Lady Ravelgold. Page 013.
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“What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered quick
With cassia, or be shot to death with pearls!”
DUCHESS OF MALFY.
“I've been i' the Indies twice, and seen strange things—
But two honest women!—One, I read of once!”
RULE A WIFE.
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It was what is called by people on the continent
a “London day.” A thin, gray mist drizzled
down through the smoke which darkened the long
cavern of Fleet-street; the sidewalks were slippery
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and clammy; the drays slid from side to side on the
greasy pavement, creating a perpetual clamour
among the lighter carriages with which they came
in contact; the porters wondered that “gemmen”
would carry their umbrellas up when there was no
rain, and the gentlemen wondered that porters
should be permitted on the sidewalks; there were
passengers in box-coats though it was the first of
May, and beggars with bare breasts though it was
chilly as November; the boys were looking wistfully
into the hosier's windows who were generally
at the pastry-cook's, and there were persons who
wished to know the time, trying in vain to see the
dial of St. Paul's through the gambage atmosphere.
It was twelve o'clock, and a plain chariot with a
simple crest on the panels, slowly picked its way
through the choked and disputed thoroughfare east
of Temple Bar. The smart glazed hat of the
coachman, the well-fitted drab greatcoat and gaiters
of the footman, and the sort of half-submissive, half-contemptuous
look on both their faces, (implying
that they were bound to drive to the devil if it were
miladi's orders, but that the rabble of Fleet-street
was a leetle too vulgar for their contact,) expressed
very plainly that the lady within was a denizen of a
more privileged quarter, but had chosen a rainy
day for some compulsory visit to “the city.”
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At the rate of perhaps a mile an hour, the well-groomed
night horses—(a pair of smart, hardy,
twelve-mile cabs, all bottom but little style, kept for
night-work and forced journeys)—had threaded the
tortuous entrails of London, and had arrived at the
arch of a dark court in Throgmorton-street. The
coachman put his wheels snug against the edge of
the sidewalk, to avoid being crushed by the passing
drays, and settled his many-caped benjamin about
him; while the footman spread his umbrella, and
making a balustrade of his arm for his mistresses
assistance, a closely-veiled lady descended and disappeared
up the wet and ill-paved avenue.
The green-baize door of Firkins and Co. opened
on its silent hinges and admitted the mysterious visiter,
who, inquiring if the nearest clerk of the junior
partner were in, was showed to a small inner room
containing a desk, two chairs, a coal fire, and a young
gentleman. The last article of furniture rose on the
lady's entrance, and as she threw off her veil he made
a low bow, with the air of a gentleman, who is neither
surprised nor embarrassed, and pushing aside the
door-check, they were left alone.
There was that forced complaisance in the lady's
manner on her first entrance, which produced the
slightest possible elevation in a very scornful lip
owned by the junior partner, but the lady was only
forty-five, high-born, and very handsome, and as she
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looked at the fine specimen of nature's nobility, who
met her with a look as proud and yet as gentle as
her own, the smoke of Fleet-street passed away
from her memory, and she became natural and even
gracious. The effect upon the junior partner was
simply that of removing from his breast the shade
of her first impression.
“I have brought you,” said his visiter, drawing a
card from her reticule, “an invitation to the dutchess
of Hautaigle's ball. She sent me half a dozen to
fill up for what she calls `ornamentals'—and I am
sure I shall scarce find another who comes so decidedly
under her grace's category.”
The fair speaker had delivered this pretty speech
in the sweetest and best-bred tone of St. James's,
looking the while at the toe of the small brodequin
which she held up to the fire—perhaps thinking only
of drying it. As she concluded her sentence, she
turned to her companion for an answer, and was
surprised at the impassive politeness of his bow of
acknowledgment.
“I regret that I shall not be able to avail myself
of your ladyship's kindness,” said the junior partner,
in the same well-enunciated tone of courtesy.
“Then,” replied the lady with a smile, “Lord
Augustus Fitz-Moi, who looks at himself all dinner-time
in a spoon, will be the Apollo of the hour.—
What a pity such a handsome creature should be
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so vain! By the way, Mr. Firkins, you live without
a looking-glass, I see.”
“Your ladyship reminds me that this is merely a
place of business. May I ask at once what errand
has procured me the honour of a visit on so unpleasant
a day?”
A slight flush brightened the cheek and forehead
of the beautiful woman, as she compressed her lips,
and forced herself to say with affected ease, “the
want of five hundred pounds.”
The junior partner paused an instant while the
lady tapped with her boot upon the fender in illdissembled
anxiety, and then, turning to his desk, he
filled up the check without remark, presented it, and
took his hat to wait on her to her carriage. A gleam
of relief and pleasure shot over her countenance as
she closed her small jewelled hand over it, followed
immediately by a look of embarrassed inquiry into
the face of the unquestioning banker.
“I am in your debt already.”
“Thirty thousand pounds, madam!”
“And for this you think the securities on the estate
of Rockland—”
“Are worth nothing, madam! But it rains. I
regret that your ladyship's carriage cannot come to
the door. In the old-fashioned days of sedan-chairs,
now, the dark courts of Lothbury must have been
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more attractive. By the way, talking of Lothbury,
there is Lady Roseberry's fête champêtre next week.
If you should chance to have a spare card—”
“Twenty, if you like—I am too happy—really,
Mr. Firkins—”
“It's on the fifteenth; I shall have the honour of
seeing your ladyship there! Good morning! Home,
coachman!”
“Does this man love me?” was Lady Ravelgold's
first thought, as she sank back in her returning chariot.
Yet no! he was even rude in his haste to be
rid of me. And I would willingly have staid, too,
for there is something about him of a mark that I
like. Ay, and he must have seen it—a lighter
encouragement has been interpreted more readily.
Five hundred pounds! Really five hundred pounds!
And thirty thousand at the back of it! What does
he mean? Heavens, if he should be deeper than I
thought! If he should wish to involve me first!”
And spite of the horrour with which the thought
was met in the mind of Lady Ravelgold, the blush
over her forehead died away into a half smile and a
brighter tint in her lips; and as the carriage wound
slowly on through the confused press of Fleet-street
and the Strand, the image of the handsome and
haughty young banker shut her eyes from all sounds
without, and she was at her own door in
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Grosvenor square before she had changed position or wandered
for half a moment from the subject of those busy
dreams.
The morning of the fifteenth of May seemed to
have been appointed by all the flowers as a jubilee
of perfume and bloom. The birds had been invited
and sang in the summer with a welcome as fullthroated
as a prima donna singing down the tenor
in a duet; the most laggard buds turned out their
hearts to the sunshine, and promised leaves on the
morrow, and that portion of London that had been
invited to Lady Roseberry's fête, thought it a very
fine day! That portion which was not, wondered
how people would go sweltering about in such a
glare for a cold dinner!
At about half-past two, a very elegant dark green
cab without a crest, and with a servant in whose
slight figure and plain blue livery there was not a
fault, whirled out at the gate of the Regent's Park,
and took its way up the well-watered road leading
to Hampstead. The gentleman whom it passed or
met turned to admire the performance of the dark
gray horse, and the ladies looked after the cab as if
they could see the handsome occupant once more
through its leather back. Whether by conspiracy
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among the coach-makers, or by an aristocracy of
taste, the degree of elegance in a turn-out attained
by the cab just described, is usually confined to the
acquaintances of Lady—; that list being understood
to enumerate all “the nice young men” of the
West end, beside the guardsmen. (The ton of the
latter, in all matters that affect the style of the
regiment, is looked after by the club and the colonel.)
The junior Firkins seemed an exception to this
exclusive rule. No “nice man” could come from
Lothbury, and he did not visit Lady—; but his
horse was faultless, and when he turned into the
gate of Rose-Eden, the policeman at the porter's
lodge, though he did not know him, thought it
unnecessary to ask for his name. Away he spattered
up the hilly avenue, and giving the reins to
his groom at the end of a green arbour leading to
the reception-lawn, he walked in and made his bow
to Lady Roseberry, who remarked, “How very
handsome! Who can he be?” and the junior partner
walked on and disappeared down an avenue of
laburnums.
Ah! but Rose-Eden looked a Paradise that day!
Hundreds had passed across the close-shaven lawn,
with a bow to the lady-mistress of this fair abode.
Yet the grounds were still private enough for Milton's
pair, so lost were they in the green labyrinths of hill
and dale. Some had descended through
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heavily-shaded paths to a fancy-dairy, built over a fountain
in the bottom of a cool dell; and here, amid her
milk-pans of old and costly china, the prettiest maid
in the country round pattered about upon a floor of
Dutch tiles, and served her visiters with creams and
ices; already, as it were, adapted to fashionable
comprehension. Some had strayed to the ornamental
cottages in the skirts of the flower-garden—
poetical abodes, built from a picturesque drawing,
with imitation roughness; thatch, lattice-window,
and low paling, all complete; and inhabited by super-annuated
dependants of Lord Roseberry, whose only
duties were to look like patriarchs, and give tea and
new cream-cheese to visiters on fête-days. Some
had gone to see the silver and gold pheasants in
their wire-houses—stately aristocrats of the game
tribe, who carry their finely-pencilled feathers like
“Marmalct Madarus,” strutting in hoop and farthingale.
Some had gone to the kennels, to see setters
and pointers, hounds and terriers, lodged like gentlemen,
each breed in its own apartment; the puppies,
as elsewhere, treated with most attention.
Some were in the flower-garden, some in the green-houses,
some in the graperies, aviaries, and grottoes;
and at the side of a bright sparkling fountain, in the
recesses of a fir-grove, with her foot upon its marble
lip, and one hand on the shoulder of a small Cupid
who archly made a drinking-cup of his wing, and
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caught the bright water as it fell, stood Lady Imogen
Ravelgold, the loveliest girl of nineteen that prayed
night and morning within the parish of May Fair,
listening to very passionate language from the young
banker of Lothbury.
A bugle on the lawn rang a recall. From every
alley, and by every path, poured in the gay multitude,
and the smooth sward looked like a plateau of
animated flowers, waked by magic from a broidery
on green velvet. Ah! the beautiful demi-toilettes!
—so difficult to attain, yet, when attained, the dress
most modest, most captivating, most worthy the
divine grace of woman. Those airy hats, sheltering
from the sun, yet not enviously concealing a
feature or a ringlet that a painter would draw for
his exhibition picture! Those summery and shapely
robes, covering the person more to show its
outline better, and provoke more the worship, which,
like all worship, is made more adoring by mystery!
Those complexions which but betray their transparency
in the sun: lips in which the blood is translucent
when between you and the light: cheeks finer-grained
than alabaster, yet as cool in their virgin purity as
a tint in the dark corner of a Ruysdael: the human
race was at less perfection in Athens in the days of
Lais—in Egypt in the days of Cleopatra, than that
day on the lawn of Rose-Eden.
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Cart-loads of ribands, of every gay colour, had
been laced through the trees in all directions; and
amid every variety of foliage, and every shade of
green, the tulip-tints shone vivid and brilliant, like
an American forest after the first frost. From the
left edge of the lawn, the ground suddenly sunk into
a dell, shaped like an amphitheatre, with a level
platform at its bottom, and all around, above and
below, thickened a shady wood. The music of a
delicious band stole up from the recesses of a grove,
draped as an orchestra and green-room on the lower
side, and while the audience disposed themselves in
the shade of the upper grove, a company of players
and dancing-girls commenced their theatricals.—
Imogen Ravelgold, who was separated, by a pine
tree only, from the junior partner, could scarce tell
you, when it was finished, what was the plot of the
play.
The recall-bugle sounded again, and the band
wound away from the lawn, playing a gay march.
Followed lady Roseberry and her suite of gentlemen,
followed dames and their daughters, followed all
who wished to see the flight of my lord's falcons.
By a narrow path and a wicket-gate, the long music-guided
train stole out upon an open hill-side, looking
down on a verdant and spreading meadow. The
band played at a short distance behind the gay
groups of spectators, and it was a pretty picture to
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look down upon the splendidly-dressed falconer and
his men, holding their fierce birds upon their wrists,
in their hoods and jesses, a foreground of old chivalry
and romance; while far beyond extended, like a sea
over the horizon, the smoke-clad pinnacles of busy
and every-day London. There are such contrasts
of the eyes of the rich!
The scarlet hood was taken from the trustiest
falcon, and a dove, confined, at first, with a string,
was thrown up, and brought back, to excite his
attention. As he fixed his eye upon him, the frightened
victim was let loose, and the falcon flung off;
away skimmed the dove in a low flight over the
meadow, and up to the very zenith, in circles of
amazing swiftness and power, sped the exulting
falcon, apparently forgetful of his prey, and bound
for the eye of the sun with his strong wings and his
liberty. The falconer's whistle and cry were heard;
the dove circled round the edge of the meadow in his
wavy flight; and down, with the speed of lightning,
shot the falcon, striking his prey dead to the earth
before the eye could settle on his form. As the
proud bird stood upon his victim, looking around
with a lifted crest and fierce eye, Lady Imogen Ravengold
heard, in a voice of which her heart knew
the musick, “They who soar highest strike surest;
the dove lies in the falcon's bosom.”
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The afternoon had, meantime, been wearing on,
and at six the “breakfast” was announced. The
tents beneath which the tables were spread were in
different parts of the grounds, and the guests had
made up their own parties. Each sped to his rendezvous,
and as the last loiterers disappeared from
the lawn, a gentleman in a claret coat and a brown
study, found himself stopping to let a lady pass who
had obeyed the summons as tardily as himself. In
a white chip hat, Hairbault's last, a few lilies of the
valley laid among her raven curls beneath, a simple
white robe, the chef-d'œuvre of Victotine in style
and tournure, Lady Ravelgold would have been the
belle of the fête, but for her daughter.
“Well emerged from Lothbury!” she said, curtsying,
with a slight flush over her features, but
immediately taking his arm; “I have lost my party.
and meeting you is opportune. Where shall we
breakfast?”
There was a small tent standing invitingly open
on the opposite side of the lawn, and by the fainter
rattle of soup-spoons from that quarter, it promised
to be less crowded than the others. The junior
partner would willingly have declined the proffered
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honour, but he saw at a glance that there was no
escape, and submitted with a grace.
“You know very few people here,” said his fair
creditor, taking the bread from her napkin.
“Your ladyship and one other.”
“Ah, we shall have dancing by and by, and I
must introduce you to my daughter. By the way,
have you no name from your mother's side? `Firkins'
sounds so very odd. Give me some pretter
word to drink in this champagne.”
“What do you think of Tremlet?”
“Too effeminate for your severe style of beauty—
but it will do. Mr. Tremlet, your health! Will you
give me a little of the paté before you? Pray, if it
is not indiscreet, how comes that classick profile, and,
more surprising still, that distinguished look of yours,
to have found no gayer destiny than the signing of
`Firkins and Co.' to notes of hand? Though I thought
you became your den in Lothbury, upon my honour
you look more at home here.”
And Lady Ravengold fixed her superb eyes upon
the beautiful features of her companion, wondering
partly why he did not speak, and partly why she
had not observed before that he was incomparably
the handsomest creature she had ever seen.
“I can regret no vocation,” he answered after a
moment, “which procures me an acquaintance with
your ladyship's family.”
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“There is an arriére pensée in that formal speech,
Mr. Tremlet. You are insincere. I am the only
one in my family whom you know, and what pleasure
have you taken in my acquaintance? And,
now I think of it, there is a mystery about you,
which, but for the noble truth written so legibly on
your features, I should be afraid to fathom. Why
have you suffered me to over-draw my credit so
enormously, and without a shadow of a protest?”
When Lady Ravelgold had disburdened her heart
of this direct question, she turned half round and
looked her companion in the face with an intense
interest, which produced upon her own features an
expression of earnestness very uncommon upon
their pale and impassive lines. She was one of
those persons of little thought, who care nothing for
causes or consequences, so that the present difficulty
is removed, or the present hour provided with its
wings; but the repeated relief she had received from
the young banker, when total ruin would have been
the consequence of his refusal, and his marked coldness
in his manner to her, had stimulated the utmost
curiosity of which she was capable. Her vanity,
founded upon her high rank and great renown as a
beauty, would have agreed that he might be willing
to get her into his power at that price, had he been
less agreeable in his own person, or more eager in
his manner. But she had wanted money sufficiently
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to know, that thirty thousand pounds are not a bagatelle,
and her brain was busy till she discovered
the equivalent he sought for it. Meantime her fear
that he would turn out to be a lover, grew rapidly
into a fear that he would not.
Lady Ravelgold had been the wife of a dissolute
earl, who had died, leaving his estate inextricably
involved. With no male heir to the title
or property, and no very near relation, the beautiful
widow shut her eyes to the difficulties by which
she was surrounded, and at the first decent moment
after the death of her lord, she had re-entered the
gay society of which she had been the bright and
particular star, and never dreamed either of diminishing
her establishment, or of calculating her possible
income. The first heavy draft she had made
upon the house of Firkins and Co., her husband's
bankers, had been returned with a statement of the
Ravelgold debt and credit on their books, by which
it appeared that Lord Ravelgold had overdrawn
four or five thousand pounds before his death, and
that from some legal difficulties, nothing could be
realized from the securities given on his estates.
This bad news arrived on the morning of a fête to
be given by the Russian ambassador, at which her
only child, Lady Imogen, was to make her début in
society. With the facility of disposition which was
peculiar to her, Lady Ravelgold thrust the papers
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into her drawer, and determining to visit her banker
on the following morning, threw the matter entirely
from her mind and made preparations for the ball.
With the Russian government the house of Firkins
and Co. had long carried on very extensive fiscal
transactions, and in obedience to instructions from
the emperor, regular invitations for the embassy
fêtes were sent to the bankers, accepted occasionally
by the junior partner only, who was generally
supposed to be a natural son of old Firkins. Out
of the banking-house he was known as Mr. Tremlet,
and it was by this name, which was presumed
to be his mother's, that he was casually introduced
to Lady Imogen on the night of the fête, while she
was separated from her mother in the dancing-room.
The consequence was a sudden, deep, ineffaceable
passion in the bosom of the young banker,
checked and silenced, but never lessened or
chilled by the recollection of the obstacle of his
birth. The impression of his subdued manner, his
worshipping, yet most respectful tones, and the
bright soul that breathed through his handsome
features with his unusual excitement, was, to say
the least, favourable upon Lady Imogen, and they
parted on the night of the fête, mutually aware of
each other's preference.
On the following morning Lady Ravelgold made
her proposed visit to the city; and inquiring for
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Mr. Firkins, was shown in as usual to the junior
partner, to whom the colloquial business of the concern
had long been entrusted. To her surprise she
found no difficulty in obtaining the sum of money
which had been refused her on the preceding day—
a result which she attributed to her powers of persuasion,
or to some new turn in the affairs of the
estate; and for two years these visits had been repeated
at intervals of three or four months, with the
same success, though not with the same delusion as
to the cause. She had discovered that the estate
was worse than nothing, and the junior partner
cared little to prolong his têtes-à-têtes with her, and,
up to the visit with which this tale opened, she had
looked to every succeeding one with increased fear
and doubt.
During these two years, Tremlet had seen Lady
Imogen occasionally at balls and public places, and
every look they exchanged wove more strongly between
them the subtle threads of love. Once or
twice she had endeavoured to interest her mother
in conversation on the subject, with the intention of
of making a confidence of her feelings; but Lady
Ravengold, when not anxious, was giddy with her
own success, and the unfamiliar name never rested
a moment on her ear. With this explanation to
render the tale intelligible, “let us,” as the French
say, “return to our muttons.”
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Of the conversation between Tremlet and her
mother, Lady Imogen was an unobserved and astonished
witness. The tent which they had entered
was large, with a buffet in the centre, and a circular
table waited on by servants within the ring; and,
just concealed by the drapery around the pole, sat
Lady Imogen with a party of her friends, discussing
very seriously the threatened fashion of tight sleeves.
She had half risen, when her mother entered, to
offer her a seat by her side, but the sight of Tremlet,
who immediately followed, had checked the words
upon her lip, and to her surprise they seated themselves
on the side that was wholly unoccupied, and
conversed in a tone inaudible to all but themselves.
Not aware that her lover knew Lady Ravelgold,
she supposed that they might have been casually
introduced, till the earnestness of her mother's manner,
and a certain case between them in the little
courtesies of the table, assured her that this could
not be their first interview. Tremlet's face was
turned from her, and she could not judge whether
he was equally interested; but she had been so accustomed
to consider her mother as irrisistible when
she chose to please, that she supposed it of course;
and very soon the heightened colour of Lady Ravelgold,
and the unwavering look of mingled admiration
and curiosity which she bent upon the handsome
face of her companion, left no doubt in her
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mind that her reserved and exclusive lover was in
the dangerous toils of a rival whose power she
knew. From the mortal pangs of a first jealousy,
heaven send thee deliverance, fair Lady Imogen!
“We shall find our account in the advances on
your ladyship's credit;” said Tremlet, in reply to
the direct question that was put to him. “Meantime
permit me to admire the courage with which
you look so disagreeable a subject in the face.”
“For `disagreeable subject,' read `Mr. Tremlet.'
I show my temerity more in that. Apropos of faces,
yours would become the new fashion of cravat. The
men at Crockford's slip the ends through a ring of
their lady-love's, if they chance to have one—thus!”
and untying the loose knot of his black satin cravat,
Lady Ravelgold slipped over the ends a diamond
of small value, conspicuously set in pearls.
“The men at Crockford's,” said Tremlet, hesitating
to commit the rudeness of removing the ring,
“are not of my school of manners. If I had been
so fortunate as to inspire a lady with a preference
for me, I should not advertise it on my cravat.”
“But suppose the lady were proud of her preference,
as dames were of the devotion of their knights
in the days of chivalry—would you not wear her
favour as conspicuously as they?”
A flush of mingled embarrassment and surprise
shot over the forehead of Tremlet, and he was
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turning the ring with his fingers, when Lady Imogen,
attempting to pass out of the tent, was stopped
by her mother.
“Imogen, my daughter! this is Mr. Tremlet.
Lady Imogen Ravelgold, Mr. Tremlet!”
The cold and scarce perceptible bow which the
wounded girl gave to her lover, betrayed no previous
acquaintance to the careless Lady Ravelgold.
Without giving a second thought to her daughter,
she held her glass for some champagne to a passing
servant, and as Lady Imogen and her friends crossed
the lawn to the dancing tent, she resumed the
conversation which they had interrupted; while
Tremlet, with his heart brooding on the altered look
he had received, listened and replied almost unconsciously;
yet from this very circumstance, in a manner
which was interpreted by his companion as the
embarrassment of a timid and long-repressed passion
for herself.
While Lady Ravelgold and the junior partner
were thus playing at cross purposes over their
champagne and bons-bons, Grisi and Lablanche
were singing a duet from I Puritani, to a full audience
in the saloon; the drinking young men sat
over their wine at the nearly deserted tables; Lady
Imogen and her friends waltzed to Collinet's band,
and the artizans were busy below the lawn, erecting
the machinery for the fire-works. Meantime every
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alley and avenue, grot and labyrinth, had been dimly
illuminated with coloured lamps, showing like varicoloured
glow-worms amid the foliage and shells;
and if the bright scenery of Rose-Eden had been
lovely by day, it was fay-land and witchery by
night. Fatal impulse of our nature, that these approaches
to paradise in the “delight of the eye,”
stir only in our bosoms the passions upon which law
and holy writ have put ban and bridle!
“Shall we stroll down this alley of crimson
lamps?” said Lady Ravelgold, crossing the lawn
from the tent where their coffee had been brought
to them, and putting her slender arm far into that
of her now pale and silent companion.
A lady in a white dress stood at the entrance of
that crimson avenue, as Tremlet and his passionate
admirer disappeared beneath the closing lines of the
long perspective, and, remaining a moment gazing
through the unbroken twinkle of the confusing
lamps, she pressed her hand hard upon her forehead,
drew up her form as if struggling with some
irrepressible feeling, and in another moment was
whirling in the waltz with Lord Ernest Fitzantelope,
whose mother wrote a complimentary paragraph
about their performance for the next Saturday's
Court Journal.
The bugle sounded, and the band played a march
upon the lawn. From the breakfast tents, from the
-- 037 --
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coffee-rooms, from the dance, from the card-tables,
poured all who wished to witness the marvels that
lie in saltpetre. Gentlemen who stood in a tender
attitude in the darkness, held themselves ready
to lean the other way when the rockets blazed up,
and mammas who were encouraging flirtations with
eligibles, whispered a caution on the same subject to
their less-experienced daughters.
Up sped the missiles, round spun the wheels, fair
burned the pagodas, swift flew the fire-doves off and
back again on their wires, and softly floated down
through the dewy atmosphere of that May night
the lambent and many-coloured stars, flung burning
from the exploded rockets. Device followed device,
and Lady Imogen almost forgot, in her child's delight
at the spectacle, that she had taken into her
bosom a green serpent, whose folds were closing
like suffocation about her heart.
The finalè was to consist of a new light, invented
by the Pyrotechnist, promised to Lady Roseberry
to be several degrees brighter than the sun—comparatively
with the quantity of matter. Before this
last flourish came a pause; and while all the world
were murmuring love and applause around her,
Lady Imogen, with her eyes fixed on an indefinite
point in the darkness, took advantage of the cessation
of light to feed her serpent with thoughts of passionate
and uncontrollable pain. A French attaché,
-- 038 --
[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
Phillipiste to the very tips of his mustache, addressed
to her ear, meantime, the compliments he had found
most effective in the Chaussée D' Antin.
The light burst suddenly from a hundred blazing
points, clear, dazzling, intense—illuminating, as by
the instantaneous burst of day, the farthest corner
of Rose-Eden. And Monsieur Mangepoire, with a
French contempt for English fire-works, took advantage
of the first ray to look into Lady Imogen's
eyes.
“Mais, Miladi!” was his immediate exclamation,
after following their direction with a glance,
“ce n'est qu'un tableau vivant, cela! Help, gentlemen!
Elle s'évanóuit. Some salts! Misericorde!
Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” And Lady Imogen Ravelgold
was carried fainting to Lady Roseberry's
chamber.
In a small opening at the end of a long avenue
of lilachs, extended from the lawn in the direction
of Lady Imogen's fixed and unconscious gaze, was
presented, by the unexpected illumination, the tableau
vivant, seen by her ladyship and Monsieur Mangepoire
at the same instant—a gentleman drawn up
to his fullest height, with his arms folded, and a lady
kneeling on the ground at his feet with her arms
stretched up to his bosom.
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A little after two o'clock on the following Wednesday,
Tremlet's cabriolet stopped near the perron
of Willis's rooms in King-street, and while he sent
up his card to the lady patronesses for his ticket to
that night's Almack's, he busied himself in looking
into the crowd of carriages about him, and reading
on the faces of their fair occupants the hope and
anxiety to which they were a prey till John the
footman brought them tickets or despair. Drawn
up on the opposite side of the street, stood a family
carriage of the old style, covered with half the arms
of the herald's office, and containing a fat dowager
and three very over-dressed daughters. Watching
them, to see the effect of their application, stood
upon the sidewalk three or four young men from the
neighbouring club-house, and at the moment Tremlet
was observing these circumstances, a foreign
britsçka, containing a beautiful woman of a reputation
better understood than expressed in the conclave
above stairs, flew round the corner of St. James'-street,
and very nearly drove into the open mouth
of the junior partner's cabriolet.
“I will bet you a Ukraine colt against this fine bay
of yours,” said the Russian secretary of legation,
-- 040 --
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advancing from the group of dandies to Tremlet,
“that miladi, yonder, with all the best blood of England
in her own and her daughter's red faces, gets
no tickets this morning.”
“I'll take a bet upon the lady who has nearly
extinguished me, if you like,” answered Tremlet,
gazing with admiration at the calm, delicate, childlike
looking creature, who sat before him in the
britsçka.
“No!” said the secretary, “for Almack's is a
republic of beauty, and she'll be voted in without
either blood or virtue. Par exémple, Lady Ravelgold's
voucher is good here, though she does study
tableaux in Lothbury—eh Tremlet?”
Totally unaware of the unlucky discovery by the
fireworks at Lady Roseberry's fête, Tremlet coloured
and was inclined to take the insinuation as an
affront; but a laugh from the dandies drew off his
companion's attention, and he observed the dowager's
footman standing at her coach window with
his empty hands held up in most expressive negation,
while the three young ladies within sat aghast, in all
the agonies of disappointed hopes. The lumbering
carriage got into motion—its ineffective blazonry
paled by the mortified blush of its occupants—and,
as the junior partner drove away, philosophizing on
the arbitrary opinions and unprovoked insults of
polite society, the britsçka shot by, showing him, as
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
he leaned forward, a lovely woman who bent on
him the most dangerous eyes in London, and an
Almack's ticket lying on the unoccupied cushion
beside her.
The white relievo upon the pale blue wall of Almack's
showed every crack in its stucco flowers,
and the faded chaperons who had defects of a similar
description to conceal, took warning of the walls,
and retreated to the friendlier dimness of the tearoom.
Collinet was beginning the second set of
quadrilles, and among the fairest of the surpassingly
beautiful women who were moving to his heavenly
music, was Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the lovelier tonight
for the first heavy sadness that had ever
dimmed the roses in her cheek. Her lady mother
divided her thoughts between what this could mean,
and whether Mr. Tremlet would come to the ball;
and when, presently after, in the dos-a-dos, she forgot
to look at her daughter, on seeing that gentleman
enter, she lost a very good opportunity for a guess
at the cause of Lady Imogen's paleness.
To the pure and true eye that appreciates the
divinity of the form after which woman is made, it
would have been a glorious feast to have seen the
perfection of shape, colour, motion and countenance
shown that night on the bright floor of Almack's.
For the young and beautiful girls whose envied
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
destiny is to commence their woman's history in this
exclusive hall, there exist aids to beauty known to
no other class or nation. Perpetual vigilance over
every limb from the cradle up; physical education
of a perfection, discipline and judgment pursued
only at great expense and under great responsibility;
moral education of the highest kind, habitual consciousness
of rank, exclusive contact with elegance
and luxury, and a freedom of intellectual culture
which breathes a soul through the face before passion
has touched it with a line or a shade—these
are some of the circumstances which make Almack's
the cynosure of the world for adorable and radiant
beauty.
There were three ladies who had come to Almack's
with a definite object that night, each of
whom was destined to be surprised and foiled:
Lady Ravelgold, who feared she had been abrupt
with the inexperienced banker, but trusted to find
him softened by a day or two's reflection; Mrs. St.
Leger, the Lady of the britsçka, who had ordered
supper for two on her arrival at home from her
morning's drive, and intended to have the company
of the handsome creature she had nearly run over
in King-street; and Lady Imogen Ravelgold, as
will appear in the sequel.
Tremlet stood in the entrance from the tea-room
a moment, gathering courage to walk alone into such
-- 043 --
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
a dazzling scene, and then, having caught a glimpse
of the glossy lines of Lady Imogen's head at the
farthest end of the room, he was advancing toward
her, when he was addressed by a lady who leaned
against one of the slender columns of the orchestra.
After a sweetly-phrased apology for having nearly
knocked out his brains that morning with her horses
fore feet, Mrs. St. Leger took his arm, and walking
deliberately two or three times up and down the
room, took possession, at last, of a banquette on the
highest range, so far from any other person, that it
would have been a marked rudeness to have left her
alone. Tremlet took his seat by her with this
instinctive feeling, trusting that some of her acquaintances
would soon approach, and give him a fair
excuse to leave her; but he soon became amused
with her piquant style of conversation, and, not
aware of being observed, fell into the attitude of a
pleased and earnest listener.
Lady Ravelgold's feelings during this petit entretien,
were of a very positive description. She had
an instinctive knowledge, and consequently a jealous
dislike of Mrs. St. Leger's character; and, still under
the delusion that the young banker's liberality was
prompted by a secret passion for herself, she saw
her credit in the city and her hold upon the affections
of Tremlet, (for whom she had really conceived a
violent affection,) melting away in every smile of
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
the dangerous woman who engrossed him. As she
looked around for a friend, to whose ear she might
communicate some of the suffocating poison in her
own heart, Lady Imogen returned to her from a
galopade; and, like a second dagger into the heart
of the pure-minded girl, went this second proof of
her lover's corrupt principle and conduct. Unwilling
to believe even her own eyes on the night of
Lady Roseberry's fête, she had summoned resolution
on the road home to ask an explanation of her mother.
Embarrassed by the abrupt question, Lady Ravelgold
felt obliged to make a partial confidence of the
state of her pecuniary affairs; and to clear herself,
she represented Tremlet as having taken advantage
of her obligations to him, to push a dishonourable
suit. The scene disclosed by the sudden blaze of
the fire-works being thus simply explained, Lady
Imogen determined at once to give up Tremlet's
acquaintance altogether; a resolution which his
open flirtation with a woman of Mrs. St. Leger's
character served to confirm. She had, however,
one errand with him, prompted by her filial feelings
and favoured by an accidental circumstance which
will appear.
“Do you believe in animal magnetism?” asked
Mrs. St. Leger, “for by the fixedness of Lady Ravelgold's
eyes in this quarter, something is going to
happen to one of us.”
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
The next moment the Russian secretary approached
and took his seat by Mrs. St. Leger, and with
diplomatic address contrived to convey to Tremlet's
ear that Lady Ravelgold wished to speak with him.
The banker rose, but the quick wit of his companion
comprehended the manœuvre.
“Ah! I see how it is,” she said, “but stay—you'll
sup with me to-night? Promise me—parole d'honneur!”
“Parole!” answered Tremlet, making his way
out between the seats, half pleased and half embarrassed.
“As for you, Monsieur le Secretaire,” said Mrs.
St. Leger, “you have forfeited my favour, and may
sup elsewhere. How dare you conspire against
me?”
While the Russian was making his peace, Tremlet
crossed over to Lady Ravelgold; but, astonished
at the change in Lady Imogen, he soon broke in
abruptly upon her mother's conversation, to ask her
to dance. She accepted his hand for a quadrille;
but as they walked down the room in search of a
vis-à-vis, she complained of heat, and asked timidly
if he would take her to the tea-room.
“Mr. Tremlet,” she said, fixing her eyes upon the
cup of tea which he had given her, and which she
found some difficulty in holding, “I have come here
to-night to communicate to you some important
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
information, to ask a favour, and to break off an
acquaintance which has lasted too long.”
Lady Imogen stopped, for the blood had fled
from her lips, and she was compelled to ask his arm
for a support. She drew herself up to her fullest
height the next moment, looked at Tremlet, who
stood in speech less astonishment, and with a strong
effort, commenced again in a low, firm tone—
“I have been acquainted with you some time, sir,
and have never inquired, nor knew more than your
name, up to this day. I suffered myself to be pleased
too blindly—”
“Dear Lady Imogen!”
“Stay a moment, sir! I will proceed directly to
my business. I received this morning a letter from
the senior partner of a mercantile house in the city,
with which you are connected. It is written on the
supposition that I have some interest in you, and
informs me that you are not, as you yourself suppose,
the son of the gentleman who writes the letter.”
“Madam!”
“That gentleman, sir, as you know, never was
married. He informs me that in the course of many
financial visits to St. Petersburgh, he formed a friendship
with Count Manteuffel, then minister of finance
to the emperour, whose tragical end, in consequence
of his extensive defalcations, is well known. In
brief, sir, you were his child, and were taken by this
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
English banker, and carefully educated as his own,
in happy ignorance, as he imagined, of your father's
misfortunes and mournful death.”
Tremlet leaned against the wall, unable to reply
to this astounding intelligence, and Lady Imogen
went on.
“Your title and estates have been restored to you
at the request of your kind benefactor, and you are
now the heir to a princely fortune, and a count of
the Russian empire. Here is the letter, sir, which
is of no value to me now. Mr. Tremlet! one word
more, sir.”
Lady Imogen gasped for breath.
“In return, sir, for much interest given you heretofore—
in return, sir, for this information—”
“Speak, dear Lady Imogen!”
“Spare my mother!”
“Mrs. St. Leger's carriage stops the way!” shouted
a servant at that moment, at the top of the stairs;
and as if there were a spell in the sound to nerve
her resolution anew, Lady Imogen Ravelgold shook
the tears from her eyes, bowed coldly to Tremlet,
and passed out into the dressing-room.
