from which they had sprung. And it was in his power to make ample
reparation to them. He would do more for Lisa than that dead man would
ever have done. He would put her in the way of an honourable career.
Whatever talents she had should be cultivated at his cost. He would
not degrade her by foolish gifts--but he would spend money freely to
further her interests, and he would keep her feet from straying any
further upon that broad road she had entered so recklessly.
He could but wonder at the lightness with which she accepted her
lover’s fate, and forewent every idea of retribution. Not so, he told
himself, would an Englishwoman bow to the stroke of destiny, if her
best-beloved were slain. And then he wondered whether, in all this
world, near or far, there was any one, besides Fiordelisa, who had
loved John Smith, and who was now mourning for him.