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Georg Ebers - "Arachne, Volume 3."

George Meredith - "Rhoda Fleming, Complete"

George Barr McCutcheon - "The Day of the Dog"

J. Alexander Gunn - "Bergson and His Philosophy"

Vittoria, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Vittoria, Complete




Pericles howled the name of his place of residence, with an offer of
lodgings in it, and was carried off writhing his body as he passed a fine
military marching band.

The figure of old Agostino Balderini stood in front of Merthyr. They
exchanged greetings. At the mention of Rome, Agostino frowned
impatiently. He spoke of Vittoria in two or three short exclamations, and
was about to speak of Carlo, but checked his tongue. "Judge for yourself.
Come, and see, and approve, if you can. Will you come? There's a meeting;
there's to be a resolution. Question--Shall we second the King of
Sardinia, Piedmont, and Savoy? If so, let us set this pumpkin, called
Milan, on its legs. I shall be an attentive listener like you, my friend.
I speak no more."

Merthyr went with him to the house of a carpenter, where in one of the
uppermost chambers communicating with the roof, Ugo Corte, Marco Sana,
Giulio Bandinelli, and others, sat waiting for the arrival of Carlo
Ammiani; when he came Carlo had to bear with the looks of mastiffs for
being late. He shook Merthyr's hand hurriedly, and as soon as the door
was fastened, began to speak. His first sentence brought a grunt of
derision from Ugo Corte. It declared that there was no hope of a rising
in Milan. Carlo swung round upon the Bergamasc. "Observe our leader,"
Agostino whispered to Merthyr; "it would be kindness to give him a duel."
More than one tumult of outcries had to be stilled before Merthyr
gathered any notion of the designs of the persons present. Bergamasc
sneered at Brescian, and both united in contempt of the Milanese, who,
having a burden on their minds, appealed at once to their individual
willingness to use the sword in vindication of Milan against its
traducers. By a great effort, Carlo got some self-mastery. He admitted,
colouring horribly, that Brescia and Bergamo were ready, and Milan was
not; therefore those noble cities (he read excerpts from letters showing
their readiness) were to take the lead, and thither on the morrow-night
he would go, let the tidings from the king's army be what they might.

Merthyr quitted the place rather impressed by his eloquence, but
unfavourably by his feverish look. Countess d'Isorella had been referred
to as one who served the cause ably and faithfully. In alluding to her,
Carlo bit his lip; he did not proceed until surrounding murmurs of
satisfaction encouraged him to continue a sort of formal eulogy of the
lady, which proved to be a defence against foregone charges, for Corte
retracted an accusation, and said that he had no fault to find with the
countess. A proposal to join the enterprise was put to Merthyr, but his
engagement with the Chief in Rome saved him from hearing much of the
marvellous facilities of the plot. "I should have wished to see you
to-night," Carlo said as they were parting. Merthyr named his hotel.
Carlo nodded. "My wife is still slightly feeble," he said.

"I regret it," Merthyr rejoined.

"She is not ill."

"No, it cannot be want of courage," Merthyr spoke at random.

"Yes, that's true," said Carlo, as vacantly. "You will see her while I am
travelling."

"I hope to find the Countess Alessandra well enough to receive me."

"Always; always," said Carlo, wishing apparently to say more. Merthyr
waited an instant, but Carlo broke into a conventional smile of adieu.

"While he is travelling," Merthyr repeated to Agostino, who had stood by
during the brief dialogue, and led the way to the Corso.

"He did not say how far!" was the old man's ejaculation.

"But, good heaven! if you think he's on an unfortunate errand, why don't
you stop him, advise him?" Merthyr broke out.

"Advise him! stop him! my friend. I would advise him, if I had the
patience of angels; stop him, if I had the power of Lucifer. Did you not
see that he shunned speaking to me? I have been such a perpetual dish of
vinegar under his nose for the last month, that the poor fellow sniffs
when I draw near. He must go his way. He leads a torrent that must sweep
him on. Corte, Sana, and the rest would be in Rome now, but for him. So
should I. Your Agostino, however, is not of Bergamo, or of Brescia; he is
not a madman; simply a poor rheumatic Piedmontese, who discerns the point
where a united Italy may fix its standard. I would start for Rome
to-morrow, if I could leave her--my soul's child!" Agostino raised his
hand: "I do love the woman, Countess Alessandra Ammiani. I say, she is a
peerless woman. Is she not?"

"There is none like her," said Merthyr.