“If you please, sir,” said a servant, approaching
the amazed banker, “Mrs. St. Leger waits for you
in her carriage.”
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
“Will you come home and sup with us?” said
Lady Ravelgold at the same instant, joining him in
the tea-room.
“I shall be only too happy, Lady Ravelgold.”
The bold coachman of Mrs. St. Leger continued
to “stop the way,” spite of policemen and infuriated
footmen, for some fifteen minutes. At the end of
that time Mr. Tremlet appeared, handing down
Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who walked to
their chariot, which was a few steps behind; and
very much to Mrs. St. Leger's astonishment, the
handsome banker sprang past her horses' heads a
minute after, jumped into his cabriolet, which stood
on the opposite side of the street, and drove after
the vanishing chariot as if his life depended on overtaking
it. Still Mrs. St. Leger's carriage “stopped
the way.” But, in a few minutes after, the same
footman who had summoned Tremlet in vain, returned
with the Russian secretary, doomed in blessed
unconsciousness to play the pis aller at her tête-à-têt
supper in Spring Gardens.
-- 049 --
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
If Lady Ravelgold showed beautiful by the
uncompromising light and in the ornamented hall
of Almack's, she was radiant as she came through
the mirror door of her own loved-contrived and
beauty-breathing boudoir. Tremlet had been showed
into this recess of luxury and elegance on his
arrival, and Lady Ravelgold and her daughter,
who preceded her by a minute or two, had gone to
their chambers, the first to make some slight changes
in her toilette, and the latter (entirely ignorant of her
lover's presence in the house,) to be alone with a
heart never before in such painful need of self-abandonment
and solitude.
Tremlet looked about him in the enchanted room
in which he found himself alone, and, spite of the
prepossessed agitation of his feelings, the voluptuous
beauty of every object had the effect to divert and
tranquillize him. The light was profuse, but it came
softened through the thinnest alabaster; and while
every object in the room was distinctly and minutely
visible, the effect of moonlight was not more soft
and dreamy. The general form of the boudoir
was an oval, but within the pilasters of folded silk
with their cornices of gold, lay crypts containing
-- 050 --
[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]
copies exquisitely done in marble of the most graceful
statues of antiquity, one of which seemed, by
the curtain drawn quite aside and a small antique
lamp burning near it, to be the divinity of the place—
the Greek Antinous, with his drooped head and
full, smooth limbs, the most passionate and life-like
representation of voluptuous beauty that intoxicates
the slumberous air of Italy. Opposite this, another
niche contained a few books, whose retreating
shelves swung on a secret door, and as it stood half
open, the nodding head of a snowy magnolia leaned
through, as if pouring from the lips of its broad
chalice the mingled odours of the unseen conservatory
it betrayed. The first sketch in crayons of a
portrait of Lady Ravelgold by young Lawrence,
stood against the wall, with the frame half buried
in a satin ottoman; and, as Tremlet stood before it,
admiring the clear, classic outline of the head and
bust, and wondering in what chamber of his brain
the gifted artist had found the beautiful drapery in
which he had drawn her, the dim light glanced
faintly on the left, and the broad mirror by which
he had entered swung again on its silver hinges,
and admitted the very presentment of what he gazed
on. Lady Ravelgold had removed the jewels from
her hair, and the robe of wrought lace, which she
had worn that night over a boddice of white satin
laced loosely below the bosom. In the place of this
-- 051 --
[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]
she had thrown upon her shoulders a flowing wrapper
of purple velvet, made open after the Persian
fashion, with a short and large sleeve, and embroidered
richly with gold upon the skirts. Her admirable
figure, gracefully defined by the satin petticoat
and boddice, showed against the gorgeous purple
as it flowed back in her advancing motion, with a
relief which would have waked the very soul of
Titian; her complexion was dazzling and faultless
in the flattering light of her own rooms; and there
are those who will read this who know how the
circumstances which surround a woman—luxury,
elegance, taste, or the opposite of these—enhance
or dim, beyond help or calculation, even the highest
order of woman's beauty.
Lady Ravelgold held a bracelet in her hand as
she came in.
“In my own house,” she said, holding the glittering
jewel to Tremlet, “I have a fancy for the style
antique. Tasseline, my maid, has gone to bed, and
you must do the devoir of a knight, or an abigail,
and loop up this Tyrian sleeve. Stay—look first
at the model—that small statue of Cytheris, yonder!
Not the shoulder—for you are to swear mine is prettier—
but the clasp. Fasten it like that. So! Now
take me for a Grecian nymph the rest of the evening.
“Lady Ravelgold!”
-- 052 --
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
“Hermione or Agläe, if you please! But let us
ring for supper!”
As the bell sounded, a superb South American
trulian darted in from the conservatory, and, spreading
his gorgeous black and gold wings a moment
over the alabaster shoulder of Lady Ravelgold, as if
he took a pleasure in prolonging the first touch as
he alighted, turned his large liquid eye fiercely on
Tremlet.
“Thus it is,” said Lady Ravelgold, “we forget
our old favourites in our new. See how jealous he
is!”
“Supper is served, miladi!” said a servant entering.
“A hand to each, then, for the present,” she said,
putting one into Tremlet's, and holding up the trulian
with the other. “He who behaves best shall drink
first with me.”
“I beg your ladyship's pardon,” said Tremlet,
drawing back, and looking at the servant, who
immediately left the room. “Let us understand
each other! Does Lady Imogen sup with us tonight?”
“Lady Imogen has retired,” said her mother, in
some surprise.
“Then, madam, will you be seated one moment
and listen to me?”
-- 053 --
[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]
Lady Ravelgold sat down on the nearest ottoman,
with the air of a person too high bred to be taken
by surprise, but the colour deepened to crimson in
the centre of her cheek, and the bird on her hand
betrayed by one of his gurgling notes that he was
held more tightly than pleased him. With a calm
and decisive tone, Tremlet went through the explanation
given in the previous parts of this narration.
He declared his love for Lady Imogen, his hopes
(while he had doubts of his birth) that Lady Ravel-gold's
increasing obligations and embarrassments
and his own wealth might weigh against his disadvantages,
and now, his honourable descent being
established, and his rank entitling him to propose
for her hand, he called upon Lady Ravelgold to
redeem her obligations to him by an immediate
explanation to her daughter of his conduct toward
herself, and by lending her whole influence to the
success of his suit.
Five minutes are brief time to change a lover
into a son-in-law; and Lady Ravelgold, as we have
seen in the course of this story, was no philosopher.
She buried her face in her hands, and sat silent for
awhile after Tremlet had concluded; but the case
was a very clear one. Ruin and mortification were
in one scale, mortification and prosperity in the
other. She rose, pale but decided, and requesting
-- 054 --
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
Monsieur le Conte Manteuffel to await her a few
minutes, ascended to her daughter's chamber.
“If you please, sir,” said a servant, entering in
about half an hour, “miladi and Lady Imogen beg
that you will join them in the supper-room.”
The spirit of beauty, if it haunt in such artificial
atmospheres as Belgrave-square, might have been
pleased to sit invisibly on the vacant side of Lady
Ravelgold's table. Tremlet had been shown in by
the servant to a small apartment, built like a belvidere
over the garden, half boudoir in its character,
yet intended as a supper-room, and at the long window
(opening forth upon descending terraces laden
with flowers and just now flooded with the light of
a glorious moon) stood Lady Imogen, with her
glossy head laid against the casement, and the palm
of her left hand pressed close upon her heart If
those two lights—the moon faintly shed off from
the divine curve of her temple, and the stained roselamp
pouring its mellow tint full on the heavenly
shape and whiteness of her shoulder and neck—if
those two lights, I say, could have been skilfully
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
managed, Mr. Lawrence! what a picture you
might have made of Lady Imogen Ravelgold!
“Imogen, my daughter! Mr. Tremlet!” said her
mother as he entered.
Without changing her position, she gave him the
hand she had been pressing on her heart.
“Mr. Tremlet!” said Lady Ravelgold, evidently
entering into her daughter's embarrassment, “trouble
yourself to come to the table and give me a bit
of this pheasant. Imogen, George waits to give
you some champagne.”
“Can you forgive me?” said the beautiful girl,
before turning to betray her blushing cheek and
suffused eyes to her mother.
Tremlet stopped as if to pluck a leaf from the
verbena at her feet, and passed his lips over the
slight fingers he held.
“Pretty trulian!” murmured Lady Ravelgold, to
her bird, as he stood on the edge of her champagne
glass, and curving his superb neck nearly double,
contrived to drink from the sparkling brim, “pretty
trulian! you will be merry after this! What ancient
Sybarite, think you, Mr. Tremlet, inhabits the
body of this bright bird? Look up, mignon, and
tell us if you were Hylas or Alcibiades! Is the
pheasant good, Mr. Tremlet?”
“Too good to come from Hades, miladi. Is it true
that you have your table supplied from Crockford's?”
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
“Tout bonnement! I make it a principle to avoid
all great anxieties, and I can trust nobody but
Ude. He sends my dinners quite hot, and if there
is a particular dish of game, he drives round at the
hour and gives it the last turn in my own kitchen.
I should die to be responsible for my dinners. I
don't know how people get on that have no grand
artiste. Pray, Mr. Tremlet, (I beg pardon—Monsieur
le Conte, perhaps I should say?”)
“No, no, I implore you! `Tremlet' has been
spoken too musically to be so soon forgotten. Tremlet
or Charles, which you will!”
Lady Ravelgold put her hand in his, and looked
from his face to her daughter's with a smile, which
assured him that she had obtained a victory over
herself. Shrinking immediately, however, from
anything like sentiment, (with the nervous dread of
pathos so peculiar to the English,) she threw off her
trulian, that made a circle and alighted on the emerald
bracelet of Lady Imogen, and rang the bell for
coffee.
“I flatter myself, Mr. Tremlet,” she said, “that I
have made a new application of the homœopathic
philosophy. Hahnemann, they say, cures fevers by
aggravating the disease; and when I cannot sleep,
I drink coffee. J'en suis passablement fiére! You
did not know I was a philosopher?”
“No, indeed!”
-- 057 --
[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]
“Well, take some of this spiced mocha. I got it
of the Turkish ambassador, to whom I made beaux
yeux on purpose. Stop! you shall have it in the
little tinsel cups he sent me. George, bring those
filagree things! Now, Mr. Tremlet, imagine yourself
in the serail du Bosphore—Imogen and I, two
lovely Circassians, par exemple! Is it not delicious?
Talking of the Bosphorus, nobody was classical
enough to understand the device in my coiffure to-night.”
“What was it?” asked Tremlet absently, gazing
while he spoke, with eyes of envy at the trulian
who was whetting his bill backward and forward
on the clear bright lips of Lady Imogen.
“Do you think my profile Grecian?” asked Lady
Ravelgold.
“Perfectly!”
“And my hair is coiffed à la Grec.”
“Most becomingly.”
“But still you won't see my golden grasshopper!
Do you happen to know, sir, that to wear the golden
grasshopper was the birthright of an Athenian? I
saw it in a book. Well! I had to explain it to
everybody. By the way, what did that gambler,
George Heriot, mean by telling me that its legs
should be black. `All Greeks have black legs,' said
he, yawning in his stupid way. What did he mean,
Mr. Tremlet?”
-- 058 --
[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]
“`Greeks' and blacklegs are convertible terms.
He thought you were more au fait of the slang dictionary.
Will you permit me to coax my beautiful
rival from your hand, Lady Imogen?”
She smiled, and put forward her wrist, with a
bend of its slender and alabaster lines which would
have drawn a sigh from Praxiteles. The trulian
glanced his fiery eyes from his mistress's face to
Tremlet's, and as the strange hand was put out to
take him from his emerald perch, he flew with the
quickness of lightning into the face of her lover, and
buried the sharp beak in his lip. The blood followed
copiously, and Lady Imogen, startled from her
timidity, sprang from her chair and pressed her
hands one after the other upon the wound, in passionate
and girlish abandonment. Lady Ravelgold
hurried to her dressing-room for something to
staunch the wound, and, left alone with the divine
creature, who hung over him, Tremlet drew her to
his bosom and pressed his cheek long and closely to
hers, while to his lips, as if to keep in life, clung her
own crimsoned and trembling fingers.
“Imogen!” said Lady Ravelgold, entering, “take
him to the fountain in the garden and wash the
wound; then put on this bit of gold-beater's skin.
I will come to you when I have locked up the trulian.
Is it painful, Mr. Tremlet?”
-- 059 --
[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]
Tremlet could not trust his voice to answer, but
with his arm still around Lady Imogen, he descended
by the terrace of flowers to the fountain.
They sat upon the edge of the marble basin, and
the moonlight striking through the jet of the fountain,
descended upon them like a rain of silver.
Lady Imogen had recovered from her fright and
buried her face in her hands, remembering into what
her feelings had betrayed her; and Tremlet, sometimes
listening to the clear bell-like music of the
descending water, sometimes uttering the broken
sentences which are most eloquent in love, sat out
the hours till the stars began to pale, undisturbed
by Lady Ravelgold, who, on the upper stair of the
terrace, read by a small lamp, which, in the calm of
that heavenly summer night, burned unflickeringly
in the open air.
It was broad daylight when Tremlet, on foot,
sauntered slowly past Hyde Park corner on his way
to the Albany. The lamps were still struggling
with the brightening approach to sunrise, the cabmen
and their horses slept on the stand by the Green
Park, and with cheerful faces the labourers went
to their work, and with haggard faces the night-birds
of dissipation crept wearily home. The well-ground
dust lay in confused heel-marks on the side-walk,
a little dampened by the night-dew; the
-- 060 --
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atmosphere in the street was clear, as it never is
after the stir of day commences; a dandy, stealing
out from Crockford's, crossed Piccadilly, lifting up
his head to draw in long breaths of the cool air,
after the closeness of over-lighted rooms and excitement;
and Tremlet, marking none of these things,
was making his way through a line of carriages
slowly drawing up to take off their wearied masters
from a prolonged fête at Devonshire-house, when a
rude hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“Monsieur Tremlet!”
“Ah, Baron! bien bon jour!”
“Bien rencontrè, Monsieur! You have insulted
a lady to-night, who has confided her cause to my
hands. Madam St. Leger, sir, is without a natural
protector, and you have taken advantage of her
position to insult her—grossly, Mr. Tremlet! grossly!”
Tremlet looked at the Russian during this extraordinary
address, and saw that he was evidently highly
excited with wine. He drew him aside into Berkeley-street,
and in the calmest manner attempted to
explain what was not very clear to himself. He had
totally forgotten Mrs. St. Leger. The diplomate,
though quite beyond himself with his excitement,
had sufficient perception left to see the weak point
of his statement, and infuriated with the placid manner
in which he attempted to excuse himself, suddenly
struck his glove into his face, and turned upon
-- 061 --
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his heel. They had been observed by a policeman,
and at the moment that Tremlet, recovering from
his astonishment, sprang forward to resent the blow,
the gray-coated guardian of the place laid his hand
upon his collar and detained him till the baron had
disappeared.
More than once on his way to the Albany, Tremlet
surprised himself forgetting both the baron and
the insult, and feeding his heart in delicious abandonment
with the dreams of his new happiness.
He reached his rooms and threw himself on the bed,
forcing from his mind, with a strong effort, the presence
of Lady Imogen, and trying to look calmly
on the unpleasant circumstance before him. A
quarrel which, the day before, he would have looked
upon merely as an inconvenience, or which, under
the insult of a blow, he would have eagerly sought,
became now an almost insupportable evil. When
he reflected on the subject of the dispute—a contention
about a woman of doubtful reputation taking
place in the same hour with a first avowal from the
delicate and pure Lady Imogen—when he remembered
the change in his fortunes, which he had as
yet scarcely found time to realize—on the consequences
to her who was so newly dear to him, and all on
he might lose, now that life had become invaluable,
his thoughts were almost too painful to bear. How
seldom do men play with an equal stake in the game
-- 062 --
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
of taking life, and how strange it is that equality of
weapons is the only comparison made necessary by
the laws of honour!
Tremlet was not a man to be long undecided. He
rose after an hour's reflection and wrote as follows:
“Baron
—Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence
of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in
which our position is false. I find myself, since last night,
the accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master
of estates and title as a count of the Russian empire.
Under the etourdissement of such sudden changes in feelings
and fortune, perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady in whose
cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any
rate, I am so newly in love with life that I am willing to
suppose for an hour that had you known these circumstances
you would have taken a different view of the offence in
question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in your
power till then to make me the reparation necessary to my
honour.
Yours, etc.
TREMLET.”
There was a bridal on the following Monday at
St. George's Church, and the Russian secretary stood
behind the bridegroom. Lady Ravelgold had never
been seen so pale, but her face was clear of all
painful feeling; and it was observed by one who
knew her well, that her beauty had acquired, during
the brief engagement of her daughter, a singular
and undefinable elevation. As the carriages with
their white favours turned into Bond-street, on their
way back to Belgrave-square the cortége was
-- 063 --
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checked by the press of vehicles, and the Russian, who
accompanied Lady Ravelgold in her chariot, found
himself opposite the open britsçka of a lady who
fixed her glass full upon him without recognising a
feature of his face.
“I am afraid you have affronted Mrs. St. Leger,
baron!” said Lady Ravelgold.
“Or I should not have been here!” said the Russian;
and as they drove up Piccadilly, he had just
time between Bond-street and Milton Crescent to
tell her ladyship the foregone chapter of this story.
The trulian, on that day, was fed with wedding-cake,
and the wound on Mr. Tremlet's lip was not
cured by letting alone.
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-- --
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-- 067 -- p416-068
“As a fish will sometimes gather force, and, with a longing,
perhaps, for the brightness of upper air, leap from its
prescribed element, and glitter a moment among the birds,
so will there be found men whose souls revolt against
destiny, and make a fiery pluck at things above them. But,
like the fish, who drops, panting, with dry scales, backward,
the aspiring man oftenest regrets the native element he has
left; and, with the failure of his unnatural effort, drops
back, content, to obscurity.”
—Jeremy Taylor.
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
“My daughter!” said the Count Spinola.
The lady so addressed threw off a slight mantle
and turned her fair features inquiringly to her father.
Heedless of the attention he had arrested, the abstracted
count paced up and down the marble
-- 068 --
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pavement of his hall, and when, a moment after, Francesca
came to him for his good-night kiss, he imprinted
it silently on her forehead, and stepped out on the
balcony to pursue, under the aiding light of the stars,
thoughts that were more imperative than sleep.
There had been a fête of great splendour in the
ducal gardens of the Boboli, and Francesca Spinola
had shown there, as usual, the most radiant and
worshipped daughter of the nobilita of Florence.
The melancholy duke himself (this was in the days
of his first marriage) had seemed even gay in presenting
her with flowers which he had gathered at
her side, with the dew on them, (in an alley glittering
with the diamonds on noble bosoms, and dewdrops
on roses that would slumber, though it was the birth-night
of a princess,) and marked as was the royal
attention to the envied beauty, it was more easily
forgiven her than her usual triumphs—for it cost no
one a lover. True to his conjugal vows, the sadfeatured
monarch paid to beauty only the homage
exacted alike by every most admirable work of
nature.
The Grand Duke Leopold had not been the only
admirer whose attentions to Francesca Spinola had
been remarked. A stranger, dressed with a magnificence
that seemed more fitted for a masquerade
than a court-ball, and yet of a mein that promised
-- 069 --
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danger to the too inquisitive, had entered alone, and,
marking out the daughter of the haughty count from
the first, had procured an introduction, no one knew
how, and sought every opportunity which the intervals
of the dance afforded, to place himself at her
side. Occupied with the courtly devoirs of his
rank, the count was, for a while, unaware of what
struck almost every one else, and it was only when
the stranger's name was inquired of him by the
duke, that his dark and jealous eye fell upon a face
whose language of kindling and undisguised admiration
a child would have interpreted aright. It
was one of those faces that are of no degree—that
may belong to a barbaric king, or to a Greek slave—
that no refinement would improve, and no servile
habits degrade; faces which take their changes from
an indomitable and powerful soul, and are beyond
the trifling impression of the common usages of life.
Spinola was offended with the daring and passionate
freedom of the stranger's gaze upon his daughter;
but he hesitated to interrupt their conversation too
rudely. He stayed to exchange a compliment with
some fair obstruction in his way across the crowded
saloon, and, in the next moment, Francesca stood
alone.
“Who left you this moment, my Francesca?” asked
the count, with affected unconcern.
-- 070 --
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
“I think, a Venetian,” she answered.
“And, his name?”
“I know not, my father!”
The count's face flashed.
“Who presented him to my darling?” he asked,
again forcing himself to composure.
Francesca coloured; and, with downcast eyes,
answered—
“No one, my father! He seemed to know me,
and I thought I might have forgotten him.
Spinola turned on his heel, and after a few vain
enquiries, and as vain a search for the stranger,
ordered his attendants, and drove silently home.
It was close upon the gray of the morning, and
the count still leaned over the stone-railing of his
balcony. Francesca had been gone an hour to her
chamber. A guitar-string sounded from the street
below, and, a moment after, a manly and mellow
voice broke into a Venetian barcarole, and sang with
a skill and tenderness which a vestal could scarce
have listened to unmoved. Spinola stepped back
and laid his hand upon his sword; but, changing
his thought, he took a lamp from the wall within,
and crept noiselessly to his daughter's chamber.
She lay within her silken curtains, with her hands
crossed on her bosom, and from her parted lips
came the low breath of innocent and untroubled
sleep. Reassured, the count closed her window and
-- 071 --
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extinguished his lamp; and, when the guitar was
no longer heard echoing from the old palace walls,
and the rich voice of the serenader had died a way
with his footsteps, the lord of the Palazzo Spinola
betook himself to sleep with a heart somewhat
relieved of its burden.
On the following day, the count pleaded the early-coming
heats of summer; and, with slight preparation,
left Florence for his summer-palace in the
Appenines. When Francesca joined him cheerfully,
and even gaily, in his sudden plan, he threw
aside the jealous fears that had haunted his breast,
and forgot the stranger and his barcarole. The old
trees of his maison de plaisance were heavy with
the leaves of the Italian May; the statues stood
cool in the shade; the mountain rivulets forgot their
birth in the rocky brooks, and ran over channels of
marble, and played up through cactus-leaves and
sea-shells, and nereids' horns, all carved by the contemporaries
of Donatello. “And here,” thought the
proud noble, “I am á l'ecart of the designs of adventurers,
and the temptations and dangers of gaiety,
and the child of my hopes will refresh her beauty and
her innocence, under the watchful eye, ever present,
of my love.”
Francesca Spinola was one of those Italian natures
of which it is difficult for the inhabitants of other
climes to conceive. She had no feelings. She had
-- 072 --
[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]
passions. She could love—but it sprang in an instant
to its fullest power—and maidenly reserve
and hesitation were incompatible with its existence.
She had listened, unmoved, to all the adulation of
the duke's court, and had been amused with the
devotion of all around her—but never touched. The
voice of the stranger at the fête of the Boboli—the
daring words he had addressed to her—had arrested
her attention; and it needed scarce the hour—which
flew like a moment at his side—to send a new sensation,
like a tempest, through her heart. She
reasoned upon nothing—asked nothing; but, while
she gave up her soul wholly to a passion hitherto
unfelt, the deep dissimulation which seems a natural
part of the love of that burning clime, prompted
her, by an unquestioned impulse, to conceal it entirely
from her father. She had counterfeited sleep
when nearly surprised in listening to the barcarole,
and she had little need to counterfeit joy at her departure
for the mountains.
The long valley of the Arno lay marked out upon
the landscape by a wreath of vapour, stealing up as
if enamoured of the fading colour of the clouds;
and far away, like a silver bar on the rim of the
horizon, shone the long line of the Mediterranean.
The mountain sides lay bathed in azure; and, echoing
from the nearest, came the vesper-bells of
-- 073 --
[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]
Vallombrosa. Peace and purity were stamped upon
the hour.
“My child,” said the softened count, drawing
Francesca to his bosom, as they stood looking off
upon this scene from the flowery terrace beneath the
portico; “does my child love me?”
Francesca placed her hands upon his shoulders and
kissed him for reply.
“I feel impelled,” he continued, “to talk to you
while this beautiful hour is around us, of an affection
that resembles it.”
“Resembles the sunset, my father?”
“Yes! Shall I tell you how? By affecting with
its soft influence every object under the bend of the
sky! My Francesca! there are parents who love
their children, and love them well, and yet find feelings
for other attachments, and devotion for every
other interest in life. Not so mine! My love for
my child is a whole existence poured into hers.
Look at me, Francesca! I am not old. I am capable,
perhaps, of other love than a parent's. There
are among the young and beautiful who have looked
on me with favouring eyes. My blood runs warm
yet, and my step is as full of manhood—perhaps my
heart as prompt to be gay—as ever. I mean to
say, that I am not too old for a lover. Does my
daughter think so?”
-- 074 --
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“I have been long vain of your beauty, dear
father,” said Francesca, threading her hand in his
dark curls.
“There are other things that might share your
empire in my heart—politics, play, the arts—a hundred
passions which possess themselves of men
whose fortune or position gives them means and
leisure. Now listen, my daughter! You have
supplanted all these! You have filled my heart
with yourself. I am tempted to love—my heart is
my daughter's. I am asked to play—my thoughts
are with my child. I have neither time for politics,
nor attention for the arts—my being breathes
through my child. I am incapable of all else. Do
you hear me, Francesca?”
“I do, dear father!”
“Then, one moment more! I cannot conceal my
thoughts from you, and you will pardon love like
mine for ungrounded fears. I liked not the stranger
at the duke's palace.”
Francesca stole a quick look at her father, and,
with the rapidity of light, her dark eye resumed its
tranquillity.
“I say I liked him not! No one knew him! He
is gone, no one knows whither! I trust he will
never be seen more in Florence. But I will not
disguise from you that I thought you—pleased with
him!”
-- 075 --
[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]
“Father!”
“Forgive me if I wrong you—but, without pursuing
the subject, let your father implore you, on his
knees, for the confidence of your heart. Will you
tell me your thoughts, Francesca? Will you love
me with but the thousandth part of my adoration,
my devotion, for my child?”
“Father! I will!”
The count rose from the knee on which he had
fallen, gave his daughter a long embrace, and led
her in. And that night she fled over the Tuscan
border, into neighbouring Romagna, and, with the
stranger at her side, sped away, under the cover of
night, toward the shores of the Brenta.
Like a city of secrets, sleeps silent Venice. Her
sea-washed foundations are buried under the smooth
glass of the tide. Her palace-entrances are dark
caverns, impenetrable to the eye. Her veiled dames
are unseen in their floating chambers, as they go
from street to street; and mysteriously and silently
glide to and fro those swift gondolas, black as night,
yet carrying sadness and mirth, innocence and guilt,
alike swiftly, mysteriously, and silently. Water,
that betrays no footstep, and covers all with the
same mantle of light, fills her streets. Silence, that
is the seal of secresy, reigns day and night over her
thousand palaces.
-- 076 --
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For an hour the smooth mirror of the broad canal
that sweeps under the Rialto, had not been divided
by the steel prow of a gondola. Francesca Spinola
stood at the window of a chamber in a palace of
gorgeous magnificence, watching that still water
for the coming of her husband. The silver lines of
the moon stole back imperceptibly, as her full orb
sailed up the heavens, and the turrets of the old
architecture of Venice, drawn clearly on the unruffled
bosom of the canal, seemed retiring before a
consuming sheet of silver. The silence seemed
painful. To the ear of the beautiful Florentine, the
want of the sound of a footstep, of the echo of some
distant wheel, the utter death of all sound common
to even the stillest hour of a paved city, seemed
oppressive and awful. Behind her burned lamps of
alabaster, and perfumes filled the chamber, and on
a cushion of costly velvet lay a mean and unornamented
guitar. Its presence in so costly a palace
was a secret yet withheld. She wished to touch
its strings, if only to disperse the horror of silence.
But she raised her fingers, and again, without touching
it, leaned out and watched the dark arch of the
Rialto.
A gondola, with a single oar, sped swiftly from
its black shadow. It could not be Paletto. He
had gone with his two faithful servants to St.
Marc's. The oar ceased—the bark headed in—the
-- 077 --
[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]
water splashed on the marble stair—and the gondolier
stepped on shore. Ah, who but Paletto had
such a form as stood there in the moonlight?
“Are we to be married again,” said Francesca,
as her husband entered the chamber, “that you
have once more disguised yourself as a fisherman?”
Paletto turned from the light, and took up the
mysterious guitar. “It is no night to be in-doors,
my Francesca! Come with me to the lagoon, and
I will tell you the story of this despised instrument.
Will you come?” he pursued, as she stood looking
at him in wonder at his strange dress and disturbed
look. “Will you come, my wife?”
“But you have returned without your gondoliers!”
she said, advancing a step to take his hand.
“I have rowed a gondola ere now,” he answered;
and, without further explanation, he led her down
the lofty staircase, and seating her in the stern of
the bark which he had brought with him, stepped
upon the platform, and, with masterly skill and
power, drove it like a shadow under the Rialto.
He who has watched the horn of a quarter-moon
gliding past the towers, pinnacles and palaces of the
drifting clouds, and in his youthful and restless brain,
fancied such must be the smooth delight and changing
vision of a traveller in strange lands—one who
has thus dreamed in his boyhood will scarce shoot
through Venice for the first time in a gondola,
-- 078 --
[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]
without a sense of familiarity with the scene and motion.
The architecture of the clouds is again drifting past,
and himself seems borne onward by the silver shallop
of the moon.
Francesca sat on the low cushion of the gondola,
watching and wondering. How should her luxurious
Paletto have acquired the exquisite skill with
which he drove the noiseless boat like a lance-fly
over the water. Another gondola approached or
was left behind, the corner of a palace was to be
rounded, or the black arch of a bridge to be shot
under, and the peculiar warning-cry of the gondoliers,
giving notice of their unheard approach, fell
from his lips so mechanically, that the hireling oarsmen
of the city, marvelling at his speed, but never
doubting that it was a comrade of the Piazza, added
the “fratello mio” to their passing salutation. She
saw by every broad beam of light, which, between
the palaces, came down across them, a brow clouded
and a mind far from the oar he turned so skilfully.
She looked at the gondola in which she sat. It was
old and mean. In the prow lay a fisher's net, and
the shabby guitar, thrown upon it, seemed now, at
least, not out of place. She looked up at Paletto
once more, and, in his bare throat and bosom, his
loose cap and neglected hair, she could with difficulty
recognize the haughty stranger of the Boboli.
She spoke to him. It was necessary to break the
-- 079 --
[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]
low-born spell that seemed closing around her. Paletto
started at her voice, and suspending his oar,
while the gondola still kept way as if with its own
irresistible volition, he passed his hand over his eyes,
and seemed waking from some painful dream.
The gondola was now far out in the lagoon.—
Around them floated an almost impalpable vapour,
just making the moonlight visible, and the soft click
of the water beneath the rising and dropping prow
was the only sound between them and the cloudless
heaven. In that silence Paletto strung his guitar
and sang to his bride with a strange energy. She
listened and played with his tangled locks, but there
seemed a spell upon her tongue when she would ask
the meaning of this mystery.
“Francesca!” he said at last, raising his head from
her lap.
“What says my fisherman?” she replied, holding
up his rough cap with a smile.
Paletto started, but recovering his composure, instantly
took the cap from her jewelled fingers and
threw it carelessly upon his head.
“Francesca! who is your husband?”
“Paletto.”
“And who is Paletto?”
“I would have asked sometimes, but your kisses
have interrupted me. Yet I know enough.”
“What know you?”
-- 080 --
[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]
“That he is a rich and noble seignior of Venice!”
“Do I look one to-night?”
“Nay—for a masquerade, I have never seen a
better! Where learned you to look so like a fisherman
and row so like a gondolier?”
Paletto frowned.
“Francesca!” said he folding his arms across his
bosom, “I am the son of a fisherman, and I was
bred to row the gondola beneath you!”
The sternness of his tone checked the smile upon
her beautiful lip, and when she spoke it was with a
look almost as stern as his own.
“You mock me too gravely, Paletto! But come!
I will question you in your own humour. Who educated
the fisherman's son?”
“The fisherman.”
“And his palace and his wealth—whence came
they, Signor Pescatore?”
The scornful smile of incredulity with which this
question was asked, speedily fled from her lip as
Paletto answered it.
“Listen! Three months since I had never known
other condition than a fisherman of the lagoon, nor
worn other dress than this in which you see me.
The first property I ever possessed beyond my day's
earnings, was this gondola. It was my father's,
Giannotto the fisherman. When it became mine
by his death, I suddenly wearied of my tame life,
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-- 082 --
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Paletto looked at her with a smile, and never
sunbeam was more unmixed with shadow than the
smile which answered it on the lips of Spinola's
daughter.
“My Paletto!” she said, “you have the soul of
a noble, and the look of one, and I am your bride.
Let us return to the palace!”
“I have no palace but this!” he said striking his
hand like a bar of iron upon the side of the gondola.
“You have not heard out my tale.”
Francesca sat with a face unmoved as marble.
“This night, at play, I lost all. My servants are
dismissed, my palace belongs to another, and with
this bark which I had repurchased, I am once more
Paletto the fisherman!”
A slight heave of the bosom of the fair Florentine
was her only response to this astounding announcement.
Her eyes turned slowly from the face of
the fisherman, and fixing apparently on some point
far out in the Adriatic, she sat silent, motionless and
cold.
“I am a man, Francesca!” said Paletto after a
pause which, in the utter stillness of the lagoon
around them, seemed like a suspension of the breathing
of nature, and “I have not gone through this
insane dream without some turning aside of the
heart. Spite of myself, I loved you, and I could
not dishonour you. We are married, Francesca!”
-- 083 --
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The small dark brows of the Florentine lowered
till the silken lashes they overhung seemed starting
from beneath here forehead. Her eyes flashed fire
below.
“Bene!” said Paletto, rising to his feet; “one
word more while we have silence around us and
are alone. You are free to leave me, and I will so
far repair the wrong I have done you, as to point
out the way. It will be daylight in an hour. Fly
to the governor's palace, announce your birth,
declare that you were forced from your father by
brigands, and claim his protection. The world will
believe you, and the consequences to myself I will
suffer in silence.”
With a sudden, convulsive motion, Francesca
thrust out her arm, and pointed a single finger toward
Venice. Paletto bent to his oar, and quivering
in every seam beneath its blade, the gondola sped
on its way. The steel prow struck fire on the granite
steps of the Piazza, the superb daughter of Spinola
stepped over the trembling side, and with a
half-wave of her hand, strode past the Lion of St.
Mark, and approached the sentinel at the palace-gate.
And as her figure was lost among the arabesque
columns shaded from the moon, Paletto's
lonely gondola shot once more silently and slowly
from the shore.
-- 084 --
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The smooth, flat pavement of the Borg'ognisanti
had been covered since morning with earth, and the
windows and balconies on either side were flaunting
with draperies of the most gorgeous colours. The
riderless horse-races, which conclude the carnival
in Florence, were to be honoured by the presence
of the court. At the far extremity of the street,
close by the gate of the Cascine, an open veranda,
painted in fresco, stood glittering with the preparations
for the royal party, and near it the costlier
hangings of here and there a window or balustrade,
showed the embroidered crests of the different
nobles of Tuscany. It was the people's place and
hour, and beneth the damask and cloth of gold,
the rough stone windows were worn smooth by the
touch of peasant hands, and the smutch'd occupants,
looking down their balconies above, upon the
usurpers of their week-day habitations, formed, to
the stranger's eye, not the least interesting feature
of the scene.
As evening approached, the balconies began to
show their burden of rank and beauty, and the street
below filled with the press of the gay contadini.
The ducal cortege, in open carriages, drove down
the length of the course to their veranda at the gate,
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but no other vehicle was permitted to enter the serried
crowd; and, on foot like the peasant-girl, the
noble's daughter followed the servants of her house,
who slowly opened for her a passage to the balcony
she sought. The sun-light began to grow golden.
