A	>>	B	>>	C	>>	D	>>	E
F	>>	G	>>	H	>>	I	>>	J
K	>>	L	>>	M	>>	N	>>	O
P	>>	R	>>		S	>>		T
U	>>		V			>>		W

Frederic Remington - "Crooked Trails"

William Dean Howells - "Ragged Lady, Complete"

George Bernard Shaw - "The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors"

Frank Preston Stearns - "Sketches from Concord and Appledore"

Vittoria, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Vittoria, Complete




"For that reason!" Vittoria burst out.

"Oh, for that reason we pity men, assuredly, my Sandra, but not kings.
Luckless kings are not generous men, and ungenerous men are mischievous
kings."

"But if you find him chivalrous and devoted; if he proves his noble
intentions, why not support him?"

"Dandle a puppet, by all means," said Laura.

Her intellect, not her heart, was harsh to the king; and her heart was
not mistress of her intellect in this respect, because she beheld riding
forth at the head of Italy one whose spirit was too much after the
pattern of her supple, springing, cowering, impressionable sex,
alternately ardent and abject, chivalrous and treacherous, and not to be
confided in firmly when standing at the head of a great cause.

Aware that she was reading him very strictly by the letters of his past
deeds, which were not plain history to Vittoria, she declared that she
did not countenance suspicion in dealing with the king, and that it would
be a delight to her to hear of his gallant bearing on the battle-field.
"Or to witness it, my Sandra, if that were possible;--we two! For, should
he prove to be no General, he has the courage of his family."

Vittoria took fire at this. "What hinders our following the army?"

"The less baggage the better, my dear."

"But the king said that my singing--I have no right to think it myself."
Vittoria concluded her sentence with a comical intention of humility.

"It was a pretty compliment," said Laura. "You replied that singing is a
poor thing in time of war, and I agree with you. We might serve as
hospital nurses."

"Why do we not determine?"

"We are only considering possibilities."

"Consider the impossibility of our remaining quiet."

"Fire that goes to flame is a waste of heat, my Sandra."

The signora, however, was not so discreet as her speech. On all sides
there was uproar and movement. High-born Italian ladies were offering
their hands for any serviceable work. Laura and Vittoria were not alone
in the desire which was growing to be resolution to share the hardships
of the soldiers, to cherish and encourage them, and by seeing, to have
the supreme joy of feeling the blows struck at the common enemy.

The opera closed when the king marched. Carlo Ammiani's letter was handed
to Vittoria at the fall of the curtain on the last night.

Three paths were open to her: either that she should obey her lover, or
earn an immense sum of money from Antonio-Pericles by accepting an
immediate engagement in London, or go to the war. To sit in submissive
obedience seemed unreasonable; to fly from Italy impossible. Yet the
latter alternative appealed strongly to her sense of duty, and as it
thereby threw her lover's commands into the background, she left it to
her heart to struggle with Carlo, and thought over the two final
propositions. The idea of being apart from Italy while the living country
streamed forth to battle struck her inflamed spirit like the shock of a
pause in martial music. Laura pretended to take no part in Vittoria's
decision, but when it was reached, she showed her a travelling-carriage
stocked with lint and linen, wine in jars, chocolate, cases of brandy,
tea, coffee, needles, thread, twine, scissors, knives; saying, as she
displayed them, "there, my dear, all my money has gone in that equipment,
so you must pay on the road."

"This doesn't leave me a choice, then," said Victoria, joining her
humour.

"Ah, but think over it," Laura suggested.

"No! not think at all," cried Vittoria.

"You do not fear Carlo's anger?"

"If I think, I am weak as water. Let us go."