"A peerless woman, recognized and sacrificed! I cannot leave her. If the
Government here would lay hands on Carlo and do their worst at once, I
would be off. They are too wary. I believe that they are luring him to
his ruin. I can give no proofs, but I judge by the best evidence. What
avails my telling him? I lose my temper the moment I begin to speak. A
curst witch beguiles the handsome idiot--poor darling lad that he is! She
has him--can I tell you how? She has got him--got him fast!--The nature
of the chains are doubtless innocent, if those which a woman throws round
us be ever distinguishable. He loves his wife--he is not a monster."

"He appears desperately feverish," said Merthyr.

"Did you not notice it? Yes, like a man pushed by his destiny out of the
path. He is ashamed to hesitate; he cannot turn back. Ahead of him he
sees a gulf. That army of Carlo Alberto may do something under its Pole.
Prophecy is too easy. I say no more. We may have Lombardy open; and if
so, my poor boy's vanity will be crowned: he will only have the king and
his army against him then."

Discoursing in this wise, they reached the caffe where Beppo had
appointed to meet his old master, and sat amid here and there a
whitecoat, and many nods and whispers over such news as the privileged
journals and the official gazette afforded.

Beppo's destination was to the Duchess of Graatli's palace. Nearing it,
he perceived Luigi endeavouring to gain a passage beside the burly form
of Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz, who presently seized him and hurled him
into the road. As Beppo was sidling up the courtway, Jacob sprang back;
Luigi made a rush; Jacob caught them both, but they wriggled out of his
clutch, and Luigi, being the fearfuller, ran the farthest. While he was
out of hearing, Beppo told Jacob to keep watch upon Luigi, as the bearer
of an amorous letter from a signor of quality to Aennchen, the which he
himself desired to obtain sight of; "for the wench has caused me three
sleepless nights," he confessed frankly. Jacob affected not to
understand. Luigi and Beppo now leaned against the wall on either side of
him and baited him till he shook with rage.

"He is the lord of the duchess, his mistress--what a lucky fellow!" said
Luigi. "When he's dog at the gates no one can approach her. When he
isn't, you can fancy what!"--"He's only a mechanical contrivance; he's
not a man," said Beppo. "He's the principal flea-catcher of the palace,"
said Luigi--"here he is all day, and at night the devil knows where he
hunts."--Luigi hopped in a half-circle round the exacerbated Jacob, and
finally provoked an assault that gave an opening to Beppo. They all ran
in, Luigi last. Jacob chased Beppo up the stairs, lost him, and
remembered what he had said of the letter borne by Luigi, for whom he
determined to lie in waiting. "Better two in there than one," he thought.
The two courted his Aennchen openly; but Luigi, as the bearer of an
amorous letter from the signor of quality, who could be no other than
signor Antonio-Pericles, was the one to be intercepted. Like other
jealous lovers, Jacob wanted to read Aennchen's answer, to be cured of
his fatal passion for the maiden, and on this he set the entire force of
his mind.

Running up by different staircases, Beppo and Luigi came upon Aennchen
nearly at the same time. She turned a cold face on Beppo, and requested
Luigi to follow her. Astonished to see him in such favour, Beppo was
ready to provoke the quarrel before the kiss when she returned; but she
said that she had obeyed her mistress's orders, and was obeying the
duchess in refusing to speak of them, or of anything relating to them.
She had promised him an interview in that little room leading into the
duchess's boudoir. He pressed her to conduct him. "Ah; then it's not for
me you come," she said. Beppo had calculated that the kiss would open his
way to the room, and the quarrel disembarrass him of his pretty companion
when there. "You have come to listen to conversation again," said
Aennchen. "Ach! the fool a woman is to think that you Italians have any
idea except self-interest when you, when you . . . talk nonsense to us.
Go away, if you please. Good-evening." She dropped a curtsey with a surly
coquetry, charming of its kind. Beppo protested that the room was dear to
him because there first he had known for one blissful half-second the
sweetness of her mouth.

"Who told you that persons who don't like your mistress are going to talk
in there?" said Aennchen.

"You," said Beppo.

Aennchen drew up in triumph: "And now will you pretend that you didn't
come up here to go in there to listen to what they say?"

Beppo clapped hands at her cleverness in trapping him. "Hush," said all
her limbs and features, belying the previous formal "good-evening." He
refused to be silent, thinking it a way of getting to the little
antechamber. "Then, I tell you, downstairs you go," said Aennchen
stiffly.

"Is it decided?" Beppo asked. "Then, good-evening. You detestable German
girls can't love. One step--a smile: another step--a kiss. You
tit-for-tat minx! Have you no notion of the sacredness of the sentiments
which inspires me to petition that the place for our interview should be
there where I tasted ecstatic joy for the space of a flash of lightning?
I will go; but it is there that I will go, and I will await you there,
signorina Aennchen. Yes, laugh at me! laugh at me!"

