Vittoria, v3

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VITTORIA

By George Meredith

BOOK 3.

XIV. AT THE MAESTRO'S DOOR
XV. AMMIANI THROUGH THE MIDNIGHT
XVI. COUNTESS AMMIANI
XVII. IN THE PIAZZA D'ARMI
XVIII. THE NIGHT OF THE FIFTEENTH
XIX. THE PRIMA DONNA

CHAPTER XIV

AT THE MAESTRO'S DOOR

The house of the Maestro Rocco Ricci turned off the Borgo della Stella.
Carlo Ammiani conducted Vittoria to the maestro's door. They conversed
very little on the way.

'You are a good swordsman?' she asked him abruptly.

'I have as much skill as belongs to a perfect intimacy with the weapon,'
he answered.

'Your father was a soldier, Signor Carlo.'

'He was a General officer in what he believed to be the army of Italy.
We used to fence together every day for two hours.'

'I love the fathers who do that,' said Vittoria.

After such speaking Ammiani was not capable of the attempt to preach
peace and safety to her. He postponed it to the next minute and the
next.

Vittoria's spirit was in one of those angry knots which are half of the
intellect, half of the will, and are much under the domination of one or
other of the passions in the ascendant. She was resolved to go forward;
she felt justified in going forward; but the divine afflatus of
enthusiasm buoyed her no longer, and she required the support of all that
accuracy of insight and that senseless stubbornness which there might be
in her nature. The feeling that it was she to whom it was given to lift
the torch and plant the standard of Italy, had swept her as through the
strings of a harp. Laura, and the horrible little bronze butterfly, and
the 'Sei sospetta,' now made her duty seem dry and miserably fleshless,
imaging itself to her as if a skeleton had been told to arise and walk:
--say, the thing obeys, and fills a ghastly distension of men's eyelids
for a space, and again lies down, and men get their breath: but who is
the rosier for it? where is the glory of it? what is the good? This
Milan, and Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Brescia, Venice, Florence, the whole
Venetian, Tuscan, and Lombardic lands, down to far Sicily, and that Rome
which always lay under the crown of a dead sunset in her idea--they too
might rise; but she thought of them as skeletons likewise. Even the
shadowy vision of Italy Free had no bloom on it, and stood fronting the
blown trumpets of resurrection Lazarus-like.

At these moments young hearts, though full of sap and fire, cannot do
common nursing labour for the little suckling sentiments and hopes, the
dreams, the languors and the energies hanging about them for nourishment.
Vittoria's horizon was within five feet of her. She saw neither splendid
earth nor ancient heaven; nothing save a breach to be stepped over in
defiance of foes and (what was harder to brave) of friends. Some wayward
activity of old associations set her humming a quaint English tune, by
which she was brought to her consciousness.

'Dear friend,' she said, becoming aware that there might be a more
troubled depth in Ammiani's absence of speech than in her own.

'Yes?' said he, quickly, as for a sentence to follow. None came, and he
continued, 'The Signora Laura is also your friend.'

She rejoined coldly, 'I am not thinking of her.'

Vittoria had tried to utter what might be a word of comfort for him, and
she found she had not a thought or an emotion. Here she differed from
Laura, who, if the mood to heal a favourite's little sore at any season
came upon her, would shower out lively tendernesses and all cajoleries
possible to the tongue of woman. Yet the irritation of action narrowed
Laura more than it did Vittoria; fevered her and distracted her
sympathies. Being herself a plaything at the time, she could easily play
a part for others. Vittoria had not grown, probably never would grow, to
be so plastic off the stage. She was stringing her hand to strike a blow
as men strike, and women when they do that cannot be quite feminine.

'How dull the streets are,' she remarked.

'They are, just now,' said Ammiani, thinking of them on the night to come
convulsed with strife, and of her, tossed perhaps like a weed along the
torrent of bloody deluge waters. Her step was so firm, her face so
assured, that he could not fancy she realized any prospect of the sort,
and it filled him with pity and a wretched quailing.

If I speak now I shall be talking like a coward, he said to himself: and
he was happily too prudent to talk to her in that strain. So he said
nothing of peace and safety. She was almost at liberty to believe that
he approved the wisdom of her resolution. At the maestro's door she
thanked him for his escort, and begged for it further within an hour.
'And do bring me some chocolate.' She struck her teeth together champing
in a pretty hunger for it. 'I have no chocolate in my pocket, and I
hardly know myself.'

'What will your Signor Antonio say?'

Vittoria filliped her fingers. 'His rule is over, and he is my slave:
I am not his. I will not eat much; but some some I must have.'

Ammiani laughed and promised to obtain it. 'That is, if there's any to
be had.'