Countess d'Isorella wrote to Carlo: "Your Vittoria is away after the king
to Pavia. They tell me she stood up in her carriage on the Ponte del
Po-'Viva il Re d'Italia!' waving the cross of Savoy. As I have previously
assured you, no woman is Republican. The demonstration was a mistake.
Public characters should not let their personal preferences betrumpeted:
a diplomatic truism:--but I must add, least of all a cantatrice for a
king. The famous Greek amateur--the prop of failing finances--is after
her to arrest her for breach of engagement. You wished to discover an
independent mind in a woman, my Carlo; did you not? One would suppose her
your wife--or widow. She looked a superb thing the last night she sang.
She is not, in my opinion, wanting in height. If, behind all that
innocence and candour, she has any trained artfulness, she will beat us
all. Heaven bless your arms!"

The demonstration mentioned by the countess had not occurred.

Vittoria's letter to her lover missed him. She wrote from Pavia, after
she had taken her decisive step.

Carlo Ammiani went into the business of the war with the belief that his
betrothed had despised his prayer to her.

He was under Colonel Corte, operating on the sub-Alpine range of hills
along the line of the Chiese South-eastward. Here the volunteers, formed
of the best blood of Milan, the gay and brave young men, after marching
in the pride of their strength to hold the Alpine passes and bar Austria
from Italy while the fight went on below, were struck by a sudden
paralysis. They hung aloft there like an arm cleft from the body.
Weapons, clothes, provisions, money, the implements of war, were withheld
from them. The Piedmontese officers despatched to watch their proceedings
laughed at them like exasperating senior scholars examining the
accomplishments of a lower form. It was manifest that Count Medole and
the Government of Milan worked everywhere to conquer the people for the
king before the king had done a stroke to conquer the Austrians for the
people; while, in order to reduce them to the condition of Piedmontese
soldiery, the flame of their patriotic enthusiasm was systematically
damped, and instead of apprentices in war, who possessed at any rate the
elementary stuff of soldiers, miserable dummies were drafted into the
royal service. The Tuscans and the Romans had good reason to complain on
behalf of their princes, as had the Venetians and the Lombards for the
cause of their Republic. Neither Tuscans, Romans, Venetians, nor Lombards
were offering up their lives simply to obtain a change of rulers; though
all Italy was ready to bow in allegiance to a king of proved kingly
quality. Early in the campaign the cry of treason was muttered, and on
all sides such became the temper of the Alpine volunteers, that Angelo
and Rinaldo Guidascarpi were forced to join their cousin under Corte, by
the dispersion of their band, amounting to something more than eighteen
hundred fighting lads, whom a Piedmontese superior officer summoned
peremptorily to shout for the king. They thundered as one voice for the
Italian Republic, and instantly broke up and disbanded. This was the
folly of the young: Carlo Ammiani confessed that it was no better; but he
knew that a breath of generous confidence from the self-appointed
champion of the national cause would have subdued his impatience at
royalty and given heart and cheer to his sickening comrades. He began to
frown angrily when he thought of Vittoria. "Where is she now?--where
now?" he asked himself in the season of his most violent wrath at the
king. Her conduct grew inseparable in his mind from the king's deeds. The
sufferings, the fierce irony, the very deaths of the men surrounding him
in aims, rose up in accusation against the woman he loved.




CHAPTER XXXI

EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR

THE TREACHERY OF PERICLES--THE WHITE UMBRELLA--THE DEATH OF RINALDO
GUIDASCARPI

The king crossed the Mincio. The Marshal, threatened on his left flank,
drew in his line from the farther Veronese heights upon a narrowed battle
front before Verona. Here they manoeuvred, and the opening successes fell
to the king. Holding Peschiera begirt, with one sharp passage of arms he
cleared the right bank of the Adige and stood on the semicircle of hills,
master of the main artery into Tyrol.