"No; really, I don't laugh at you, signor Beppo," said Aennchen,
protesting in denial of what she was doing. "This way."

"No, it's that way," said Beppo.

"It's through here." She opened a door. "The duchess has a reception
to-night, and you can't go round. Ach! you would not betray me?"

"Not if it were the duchess herself," said Beppo; "he would refuse to
satisfy man's natural vanity, in such a case."

Eager to advance to the little antechamber, he allowed Aennchen to wait
behind him. He heard the door shut and a lock turn, and he was in the
dark, and alone, left to take counsel of his fingers' ends.

"She was born to it," Beppo remarked, to extenuate his outwitted cunning,
when he found each door of the room fast against him.

On the following night Vittoria was to sing at a concert in the Duchess
of Graatli's great saloon, and the duchess had humoured Pericles by
consenting to his preposterous request that his spy should have an
opportunity of hearing Countess d'Isorella and Irma di Karski in private
conversation together, to discover whether there was any plot of any sort
to vex the evening's entertainment; as the jealous spite of those two
women, Pericles said, was equal to any devilry on earth. It happened that
Countess d'Isorella did not come. Luigi, in despair,--was the hearer of a
quick question and answer dialogue, in the obscure German tongue, between
Anna von Lenkenstein and Irma di Karski; but a happy peep between the
hanging curtains gave him sight of a letter passing from Anna's hands to
Irma's. Anna quitted her. Irma, was looking at the superscription of the
letter, an the act of passing in her steps, when Luigi tore the curtains
apart, and sprang on her arm like a cat. Before her shrieks could bring
succour, Luigi was bounding across the court with the letter in his
possession. A dreadful hug awaited him; his pockets were ransacked, and
he was pitched aching into the street. Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz went
straightway under a gas-lamp, where he read the address of the letter to
Countess d'Isorella. He doubted; he had a half-desire to tear the letter
open. But a rumour of the attack upon Irma had spread among the domestics
and Jacob prudently went up to his mistress. The duchess was sitting with
Laura. She received the letter, eyed: it all over, and held it to a
candle.

Laura's head was bent in dark meditation. The sudden increase of light
aroused her, and she asked, "What is that?"

"A letter from Countess Anna to Countess d'Isorella," said the duchess.

"Burnt!" Laura screamed.

"It's only fair," the duchess remarked.

"From her to that woman! It may be priceless. Stop! Let me see what
remains. Amalia! are you mad? Oh! you false friend. I would have
sacrificed my right hand to see it."

"Try and love me still," said the duchess, letting her take one unburnt
corner, and crumble the black tissuey fragments to smut in her hands.

There was no writing; the unburnt corner of the letter was a blank.

Laura fooled the wretched ashes between her palms. "Good-night," she
said. "Your face will be of this colour to me, my dear, for long."

"I cannot behave disgracefully, even to keep your love, my beloved," said
the duchess.

"You cannot betray a German, you mean," Laura retorted. "You could let a
spy into the house."

"That was a childish matter--merely to satisfy a whim."

"I say you could let a spy into the house. Who is to know where the
scruples of you women begin? I would have given my jewels, my head, my
husband's sword, for a sight of that letter. I swear that it concerns us.
Yes, us. You are a false friend. Fish-blooded creature! may it be a year
before I look on you again. Hide among your miserable set!"

"Judge me when you are cooler, dearest," said the duchess, seeking to
detain the impetuous sister of her affection by the sweeping skirts; but
Laura spurned her touch, and went from her.

Irma drove to Countess d'Isorella's. Violetta was abed, and lay fair and
placid as a Titian Venus, while Irma sputtered out her tale, with
intermittent sobs. She rose upon her elbow, and planting it in her
pillow, took half-a-dozen puffs of a cigarette, and then requested Irma
to ring for her maid. "Do nothing till you see me again," she said; "and
take my advice: always get to bed before midnight, or you'll have
unmanageable wrinkles in a couple of years. If you had been in bed at a
prudent hour to-night, this scandal would not have occurred."

"How can I be in bed? How could I help it?" moaned Irma, replying to the
abstract rule, and the perplexing illustration of its force.

Violetta dismissed her. "After all, my wish is to save my poor Amaranto,"
she mused. "I am only doing now what I should have been doing in the
daylight; and if I can't stop him, the Government must; and they will.
Whatever the letter contained, I can anticipate it. He knows my
profession and my necessities. I must have money. Why not from the rich
German woman whom he jilted?"