'Break open doors to get it for me,' she said, stamping with fun to
inspirit him.

No sooner was she standing alone, than her elbow was gently plucked at
on the other side: a voice was sibilating: 'S-s-signorina.' She allowed
herself to be drawn out of the light of the open doorway, having no
suspicion and no fear. 'Signorina, here is chocolate.' She beheld two
hands in cup-shape, surcharged with packets of Turin chocolate.

'Lugi, it is you?'

The Motterone spy screwed his eyelids to an expression of the shrewdest
secresy.

'Hist! signorina. Take some. You shall have all, but wait:--by-and-by.
Aha! you look at my eyes as you did on the Monterone, because one of
them takes the shoulder-view; but, the truth is, my father was a
contrabandist, and had his eye in his ear when the frontier guard sent a
bullet through his back, cotton-bags and cutleries, and all! I inherit
from him, and have been wry-eyed ever since. How does that touch a man's
honesty, signorina? Not at all. Don't even suspect that you won't
appreciate Luigi by-and-by. So, you won't ask me a word, signorina, but
up you go to the maestro:--signorina, I swear I am your faithful servant
--up to the maestro, and down first. Come down first not last:--first.
Let the other one come down after you; and you come down first. Leave
her behind, la Lazzeruola; and here, 'Luigi displayed a black veil, the
common head-dress of the Milanese women, and twisted his fingers round
and round on his forehead to personate the horns of the veil; 'take it,
signorina; you know how to wear it. Luigi and the saints watch over you.'
Vittoria found herself left in possession of the veil and a packet of
chocolate.

'If I am watched over by the saints and Luigi,' she thought, and bit at
the chocolate.

When the door had closed upon her, Luigi resumed his station near it,
warily casting his glances along the house-fronts, and moving his springy
little legs like a heath-cock alert. They carried him sharp to an
opposite corner of the street at a noise of some one running exposed to
all eyes right down the middle of the road, straight to the house: in
which foolish person he discerned Beppo, all of whose proceedings Luigi
observed and commented on from the safe obscurity under eaves and
starlight, while Beppo was in the light of the lamps. 'You thunder at
the door, my Beppo. You are a fire-balloon: you are going to burn
yourself up with what you carry. You think you can do something, because
you read books and frequent the talking theatres--fourteen syllables to a
word. Mother of heaven! will you never learn anything from natural
intelligence? There you are, in at the door. And now you will disturb
the signorina, and you will do nothing but make la Lazzeruola's ears
lively. Bounce! you are up the stairs. Bounce! you are on the landing.
Thrum! you drum at the door, and they are singing; they don't hear you.
And now you're meek as a mouse. That's it--if you don't hit the mark
when you go like a bullet, you 're stupid as lead. And they call you a
clever fellow! Luigi's day is to come. When all have paid him all
round, they will acknowledge Luigi's worth. You are honest enough, my
Beppo; but you might as well be a countryman. You are the signorina's
servant, but I know the turnings, said the rat to the cavaliere weazel.'

In a few minutes Beppo stepped from the house, and flung himself with his
back against the lintel of the doorway.

'That looks like determination to stop on guard,' said Luigi.

He knew the exact feeling expressed by it, when one has come violently on
an errand and has done no good.

'A flea, my feathery lad, will set you flying again.'

As it was imperative in Luigi's schemes that Beppo should be set flying
again, he slipped away stealthily, and sped fast into the neighbouring
Corso, where a light English closed carriage, drawn by a pair of the
island horses, moved at a slow pace. Two men were on the driver's seat,
one of whom Luigi hailed to come down then he laid a strip of paper on
his knee, and after thumping on the side of his nose to get a notion of
English-Italian, he wrote with a pencil, dancing upon one leg all the
while for a balance:--

'Come, Beppo, daughter sake, now, at once, immediate,
Beppo, signor.'

'That's to the very extremity how the little signora Inglese would
write,' said Luigi; yet cogitating profoundly in a dubitative twinkle of
a second as to whether it might not be the English habit to wind up a
hasty missive with an expediting oath. He had heard the oath of emphasis
in that island: but he decided to let it go as it stood. The man he had
summoned was directed to take it straightway and deliver it to one who
would be found at the house-door of the Maestro Rocco Ricci.

'Thus, like a drunken sentinel,' said Luigi, folding his arms, crossing
his legs, and leaning back. 'Forward, Matteo, my cherub.'

'All goes right?' the coachman addressed Luigi.