The village of Pastrengo has given its name to the day. It was a day of
intense heat coming after heavy rains. The arid soil steamed; the white
powder-smoke curled in long horizontal columns across the hazy ring of
the fight. Seen from a distance it was like a huge downy ball, kicked
this way and that between the cypresses by invisible giants. A pair of
eager-eyed women gazing on a battle-field for the first time could but
ask themselves in bewilderment whether the fate of countries were verily
settled in such a fashion. Far in the rear, Vittoria and Laura heard the
cannon-shots; a sullen dull sound, as of a mallet striking upon rotten
timber. They drove at speed. The great thumps became varied by musketry
volleys, that were like blocks of rockboulder tumbled in the roll of a
mountain torrent. These, then, were the voices of Italy and Austria
speaking the devilish tongue of the final alternative. Cannon, rockets,
musketry, and now the run of drums, now the ring of bugles, now the tramp
of horses, and the field was like a landslip. A joyful bright black
death-wine seemed to pour from the bugles all about. The women strained
their senses to hear and see; they could realize nothing of a reality so
absolute; their feelings were shattered, and crowded over them in
patches;--horror, glory, panic, hope, shifted lights within their bosoms.
The fascination and repulsion of the image of Force divided them. They
feared; they were prostrate; they sprang in praise. The image of Force
was god and devil to their souls. They strove to understand why the field
was marked with blocks of men who made a plume of vapour here, and
hurried thither. The action of their intellects resolved to a blank
marvel at seeing an imminent thing--an interrogation to almighty heaven
treated with method, not with fury streaming forward. Cleave the opposing
ranks! Cry to God for fire? Cut them through! They had come to see the
Song of Deborah performed before their eyes, and they witnessed only a
battle. Blocks of infantry gathered densely, thinned to a line, wheeled
in column, marched: blocks of cavalry changed posts: artillery bellowed
from one spot and quickly selected another. Infantry advanced in the wake
of tiny smokepuffs, halted, advanced again, rattled files of shots,
became struck into knots, faced half about as from a blow of the back of
a hand, retired orderly. Cavalry curved like a flickering scimetar in
their rear; artillery plodded to its further station. Innumerable tiny
smoke-puffs then preceded a fresh advance of infantry. The enemy were on
the hills and looked mightier, for they were revealed among red flashes
of their guns, and stood partly visible above clouds of hostile smoke and
through clouds of their own, which grasped viscously by the skirts of the
hills. Yet it seemed a strife of insects, until, one by one, soldiers who
had gone into yonder white pit for the bloody kiss of death, and had got
it on their faces, were borne by Vittoria and Laura knelt in this horrid
stream of mortal anguish to give succour from their stores in the
carriage. Their natural emotions were distraught. They welcomed the sight
of suffering thankfully, for the poor blotted faces were so glad at sight
of them. Torture was their key to the reading of the battle. They gazed
on the field no longer, but let the roaring wave of combat wash up to
them what it would.

The hill behind Pastrengo was twice stormed. When the bluecoats first
fell back, a fine charge of Piedmontese horse cleared the slopes for a
second effort, and they went up and on, driving the enemy from hill to
hill. The Adige was crossed by the Austrians under cover of Tyrolese
rifleshots.

Then, with Beppo at their heels, bearing water, wine, and brandy, the
women walked in the paths of carnage, and saw the many faces of death.
Laura whispered strangely, "How light-hearted they look!" The wounded
called their comforters sweet names. Some smoked and some sang, some
groaned; all were quick to drink. Their jokes at the dead were universal.
They twisted their bodies painfully to stick a cigar between dead lips,
and besprinkle them with the last drops of liquor in their cups, laughing
a benediction. These scenes put grievous chains on Vittoria's spirit, but
Laura evidently was not the heavier for them. Glorious Verona shone under
the sunset as their own to come; Peschiera, on the blue lake, was in the
hollow of their hands. "Prizes worth any quantity of blood," said Laura.
Vittoria confessed that she had seen enough of blood, and her aspect
provoked Laura to utter, "For God's sake, think of something
miserable;--cry, if you can!"

Vittoria's underlip dropped sickly with the question, "Why?"

Laura stated the physical necessity with Italian naivete.

