Venetia Part 48

'Why did they not let you at least hate me!'

'My father!' said Venetia, in a firmer voice, and with returning animation, yet gazing around her with a still distracted air, 'Am I with my father? The clouds clear from my brain. I remember that we met. Where was it? Was it at Arqua? In the garden? I am with my father!' she continued in a rapid tone and with a wild smile. 'Oh! let me look on him;' and she turned round, and gazed upon Herbert with a serious scrutiny. 'Are you my father?' she continued, in a still, small voice. 'Your hair has grown grey since last I saw you; it was golden then, like mine. I know you are my father,' she added, after a pause, and in a tone almost of gaiety. 'You cannot deceive me. I know your name. They did not tell it me; I found it out myself, but it made me very ill, very; and I do not think I have ever been quite well since. You are Marmion Herbert. My mother had a dog called Marmion, when I was a little girl, but I did not know I had a father then.'

'Venetia!' exclaimed Herbert, with streaming eyes, as he listened with anguish to these incoherent sentences. 'My Venetia loves me!'

'Oh! she always loved you,' replied Venetia; always, always. Before she knew her father she loved him. I dare say you think I do not love you, because I am not used to speak to a father. Everything must be learnt, you know,' she said, with a faint, sad smile; 'and then it was so sudden! I do not think my mother knows it yet. And after all, though I found you out in a moment, still, I know not why, I thought it was a picture. But I read your verses, and I knew them by heart at once; but now my memory has worn out, for I am ill, and everything has gone cross with me. And all because my father wrote me verses. 'Tis very strange, is not it?'

'Sweet lamb of my affections,' exclaimed Herbert to himself, 'I fear me much this sudden meeting with one from whose bosom you ought never to have been estranged, has been for the moment too great a trial for this delicate brain.'

'I will not tell my mother,' said Venetia; 'she will be angry.'

'Your mother, darling; where is your mother?' said Herbert, looking, if possible, paler than he was wont.

She was at Arqua with me, and on the lake for months, but where we are now, I cannot say. If I could only remember where we are now,' she added with earnestness, and with a struggle to collect herself, 'I should know everything.'

'This is Rovigo, my child, the inn of Rovigo. You are travelling with your mother. Is it not so?'

'Yes! and we came this morning, and it rained. Now I know everything,'

said Venetia, with an animated and even cheerful air.

'And we met in the vestibule, my sweet,' continued Herbert, in a soothing voice; 'we came out of opposite chambers, and you knew me; my Venetia knew me. Try to tell me, my darling,' he added, in a tone of coaxing fondness, 'try to remember how Venetia knew her father.'

'He was so like his picture at Cherbury,' replied Venetia.

'Cherbury!' exclaimed Herbert, with a deep-drawn sigh.

'Only your hair has grown grey, dear father; but it is long, quite as long as in your picture.'

'Her dog called Marmion!' murmured Herbert to himself, 'and my portrait, too! You saw your father's portrait, then, every day, love?'

'Oh, no! said Venetia, shaking her head, 'only once, only once. And I never told mamma. It was where no one could go, but I went there one day. It was in a room that no one ever entered except mamma, but I entered it. I stole the key, and had a fever, and in my fever I confessed all. But I never knew it. Mamma never told me I confessed it, until many, many years afterwards. It was the first, the only time she ever mentioned to me your name, my father.'

'And she told you to shun me, to hate me? She told you I was a villain, a profligate, a demon? eh? eh? Was it not so, Venetia?'

'She told me that you had broken her heart,' said Venetia; 'and she prayed to G.o.d that her child might not be so miserable.'

'Oh, my Venetia!' exclaimed Herbert, pressing her to his breast, and in a voice stifled with emotion, 'I feel now we might have been happy!'

In the meantime the prolonged absence of her daughter surprised Lady Annabel. At length she rose, and walked into their adjoining apartment, but to her surprise Venetia was not there. Returning to her saloon, she found Pauncefort and the waiter arranging the table for dinner.

'Where is Miss Herbert, Pauncefort?' inquired Lady Annabel.

'I am sure, my lady, I cannot say. I have no doubt she is in the other room.'

'She is not there, for I have just quitted it,' replied Lady Annabel.

'How very strange! You have not seen the signora?' inquired Lady Annabel of the waiter.

'The signora is in the room with the gentleman.'

'The gentleman!' exclaimed Lady Annabel. 'Tell me, good man, what do you mean? I am inquiring for my daughter.'

'I know well the signora is talking of her daughter,' replied the waiter.

'But do you know my daughter by sight? Surely you you must mean some one else.'

'Do I know the signora's daughter?' said the waiter. 'The beautiful young lady, with hair like Santa Marguerita, in the church of the Holy Trinity! I tell the signora, I saw her carried into numero 4, in the arms of the Signor Forestiere, who arrived this morning.'

'Venetia is ill,' said Lady Annabel. 'Show me to the room, my friend.'

Lady Annabel accordingly, with a hurried step, following her guide, quitted the chamber. Pauncefort remained fixed to the earth, the very picture of perplexity.

