A Siren Part 26

"I'd hold to my bet, all the same for that; and now let's get to bed, you have to sing to-morrow night."

"Yes, and I'm regularly tired out; good-night."

The Marchese Lamberto was probably hardly less in need of rest, when he reached the Palazzo Castelmare. But he did not equally feel that it was within his reach. He shut himself into his room; and throwing himself into an easy chair, with one hand pressed to his fevered brow, strove to think; set himself to think out the possibilities of the present, and the prospects of the future, as far as the blinding volcano bursts of pa.s.sion, which ever and anon threatened to sweep all power of thought away, would permit him to do so.

So this was the meaning of all the difficulties, which Bianca had made.

She had absolutely conceived the idea of his marrying her. Heavens and earth! Was she mad? But, at all events, if this notion had been the cause of all her fighting off of his advances for the last month past, it was not necessary to attribute her conduct to any preference for some more favoured lover; she had a.s.sured him that she loved him--loved him as she had never loved another. And, gracious heaven, how lovely she looked as she said it!

He pressed his hands before his eyes, and saw again in fancy the beautiful vision; gloated on the eloquent movement of her person in the earnestness of her confession; looked again into those large appealing honest eyes, which seemed to be so incapable of lending their voucher to a lie. Surely it could not be that all those protestations and a.s.surances were false,--mere comedy got up for the purpose of deluding him. That she was worldlily anxious to secure so great a prize as that which she was trying for was natural enough--was matter of course. But surely, surely there was genuine affection in that glance. Was it not likely to be genuine,--that feeling that she could not be to him what she had been to others? It must have been abundantly clear to her that had she chosen to accept from him what he had offered her, she might have amply satisfied any mercenary views, the most exorbitant. Therefore her views and her feelings were of a different order.

And then the thought of being so loved by such a creature--of being really loved for himself--loved as she had never loved before, made for the moment all other thought impossible to him: he started from his chair, and paced the room with rapid disordered strides. What was all the world to the ecstasy of such a love? All--all that he had hitherto lived for, was it not flat, stale, poor, puerile, in comparison to it?

Why not leave all, and seize a happiness so infinitely greater than any he had ever known or imagined? Why not marry her, and be hers for ever, as she was anxious to be his? n.o.bles of higher rank than his had done as much before. Why not?

What would they all say and think? All his world, that he had lived among, and lived for, from his cradle upwards: the Cardinal, his sister, his nephew, Violante? The whole society which had looked up to him as some one altogether above the sphere of human frailties and follies: how could he face them? What say to them? Why face them at all? Why not leave all, and make a new world for himself and the one dear companion of it? Marry her, and take her safe away from all her past, and from all his. Why not?

But would she consent to that? Would that be her idea of a marriage with the Marchese di Castelmare? Was it not likely that she would prefer to be Marchesa di Castelmare in the Palazzo Castelmare,--in Ravenna, where--ha!--where Ludovico was, for whom she had so much regard? who was so frequently with her. That poor Violante! Of course he knew that there could be no love between her and his nephew. Ludovico had promised that that marriage should be made. Ay, marry the uncle, to be the nephew's mistress with all convenience! Such things had often been; there was nothing new in the arrangement--nothing original in the idea--why, the very stage was full of such examples: he to be the old duped husband of the farce; he saw it all.

And as these thoughts also suggested themselves to his mind, his heart seemed as though it were clutched by a hand of ice, while his brow throbbed and his head burned with the pulsing blood.

He threw himself on to his chair again, and tore his hair with rage and anguish; and all those vivid and palpitating love-representations which pa.s.sion had but now painted on the retina of his eye, were reproduced by jealousy with the difference that Ludovico instead of himself was the actor in them.

It was maddening; his brain seemed to reel; a cold sweat broke out all over him. The fear dashed across his mind that he should really lose his reason.

Was there, he thought to himself, as the terror of this made him shudder--was there that night in all Ravenna so miserable a being as himself? And that miserable man, cowering there in the restlessness of his agony, was the Marchese Lamberto di Castelmare; he whose whole life had been one placid scene of happiness, prosperity, and content. Never had he known a pa.s.sion strong enough and forbidden enough to cause him a pang or a sleepless hour till now. Had not his life been happy? What did he want with more? Ah, if he could but blot out for ever all that the last month had brought with it. If he could but be again as he had been before this woman had cast her sorcery on him. Ah, would to G.o.d that his eyes had never seen her!

Was it yet too late? Could he not even now tear her from his mind, shut his eyes to the recollection of her, so command his imagination that it should never again present the image of her to his fancy?

And thereupon forthwith uncommanded fancy was busy with every detail of the beauties that had so made him their slave. The line of the neck and shoulder which he had looked down on as he stood at the sofa head; all the white ivory from the fresh innocent rosy little ear to the swell of the curves about the bosom; the intoxicating perfume from the heavy tresses of the hair; the lithe slender waist, round and yielding; the slight nervous hands, the touch of whose fingers fired the blood, as a match fires gunpowder; the exquisite feet; and, oh G.o.d! that face, whose every feature, as he last looked on it, was harmonized in an expression of love.