"If I can," said Vittoria, and blinked to get a tear; but laughter helped
as well to relieve her, and it came on their return to the carriage. They
found the spy Luigi sitting beside the driver. He informed them that
Antonio-Pericles had been in the track of the army ever since their
flight from Turin; daily hurrying off with whip of horses at the sound of
cannon-shot, and gradually stealing back to the extreme rear. This day he
had flown from Oliosi to Cavriani, and was, perhaps, retracing his way
already as before, on fearful toe-tips. Luigi acted the caution of one
who stepped blindfolded across hot iron plates. Vittoria, without a spark
of interest, asked why the Signor Antonio should be following the army.

"Why, it's to find you, signorina."

Luigi's comical emphasis conjured up in a jumbled picture the devotion,
the fury, the zeal, the terror of Antonio-Pericles--a mixture of
demoniacal energy and ludicrous trepidation. She imagined his long
figure, fantastical as a shadow, off at huge strides, and back, with eyes
sliding swiftly to the temples, and his odd serpent's head raised to peer
across the plains and occasionally to exclaim to the reasonable heavens
in anger at men and loathing of her. She laughed ungovernably. Luigi
exclaimed that, albeit in disgrace with the signor Antonio, he had been
sent for to serve him afresh, and had now been sent forward to entreat
the gracious signorina to grant her sincerest friend and adorer an
interview. She laughed at Pericles, but in truth she almost loved the man
for his worship of her Art, and representation of her dear peaceful
practice of it.

The interview between them took place at Oliosi. There, also, she met
Georgiana Ford, the half-sister of Merthyr Powys, who told her that
Merthyr and Augustus Gambier were in the ranks of a volunteer contingent
in the king's army, and might have been present at Pastrengo. Georgiana
held aloof from battle-fields, her business being simply to serve as
Merthyr's nurse in case of wounds, or to see the last of him in case of
death. She appeared to have no enthusiasm. She seconded strongly the
vehement persuasions addressed by Pericles to Vittoria. Her disapproval
of the presence of her sex on fields of battle was precise. Pericles had
followed the army to give Vittoria one last chance, he said, and drag her
away from this sick country, as he called it, pointing at the dusty land
from the windows of the inn. On first seeing her he gasped like one who
has recovered a lost thing. To Laura he was a fool; but Vittoria enjoyed
his wildest outbursts, and her half-sincere humility encouraged him to
think that he had captured her at last. He enlarged on the perils
surrounding her voice in dusty bellowing Lombardy, and on the ardour of
his friendship in exposing himself to perils as tremendous, that he might
rescue her. While speaking he pricked a lively ear for the noise of guns,
hearing a gun in everything, and jumping to the window with horrid
imprecations. His carriage was horsed at the doors below. Let the horses
die, he said, let the coachman have sun-stroke. Let hundreds perish, if
Vittoria would only start in an hour-in two--to-night--to-morrow.

"Because, do you see,"--he turned to Laura and Georgiana, submitting to
the vexatious necessity of seeming reasonable to these creatures,--"she
is a casket for one pearl. It is only one, but it is ONE, mon Dieu! and
inscrutable heaven, mesdames, has made the holder of it mad. Her voice
has but a sole skin; it is not like a body; it bleeds to death at a
scratch. A spot on the pearl, and it is perished--pfoof! Ah, cruel thing!
impious, I say. I have watched, I have reared her. Speak to me of
mothers! I have cherished her for her splendid destiny--to see it go
down, heels up, among quarrels of boobies! Yes; we have war in Italy.
Fight! Fight in this beautiful climate that you may be dominated by a
blue coat, not by a white coat. We are an intelligent race; we are a
civilized people; we will fight for that. What has a voice of the very
heavens to do with your fighting? I heard it first in England, in a
firwood, in a month of Spring, at night-time, fifteen miles and a quarter
from the city of London--oh, city of peace! Sandra you will come there. I
give you thousands additional to the sum stipulated. You have no rival.
Sandra Belloni! no rival, I say"--he invoked her in English, "and you
hear--you, to be a draggle-tail vivandiere wiz a brandy-bottle at your
hips and a reputation going like ze brandy. Ah! pardon, mesdames; but did
mankind ever see a frenzy like this girl's? Speak, Sandra. I could cry it
like Michiella to Camilla--Speak!"