The convent-bell across the Arno rang the first peal
of vespers, and the horses were led in.
It was a puzzle to any but an Italian how that
race was to be run. The entire population of Florence
was crowded into a single narrow street, men,
women and children, struggling only for a foothold.
The signal was about to be given for the start, yet
no attempt was made to clear a passage. Twenty
high-spirited horses fretted behind the rope, each
with a dozen spurs hung to his surcingales, which,
at the least motion, must drive him onward like the
steed of Mazeppa. Gay ribands were braided in
their manes, and the bets ran high. All sounded and
looked merry, yet it would seem as if the loosing of
the start-rope must be like the letting in of destruction
upon the crowd.
In a projecting gallery of a house on the side next
the Arno, was a party that attracted attention,
somewhat from their rank and splendid attire, but
more from the remarkable beauty of a female, who
seemed their star and idol. She was something
above the middle height of the women of Italy, and
of the style of face seen in the famous Judith of
-- 086 --
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the Pitti—dark, and of melancholy so unfathomable
as almost to affray the beholder. She looked a
brooding prophetess, yet through the sad expression
of her features there was a gleam of fierceness, that
to the more critical eye betrayed a more earthly
gleam of human passion and suffering. As if to
belie the maturity of years of which such an expression
should be the work, an ungloved hand and arm
of almost child-like softness and roundness lay on
the drapery of the railed gallery; and stealing from
that to her just-perfected form, the gazer made a
new judgment of her years, while he wondered
what strange fires had forced outward the riper
lineaments of her character.
The Count-Fazelli, the husband of this fair dame,
stood within reach of her hand, for it was pressed
on his arm with no gentle touch, yet his face was
turned from her. He was a slight youth, little
older, apparently, than herself, of an effeminate and
yet wilful cast of countenance, and would have been
pronounced by women (what a man would scarce
allow him to be) eminently handsome. Effeminate
coxcomb as he was, he had power over the stronger
nature beside him, and of such stuff, in courts and
cities, are made, sometimes, the heroes whose success
makes worthier men almost forswear the worship
due to women.
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There were two other persons in the balconies of
the Corso, who were actors in the drama of which
this was a scene. The first was the prima donna
of the Cocomero, to whose rather mature charms
the capricious Fazelli had been for a month paying
a too open homage; and the second was a captain
in the duke's guard, whose personal daring in the
extermination of a troop of brigands, had won for
him some celebrity and his present commission.
What thread of sympathy rested between so humble
an individual and the haughty Countess Fazelli,
will be shown in the sequel. Enough for the present,
that as he stood leaning against the pillar of an
opposite gallery, looking carelessly on the preparations
for the course, that proud dame saw and
remembered him.
A blast from a bugle drew all eyes to the starting-post,
and in another minute the rope was dropped
and the fiery horses loosed upon their career. Right
into the crowd, as if the bodies of the good citizens
of Florence were made of air, sprang the goaded
troop, and the impossible thing was done, for the
suffocating throngs divided like waves before the
prow, and united again as scatheless and as soon.
The spurs played merrily upon the flanks of the
affrighted animals, and in an instant they had swept
through the Borg'ognisanti, and disappeared into
the narrow lane leading to the Trinita. It was
-- 088 --
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more a scramble than a race, yet there must be a
winner, and all eyes were now occupied in gazing
after the first glimpse of his ribands as he was led
back in triumph.
Uncompelled by danger, the suffocating crowd
made way with more difficulty for the one winning
horse than they had done for the score that had
contended with him. Yet, champing the bit, and
tossing his ribands into the air, he came slowly back,
and after passing in front of the royal veranda,
where a small flag was thrown down to be set into
the rosette of his bridle, he returned a few steps, and
was checked by the groom under the balcony of
the prima donna. A moment after, the winning
flag was waving from the rails above, and as the
sign that she was the owner of the victorious horse
was seen by the people, a shout arose which thrilled
the veins of the fair singer, more than all the plaudits
of the Cocomero. It is thought to be pleasant
to succeed in that for which we have most struggled—
that for which our ambition and our efforts are
known to the world—to be eminent, in short, in our
metier—our vocation. I am inclined to think it natural
to most men, however, and to all possessors of
genius, to undervalue that for which the world is
most willing to praise them, and to delight more in
excelling in that which seems foreign to their usual
pursuits, even if it be a trifle. It is delightful to
-- 089 --
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disappoint the world by success in anything. Detraction,
that follows genius to the grave, sometimes
admits its triumph, but never without the “back-water”
that it could do no more. The fine actress
had won a shout from assembled Florence, yet off
the scene. She laid one hand upon her heart, and
the other, in the rash exultation of the moment, ventured
to wave a kiss of gratitude to the Count
Fazelli.
As that favoured signor crossed to offer his congratulations,
his place beside the countess was filled
by a young noble, who gave her the explanatory
information—that the horse was Fazelli's gift.—
Calmly, almost without a sign of interest or emotion,
she turned her eyes upon the opposite balcony. A
less searching and interested glance would have discovered,
that if the young count had hitherto shared
the favour of the admired singer with his rivals, he
bad no rival now. There was in the demeanour of
both an undisguised tenderness that the young
countess had little need to watch long, and retiring
from the balcony, she accepted the attendance of her
communicative companion, and was soon whirling
in her chariot over the Ponte St. Angelo, on her
way to the princely palace that would soon cease to
call her its mistress.
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Like square ingots of silver, the moonlight came
through the battlements of the royal abode of the
Medici. It was an hour before day. The heavy
heel of the sentry was the only sound near the walls
of the Pitti, save, when he passed to turn, the ripple
of the Arno beneath the arches of the jeweller's
bridge broke faintly on the ear. The captain of the
guard had strolled from the deep shadow of the
palace into the open moonlight, and leaned against a
small stone shrine of the Virgin set into the opposite
wall, watching musingly the companionable and
thought-stirring empress of the night.
“Paletto!” suddenly uttered a voice near him!
The guardsman started, but instantly recovered
his position; and stood looking over his epaulet at
the intruder, with folded arms.
“Paletto!” she said again, in a lower and more
appealing tone; “will you listen to me?”
“Say on, Countess Fazelli!”
“Countess Fazelli no longer, but Paletto's wife!”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the guardsman bitterly, “that
story is old, for so false a one.”
“Scorn me not! I am changed.” The dark eyes
of Francesca Cappone lifted up, moist and full, into
the moonlight, and fixing them steadfastly on the
soldier's, she seemed to demand that he should read
her soul in them. For an instant, as he did so, a
troubled emotion was visible in his own features,
-- 091 --
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but a new thought seemed to succeed the feeling
and turning away with a cold gesture, he said, “I
knew you false, but till now I thought you pure.
Tempt me not to despise as well as hate you!”
“I have deserved much at your hand,” she answered,
with a deeper tone, “but not this. You are
my husband, Paletto!”
“One of them!” he replied with a sneer.
Francesca clasped her hands in agony. “I have
come to you,” she said, “trusting the generous
nature which I have proved so well. I cannot live
unloved. I deserted you, for I was ignorant of myself.
I have tried splendour and the love of my
own rank, but one is hollow and the last is selfish.
Oh Paletto! What love is generous like yours!”
The guardsman's bosom heaved, but he did not
turn to her. She laid her hand upon his arm, “I
have come to implore you to take me back, Paletto.
False as I was to you, you have been true to me.
I would be your wife again. I would share your
poverty, if you were once more a fisherman on the
lagoon. Are you inexorable, Paletto?
Her hand stole up to his shoulder; she crept
closer to him, and buried her head, unrepelled, in
his bosom. Paletto laid his hand upon the mass of
raven hair whose touch had once been to him so
familiar, and while the moon drew their shadows as
one on the shrine of the Virgin, the vows of early
-- 092 --
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love were repeated with a fervour unknown hitherto
to the lips of Cappone's daughter, the Paletto
replied, not like a courtly noble, but like that which
was more eloquent—his own love-prompted and
fiery spirit.
The nextday there was a brief but fierce rencontre
between Count Fazelli and the guardsman Paletto,
at the door of the church of Santa Trinita. Francesca
had gone openly with her husband to vespers,
attended by a monk. When attacked by the
young count as the daring abducer of his wife, he
had placed her under that monk's protection till the
quarrel should be over, and, with the same holy
man to plead his cause, he boldly claimed his wife
at the duke's hands, and bore her triumphantly from
Florence.
I heard this story in Venice. The gondolier
Paletto they say still rows his boat on the lagoon,
and sometimes his wife is with him, and sometimes
a daughter, whose exquisite beauty, though she is
still a child, is the wonder of the Rialto as he passes
under. I never chanced to see him, but many a
stranger has hired the best oar of the Piazza, to pull
out toward the Adriatic in the hope of finding
Paletto's boat and getting a glimpse of his proud
and still most beautiful wife—a wife, it is said, than
whom a happier or more contented one with her lot,
lives not in the “city of the sea.”
-- --
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-- 094 --
Violanta Cesarini. Page 094.
-- 095 -- p416-096
“When every feather sticks in its own wing.
Lord Timon will be left a naked gull.”
[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]
It was an eve fit for an angel's birthnight, (and we
know angels are born in this loving world,) and
while the moon, as if shining only for artist's eyes,
drew the outlines of palace and chapel, stern turret
and serenaded belvidere, with her silver pencil on the
street, two grave seniors, guardians in their own
veins of the blood of two lofty names known long to
Roman story, leaned together over a balcony of
fretted stone, jutting out upon the Corso, and
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-- 097 --
[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]
affianced now leaning against a palace wall, while a wandering
harp-girl sung better for a baiocco than noble
ladies for the praise of a cardinal; at one corner
stood an artist with his tablet, catching some chance
effect perhaps in the drapery of a marble saint,
perhaps in the softer drapery of a sinner; the cafés
far up and down, looked like festas out of doors, with
their groups of gaily dressed idlers, eating sherbets
and buying flowers; a gray friar passed now with
his low toned benedicite; and again a black cowl
with a face that reddened the very moonbeam that
peeped under; hunchbacks contended testily for the
wall and tall fellows (by their long hair and fine
symmetry, professed models for sculptors and painters)
yielded to them with a gibe. And this is Rome
when the moon shines well, and on this care cheating
scene looked down the Countess Violanta, with
her heart as full of perplexity as her silk boddicelace
would bear without breaking.
I dare say you did not observe, if you were in
Rome that night, and strolling, as you would have
been, in the Corso, (this was three years ago last
May, and if you were in the habit of reading the
Diario di Roma, the story will not be new to you;)
you did not observe, I am sure, that a thread ran
across from the balcony I speak of, in the Palazzo
Cesarini, to a high window in an old palace opposite,
inhabited, as are many palaces in Rome, by a
-- 098 --
[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]
decayed family and several artists. On the two
sides of this thread, pressed, while she mused, the
slight fingers of Violanta Cesarini; and, as if it
descended from the stars at every pull which the
light May-breeze gave it in passing, she turned her
soft blue eyes upwards, and her face grew radiant
with hope—not such as is fed with star-gazing!
Like a white dove shooting with slant wings
downwards a folded slip of paper flew across on
this invisible thread, and, by heaven's unflickering
lamp, Violanta read some characters traced with a
rough crayon, but in most sweet Italian. A look
upwards, and a nod, as if she were answering the
stars that peeped over her, and the fair form had
gone with its snowy robes from the balcony, and
across the high window from which the messenger
had come, dropped the thick and impenetrable folds
of the gray curtain of an artist.
It was a large upper room, such as is found in the
vast houses of the decayed nobility of Rome, and of
its two windows one was roughly boarded up to
exclude the light, while a coarse gray cloth did
nearly the same service at the other, shutting out all
but an artist's modicum of day. The walls of rough
plaster were covered with grotesque drawings, done
apparently with bits of coal, varied here and there
with scraps of unframed canvass. nailed carelessly
-- 099 --
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np, and covered with the study of some head, by a
famous master. A large table on one side of the
room was burdened with a confused heap of brushes,
paint-bags, and discoloured cloths, surmounted with
a clean pallette; and not far off stood an easel,
covered with thumb-marks of all dyes, and supporting
a new canvass, on which was outlined the figure
of a nymph, with the head finished in a style that
would have stirred the warm blood of Raphael
himself with emulous admiration. A low flock bed,
and a chair without a bottom, but with a large cloak
hung over its back, a pair of foils and a rapier, completed
so much of the furniture of the room as
belonged to a gay student of Corregio's art, who
wrote himself Biondo Amieri.
By the light of ths same antique lamp, hung on a
rusty nail against the wall, you might see a very
good effect on the face of an unfinished group in
marble, of which the model, in plaster, stood a little
behind, representing a youth with a dagger at his
heart, arrested in the act of self-murder by a female,
whose softened resembled to him proclaimed her at
the first glance his sister. A mallet, chisels, and
other implements used in sculpture, lay on the rough
base of the unfinished group, and half disclosed, half
concealed, by a screen covered with prints by some
curious female hand, stood a bed with white curtains,
and an oratory of carved oak at its head, supporting
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a clasped missal. A chair or two, whose seats of
worked satin had figured one day in more luxurious
neighborhood, a table covered with a few books and
several drawings from the antique, and a carefully
locked escritoire, served, with other appearances, to
distinguish this side of the room as belonging to a
separate occupant, of gentler taste or nurture.
While the adventurous Violanta is preparing herself
to take advantage of the information received
by her secret telegraph, I shall have time, dear
reader, to put you up to a little of the family history
of the Cesarini, necessary no less to a proper understanding
of the story, than to the herione's character
for discretion. On the latter point, I would suggest
to you, you may as well suspend your opinion.
It is well known to all the gossips in Rome, that,
for four successive generations, the Marquises of
Cesarini have obtained dispensations of the Pope for
marrying beautiful peasant girls from the neighborhood
of their castle, in Romagna. The considerable
sums paid for these dispensations, reconciled the
Holy See to such an unprecedented introduction of
vulgar blood into the veins of the nobility, and the
remarkable female beauty of the race, (heightened
by the addition of nature's aristocracy to its own,)
contributed to maintain good-will at a court, devoted
above all others to the cultivation of the fine arts,
of which woman is the Eidolon and the soul. The
-- 101 --
[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]
last marquis, educated like his fathers, in their wild
domain among the mountains, selected, like them,
the fairest wild-flower that sprung at his feet, and
after the birth of one son, applied for the tardy dispensation.
From some unknown cause, (possibly
a diminished bribe, as the marquis was less lavish
in his disposition than his predecessors,) the Pope
sanctioned the marriage, but refused to legitimatize
the son, unless the next born should be a daughter.
The marchioness soon after retired, (from mortification
it is supposed,) to her home in the mountains,
and after two years of close seclusion, returned to
Rome, bringing with her an infant daughter, then
three months of age, destined to be the heroine of our
story. No other child appearing, the young Cesarini
was legitimatized, and with his infant sister passed
most of his youth at Rome. Some three or four years
before the time when our tale commences, this youth,
who had betrayed always, a coarse and brutal temper,
administered his stiletto to a gentleman on the
Corso, and flying from Rome, became a brigand
in the Abruzzi. His violence and atrocity in this
congenial life, soon put him beyond hope of pardon,
and on his outlawry by the Pope, Violanta became
the heiress of the estates of Cesarini.
The marchioness had died when Violanta was
between seven and eight years of age, leaving her,
by a deathbed injunction, in the charge of her own
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constant attendant, a faithful servant from Romagno,
supposed to be distant kinswomen to her mistress.
With this tried dependant, the young countess was
permitted to go where she pleased, at all hours
when not attended by her masters, and seeing her
tractable and lovely, the old marquess, whose pride
in the beauty of his family was the passion next to
love of money in his heart, gave himself little trouble,
and thought himself consoled for the loss of his son
in the growing attractions and filial virtues of his
daughter.
On a bright morning in early spring, six years
before the date of our tale, the young countess and
her attendant were gathering wild flowers near the
Fountain of Egeria, (of all spots of earth, that on
which the wild flowers are most profuse and sweetest,)
when a deformed youth, who seemed to be
no stranger to Donna Bettina, addressed Violanta
in a tone of voice so musical, and with a look so
kindly and winning, that the frank child took his hand,
and led him off in search of cardinals and blue-bells,
with the familiarity of an established playfellow.
After this day, the little countess never came home
pleased from a morning drive and ramble in which
she had not seen her friend Signor Giulio; and the
romantic baths of Caracalla, and the many delicious
haunts among the ruins about Rome, had borne
witness to the growth of a friendship, all fondness
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and impulse on the part of Violanta, all tenderness
and delicacy on that of the deformed youth. By
what wonderful instinct they happened always to
meet, the delighted child never found time or thought
to inquire.
Two or three years passed on thus, and the old
marquess had grown to listen with amused familiarity
to his daughter's prattle about the deformed
youth, and no incident had varied the pleasant
tenour of their lives and rambles, except that, Giulio
once falling ill, Bettina had taken the young countess
to his home, where she discovered that, young
as he was, he made some progress in moulding in
clay, and was destined for a sculptor. This visit to
the apartment of an obscure youth, however, the
marquis had seen fit to object to; and though, at his
daughter's request, he sent the young sculptor an
order for his first statue, he peremptorily forbade all
further intercourse between him and Violanta. In
the paroxysm of her grief at the first disgrace she
had ever fallen into with her master, Bettina disclosed
to her young mistress, by way of justification,
a secret she had been bound by the most solemn
oaths to conceal, and of which she now was the sole
living depository—that this deformed youth was born
in the castle of the Cesarini, in Romagna, of no less
obscure parentage than the castle's lord and lady,
and beingthe first child after the dispensation of
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marriage, anda son, he was consequently the rightful
heir to the marquisate and estates of Cesarini;
and the elder son, by the terms of that dispensation,
was illegitimate.
This was astounding intelligence to Violanta,
who, nevertheless, child as she was, felt its truth in
the yearnings of her heart to Giulio; but it was
with no little pains and difficulty on Bettina's part,
that she was persuaded to preserve the secret from
her father. The Romagnese knew her master's
weakness; and as the birth of the child had occurred
during his long absence from the castle, and the
marchioness, proud of her eldest-born, had determined
from the first that he alone should enjoy the
name and honours of his father, it was not very
probable that upon the simple word of a domestic,
he would believe a deformed hunchback to be his
son and heir.
The intermediate history of Giulio, Bettina knew
little about, simply informing her mistress, that disgusted
with his deformity, the unnatural mother had
sent him to nurse in a far-off village of Romagna,
and that the interest of a small sum which the marquess
supposed had been expended on masses for
the souls of his ancestors, was still paid to his foster
parents for his use.
From the time of this disclosure, Violanta's life
had been but too happy. Feeling justified in
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contriving secret interviews with her brother; and possessing
the efficient connivance of Bettina, who grew,
like, herself, almost to worship the pure-minded
and the gentle Giulio, her heart and her time were
blissfully crowded with interest. So far, the love
that had welled from her heart had been all joyous
and untroubled.
It was during the absence of the marquis and his
daughter from Rome, and in an unhealthy season,
that Giulio, always delicate in health and liable to
excessive fits of depression, had fallen ill in his solitary
room, and, but for the friendly care of a young
artist whom he had long known, must have died of
want and neglect. As he began to recover, he accepted
the offer of Amieri, his friend, to share with
him a lodging in the more elevated air of the Corso,
and, the more readily, that this room chanced to
overlook the palace of Cesarina. Here Violanta
found him on her return, and though displeased that
he was no longer alone, she still continued, when
Amieri was absent, to see him sometimes in his
room, and their old haunts without the walls were
frequented as often as his health and strength would
permit. A chance meeting of Violanta and Amieri
in his own studio, however, made it necessary that
he should be admitted to their secret, and the consequence
of that interview, and others which Violanta
found it impossible to avoid, was a passion in the
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heart of the enthusiastic painter, which consumed,
as it well might, every faculty of his soul.
We are thus brought to an evening of balmy May,
when Giulio found himself alone. Biondo had been
painting all day on the face of his nymph, endeavoring
in vain to give it any other features than those
of the lady of his intense worship, and having gone
out to ramble for fresh air and relaxation in the Corso,
Giulio thought he might venture to throw across
his ball of thread and send a missive to his sister,
promising her an uninterrupted hour of his society.
With these preliminaries, our story will now run
smoothly on.
“Come in, carissima!” said the low, silver-toned
voice of the deformed sculptor, as a female figure,
in the hood and cloak of an old woman, crossed the
threshold of his chamber.
“Dear Giulio!” And she leaned slightly over the
diminutive form of her brother, and first kissing his
pale forehead, while she unfastened the clasp of
Bettina's cloak of black silk, threw her arms about
him as the disguise fell off, and multiplied, between
her caresses, the endearing terms in which the lan
guage of that soft clime is so prodigal.
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They sat down at the foot of his group in marble,
and each told the little history of the hours they had
spent apart. They grew alike as they conversed;
for theirs was that resemblance of the soul, to which
the features answer only when the soul is breathing
through. Unless seen together, and not only together,
but gazing on each other in complete abandonment
of heart, the friends that knew them best
would have said they were unlike. Yet Amieri's
nymph on the canvass was like both, for Amieri drew
from the picture burnt on his own heart by love, and
the soul of Violanta lay breathing beneath every
lineament.
“You have not touched the marble to-day!” said
the countess, taking the lamp from its nail, and shedding
the light aslant on the back of the statue.
“No! I have lifted the hammer twenty times to
break it in pieces.”
“Ah! dearest Giulio! talk not thus! Think it is
my image you would destroy!”
“If it were, and truly done, I would sooner strike
the blessed crucifix. But, Violanta! there is a link
wanting in this deformed frame of mine! The sense
of beauty, or the power to body it forth wants room
in me. I feel it—I feel it!”
Violanta ran to him and pressed the long curls
that fell over his pallid temples to her bosom. There
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was a tone of conviction in his voice that she knew
not how to answer.
He continued, as if he were musing aloud:
“I have tried to stifle this belief in my bosom, and
have never spoken of it till now—but it is true!
Look at that statue! Parts of it are like nature—
but it wants uniformity—it wants grace—it wants
what I want—proportion! I never shall give it
that, because I want the sense, the consciousness,
the emotion, of complete godlike movement. It is
only the well formed who feel this. Sculptors may
imitate gods! for they are made in God's image.
But oh, Violanta! I am not!”
“My poor brother!”
“Our blessed Saviour was not more beautiful
than the Apollo,” he passionately continued, “but
could I feel like the Apollo! Can I stand before
the clay and straighten myself to his attitude, and
fancy, by the most delirious effort of imagination,
that I realize in this frame, and could ever have
conceived and moulded his indignant and lofty beauty?”
No—no—no!”
“Dear—dear Giulio.” He dropped his head
again, and she felt his tears penetrate to her bosom.
“Leave this melancholy theme,” she said, in an
imploring tone, “and let us talk of other things, I
have something to tell you, Giulio!”
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“Raphael was beautiful,” he said, raising himself
up, unconscious of the interruption, “and Giorgione,
and Titian, both nobly formed, and Michael Angelo
had the port of an archangel! Yes, the soul inhabits
the whole body, and the sentiment of beauty
moves and quickens through it all. My tenement is
cramped!—Violanta!”
“Well dear brother!”
“Tell me your feelings when you first breathe the
air in a bright morning in spring. Do you feel
graceful? Is there a sensation of beauty? Do you
lift yourself and feel swan-like and lofty, and worthy
of the divine image in which you breathe. Tell me
truly, Violanta.”
“Yes, brother!”
“I knew it! I have a faint dream of such a feeling—
a sensation that is confined to my brain somehow
which I struggle to express in motion—but
if I lift my finger, it is gone. I watch Amieri
sometimes, when he draws. He pierces my very
soul by assuming, always, the attitude on his canvass.
Violanta! how can I stand like a statue
that would please the eye?”
“Giulio! Giulio!”
“Well, I will not burden you with my sadness.
Let us look at Biondo's nymph. Pray the Virgin he
come not in the while—for painting, by lamp-light,
shows less fairly than marble.”
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He took the lamp, and while Violanta shook the
tears from her eyes, he drew out the pegs of the
easel, and lowered the picture to the light.
“Are you sure Amieri will not come in, Giulio?”
inquired his sister, looking back timidly at the door
while she advanced.
“I think he will not. The Corso is gay to night,
and his handsome face and frank carriage, win greetings,
as the diamond draws light. Look at his
picture, Violanta! With what triumph he paints!
How different from my hesitating hand! The
thought that is born in his fancy, collects instant fire
in his veins and comes prompt and proportionate to
his hand. It looks like a thing born, not wrought!
How beautiful you are, my Violanta! He has done
well—brave Biondo!”
“It is like me, yet fairer.”
“I wish it were done! There is a look on the lips
that is like a sensation I feel sometimes on my own
I almost feel as if I should straighten and grow fair
as it advances. Would it not be a blessed thing,
Violanta?”
“I love you as you are, dear Giulio!”
“But I thirst to be loved like other men! I would
pass in the street and not read pity in all eyes. I
would go out like Biondo, and be greeted in the
street with `Mio bravo!' `Mio bello!' I would be
beloved by some one that is not my sister, Violanta!
I would have my share—only my share—of huma
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joy and regard. I were better dead than be a
hunchback. I would die, but for you—to-night—
yes, to night.”
With a convulsive hand he pulled aside the curtain,
and sent a long, earnest look up to the stars.
Violanta had never before heard him give words to
his melancholy thoughts, and she felt appalled and
silenced by the inexpressible poignancy of his tones,
and the feverish, tearless, broken-heartedness of his
whole manner. As she took his hand, there was a
noise in the street below, and presently after, a hurried
step was heard on the stair, and Amieri rushed
in, seized the rapier which hung over his bed and
without observing Violanta, was flying again from
the apartment.
“Biondo!” cried a voice which would have stayed
him were next breath to have been drawn in heaven.
“Contessa Violanta!”
“What is it Amieri? Where go you now?”
asked Giulio, gliding between him and the door.
Biondo's cheek and brow had flushed when first
arrested by the voice of the countess, but now he
stood silent and with his eyes on the floor, pale as
the statue before him.
“A quarrel, Giulio!' he said at length.
“Biondo!” The countess sprang to his side with
the simple utterance of his name, and laid her small
hand on his arm. “You shall not go! You are
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dear to us—dear to Guilio, Signor Amieri! If you
love us—if you care for Giulio—nay, I will say it—
if you care for me, dear Biondo, put not your life in
peril.”
“Lady!” said the painter, bowing his head to his
wrist, and kissing lightly the small white fingers
that pressed it, “if I were to lose my life this hour,
I should bless with my dying lips the occasion which
had drawn from you the blessed words I hear. But
the more life is valuable to me by your regard, the
more need you should not delay me. I am waited
for. Farewell!”
Disengaging himself from Violanta's grasp, quickly
but gently, Amieri darted through the door, and was
gone.
Biondo had readily found a second in the first
artist he met on the Corso, and after a rapid walk
they turned on the lonely and lofty wall of the
Palatine, to look back on the ruins of the Forum.—
At a fountain side, not far beyond, he had agreed to
find his antagonist; but spite of the pressing business
of the hour, the wonderful and solemn beauty of the
ruins that lay steeped in moonlight at his feet, awoke,
for an instant, all of the painter in his soul.
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“Is it not glorious, Lenzoni?” he said, pointing with
his rapier to the softened and tall columns that carried
their capitals among the stars.
“We have not come out to sketch, Amieri!” was
the reply.
“True, caro! but my fingers work as if the pencil
was in them, and I forget revenge while I see what I
shall never sketch again!”
Lenzoni struck his hand heavily on Amieri's
shoulder, as if to wake him from a dream, and looked
close into his face.
“If you fight in this spirit, Biondo—”
“I shall fight with heart and soul, Lenzoni; fear
me not! But when I saw, just now, the bel'effetto
of the sharp-drawn shadows under the arch of Constantine,
and felt instinctively for my pencil, something
told me, at my heart's ear—you will never
trace line again, Amieri!”
“Take heart, caro amico!”
My heart is ready, but my thoughts come fast!—
What were my blood, I cannot but reflect, added to
the ashes of Rome? We fight in the grave of an
empire! But you will not philosophize, dull Lenzoni!
Come on to the fountain!”
The moon shone soft on the greensward rim of
the neglected fountain that once sparkled through
the “gold palace” of Nero. The white edges of
half buried marble peeped here and there from the
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grass, and beneath the shadow of an ivy-covered and
tottering arch, sang a nightingale, the triumphant
possessor of life amid the forgotten ashes of the
Cæsars. Amieri listened to his song.
“You are prompt, signor!” said a gay-voiced
gentleman, turning the corner of the ruined wall, as
Biondo, still listening to the nightingale, fed his heart
with the last sweet words of Violanta.
“`Sempre pronto,' is a good device,” answered
Lenzoni, springing to his feet. “Will you fight, side
to the moon, signors, or shall we pull straws for the
choice of light?”
Amieri's antagonist was a strongly made man of
thirty, costly in his dress, and of that class of features
eminently handsome, yet eminently displeasing.—
The origin of the quarrel was an insulting observation,
coupled with the name of the young Countess
Cesarini, which Biondo, who was standing in the
shadow of a wall, watching her window from the
Corso,accidentally overheard. A blow on the mouth
was the first warning the stranger received of a
listener's neighbourhood, and after a momentary
struggle they exchanged cards, and separated to
meet in an hour, with swords. at the fountain, on the
Palatine.
Amieri was accounted the best foil in the ateliers
of Rome, but his antagonist, the Count Lamba
Malaspina, had just returned from a long residence
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in France, and had the reputation of an accomplished
swordsman. Amieri was slighter in person, but well
made, and agile as a leopard; but when Lenzoni
looked into the cool eye of Malaspina, the spirit and
fire which he would have relied upon to ensure his
friend success in an ordinary contest, made him
tremble now.
Count Lamba bowed, and they crossed swords.
Amieri had read his antagonist's character, like his
friend, and, at the instant their blades parted, he
broke down his guard with the quickness of lightning,
and wounded him in the face. Malapina smiled as
he crossed his rapier again, and in the next moment
Amieri's sword flew high above his head, and the
count's was at his breast.
“Ask for your life, mio bravo!” he said, as calmly
as if they had met by chance in the Corso.
“A'morte! villain and slandered!” cried Amieri,
and striking the sword from his bosom, he aimed a
a blow at Malaspina, which by a backward movement,
was recieved on the point of the blade. Transfixed
through the wrist, Amieri struggled in vain
against the superior strength and coolness of his
antagonist, and falling on his knee, waited in silence
for his death-blow. Malaspina drew his sword
gently as possible from the wound, and recommending
a tourniquet to Lenzoni till a surgeon could be
procured, washed the blood from his face in the
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fountain,and descended into the Forum, humming the
air of a new song.
Faint with loss of blood, and with his left arm
around Lenzoni's neck, Biondo arrived at the surgeon's
door.
“Can you save his hand?” was the first eager
question.
Amieri held up his bleeding wrist with difficulty,
and the surgeon shook his head as he laid the helpless
fingers in his palm. The tendon was entirely parted.
“I may save the hand,” he said, “but he will never
use it more!”
Amieri gave his friend a look full of anguish, and
fell back insensible.
“Poor Biondo!” said Lenzoni, as he raised his
pallid head from the surgeon's pillow. “Death were
less misfortune than the loss of a hand like thine.—
The foreboding was too true, alas! that thou never
wouldst use pencil more!”
The frowning battlements of St. Angelo were
brightened with the glare of lamps across the Tiber,
and the dark breast of the river was laced with bars
of gold like the coat of a captain of dragoons. Here
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and there lay a boat in mid-stream, and while the
drift of the current was counteracted by an occasional
stroke at the oar, the boatmen listened to the
heavenly strains of a waltz, dying and triumphing
in alternate cadences upon the breath of night and
the pope's band. A platform was built out over the
river, forming a continuation of the stage, the pit was
floored over, and all draped like a Persian harem;
and thus began a masquerade at the Teatro della
Pergola at Rome, which stands, if you will take the
trouble to remember, close by the bridge and castle
of St. Angelo upon the bank of the “yellow Tiber.”
The entrance of the crowd to the theatre was like
a procession intended to represent the things of which
we are commanded, not to make gravenimages, nor
to bow down and worship them. There was the
likeness of everything in heaven above and on the
earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth.
There were angels, devils, serpents, birds, beasts,
fishes and fair women—of which none except the
last occasioned much transgression of the commandment.
Oddly enough, the fishes waltzed—
and so did the beasts and fair women, the serpents
and birds—pairing off as they came within sound of
the musick, with a defiance of natural antipathies
which would have driven a naturalist out of his
senses.
A chariot drove up with the crest of the Cesarini
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on the pannel, and out of it stepped rather a stiff
figure dressed as a wandering palmer, with serge
and scallop-shells, followed by a masked hunchback
whosê costume, even to the threadbare spot on the
ridge of his deformity, was approved, by the loungers
at the door, in a general “bravissimo.” They entered
the dressing-room, and the cloak-keeper was not
surprised when the lump was withdrawn in the
shape of a pad of wool, and by the aid of a hood
and petticoat of black silk, the deformed was transformed
into a slender domino, undistinguished but
for the grace and elasiticity of her movements. The
attendant was surprised, however, when having
stepped aside to deposite the pad given in charge to
her, she turned and saw the domino flitting from the
room, but the hunchback with his threadbare hump
still leaning on the palmer's arm!
“Santissima Vergine!” she exclaimed, pulling out
her cross and holding it between herself and Giulio,
“the Fiend—the unholy Fiend!”
Donna Bettina laughed under her palmer's cowl,
and drawing Giulio's arm within her own, they
mingled in the masquerade.
The old Oount Cesarini arrived a few minutes
after in one of the equipages of the Malaspina,
accompanied by a red-cross knight in a magnificent
armour, his sword-hilt sparkling with diamonds, and
the bars of his visor half drawn, yet showing a
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beard of jetty and curling black, and a mouth of the
most regular, yet unpleasant beauty. The upper
part of his face was quite concealed, yet the sneer
on his lips promised a cold and unfeeling eye.
“As a hunchback, did you say, count?”
“It was her whim,” answered Cesarini. “She
has given arms to a poor sculptor with that deformity
till her brain is filled with it. Pray the saints to
affect not your offspring, Lamba!”
Malaspina surveyed himself in the long mirror at
the entrance of the saloon, and smiled back incredulously
with his white teeth.
“I gave Bettina strict orders not to leave her side,”
said Cesarini. “You will find the old donna by her
palmer's dress. The saints speed your suit, Lamba!
I will await you in the card-room when the dance
wearies you!”
It was not for some time after the two old nobles
had affianced their children, that Cesarini had found
a fitting opportunity to break the subject to his
daughter. When he did so, somewhat to his embarrassment,
Violanta listened to it without surprise;—
and after hearing all he had to say upon the honourable
descent, large fortune and courtly accomplishments
of the young Count Lamba, she only permitted
her father to entertain any future hope on the subject,
upon the condition, that, till she was of age, her
proposed husband should not even be presented to
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her. For this victory over the most cherished
ambition of the old count, Violonta was indebted
partly to the Holy See, and partly to some qualities
in her own character, of which her father knew the
force. He was aware with what readiness the cardinals
would seize upon the slightest wish she might
express to take the veil and bring her possessions
into the church, and he was sufficiently acquainted
with the qualities of a Cesarini, not to drive one of
their daughters to extremity.
With some embarrassment the old count made a
clean breast to Malaspina and his son, and was
exhausting language in regrets, when he was relieved
by an assurance from Lamba that the difficulty
increased his zest for the match, and that, Cesarini's
permission, he would find opportunitie to encounter
her in her walks as a stranger, and make his way
after the romantic taste which he supposed was
alone at the bottom of her refusal. For success in
this, Count Lambo relied on his personal beauty and
on that address in the arts of adventure which is
acquired by a residence in France.
Since his duel, Amieri had been confined to his
bed with a violent fever, dangerously aggravated by
the peculiar nature of his calamity. The love of
the pencil was the breath of his soul, and in
all his thoughts of Violanta, it was only as a rival
of the lofty fame of painters who had made
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themselves the companions of kings, that he could imagine
himself a claimant for her love. It seemed
to him that his nerveless hand had shut out heaven's
intire light.