'As honey, as butter, as a mulberry leaf with a score of worms on it!
The wine and the bread and the cream-cheeses are inside, my dainty one,
are they? She must not starve, nor must I. Are our hampers fastened out
side? Good. We shall be among the Germans in a day and a night. I 've
got the route, and I pronounce the name of the chateau very perfectly--
"Schloss Sonnenberg." Do that if you can.'

The unpractised Italian coachman declined to attempt it. He and Luigi
compared time by their watches. In three-quarters of an hour he was to
be within hail of the maestro's house. Thither Luigi quietly returned.

Beppo's place there was vacant.

'That's better than a draught of Asti,' said Luigi.

The lighted windows of the maestro's house, and the piano striking
corrective notes, assured him that the special rehearsal was still going
on; and as he might now calculate on two or three minutes to spare, he
threw back his coat-collar, lifted his head, and distended his chest,
apparently to chime in with the singing, but simply to listen to it. For
him, it was imperative that he should act the thing, in order to
apprehend and appreciate it.

A hurried footing told of the approach of one whom he expected.

'Luigi!'

'Here, padrone.'

'You have the chocolate?'

'Signor Antonio, I have deposited it in the carriage.'

'She is in up there?'

'I beheld her entering.'

'Good; that is fixed fact.' The Signor Antonio drove at his moustache
right and left. 'I give you, see, Italian money and German money: German
money in paper; and a paper written out by me to explain the value of the
German paper-money. Silence, engine that you are, and not a man! I am
preventive of stupidity, I am? Do I not know that, hein? Am I in need
of the acclamation of you, my friend? On to the Chateau Sonnenberg:--
drive on, drive on, and one who stops you, you drive over him: the
gendarmes in white will peruse this paper, if there is any question, and
will pass you and the cage, bowing; you hear? It is a pass; the military
pass you when you show this paper. My good friend, Captain Weisspriess,
on the staff of General Pierson, gives it, signed, and it is effectual.
But you lose not the paper: put it away with the paper-money, quite safe.
For yourself, this is half your pay--I give you napoleons; ten. Count.
And now--once at the Chateau Sonnenberg, I repeat, you leave her in
charge of two persons, one a woman, at the gate, and then back--frrrrr..'

Antonio-Pericles smacked on the flat of his hand, and sounded a rapid
course of wheels.

'Back, and drop not a crumb upon the road. You have your map. It is,
after Roveredo, straight up the Adige, by Bolzano . . . say "Botzen."'

'"Botz,"' said Luigi, submissively.

'"Botz"--"Botz"--ass! fool! double idiot! "Botzon!"' Antonio-Pericles
corrected him furiously, exclaiming to the sovereign skies, 'Though I pay
for brains, can I get them! No. But make a fiasco, Luigi, and not a
second ten for you, my friend: and away, out of my sight, show yourself
no more!'

Luigi humbly said that he was not the instrument of a fiasco.

Half spurning him, Antonio-Pericles snarled an end both to his advices
and his prophetic disgust of the miserable tools furnished unto masterly
minds upon this earth. He paced forward and back, murmuring in French,
'Mon Dieu! was there ever such a folly as in the head of this girl? It
is her occasion:--Shall I be a Star? Shall I be a Cinder? It is
tomorrow night her moment of Birth! No; she prefers to be extinguished.
For what? For this thing she calls her country. It is infamous. Yes,
vile little cheat! But, do you know Antonio-Pericles? Not yet. I will
nourish you, I will imprison you: I will have you tortured by love, by
the very devil of love, by the red-hot pincers of love, till you scream.
a music, and die to melt him with your voice, and kick your country to
the gutter, and know your Italy for a birthplace and a cradle of Song,
and no more, and enough! Bah!'

Having thus delivered himself of the effervescence of his internal
agitation, he turned sharply round upon Luigi, with a military stamp of
the foot and shout of the man's name.

'It is love she wants,' Antonio-Pericles resumed his savage soliloquy.
'She wants to be kindled on fire. Too much Government of brain; not
sufficient Insurrection of heart! There it is. There it lies. But,
little fool! you shall find people with arms and shots and cannon
running all up and down your body, firing and crying out "Victory for
Love!" till you are beaten, till you gasp "Love! love! love!" and then
comes a beatific--oh! a heaven and a hell to your voice. I will pay,'
the excited connoisseur pursued more deliberately: 'I will pay half my
fortune to bring this about. I am fortified, for I know such a voice was
sent to be sublime.' He exclaimed in an ecstasy: 'It opens the skies!'
and immediately appended: 'It is destined to suffocate the theatres!'