Vittoria compelled him to despatch his horses to stables. He had relays
of horses at war-prices between Castiglione and Pavia, and a retinue of
servants; nor did he hesitate to inform the ladies that, before
entrusting his person to the hazards of war, he had taken care to be
provided with safe-conduct passes for both armies, as befitted a prudent
man of peace--"or sense; it is one, mesdames."

Notwithstanding his terror at the guns, and disgust at the soldiery and
the bad fare at the inn, Vittoria's presence kept him lingering in this
wretched place, though he cried continually, "I shall have
heart-disease." He believed at first that he should subdue her; then it
became his intention to carry her off.

It was to see Merthyr that she remained. Merthyr came there the day after
the engagement at Santa Lucia. They had not met since the days at Meran.
He was bronzed, and keen with strife, and looked young, but spoke not
over-hopefully. He scolded her for wishing to taste battle, and compared
her to a bad swimmer on deep shores. Pericles bounded with delight to
hear him, and said he had not supposed there was so much sense in Powys.
Merthyr confessed that the Austrians had as good as beaten them at Santa
Lucia. The tactical combinations of the Piedmontese were wretched. He was
enamoured of the gallantly of the Duke of Savoy, who had saved the right
wing of the army from rout while covering the backward movement. Why
there had been any fight at all at Santa Lucia, where nothing was to be
gained, much to be lost, he was incapable of telling; but attributed it
to an antique chivalry on the part of the king, that had prompted the
hero to a trial of strength, a bout of blood-letting.

"You do think he is a hero?" said Vittoria.

"He is; and he will march to Venice."

"And open the opera at Venice," Pericles sneered. "Powys, mon cher, cure
her of this beastly dream. It is a scandal to you to want a woman's help.
You were defeated at Santa Lucia. I say bravo to anything that brings you
to reason. Bravo! You hear me."

The engagement at Santa Lucia was designed by the king to serve as an
instigating signal for the Veronese to rise in revolt; and this was the
secret of Charles Albert's stultifying manoeuvres between Peschiera and
Mantua. Instead of matching his military skill against the wary old
Marshal's, he was offering incentives to conspiracy. Distrusting the
revolution, which was a force behind him, he placed such reliance on its
efforts in his front as to make it the pivot of his actions.

"The volunteers North-east of Vicenza are doing the real work for us, I
believe," said Merthyr; and it seemed so then, as it might have been
indeed, had they not been left almost entirely to themselves to do it.

These tidings of a fight lost set Laura and Vittoria quivering with
nervous irritation. They had been on the field of Pastrengo, and it was
won. They had been absent from Santa Lucia. What was the deduction? Not
such as reason would have made for them; but they were at the mercy of
the currents of the blood. "Let us go on," said Laura. Merthyr refused to
convoy them. Pericles drove with him an hour on the road, and returned in
glee, to find Vittoria and Laura seated in their carriage, and Luigi
scuffling with Beppo.

"Padrone, see how I assist you," cried Luigi.

Upon this Beppo instantly made a swan's neck of his body and trumpeted:
"A sally from the fortress for forage."

"Whip! whip!" Pericles shouted to his coachman, and the two carriages
parted company at the top of their speed.