Giulio had watched by his friend with the faithful
fondness of a woman, and had gathered from his
moments of delirium, what Biondo had from delicacy
to Violanta never revealed to his second, Lenzoni—
the cause of his quarrel with Malaspina. Touched
with this chivalric tenderness toward his sister the
kind Giulio hung over him with renewed affection,
and when, in subsequent ravings, the maimed
youth betrayed the real sting of his misfortune—
the death of his hopes of her love—the unambitious
brother resolved in his heart that if he could aid him
by service or sacrifice, by influence with Violanta,
or by making the almost desperate attempt to establish
his own claims to the name and fortunes of
Cesarini, he would devote himself to his service
heart and soul.
During the confinement of Amieri to his room, the
young countess had of course, been unable to visit
her brother, and as he scarce left the patient's side
for a moment, their intercourse for two or three
weeks had been entirely interrupted. On the first
day the convalescent youth could walk out, she had
stolen to the studio, and heard from Giulio the whole
history of the duel and its consequences. When he
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had finished his narrative, Violanta sat, for a few
minutes, lost in thought.
“Giulio!” she said at last, with a gaiety of tone,
which startled him.
Violanta!”
“Did you ever remark that our voices are very
much alike?”
“Biondo often says so.”
“And you have a foot almost as small as mine.”
“I have not the proportions of a man, Violanta!”
“Nay, brother, but I mean that—that—we might
pass for each other, if we were masked. Our
height is the same. Stand up, Giulio!”
“You would not mock me!” said the melancholy
youth with a faint smile, as he rose and set his bent
back beside the straight and lithe form of his sister.
“Listen to me, amato-bene!” she replied, sitting
down and drawing him upon her knee, after satisfying
himself that there was no perceptible difference
in their height. “Put your arm about my neck, and
love me while I tell you of my little plot.”
Giulio impressed a kiss upon the clear, alabaster
forehead of the beautiful girl, and looked into her
face inquiringly.
“There is to be a masquerade at La Pergola,”
she said—“a superb masquerade given to some
prince! And I am to go, Giulio mio!”
“Well,” answered the listener, sadly.
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“But do you not seem surprised that I am permitted
to go! Shall I tell you the reason why papa
gave me permission?”
“If you will, Violonta!”
“A little bird told me that Malaspina means to
be there!”
“And you will go to meet him?”
“You shall go to meet him, and I—” she
hesitated and cast down the long dark fringes of her
eyes. “I will meet Biondo!”
“Giulio clasped her passionately to his heart.
“I see!—I see!” he cried, springing upon his feet,
as he anticipated the remaining circumstances of
the plot. “We shall be two hunchbacks—they will
little think that we are two Cesarini. Dear, noble
Violanta! you will speak kindly to Biondo. Send
Bettina for the clothes, carina mia! You will get
twin masks in the Corso. And, Violanta?”
“What, Giulio?”
“Tell Bettina to breathe no word of our project
to Amieri! I will persuade him to go but to see you
dance! Poor Amieri! Dear, dear sister! Farewell
now! He will be returning, and you must be gone.
The Holy Virgin guard you, my Violanta!”
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The reader will long since have been reminded,
by the trouble we have to whip in and flog up the
lagging and straggling members of our story, of a
flock of sheep driven unwillingly to market. Indeed,
to stop at the confessional, (as you will see
many a shepherd of the Campagna, on his way to
Rome,) this tale of many tails should have been a
novel. You have, in brief, what should have
heen well elaborated, embarrassed with difficulties,
relieved by digressions, tipped with a moral, and
bound in two volumes, with a portrait of the author.
We are sacrificed to the spirit of the age. The
eighteenth century will be known in hieroglyphics
by a pair of shears. But, “to return to our muttons.”
The masquerade went merrily on, or, if there
were more than one heavy heart among those light
heels, it was not known, as the newspapers say, “to
our reporter.” One, there certainly was—heavy
as Etna on the breast of Enceladus. Biondo Amieri
sat in a corner of the gallery, with his swathed
hand laid before him, pale as a new statue, and with
a melancholy in his soft dark eyes, which would have
touched the executioners of St. Agatha. Beside
him sat Lenzoni, who was content to forego the
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waltz for a while, and keep company for pity with a
friend who was too busy with his own thoughts to
give him word or look, but still keeping sharp watch
on the scene below, and betraying by unconscious
ejaculations how great a penance he had put on himself
for love and charity.
“Ah, la bella musica, Biondo!” he exclaimed
drumming on the banquette, while his friend held
up his wounded hand to escape the jar, “listen to that
waltz, that might set fire to the heels of St. Peter.
Corpo di Bacco! look at the dragon!—a dragon
making love to a nun, Amieri! Ah! San Pietro!
what a foot! Wait till I come, sweet goblin! That
a goblin's tail should follow such ankles, Biondo!
Eh! bellissimo! the knight! Look at the red-cross
knight, Amieri! and—what?—il gobbo, by St. Anthony!
and the red-cross takes him for a woman!
It is Giulio, or there never were two hunchbacks so
wondrous like! Ecco, Biondo!”
But there was little need to cry “look” to Amieri,
now. A hunchback, closely masked, and leaning
on a palmer's arm, made his way slowly through
the crowd, and a red-cross knight, a figure gallant
enough to have made a monarch jealous, whispered
with courteous and courtly deference in his ear.
“Cielo! it is she!” said Biondo, with mournful
earnestness, not heeding his companion, and laying
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his hand upon his wounded wrist, as if the sight he
looked on gave it a fresher pang.
“She?” answered Lenzoni, with a laugh. “If it
is not he—not gobbo Giulio—I'll eat that cross-hilted
rapier! What `she' should it be, caro Biondo!”
“I tell thee,” said Amieri, “Giulio is asleep at the
foot of his marred statue! I left him but now, he is
too ill with his late vigils to be here—but his clothes,
I may tell thee, are borrowed by one who wears
them as you see. Look at the foot, Lenzoni!”
“A woman, true enough, if the shoe were all!
But I'll have a close look! Stay for me, dear Amieri!
I will return ere you have looked twice at
them!”
And happy, with all his kind sympathy, to find a
fair apology to be free, Lenzoni leaped over the
benches and mingled in the crowd below.
Left alone, Biondo devoured with his eyes, every
movement of the group in which he was so deeply
interested, and the wound in his hand seemed burning
with a throb of fire, while he tried in vain to detect,
in the manner of the hunchback, that coyness
which might show, even through a mask, dislike or
indifference. There was even, he thought, (and he
delivered his soul over to Apollyon in the usual phrase
for thinking such ill of such an angel;) there was
even in her manner a levity and freedom of gesture
for which the mask she wore should be no apology.
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He was about to curse Malaspina for having spared
his life at the fountain, when some one jumped
lightly over the seat, and took a place beside him.
It was a female in a black domino, closely masked,
and through the pasteboard mouth protruded the bit
of ivory, commonly held in the teeth by maskers
to disguise the voice.
“Good evening to you, fair signor!”
“Good even to you, lady!”
“I am come to share your melancholy, signor!”
“I have none to give away unless you will take
all; and just now, my fair one, it is rather anger
than sadness. If it please you, leave me!”
“What if I am more pleased to stay!”
“Briefly, I would be alone! I am not of the festa.
I but look on, here!” And Biondo turned his
shoulder to the mask, and fixed his eyes again on
the hunchback, who having taken the knight's arm,
was talking and promenading most gaily between
him and the palmer.
“You have a wounded hand, signor!” resumed
his importunate neighbor.
“A useless one, lady. Would it were well!'
“Signor Melancholy, repine not against providence.
I that am no witch, tell thee that thou wilt
yet bless heaven that this hand is disabled.”
Biondo turned and looked at the bold prophetess,
but her disguise was impenetrable.
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“You are a masker, lady, and talk at random!”
“No! I will tell you the thought uppermost in
your bosom!”
“What is it?”
“A longing for a pluck at the red-cross, yonder!”
“True, by St. Mary!” said Biondo, starting energetically:
“but you read it in my eyes!”
“I have told you your first thought, signor, and I
will give you a hint of the second. Is there a likeness
between a nymph on canvass, and a gobbo in a
mask!”
“Giulio!” exclaimed Amieri, turning suddenly
round; but the straight back of the domino met his
eye, and totally bewildered, he resumed his seat,
and slowly perused the stranger from head to foot.
“Talk to me as if my mask were the mirror of
your soul, Amieri,” said the soft but undisguised
voice. “You need sympathy in this mood, and I am
your good angel. Is your wrist painful to-night?”
“I cannot talk to you,” he said, turning to resume
his observation on the scene below. “If you know
the face beneath the gobbo's mask, you know the
heaven from which I am shut out. But I must gaze
on it still.”
“Is it a woman?”
“No! an angel.”
“And encourages the devil in the shape of Malaspina?
You miscall her, Amieri!”
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The answer was interrupted by Lenzoni, who ran
into the gallery, but seeing his friend beset by a
mask, he gave him joy of his good luck, and refusing
to interrupt the tête-à-tête, disappeared with a
laugh.
“Brave, kind Lenzoni!” said the stranger.
“Are you his good angel, too?” asked Amieri,
surprised again at the knowledge so mysteriously
displayed.
“No! Little as you know of me you would not
be willing to share me with another! Say, Amieri!
love you the gobbo on the knight's arm?”
“You have read me riddles less clear, my fair
incognita! I would die at morn but to say farewell
to her at midnight!”
“Do you despair of her love?”
“Do I despair of excelling Raphael with these
unstrung fingers? I never hoped—but in my
dreams, lady!”
“Then hope, waking! For as there is truth in
heaven, Violanta Cesarini loves you, Biondo!”
Laying his left hand sternly on the arm of the
stranger, Biondo raised his helpless wrist and pointed
towards the hunchback, who, seated by the red-cross
night, played with the diamond cross of his
sword-hilt, while the palmer turned his back, as if
to give two lovers an opportunity.
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With a heart overwhelmed with bitterness, he
then turned to the mocking incognito. Violanta sat
beside him!
Holding her mask between her and the crowd
below, the maiden blush mounted to her temples,
and the long sweeping lashes dropped over her eyes
their veiling and silken fringes. And while the red-cross
knight still made eloquent love to Giulio in the
saloon of the masquerade, Amieri and Violanta, in
their unobserved retreat, exchanged vows, faint and
choked with emotion on his part, but all hope, encouragement
and assurance on hers.
“Will you waltz?” said a merry-voiced domino
to the red-cross knight, a few minutes after tapping
him smartly on the corslet with her black fan, and
pointing, for the first step, a foot that would have
tempted St. Anthony.
“By the mass!” answered Malaspina, “I should
pay an ill compliment to the sweetest voice that
ever enchanted human ear,” (and he bowed low to
Giulio) “did I refuse invitation so sweetly toned.
Yet my Milan armour is not light!”
“I have been refusing his entreaties this hour,”
said Giulio, as the knight whirled away with
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Violanta, “for though I can chatter like a woman, I
should dance like myself. He is not unwilling to
show his grace to `his lady-mistress!' Ha! ha!
It is worth while to sham the petticoat for once to
see what fools men are when they would please a
woman! But, close mask! Here comes the Count
Cesarini!”
“How fares my child?” said the old noble, leaning
over the masked Giulio, and touching with his
lips the glossy curl which concealed his temple.
“Are you amused, idolo mio?”
A sudden tremour shot through the frame of poor
Giulio at the first endearment ever addressed to his
ear by the voice of a parent. The tears coursed
down under his mask, and for all answer to the question,
he could only lay his small soft hand in his
father's and return his pressure with irresistible
strength and emotion.
“You are not well, my child!” he said, surprised
at not receiving an answer, “this ugly hump
oppresses you! Come to the air! So—lean on me,
caro tesoro! We will remove the hump presently.
A Cesarini with a hump indeed! Straighten yourself,
my life, my child, and you will breathe more
freely!”
Thus entered, at one wound, daggers and balm
into the heart of the deformed youth; and while
Bettina, trembling in every limb, grew giddy with
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fear as they made their way through the crowd,
Giulio, relieved by his tears, nerved himself with
a strong effort and prepared to play out his difficult
part with calmness.
They threaded slowly the crowded maze of
waltzers, and, emerging from the close saloons,
stood at last in the gallery overhanging the river.
The moon was rising, and touched with a pale light
the dark face of the Tiber; the music came faintly
out to the night air, and a fresh west wind, cool and
balmy from the verdant campagna, breathed softly
through the lattices.
Refusing a chair, Giulio leaned over the balustrade,
and the count stood by his side and encircled his
waist with his arm.
“I cannot bear this deformity, my Violanta!” he
said, “you look so unlike my child with it; I need
this little hand to re-assure me.”
“Should you know that was my hand, father?”
said Giulio.
“Should I not! I have told you a thousand times
that the nails of a Cesarini were marked—let me see
you again—by the arch of this rosy line! See, my
little Gobbo! They are like four pink fairy shells
of India laid over rolled leaves of roses. What was
the poet's name who said that of the old Countess
Giulia Cesarini—la bella Giulia?”
“Should you have known my voice, father?” asked
Giulio, evading the question.
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“Yes my darling, why ask me?”
“But, father!—if I had been stolen by brigands
from the cradle—or you had not seen me for many,
many years—and I had met you to night as a gobbo
and had spoken to you—only in sport—and had
called you `father, dear father!' should you have
known my voice? would you have owned me for a
Cesarini?”
“Instantly, my fair child!”
“But suppose my back had been broken—suppose
I were a gobbo—a deformed hunchback indeed, indeed—
but had still nails with a rosy arch, and the
same voice with which I speak to you now—and
pressed your hand thus—and loved you—would
you disown me, father?”
Giulio had raised himself while he spoke, and taken
his hand from his father's with a feeling that life
or death would be in his answer to that question.
Cesarini was disturbed, and did not reply for a
moment.
“My child!” said he at last “there is that in
your voice that would convince me you are mine,
against all the evidence in the universe. I cannot
imagine the dreadful image you have conjured up,
for the Cesarini are beautiful and straight by long
inheritance. But if a monster spoke to me thus, I
should love him! Come to my bosom, my blessed
child! and dispel those wild dreams! Come, Violanta!”
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“Giulio attempted to raise his arms to his father's
neck, but the strength that had sustained him so
well, began to ebb from him. He uttered some indistinct
words, lifted his hand to his mask as if to
remove it for breath, and sunk slowly to the floor.
“It is your son, my lord!” cried Bettina. “Lift
him, Count Cesarini! Lift your child to the air before
he dies!”
She tore off his mask and disclosed to the thunder-stricken
count the face of the stranger! As he
stood pale and aghast, too much confounded for utterance
or action, the black domino tripped into the
gallery, followed by the red-cross knight, panting
under his armor.
“Giulio! my own Giulio!” cried Violanta, throwing
herself on her knees beside her pale and insensible
brother, and covering his forehead and lips
with kisses. “Is he hurt? Is he dead? Water!
for the love of heaven! Will no one bring water?”
And tearing away her own mask, she lifted him
from the ground, and totally regardless of the astonished
group who looked on in petrified silence,
fanned and caressed him into life and consciousness.
“Come away, Violanta!' said her father at last,
in a hoarse voice.
“Never, my father! he is our own blood! How
feel you now, Giulio?”
“Better, sweet! where is Biondo?”
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“Near by! But you shall go home with me.
Signor Malaspina, as you hope for my favor, lend
my brother an arm. Bettina, call up the chariot.
Nay, father! he goes home with me, or I with him.
we never part more!”
The red-cross knight gave Giulio an arm, and
leaning on him and Violanta, the poor youth made
his way to the carriage. Amieri sat at the door,
and received only a look as she passed, and helping
Giulio tenderly in, she gave the order to drive swiftly
home, and in a few minutes they entered together
the palace of their common inheritance.
It would be superfluous to dwell on the incidents
of the sequel, which were detailed in the Diario di
Roma, and are known to all the world. The hunch-back
Count Cesarini has succeeded his father in his
title and estates, and is beloved of all Rome. The
next heir to the title is a son (now two years of age)
of the Countess Amieri, who is to take the name of
Cesarini on coming to his majority. They live together
in the old palazzo, and all strangers go to see
their gallery of pictures, of which none are bad, except
some well intended but not very felicitously executed
compositions by one Lenzoni.
Count Lamba Malaspina is at present in exile
having been convicted of drawing a sword on a
disabled gentleman, on his way from a masquerade
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at La Pergola. His seclusion is rendered the more
tolerable by the loss of his teeth, which were rudely
thrust down his throat by this same Lenzoni (fated
to have a finger in every pie) in defence of the attacked
party on that occasion. You will hear Lenzoni's
address (should you wish to purchase a picture
of his painting) at the Caffé del Gioco, opposite
the trattoria of La Bella Donna in the Corso.
-- --
Pasquali, the Tailor of Venice.
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-- --
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-- 139 -- p416-140
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Giannino Pasquali was a smart tailor some five
years ago, occupying a cool shop on one of the
smaller canals of Venice. Four pairs of suspenders,
a print of the fashions, and a motley row of the
gay colored trousers worn by the gondoliers, ornamented
the window looking on the dark alley in the
rear, and, attached to the post of the water-gate on
the canal side, floated a small black gondola, the
possession of which afforded the same proof of
prosperity of the Venetian tailor which is expressed
by a horse and buggy at the door of a snip in London.
The place-seeking traveller, who, nez en l'air,
threaded the tangled labarynth of alleys and bridges
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between the Rialto and St. Marc's, would scarce
have observed the humble shop-window of Pasquali,
yet he had a consequence on the Piazza, and the
lagoon had seen his triumphs as an amateur gondolier.
Giannino was some thirty years of age, and
his wife Fiametta, whom he had married for her
zecchini, was on the shady side of fifty.
If the truth must be told, Pasquali had discovered
that, even with a bag of sequins for eye-water, Fiametta
was not always the most lovely woman in
Venice. Just across the canal lived old Donna
Bentoccata, the nurse, whose daughter Turturilla
was like the blonde in Titian's picture of the Mary's;
and to the charms of Turturilla, even seen through
the leaden light of poverty, the unhappy Pasquali
was far from insensible.
The festa of San Antonio arrived after a damp
week of November, and though you wold suppose
the atmosphere of Venice not liable to any very
sensible increase of moisture, Fiametta, like people
who live on land, and who have the rheumatism as
a punishment for their age and ugliness, was usually
confined to her brazero of hot coals till it was dry
enough on the Lido for the peacocks to walk abroad.
On this festa, however, San Antonio being, as every
one knows, the patron saint of Padua, the Padovese
were to come down the Brenta, as was their custom,
and cross over the sea to Venice to assist in
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the celebration; and Fiametta once more thought
Pasquali loved her for herself alone when he swore
by his rosary that unless she accompanied him to the
festa in her wedding dress, he would not turn an oar
in the race, nor unfasten his gondola from the door
post. Alas! Fiametta was married in the summer
solstice, and her dress was permeable to the wind as
a cobweb or gossamer, Is it possible you could
have remembered that, oh, wicked Pasquali?
It was a day to puzzle a barometer; now bright,
now rainy; now gusty as a corridor in a novel, and
now calm as a lady after a fit of tears. Pasquali
was up early and waked Fiametta with a kiss, and,
by way of unusual tenderness, or by way of ensuring
the wedding dress, he chose to play dressing
maid, and arranged with his own hands her jupon
and fezzoletta. She emerged from her chamber
looking like a slice of orange-peel in a flower-bed,
but smiling and nodding, and vowing the day warm
as April, and the sky without a cloud. The widening
circles of an occasional drop of rain in the canal
were nothing but the bubbles bursting after a
passing oar, or perhaps the last flies of summer.
Pasquali swore it was weather to win down a peri.
As Fiametta stepped into the gondola, she glanced
her eyes over the way and saw Turturilla, with a
face as sorrowful as the first day in Lent, seated at
her window. Her lap was full of work, and it was
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quite evident that she had not thought of being at the
festa. Fiametta's heart was already warm, and it
melted quite at the view of the poor girl's loneliness.
“Pasquali mio!” she said, in a deprecating tone,
as if she were uncertain how the proposition would
be received, “I think we could make room for poor
Turturilla!”
A gleam of pleasure, unobserved by the confiding
sposa, tinted faintly the smooth olive cheek of
Pasquali,
“Eh! diavolo!” he replied, so loud that the sorrowful
seamstress heard, and hung down her head
still lower; “must you take pity on every cheese-paring
of a regczza who happens to have no lover!
Have reason! have reason! The Gondola is narrower
than your brave heart my fine Fiametta!”
And away he pushed from the water-steps.
Turturilla rose from her work and stepped out
upon the rusty gratings of the balcony to see them
depart. Pasquali stopped to grease the notch of
his oar, and between that and some other embarrassments,
the gondola was suffered to float directly
under her window, The compliment to the generous
nature of Fiametta, was, meantime, working,
and as she was compelled to exchange a word or
two with Turturilla while her husband was getting
his oar into the socket, it resulted, (as he thought it
very probable it would,) in the good wife's renewing
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her proposition, and making a point of sending the
deserted girl for her holiday bonnet. Pasquali
swore through all the saints and angels by the time
she had made herself ready, though she was but five
minutes gone from the window, and telling Fiametta
in her ear that she must consider it as the purest obligation,
he backed up to the steps of old Donna Bentoccata,
helped in her daughter with a better grace
than could have been expected, and with one or two
short and deep strokes, put forth into the grand canal
with the velocity of a lance-fly.
A gleam of sunshine lay along the bosom of the
broad silver sheet, and it was beautiful to see the
gondolas with their gay colored freights all hastening
in one direction, and with swift track to the festa.
Far up and down they rippled the smooth water,
here gliding out from below a palace-arch, there
from a narrow and unseen canal, the steel beaks
curved and flashing, the water glancing on the oarblades,
the curtains moving, and the fair women of
Venice leaning out and touching hands as they neared
neighbor or acquaintance in the close-pressing
gondolas. It was a beautiful sight, indeed, and
three of the happiest hearts in that swift gliding
company were in Pasquali's gondola, though the
bliss of Fiametta, I am compelled to say, was entirely
owing to the bandage with which love is so
significantly painted. Ah! poor Fiametta!
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From the Lido, from Fusina, from under the
Bridge of Sighs, from all quarters of the lagoon,
and from all points of the floating city of Venice,
streamed the flying gondolas to the Giudecca. The
narrow walk along the edge of the long and close-built
island was thronged with booths and promenaders,
and the black barks by hundreds bumped their
steel noses against the pier as the agitated water rose
and fell beneath them. The gondolas intended for
the race pulled slowly up and down, close to the
shore, exhibiting their fairy-like forms and their sinewy
and gaily dressed gondoliers to the crowds on
land and water; the bands of music, attached to
different parties, played here and there a strain; the
criers of holy pictures and gingerbread made the air
vocal with their lisping and soft Venetian; and all
over the scene, as if it was the light of the sky or
some other light as blessed but less common, shonè
glowing black eyes, black as night, and sparkling as
the stars on night's darkest bosom. He who thinks
lightly of Italian beauty should have seen the women
of Venice on St. Antonio's day '32, or on any
day or at any hour when their pulses are beating
high and their eyes alight—for they are neither one
nor the other always. The women of that fair
clime, to borrow the similie of Moore, are like lava-streams,
only bright when the volcano kindles.
Their long lashes cover lustreless eyes, and their
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blood shows dully through the cheek in common
and listless hours. The calm, the passive tranquillity
in which the delicate graces of colder climes
find their element are to them a torpor of the heart
when the blood scarce seems to flow. They are
wakeful only to the energetic, the passionate, the
joyous movements of the soul.
Pasquali stood erect in the prow of his gondola,
and stole furtive glances at Turturilla while he
pointed away with his finger to call off the sharp
eyes of Fiametta; but Fiametta was happy and
unsuspicious. Only when now and then the wind
came up chilly from the Adriatick, the poor wife
shivered and sat closer to Turturilla, who in her
plainer but thicker dress, to say nothing of younger
blood, sat more comfortably on the black cushion
and thought less about the weather. An occasional
drop of rain fell on the nose of poor Fiametta, but if
she did not believe it was the spray from Pasquali's
oar, she at least did her best to believe so; and the
perfidious tailor swore by St. Anthony that the
clouds were as dry as her eyelashes. I never was
very certain that Turturilla was not in the secret of
this day's treacheries.
The broad centre of the Giudecca was cleared,
and the boats took their places for the race. Pasquali
ranged his gondola with those of the other
spectators, and telling Fiametta in her ear that he
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should sit on the other side of Turturilla as a punishment
for their malapropos invitation, he placed himself
on the small remainder of the deep cushion on
the farthest side from his now penitent spouse, and
while he complained almost rudely of the narrowness
of his seat, he made free to hold on by Turturilla's
waist which no doubt made the poor girl's mind
more easy on the subject of her intrusion.
Who won and who lost the race—what was the
device of each flag, and what bets and bright eyes
changed owners by the result, no personage of this
tale knew or cared, save Fiametta. She looked
on eagerly. Pasquali and Turturilla, as the French
say trouvaient autress chats á frottér.
After the decision of the grand race, St. Antonio
being the protector, more particularly of the humble,
(“patron of pigs” in the saints' calendar,) the seignoria
and the grand people generally, pulled away
for St. Marc's, leaving the crowded Giudecca to
the people. Pasquali, as was said before, had some
renown as a gondolier. Something what would be
called in other countries a scrub race, followed the
departure of the winning boat, and several gondolas,
holding each one person only, took their places for
the start. The tailor laid his hand on his bosom,
and, with the smile that had first stirred the heart
and the sequins of Fiametta, begged her to gratify
his love by acting as his make-weight while he turned
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an oar for the pig of St. Antonio. The prize
roasted to an appetizing crisp, stood high on a platter
in front of one of the booths on shore, and Fiametta
smacked her lips, overcame her tears with an effort,
and told him, in accents as little as possible like the
creak of a dry oar in the socket, that he might set
Turturilla on shore.
A word in her ear, as he handed her over the
gunwale, reconciled Donna Bentoccata's fair daughter
to this conjugal partiality, and stripping his manly
figure of its upper disguises, Pasquali straightened
out his fine limbs, and drove his bark to the line in a
style that drew applause from even his competitors.
As a mark of their approbation, they offered him an
outside place where his fair dame would be less
likely to be spattered with the contending oars; but
he was too generous to take advantage of this considerate
offer, and crying out as he took the middle,
“ben pronto, signori!” gave Fiametta a confident
look and stood like a hound in the leash.
Off they went at the tap of the drum, poor Fiametta
holding her breath and clinging to the sides of
the gondola, and Pasquali developing skill and
muscle—not for Fiametta's eyes only. It was a
short, sharp race, without jockeying or management,
all fair play and main strength, and the tailor shot
past the end of the Giudecca a boat's length ahead.
Much more applauded than a king at a coronation
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or a lord-mayor taking water at London stairs, he
slowly made his way back to Turturilla, and it was
only when that demure damsel rather shrunk from
sitting down in two inches of water, that he discovered
how the disturbed element had quite filled up the
hollow of the leather cushion and made a peninsula
of the uncomplaining Fiametta. She was as
well watered, as a favourite plant in a flower-garden.
“Pasquali mio!” she said in an imploring tone,
holding up the skirt of her dress with the tips of her
thumb and finger, “could you just take me home
while I change my dress.
“One moment, Fiametta cara! they are bringing
the pig!”
The crisp and succulent trophy was solemnly
placed in the prow of the victor's gondola, and preparation
was made to convoy him home with a
triumphant procession. A half hour before it was
in order to move—an hour in first making the circuit
of the grand canal, and an hour more in drinking a
glass and exchanging good wishes at the stairs of the
Rialto, and Donna Fiametta had sat too long by two
hours and a half with scarce a dry thread on her
body. What afterwards befell will be seen in the
more melancholy sequel.
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The hospital of St. Girolamo is attached to the
convent of that name, standing on one of the canals
which put forth on the seaward side of Venice. It
is a long building, with its low windows and latticed
doors opening almost on the level of the sea, and the
wards for the sick are large and well aired; but,
except when the breeze is stirring, impregnated with
a saline dampness from the canal, which, as Pasquali
remarked, was good for the rheumatism. It was not
so good for the patient.
The loving wife Fiametta grew worse and worse
after the fatal festa, and the fit of rheumatism brought
on by the slightness of her dress and the spattering he
had given her in the race, had increased by the end of
the week, to a rheumatic fever. Fiametta was old
and tough, however, and struggled manfully (woman
as she was) with the disease, but being one night a
little out of her head, her loving husband took
occasion to shudder at the responsibility of taking
care of her, and jumping into his gondola, he pulled
across to St. Girolamo and bespoke a dry bed and
a sister of charity, and brought back the pious father
Gasparo and a comfortable litter. Fiametta was
dozing when they arrived, and the kind hearted
tailor willing to spare her the pain of knowing that
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she was on her way to the hospital for the poor,
set out some meat and wine for the monk, and sending
over for Turturilla and the nurse to mix the
salad, they sat and eat away the hours till the poor
dame's brain should be wandering again.
Toward night the monk and dame Bentoccata
were comfortably dozing with each other's support,
(having fallen asleep at table,) and Pasquali with a
kiss from Turturilla, stole softly up stairs. Fiametta
was muttering unquietly, and working her fingers in
the palms of her hands, and on feeling her pulse he
found the fever was at its height. She took him,
besides, for the prize pig of the festa, for he knew
her wits were fairly abroad. He crept down stairs,
gave the monk a strong cup of coffee to get him
well awake, and, between the four of them, they got
poor Fiametta into the litter, drew the curtains tenderly
around and deposited her safely in the bottom
of the gondola.
Lightly and smoothly the winner of the pig pulled
away with his loving burden, and gliding around the
slimy corners of the palaces, and hushing his voice
as he cried out “right!” or “left!” to guard the
coming gondoliers of his vicinity, he arrived, like a
thought of love to a maid's mind in sleep, at the door
of St. Girolamo. The abbess looked out and said,
“benedicite!” and the monk stood firm on his brown
sandals to receive the precious burden from the arms
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of Pasquali. Believing firmly that it was equivalent
to committing her to the hand of St. Peter, and of
course abandoning all hope of seeing her again in
this world, the soft-hearted tailor wiped his eye as
she was lifted in, and receiving a promise from father
Gasparo that he would communicate faithfully the
state of her soul in the last agony, he pulled, with
lightened gondola and heart, back to his widower's
home and Turturilla.
For many good reasons, and apparent as good,
it is a rule in the hospital of St. Girolamo, that the
sick under its holy charge shall receive the visit of
neither friend nor relative. If they recover, they
return to their abodes to earn candles for the altar
of the restoring saint. If they die, their clothes are
sent to their surviving friends, and this affecting memorial,
besides communicating the melancholy news,
affords all the particulars and all the consolation they
are supposed to require upon the subject of their
loss.
Waiting patiently for Father Gasparo and his
bundle, Pasquali and Turturilla gave themselves up
to hopes, which on the tailor's part, (we fear it must
be admitted,) augured a quicker recovery from grief
than might be credited to an elastic constitution.
The fortune of poor Fiametta was sufficent to warrant
Pasquali in neglecting his shop to celebrate every
festa that the church acknowledged, and for ten days
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subsequent to the committal of his wife to the tender
mercies of St. Girolamo, five days out of seven was
the proportion of merry holidays with his new
betrothed.
They were sitting one evening in the open piazza
of St. Mark, in front of the most thronged café of
that matchless square. The moon was resting her
silver disk on the point of the Campanile, and the
shadows of thousands of gay Venetians fell on the
immense pavement below, clear and sharply drawn
as a black cartoon. The four extending sides of the
square lay half in shades half in light, with their
innumerable columns and balconies and sculptured
work, and, frowning down on all, in broken light and
shadow, stood the arabesque structure of St. Mark's
itself dizzying the eyes with its mosaicks and confused
devices, and thrusting forth the heads of her four
golden-collared steeds into the moonbeams, till they
looked on that black relief, like the horses of Pluto
issuing from the gates of Hades. In the centre of
the square stood a tall woman, singing, in rich contralto,
an old song of the better days of Venice; and
against one of the pillars, Polichinello had backed
his wooden stage, and beat about his puppets with
an energy worthy of old Dandolo and his helmeted
galley-men. To those who wore not the spectacles
of grief or discontent, the square of St. Mark's that
night was like some cozening tableau. I never saw
anything so gay!
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Every body who has “swam in a gondola,”
knows how the cafés of Venice thrust out their
checkered awnings over a portion of the square, and
fill the shaded space below with chairs and marble
tables. In a corner of the shadow thus afforded, with
ice and coffee on a small round slab between them,
and the flat pavement of the public promenade under
their feet, sat our two lovers. With neither hoof nor
wheel to drown or interrupt their voices, (as in cities
whose streets are stones, not water,) they murmured
their hopes and wishes in the softest language under
the sun, and with the sotto voce acquired by all the inhabitants
of this noiseless city. Fiametta had taken
ice to cool her and coffee to take off the chill of her
ice, and a bicchiere del perfetto amore to reconcile
these two antagonists in her digestion, when the
slippers of a monk glided by, and in a moment the
recognized father Gasparo made a third in the
shadowy corner. The expected bundle was under
his arm, and he was on his way to Pasquali's dwelling.
Having assured the disconsolate tailor that
she had had unction and wafer as became the wife
of a citizen of Venice like himself, he took heart and
grew content that she was in heaven. It was a
better place, and Turturilla for so little as a gold
ring, would supply her place in his bosom.
The moon was but a brief week older when Pasquali
and Turturilla stood in the church of our Lady
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of Grief, and father Gasparo within the palings of
the altar. She was as fair a maid as ever bloomed
in the garden of beauty beloved of Titian, and the
tailor was nearer worth nine men to look at, than
the fraction of a man considered usually the exponent
of his profession. Away mumbled the good
father upon the matrimonial service, thinking of the
old wine and rich pastries that were holding their
sweetness under cork and crust only till he had
done his ceremony, and quicker by some seconds
than had ever been achieved before by priest or
bishop, he arrived at the putting on of the ring.
His hand was tremulous, and (oh unlucky omen!)
he dropped it within the gilden fence of the chancel.
The choristers were called, and father Gasparo
dropped on his knees to look for it—but if the
devil had not spirited it away, there was no other
reason why that search was in vain. Short of an
errand to the goldsmith on the Rialto, it was at last
determined the wedding could not proceed. Father
Gasparo went to hide his impatience within the
restiary, and Turturilla knelt down to pray against
the arts of Sathanas. Before they had settled severally
to their pious occupations. Pasquali was half
way to the Rialto.
Half an hour elapsed, and then instead of the
light grazing of a swift-sped gondola along the
church stairs, the splash of a sullen oar was heard,
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and Pasquali stepped on shore. They had hastened
to the door to receive him—monk, choristers
and bride—and to their surprise and bewilderment,
he waited to hand out a woman in a strange dress,
who seemed disposed, bridegroom as he was, to
make him wait her leisure. Her clothes fitted her
ill, and she carried in her hand a pair of shoes, it
was easy to see were never made for her. She
rose at last, and as her face became visible, down
dropped Turturilla and the pious father, and motionless
and aghast stood the simple Pasquali. Fiametta
stepped on shore!
In broken words Pasquali explained. He had
landed at the stairs near the fish market, and
with two leaps reaching the top, sped off past the
buttress in the direction of the goldsmith, when his
course was arrested by encountering at full speed,
the person of an old woman. Hastily raising her
up, he recognized his wife, who, fully recovered,
but without a gondola, was threading the zig-zag
alleys on foot, on her way to her own domicil. After
the first astonishment was over, her dress explained
the error of the good father and the extent
of his own misfortune. The clothes had been hung
between the bed of Fiametta and that of a smaller
woman who had been long languishing of a consumption.
She died, and Fiameta's clothes, brought
to the door by mistake were recognized by father
Gasparo and taken to Pasquali.
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The holy monk, chop-fallen and sad, took his solitary
way to the convent, but with the first step he
felt something slide into the heel of his sandal. He
sat down on the church stairs and absolved the devil
from theft—it was the lost ring, which had fallen
upon his foot and saved Pasquali the tailor from
the pains of bigamy.