Quite still he sate for some minutes, conscious of nothing save the pictures which memory was pa.s.sing before his eye. Then suddenly, with a bound, he sprang from his chair, and away from it, and beat his head against the opposite wall of the large room.

"Fool, fool; enslaved, besotted idiot! I am lost, spelled; the victim of sorcery I cannot fight against. What am I to do, what am I to do? Surely I can keep my steps from going near her. If I were to swear now that I will never set eyes on her more?"

And then he recollected that it was impossible for him even to seek that means of safety without giving rise to all kinds of observations, and wonder, and speculation in the city. He was to see the prima donna on the following day. His habits in such matters, well known to all the town, brought him into frequent contact with Bianca, as with other ladies who had been similarly engaged in Ravenna. What would be thought, or guessed, or said, if he were suddenly to refuse to hold any further communication with her?

And would he not thus be simply leaving the coast all free to his nephew? To be sure. There, there, he could see it all. And that was the worst h.e.l.l of all. Anything, anything was preferable to that. Come what would that should never, never, never be. Rather--rather anything. He gnashed his teeth, and clenched his hand; and a sudden agony of hatred for both Bianca and his nephew seemed to steal like a snake into his heart, and maddened him.

And thus the miserable man pa.s.sed the greater part of the night in useless strugglings with the bonds that bound him.

It was near morning before he crept, still sleepless, but utterly worn out, to his bed.

He did sleep, exhausted as he was, after awhile; but it was only to see again in dreams all that he had so bitterly wished that he had never seen at all. Sometimes he was himself by Bianca's side, licensed to revel to the full in her every charm. And then the dream would change.

It was Ludovico he saw in her white arms; and he started from his fevered sleep bathed in perspiration and quivering in every limb.

The next morning he was, in truth, quite ill enough to have furnished a very sufficient and unsuspected excuse for not going to meet the impresario at Bianca's house according to appointment. He thought at first that he would do so. But as the time drew near, he dragged himself from his bed, haggard, fevered, and looking very ill, and crawled to the appointed meeting.

BOOK IV

The last Days of the Carnival

CHAPTER I

In the Cardinal's Chapel

Paolina was industriously pursuing her task in the chapel of the Cardinal's palace. Ludovico was not so frequently with her there as he had been while she was at work in San Vitale. But there were evident reasons why this was necessarily the case. The chapel in question is a private one, and is accessible only by pa.s.sing through a portion of the Cardinal's residence. At San Vitale Ludovico needed to take n.o.body into his confidence, when he climbed to Paolina's scaffolding to be by her side while she worked, save the old sacristan. But to have joined her at her work in the Cardinal's palace, he must have knocked at the door of the residence, and told the servants what he wanted.

And that would have been obviously inconvenient, even without mentioning the fact that the Lady Violante, to whom the gentleman ought to have been addressing himself, pa.s.sed much of her time at the palace, and might very possibly have been met by him there.

It was true that, ever since the ball at the Castelmare palazzo, on the second day of the year, Ludovico had felt pretty nearly sure that Violante was as desirous of escaping from the marriage which had been arranged as he was himself. But it did not at all follow that it would be an easy matter to break it off. Of course it was not to be expected that Violante herself could take any active step towards refusing to fulfil the promise that her family had made for her. That would be for him to do. And except as regarded his intercourse with the lady, and her personal feelings, the task of doing so was hardly rendered any the easier by the knowledge that he would be consulting her wishes as well as his own.

It would hardly, therefore, have done in any way for him to have been visiting the young artist in the Cardinal Legate's chapel.

The intercourse, however, between Ludovico and Paolina was much pleasanter and more unrestrained than it had been before that explanation, which had ensued between them. He was a frequent visitor at the house in the Via di Sta. Eufemia in the evening; and the happy hours were pa.s.sed by them on the perfectly understood footing of mutual betrothal.

And Ludovico was perfectly honest and sincere in all that he said to Paolina. He said nothing to her that he did not equally say to himself.

And if his conduct under the circ.u.mstances was not exactly what a father or brother of Paolina might have desired it to be, the fault arose from the indecision of character, which belonged to a weak man accustomed to self-indulgence. There was difficulty and annoyance before him; and instead of meeting it, as a strong man would have done, he turned from it, and was content to put off the evil day, contenting himself with the enjoyment of that which was pa.s.sing. He marvelled somewhat at the ease, with which he was permitted to pa.s.s evening after evening with his mistress,--at the absence of surveillance, of which he was conscious,--and at the silence of his uncle as to both his visits to Via di Sta. Eufemia, and his no visits to the Lady Violante. But he troubled himself little to account for this, or to question the reason of the goods the G.o.ds provided him. It was not in his character to do so.

