Lady Rose's Daughter Part 61

"The Grand Duke is a horrid wretch, and if he wasn't a grand duke you'd be the first to cut him. I had to spend a whole dinner-time last year in teaching him his proper place. It was very humiliating, and not at all amusing. You can have a men's dinner for him. That's all he's fit for.

"And as for the babies, Mrs. Robson sends me a telegram every morning. I can't make out that they have had a finger-ache since I went away, and I am sure mothers are entirely superfluous. All the same, I think about them a great deal, especially at night. Last night I tried to think about their education--if only I wasn't such a sleepy creature! But, at any rate, I never in my life tried to think about it at home. So that's so much to the good.

"Indeed, I'll come back to you soon, you poor, forsaken, old thing! But Julie has no one in the world, and I feel like a Newfoundland dog who has pulled some one out of the water. The water was deep; and the life's only just coming back; and the dog's not much good. But he sits there, for company, till the doctor comes, and that's just what I'm doing.

"I know you don't approve of the notions I have in my head now. But that's because you don't understand. Why don't you come out and join us?

Then you'd like Julie as much as I do; everything would be quite simple; and I shouldn't be in the least jealous.

"Dr. Meredith is coming here, probably to-night, and Jacob should arrive to-morrow on his way to Venice, where poor Chudleigh and his boy are."

The _breva_, or fair-weather wind, from the north was blowing freshly yet softly down the lake. The afternoon sun was burning on Bellaggio, on the long terrace of the Melzi villa, on the white mist of fruit-blossom that lay lightly on the green slopes above San Giovanni.

Suddenly the d.u.c.h.ess and the boatman left the common topics of every day by which the d.u.c.h.ess was trying to improve her Italian--such as the proposed enlargement of the Bellevue Hotel, the new villas that were springing up, the gardens of the Villa Carlotta, and so forth. Evelyn had carelessly asked the old man whether he had been in any of the fighting of '59, and in an instant, under her eyes, he became another being. Out rolled a torrent of speech; the oars lay idly on the water; and through the man's gnarled and wrinkled face there blazed a high and illumining pa.s.sion. Novara and its beaten king, in '49; the ten years of waiting, when a whole people bode its time, in a gay, grim silence; the grudging victory of Magenta; the fivefold struggle that wrenched the hills of San Martino from the Austrians; the humiliations and the rage of Villafranca--of all these had this wasted graybeard made a part. And he talked of them with the Latin eloquence and facility, as no veteran of the north could have talked; he was in a moment the equal of these great affairs in which he had mingled; so that one felt in him the son of a race which had been rolled and polished--a pebble, as it were, from rocks which had made the primeval frame-work of the world--in the main course and stream of history.

Then from the campaign of '59 he fell back on the Five Days of Milan in '48--the immortal days, when a populace drove out an army, and what began almost in jest ended in a delirium, a stupefaction of victory. His language was hot, broken, confused, like the street fighting it chronicled. Afterwards--a further sharpening and blanching of the old face--and he had carried them deep into the black years of Italy's patience and Austria's revenge. Throwing out a thin arm, he pointed towards town after town on the lake sh.o.r.es, now in the brilliance of sunset, now in the shadow of the northern slope--Gravedona, Varenna, Argegno--towns which had each of them given their sons to the Austrian bullet and the Austrian lash for the ransom of Italy.

He ran through the sacred names--Stazzonelli, Riccini, Crescieri, Ronchetti, Ceresa, Previtali--young men, almost all of them, shot for the possession of a gun or a knife, for helping their comrades in the Austrian army to desert, for "insulting conduct" towards an Austrian soldier or officer.

Of one of these executions, which he had himself witnessed at Varese--the shooting of a young fellow of six-and-twenty, his own friend and kinsman--he gave an account which blanched the d.u.c.h.ess's cheeks and brought the big tears into her eyes. Then, when he saw the effect he had produced, the old man trembled.

"Ah, eccellenza," he cried, "but it had to be! The Italians had to show they knew how to die; then G.o.d let them live. Ecco, eccellenza!"

And he drew from his breast-pocket, with shaking hands, an old envelope tied round with string. When he had untied it, a piece of paper emerged, brown with age and worn with much reading. It was a rudely printed broadsheet containing an account of the last words and sufferings of the martyrs of Mantua--those conspirators of 1852--from whose graves and dungeons sprang, tenfold renewed, the regenerating and liberating forces which, but a few years later, drove out the Austrian with the Bourbon, together.

"See here, eccellenza," he said, as he tenderly spread out its tattered folds and gave it into the d.u.c.h.ess's hand. "Have the goodness to look where is that black mark. There you will find the last words of Don Enrico Tazzoli, the half-brother of my father. He was a priest, eccellenza. Ah, it was not then as it is now! The priests were then for Italy. They hanged three of them at Mantua alone. As for Don Enrico, first they stripped him of his priesthood, and then they hanged him. And those were his last words, and the last words of Sca.r.s.ellini also, who suffered with him. _Veda eccellenza_! As for me, I know them from a boy."

And while the d.u.c.h.ess read, the old man repeated tags and fragments under his breath, as he once more resumed the oars and drove the boat gently towards Menaggio.