Pausing as before a splendid vision: 'Money--let it go like dust! I have
an object. Sandra Belloni--you stupid Vittoria Campa!--I have millions
and the whole Austrian Government to back me, and you to be wilful,
little rebel! I could laugh. It is only Love you want. Your voice is
now in a marble chamber. I will put it in a palace of cedarwood. This
Ammiani I let visit you in the hope that he would touch you.

Bah! he is a patriot--not a man! He cannot make you wince and pine, and
be cold and be hot, and--Bah! I give a chance to some one else who is
not a patriot. He has done mischief with the inflammable little Anna von
Lenkenstein--I know it. Your proper lovers, you women, are the broad,
the business lovers, and Weisspriess is your man.'

Antonio-Pericles glanced up at the maestro's windows. 'Hark! it is her
voice,' he said, and drew up his clenched fists with rage, as if pumping.
'Cold as ice! Not a flaw. She is a lantern with no light in it--
crystal, if you like. Hark now at Irma, the stork-neck. Aie! what a
long way it is from your throat to your head, Mademoiselle Irma! You
were reared upon lemons. The split hair of your mural crown is not
thinner than that voice of yours. It is a mockery to hear you; but you
are good enough for the people, my dear, and you do work, running up and
down that ladder of wires between your throat and your head;--you work,
it is true, you puss! sleek as a puss, bony as a puss, musical as a puss.
But you are good enough for the people. Hola!'

This exclamation was addressed to a cavalier who was dismounting from his
horse about fifty yards down the street, and who, giving the reins to a
mounted servant, advanced to meet the Signor Antonio.

'It is you, Herr Captain von Weisspriess!'

'When he makes an appointment you see him, as a rule, my dear Pericles,'
returned the captain.

'You are out of uniform--good. We will go up. Remember, you are a
connoisseur, from Bonn--from Berlin--from Leipsic: not of the K.K. army!
Abjure it, or you make no way with this mad thing. You shall see her and
hear her, and judge if she is worth your visit to Schloss Sonnenberg and
a short siege. Good: we go aloft. You bow to the maestro respectfully
twice, as in duty; then a third time, as from a whisper of your soul.
Vanitas, vanitatis! You speak of the 'UT de poitrine.' You remark:
"Albrechtsberger has said---," and you slap your head and stop. They
think, "He is polite, and will not quote a German authority to us": and
they think, "He will not continue his quotation; in truth, he scornfully
considers it superfluous to talk of counterpoint to us poor Italians."
Your Christian name is Johann?--you are Herr Johannes. Look at her well.
I shall not expose you longer than ten minutes to their observation.
Frown meditative; the elbow propped and two fingers in the left cheek;
and walk into the room with a stoop: touch a note of the piano, leaning
your ear to it as in detection of five-fifteenths of a shade of discord.
Frown in trouble as of a tooth. So, when you smile, it is immense praise
to them, and easy for you.'

The names of the Signor Antonio-Pericles and Herr Johannes were taken up
to the maestro.

Tormented with curiosity, Luigi saw them enter the house. The face and
the martial or sanguinary reputation of Captain Weisspriess were not
unknown to him. 'What has he to do with this affair?' thought Luigi, and
sauntered down to the captain's servant, who accepted a cigar from him,
but was rendered incorruptible by ignorance of his language. He observed
that the horses were fresh, and were furnished with saddle-bags as for an
expedition. What expedition? To serve as escort to the carriage?--a
nonsensical idea. But the discovery that an idea is nonsensical is not a
satisfactory solution of a difficulty. Luigi squatted on his haunches
beside the doorstep, a little under one of the lower windows of Rocco
Ricci's house. Earlier than he expected, the captain and Signor Antonio
came out; and as soon as the door had closed behind them, the captain
exclaimed, 'I give you my hand on it, my brave Pericles. You have done
me many services, but this is finest of all. She's superb. She's a nice
little wild woman to tame. I shall go to the Sonnenberg immediately. I
have only to tell General Pierson that his nephew is to be prevented from
playing the fool, and I get leave at once, if there's no active work.'

'His nephew, Lieutenant Pierson, or Pole--hein?' interposed the Greek.

'That 's the man. He 's on the Marshal's staff. He 's engaged to the
Countess Lena von Lenkenstein. She has fire enough, my Pericles.'

'The Countess Anna, you say?' The Greek stretched forward his ear, and
was never so near getting it vigorously cuffed.

'Deafness is an unpardonable offence, my dear Pericles.'

Antonio-Pericles sniffed, and assented, 'It is the stupidity of the ear.'

'I said, the Countess Lena.'

'Von Lenkenstein; but I choose to be further deaf.'

'To the devil, sir. Do you pretend to be angry?' cried Weisspriess.

'The devil, sir, with your recommendation, is too black for me to visit
him,' Antonio-Pericles rejoined.