-- 157 --
The Bandit of Austria. Page 157.
-- --
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-- 159 -- p416-160
“Affection is a fire which kindleth as well in the bramble
as in the oak, and catcheth hold where it first lighteth,
not where it may best burn. Larks that mount in the air
build their nests below in the earth; and women that cast
their eyes upon kings, may place their hearts upon vassals.”
MARLOWE.
“L'agrement est arbitraire: la beaute est quelque chose
de plus reel et de plus independent du gout et de l'opinion.”
LA BRUYERE.
[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]
Fast and rebukingly rang the matins from the
towers of St. Etienne, and, though unused to wake,
much less to pray, at that sunrise hour, I felt a compunctious
visiting as my postillion cracked his whip
and flew past the sacred threshold, over which tripped,
as if every stroke would be the last, the tardy
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yet light-footed mass-goers of Vienna. It was my
first entrance into this Paris of Germany, and I
stretched my head from the window to look back
with delight upon the fretted gothic pile, so cumbered
with ornament, yet so light and airy—so vast in the
area it covered, yet so crusted in every part with
delicate device and sculpture. On sped the merciless
postillion, and the next moment we rattled into
the court-yard of the hotel.
I gave my keys to the most faithful and intelligent
of valets—an English boy of sixteen, promoted from
white top-boots and a cabriolet in London, to a plain
coat and almost his master's friendship upon the
continent—and leaving him to find rooms to my
taste, make them habitable and get breakfast, I retraced
my way to ramble a half hour through the
aisles of St. Etienne.
The lingering bell was still beating its quick and
monotonous call, and just before me, followed closely
by a female domestic, a veiled and slightly-formed
lady stepped over the threshold of the cathedral,
and took her way by the least-frequented aisle to the
altar. I gave a passing glance of admiration at the
small ankle and dainty chaussure betrayed by her
hurried step; but remembering with a slight effort
that I had sought the church with at least some feeble
intentions of religious worship, I crossed the
broad nave to the opposite side, and was soon
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leaning against a pillar, and listening to the heavenly-breathed
music of the voluntary, with a confused,
but I trust, not altogether unprofitable feeling of devotion.
The peasants, with their baskets standing beside
them on the tesselated floor, counted their beads upon
their knees; the murmur, low-toned and universal,
rose through the vibrations of the anthem with
an accompaniment upon which I have always
thought the great composers calculated, no less than
upon the echoing arches, and atmosphere thickened
with incense; and the deep-throated priest muttered
his Latin prayer, more edifying to me that it left my
thoughts to their own impulses of worship, undemeaned
by the irresistible littleness of criticism, and
unchecked by the narrow bounds of another's comprehension
of the Divinity. Without being in any
leaning of opinion a son of the church of Rome, I
confess my soul gets nearer to heaven; and my religious
tendencies, dulled and diverted from improvement
by a life of travel and excitement, are more
gratefully ministered to, in the in distinct worship of
the catholics. It seems to me that no man can pray
well through the hesitating lips of another. The
inflated style or rhetorical efforts of many, addressing
heaven with difficult grammar and embarrassed
logic—and the weary monotony of others, repeating
without interest and apparently without
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thought, the most solemn appeals to the mercy of
the Almighty—are imperfect vehicles, at least to
me, for a fresh and apprehensive spirit of worship.
The religious architecture of the catholics favors the
solitary prayer of the heart. The vast floor of the
cathedral, the far receding aisles with their solemn
light, to which penetrate only the indistinct murmur
of priest and penitent, and the affecting wail or triumphant
hallelujah of the choir; the touching attitudes
and utter abandonment of all around to their
unarticulated devotions; the freedom to enter and
depart, unquestioned and unnoticed, and the wonderful
impressiveness of the lofty architecture, clustered
with mementos of death, and presenting
through every sense, some unobtrusive persuasion
to the duties of the spot—all these, I cannot but
think, are aids, not unimportant to devout feeling,
nor to the most careless keeper of his creed and
conscience, entirely without salutary use.
My eye had been resting unconsciously on the
drapery of a statue, upon which the light of a painted
oriel window threw the mingled dyes of a peacock.
It was the figure of an apostle; and curious
at last to see whence the colours came which turned
the saintly garb into a mantle of shot silk, I strayed
towards the eastern window, and was studying
the georgeous dyes and grotesque drawing of an art
lost to the world, when I discovered that I was in
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the neighbourhood of the pretty figure that had tripped
into church so lightly before me. She knelt
near the altar, a little forward from one of the heavy
gothic pillars, with her maid beside her, and,
close behind knelt a gentleman, who I observed at
a second glance, was paying his devotions exclusively
to the small foot that peeped from the edge of
a snowy peignoir, the dishabille of which was covered
and betrayed by a lace-veil and mantle. As I
stood thinking what a graceful study her figure
would make for a sculptor, and what an irreligious
impertinenee was visible in the air of the gentleman
behind, he leaned forward as if to prostrate his face
upon the pavement, and pressed his lips upon the
slender sole of (I have no doubt) the prettiest shoe
in Vienna. The natural aversion which all men
have for each other as strangers, was quickened in
my bosom by a feeling much more vivid, and said
to be quite as natural—resentment at any demonstration
by another of preference for the woman one
has admired. If I have not mistaken human nature,
there is a sort of imaginary property which every
man feels in a woman he has looked upon with even
the most transient regard, which is violated malgré
lui, by a similar feeling on the part of any other individual.
Not sure that the gentleman, who had so suddenly
become my enemy, had any warrant in the lady's
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connivance for his attentions, I retreated to the shelter
of the pillar, and was presently satisfied that he
was as much a stranger to her as myself, and was
decidedly annoying her. A slight advance in her
position to eseape his contact gave me the opportunity
I wished, and stepping upon the small space between
the skirt of her dress and the outpost of his
ebony cane, I began to study the architecture of the
roof with great seriousness. The gothic order, it is
said, sprang from the first attempts at constructing
roofs from the branches of trees, and is more perfect
as it imitates more closely the natural wilderness
with its tall tree-shafts and interlacing limbs.
With my eyes half shut I endeavoured to transport
myself to an Ameriean forest, and convert the
beams and angles of this vast gothic structure into a
primitive temple of pines, with the sunshine coming
brokingly through; but the delusion, otherwise easy
enough, was destroyed by the cherubs roosting on
the cornices, and the apostles and saints perched as
it were in the branches; and, spite of myself, I
thought it represented best Shylock's “wilderness
of monkeys.”
“S'il vous plait, monsieur!” said the gentleman,
pulling me by the pantaloons as I was losing myself
in these ill-timed speculations.
I looked down.
“Vous me gênez, monsiêur!”
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“J'en suis bien sure, monsieur!”—and I resumed
my study of the roof, turning gradually round till my
heels were against his knees, and backing peu-à-peu.
It has often occurred to me as a defect in the system
of civil justice, that the time of the day at which
a crime is committed is never taken into account by
judge or jury. The humours of an empty stomach
act so energetically on the judgment and temper of
a man, and the same act appears so differently to
him, fasting and full, that I presume an inquiry into
the subject would prove that few offences against
law and human pity were ever perpetrated by villains
who had dined. In the adventure before us,
the best-disposed reader will condemn my interference
in a stranger's gallantries as impertinent and
quixotick. Later in the day, I should as soon have
thought of ordering water-cresses for the gentleman's
dindon aux truffes.
I was calling myself to account something after
the above fashion, the gentleman in question standing
near me, drumming on his boot with his ebony
cane, when the lady rose, threw her rosary over her
neck, and turning to me with a grateful smile, courtesied
slightly and disappeared. I was struck so
exceedingly with the intense melancholy in the expression
of the face—an expression so totally at
variance with the elasticity of the step, and the promise
of the slight and riante figure and air—that I
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quite forgot I had drawn a quarrel on myself, and
was loitering slowly toward the door of the church,
when the gentleman I had offended touched me on
the arm, and in the politest manner possible requested
my address. We exchanged cards, and I hastened
home to breakfast, musing on the facility with which
the current of our daily life may be thickened. I
fancied I had a new love on my hands, and I was
telerably sure of a quarrel—yet I had been in Vienna
but fifty-four minutes by Bréguet.
My breakfast was waiting, and Percie had found
time to turn a comb through his brown curls, and
get the dust off his gaiters. He was tall for his age,
and, (unaware to himself, poor boy!) every word and
action reflected upon the handsome seamstress in
Cranbourne Alley, whom he called his mother—for
he showed blood. His father was a gentleman, or
there is no truth in thorough-breeding. As I looked
at him a difficulty vanished from my mind.
“Percie!”
“Sir!”
“Get into your best suit of plain clothes, and if a
foreigner calls on me this morning, come in and forget
that you are a valet. I have occasion to use you
for a gentleman.”
“Yes, sir!”
“My pistols are clean, I presume?”
“Yes, sir!”
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I wrote a letter or two, read a volume of “Ni
jamais, ni toujours,” and about noon a captain of
dragoons was announced, bringing me the expected
cartel. Percie came in, treading gingerly in a pair
of tight French boots, but behaving exceedingly
like a gentleman, and after a little conversation,
managed on his part strictly according my instructions,
he took his cane and walked off with his friend
of the steel scabbard to become acquainted with the
ground.
The gray of a heavenly summer morning was
brightening above the chimneys of the fair city of
Vienna as I stepped into a caléche, followed by Percie.
With a special passport (procured by the
politeness of my antagonist) we made our sortie at that
early hour from the gates, and crossing the glacis,
took the road to the banks of the Danube. It was
but a mile from the city, and the mist lay low on the
face of the troubled current of the river, while the
towers and pinnacles of the silent capital cut the sky
in clear and sharp lines—as if tranquillity and purity,
those immaculate hand-maidens of nature, had
tired of innocence and their mistress—and slept in
town!
I had taken some coffee and broiled chicken before
starting, and (removed thus from the category of
the savage unbreakfasted) I was in one of those
moods of universal benevolence, said (erroneously)
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to be produced only by a clean breast and milk diet.
I could have wept, with Wordsworth, over a violet.
My opponent was there with his dragoon, and Percie,
cool and gentlemanlike, like a man who “had served,”
looked on at the loading of the pistols, and gave
me mine with a very firm hand, but with a moisture
and anxiety in his eye which I have remembered
since. We were to fire any time after the counting
of three, and having no malice against my friend,
whose impertinence to a lady was (really!) no business
of mine, I intended, of course, to throw away my
fire.
The first word was given and I looked at my antagonist,
who, I saw at a glance, had no such gentle
intentions. He was taking deliberate aim, and in the
four seconds that elapsed between the remaining two
words, I changed my mind (one thinks so fast when
his leisure is limited!) at least twenty times whether
I should fire at him or no.
“Trois!” pronounced the dragoon, from a throat
like a trombone, and with the last thought, up flew
my hand, and as my pistol discharged in the air,
my friend's shot struck upon a large turquoise which
I wore on my third finger, and drew a slight pencil-line
across my left organ of causality. It was well
aimed for my temple, but the ring had saved me.
Friend of those days, regretted and unforgotten!
days of the deepest sadness and heart-heaviness, yet
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somehow dearer in remembrance than all the joys
I can recall—there was a talisman in thy parting gift
thou didst not think would be, one day, my angel!
“You will be able to wear your hair over the
scar, sir!” said Percie, coming up and putting his
finger on the wound.
“Monsieur!” said the dragoon, advancing to Percie
after a short conference with his principal, and
looking twice as fierce as before.
“Monsieur!” said Percie, wheeling short upon
him.
“My friend is not satisfied. He presumes that
monsieur l' Anglais wishes to trifle with him.”
“Then let your friend take care of himself,” said I,
roused by the unprovoked murderousness of the
feeling. Load the pistols, Percie! In my country,”
I continued, turning to the dragoon, “a man is disgraced
who fires twice upon an antagonist who has
spared him! Your friend is a ruffian, and the consequences
be on his own hand!”
We took our places and the first word was given,
when a man dashed between us on horseback at
top-speed. The violence with which he drew rein
brought his horse upon his haunches, and he was on
his feet in half a breath.
The idea that he was an officer of the police was
immediately dissipated by his step and air. Of the
finest athletic form I had ever seen, agile, graceful
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and dressed pointedly well, there was still an indefinable
something about him, either above or below
a gentleman—which, it was difficult to say. His
features were slight, fair, and, except a brow too
heavy for them and a lip of singular and (I thought)
habitual defiance, almost feminine. His hair grew
long and had been soigné, probably by more caressing
fingers than his own, and his rather silken moustache
was glossy with some odorent oil. As he
approached me and took my hand, with a clasp like
a smith's vice, I observed these circumstances, and
could have drawn his portrait without ever seeing
him again—so marked a man was he, in every point
and feature.
His business was soon explained. He was the
husband of the lady my opponent had insulted,
and that pleasant gentleman could, of course, make
no objection to taking my place. I officiated as
tèmoin and, as they took their positions, I anticipated
for the dragoon and myself the trouble of carrying
them both off the field. I had a practical assurance
of my friend's pistol, and the stranger was not the
looking man to miss a hair's breadth of his aim.
The word was not fairly off my lips when both
pistols cracked like one discharge, and high into the
air sprang my revengeful opponent, and dropped
like a clod upon the grass. The stranger opened
his waistcoat, thrust his fore-finger into a wound in
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his left breast, and slightly closing his teeth, pushed
a bullet through, which had been checked by the
bone and lodged in the flesh near the skin. The
surgeon who had accompanied my unfortunate antagonist,
left the body, which he had found beyond
his art, and readily gave his assistance to stanch
the blood of my preserver; and jumping with the
latter into my calèche, I put Percie upon the stranger's
horse, and we drove back to Vienna.
The market people were crowding in at the gate,
the merry peasant girls glanced at us with their blue,
German eyes, the shopmen laid out their gay wares
to the street, and the tide of life ran on as busily and
as gaily, though a drop had been extracted, within
scarce ten minutes, from its quickest vein. I felt a
revulsion at my heart, and grew faint and sick. Is a
human life—is my life worth anything, even a thought,
to my fellow-creatures? was the bitter question
forced upon my soul. How icily and keenly the
unconscious indifference of the world penetrates to
the nerve and marrow of him who suddenly realizes
it.
We dashed through the kohl-market, and driving
into the porte-cochére of a dark-looking house in one
of the cross streets of that quarter, were ushered
into apartments of extraordinary magnificence.
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“What do you want, Percie?”
He was walking into the room with all the deliberate
politeness of a “gold-stick-in-waiting.”
“I beg pardon, sir, but I was asked to walk up,
and I was not sure whether I was still a gentleman.”
It instantly struck me that it might seem rather
infra dig to the chevalier (my new friend had thus
announced himself) to have had a valet for a second,
and as he immediately after entered the room, having
stepped below to give orders about his horse, I presented
Percie as a gentleman and my friend, and
resumed my observation of the singular apartment
in which I found myself.
The effect on coming first in at the door, was that
of a small and lofty chapel, where the light struggled
in from an unseen aperture above the altar. There
were two windows at the farther extremity, but curtained
so heavily, and set so deeply into the wall,
that I did not at first observe the six richly-carpeted
steps which led up to them, nor the luxuriously cushioned
seats on either side of the casement, within
the niche, for those who would mount thither for
fresh air. The walls were tapestried, but very
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ragged and dusty, and the floor, though there were
several thicknesses of the heavy-piled, small, Turkey
carpets laid loosely over it, was irregular and
sunken. The corners were heaped with various
articles I could not at first distinguish. My host
fortunately gave me an opportunity to gratify my
curiosity by frequent absences under the housekeeper's
apology (odd I thought for a chevalier) of
expediting breakfast; and with the aid of Percie, I
tumbled his chattles about with all necessary freedom.
“That,” said the chevalier, entering, as I turned
out the face of a fresh coloured picture to the light,
“is a capo d'opera of a French artist, who painted
it, as you may say by the gleam of the dagger.”
“A cool light, as a painter would say!”
“He was a cool fellow, sir, and would have handled
a broad sword better than a pencil.”
Percie stepped up while I was examining the
exquisite finish of the picture, and asked very respectfully
if the chevalier would give him the particulars
of the story. It was a full-length portrait
of a young and excessively beautiful girl, of aparently
scarce fifteen, entirely nude, and lying upon
a black velvet couch, with one foot laid on a broken
diadem, and her right hand pressing a wild rose
to her heart.
“It was the fancy, sir,” continued the chevalier,
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“of a bold outlaw, who loved the only daughter
of a noble of Hungary,
“Is this the lady sir?” asked Percie, in his politest
valet French.
The chevalier hesitated a moment and looked
over his shoulder as if he might be overheard.
“This is she—copied to the minutest shadow of
a hair! He was a bold outlaw, gentlemen, and had
plucked the lady from her father's castle with his
own hand.”
“Against her will?” interrupted Percie, rather
energetically.
“No!” scowled the chevalier, as if his lowering
brows had articulated the word, “by her own will
and connivance; for she loved him.”
Percie drew a long breath, and looked more closely
at the taper limbs and the exquisitely-chiselled
features of the face, which was turned over the
shoulder with a look of timid shame inimitably true
to nature.
“She loved him,” continued our fierce narrator,
who, I almost began to suspect was the outlaw himself,
by the energy with which he enforced the tale,
“and after a moonlight ramble or two with him in
the forest of her father's domain, she fled and became
his wife. You are admiring the hair, sir! It
is as luxuriant and glossy now!”
“If you please, sir, it is the villain himself!” said
Percie in an undertone.
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“Bref,” continued the chevalier, either not understanding
English or not heeding the interruption, “an
adventurous painter, one day hunting the picturesque
in the neighbourhood of the outlaw's retreat, surprised
this fair creature bathing in one of the loneliest
mountain-streams in Hungary. His art appeared to
be his first passion, for he hid himself in the trees
and drew her as she stood dallying on the margin of
the small pool in which the brook loitered; and so
busy was he with his own work, or so soft was the
mountain moss under its master's tread, that the
outlaw looked, unperceived the while, over his
shoulder, and fell in love anew with the admirable
counterfeit. She looked like a naiad, sir, new-born
of a dew-drop and a violet.”
I nodded an assent to Percie.
“The sketch, excellent as it seemed, was still unfinished
when the painter, enamoured as he might
well be, of these sweet limbs, glossy with the shining
water, flung down his book and sprang toward her.
The outlaw—”
“Struck him to the heart? Oh heaven!” said
Percie, covering his eyes as if he could see the
murder.
“No! he was a student of the human soul, and
deferred his vengeance.”
Percie looked up and listened, like a man whose
wits were perfectly abroad.
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“He was not unwilling since her person had been
seen irretrievably, to know how his shrinking Iminild
(this was her name of melody) would have escaped,
had she been found alone.”
“The painter”—prompted Percie, impatient for
the sequel
“The painter flew over rock and brake, and
sprang into the pool in which she was half immersed;
and my brave girl—”
He hesitated, for he had betrayed himself.
“Ay—she is mine, gentlemen; and I am Yvain,
the outlaw—my brave wife, I say with a single
bound, leaped to the rock where her dress was concealed,
seized a short spear which she used as a staff
in her climbing rambles, and struck it through his
shoulder as he pursued!”
“Bravely done!” I thought aloud.
“Was it not? I came up the next moment, but the
spear stuck in his shoulder, and I could not fall upon
a wounded man. We carried him to our ruined
castle in the mountains, and while my Iminild cured
her own wound, I sent for his paints, and let him
finish his bold beginning with a difference of my own.
You see the picture.”
“Was the painter's love cured with his wound!”
I asked with a smile.
“No, by St. Stephen! He grew ten times more
enamoured as he drew. He was as fierce as a
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welk hawk, and as willing to quarrel for his prey.
I could have driven my dagger to his heart a hundred
times for the mutter of his lips and the flash of
his dark eyes as he fed his gaze upon her; but he
finished the picture, and I gave him a fair field. He
chose the broadsword, and hacked away at me like
a man.”
“And the result”—I asked.
“I am here!” replied the outlaw significantly.
Percie leaped upon the carpeted steps, and pushed
back the window for fresh air; and, for myself, I
scarce knew how to act under the roof of a man,
who, though he confessed himself an outlaw and
almost an assassin, was bound to me by the ties of
our own critical adventure, and had confided his
condition to me with so ready a reliance on my
honour. In the midst of my dilemma, while I was
pretending to occupy myself with examining a silver
mounted and peaked saddle, which I found behind
the picture in the corner, a deep and unpleasant
voice announced breakfast.
“Wolfen is rather a grim chamberlain,” said the
chevalier, bowing with the grace and smile of the
softest courtier, “but he will usher you to breakfast
and I am sure you stand in need of it. For myself,
I could eat worse meat than my grandfather with
this appetite.”
Percie gave me a look of inquiry and uneasiness
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when he found we were to follow the rough domestic
through the dark corridors of the old house, and
through his underbred politeness of insisting on following
his host, I could see that he was unwilling to
trust the outlaw with the rear; but a massive and
broad door, flung open at the end of the passage, let
in upon us presently the cool and fresh air from a
northern exposure, and, stepping forward quickly to
the threshold, we beheld a picture which changed
the current and colour of our thoughts.
In the bottom of an excavated area, which, as
well as I could judge, must be forty feet below the
level of the court, lay a small and antique garden,
brilliant with the most costly flowers, and cooled by
a fountain gushing from under the foot of a nymph in
marble. The spreading tops of six alleys of lindens
reaching to the level of the street, formed a living
roof to the grot-like depths of the garden, and concealed
it from all view but that of persons descending
like ourselves from the house; while, instead of
walls to shut in this Paradise in the heart of a city,
sharply-inclined slopes of green-sward leaned in
under the branches of the lindens, and completed the
fairy-like enclosure of shade and verdure. As we
descended the rose-laden steps and terraces, I observed,
that, of the immense profusion of flowers in
the area below, nearly all were costly exoticks, whose
pots were set in the earth, and probably brought
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away from the sunshine only when in high bloom;
and as we rounded the spreading basin of the fountain
which broke the perspective of the alley, a table,
which had been concealed by the marble nymph,
and a skilfully-disposed array of rhododendrons lay
just beneath our feet, while a lady, whose features
I could not fail to remember, smiled up from her
couch of crimson cushions and gave us a graceful
welcome.
The same taste for depth which had been shown
in the room sunk below the windows, and the garden
below the street, was continued in the kind of marble
divan in which we were to breakfast. Four steps
descending from the pavement of the alley introduced
us into a circular excavation, whose marble seats,
covered with cushions of crimson silk, surrounded a
table laden with the substantial viands which are
common to a morning meal in Vienna, and smoking
with coffee, whose aroma (Percie agreed with me)
exceeded even the tube roses in grateful sweetness.
Between the cushions at our backs and the pavements
just above the level of our heads, were piled circles
of thickly-flowering geraniums, which enclosed
us in rings of perfume, and, pouring from the cup of
a sculptured flower, held in the hand of the nymph
a smooth stream like a silver rod supplied a channel
grooved around the centre of the marble table,
through which the bright water, with the impulse of
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its descent, made a swift revolution and disappeared.
It was a scene to give memory the lie if it could
have recalled the bloodshed of the morning. The
green light flecked down through the leafy roof upon
the glittering and singing water; a nightingale in a
recess of the garden, gurgled through his wires as if
intoxicated with the congenial twilight of his prison;
the heavy-cupped flowers of the tropics nodded with
the rain of the fountain spray; the distant roll of
wheels in the neighbouring streets came with an
assurance of reality to this dream-land, yet softened
by the unreverberating roof and an air crowded with
flowers and trembling with the pulsations of falling
water; the lowering forehead of the outlaw cleared
uplike a sky of June after a thunder-shower, and his
voice grew gentle and caressing; and the delicate
mistress of all (by birth, Countess Iminild,) a creature
as slight as Psyche, and as white as the lotus,
whose flexile stem served her for a bracelet, welcomed
us with her soft voice and humid eyes, and
saddened by the even of the morning, looked on her
husband with a tenderness that would have assoiled
her of her sins against delicacy, I thought even in the
mind of an angel.
“We live, like truth, here, in the bottom of a well,”
said the countess to Percie, as she gave him his coffee;
“how do you like my whimsical abode, sir?”
“I should like any place where you were, Miladi!”
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he answered, blushing and stealing his eyes across
at me, either in doubt how far he might presume
upon his new character, or suspecting that I should
smile at his gallantry.
The outlaw glanced his eyes over the curling
head of the boy, with one of those just perceptible
smiles which developed, occasionally, in great beauty,
the gentle spirit in his bosom; and Iminild, pleased
with the compliment or the blush, threw off her pensive
mood, and assumed in an instant, the coquettish
air which had attracted my notice as she stepped
before me into the church of St. Etienne.
“You had hard work,” she said to keep up with
your long-legged dragoon yesterday. Monsieur
Percie!”
“Miladi?” he answered, with a look of inquiry.
“Oh, I was behind you, and my legs are not much
longer than yours. How he strided away with his
long spurs, to be sure! Do you remember a smart
young gentleman with a blue cap that walked past
you on the glacis occasionally.”
Ah, with laced boots, like a Hungarian?”
“I see I am ever to be known by my foot,” said
she, putting it out upon the cushion, and turning it
about with naive admiration; “that poor captain of
the imperial guard payed dearly for kissing it, holy
virgin!” and she crossed herself and was silent for a
moment.
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“If I might take the freedom, chevalier,” I said,
“pray how came I indebted to your assistance
in this affair?”
“Iminild has partly explained,” he answered.
“She knew, of course, that a challenge would follow
your interference, and it was very easy to know that
an officer of some sort would take a message in the
course of the morning to Le Prince Charles, the
only hotel frequented by the English d'un certain
gens.
I bowed to the compliment.
“Arriving in Vienna late last night, I found Iminild
(who had followed this gentleman and the dragoon
unperceived) in possession of all the circumstances;
and, but for oversleeping myself this morning, I should
have saved your turquoise, mon seigneur!”
“Have you lived here long, Miladi?” asked Percie,
looking up into her eyes with an unconscious
passionateness which made the Countess Iminild
colour slightly, and bite her lips to retain an expression
of pleasure.
“I have not lived long, anywhere, sir!” she
answered half archly, “but I played in this garden
when not much older than you!”
Percie looked confused and pulled up his cravat.
“This house said the chevalier, willing apparently
to spare the countess a painful narration, “is the
property of the old Count Ildefert, my wife's father.
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He has long ceased to visit Vienna, and has left it, he
supposes, to a stranger. When Iminild tires of the
forest, she comes here, and I join her if I can find
time. I must to the saddle to-morrow, by St.
Jacques!”
The word had scarce died on his lips when the
door by which we had entered the garden was flung
open, and the measured tread of gens-d'armes resounded
in the corridor. The first man who stood
out upon the upper terrace was the dragoon who
had been second to my opponent.
“Traitor and villain!” muttered the outlaw between
his teeth, “I thought I remembered you! It
is that false comrade Berthold, Iminild!”
Yvain had risen from the table as if but to stretch
his legs; and drawing a pistol from his bosom he
cocked it as he quietly stepped up into the garden.
I saw at a glance that there was no chance for his
escape, and laid my hand on his arm.
“Chevalier!” I said, “surrender and trust to opportunity.
It is madness to resist here.”
“Yvain!” said Iminild, in a low voice, flying to
his side as she comprehended his intention, “leave
me that vengeance, and try the parapet. I,ll kill
him before he sleeps! Quick! Ah, heavens!”
The dragoon had turned at that instant to fly, and
with suddenness of thought the pistol flashed, and
the traitor dropped heavily on the terrace.
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Springing like a cat up the slope of green sward, Yvain
stood an instant on the summit of the wall, hesitating
where to jump beyond, and in the next moment
rolled heavily back, stabbed through and through
with a bayonet from the opposite side.
The blood left the lips and cheek of Iminild; but
without a word or a sign of terror, she sprang to
the side of the fallen outlaw and lifted him up against
her knee. The gens-d'armes rushed to the spot, but
the subaltern who commanded them yielded instantly
to my wish that they should retire to the skirts
of the garden; and, sending Percie to the fountain
for water, we bathed the lips and forehead of the
dying man and set him against the sloping parapet.
With one hand grasping the dress of Iminild and the
other clasped in mine, he struggled to speak.
“The cross!” he gasped, “the cross!”
Iminild drew a silver crucifix from her bosom.
“Swear on this,” he said, putting it to my lips and
speaking with terrible energy, “swear that you will
protect her while you live!”
“I swear!”
He shut our hands together convulsively, gasped
slightly as if he would speak again, and, in another
instant sunk, relaxed and lifeless, on the shoulder of
Iminild.
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The fate and history of Yvain, the outlaw, became,
on the following day, the talk of Vienna.
He had been long known as the daring horse-stealer
of Hungary; and, though it was not doubted that
his sway was exercised over plunderers of every
description, even pirates upon the high seas, his own
courage and address were principally applied to robbery
of the well-guarded steeds of the emperor and
his nobles. It was said that there was not a horse
in the dominions of Austria whose qualities and
breeding were not known to him, nor one he cared
to have which was not in his concealed stables in
the forest. The most incredible stories were told
of his horsemanship. He would so disguise the
animal on which he rode, either by forcing him into
new paces or by other arts only known to himself,
that he would make the tour of the Glacis on the
emperor's best horse, newly stolen, unsuspected
even by the royal grooms. The roadsters of his
own troop were the best steeds bred on the banks
of the Danube; but, though always in the highest
condition, they would never have been suspected to
be worth a florin till put upon their mettle. The
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extraordinary escapes of his band from the vigilant
and well-mounted gens-d'armes were thus accounted
for; and, in most of the villages in Austria, the people,
on some market-day or other, had seen a body
of apparently ill-mounted peasants suddenly start
off with the speed of lightning at the appearance of
gens-d'armes, and, flying over fence and wall, draw
a straight course for the mountains, distancing their
pursuers with the ease of swallows on the wing.
After the death of Yvain in the garden, I had
been forced with Percie into a carriage, standing in
the court, and accompanied by a guard, driven to
my hotel, where I was given to understand that I was
to remain under arrest till further orders. A sentinel
at the door forbade all ingress or egress except
to the people of the house: a circumstance which
was only distressing to me, as it precluded my inquiries
after the Countess Iminild, of whom common
rumour, the servants informed me, made not the
slightest mention.
Four days after this, on the relief of the guard at
noon, a subaltern entered my room and informed
me that I was at liberty. I instantly made preparations
to go out, and was drawing on my boots when
Percie, who had not yet recovered from the shock
of his arrest, entered in some alarm, and informed
me that one of the royal grooms was in the court
with a letter, which he would deliver only into my
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own hands. He had orders beside, he said, not to
leave his saddle. Wondering what new leaf of my
destiny was to turn over, I went below and received
a letter, with apparently the imperial seal, from a
well-dressed groom in the livery of the emperor's
brother, the king of Hungary. He was mounted on
a compact, yet fine-limbed horse, and both horse
and rider were as still as if cut in marble.
I returned to my room and broke the seal. It
was a letter from Iminild, and the bold bearer was
an outlaw disguised! She had heard that I was to
be released that morning, and desired me to ride out
on the road to Gratz. In a postscript she begged I
would request Monsieur Percie to accompany me.
I sent for horses, and, wishing to be left to my
own thoughts, ordered Percie to fall behind, and
rode slowly out of the southern gate. If the Countess
Iminild were safe, I had enough of the adventure
for my taste. My oath bound me to protect
this wild an unsexed woman, but farther intercourse
with a band of outlaws, or farther peril of my head
for no reason that either a court of gallantry or of justice
would recognize, was beyond my usual programme
of pleasant events. The road was a gentle
ascent, and with the bridle on the neck of my
hack I paced thoughfully on, till, at a slight turn, we
stood at a fair height above Vienna.
“It is a beautiful city, sir,” said Percie, riding up.
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“How the deuce could she have escaped?” said
I, thinking aloud.
“Has she escaped, sir? Ah, thank heaven!” exclaimed
the passionate boy, the tears rushing to his
eyes.
“Why, Percie!” I said with a tone of surprise
which called a blush into face, “have you really
found leisure to fall in love amid all this imbroglio?”
“I beg pardon, my dear master!” he replied in a
confused voice, “I scarce know what it is to fall in
love; but I would die for Miladi Iminild.”
“Not at all an impossible sequel, my poor boy!
But wheel about and touch your hat, for here comes
some one of the royal family!”
A horseman was approaching at an easy canter,
over the broad and unfenced plain of table-land
which overlooks Vienna on the south, attended by
six mounted servants in the white kerseymere frocks,
braided with the two-headed black eagle, which
distinguish the members of the imperial household.
The carriages on the road stopped while he passed,
the foot-passengers touched their caps, and, as he
came near, I perceived that he was slight and young,
but rode with a confidence and a grace not often
attained. His horse had the subdued, half-fiery
action of an Arab, and Percie nearly dropped from
his saddle when the young horseman suddenly
drove in his spurs, and with almost a single vault
stood motionless before us.
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“Monsieur!”
“Madame la Contesse!”
I was uncertain how to receive her, and took refuge
in civility. Whether she would be overwhelmed
with the recollection of Yvain's death, or had
put away the thought altogether with her masculine
firmness, was a dilemma for which the eccentric contradictions
of her character left me no probable solution.
Motioning with her hand after saluting me,
two of the party rode back and forward in different
directions, as if patrolling; and giving a look
between a tear and a smile at Percie, she placed
her hand in mine, and shook off her sadness with a
strong effort.
“You did not expect so large a suite with your
protegée,” she said, rather gaily, after a moment.
“Do I understand that you come now to put
yourself under my protection!” I asked in reply.
“Soon, but not now, nor here. I have a hundred
men at the foot of Mount Semering, whose future
fate, in some important respects, none can decide
but myself. Yvain was always prepared for this,
and everything is en train. I come now but to appoint
a place of meeting. Quick! my patrole
comes in, and some one approaches whom we must
fly. Can you await me at Gratz?”
“I can and will!”
She put her slight hand to my lips, waved a kiss
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at Percie, and away with the speed of wind, flew her
swift Arab over the plain, followed by the six horsemen,
every one of whom seemed part of the animal
that carried him—he rode so admirably.
The slight figure of Iminild in the close fitting
dress of a Hungarian page, her jacket open and her
beautiful limbs perfectly defined, silver fringes at
her ankles and waist, and a row of silver buttons
gallonné down to the instep, her bright, flashing eyes,
her short curls escaping from her cap and tangled
over her left temple, with the gold tassel, dirk and
pistol at her belt and spurs upon her heels—it was
an apparition I had scarce time to realize, but it seemed
painted on my eyes. The cloud of dust which
followed their rapid flight faded away as I watched
it, but I saw her still.
“Shall I ride back and order post-horses, sir!”
asked Percie standing up in his stirrups.
“No; but you may order dinner at six. And
Percie,!” he was riding away with a gloomy air;
“you may go to the police and get our passports
for Venice.”
“By the way of Gratz, sir!”
“Yes, simpleton!”
There is a difference between sixteen and twenty-six,
I thought to myself, as the handsome boy
flogged his horse into a gallop. The time is
gone when I could love without reason. Yet I
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remember when a feather, stuck jauntily into a bonnet,
would have made any woman a princess; and
in those days heaven help us! I should have loved
this woman more for her galliardize than ten times
a prettier one with all the virtues of Dorcas. For
which of my sins am I made guardian to a robber's
wife, I wonder!
The heavy German postillions, with their cocked
hats and yellow coats, got us over the ground after
a manner, and toward the sunset of a summer's
evening the tall castle of Gratz, perched on a
pinnacle of rock in the centre of a vast plain, stood
up boldly against the reddening sky. The rich
fields of Styria were ripening to an early harvest,
the people sat at their doors with the look of household
happiness for which the inhabitants of these
“despotic countries” are so remarkable; and now
and then on the road the rattling of steel scabbards
drew my attention from a book or a reverie, and the
mounted troops, so perpetually seen on the broad
roads of Austria, lingered slowly past with their
dust and baggage-trains.