Paolina, on her side, was, upon the whole, trustful and contented. Yet there had been moments at which she had suffered a pa.s.sing pang from little gossipings which had been, perhaps injudiciously, repeated to her by Orsola Steno. Of course the great prima donna, the celebrated Lalli, who was blessing Ravenna by her presence, was often talked of in the Via di Sta. Eufemia, as she was in every other house in the city. That was quite a matter of course. And then Orsola would speak of the strict conduct of the lady; of the fact that no one of the young n.o.bles of the place was permitted to visit her--except, indeed, the young Marchese Ludovico; and how people did say that half-a-dozen would be safer company than one; and that the young Marchese was finishing the sowing of his wild oats before becoming a married man by a flirtation with one of the most celebrated beauties of Italy.

There was very little cause for this gossip beyond what the reader is aware of. Still, upon the whole, it might have been better if Ludovico had seen less of the fascinating singer. He had given cause enough for spiteful tongues to make mischief if they could do so; and it may probably be supposed that he was not insensible to the fascinations of Bianca--perhaps not to the glory of the fact that he was the only young man admitted to her society, and that he had occasionally done that which, being repeated, might not unnaturally give umbrage to Paolina.

It was now within ten days or so of the end of Carnival; and, while almost everybody else was amusing themselves in some way or other, Paolina stuck close to her work in the chapel, intent on her silent and solitary task, while, from time to time, the voices of revellers in the streets would reach her in her seclusion.

But all her hours of work there had not pa.s.sed in utter solitude.

The Contessa Violante was in the habit of spending much of her time in the palace of her great-uncle the Cardinal Legate. It presented, among other advantages, that of being pretty well the only place in which she could escape for awhile from the companionship of the Signora a.s.sunta f.a.giani, her duenna. Certainly, it would not have been consistent with that lady's conception of her duty to allow her charge to visit any other house whatever in the city, without the protection of her companionship, but the palace of a Cardinal Legate--and that Legate her great-uncle. Besides that, her great-aunt, the Cardinal's sister, was also often at her brother's residence; and, having this facility close at hand, Violante was wont very frequently to avail herself of the privacy, comfort, and warmth of her uncle's chapel for the morning's devotions, which she never missed.

One morning she found a small portable scaffold or estrade of deals standing in one corner of the chapel; and, on inquiring for what purpose it had been placed there, she was told that it was to enable an artist to make a copy of some of the mosaics on the vault of the little apartment. She learned further that the artist in question was a young Venetian lady: that she was a protegee of the Marchese Lamberto; and that the permission to execute the copies in question, and to have that scaffolding placed there, had been obtained by him.

Then Violante knew right well who the Venetian artist was. The worthy a.s.sunta f.a.giani had taken care that all the gossip of Ravenna which connected this girl's name with that of Ludovico di Castelmare should reach her ears. And she was glad of the easy opportunity which thus offered itself to her of gratifying her natural curiosity respecting the stranger--the girl who could win that love which had been promised to her; but which she had been unable to inspire.

This Paolina Foscarelli--she well knew her name--was, in some sense, her rival. Ludovico di Castelmare was bidden to love her, the Contessa Violante, and instead of doing so, had given his love, as she had been a.s.sured, to this Venetian. She knew, indeed, quite well that had the stranger never come near Ravenna, Ludovico would not have loved her the more. She did not love Ludovico. She was anxious to be quit of the engagement it had been proposed to make between them; and it might be very likely that this girl might be serviceable to her, rather than otherwise, in helping to bring about such a consummation.

Nevertheless, there was a certain amount of bitterness--such bitterness, more akin to self-depreciation, as could find place in the gentle heart of Violante--in the thought of what might have been; in the thought that she was irrevocably excluded from that which it had been so easy for this poor stranger artist to attain; and, above all, there was a strong curiosity to see the beauty which had accomplished this; to hear the voice which had been able to charm; and, further, in her own interest, to ascertain, if that should be possible, whether the tie which she had been told existed between this girl and the man who had been a.s.signed to her for a husband, was, or was not, of a nature likely to lead to a marriage between them.

At first sight this would have seemed impossible to the aristocratic notions of the Cardinal Legate's niece. But a.s.sunta f.a.giani, whose object had been simply to convince Violante that no union between herself and Ludovico would ever take place, despite all appearances to the contrary, had given her to understand that it was whispered as a thing not impossible--such was Ludovico's infatuation--that he might even go the length of making such an alliance.

One morning, soon after the commencement of her work in the chapel, whither she had been escorted on her first going thither by the Marchese Lamberto himself in person, in accordance with his promise, Violante, on entering the chapel, saw that the little scaffold had been pulled out from its corner and placed immediately under one of the medallion portraits of the Apostles, on the vault of the building. She looked up, and perceiving the artist above her at her work, paused, hesitating before kneeling at the footstool in front of the altar.

In an instant a light step tripped down the steps of the wooden erection, and a little figure, clad in a brown holland frock, which wrapped it from head to foot, stood by her side.

Paolina knew very well who the lady that had entered the chapel was: and, as may be easily imagined, she too was not without her share of curiosity.