'By heaven, Pericles, for less than what you allow yourself to say, I've
sent men to him howling!'

They faced one another, pulling at their moustachios. Weisspriess
laughed.

'You're not a fighting man, Pericles.'

The Greek nodded affably. 'One is in my way, I have him put out of my
way. It is easiest.'

'Ah! easiest, is it?' Captain Weisspriess 'frowned meditative' over this
remarkable statement of a system. 'Well, it certainly saves trouble.
Besides, my good Pericles, none but an ass would quarrel with you. I was
observing that General Pierson wants his nephew to marry the Countess
Lena immediately; and if, as you tell me, this girl Belloni, who is
called la Vittoria--the precious little woman!--has such power over him,
it's quite as well, from the General's point of view, that she should be
out of the way at Sonnenberg. I have my footing at the Duchess of
Graath's. I believe she hopes that I shall some day challenge and kill
her husband; and as I am supposed to have saved Major de Pyrmont's life,
I am also an object of present gratitude. Do you imagine that your
little brown-eyed Belloni scented one of her enemies in me?'

'I know nothing of imagination,' the Signor Antonio observed frigidly.

'Till we meet!' Captain Weisspriess kissed his fingers, half as up toward
the windows, and half to the Greek. 'Save me from having to teach love
to your Irma!'

He ran to join his servant.

Luigi had heard much of the conversation, as well as the last sentence.

'It shall be to la Irma if it is to anybody,' Luigi muttered.

'Let Weisspriess--he will not awake love in her--let him kindle hate, it
will do,' said the Signor Antonio. 'She has seen him, and if he meets
her on the route to Meran, she will think it her fascination.'

Looking at his watch and at the lighted windows, he repeated his special
injunctions to Luigi. 'It is near the time. I go to sleep. I am
getting old: I grow nervous. Ten-twenty in addition, you shall have, if
all is done right. Your weekly pay runs on. Twenty--you shall have
thirty! Thirty napoleons additional!'

Ten fingers were flashed thrice.

Luigi gave a jump. 'Padrone, they are mine.'

'Animal, that shake your belly-bag and brain-box, stand!' cried the
Greek, who desired to see Luigi standing firm that he might inspire
himself with confidence in his integrity. When Luigi's posture had
satisfied him, he turned and went off at great strides.

'He does pay,' Luigi reflected, seeing that immense virtue in his patron.
'Yes, he pays; but what is he about? It is this question for me--"Do I
serve my hand? or, Do I serve my heart?" My hand takes the money, and it
is not German money. My heart gives the affection, and the signorina has
my heart. She reached me that cigarette on the Motterone like the
Madonna: it is never to be forgotten! I serve my heart! Now, Beppo, you
may come; come quick for her. I see the carriage, and there are three
stout fellows in it who could trip and muzzle you at a signal from me
before you could count the letters of your father's baptismal name. Oh!
but if the signorina disobeys me and comes out last!--the Signor Antonio
will ask the maestro, who will say, "Yes, la Vittoria was here with me
last of the two"; and I lose my ten, my twenty, my thirty napoleons.'

Luigi's chest expanded largely with a melancholy draught of air.

The carriage meantime had become visible at the head of the street,
where it remained within hearing of a whistle. One of the Milanese hired
vehicles drove up to the maestro's door shortly after, and Luigi cursed
it. His worst fears for the future of the thirty napoleons were
confirmed; the door opened and the Maestro Rocco Ricci, bareheaded and in
his black silk dressing-gown, led out Irma di Karski, by some called
rival to la Vittoria; a tall Slavic damsel, whose laughter was not soft
and smooth, whose cheeks were bright, and whose eyes were deep in the
head and dull. But she had vivacity both of lips and shoulders. The
shoulders were bony; the lips were sharp and red, like winter-berries in
the morning-time. Freshness was not absent from her aspect. The critical
objection was that it seemed a plastered freshness and not true bloom; or
rather it was a savage and a hard, not a sweet freshness. Hence perhaps
the name which distinguished her la Lazzeruola (crab apple). It was a
freshness that did not invite the bite; sour to Italian taste.

She was apparently in vast delight. 'There will be a perfect inundation
to-morrow night from Prague and Vienna to see me even in so miserable a
part as Michiella,' she said. 'Here I am supposed to be a beginner; I am
no debutante there.'

'I can believe it, I can believe it,' responded Rocco, bowing for her
speedy departure.

'You are not satisfied with my singing of Michiella's score! Now, tell
me, kind, good, harsh old master! you think that Miss Vittoria would
sing it better. So do I. And I can sing another part better. You do
not know my capacities.'

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