It had been a long summer's day, and, contrary to
my usual practice, I had not mounted, even for half a
post, to Percie's side in the rumble. Out of humour
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with fate for having drawn me into very embarassing
circumstances—out of humour with myself for
the quixotic step which had first brought it on me—
and a little out of humour with Percie, (perhaps from
an unacknowledged jealously of Iminild's marked
preference for the varlet,) I left him to toast alone
in the sun, while I tried to forget him and myself in
“Le Marquis de Pontanges.” What a very clever
book it is, by the way!
The pompous sergeant of the guard performed
his office upon my passport at the gate—giving me
at least a kreutzer worth of his majesty's black sand
in exchange for my florin and my English curse;
(I said before I was out of temper, and he was half
an hour writing his abominable name,) and leaving
my carriage and Percie to find their way together
to the hotel, I dismounted at the foot of a steep street
and made my way to the battlements of the castle,
in search of scenery and equanimity.
Ah! what a glorious landscape! The precipitous
rock on which the old fortress is built seems dropped
by the Titans in the midst of a plain, extending
miles in every direction, with scarce another pebble.
Close at its base run the populous streets,
coiling about it like serpents around a pyramid, and
away from the walls of the city spread the broad
fields, laden, as far as the eye can see, with tribute
for the emperor! The tall castle, with its armed
crest, looks down among the reapers.
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“You have not lost your friend and lover, yet you
are melancholy!” said a voice behind me, that I
was scarce startled to hear.
“Is it you, Iminild?”
“Scarce the same—for Iminild was never before
so sad. It is something in the sunset. Come away
while the woman keeps down in me, and let us
stroll through the Plaza, where the band is playing.
Do you love military music?”
I looked at the costume and figure of the extraordinary
creature before I ventured with her on a
public promenade. She was dressed like one of
the travelling apprentices of Germany, with cap
and bleuzer, and had assumed the air of the craft
with a success absolutely beyond detection. I gave
her my arm and we sauntered through the crowd,
listening to the thrilling music of one of the finest
bands in Germany. The priviliged character and
free manners of the wandering craftsmen whose
dress she had adopted, I was well aware, reconciled,
in the eyes of the inhabitants, the marked
contrast between our conditions in life. They would
simply have said, if they had made a remark at all,
that the Englishman was bon enfant and the craftsman
bon camarade.
“You had better look at me, messieurs!” said the
dusty apprentice, as two officers of the regiment
passed and gave me the usual strangers' stare; “I
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am better worth your while by exactly five thousand
florins.”
“And pray how?” I asked.
“That price is set on my head!”
“Heavens! and you walk here!”
“They kept you longer than usual with your passport,
I presume?”
“At the gate? yes.”
“I came in with my pack at the time. They have
orders to examine all travellers and passports with
unusual care, these sharp officials! But I shall get
out as easily as I got in!”
“My dear countess!” I said, in a tone of serious
remonstrance, “do not trifle with the vigilance of
the best police in Europe! I am your guardian, and
you owe my advice some respect. Come away
from the square and let us talk of it in earnest.”
“Wise seignior! suffer me to remind you how
deftly I slipped through the fingers of these gentry
after our tragedy in Vienna, and pay my opinion some
respect! It was my vanity that brought me, with
my lackeys, to meet you à la prince royale so near
Vienna; and hence this alarm in the police, for I was
seen and suspected. I have shown myself to you
in my favourite character, however, and have done
with rash measures. You shall see me on the road
to-morrow, safe as the heart in your bosom.
Where is Monsieur Percie!”
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“At the hotel. But stay! can I trust you with
yourself?”
“Yes, and dull company, too! A revoir!”
And whistling the popular air of the craft she had
assumed, the Countess Iminild struck her long staff
on the pavement, and with the gait of a tired and
habitual pedestrian, disappeared by a narrow street
leading under the precipitory battlements of the castle.
Percie made his appearance with a cup of coffee
the following morning, and, with the intention of posting
a couple of leagues to breakfast, I hurried through
my toilet and was in my carriage an hour after sunrise.
The postillion was in his saddle and only waited
for Percie, who, upon enquiry, was nowhere to
be found. I sat fifteen minutes, and just as I was
beginning to be alarmed he ran into the large court of
the hotel, and, crying out to the postillions that all
was right, jumped into his place with an agility,
it struck me, very unlike his usual gentlemanlike
deliberation. Determining to take advantage of the
first up-hill to catechize him upon his matutinal
rambles, I read the signs along the street till we
pulled up at the gate.
Iminild's communication had prepared me for
unusual delay with my passport, and I was not
surprised when the officer, in returning it to me,
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requested me as a matter of form, to declare, upon
my honour, that the servant behind my carriage was
an Englishman, and the person mentioned in my
passport.
“Foi d'honneur, monsieur,” I said, placing my
hand politely on my heart, and off trotted the postillion,
while the captain of the guard, flattered with
my civility, touched his foraging-cap, and sent me
a German blessing through his mustache.
It was a divine morning, and the fresh and dewy
air took me back many a year, to the days when I
was more familiar with the hour. We had a long
trajet across the plain, and unlooping an antivibration
tablet, for the invention of which my ingenuity took
great credit to itself, (suspended on caoutchouc cords
from the roof of the carriage—and deserving of a
patent I trust you will allow!) I let off my poetical
vein in the following beginning to what might have
turned out, but for the interruption, a very edifying
copy of verses:
Ye are not what ye were to me,
Oh waning night and morning star!
Though silent still your watches flee—
Though hang yon lamp in heaven as far—
Though live the thoughts ye fed of yore—
I'm thine, oh starry dawn no more!
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Yet to that dew-pearl'd hour alone
I was not folly's blindest child;
It came when wearied mirth had flown,
And sleep was on the gay and wild;
And wakeful with repentant pain,
I lay amid its lap of flowers,
And with a truant's earnest brain
Turned back the leaves of wasted hours.
The angels that by day would flee,
Returned, oh morning star! with thee!
Yet now again— * * *
* * * * *
A foot thrust into my carriage-window rudely
broke the thread of these delicate musings. The
postillion was on a walk, and before I could get my
wits back from their wool-gathering, the Countess
Iminild, in Percie's clothes, sat laughing on the
cushion beside me.
“On what bird's back has your ladyship descended
from the clouds?” I asked with unfeigned astonishment.
“The same bird has brought us both down—c'est
à dire, if you are not still en l' air,” she added, looking
from my scrawled tablets to my perplexed face.
“Are you really and really the Countess Iminild?”
I asked with a smile, looking down at the trowsered
feet and loose-fitting boots of the pseudo-valet.
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“Yes, indeed! but I leave it to you to swear,
`foi d' honneur,' that a born countess is an English
valet!” And she laughed so long and merrily that
the postillion looked over his yellow epaulettes in
astonishment.
“Kind, generous Percie!” she said, changing her
tone presently to one of great feeling, I would scarce
believe him last night when he informed me, as as inducement
to leave him behind, that he was only a servant!
You never told me this. But he is a gentleman,
in every feeling as well as in every feature,
and, by heavens! he shall be a menial no longer!”
This speech, begun with much tenderness, rose,
toward the close, to the violence of passion; and
folding her arms with an air of defiance, the lady-outlaw
threw herself back in the carriage.
“I have no objection,” I said, after a short silence,
“that Percie should set up for a gentleman. Nature
has certainly done her part to make him one; but
till you can give him means and education, the coat
which you wear, with such a grace, is his safest shell.
`Ants live safely till they have gotten wings,' says
the old proverb.”
The blowing of the postillion's horn interrupted
the argument, and, a moment after, we were rolled
up, with German leisure, to the door of the small inn
where I had designed to breakfast. Thinking it
probable that the people of the house, in so small a
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village, would be too simple to make any dangerous
comments upon our appearance, I politely handed the
countess out of the carriage, and ordered plates for
two.
“It is scarce worth while,” she said, as she heard
the order, “for I shall remain at the door on the
look out. The eil-waggen, for Trieste, which
was to leave Gratz an hour after us, will be soon
here, and, (if my friends have served me well,) Percie
in it. St. Mary speed him safely!”
She stode away to a small hillock to look out for
the lumbering diligence, with a gait that was no
stranger to, “doublet and hose.” It soon came on
with its usual tempest of whip-cracking and bugle-blasts,
and nearly overturning a fat burgher, who
would have profferred the assistance of his hand,
out jumped a petticoat, which, I saw, at a glance,
gave a very embarrassed motion to gentleman
Percie.
“This young lady,” said the countess, dragging
the striding and unwilling damsel into the little parlour
where I was breakfasting “travels under the
charge of a deaf old brazier, who has been requested
to protect her modesty as far as Laybach. Make
a curtsy, child!”
“I beg pardon, sir!” began Percie.
“Hush, hush! no English! Walls have ears, and
your voice is rather gruffish, mademoiselle. Show
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me your passport? Cunegunda Von Krakenpate,
eighteen years of age, blue eyes, nose and chin middling,
etc! There is the conductor's horn! Allez vite!”
We meet a Laybach. Adieu, charmante femme!
Adieu!
And with the sort of caricatured elegance which
women always assume in their imitations of our sex,
Countess Iminild, in frock-coat and trowsers, helped
into the diligence, in hood and petticoat, my “tiger”
from Cranbourne-alley!
Spite of remonstrance on my part, the imperative
countess, who had asserted her authority more than
once on our way to Laybach, insisted on the company
of Miss Cunegunda Von Krakenpate, in an
evening walk around the town. Fearing that Percie's
masculine stride would betray him, and objecting
to lend myself to a farce with my valet, I
opposed the freak as long as it was courteous—but
it was not the first time I had learned that a spoiled
woman would have her own way, and, too vexed
to laugh, I soberly promenaded the broad avenue of
the capital of Styria, with a valet en demoiselle, and
a dame en valet.
It was but a few hours hence to Planina, and
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Iminild, who seemed to fear no risk out of a walled city,
waited on Percie to the carriage the following
morning, and in a few hours we drove up to the
rural inn of this small town of Littorale.
I had been too much out of humour to ask the
countess, a second time, what errand she could have
in so rustic a neighbourhood. She had made a
mystery of it, merely requiring of me that I should
defer all arrangements for the future, as far as she
was concerned, till we had visited a spot in Littorale,
upon which her fate in many respects depended.
After twenty fruitless conjectures, I abandoned myself
to the course of circumstances, reserving only
the determination, if it should prove a haunt of
Yvain's troop, to separate at once from her company
and await her at Trieste.
Our dinner was preparing at the inn, and tired of
the embarrassment Percie exhibited in my presence,
I walked out and seated myself under an immense
linden, that every traveller will remember, standing
in the centre of the motley and indescribable clusters
of buildings, which serve the innkeeper and blacksmith
of Planina for barns, forge, dwelling, and
outhouses. The tree seems the father of the village.
It was a hot afternoon, and I was compelled to
dispute the shade with a congregation of cows and
double-jointed posthorses; but finding a seat high up
on the root, at last I busied myself with gazing down
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the road, and conjecturing what a cloud of dust
might contain, which, in an opposite direction from
that which we had come, was slowly creeping
onward to the inn.
Four roughly-harnessed horses at length, appeared,
with their traces tied over their backs—one
of them ridden by a man in a farmer's frock. They
struck me at first as fine specimens of the German
breed of draught-horses, with their shaggy fetlocks
and long manes; but while they drank at the trough
which stood in the shade of the linden, the low tone
in which the man checked their greedy thirst, and the
instant obedience of the well-trained animals, awakened
at once my suspicions that we were to become
better acquainted. A more narrow examination
convinced me that, covered with dust and disguised
with coarse harness as they were, they were four
horses of such bone and condition, as were never
seen in a farmer's stables. The rider dismounted
at the inn door, and very much to the embarrassment
of my suppositions, the landlord, a stupid and heavy
Boniface, greeted him with the familiarity of an old
acquaintance, and in answer, apparently to an inquiry,
pointed to my carriage, and led him into the
house.
“Monsieur Tyrell,” said Iminild, coming out to
me a moment after, “a servant whom I had expected
has arrived with my horses, and with your
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consent, they shall be put to your carriage immediately.”
“To take us where?”
“To our place of destination.”
“Too indefinite, by half, Countess! Listen to me!
I have very sufficient reason to fancy that, in leaving
the post-road to Trieste, I shall leave the society of
honest men. You and your `minions of the moon'
may be very pleasant, but you are not very safe
companions; and having really a wish to die quietly
in my bed—”
The countess burst into a laugh.
“If you will have the character of the gentleman
you are about to visit from the landlord here—”
“Who is one of your ruffians himself, I'll be
sworn!”
“No, on my honour! A more innocent old beer-guzzler
lives not on the road. But I will tell you
thus much, and it ought to content you. Ten miles
to the west of this dwells a country gentleman, who,
the landlord will certify, is as honest a subject of his
gracious majesty as is to be found in Littorale. He
lives freely on his means, and entertains strangers
occasionally from all countries, for he has been a
traveller in his time. You are invited to pass a day
or two with this Mynheer Krakenpate, (who, by the
way, has no objection to pass for father of the young
lady you have so kindly brought from Laybach,)
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and he has sent you his horses, like a generous host,
to bring you to his door. More seriously, this was
a retreat of Yvain's, where he would live quietly
and play bon citoyen, and you have nothing earthly
to fear in accompanying me thither. And now will
you wait and eat the greasy meal you have ordered,
or will you save your appetite for la fortune de pot
at Mynheer Krakenpate's, and get presently on the
road!”
I yielded rather to the seducing smile and captivating
beauty of my pleasing ward, than to any
confidence in the honesty of Myneer Krakenpate;
and Percie being once more ceremoniously handed
in, we left the village at the sober trot becoming
the fat steeds of a landholder. A quarter of a
mile of this was quite sufficient for Iminild, and
a word to the postillion changed, like a metamorphosis,
both horse and rider. From a heavy unelastic
figure, he rose into a gallant and withy horseman,
and, with one of his low-spoken words, away flew
the four compact animals, treading lightly as cats,
and, with the greatest apparent ease, putting us over
the ground at the rate of fourteen miles in the hour.
The dust was distanced, a pleasant breeze was
created by the motion, and when at last we turned
from the main road, and sped off to the right at the
same exhilarating pace, I returned Iminild's arch
look of remonstrace with my best-humoured smile
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and an affectionate je me fie à vous! Miss Krakenpate,
I observed, echoed the sentiment by a slight
pressure of the countess's arm, looking very innocently
out of the window all the while.
A couple oi miles, soon done, brought us round
the face of a craggy precipice, forming the brow of
a hill, and with a continuation of the turn, we drew
up at the gate of a substantial-looking building,
something between a villa and a farm-house, built
against the rock, as if for the purpose of shelter from
the north winds. Two beautiful Angora hounds
sprang out at the noise, and recognized Iminild
through all her disguise, and presently, with a look of
forced courtesy, as if not quite sure whether he
might throw off the mask, a stout man of about fifty,
hardly a gentleman, yet above a common peasant
in his manners, stepped forward from the garden to
give Miss Krakenpate his assistance in alighting.
“Dinner in half an hour!” was Iminild's brief
greeting, and, stepping between her bowing dependant
and Percie, she led the way into the house.
I was shown into a chamber, furnished scarce
above the common style of a German inn, where I
made a hungry man's despatch in my toilet, and descended
at once to the parlour. The doors were all
open upon the ground floor, and, finding myself quite
alone, I sauntered from room to room, wondering
at the scantiness of the furniture and general air of
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discomfort, and scarce able to believe that the same
mistress presided over this and the singular paradise
in which I had first found her at Vienna. After visiting
every corner of the ground floor with a freedom
which I assumed in my character as guardian, it
occurred to me that I had not yet found the diningroom,
and I was making a new search, when Iminild
entered.
I have said she was a beautiful woman. She was
dressed now in the Albanian costume, with the additional
gorgeousness of gold embroidery, which
might distinguish the favourite child of a chief of
Suli. It was the male attire, with a snowy white
juktanilla reaching to the knee, a short jacket of
crimson velvet, and a close-buttoned vest of silver
cloth, fitting admirably to her girlish bust, and leaving
her slender and pearly neck to rise bare and
swan-like into the masses of her clustering hair.
Her slight waist was defined by the girdle of fine
linen edged with fringe of gold, which was tied coquettishly
over her left side and fell to her ankle
and below the embroidered leggin appeared the
fairy foot, which had drawn upon me all this long
train of adventure, thrust into a Turkish slipper
with a sparkling emerald on its instep. A feronière
of the yellowest gold sequins bound her hair back
from her temples, and this was the only confinement
to the dark brown meshes which, in wavy lines and
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in the richest profusion, fell almost to her feet. The
only blemish to this vision of loveliness was a flush
about her eyes. The place had recalled Yvain to
her memory.
“I am about to disclose to you secrets,” said she,
laying her hand on my arm, “which have never
been revealed but to the most trusty of Yvain's confederates.
To satisfy those whom you will meet
you must swear to me on the same cross which he
pressed to your lips when dying, that you will never
violate, while I live, the trust we repose in you.”
“I will take no oath,” I said; “for you are leading
me blindfolded. If you are not satisfied with the
assurance that I can betray no confidence which
honour would preserve, hungry as I am, I will yet
dine in Planina.”
“Then I will trust to the faith of an Englishman.
And now I have a favour, not to beg, but to insist
upon—that from this moment you consider Percie
as dismissed from your service, and treat him, while
here at least, as my equal and friend.”
“Willingly!” I said; and as the word left my
lips, enter Percie in the counterpart dress of Iminild,
with a silver-sheathed ataghan at his side, and the
blueish muzzles of a pair of Egg's hair-triggers
peeping from below his girdle. To do the rascal
justice, he was as handsome in his new toggery as
his mistress, and carried it as gallantly. They
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would have made the prettiest tableau as Juan and
Haidée.
“Is there any chance that these `persuaders' may
be necessary,” I asked, pointing to his pistols which
a woke in my mind a momentary suspicion.
“No—none that I can foresee—but they are
loaded. A favourite, among men whose passions
are professionally wild,” she continued with a meaning
glance at Percie; “should be ready to lay his
hand on them, even if stirred in his sleep!”
I had been so accustomed to surprises of late, that
I scarce started to observe, while Iminild was speaking,
that an old-fashioned clock, which stood in a
niche in the wall, was slowly swinging out upon
hinges. A narrow aperture of sufficient breadth to
admit one person at a time, was disclosed when it
had made its entire revolution, and in it stood with
a lighted torch, the stout landlord Von Krakenpate.
Iminild looked at me an instant as if to enjoy my
surprise.
“Will you lead me in to dinner, Mr. Tyrell?” she
said at last, with a laugh.
“If we are to follow Myneer Von Krakenpate,”
I replied, “give me hold of the skirt of your juktanilla,
rather, and let me follow! Do we dine in the
cellar?”
I stepped before Percie, who was inclined to take
advantage of my hesitation to precede me, and
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followed the countess into the opening, which, from
the position of the house, I saw must lead directly
into the face of the rock. Two or three descending
steps convinced me that it was a natural opening enlarged
by art; and after one or two sharp turns, and
a descent of perhaps fifty feet, we came to a door
which, suddenly flung open by our torch-bearer,
deluged the dark passage with a blaze of light which
the eyesight almost refused to bear. Recovering
from my amazement, I stepped over the threshold
of the door, and stood upon a carpet in a gallery of
sparkling stalactites, the dazzling reflection of inumerable
lamps flooding the air around, and a long
snow-white vista of the same brilliancy and effect
streching downward before me. Two ridges of
the calcareous stratta running almost parallel over
our heads, formed the cornices of the descending
corridor, and from these with a regularity that
seemed like design, the sparkling pillars, white as
alabaster, and shaped like inverted cones, dropped
nearly to the floor, their transparent points resting
on the peaks of the corresponding stalagmites,
which of a darker hue and coarser grain, seemed
designed as bases to a new order of architectural
columns. The reflection from the pure crystalline
rock gave to this singular gallery a splendor which
only the palace of Aladdin could have equalled. The
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lamps were hung between in irregular but effective
ranges, and in our descent, like Thalaba, who refreshed
his dazzled eyes in the desert of snow by
looking on the green wings of the spirit bird, I was
compelled to bend my eyes perpetually for relief upon
the soft, dark masses of hair which floated upon
the lovely shoulders of Iminild.
At the extremity of the gallery we turned short to
the right, and followed an irregular passage, sometimes
so low that we could scarce stand upright,
but all lighted with the same intense brilliancy, and
formed of the same glittering and snow-white substance.
We had been rambling on thus far perhaps
ten minutes, when suddenly the air, which I had felt
uncomfortably chill, grew warm and soft, and the
low reverberation of running water fell
delighfully
on our ears. Far a-head we could see two sparry
columns standing close together, and apparently
closing up the way.
“Courage! my venerable guardian!” cried Imnild,
laughing over her shoulder; “you will see your
dinner presently. Are you hungry, Percie?”
“Not while you look back, Madame la Comtesse!”
answered the callow gentleman, with an instinctive
tact at his new vocation.
We stood at the two pillars which formed the
extremity of the passage, and looked down upon a
scene of which all description must be faint and
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imperfect. A hundred feet below ran a broad subterraneous
river, whose waters sparkling in the blaze
of a thousand torches, sprang into light from the
deepest darkness, crossed with foaming rapidity the
bosom of the vast illuminated cavern, and disappeared
again in the same inscrutable gloom. Whence it
it came or whither it fled was a mystery beyond the
reach of the eye. The deep recesses of the cavern
seemed darker for the intense light gathered about
the centre.
After the first few minutes of bewilderment, I endeavoured
to realize in detail the wondrous scene before
me. The cavern was of an irregular shape, but
all studded above with the same sparry incrustation,
thousands upon thousands of pendant stalactites glittering
on the roof, and showering back light upon the
clusters of blazing torches fastened every where
upon the shelvy sides. Here and there vast
columns, alabaster white, with bases of gold colour,
fell from the roof to the floor, like pillars left standing
in the ruined nisle of a cathedral, and from corner
to corner ran their curtains of the same brilliant
calcareous spar, shaped like the sharp edge of a
snow-drift, and almost white. It was like laying
bare the palace of some king-wizard of the mine to
gaze down upon it.
“What think you of Myneer Krakenpate's taste
in a dining-room, Monsieur Tyrell?” asked the
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countess, who stood between Percie and myself, with
a hand on the shoulder of each.
I had scarce found time, as yet, to scrutinize the
artificial portion of the marvellous scene, but, at the
question of Iminild, I bent my gaze on a broad platform,
rising high above the river on its opposite
bank, the rear of which was closed in by perhaps
forty irregular columns, leaving between them and
the sharp precipice on the river-side, an area, in
height and extent of about the capacity of a ball-room.
A rude bridge, of very light construction,
rose in a single arch across the river, forming the
only possible access to the platform from the side
where we stood, and, following the path back with
my eye, I observed a narrow and spiral staircase,
partly of wood and partly cut in the rock, ascending
from the bridge to the gallery we had followed
hither. The platform was carpetted richly, and
flooded with intense light, and in its centre stood a
gorgeous array of smoking dishes, served after the
Turkish fashion, with a cloth upon the floor and surrounded
with cushions and ottomans of every shape
and colour. A troop of black slaves, whose silver
anklets, glittered as they moved, were busy bringing
wines and completing the arrangements for the
meal.
“Allons, mignon!” cried Iminild, getting impatient
and seizing Percie's arm, “let us get over the
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river, and perhaps Mr. Tyrell will look down upon
us with his grands yeux while we dine. Oh, you
will come with us! Suivez donc!”
An iron door, which I had not hitherto observed,
let us out from the gallery upon the staircase, and
Myneer Von Krakenpate carefully turned the key
behind us. We crept slowly down the narrow
staircase and reached the edge of the river, where
the warm air from the open sunshine came pouring
through the cavern with the current, bringing with
it a smell of green fields and flowers, and removing
entirely the chill of the cavernous and confined at
mosphere I had found so uncomfortable above
We crossed the bridge, and stepping upon the elastic
carpets piled thickly on the platform, arranged
ourselves about the smoking repast, Myneer Von
Krakenpate sitting down after permission from Iminild,
and Percie by order of the same imperative
dictatress, throwing his graceful length at her feet.
“Take a lesson in flattery from Percie, Mr. Tyrell,
and be satisfied with your bliss in my society without
asking for explanations. I would fain have the
use of my tongue (to swallow) for ten minutes, and
I see you making up your mouth for a question.
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Try this pilau! It is made by a Greek cook,
who fries, boils and stews in a kitchen with a river
for a chimney.”
“Precisely what I was going to ask you. I was
wondering how you cook without smoking your
snow-white roof.”
“Yes, the river is a good slave, and steals wood
as well. We have only to cut it by moonlight and
commit it to the current.”
“The kitchen is down stream, then?”
“Down stream; and down stream lives jolly Perdicaris
the cook, who having lost his nose in a sea-fight,
is reconciled to forswear sunshine and mankind,
and cook rice for pirates.”
“Is it true then that Yvain held command on the
sea?”
“No, not Yvain, but Tranchcœur—his equal in
command over this honest confederacy. By the
way, he his your countryman, Mr. Tyrell, though he
fights under a nom de guerre. You are very likely
to see him, too, for his bark is at Trieste, and he is
the only human being besides myself (and my company
here) who can come and go at will in this
robber's paradise. He is a lover of mine, parbleu!
and since Yvain's death, heaven knows what fancy
he may bring hither in his hot brain! I have armed
Percie for the hazard?”
The thin nostrils of my friend from Cranbourne
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Alley dilated with prophetic dislike of a rival thus
abruptly alluded to, and there was that in his face
which would have proved, against all the nurses'
oaths in christendom, that the spirit of a gentleman's
blood ran warm through his heart. Signor Tranchc
œur must be gentle in his suit, I said to myself
or he will find what virtue lies in a hair-trigger!
Percie had forgot to eat since the mention of the
pirate's name, and sat with folded arms and his right
hand on his pistol.
A black slave brought in an omellette souffleé, as
light and delicate as the chef-d'œuvre of an artiste in
the Palais Royal. Iminild spoke to him in Greek,
as he knelt and placed it before her.
“I have a presentiment,” she said, looking at me
as the slave disappeared, “that Tranchcœur will
be here presently. I have ordered another omelette
on the strength of the feeling, for he is fond of it,
and may be soothed by the attention.”
“You fear him, then?”
“Not if I were alone, for he is as gentle as a woman
when he has no rival near him—but I doubt
his relish of Percie. Have you dined?”
“Quite.”
“Then come and look at my garden, and have a
peep at old Perdicaris. Stay here, Percie, and finish
your grapes, mon-mignon! I have a word to say
to Mr. Tyrell.”
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We walked across the platform, and passing between
two of the sparry columns forming its boundary,
entered upon a low passage which led to a large
opening, resembling singularly a garden of low
shrubs turned by some magic to sparkling marble.
Two or three hundred of these stalagmite cones,
formed by the dripping of calcareous water from
the roof, (as those on the roof were formed by the
same fluid which hardened and pondered,) stood
about in the spacious area, every shrub having an
answering cone on the roof, like the reflection of the
same marble garden in a mirror. One side of this
singular apartment was used as a treasury for the
spoils of the band, and on the points of the white
cones hung pitchers and altar lamps of silver, gold
drinking-cups, and chains, and plate and jewellery
of every age and description. Farther on were piled,
in unthrifty confusion, heaps of velvets and silks, fine
broadcloths, French gloves, shoes and slippers,
brocades of Genoa, pieces of English linen, damask
curtains still fastened to their cornices, a harp and
mandolin, cases of damaged bons-bons, two or three
richly-bound books, and, (last and most valuable in
my eyes,) a minature bureau, evidently the plunder
of some antiquary's treasure, containing in its little
drawers antique gold coins of India, carefully dated
and arranged, with a list of its contents half-torn
from the lid.
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“You should hear Tranchcœur's sermons on
these pretty texts,” said the countess, trying to thrust
open a bale of Brusa silk with her Turkish slipper.
“He will beat off the top of a stalagmite with his
sabre-hilt, and sit down and talk over his spoils and
the adventures they recall, till morning dawns.”
“And how is that discovered in this sunless
cave?”
“By the perfume. The river brings news of it,
and fills the cavern with the sun's first kisses. Those
violets `kiss and tell,' Mr. Tyrell! Apropos des
bottes, let us look into the kitchen.”
We turned to the right, keeping on the same level,
and a few steps brought us to the brow of a considerable
descent forming the lower edge of the carpeted
platform, but separated from it by a wall of close
stalactites. At the bottom of the descent ran the
river, but just along the brink, forming a considerable
crescent, extended a flat rock, occupied by all the
varied implements of a kitchen, and lighted by the
glare of two or three different fires blazing against
the perpendicular limit of the cave. The smoke of
these followed the inclination of the wall, and was
swept entirely down with the current of the river.
At the nearest fire stood Perdicaris, a fat, long-haired
and sinister-looking rascal, his noseless face glowing
with the heat, and at his side waited, with a silver
dish, the Nubian slave who had been sent for
Tranchcœur's omelette.
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“One of the most bloody fights of my friend the
rover,” said Iminild, “was with an armed slaver,
from whom he took these six pages of mine. They
have reason enough to comprehend an order, but
too little to dream of liberty. They are as contented
as tortoises, ici-bas.”
“Is there no egress hence but by the iron door?”
“None that I know of, unless one could swim up
this swift river like a salmon. You may have surmised
by this time, that we monopolize an unexplored
part of the great cave of Adelsberg. Common
report says it extends ten miles under ground,
but common report has never burrowed as far as
this, and I doubt whether there is any communication.
Father Krakenpate's clock conceals an entrance,
discovered first by robbers, and handed
down by tradition, heaven knows how long. But—
hark! Tranchcœur, by heaven! my heart foreboded
it!”
I sprang after the countess, who, with her last
exclamation, darted between two of the glittering
columns separating us from the platform, and my
first glance convinced me that her fullest anticipations
of the pirate's jealousy were more than realised.
Percie stood with his back to a tall pillar on the
farther side, with his pistol levelled, calm and
unmoveable as a stalactite; and, with his sabre
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drawn and his eyes flashing fire, a tall powerfully-built
man in a sailor's press, was arrested by Iminild
in the act of rushing on him. “Stop! or you die,
Tranchcœur!” said the countess, in a tone of trifling
command. He is my guest!”
“He is my prisoner, madame!” was the answer
as the pirate changed his position to one of perfect
repose and shot his sabre into his sheath, as if a brief
delay could make little difference.
“We shall see that,” said the countess, once more'
with as soft a voice as was ever heard in a lady's
boudoir; and stepping to the edge of the platform'
she touched with her slipper a suspended gong,
which sent through the cavern a shrill reveberation
heard clearly over the rushing music of the river.
In an instant the click of forty muskets from the
other side fell on our ears; and, at a wave of her
hand, the butts rattled on the rocks, and all was still
again.
“I have not trusted myself within your reach,
Monsieur Tranchcœur,” said Iminild, flinging herself
carelessly on an ottoman, and motioning to Percie
to keep his stand, “withont a score or two of
my free riders from Mount Semering to regulate
your conscience. I am mistress here, sir! You
may sit down!”
Tranchcœur had assumed an air of the most gentlemanly
tranquillity, and motioning to one of the
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slaves for his pipe, he politely begged pardon of
smoking in the countess's presence, and filled the
enamelled bowl with Shiraz tobacco.
“You heard of Yvain's death?” she remarked
after a moment passing her hand over her eyes.
“Yes, at Venice.”
“With his dying words, he gave me and mine in
charge to this Englishman. Mr. Tyrell, Monsieur
Tranchcœur.”
The pirate bowed.
“Have you been long from England?” he asked
with an accent and voice that even in that brief
question, savoured of the nonchalant English of the
West End.
“Two years!” I answered.
“I should have supposed much longer from your
chivalry in St. Etienne, Mr. Tyrell. My countrymen
generally are less hasty. Your valet there,” he
continued, looking sneeringly at Percie, “seems as
quick on the trigger as his master.”
Percie turned on his heel, and walked to the edge
of the platform as if uneasy at the remark, and Iminild
rose to her feet.
“Look you, Tranchcœur! I'll have none of your
sneers. That youth is as well-born and better bred
than yourself, and with his consent, shall have the
authority of the holy church ere long to protect my
property and me. Will you aid me in this, Mr.
Tyrell?”
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“Willingly, countess!”
“Then, Tranchcœur, farewell! I have withdrawn
from the common stock Yvain's gold and jewels,
and I trust to your sense of honour to render me at
Venice whatever else of his private property may
be concealed in the island.”
“Iminild!” cried the pirate, springing to his feet,
“I did not think to show a weakness before this
stranger, but I implore you to delay!”
His bosom heaved with strong emotion as he
spoke, and the colour fled from his bronzed features
as if he were struck with a mortal sickness.
“I cannot lose you, Iminild! I have loved you
too long. You must—”
She motioned to Percie to pass on.
“By heaven, you shall!” he cried, in a voice suddenly
become hoarse with passion; and reckless of
consequences, he leaped across the heaps of cushions,
and, seizing Percie by the throat, flung him with
terrible and headlong violence into the river.
A scream from Iminild, and the report of a musket
from the other side, rang at the same instant
through the cavern, and as I rushed forward to
seize the pistol which he had struck from Percie's
hand, his half-drawn sabre slid back powerless into
the sheath, and Tranchcœur dropped heavily on his
knee.
“I am peppered, Mr. Tyrell!” he said, waving me
-- 222 --
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off with difficult effort to smile, “look after the
boy, if you care for him! A curse on her German
wolves!”
Percie met me on the bridge, supporting Iminild,
who hung on his neck, smothering him with kisses.
“Where is that dog of a pirate?” she cried, suddenly
snatching her ataghan from the sheath and
flying across the platform. “Tranchcœur!”
Her hand was arrested by the deadly pallor and
helpless attitude of the wounded man, and the weapon
dropped as she stood over him.
“I think it is not mortal,” he said, groaning as he
pressed his hand to his side, “but take your boy
out of my sight! Iminild!”
“Well, Tranchcœur!”
“I have not done well—but you know my nature—
and my love! Forgive me, and farewell! Send
Bertram to stanch his blood—I get faint! A little
wine, Iminild!”
He ook the massive flagon from her hand, and
drank a long draught, and then drawing to him a
cloak which lay near, he covered his head and dropped
on his side as if to sleep.
Iminild knelt beside him and tore open the shirt
beneath his jacket, and while she busied herself in
stanching the blood, Perdicaris, apparently well prepared
for such accidents, arrived with a surgeon's
probe, and, on examination of the wound, assured
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Iminild that she might safely leave him. Washing
her hands in the flagon of wine, she threw a cloak
over the wet and shivering Percie, and, silent with
horror at the scene behind us, we made our way
over the bridge, and in a short time, to my infinite
relief, stood in the broad moonlight on the portico
of Myneer Krakenpate.
My carriage was soon loaded with the baggage
and treasure of the countess, and with the same
swift horses that had brought us from Planina, we
regained the post-road, and sped on toward Venice
by the Friuli. We arrived on the following night
at the fair city so beloved of romance, and with
what haste I might, I procured a priest and married
the Countess Iminild to gentleman Percie.
As she possessed now a natural guardian, and a
sufficient means of life, I felt released from my death
vow to Yvain, and bidding farewell to the “happy
couple,” I resumed my quiet habit of travel, and
three days after my arrival at Venice, was on the
road to Padua by the Brenta.
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-- 225 --
Oonder-Hoofden, or the Undercliff. Page 225.
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-- 227 -- p416-228
[figure description] Page 227.[end figure description]
“It is but an arm of the sea, as I told thee, skipper,”
said John Fleming, the mate of the “Halve-Mane,”
standing ready to jam down the tiller and
bring-to, if his master should agree with him in opinion.
Hudson stood by his steersman, with folded arms,
now looking at the high-water mark on the rocks,
which betrayed a falling tide, now turning his ear
slightly forward to catch the cry of the man who
stood heaving the lead from the larboard bow. The
wind drew lightly across the starboard quarter, and,
with a counter-tide, the little vessel stole on scarce
perceptibly, though her mainsail was kept full—the
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slowly passing forest trees on the shore giving the
lie to the merry and gurgling ripple at the prow.