Pericles fell a victim to a regiment of bersaglieri that wanted horses,
and unceremoniously stopped his pair and took possession of them on the
route for Peschiera. He was left in a stranded carriage between a dusty
ditch and a mulberry bough. Vittoria and Laura were not much luckier.
They were met by a band of deserters, who made no claim upon the horses,
but stood for drink, and having therewith fortified their fine opinion of
themselves, petitioned for money. A kiss was their next demand. Money and
good humour saved the women from indignity. The band of rascals went off
with a 'Viva l'Italia.' Such scum is upon every popular rising, as
Vittoria had to learn. Days of rain and an incomprehensible inactivity of
the royal army kept her at a miserable inn, where the walls were bare,
the cock had crowed his last. The guns of Peschiera seemed to roam over
the plain like an echo unwillingly aroused that seeks a hollow for its
further sleep. Laura sat pondering for hours, harsh in manner, as if she
hated her. "I think," she said once, "that women are those persons who
have done evil in another world:" The "why?" from Vittoria was uttered
simply to awaken friendly talk, but Laura relapsed into her gloom. A
village priest, a sleek gentle creature, who shook his head to earth when
he hoped, and filled his nostrils with snuff when he desponded, gave them
occasional companionship under the title of consolation. He wished the
Austrians to be beaten, remarking, however, that they were good
Catholics, most fervent Catholics. As the Lord decided, so it would end!
"Oh, delicious creed!" Laura broke out: "Oh, dear and sweet doctrine!
that results and developments in a world where there is more evil than
good are approved by heaven." She twisted the mild man in supple steel of
her irony so tenderly that Vittoria marvelled to hear her speak of him in
abhorrence when they quitted the village. "Not to be born a woman, and
voluntarily to be a woman!" ejaculated Laura. "How many, how many are we
to deduct from the male population of Italy? Cross in hand, he should be
at the head of our arms, not whimpering in a corner for white bread.
Wretch! he makes the marrow in my bones rage at him. He chronicled pig
that squeaked."

"Why had she been so gentle with him?"

"Because, my dear, when I loathe a thing I never care to exhaust my
detestation before I can strike it," said the true Italian.

They were on the field of Goito; it was won. It was won against odds. At
Pastrengo they witnessed an encounter; this was a battle. Vittoria
perceived that there was the difference between a symphony and a lyric
song. The blessedness of the sensation that death can be light and easy
dispossessed her of the meaner compassion, half made up of cowardice,
which she had been nearly borne down by on the field of Pastrengo. At an
angle on a height off the left wing of the royal army the face of the
battle was plain to her: the movements of the troops were clear as
strokes on a slate. Laura flung her life into her eyes, and knelt and
watched, without summing one sole thing from what her senses received.

Vittoria said, "We are too far away to understand it."

"No," said Laura, "we are too far away to feel it."

The savage soul of the woman was robbed of its share of tragic emotion by
having to hold so far aloof. Flashes of guns were but flashes of guns up
there where she knelt. She thirsted to read the things written by them;
thirsted for their mystic terrors, somewhat as souls of great prophets
have craved for the full revelation of those fitful underlights which
inspired their mouths.

Charles Albert's star was at its highest when the Piedmontese drums beat
for an advance of the whole line at Goito.

Laura stood up, white as furnace-fire. "Women can do some good by
praying," she said. She believed that she had been praying. That was her
part in the victory.

Rain fell as from the forehead of thunder. From black eve to black dawn
the women were among dead and dying men, where the lanterns trailed a
slow flame across faces that took the light and let it go. They returned
to their carriage exhausted. The ways were almost impassable for
carriage-wheels. While they were toiling on and exchanging their drenched
clothes, Vittoria heard Merthyr's voice speaking to Beppo on the box. He
was saying that Captain Gambier lay badly wounded; brandy was wanted for
him. She flung a cloak over Laura, and handed out the flask with a naked
arm. It was not till she saw him again that she remembered or even felt
that he had kissed the arm. A spot of sweet fire burned on it just where
the soft fulness of a woman's arm slopes to the bend. He chid her for
being on the field and rejoiced in a breath, for the carriage and its
contents helped to rescue his wounded brother in arms from probable
death. Gambier, wounded in thigh and ankle by rifle-shot, was placed in
the carriage. His clothes were saturated with the soil of Goito; but
wounded and wet, he smiled gaily, and talked sweet boyish English.
Merthyr gave the driver directions to wind along up the Mincio.
"Georgiana will be at the nearest village--she has an instinct for
battle-fields, or keeps spies in her pay," he said.