She attributed Anna's apparent passion of revenge to a secret passion of
unrequited love. What else was implied by her willingness to part with
land and money for the key to his machinations?

Violetta would have understood a revenge directed against Angelo
Guidascarpi, as the slayer of Anna's brother. But of him Anna had only
inquired once, and carelessly, whether he was in Milan. Anna's mystical
semi-patriotism--prompted by her hatred of Vittoria, hatred of Carlo as
Angelo's cousin and protector, hatred of the Italy which held the three,
who never took the name Tedesco on their tongues without loathing--was
perfectly hidden from this shrewd head.

Some extra patrols were in the streets. As she stepped into the carriage,
a man rushed up, speaking hoarsely and inarticulately, and jumped in
beside her. She had discerned Barto Rizzo in time to give directions to
her footman, before she was addressed by a body of gendarmes in pursuit,
whom she mystified by entreating them to enter her house and search it
through, if they supposed that any evil-doer had taken advantage of the
open door. They informed her that a man had escaped from the civil
prison. "Poor creature!" said the countess, with womanly pity; "but you
must see that he is not in my house. How could three of you let one
escape?" She drove off laughing at their vehement assertion that he would
not have escaped from them. Barto Rizzo made her conduct him to Countess
Ammiani's gates.

Violetta was frightened by his eyes when she tried to persuade him in her
best coaxing manner to avoid Count Ammiani. In fact she apprehended that
he would be very much in her way. She had no time for chagrin at her loss
of power over him, though she was sensible of vexation. Barto folded his
arms and sat with his head in his chest, silent, till they reached the'
gates, when he said in French, "Madame, I am a nameless person in your
train. Gabble!" he added, when the countess advised him not to enter; nor
would he allow her to precede him by more than one step. Violetta sent up
her name. The man had shaken her nerves. "At least, remember that your
appearance should be decent," she said, catching sight of blood on his
hands, and torn garments. "I expect, madame," he replied, "I shall not
have time to wash before I am laid out. My time is short. I want tobacco.
The washing can be done by-and-by, but not the smoking."

They were ushered up to the reception-room, where Countess Ammiani,
Vittoria, and Carlo sat, awaiting the visitor whose unexpected name, cast
in their midst at so troubled a season, had clothed her with some of the
midnight's terrors.




CHAPTER XLIII

THE LAST MEETING IN MILAN

Barto Rizzo had silence about him without having to ask for it, when he
followed Violetta into Countess Ammiani's saloon of reception. Carlo was
leaning over his mother's chair, holding Vittoria's wrist across it, and
so enclosing her, while both young faces were raised to the bowed
forehead of the countess. They stood up. Violetta broke through the
formal superlatives of an Italian greeting. "Speak to me alone," she
murmured for Carlo's ear and glancing at Barto: "Here is a madman; a mild
one, I trust." She contrived to show that she was not responsible for his
intrusion. Countess Ammiani gathered Vittoria in her arms; Carlo stepped
a pace before them. Terror was on the venerable lady's face, wrath on her
son's. As he fronted Barto, he motioned a finger to the curtain hangings,
and Violetta, quick at reading signs, found his bare sword there. "But
you will not want it," she remarked, handing the hilt to him, and softly
eyeing the impression of her warm touch on the steel as it passed.

"Carlo, thou son of Paolo! Countess Marcellina, wife of a true patriot!
stand aside, both of you. It is between the Countess Alessandra and
myself," so the man commenced, with his usual pomp of interjection.
"Swords and big eyes,--are they things to stop me?" Barto laughed
scornfully. He had spoken in the full roll of his voice, and the sword
was hard back for the thrust.

Vittoria disengaged herself from the countess. "Speak to me," she said,
dismayed by the look of what seemed an exaltation of madness in Barto's
visage, but firm as far as the trembling of her limbs would let her be.

He dropped to her feet and kissed them.

"Emilia Alessandra Belloni! Vittoria! Countess Alessandra Ammiani! pity
me. Hear this:--I hated you as the devil is hated. Yesterday I woke up in
prison to hear that I must adore you. God of all the pits of punishment!
was there ever one like this? I had to change heads."

It was the language of a distorted mind, and lamentable to hear when a
sob shattered his voice.

"Am I mad?" he asked piteously, clasping his temples.

"You are as we are, if you weep," said Vittoria, to sooth him.

"Then I have been mad!" he cried, starting. "I knew you a wicked
virgin--signora contessa, confess to me, marriage has changed you. Has it
not changed you? In the name of the Father of the Saints, help me out of
it:--my brain reels backwards. You were false, but marriage--It acts in
this way with you women; yes, that we know--you were married, and you
said, 'Now let us be faithful.' Did you not say that? I am forgiving,
though none think it. You have only to confess. If you will not,--oh!" He
smote his face, groaning.