'Well, to be sure!' she exclaimed, 'was anything ever so strange! In the arms of Signor Forestiere! Forestiere. An English name. There is no person of the name of Forest that I know. And in his arms, too! I should not wonder if it was my lord after all. Well, I should be glad if he were to come to light again, for, after all, my lady may say what she likes, but if Miss Venetia don't marry Lord Cadurcis, I must say marriages were never made in heaven!'

CHAPTER V.

The waiter threw open the door of Mr. Herbert's chamber, and Lady Annabel swept in with a majesty she generally a.s.sumed when about to meet strangers. The first thing she beheld was her daughter in the arms of a man whose head was bent, and who was embracing her.

Notwithstanding this astounding spectacle, Lady Annabel neither started nor screamed; she only said in an audible tone, and one rather expressing astonishment than agitation, 'Venetia!'

Immediately the stranger looked up, and Lady Annabel beheld her husband!

She was rooted to the earth. She turned deadly pale; for a moment her countenance expressed only terror, but the terror quickly changed into aversion. Suddenly she rushed forward, and exclaimed in a tone in which decision conquered dismay, 'Restore me my child!'

The moment Herbert had recognised his wife he had dexterously disengaged himself from the grasp of Venetia, whom he left on the chair, and meeting Lady Annabel with extended arms, that seemed to deprecate her wrath, he said, 'I seek not to deprive you of her; she is yours, and she is worthy of you; but respect, for a few moments, the feelings of a father who has met his only child in a manner so unforeseen.'

The presence of her mother instantaneously restored Venetia to herself. Her mind was in a moment cleared and settled. Her past and peculiar life, and all its incidents, recurred to her with their accustomed order, vividness, and truth. She thoroughly comprehended her present situation. Actuated by long-cherished feelings and the necessity of the occasion, she rose and threw herself at her mother's feet and exclaimed, 'O mother! he is my father, love him!'

Lady Annabel stood with an averted countenance, Venetia clinging to her hand, which she had caught when she rushed forward, and which now fell pa.s.sive by Lady Annabel's side, giving no sign, by any pressure or motion, of the slightest sympathy with her daughter, or feeling for the strange and agonising situation in which they were both placed.

'Annabel,' said Herbert, in a voice that trembled, though the speaker struggled to appear calm, 'be charitable! I have never intruded upon your privacy; I will not now outrage it. Accident, or some diviner motive, has brought us together this day. If you will not treat me with kindness, look not upon me with aversion before our child.'

Still she was silent and motionless, her countenance hidden from her husband and her daughter, but her erect and haughty form betokening her inexorable mind. 'Annabel,' said Herbert, who had now withdrawn to some distance, and leant against a pillar, 'will not then nearly twenty years of desolation purchase one moment of intercourse? I have injured you. Be it so. This is not the moment I will defend myself.

But have I not suffered? Is not this meeting a punishment deeper even than your vengeance could devise? Is it nothing to behold this beautiful child, and feel that she is only yours? Annabel, look on me, look on me only one moment! My frame is bowed, my hair is grey, my heart is withered; the principle of existence waxes faint and slack in this attenuated frame. I am no longer that Herbert on whom you once smiled, but a man stricken with many sorrows. The odious conviction of my life cannot long haunt you; yet a little while, and my memory will alone remain. Think of this, Annabel; I beseech you, think of it. Oh!

believe me, when the speedy hour arrives that will consign me to the grave, where I shall at least find peace, it will not be utterly without satisfaction that you will remember that we met if even by accident, and parted at least not with harshness!'

'Mother, dearest mother!' murmured Venetia, 'speak to him, look on him!'

'Venetia,' said her mother, without turning her head, but in a calm, firm tone, 'your father has seen you, has conversed with you. Between your father and myself there can be nothing to communicate, either of fact or feeling. Now let us depart.'

'No, no, not depart!' said Venetia franticly. 'You did not say depart, dear mother! I cannot go,' she added in a low and half-hysterical voice.

'Desert me, then,' said the mother. 'A fitting consequence of your private communications with your father,' she added in a tone of bitter scorn; and Lady Annabel moved to depart, but Venetia, still kneeling, clung to her convulsively.

'Mother, mother, you shall not go; you shall not leave me; we will never part, mother,' continued Venetia, in a tone almost of violence, as she perceived her mother give no indication of yielding to her wish. 'Are my feelings then nothing?' she then exclaimed. 'Is this your sense of my fidelity? Am I for ever to be a victim?' She loosened her hold of her mother's hand, her mother moved on, Venetia fell upon her forehead and uttered a faint scream. The heart of Lady Annabel relented when she fancied her daughter suffered physical pain, however slight; she hesitated, she turned, she hastened to her child; her husband had simultaneously advanced; in the rapid movement and confusion her hand touched that of Herbert.

'I yield her to you, Annabel,' said Herbert, placing Venetia in her mother's arms. 'You mistake me, as you have often mistaken me, if you think I seek to practise on the feelings of this angelic child. She is yours; may she compensate you for the misery I have caused you, but never sought to occasion!'