"_The mult.i.tude of victims has not robbed us of courage in the past, nor will it so rob us in the future--till victory dawns. The cause of the people is like the cause of religion--it triumphs only through its martyrs.... You--who survive--will conquer, and in your victory we, the dead, shall live_....

"_Take no thought for us; the blood of the forerunners is like the seed which the wise husbandman scatters on the fertile ground_.... _Teach our young men how to adore and how to suffer for a great idea. Work incessantly at that; so shall our country come to birth; and grieve not for us!... Yes, Italy shall be one! To that all things point._ WORK!

_There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome, no opposition that cannot be destroyed. The_ HOW _and the_ WHEN _only remain to be solved. You, more fortunate than we, will find the clew to the riddle, when all things are accomplished, and the times are ripe.... Hope!--my parents, and my brothers--hope always!--waste no time in weeping_."

The d.u.c.h.ess read aloud the Italian, and Julie stooped over her shoulder to follow the words.

"Marvellous!" said Julie, in a low voice, as she sank back into her place. "A youth of twenty-seven, with the rope round his neck, and he comforts himself with 'Italy.' What's 'Italy' to him, or he to 'Italy'?"

Not even an immediate paradise. "Is there anybody capable of it now?"

Her face and att.i.tude had lost their languor. As the d.u.c.h.ess returned his treasure to the old man she looked at Julie with joy. Not since her illness had there been any such sign of warmth and energy.

And, indeed, as they floated on, past the glow of Bellaggio, towards the broad gold and azure of the farther lake, the world-defying pa.s.sion that breathed from these words of dead and murdered Italians played as a bracing and renewing power on Julie's still feeble being. It was akin to the high snows on those far Alps that closed in the lake--to the pure wind that blew from them--to the "gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme," amid which their little boat pressed on towards the sh.o.r.e.

"What matter," cried the intelligence, but as though through sobs--"what matter the individual struggle and misery? These can be lived down. The heart can be silenced--nerves steadied--strength restored. Will and idea remain--the eternal spectacle of the world, and the eternal thirst of man to see, to know, to feel, to realize himself, if not in one pa.s.sion, then in another. If not in love, then in patriotism--art--thought."

The d.u.c.h.ess and Julie landed presently beneath the villa of which they were the pa.s.sing tenants. The d.u.c.h.ess mounted the double staircase where the banksia already hung in a golden curtain over the marble bal.u.s.trade.

Her face was thoughtful. She had to write her daily letter to the absent and reproachful Duke.

Julie parted from her with a caress, and paused awhile to watch the small figure till it mounted out of sight. Her friend had become very dear to her. A new humility, a new grat.i.tude filled her heart. Evelyn should not sacrifice herself much longer. When she had insisted on carrying her patient abroad, Julie had neither mind nor will wherewith to resist. But now--the Duke should soon come to his own again.

She herself turned inland for that short walk by which each day she tested her returning strength. She climbed the winding road to Criante, the lovely village above Cadenabbia; then, turning to the left, she mounted a path that led to the woods which overhang the famous gardens of the Villa Carlotta.

Such a path! To the left hand, and, as it seemed, steeply beneath her feet, all earth and heaven--the wide lake, the purple mountains, the glories of a flaming sky. On the calm s.p.a.ces of water lay a shimmer of crimson and gold, repeating the n.o.ble splendor of the clouds; the midgelike boats crept from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e; and, midway between Bellaggio and Cadenabbia, the steam-boat, a white speck, drew a silver furrow. To her right a green hill-side--each blade of gra.s.s, each flower, each tuft of heath, enskied, transfigured, by the broad light that poured across it from the hidden west. And on the very hill-top a few scattered olives, peaches, and wild cherries scrawled upon the blue, their bare, leaning stems, their pearly whites, their golden pinks and feathery grays all in a glory of sunset that made of them things enchanted, aerial, fantastical, like a dance of Botticelli angels on the height.

And presently a sheltered bank in a green hollow, where Julie sat down to rest. But nature, in this tranquil spot, had still new pageants, new sorceries wherewith to play upon the nerves of wonder. Across the hollow a great crag clothed in still leafless chestnut-trees reared itself against the lake. The innumerable lines of stem and branch, warm brown or steely gray, were drawn sharp on silver air, while at the very summit of the rock one superb tree with branching limbs, touched with intense black, sprang high above the rest, the proud plume or ensign of the wood. Through the trunks the blaze of distant snow and the purples of craggy mountains; in front the glistening spray of peach or cherry blossom, breaking the still wintry beauty of that majestic grove. And in all the air, dropping from the heaven, spread on the hills, or shimmering on the lake, a diffusion of purest rose and deepest blue, lake and cloud and mountain each melting into the other, as though heaven and earth conspired merely to give value and relief to the year's new birth, to this near sparkle of young leaf and blossom which shone like points of fire on the deep breast of the distance.