Carlo spoke a stern word in an undertone; counselling him to be gone.

"If you will not--what was she to do?" Barto cut the question to
interrogate his strayed wits. "Look at me, Countess Alessandra. I was in
the prison. I heard that my Rosellina had a tight heart. She cried for
her master, poor heathen, and I sprang out of the walls to her.
There--there--she lay like a breathing board; a woman with a body like a
coffin half alive; not an eye to show; nothing but a body and a whisper.
She perished righteously, for she disobeyed. She acted without my orders:
she dared to think! She will be damned, for she would have vengeance
before she went. She glorified you over me--over Barto Rizzo. Oh! she
shocked my soul. But she is dead, and I am her slave. Every word was of
you. Take another head, Barto Rizzo your old one was mad: she said that
to my soul. She died blessing you above me. I saw the last bit of life go
up from her mouth blessing you. It's heard by this time in heaven, and
it's written. Then I have had two years of madness. If she is right, I
was wrong; I was a devil of hell. I know there's an eye given to dying
creatures, and she looked with it, and she said, the soul of Rinaldo
Guidascarpi, her angel, was glorifying you; and she thanked the sticking
of her heart, when she tried to stab you, poor fool!"

Carlo interrupted: "Now go; you have said enough."

"No, let him speak," said Vittoria. She supposed that Barto was going to
say that he had not given the order for her assassination. "You do not
wish me dead, signore?"

"Nothing that is not standing in my way, signora contessa," said Barto;
and his features blazed with a smile of happy self-justification. "I have
killed a sentinel this night: Providence placed him there. I wish for no
death, but I punish, and--ah! the cursed sight of the woman who calls me
mad for two years. She thrusts a bar of iron in an engine at work, and
says, Work on! work on! Were you not a traitress? Countess Alessandra,
were you not once a traitress? Oh! confess it; save my head. Reflect,
dear lady! it's cruel to make a man of a saintly sincerity look back--I
count the months--seventeen months! to look back seventeen months, and
see that his tongue was a clapper,--his will, his eyes, his ears, all
about him, everything, stirred like a pot on the fire. I traced you. I
saw your treachery. I said--I, I am her Day of Judgement. She shall look
on me and perish, struck down by her own treachery. Were my senses false
to me? I had lived in virtuous fidelity to my principles. None can accuse
me. Why were my senses false, if my principles were true? I said you were
a traitress. I saw it from the first. I had the divine contempt for
women. My distrust of a woman was the eye of this brain, and I
said--Follow her, dog her, find her out! I proved her false; but her
devilish cunning deceived every other man in the world. Oh! let me
bellow, for it's me she proves the mass of corruption! Tomorrow I die,
and if I am mad now, what sort of a curse is that?

"Now to-morrow is an hour--a laugh! But if I've not been shot from a true
bow--if I've been a sham for two years--if my name, and nature, bones,
brains, were all false things hunting a shadow, Countess Alessandra, see
the misery of Barto Rizzo! Look at those two years, and say that I had my
head. Answer me, as you love your husband: are you heart and soul with
him in the fresh fight for Lombardy?" He said this with a look
penetrating and malignant, and then by a sudden flash pitifully
entreating.

Carlo feared to provoke, revolted from the thought of slaying him. "Yes,
yes," he interposed, "my wife is heart and soul in it. Go."

Barto looked from him to her with the eyes of a dog that awaits an order.

Victoria gathered her strength, and said: "I am not."

"It is her answer!" Barto roared, and from deep dejection his whole
countenance radiated. "She says it--she might give the lie to a saint! I
was never mad. I saw the spot, and put my finger on it, and not a madman
can do that. My two years are my own. Mad now, for, see!

"I worship the creature. She is not heart and soul in it. She is not in it
at all. She is a little woman, a lovely thing, a toy, a cantatrice. Joy
to the big heart of Barto Rizzo! I am for Brescia!"

He flung his arm like a banner, and ran out.

Carlo laid his sword on a table. Vittoria's head was on his mother's
bosom.

The hour was too full of imminent grief for either of the three to regard
this scene as other than a gross intrusion ended.

"Why did you deny my words?" Carlo said coldly.

"I could not lie to make him wretched," she replied in a low murmur.

"Do you know what that 'I am for Brescia' means? He goes to stir the city
before a soul is ready."

"I warned you that I should speak the truth of myself to-night, dearest."

"You should discern between speaking truth to a madman, and to a man."