The noble river, or creek, which they had followed
in admiring astonishment for fifty miles, had hitherto
opened fairly and broadly before them, though,
once or twice, its widening and mountain-girt bosom
had deceived the bold navigator into the belief,
that he was entering upon some inland lake. The
wind still blew kindly and steadily from the south-east,
and the sunset of the second day—a spectacle
of tumultuous and gorgeous glory which Hudson
attributed justly to the more violent atmospheric
laws of an unsettled continent—had found them apparently
closed in by impenetrable mountains, and running
immediately on the head shore of an extended
arm of the sea.
“She'll strike before she can follow her helm,”
cried the young sailor in an impatient tone, yet still
with habitual obedience keeping her duly on her
course.
“Port a little!” answered the skipper, a moment
after, as if he had not heard the querulous comment
of his mate.
Fleming's attention was withdrawn an instant by
a low gutteral sound of satisfaction, which reached
his ear as the head of the vessel went round, and,
casting his eye a-mid-ships, he observed the three
Indians who had come off to the Half-Moon in a
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[figure description] Page 229.[end figure description]
canoe, and had been received on board by the master,
standing together in the chains, and looking forward
to the rocks they were approaching with
countenances of the most eager interest.
“Master Hendrick!” he vociferated in the tone of
a man who can contain his anger no longer, “will
you look at these grinning red-devils, who are rejoicing
to see you run so blindly ashore?”
The adventurous little bark was by this time
within a biscuit toss of a rocky point that jutted
forth into the river with the grace of a lady's foot
dallying with the water in her bath; and, beyond
the sedgy bank disappeared in an apparent inlet,
barely deep enough, it seemed to the irritated steersman,
to shelter a canoe.
As the Half-Moon obeyed her last order, and
headed a point more to the west, Hudson strode
forward to the bow, and sprang upon the windlass,
stretching his gaze eagerly into the bosom of the
devils that were now darkening with the heavy shadows
of twilight, though the sky was still gorgeously
purple overhead.
The crew had by this time gathered with unconscious
apprehension at the halyards, ready to let go
at the slightest gesture of the master, but, in the
slow progress of the little bark, the minute or two
which she took to advance beyond the point on
which his eye was fixed, seemed an age of suspense.
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The Half-Moon seemed now almost immoveable,
for the current, which convinced Hudson there was
a passage beyond, set her back from the point with
increasing force, and the wind lulled a little with the
sunset. Inch by inch, however she crept on, till at
last the silent skipper sprang from the windlass upon
the bowsprit, and, running out with the agility of a
boy, gave a single glance ahead, and the next moment
had the tiller in his hand, and cried out with a
voice of thunder, “Stand by the halyards! helm's-a
lee!”
In a moment, as if his words had been lightning,
the blocks rattled, the heavy boom swung round like
a willow spray, and the white canvass, after fluttering
an instant in the wind, filled and drew steadily
on the other tack.
Looks of satisfaction were exchanged between
the crew, who expected the next instant an order
to take in the sail and drop anchor—but the master
was at the helm, and to their utter consternation, he
kept her steadily to the wind and drove straight on—
while a gorge, that in the increasing darkness,
seemed the entrance to a cavern, opened its rocky
sides as they advanced.
The apprehensions of the crew were half lost in
their astonishment at the grandeur of the scene.
The cliffs seemed to close up behind them; a mountain,
that reached apparently to the now colourless
-- 231 --
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clouds, rose up gigantic, in the increasing twilight,
over the prow; on the right, where the water seemed
to bend, a craggy precipice extended its threatening
wall; and in the midst of this round bay, which
seemed to them to be an enclosed lake in the bottom
of an abyss, the wind suddenly took them aback,
the Halve Mane lost her headway, and threatened
to go on the rocks with the current, and audible curses
at his folly reached the ears of the determined
master.
More to divert their attention than with a prognostic
of the direction of the wind, Hudson gave the
order to tack, and, more slowly this time, but still
with sufficient expedition, the movement was executed,
and the flapping sails swung round. The halyards,
were not belayed before the breeze, rushing
down a steep valley on the left, struck full
on the larboard quarter, and, running sharp past
the face of the precipice over the starboard bow,
Hudson pointed out, exultingly, to his astonished
men, the broad waters of the mighty river, extending
far through the gorge beyond—the dim purple
of the lingering day, which had been long lost to the
cavernous and overshadowed pass they had penetrated,
tinting its far bosom like the last faint hue of
the expiring dolphin.
The exulting glow of triumph suffused the face
of the skipper, and relinquishing the tiller once more
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to the mortified Fleming, he walked forward to look
out for an anchorage. The Indians, who still stood
in the chains together, and who had continued to
express their satisfaction as the vessel made her way
through the pass, now pointed eagerly to a little
bay on the left, across which a canoe was shooting
like the reflection of a lance in the air, and, the wind
dying momently away, Hudson gave the order to
round to, and dropped his anchor for the night.
In obedience to the politic orders of Hudson the
men were endeavouring, by presents and signs, to
induce the Indians to leave the vessel, and the master
himself stood on the poop with his mate, gazing
back on the wonderful scene they had passed
through.
“This passage,” said Hudson, musingly, “has
been rent open by an earthquake, and the rocks look
still as if they felt the agony of the throe.”
“It is a pity the earthquake did its job so raggedly,
then!” answered his sulky companion, who
had not yet forgiven the mountains for the shame
their zig-zag precipices had put upon his sagacity.
At that instant a sound, like that of a heavy body
sliding into the water, struck the ear of Fleming,
and looking quickly over the stern, he saw one of
the Indians swimming from the vessel with a pillow
in his hand, which he had evidently stolen from the
cabin window. To seize a musket, which lay ready
-- 233 --
[figure description] Page 233.[end figure description]
for attack on the quarter-deck, and fire upon the
poor savage, was the sudden thought and action of a
man on the watch, for a vent to incensed feelings.
The Indian gave a yell which mingled wildly with
the echoes of the report from the reverberating hills,
and springing waist-high out of the water, the gurgling
eddy closed suddenly over his head.
The canoe in which the other savages were
already embarked shot away, like an arrow, to the
shore, and Hudson, grieved and alarmed inexpressibly
at the fool-hardy rashness of his mate, ordered
all hands to arms, and established a double watch
for the night.
Hour after hour, the master and the non-repentant
Fleming paced fore and aft, each in his own
quarter of the vessel, watching the shore and the
dark face of the water with straining eyes: but no
sound came from the low cliff round which the flying
canoe had vanished, and the stars seemed to
wink almost audibly in the dread stillness of nature.
The men alarmed at the evident agitation of Hudson,
who, in these pent-up waters, anticipated a
most effective and speedy revenge from the surrounding
tribes, drowsed not upon their watch, and
the gray light of the morning began to show faintly
over the mountains before the anxious master withdrew
his aching eyes from the still and star
waters.
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Like a web woven of gold by the lightning, the
sun's rays ran in swift threads from summit to summit
of the dark green mountains, and the soft mist
that slept on the breast of the river began to lift like
the slumberous lid from the eye of woman, when
her dream is broken at dawn. Not so poetically
were these daily glories regarded, however, by the
morning watch of the Half-Moon, who, between
the desire to drop asleep with their heads on the
capstan, and the necessity of keeping sharper watch
lest the Indians should come off through the rising
mist, bore the double pains of Tantalus and Sysiphus—
ungratified desire at their lips and threatening
ruin over their heads.
After dividing the watch at the break of day,
Hudson, with the relieved part of his crew, had
gone below, and might have been asleep an hour,
when Fleming suddenly entered the cabin and laid
his hand upon his shoulder. The skipper sprang
from his birth with the habitual readiness of a sea-man,
and followed his mate upon deck, where he
found his men standing to their arms, and watching
an object that, to his first glance, seemed like a canoe
sailing down upon them through the air. The rash
homi cide drew close to Hendrick as he regarded it,
-- 235 --
[figure description] Page 235.[end figure description]
and the chatter of his teeth betrayed that during the
long and anxious watches of the night, his conscience
had not justified him for the hasty death he had
awarded to a fellow creature.
“She but looms through the mist!” said the skipper,
after regarding the advancing object for a
moment. “It is a single canoe, and can scarce
harm us. Let her come alongside!”
The natural explanation of the phenomenon at
once satisfied the crew, who had taken their superstitous
fears rather from Fleming's evident alarm
than from their own want of reflection; but the
guilty man himself still gazed on the advancing
phantom, and when a slight stir of the breeze raised
the mist like the corner of a curtain, and dropped
the canoe plain upon the surface of the river, he
turned gloomily on his heel, and muttered in an
undertone to Hudson, “It brings no good, Skipper
Hendrick!”
Meanwhile the canoe advanced slowly. The
single paddle which propelled her paused before
every turn, and as the mist lifted quite up and showed
a long green line of shore between its shadowy
fringe and the water, an Indian, highly painted, and
more ornamented than any they had hitherto seen,
appeared gazing earnestly at the vessel, and evidently
approaching with fear and caution.
The Half-Moon was heading up the river with
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[figure description] Page 236.[end figure description]
the rising tide, and Hudson walked forward to the
bows to look at the savage more closely. By the
eagle and bear, so richly embroidered in the gaycoloured
quills of the porcupine on his belt of wampum,
he presumed him to be a chief; and glancing
his eye into the canoe, he saw the pillow which had
occasioned the death of the plunderer the night
before, and on it lay two ears of corn, and two
broken arrows. Pausing a moment as he drew
near, the Indian pointed to these signs of peace, and
Hudson, in reply, spread out his open hands and
beckoned him to come on board. In an instant the
slight canoe shot under the starboard bow, and with
a noble confidence which the skipper remarked
upon with admiration, the tall savage sprang upon
the deck and laid the hand of the commander to
his breast.
The noon arrived, hot and sultry, and there was
no likelihood of a wind till sunset. The chief had
been feasted on board, and had shown, in his delight,
the most unequivocal evidence of good feeling; and
even Fleming, at last, who had drank more freely than
usual during the morning, abandoned his suspicion,
and joined in amusing the superb savage who was
their guest. In the course of the forenoon, another
canoe came off, paddled by a single young woman,
whom Fleming, recognised as having accompanied
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[figure description] Page 237.[end figure description]
the plunderers the night before, but in his half-intoxicated
state, it seemed to recall none of his previous
bodings, and to his own surprise, and that of the
crew, she evidently regarded him with particular
favour, and by pertinacious and ingenious signs,
endeavoured to induce him to go ashore with her
in the canoe. The particular character of her face
and form would have given the mate a clue to her
probable motives, had he been less reckless from his
excitement. She was taller than is common for
females of the savage tribes, and her polished limbs,
as gracefully moulded in their dark hues as those of
the mercury of the fountain, combined, with their
slightness, a nerve and steadiness of action which
betrayed strength and resolution of heart and frame.
Her face was highly beautiful, but the voluptuous
fulness of the lips was contradicted by a fierce fire
in her night-dark eyes, and a quickness of the brow
to descend, which told of angry passions habitually
on the alert. It was remarked by Hans Christaern,
one of the crew, that when Fleming left her
for an instant, she abstracted herself from the other
joyous groups, and, with folded arms and looks of
brooding thoughtfulness, stood looking over the stern;
but immediately on his re-appearance, her snowy
teeth became visible between her relaxing lips, and
she resumed her patient gaze upon his countenance,
and her occasional efforts to draw him into the canoe.
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Quite regardless of the presence of the woman,
the chief sat apart with Hudson, communicating his
ideas by intelligent signs, and after a while, the skipper
called his mate, and informed him that, as far as
he could understand, the chief wished to give them
a feast on shore. “Arm yourselves well,” said
he, “though I look for no treachery from this noble
pagan; and if chance should put us in danger, we
shall be more than a match for the whole tribe.
Come with me, Fleming,” he continued, after a
pause, “you are too rash with your fire-arms to be
left in command. Man the watch, four of you,
and the rest get into the long-boat. We'll while
away these sluggish hours, though danger is in it.”
The men sprang gaily below for their arms, and
were soon equipped and ready, and the chief, with
an expression of delight, put off in his canoe, followed
more slowly by the heavy long-boat, into which
Hudson, having given particular orders to the watch
to let no savages on board during his absence, was
the last to embark. The woman, whom the chief had
called to him before his departure by the name of
Kihyalee, sped off before in her swift canoe to another
point of the shore, and when Fleming cried out
from the bow of the boat, impatiently motioning her
to follow, she smiled in a manner that sent a momentary
shudder through the veins of the skipper who
chanced to observe the action, and by a circular
-- 239 --
[figure description] Page 239.[end figure description]
movement of her arm conveyed to him that she
should meet him from the other side of the hill. As
they followed the chief, they discoverd the wigwams
of an Indian village behind the rocky point
for which she was making, and understood that the
chief had sent her thither on some errand connected
with his proposed hospitality.
A large square rock, which had the look of having
been hurled with some avalanche from the
mountain, lay in the curve of a small beach of sand,
surrounded by the shallow water, and, on the left of
this, the chief pointed out to the skipper a deeper
channel, hollowed by the entrance of a mountaintorrent
into the river, through which he might bring
his boat to land. At the edge of this torrent's bed,
the scene of the first act of hospitality to our race
upon the Hudson, stands at this day the gate to the
most hospitable mansion on the river, as if the spirit
of the spot had consecrated it to its first association
with the white man.
The chief led the way when the crew had disembarked,
by a path skirting the deep-worn bed of the
torrent, and after an ascent of a few minutes, through
a grove of tall firs, a short turn to the left brought
them upon an open table of land, a hundred and fifty
feet above the river, shut in by a circle of forest-trees,
and frowned over on the east by a tall and bald cliff,
which shot up in a perpendicular line to the height
-- 240 --
[figure description] Page 240.[end figure description]
of three hundred feet. From a cleft in the face of
this precipice a natural spring oozed forth, drawing
a darker line down the sun-parched rock, and feeding
a small stream that found its way to the river on the
northern side of the platform just mentioned, creating
between itself and the deeper torrent to the south,
a sort of highland peninsula, now constituting the
estate of the hospitable gentleman above alluded to.
Hudson looked around him with delight and surprise
when he stood on the highest part of the broad
natural table selected by the chief for his entertainment.
The view north showed a cleft through the
hills, with the river coiled like a lake in its widening
bed, while a blue and wavy line of mountains formed
the far horizon at its back; south, the bold eminences,
between which he had found his adventurous
way, closed in like the hollowed sides of a bright-green
vase, with glimpses of the river lying in its
bottom like crystal; below him descended a sharp
and wooded bank, with the river at its foot, and
directly opposite rose a hill in a magnificent cone
to the very sky, sending its shadow down through
the mirrored water, as if it entered to some inner
world. The excessive lavishness of the foliage
clothed these bold natural features with a grace and
richness altogether captivating to the senses, and
Hudson long stood, gazing around him, believing
that the tales of brighter and happier lands were
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[figure description] Page 241.[end figure description]
truer than he had deemed, and that it was his lucky
destiny to have been the discoverer of a future
Utopia.
A little later, several groups of Indians were seen
advancing from the village, bearing the materials
for a feast, which they deposited under a large tree,
indicated by the chief. It was soon arranged, and
Hudson with his men surrounded the dishes of shell
and wood, one of which, placed in the centre, contained
a roasted dog, half buried in Indian-corn.
While the chief and several of his warriors sat down
in company with the whites, the young men danced
the calumet-dance to the sound of a rude drum,
formed by drawing a skin tightly over a wooden
bowl, and near them, in groups, stood the women
and children of the village, glancing with looks of
curiosity from the feats of the young men to the
unaccustomed faces of the strangers.
Among the women stood Kihyalee, who kept her
large bright eyes fixed almost fiercely upon Fleming
yet when he looked towards her, she smiled and
turned as if she would beckon him away—a bidding
which he tried in vain to obey, under the vigilant
watch of his master.
The feast went on, and the Indians having produced
gourds, filled with a slight intoxicating liquor
made from the corn, Hudson offered to the chief,
some spirits from a bottle which he had entrusted,
-- 242 --
[figure description] Page 242.[end figure description]
to one of the men to wash down the expected roughness
of the savage viands. The bottle passed in
turn to the mate, who was observed to drink freely,
and, a few minutes after, Hudson rising to see more
nearly a trial of skill with the bow and arrow, Fleming
found the desired opportunity, and followed the
tempting Kihyalee into the forest.
The sun began to throw the shadows of the tall
pines in gigantic pinnacles along the ground and the
youths of the friendly tribe, who had entertained the
great navigator, ceased from their dances and feats
of skill, and clustered around the feast-tree. Intending
to get under weigh with the evening breeze and
proceed still farther up the river, Hudson rose to collect
his men, and bid the chief farewell. Taking the
hand of the majestic savage and putting it to his
breast, to express in his own manner the kind feelings
he entertained for him, he turned toward the
path by which he came, and was glancing round at
his men, when Hans Christaern enquired if he had
sent the mate back to the vessel.
“Der teufel, no!” answered the skipper, missing
him for the first time; “has he been long gone?”
“A full hour!” said one of the men.
Hudson put his hand to his head, and remembered
the deep wroug Fleming had done to the tribe.
Retribution, he feared, had over-taken him—but
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[figure description] Page 243.[end figure description]
how was it done so silently? How had the guilty
man been induced to leave his comrades, and accelerate
his doom by his own voluntary act?
The next instant resolved the question. A distant
and prolonged scream, as of a man in mortal agony,
drew all eyes to the summit of the beetling cliff,
which overhung them. On its extremest verge, outlined
distinctly against the sky, stood the tall figure of
Kihyalee, holding from her, yet poised over the precipice,
the writhing form of her victim, while in the
other hand, flashing in the rays of the sun, glittered
the bright hatchet she had plucked from his girdle.
Infuriated at the sight, and suspecting collision on
the part of the chief, Hudson drew his cutlass and
gave the order to stand to arms, but as he turned,
the gigantic savage had drawn an arrow to its head
with incredible force, and though it fell far short of
its mark, there was that in the action and in his look
which, in the passing of a thought, changed the mind
of the skipper. In another instant, the hesitating
arm of the widowed Kihyalee descended, and looseening
her hold upon the relaxed body of her victim.
the doomed mate fell heavily down the face of the
precipice.
The chief turned to Hudson, who stood trembling
and aghast at the awful scene, and plucking the remaining
arrows from his quiver, he broke them and
threw himself on the ground. The tribe gathered
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around their chief, Hudson moved his hand to them
in token of forgiveness, and in a melancholy silence
the crew took their way after him to the shore.
-- 245 --
The Picker and Piler. Page 245.
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-- 247 -- p416-248
[figure description] Page 247.[end figure description]
The nature of the strange incident I have to relate
forbids me to record either place or time.
On one of the wildest nights in which I had ever
been abroad, I drove my panting horses through a
snow drift breast high, to the door of a small tavern
in the western country. The host turned out unwillingly
at the knock of my whip handle on the
outer door, and, wading before the tired animals to
the barn, which was nearly inaccessible from the
banks of snow, he assisted me in getting off their
frozen harnesses, and bestowing them safely for the
night.
The “bar-room” fire burnt brightly, and never was
fire more welcome. Room was made for me by
four or five rough men who sat silent around it, and
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[figure description] Page 248.[end figure description]
with a keen comprehension of “pleasure after pain,
I took off my furs and moccasins, and streched my
cold contracted limbs to the blaze. When, a few
minutes after, a plate of cold salt beef was brought
me, with a corn cake and a mug of “flip” hissing
from the poker, it certainly would have been hard to
convince me that I would have put on my coats and
moccasins again to have ridden a mile to Paradise.
The faces of my new companions, which I had
not found time to inspect very closely while my supper
lasted, were fully revealed by the light of a pitch-pine
knot, thrown on the hearth by the landlord,
and their grim reserve and ferocity put me in mind,
for the first time since I had entered the room, of my
errand in that quarter of the country.
The timber-tracts which lie convenient to the
rivers of the west, offer to the refugee and desperado
of every description, a resource from want, and, (in
their own opinion,) from crime, which is seized upon
by all at least who are willing to labour. The owners
of the extensive forests, destined to become so
valuable, are mostly men of large speculation, living
in citeis, who, satisfied with the constant advance in
the price of lumber, consider their pine-trees as liable
to nothing but the laws of nature, and leave them
unfenced and unprotected, to increase in size and
value till the land beneath them is wanted for culture.
It is natural enough that solitary settlers, living in the
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neighborhood of miles of apparently unclaimed land,
should think seldom of the owner, and in time grow
to the opinion of the Indian, that the Great Spirit
gave the land, the air, and the water, to all his
children, and they are free to all alike. Furnishing
the requisite teams and implements therefore, the
inhabitants of these tracts collect a number of the
stragglers through the country, and forming what
is called a “bee,” go into the nearest woods, and
for a month or more, work laboriously at selecting,
and felling the tallest and straightest pines. In their
rude shanty at night they have bread, pork, and
whiskey, which hard labour makes sufficiently palatable,
and the time is passed merrily till the snow is
right for sledding. The logs are then drawn to the
water sides, rafts are formed, and the valuable
lumber, for which they paid nothing but their labour,
is run to the cites for their common advantage.
The only enemies of this class of men are the agents
who are sometimes sent out in the winter to detect
them in the act of felling or drawing off timber, and
in the dark countenances around the fire, I read this
as the interpretation of my own visit to the woods.
They soon brightened and grew talkative when they
discovered that I was in search of hands to fell and
burn, and make clearing for a farm; and after a
talk of an hour or two, I was told in answer to my
inquiries, that all the “men people” in the country
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were busy “lumbering for themselves,” unless it
were—the “Picker and Piler.”
As the words were pronounced, a shrill neigh
outside the door pronounced the arrival of a new
comer.
“Talk of the devil”—said the man in a lower tone.
and without finishing the proverb he rose with a
respect which he had not accorded to me, to make
room for the Picker and Piler.
A man of rather low stature entered, and turned to
drive back his horse, who had followed him nearly
in. I observed that the animal had neither saddle
nor bridle. Shutting the door upon him without
violence, he exchanged nods with one or two of the
men, and giving the landlord a small keg which he
had brought, he pleaded haste for refusing the
offered chair, and stood silent by the fire. His features
were blackened with smoke, but I could see
that they were small and regular, and his voice,
though it conveyed in its deliberate accents an
indefinable resolution, was almost femininely soft
and winning.
“That stranger yonder has got a job for you,”
said the landlord, as he gave him back the keg and
received the money.
Turning quickly upon me, he detected me in a
very eager scrunity of himself, and for a moment I
was thrown too much off my guard to address him.
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“Is it you, sir?” he asked, after waiting a moment.
“Yes,—I have some work to be done hereabouts,
but—you seem in a hurry. Could you call here tomorrow.”
“I may not be here again in a week.”
“Do you live far from here?” He smiled.
“I scarce know where I live, but I am burning a
piece of wood a mile or two up the run, and if you
would like a warmer bed than the landlord will give
you—”
That personage decided the question for me by
telling me in so many words that I had better go.
His beds were all taken up, and my horses should
be taken care of till my return. I saw that my presence
had interrupted something, probably the formation
of a “bee,” and more willingly than I would
have believed possible an hour before, I resumed my
furs and wrappers, and declared that I was ready.
The Picker and Piler had inspired me, and I knew
not why, with an involuntary respect and liking.
“It is a rough night, sir,” said he, as he shouldered
a rifle he had left outside, and slung the keg by
a leather strap over the neck of his horse, “but I
will soon show you a better climate. Come, sir,
jump on!”
“And you?” I said inquisitively, as he held his
horse by the mane for me to mount. It was a
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Canadian pony, scarce larger than a Newfoundland
dog.
“I am more used to the road, sir, and will walk.
Come?”
“It was no time to stand upon etiquette, even if
it had been possible to resist the strange tone of
authority with which he spoke. So without more
ado, I sprang upon the animal's back, and holding
on by the long tuft upon his withers, suffered him
passively to plunge through the drift after his
master.
Wondering at the readiness with which I had
entered upon this equivocal adventure, but never for
an instant losing confidence in my guide, I shut my
eyes to the blinding cold, and accommodating my
limbs as well as I could to the bare back and scrambling
paces of the Canadian. The Picker and
Piler strode on before, the pony following like a
spaniel at his heels, and after a half hour's tramp,
during which I had merely observed that we were
rounding the base of a considerable hill, we turned
short to the right, and were met by a column of
smoke, which, lifting, the moment after, disclosed
the two slopes of a considerable valley enveloped
in one sea of fire. A red, lurid cloud, overhung it
at the tops of the tallest trees, and far and wide,
above that spread a covering of black smoke, heaving
upward in vast and billowy masses, and rolling
away on every side into the darkness.
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We approached a pine of gigantic height, on fire
to the very peak, not a branch left on the trunk,
and its pitchy knots distributed like the eyes of the
lamprey, burning pure and steady amid the irregular
flame. I had once or twice, with an instinctive
wish to draw rein, pulled hard upon the tangled
tuft in my hand, but master and horse kept on.
This burning tree, however, was the first of a thousand,
and as the pony turned his eyes away from
the intense heat to pass between it and a bare rock,
I glanced into the glowing labyrinth beyond, and
my faith gave way. I jumped from his back and
hailed the Picker and Piler, with a halloo scarcely
audible amid the tumult of the crackling branches.
My voice did not evidently reach his ear, but the
pony, relieved from my weight, galloped to his side,
and rubbed his muzzle against the unoccupied hand
of his master.
He turned back immediately. “I beg pardon,”
he said, “I have that to think of just now which
makes me forgetful. I am not surprised at your
hesitation, but mount again and trust the pony.”
The animal turned rather unwillingly at his master's
bidding, and a little ashamed of having shown
fear, while a horse would follow, I jumped again
on his back.
“If you find the heat inconvienent, cover your
face.” And with this laconic advice, the Picker
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and Piler turned on his heel, and once more strode
away before us.
Sheltering the sides of my face by holding up the
corners of my wrapper with both hands, I abandoned
myself to the horse. He overtook his master
with a shuffling canter, and putting his nose as
close to the ground as he could carry it without
stumbling, followed closely at his heels. I observed,
by the green logs lying immediately along our path,
that we were following an avenue of prostrate
timber which had been felled before the wood was
fired; but descending presently to the left, we
struck at once into the deep bed of a brook, and
by the lifted head and slower gait of the pony, as
well as my own easier respiration, I found that the
hollow through which it ran, contained a body
of pure air unreached by the swaying curtains of
smoke or the excessive heat of the fiery currents
above. The pony now picked his way leisurely
along the brookside, and while my lungs expanded
with the relief of breathing a more temperate
atmosphere, I raised myself from my stooping posture
in a profuse perspiration, and one by one disembarassed
myself from my protectives against the
cold.
I had lost sight for several minutes of the Picker
and Piler, and presumed by the pony's desultory
movements that he was near the end of his journey,
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when, rounding a shelvy point of rock, we stood
suddenly upon the brink of a slight waterfall, where
the brook leaped four or five feet into a shrunken
dell, and after describing a half circle on a rocky
platform, resumed its onward course in the same
direction as before. This curve of the brook and
the platform it enclosed lay lower than the general
level of the forest, and the air around and within it,
it seemed to me, was as clear and genial as the
summer noon. Over one side, from the rocky wall,
a rude and temporary roof of pine slabs drooped
upon a barricado of logs, forming a low hut, and
before the entrance of this, at the moment of my
appearance, stood a woman and a showily dressed
young man, both evidently confused at the sudden
apparition of the Picker and Piler. My eyes had
scarce rested on the latter, when, from standing at
his fullest height with his rifle raised as if to beat
the other to the earth, he suddenly resumed his
stooping and quiet mien, set his rifle against the
rock, and came forward to give me his hand.
“My daughter!” he said, more in the way of
explanation than introduction, and without taking
further notice of the young man whose presence
seemed so unwelcome, he poured me a draught
from the keg he had brought, pointed to the water
falling close at my hand, and threw himself at his
length upon the ground.
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The face and general appearance of the young
man, now seated directly opposite me, offered no
temptation for more than a single glance, and my
whole attention was soon absorbed by the daughter
of my singular host, who, crossing from the platform
to the hut, divided her attention between a
haunch of vension roasting before a burning log of
hickory, and the arrangement of a few most primitive
implements for our coming supper. She was
slight, like her father, in form, and as far as I had
been able to distinguish his blackened features,
resembled him in the general outline. But in the
place of his thin and determined mouth, her lips were
round and voluptuous, and though her eye looked
as if it might wake, it expressed, even in the presence
of her moody father, a drowsy and soft indolence,
common enough to the Asiatics, but seldom
seen in America. Her dress was coarse and
careless, but she was beautiful with every possible
disadvantage, and, whether married or not, evidently
soon to become a mother.
The venison was placed before us on the rock,
and the young man, uninvited, and with rather an
air of bravado, cut himself a steak from the haunch
and broiled it on the hickory coals, while the daughter
kept as near him as her attention to her father's
wants would permit, but neither joined us in eating,
nor encouraged my attempts at conversation. The
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Picker and Piler ate in silence, leaving me to be
my own carver, and finishing his repast by a deep
draught from the keg which had been the means of
our acquaintance, he sprang upon his feet and disppaeared.
“The wind has changed,” said the daughter,
looking up at the smoke, “and he has gone to the
western edge to start a new fire. It's a full half
mile, and he'll be gone an hour.”
This was said with a look at me which was anything
but equivocal. I was de trop. I took up the
rifle of the Picker and Piler, forgetting that there
was probably nothing to shoot in a burning wood,
and remarking that I would have a look for a deer,
jumped up the water-fall side, and was immediately
hidden by the rocks.
I had no conception of the scene that lay around
me. The natural cave or hollow of rock in which
the hut lay embosomed, was the centre of an area
of perhaps an acre, which had been felled in the
heart of the wood before it was set on fire. The
forest encircled it with blazing columns, whose
capitals were apparently lost in the sky, and curtains
of smoke and flame, which flew as if lashed
into ribands by a whirlwind. The grandeur, the
violence, the intense brightness of the spectacle,
outran all imagination. The pines, on fire to the
peak, and straight as arrows, seemed to resemble,
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at one moment the conflagration of an eastern city;
with innumerable minarets abandoned to the devouring
element. At the next moment, the wind,
changing its direction, swept out every vestige of
smoke, and extinguished every tongue of flame,
and the tall trees, in clear and flameless ignition,
standing parallel in thousands, resembled some
blinding temple of the genii, whose columns of
miraculous rubies, sparkling audibly, outshone the
day. By single glances, my eye penetrated into
aisles of blazing pillars, extending far into the forest,
and the next instant, like a tremendous surge
alive with serpents of fire, the smoke and flame
swept through it, and it seemed to me as if some
glorious structure had been consumed in the passing
of a thought. For a minute, again, all would be
still except the crackling of the fibres of the wood,
and with the first stir of the wind, like a shower of
flashing gems, the bright coals rained down
through the forest, and for a moment the earth
glowed under the trees as if its whole crust were
alive with one bright ignition.
With the pungency of the smoke and heat, and
the variety and bewilderment of the spectacle, I
found my eyes and brain growing giddy. The
brook ran cool below, and the heat had dried the
leaves in the small clearing, and with the abandonment
of a man overcome with the sultriness of
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summer, I lay down on the rivulet's bank, and
dipped my head and bathed my eyes in the running
water. Close to its surface there was not a particle
of smoke in the air, and, exceedingly refreshed
with its temperate coolness, I lay for sometime in
luxurious ease, trying in vain to fancy the winter
that howled without. Frost and cold were never
more difficult to realize in midsummer, though
within a hundred rods, probably, a sleeping man
would freeze to death in an hour.
“I have a better bed for you in the shanty,” said
the Picker and Piler, who had approached unheard
in the noise of the fires, and suddenly stood over
me.
He took up his rifle, which I had laid against a
prostrate log, and looked anxiously towards the
descent to the hut.
“I am little inclined for sleep,” I answered, “and
perhaps you will give me an hour of conversation
here. The scene is new to me”—
“I have another guest to dispose of,” he answered,
“and we shall be more out of the smoke
near the shanty.”
I was not surprised, as I jumped upon the
platform, to find him angrily separating his daughter
and the stranger. The girl entered the hut,
and with a decisive gesture, he pointed the young
man to a “shake-down” of straw in the remotest
corner of the rocky enclosure.
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“With your leave, old gentleman,” said the
intruder, after glancing at his intended place of
repose, “I'll find a crib for myself.” And springing
up the craggy rock opposite the door of the shanty
he gathered a slight heap of brush, and threw it
into a hollow left in the earth by a tree, which,
though full grown and green, had been borne to the
earth and partly uprooted by the falling across it of
an overblown and gigantic pine. The earth and
stones had followed the uptorn mass, forming a
solid upright wall, from which, like struggling
fingers, stretching back in agony to the ground
from which they had parted, a few rent and naked
roots pointed into the cavity. The sequel will
show why I am so particular in this description.
“When peace was declared between England
and this country,” said the Picker and Piler (after
an hour's conversation, which had led insensibly to
his own history,) I was in command of a privateer.
Not choosing to become a pirate, by continuing the
cruise, I was set ashore in the West Indies by a
crew in open mutiny. My property was all on
board, and I was left a beggar. I had one child, a
daughter, whose mother died in giving her birth.
“Having left a sufficient sum for her education
in the hands of a brother of my own, under whose
roof she had passed the first years of her life, I
determined to retrieve my fortunes before she or
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my friends should be made acquainted with my
disaster.
“Ten years passed over, and I was still a wanderer
and a beggar.
“I determined to see my child, and came back,
like one from the dead, to my brother's door. He
had forgotten me, and abused his trust. My
daughter, then seventeen, and such as you see her
here, was the drudge in the family of a stranger—
ignorant and friendless. My heart turned against
mankind with this last drop in a bitter cup, and,
unfitted for quiet life, I looked around for some
channel of desperate adventure. But my daughter
was the perpetual obstacle. What to do with her?
She had neither the manners nor the education of a
lady, and to leave her a servant was impossible. I
started with her for the West, with the vague
design of joining some tribe of Indians, and chance
and want have thrown me into the only mode of
life on earth that could now be palatable to me.”
“Is it not lonely,” I asked, “after your stirring
adventures?”
“Lonely! If you knew the delight with which I
live in the wilderness, with a circle of fire to shut
out the world! The labour is hard it is true, but I
need it, to sleep and forget. There is no way else
in which I could seclude my daughter. Till lately,
she has been contented, too. We live a month
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together in one place—the centre like this of a burning
wood. I can bear hardship, but I love a high
temperature—the climate of the tropics—and I have
it here. For weeks I forget that it is winter, tending
my fires and living on the game I have stored
up. There is a hollow or a brook—a bed or a
cave, in every wood, where the cool air, as here,
sinks to the bottom, and there I can put up my
shanty, secure from all intrusion—but such as I
bring upon myself.”
The look he gave to the uprooted ash and the
sleeper beneath it, made an apology for this last
clause unnecessary. He thought not of me.
“Some months since,” continued the Picker and
Piler, in a voice husky with suppressed feeling, “I
met the villain who sleeps yonder, accidentally, as I
met you. He is the owner of this land. After
engaging to clear and burn it, I invited him, as I
did yourself, from a momentary fever for company
which sometimes comes over the solitary, to go
with me to the fallow I was clearing. He loitered
in the neighborhood a while, under pretext of hunting,
and twice on my return from the village, I
found that my daughter had seen him. Time has
betrayed the wrong he inflicted on me.
The voice of the agitated father sank almost to
a whisper as he pronounced the last few words,
and, rising from the rock on which we were sitting,
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he paced for a few minutes up and down the platform
in silence.
The reader must fill up from his own imagination
the drama of which this is but the outline, for the
Picker and Piler was not a man to be questioned
and I can tell but what I saw and heard. In the
narration of his story he seemed but recapitulating
the prominent events for his own self-converse
rather than attempting to tell a tale to me, and it
was hurried over as brokenly and briefly as I have
put it down. I sat in a listening attitude after he
concluded, but he seemed to have unburthened his
bosom sufficiently, and his lips were closed with
stern compression.
“You forget,” he said, after pacing a while, “that
I offered you a place to sleep. The night wears
late. Stretch yourself on that straw, with your
cloak over you. Good night!”
I lay down and looked up at the smoke rolling
heavily into the sky till I slept.