On the green ledge which ran round the hollow were children tugging at a goat. Opposite was a _contadino's_ house of gray stone. A water-wheel turned beside it, and a stream, brought down from the hills, ran chattering past, a white and dancing thread of water. Everything was very still and soft. The children and the river made their voices heard; and there were nightingales singing in the woods below. Otherwise all was quiet. With a tranquil and stealthy joy the spring was taking possession. Nay--the Angelus! It swung over the lake and rolled from village to village....

The tears were in Julie's eyes. Such beauty as this was apt now to crush and break her. All her being was still sore, and this appeal of nature was sometimes more than she could bear.

Only a few short weeks since Warkworth had gone out of her life--since Delafield at a stroke had saved her from ruin--since Lord Lackington had pa.s.sed away.

One letter had reached her from Warkworth, a wild and incoherent letter, written at night in a little room of a squalid hotel near the Gare de Sceaux. Her telegram had reached him, and for him, as for her, all was over.

But the letter was by no means a mere cry of baffled pa.s.sion. There was in it a new note of moral anguish, as fresh and startling in her ear, coming from him, as the cry of pa.s.sion itself. In the language of religion, it was the utterance of a man "convicted of sin."

"How long is it since that man gave me your telegram? I was pacing up and down the departure platform, working myself into an agony of nervousness and anxiety as the time went by, wondering what on earth had happened to you, when the _chef de gare_ came up: 'Monsieur attend une depeche?' There were some stupid formalities--at last I got it. It seemed to me I had already guessed what it contained.

"So it was _Delafield_ who met you--Delafield who turned you back?

"I saw him outside the hotel yesterday, and we exchanged a few words. I have always disliked his long, pale face and his high and mighty ways--at any rate, towards plain fellows, who don't belong to the cla.s.ses, like me. Yesterday I was more than usually anxious to get rid of him.

"So he guessed?

"It can't have been chance. In some way he guessed. And you have been torn from me. My G.o.d! If I could only reach him--if I could fling his contempt in his face! And yet--

"I have been walking up and down this room all night. The longing for you has been the sharpest suffering I suppose that I have ever known. For I am not one of the many people who enjoy pain. I have kept as free of it as I could. This time it caught and gripped me. Yet that isn't all. There has been something else.

"What strange, patched creatures we are! Do you know, Julie, that by the time the dawn came I was on my knees--thanking G.o.d that we were parted--that you were on your way home--safe--out of my reach? Was I mad, or what? I can't explain it. I only know that one moment I hated Delafield as a mortal enemy--whether he was conscious of what he had done or no--and the next I found myself blessing him!

"I understand now what people mean when they talk of conversion. It seems to me that in the hours I have just pa.s.sed through things have come to light in me that I myself never suspected. I came of an Evangelical stock--I was brought up in a religious household. I suppose that one can't, after all, get away from the blood and the life that one inherits. My poor, old father--I was a bad son, and I know I hastened his death--was a sort of Puritan saint, with very stern ideas. I seem to have been talking with him this night, and shrinking under his condemnation. I could see his old face, as he put before me the thoughts I had dared to entertain, the risks I had been ready to take towards the woman I loved--the woman to whom I owed a deep debt of eternal grat.i.tude.

"Julie, it is strange how this appointment affects me. Last night I saw several people at the Emba.s.sy--good fellows--who seemed anxious to do all they could for me. Such men never took so much notice of me before. It is plain to me that this task will make or mar me. I may fail. I may die. But if I succeed England will owe me something, and these men at the top of the tree--

"Good G.o.d! how can I go on writing this to you? It's because I came back to the hotel and tossed about half the night brooding over the difference between what these men--these honorable, distinguished fellows--were prepared to think of me, and the blackguard I knew myself to be. What, take everything from a woman's hand, and then turn and try and drag her in the mire--propose to her what one would shoot a man for proposing to one's sister! Thief and cur.

"Julie--kind, beloved Julie--forget it all! For G.o.d's sake, let's cast it all behind us! As long as I live, your name, your memory will live in my heart. We shall not meet, probably, for many years. You'll marry and be happy yet. Just now I know you're suffering. I seem to see you in the train--on the steamer--your pale face that has lighted up life for me--your dear, slender hands that folded so easily into one of mine. You are in pain, my darling. Your nature is wrenched from its natural supports. And you gave me all your fine, clear mind, and all your heart. I ought to be d.a.m.ned to the deepest h.e.l.l!

"Then, again, I say to myself, if only she were here! If only I had her _here_, with her arms round my neck, surely I might have found the courage and the mere manliness to extricate both herself and me from these entanglements. Aileen might have released and forgiven one.

"No, no! It's all over! I'll go and do my task. You set it me. You sha'n't be ashamed of me there.

"Good-bye, Julie, my love--good-bye--forever!"

These were portions of that strange doc.u.ment composed through the intervals of a long night, which showed in Warkworth's mind the survival of a moral code, inherited from generations of scrupulous and G.o.d-fearing ancestors, overlaid by selfish living, and now revived under the stress, the purification partly of deepening pa.s.sion, partly of a high responsibility. The letter was incoherent, illogical; it showed now the meaner, now the n.o.bler elements of character; but it was human; it came from the warm depths of life, and it had exerted in the end a composing and appeasing force upon the woman to whom it was addressed.