I awoke, feeling chilled, for the rock sheltered me
from the rays of the fire. I stepped out from the
hollow. The fires were pale with the gray of the
morning, and the sky was visible through the smoke.
I looked around for a place to warm myself.
The hickory log had smouldered out, but a fire
had been kindled under the overblown pine, and
its pitchy heart was now flowing with the steady
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brilliancy of a torch. I took up one of its broken
branches, cracked it on my knee, and stirring up
the coals below, soon sent up a merry blaze, which
enveloped the whole trunk.
Turning my back to the increasing heat, I
started, for, creeping towards me, with a look of
eagerness for which I was at a loss to account,
came the Picker and Piler.
“Twice doomed!” he muttered between his
teeth, “but not by me!”
He threw down a handful of pitch pine knots,
laid his axe against a burning tree, and with a
branch of hemlock, swept off the flame from the
spot where the fire was eating through, as if to see
how nearly it was divided.
I began to think him insane, for I could get no
answer to my questions, and when he spoke, it was
half audible, and with his eyes turned from me
fixedly. I looked in the same direction, but could
see nothing remarkable. The seducer slept soundly
beneath his matted wall, and the rude door of the
shanty was behind us. Leaving him to see phantoms
in the air, as I thought, I turned my eyes to
the drips of the waterfall, and was absorbed in
memories of my own, when I saw the girl steal
from the shanty, and with one bound overleap the
rocky barrier of the platform. I laid my hand on
the shoulder of my host, and pointed after her, as
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with stealthy pace looking back occasionally to the
hut, where she evidently thought her father slept,
she crept round toward her lover.
“He dies!” cried the infuriated man; but as he
jumped from me to seize his axe, the girl crouched
out of sight, and my own first thought was to
awake the sleeper. I made two bounds and looked
back, for I heard no footstep.
“Stand clear!” shouted a voice of almost super-natural
shrillness! and as I caught sight of the
Picker and Piler standing enveloped in smoke upon
the bnrning tree, with his axe high in the air, the
trnth flashed on me.
Down came the axe into the very heart of the
pitchy flame, and trembling with the tremendous
smoke, the trunk slowly bent upwards from the fire.
The Picker and Piler sprang clear, the overborne
ash creaked and heaved, and with a sick giddiness
in my eyes, I look at the unwarned sleeper.
One half of the dissevered pine fell to the earth,
and the shock startled him from his sleep. A
whole age seemed to me elapsing while the other
rose with the slow lift of the ash. As it slid heavily
away, the vigorous tree righted, like a giant
springing to his feet. I saw the root pin the hand
of the seducer to the earth—a struggle—a contortion
and the leafless and waving top of the recovered
and upright tree rocked with its effort, and a
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long, sharp cry had gone out echoing through the
woods, and was still. I felt my brain reel.
Blanched to a livid paleness, the girl moved
about in the sickly daylight when I recovered; but
the Picker and Piler, with a clearer brow than I
had yet seen him wear, was kindling fires beneath
the remnants of the pine.
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Stratford-on-Avon. Page 267.
-- --
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-- 269 -- p416-270
“One-p'un'-five outside, sir, two pun' in.”
[figure description] Page 269.[end figure description]
It was a bright, calm afternoon in September,
promising nothing but a morrow of sunshine and
autumn, when I stepped in at the “White-Horse
cellar,” in Piccadilly, to take my place in the
Tantivy coach for Stratford-on-Avon. Preferring
the outside of the coach, at least by as much
as the difference in the prices, and accustomed from
long habit to pay dearest for that which most
pleased me, I wrote myself down for the outside,
and deposited my two pound in the horny palm of
the old ex-coachman, retired from the box, and
playing clerk in this dingy den of parcels and portmanteaus.
Supposing my buisness concluded, I
stood a minute speculating on the weather-beaten,
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cramp-handed old Jehu before me, and trying to
reconcile his ideas of “retirement from office”
with those of his almost next door neighbour, the
hero of Strathfieldsaye. He was at least as “soft
a gentleman” to look at as the duke; but compare
his crammed and noisesome cellar with the lordly
parks and spacious domains of a king's bounty!
Yet for the mere courage of the man, there are
exigencies in the life of a coachman that require as
much as might have served his grace at Waterloo.
The broad rimmed beaver set knowingly on the
ex-Jehu's forehead, forebade a comparison between
their sculls.
I had mounted the first stair toward daylight,
when a touch on the shoulder with the end of a
long whip—a technical “reminder,” which probably
came easier to the old driver than the phrasing
of a sentence to a “gemman”--recalled me to the
cellar.
“Fifteen shillin', sir,” said he laconically, pointing
with the same expressive exponent of his profession
to the change for my out side place, which I had
left lying on the counter.
“You are at least as honest as the duke,” I soliloquized,
as I pocketed the six bright and substantial
half-crowns, “and if a long life of honesty and
courage are to be rewarded but with a seat in a
gloomy cellar, while the addition of brain-work to
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these is paid with the princely possessions of a
duke, there is a mistake somewhere in the scale of
merit.”
I was at the White-Horse cellar again the following
morning at six, promising myself with great
sincerity never to rely again on the constancy of
an English sky. It rained in torrents. The four
inside places were all taken, and with twelve
fellow-outsides, I mounted to the wet seat, and
begging a little straw by way of cushion from the
ostler, spread my umbrella, abandoned my knees
with a single effort of mind to the drippings of the
driver's weather- proof upper Benjamin, and away
we sped. I was “due” at the house of a hospitable
old Catholic Baronet, a hundred and two miles
from London, at the dinner-hour of that day, and
to wait till it had done raining in England, is to
expect the millenium.
London in the morning—I mean the poor man's
morning, daylight—is to me matter for the most
speculative and intense melancholy. Hyde Park
in the sunshine of a bright afternoon, glittering with
equipages and gay with the Aladdin splendours of
rank and wealth, is a scene which sends the mercurial
qualities of the blood trippingly through the
veins. But Hyde Park at daylight seen from
Piccadilly through fog and rain, is perhaps, of all
contrasts, to one who has frequented it in its bright
-- 272 --
[figure description] Page 272.[end figure description]
hours, the most dispiriting and dreary. To remember
that, behind the barricaded and wet windows
of Apsley House, sleeps the hero of Waterloo; that
within the dripping and close-shuttered balcony
visible beyond, slumbers and dreams in her splendid
beauty the gifted woman, to whom Moore has
swung his censer of glorious incense, whom Byron
has sought, whom all the genius of England gathers
about and acknowledges supreme over minds
like her own—that under these crowded and fogwrapped
houses lie in their dim chambers, breathing
of perfume and luxury, the high-born and nobly-moulded
creatures who preserve for the aristocracy
of England the palm of the world's beauty—
to remember this, and a thousand other associations
linked with the spot, is not at all to diminish,
but rather to deepen the melancholy of the picture.
Why is it that the deserted stage of a theatre,
the echo of an empty ball-room, the loneliness of a
frequented promenade in untimely hours—any
scene, in short, of gayety gone by but remembered--oppresses
and dissatisfies the heart! One
would think memory should re-brighten and repopulate
such places.
The wheels hissed through the shallow pools in
the Macadam road, the regular pattering of the
small hoofs in the wet carriage-tracks maintained
its quick and monotomous beat on the ear; the
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silent driver kept his eye on the traces, and “reminded”
now and then with but the weight of his silk
snapper a lagging wheeler or leader, and the
complicated but compact machine of which the
square foot that I occupied had been so nicely
calculated, sped on its ten miles in the hour with
the steadfastness of a star in its orbit, and as independent
of clouds and rain.
“Est ce que monsieur parle François?” asked
at the end of the first stage my right-hand neighbour,
a little gentleman, of whom I had hitherto
only remarked that he was holding on to the iron
railing of the seat with great tenacity.
Having admited in an evil moment that I had
been in France, I was first distinctly made to
understand that my neighbour was on his way to
Birmingham purely for pleasure, and without the
most distant object of business—a point on which
he insisted so long, and recurred to so often, that
he succeeded at last in persuading me that he was
doubtless a candidate for the French clerkship of
some exporter of buttons. After listening to an
amusing dissertation on the rashness of committing
one's life to an English stage-coach, with scarce
room enough for the perch of a parrot, and a
velocity so diablement dangereux, I tired of my
Frenchman; and, since I could not have my own
thoughts in peace, opened a conversation with a
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straw-bonnet and shawl on my left—the property, I
soon discovered, of a very smart lady's maid, very
indignant at having been made to change places
with Master George, who, with his mother and her
mistress, were dry and comfortable inside. She
“would not have minded the outside place,” she
said, “for there were sometimes very agreeable
gentlemen on the outside, very!—but she had been
promised to go inside, and had dressed accordingly;
and it was very provoking to spoil a nice new
shawl and best bonnet, just because a great school-boy,
that had nothing on that would damage, chose
not to ride in the rain.”
“Very provoking, indeed!” I responded, letting
in the rain upon myself unconsciously, in extending
my umbrella forward so as to protect her on the
side of the wind.
“We should have gone down in the carriage
sir,” she continued, edging a little closer to get the
full advantage of my umbrella; “but John the
coachman has got the hinfluenzy, and my missis
won't be driven by no other coachman; she's as
obstinate as a mule, sir. And that isn't all I could
tell, sir; but I scorns to hurt the character of one of
my own sex.” And the pretty Abigal pursed up
her red lips, and looked determined not to destroy
her mistress's character—unless particularly requested.
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-- 276 --
I detest what may be called a proper road-book—
even would it be less absurd than it is to write
one on a country so well conned as England.
I shall say nothing therefore of Marlow, which
looked the picture of rural lovliness though seen
through fog, nor of Oxford, of which all I remember
is that I dined there with my teeth chattering,
and my knees saturated with rain. All England is
lovely to the wild eye of an American unused to
high cultivation; and though my enthusiasm was
somewhat damp, I arrived at the bridge over the
Avon, blessing England sufficiently for its beauty,
and much more for the speed of its coaches.
The Avon, above and below the bridge, ran
brightly along between low banks, half ward, half
meadow; and on the other side lay the native town
of the immortal — a gay cheerful-look
ing village, narrowing in the centre to a closely
built street, across which swung, broad and fair,
the sign of the Red Horse. More ambitious hotels
lay beyond, and broader streets; but while Washington
Irving is remembered, (and that will be,
while the language lasts,) the quiet inn in which the
great Geoffrey thought and wrote of Shakespeare,
wil be the altar of the pilgrim's devotions.
My baggage was set down, the coachman and
guard tiped their hats for a shilling, and, chilled to
the bone, I raised my hat instinctively to the courtesy
[figure description] Page 276.[end figure description]
tesy of a slender gentlewoman in black, who, by
the keys at her girdle, should be the landlady.
Having expected to see a rosy little Mrs. Boniface,
with a brown pinafore and worsted mittens, I made
up my mind at once that the inn had changed
mistresses. On the right of the old-fashioned
entrance blazed cheerily the kitchen fire, and with
my enthusiasm rather dashed by my disappointment,
I stepped in to make friends with the cook,
and get a little warmth and information.
“So your old mistress is dead, Mrs. Cook,” said
I, rubbing my hands with great satisfaction between
the fire and a well-roasted chicken.
“Lauk, sir, no, she isn't!” answered the rosy lass,
pointing with a dredging-box to the same respectable
lady in black who was just entering to look
after me.
“I beg pardon, sir,” she said, dropping a courtesy;
“but are you the gentleman expected by Sir
Charles—?”
“Yes, madam! And can you tell me anything
of your predecessor who had the inn in the days of
Washington Irving?”
She dropped another courtesy, and drew up her
thin person to its full height, while a smile of gratified
vanity stole out at the corners of her mouth.
“The carriage has been waiting some time for
you, sir,” she said, with a softer tone than that in
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which she had hitherto addressed me; and you
will scarce be at C—in time for dinner. You
will be coming over to-morrow or the day after
perhaps, sir; and then, if you would honor my little
room by taking a cup of tea with me, I should be
pleased to tell you all about it, sir.”
I remembered a promise I had nearly forgotten,
that I would reserve my visit to Stratford till I
could be accompanied by Miss J. P—, whom I
was to have the honor of meeting at my place of
destination, and promising an early acceptance of
the kind landlady's invitation, I hurried on to my
appointment over the fertile hills of Warwickshire.
I was established in one of those old Elizabethan
country houses, which, with their vast parks, their
self-sufficing resources of subsistence and company,
and the absolute deference shown on all sides to
the lord of the manor, give one the impression
rather of a little kingdom with a castle in its heart,
than of an abode for a gentleman subject. The
house itself (called like most houses of this size and
consequence in Warwickshire, a “Court,”) was a
Gothic, half castellated square, with four round
towers, and innumerable embrasures and windows;
two wings in front, probably more modern than the
body of the house, and again two long wings
extending to the rear, at right angles, and enclosing
a flowery and formal parterre. There had been a
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trench about it, now filled up, and at a short distance
from the house stood a polyangular and massive
structure, well calculated for defence, and intended
as a stronghold for the retreat of the family and tenants
in more troubled times. One of these rear
wings enclosed a Catholic chapel, for the worship
of the baronet and those of his tenants who professed
the same faith; while on the northern side, between
the house and the garden, stood a large Protestant
stone church, with a turret and spire, both chapel
and church, with their clergyman and priest, dependent
on the estate, and equally favoured by the
liberal and high-minded baronet. The tenantry
formed two considerable congregations, and lived
and worshipped side by side, with the most perfect
harmony—an instance of real Christianity, in my
opinion, which the angels of heaven might come
down to see. A lovely rural graveyard for the
lord and his tenants, and a secluded lake below the
garden, in which hundreds of wild duck swan and
screamed unmolested, completed the outward features
of C—Court.
There are noble houses in England, with a door
communicating from the dining-room to the stables,
that the master and his friends may see their favourites,
after dinner, without exposure to the
weather. In the place of this rather bizarre luxury,
the oak pannelled and spacious dining-hall of C—
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is on a level with the organ loft of the chapel, and
when the cloth is removed, the large door between
is thrown open, and the noble instrument pours the
rich and thrilling music of vespers through the
rooms. When the service is concluded, and the
lights on the altar extinguished, the blind organist
(an accomplished musician, and a tenant on the
estate) continues his voluntaries in the dark until
the hall-door informs him of the retreat of the
company to the drawing-room. There is not only
refinement and luxury in this beautiful arrangement,
but food for the soul and heart.
I chose my room from among the endless vacant
but equally luxurious chambers of the rambling old
house; my preference solely directed by the portrait
of a nun, one of the family in ages gone by—a
picture full of melancholy beauty, which hung
opposite the window. The face was distinguished
by all that in England marks the gentlewoman of
ancient and pure descent; and while it was a
woman with the more tender qualites of her sex
breathing through her features, it was still a lofty
and sainted sister, true to her cross, and sincere in
her vows and seclusion. It was the work of a
master, probably Vandyke, and a picture in which
the most solitary man would find company and
communion. On the other walls, and in most of
the other rooms and corridors were distributed
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portraits of the gentleman and soldiers of the family,
most of them bearing some resemblance to the
nun, but differing, as brothers in those wild times
may be supposed to have differed, from the gentle
creatures of the same blood, nursed in the privacy
of peace.
One of the first visits in the neighbourhood was
naturally to Stratford-on-Avon. It lay some ten
miles south of us, and I drove down, with that distinguished
literary friend I have before mentioned,
in the carriage of our kind host, securing, by the
presence of his servants and equippage, a degree of
respect and attention which would not have been
accorded to us in our simple character of travellers.
The prim mistress of the Red Lion, in her close
black bonnet and widow's weeds, received us at
the door with a deeper courtesy than usual, and a
smile of less wintry formality; and proposing to
dine at the inn, and “suck the brain” of the hostess
more at our leisure, we started immediately for the
house of the wool-comber—the birthplace of Shakspeare.
Stratford should have been forbidden ground to
builders, masons, shopkeepers, and generally to all
people of thrift and whitewash. It is now rather
a smart town, with gay calicoes, shawls of the last
pattern, hardware, and millinery, exhibited in all
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their splendour down the widened and newer
streets; and though here and there remains a glorious
old gloomy and inconvenient abode, which
looks as if Shakspeare might have taken shelter
under its eaves, the gayer features of the town
have the best of it, and flaunt their gaudy and
unrespected newness in the very windows of that
immortal birthplace. I stepped into a shop to
inquire the way to it.
“Shiksper's' ouse, sir? Yes, sir!” said a drapper
clerk, with his hair astonished into the most
impossible directions by force of brushing; “keep
to the right, sir! Shiksper lived in the white 'ouse,
sir—the 'ouse, you see beyond, with the windy
swung up, sir.”
A low, old-fashioned house, with a window suspended
on a hinge, newly whitewashed and scrubbed,
stood a little up the street. A sign over the
door informed us in an inflated paragraph, that the
immortal Will Shakspeare was born under this
roof, and that an old woman within would show it
to us for a consideration. It had been used until
very lately, I had been told, for a butcher's shop.
A “garrulous old lady” met us at the bottom of
the narrow stair leading to the second floor, and
began—not to say anything of Shakspeare—but to
show us the names of Byron, Moore, Rogers, etc.,
written among thousands of others on the wall!
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She had worn out Shakspeare! She had told that
story till she was tired of it! or (what perhaps is
more probable) most people who go there fall to
reading the names of the visiters so industriously,
that she has grown to think some of Shakspeare's
pilgrims greater than Shakspeare.
“Was this old oaken chest here in the days of
Shakspeare, madam,” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” and here's the name of Byron—here
with a capital B. Here's a curiosity, sir.”
“And this small wooden box?”
“Made of Shakspeare's mulberry, sir. I had
sich a time about that box, sir. Two young gemman
were here the other day—just run up while
the coach was changing horses, to see the house.
As soon as they were gone I misses the box. Off
scuds my son to the Red Lion, and there they sat
on the top looking as innocent as may be. “Stop
the coach,” says my son. “What do you want,”
says the driver. “My mother's mulberry box?—
Shakspeare's mulberry box!—One of them 'ere
young men's got it in his pocket.” And true
enough, sir, one on 'em had the imperence to take
it out of his pocket and flings it into my son's
face; and you know the coach never stops a minnit
for nothing, sir, or he'd a' smarted for it.”
Spirit of Shakspeare! dost thou not sometimes
walk alone in this humble chamber! Must one's
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[figure description] Page 283.[end figure description]
inmost soul be fretted and frighted always from its
devotion by an abominable old woman? Why
should not such lucrative occupations be given in
charity to the deaf and dumb? The pointing of a
finger were enough in such spots of earth!
I sat down in despair to look over the book of
visiters, trusting that she would tire of my inattention.
As it was of no use to point out names to
those who would not look, however, she commenced
a long story of an American, who had lately
taken the whim to sleep in Shakspeare's birth-chamber.
She had shaken him down a bed on
the floor, and he had passed the night there. It
seemed to bother her to comprehend why two-thirds
of her visiters should be Americans—a circumstance
that was abundantly proved by the
books.
It was only when we were fairly in the street
that I began to realize that I had seen one of the
most glorious altars of memory—that deathless Will
Shakspeare, the mortal, who was, perhaps, (not to
speak profanely) next to his Maker, in the divine
faculty of creation, first saw the light through the
low lattice on which we turned back to look.
The single window of the room in which Scott
died at Abottsford, and this in the birth-chamber
of Shakspeare, have seemed to me almost marked
with the touch of the fire of those great souls—for I
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[figure description] Page 284.[end figure description]
think we have an instinct which tells us on the spot
where mighty spirits have come or gone, that they
came and went with the light of heaven.
We walked down the street to see the house
where Shakspeare lived on his return to Stratford.
It stands at the corner of a lane, not far
from the church were he was buried, and is a newish
un-Shaksperian looking place—no doubt, if it
be indeed the same house, most profanely and considerably
altered. The present proprietor or occupant
of the house or site, took upon himself some
time since the odium of cutting down the famous mulberry
tree planted by the poet's hand in the garden.
I forgot to mention in the beginning of these notes
that two or three miles before coming to Stratford,
we passed through Shottery, where Anne
Hathaway lived. A nephew of the excellent baronet
whose guests we were, occupies the house.
I looked up and down the green lanes about it, and
glanced my eye round upon the hills over which
the sun has continued to set and the moon to ride
in her love-inspiring beauty ever since. There
were doubtless outlines in the landscape which had
been followed by the eye of Shakspeare when coming,
a trembling lover, to Shottery—doubtless, teints
in the sky, crops on the fields, smoke-wreaths from
the old homesteads on the hill-sides, which are little
altered now. How daringly the imagination plucks
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[figure description] Page 285.[end figure description]
back the past in such places! How boldly we ask
of fancy and probability the thousand questions we
would put, if we might, to the magic mirror of
Agrippa? Did that great mortal love timidly, like
ourselves? Was the passionate outpouring of his
heart simple, and suited to the humble condition of
Anne Hatha way, or was it the first fiery coinage of
Romco and Othello? Did she know the immortal
honour and light poured upon woman by the love
of genius? Did she know how this common and
oftenest terrestrial passion becomes fused in the
poet's bosom with celestial fire, and, in its wondrous
elevation and purity, ascends lambently and
musically to the very stars! Did she coy it with
him? Was she a woman to him, as commoner
mortals find woman—capricious, tender, cruel,
intoxicating, cold—everything by changes impossible
to calculate or foresee! Did he walk home to
Stratford, sometimes, despairing in perfect sickheartedness
of her affection, and was he recalled
by a message or a lover's instinct to find her weeping
and passionately repentant?
How natural it is by such questions and speculations
to betray our innate desire to bring the lofty
spirits of our common mould to our own inward
level—to seek analogies between our affections, passions,
appetites and theirs—to wish they might have
been no more exalted, no more fervent, no more
-- 286 --
[figure description] Page 286.[end figure description]
worthy of the adorable love of woman than ourselves!
The same temper that prompts the depreciation,
the envy, the hatred exercised toward the
poet in his lifetime, mingles, not inconsiderably, in
the researches so industriously prosecuted after his
death into his youth and history. To be admired
in this world, and much more to be beloved for
higher qualites than his fellow-men, ensures to
genius not only to be persecuted in life, but to be
ferretted out with all his frailties and imperfections
from the grave.
The church in which Shakspeare is buried stands
near the banks of the Avon, and is a most picturesque
and proper place of repose for his ashes.
An avenue of small trees and vines, ingeniously
over-laced, extends from the street to the principal
door, and the interior is broken up into that confused
and accidental medley of tombs, pews, cross-lights,
and pillars, for which the old churches of
England are remarkable. The tomb and effigy of
the great poet, lie in an inner chapel, and are as
described in every traveller's book. I will not
take up room with the repetition.
It gives one an odd feeling to see the tomb of his
wife and daughter beside him. One does not realize
before, that Shakspeare had wife, children,
kinsmen, like other men—that there were those
who had a right to lie in the same tomb; to whom
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[figure description] Page 287.[end figure description]
he owed the charites of life; whom he may have
benefitted or offended; who may have influenced
materially his destiny, or he theirs; who were the
inheritors of his household goods, his wardrobe,
his books—people who looked on him—on Shakspeare—
as a landholder, a renter of a pew, a townsman;
a relative, in short, who had claims upon
them, not for the eternal homage due to celestial
inspiration, but for the charity of shelter and bread
had he been poor, for kindness and ministry had he
been sick, for burial and the tears of natural affection
when he died. It is painful and embarrassing to the
mind to go to Stratford—to reconcile the immortality
and the incomprehensible power of genius like
Shakspeare's, with the space, tenement and circumstance
of a man! The poet should be like the
sea-bird, seen only on the wing—his birth, his slumber
and his death mysteries alike.
I had stipulated with the hostess that my baggage
should be put into the chamber occupied by
Washington Irving. I was shown into it to dress
for dinner—a small, neat room, a perfect specimen
in short of an English bed-room, with snow-white
curtains, a looking glass the size of the face, a well-polished
grate and poker, a well fitted carpet, and
as much light as heaven permits to the climate.
Our dinner for two was served in a neat parlor
on the same floor—an English inn dinner—simple,
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[figure description] Page 288.[end figure description]
neat and comfortable in the sense of that word
unknown in other countries. There was just fire
enough in the grate, just enough for two in the
different dishes, a servant who was just enough in
the room, and just civil enough—in short, it was,
like every thing else in that country of adaptation
and fitness, just what was ordered and wanted, and
no more.
The evening turned out stormy, and the rain
pattered merrily against the windows. The shutters
were closed, the fire blazed up with new
brightness, the well fitted wax-lights were set on
the table, and when the dishes were removed, we
replaced the wine with a tea-tray, and sent for the
hostess to give us her company and a little gossip
over our cups.
Nothing could be more nicely understood and
defined than the manner of English hostesses
generally in such situations, and of Mrs. Gardiner
particularly in this. Respectful without servility,
perfectly sure of the propriety of her own manner
and mode of expression, yet preserving in every look
and word the proper distinction between herself
and her guests, she ensured from them that kindness
and ease of communication which would make a
long evening of social conversation pass not only
without embarrassment on either side, but with
mutual pleasure and gratification.
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“I have brought up, mem,” she said, producing
a well-polished poker from under her black apron
before she took the chair set for her at the table, “I
have brought up a relic for you to see that no
money would buy from me.”
She turned it over in my hand, and I read on one
of the flat sides at the bottom, “GEOFFREY CRAYON'S
SCEPTRE.”
“Do you remember Mr. Irving,” asked my
friend, “or have you supposed, since reading his
sketch of Stratford-on-Avon, that the gentleman in
number three might be the person?”
The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the
expression of a person about to compliment herself
stole into the corners of her mouth.
“Why, you see, mem, I am very much in the
habit of observing my guests, and I think I may
say I knows a super or gentleman when I sees him.
“If you remember, mem,” (and she took down
from the mantlepiece a much worn copy of the
Sketch-Book,) Geoffery Crayon tells the circumstance
of my stepping in when it was getting late
and asking if he had rung. I knows it by that,
and then the gentleman I mean was an American,
and I think, mem. besides,” (and she hesitated a
little as if she was about to advance an original
and rather ventursome opinion,) “I think I can see
that gentleman's likeness all through this book.”
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A truer remark or a more just criticism was
perhaps never made on the Sketch-Book. We
smiled, and Mrs. Gardiner proceded:
“I was in and out of the coffee-room the night he
arrived, mem, and I sees directly by his modest
ways and timid look that he was a gentleman, and
not fit company for the other travellers. They
were all young men, sir, and business travellers, and
you know, mem, ignorance takes the advantage of
modest merit, and after their dinner they were very
noisy and rude. So, I says to Sarah, the chambermaid,
says I, that nice gentleman can't get near the
fire, and you go and light a fire in number three
and he shall sit alone, and it shan't cost him nothing,
for I like the look on him, Well, mem, he seemed
pleased to be alone, and after his tea, he puts his
legs up over the grate, and there he sits with the
poker in his hand till ten o'clock. The other
travellers went to bed, and at last the house was
as still as midnight, all but a poke in the grate now
and then in number three, and every time I heard
it I jumped up and lit a bed-candle, for I was
getting very sleepy, and I hoped he was getting
up to ring for a light,. Well, mem. I nodded and
nodded, and still no ring at the bell. At last I
says to Sarah, says I, go into number three and
upset something, for I am sure that gentleman has
fallen asleep. `La,' ma'am,' says Sarah, `I don't
-- 291 --
[figure description] Page 291.[end figure description]
dare. Well, then, says I, I'll go. So I opens
the door, and I says, `If you please sir, did you
ring'—little thinking that question would ever be
written down in such a beautiful book, mem. He
sat with his feet on the fender poking the fire, and
a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought
was in his mind. `No, ma'am,' says he, `I did not.'
I shuts the door, and sits down again, for I hadn't
the heart to tell him that it was late, for he was a
gentleman not to speak rudely to, mem. Well, it
was past twelve o'clock, when the bell did ring.
`There,' says I to Sarah,' thank heaven he has done
thinking, and we can go to bed.' So he walked up
stairs with his light, and the next morning he was
up early and off to the Shakspeare house, and he
brings me home a box of the mulberry tree, and
asks me if I thought it was genuine, and said it was
for his mother in America. And I loved him still
more for that, and I'm sure I prayed she might live
to see him return.”
“I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner; but how soon
after did you set aside the poker.”
“Why, sir, you see there's a Mr. Vincent that
comes here sometimes, and he says to me one day,
`So, Mrs. Gardiner, you're finely immortalized,
Read that.' So the minnit I read it, I remembered
who it was and all about it, and I runs and gets
the number three poker, and locks it up safe and
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[figure description] Page 292.[end figure description]
sound, and by and by I sends it to Brummagem,
and has his name engraved on it, and here you see
it, sir, and I would't take no money for it.”
I had never the honor to meet or know Mr. Irving,
and I evidently lost ground with the hostess of the
Red Horse for that misfortune. I delighted her,
however, with the account which I had seen in a
late newspaper, of his having shot a buffalo in the
praries of the west, and she soon courtesied herself
out and left me to the delightful society of the distinguished
lady who had accompanied me. Among
all my many loiterings in many lands, I remember
none more intellectually pure and gratifying, than
this at Stratford-on-Avon. My sleep, in the little
bed consecrated by the slumbers of the immortal
Geoffery, was sweet and light, and I write myself
his debtor far a large share of the pleasure which
genius like his lavishes on the world.
-- 293 -- p416-294
Charlecote. Page 293.
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Oncr more posting through Shottery and Stratford-on-Avon,
on the road to Kenilworth and Warwick,
I felt a pleasure in becoming an habitué in
Shakspeare's town—in being recognized by the
Stratford post-boys, known at the Stratford Inn,
and remembered at the toll-gates. It is pleasant to
be welcomed by name any where; but at Stratford-on-Avon,
it is a recognition by those whose fathers
or predecessors were the companions of Shakspeare's
frolics. Every fellow in a slouched hat—
every idler on a tavern bench—every saunterer
with a dog at his heels on the highway, should be a
deer-stealer from Charlecote. You would almost ask
him, “Was Will Shakspeare with you last night?”
The Lucys still live at Charlecote, immortalized
by a varlet poacher who was tried before old Sir
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Thomas for stealing a buck. They have drawn an
apology from Walter Savage Landor for making
too free with the family history, under cover of an
imaginary account of the trial. I thought, as we
drove along in sight of the fine old hall, with its broad
park and majestic trees—(very much as it stood in
the days of Sir Thomas, I believe)—that most probably
the descendants of the old justice look even
now upon Shakspeare more as an offender against
the game-laws, than as a writer of immortal plays.
I venture to say, it would be bad tact in a visiter to
Charlecote to felicitate the family on the honour of
possessing a park in which Shakspeare had stolen
deer—to show more interest in seeing the hall in
which he was tried, than in the family portraits.
On the road which I was travelling, (from Stratford
to Charlecote,) Shakspeare had been dragged
as a culprit. What were his feelings before Sir
Thomas! He felt, doubtless, as every possessor of
the divine fire of genius must feel, when brought
rudely in contact with his fellow-men, that he was
too much their superior to be angry. The humour
in which he has drawn Justice Shallow, proves
abundantly that he was more amused than displeased
with his own trial. But was there no vexation
at the moment? A reflection, it might be, from the
estimate of his position in the minds of those who
were about him—who looked on him simply as a
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[figure description] Page 297.[end figure description]
stealer of so much venison. Did he care for Anne
Hathaway's opinion, then?
How little did Sir Thomas Lucy understand the
relation between judge and culprit on that trial!—
How littld did he dream he was sitting for his picture
to the pestilent varlet at the bar; that the
deer-stealer could better afford to forgive him, that
he the deer-stealer. Genius forgives, or rather forgets,
all wrongs done in ignorance of its immortal
presence. Had Ben Johnson made a wilful jest on
a line in his new play, it would have rankled longer
than fine and imprisonment for deer-stealing. Those
who crowd back and trample upon men of genius
in the common walk of life; who cheat them, misrepresent
them, take advantage of their inattention
or their generosity in worldly matters, are sometimes
surprised how their injuries, if not themselves,
are forgotten. Old Adam Woodcock might as well
have held malice against Roland Græme for the
stab in the stuffed doublet of the Abbot of Misrule.
Yet, as I might have remarked in the paragraph
gone before, it is probably not easy to put conscious
and secret superiority entirely between the mind
and the opinions of those around who think differently.
It is one reason why men of genius love
more than the common share of solitude—to recover
self-respect. In the midst of the amusing travesty
he was drawing in his own mind of the grave scene
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[figure description] Page 298.[end figure description]
about him, Shakspeare possibly felt at moments as
like a detected culprit as he seemed to the game-keeper
and the justice. It is a small penalty to pay
for the after worship of the world! The ragged and
proverbially ill-dressed peasants who are selected
from the whole campagna, as models to the sculptors
of Rome, care little what is thought of their
good looks in the Corso. The disguised proportions
beneath their rags will be admired in deathless marble,
when the noble who scarce deigns their possessor
a look, will lie in forgotten dust under his stone
scutcheon.
Were it not for the “out-heroded” descriptions
in the Guide-Books, one might say a great deal of
Warwick Castle. It is the quality of over-done
or ill-expressed enthusiasm, to silence that which is
more rational and real. Warwick is, perhaps, the
best kept of all the famous old castles of England.
It is superb and admirably appointed modern dwelling,
in the shell, and with all the means and appliances
preserved, of an ancient strong-hold. It is a
curious union, too. My lady's maid and my lord's
valet, coquet upon the bartizan, where old Guy of
Warwick stalked in his coat of mail. The London
cockney, from his two days watering at Leamington,
stops his poney-chaise, hired at half-a-crown
the hour, and walks Mrs. Popkins over the old
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draw-bridge as peacefully, as if it were the threshold
of his shop in the Strand. Scot and Frenchman
saunter through fosse and tower, and no ghost of
the middle ages stalks forth, with closed visor, to
challenge these once natural foes. The powdered
butler yawns through an embrazure, expecting
“miladi,” the countess of this fair domain, who in
one day's posting from London, seeks relief in Warwick
Castle from the routs and soirées of town.
What would old Guy say, or the “noble imp” whose
effigy is among the escutcheoned tombs of his fathers,
if they could rise through their marble slabs,
and be whirled over the drawbridge in a post-chaise?
How indignantly they would listen to the
reckoning within their own portcullis, of the rates
for chaise and postillion! How astonished they
would be at the butler's bow, and the proffered
officiousness of the valet. “Shall I draw off your
lordship's boots. Which of these new vests from
Staub will your lordship put on for dinner.
Among the pictures at Warwick, I was interested
by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, (the best of that
sovereign I ever saw;) one of Michiavelli, one of
Essex, and one of Sir Philip Sidney, The delightful
and gifted woman whom I had accompanied to
the castle, observed of the latter, that the hand alone
expressed all his character. I had often made the
remark in real life, but I had never seen an instance
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on painting where the likeness was so true. No
one could doubt, who knew Sir Philip Sidney's
character, that it was a literal portrait of his hand.
In our day, if you have an artist for a friend, he
makes use of you while you call, to “sit for the
hand” of the portrait on his easel. Having a preference
for the society of artists myself, and frequenting
their studios considerably, I know of some
hundred and fifty unsuspecting gentlemen on canvass,
who have procured for posterity and their
children, portraits of their own heads and dress-coats
to be sure, but of the hands of other persons!
The head of Machiavelli is, as is seen in the
marble in the gallery of Florence, small, slender,
and visibly “made to creep into crevices.” The
face is impassive and calm, and the lips, though
slight and almost feminine, have an indefinable
firmness and character. Essex is the bold, plain,
and blunt soldier history makes him, and Elizabeth
not unqueenly, nor (to my thinking) of an uninteresting
countenance; but, with all the artist's flattery,
ugly enough to be the abode of the murderous
envy that brought Mary to the block.
We paid our five shillings for having been
walked through the marble hall of Castle Warwick,
and the dressing-room of its modern lady, and gratified
much more by our visit than I have expressed
in this brief description, posted on to Kenilworth.
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The end
Le fin
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Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 1806-1867 [1840], Romance of travel (Samuel Colman, New York) [word count] [eaf416].
