Part 31 (1/2)
Beppo in Turin and Luigi on the lake were the watch set on Countess d'Isorella; they were useless except to fortify Laura's suspicions. The d.u.c.h.ess of Graatli wrote mere gossip from Milan. She mentioned that Anna of Lenkenstein had visited with her the tomb of her brother Count Paul at Bologna, and had returned in double mourning; and that Madame Sedley-”the sister of our poor ruined Pierson”-had obtained grace, for herself at least, from Anna, by casting herself at Anna's feet,-and that they were now friends.
Vittoria felt ashamed of Adela.
When Carlo returned, the signora attacked him boldly with all her weapons; reproached him; said, ”Would my husband have treated me in such a manner?” Carlo twisted his moustache and stroked his young beard for patience. They pa.s.sed from room to balcony and terrace, and Laura brought him back into company without cessation of her fire of questions and sarcasms, saying, ”No, no; we will speak of these things publicly.” She appealed alternately to Agostino, Vittoria, and Countess Ammiani for support, and as she certainly spoke sense, Carlo was reduced to gloom and silence. Laura then paused. ”Surely you have punished your bride enough?” she said; and more softly, ”Brother of my Giacomo! you are under an evil spell.”
Carlo started up in anger. Bending to Vittoria, he offered her his hand to lead her out, They went together.
”A good sign,” said the countess.
”A bad sign!” Laura sighed. ”If he had taken me out for explanation! But tell me, my Agostino, are you the woman's dupe?”
”I have been,” Agostino admitted frankly.
”You did really put faith in her?”
”She condescends to be so excessively charming.”
”You could not advance a better reason.”
”It is one of our best; perhaps our very best, where your s.e.x is concerned, signora.”
”You are her dupe no more?”
”No more. Oh, dear no!”
”You understand her now, do you?”
”For the very reason, signora, that I have been her dupe. That is, I am beginning to understand her. I am not yet in possession of the key.”
”Not yet in possession!” said Laura contemptuously; ”but, never mind. Now for Carlo.”
”Now for Carlo. He declares that he never has been deceived by her.”
”He is perilously vain,” sighed the signora.
”Seriously”-Agostino drew out the length of his beard-”I do not suppose that he has been-boys, you know, are so acute. He fancies he can make her of service, and he shows some skill.”
”The skill of a fish to get into the net!”
”My dearest signora, you do not allow for the times. I remember”-Agostino peered upward through his eyelashes in a way that he had-”I remember seeing in a meadow a gossamer running away with a spider-thread. It was against all calculation. But, observe: there were exterior agencies at work: a stout wind blew. The ordinary reckoning is based on calms. Without the operation of disturbing elements, the spider-thread would have gently detained the gossamer.”
”Is that meant for my son?” Countess Ammiani asked slowly, with incredulous emphasis.
Agostino and Laura, laughing in their hearts at the mother's mysterious veneration for Carlo, had to explain that 'gossamer' was a poetic, generic term, to embrace the lighter qualities of masculine youth.
A woman's figure pa.s.sed swiftly by the window, which led Laura to suppose that the couple outside had parted. She ran forth, calling to one of them, but they came hand in hand, declaring that they had seen neither woman nor man. ”And I am happy,” Vittoria whispered. She looked happy, pale though she was.
”It is only my dreadful longing for rest which makes me pale,” she said to Laura, when they were alone. ”Carlo has proved to me that he is wiser than I am.”
”A proof that you love Carlo, perhaps,” Laura rejoined.
”Dearest, he speaks more gently of the king.”
”It may be cunning, or it may be carelessness.”
”Will nothing satisfy you, wilful sceptic? He is quite alive to the Countess d'Isorella's character. He told me how she dazzled him once.”
”Not how she has entangled him now?”
”It is not true. He told me what I should like to dream over without talking any more to anybody. Ah, what a delight! to have known him, as you did, when he was a boy. Can one who knew him then mean harm to him? I am not capable of imagining it. No; he will not abandon poor broken Lombardy, and he is right; and it is my duty to sit and wait. No shadow shall come between us. He has said it, and I have said it. We have but one thing to fear, which is contemptible to fear; so I am at peace.”
”Love-sick,” was Laura's mental comment. Yet when Carlo explained his position to her next day, she was milder in her condemnation of him, and even admitted that a man must be guided by such brains as he possesses. He had conceived that his mother had a right to claim one month from him at the close of the war; he said this reddening. Laura nodded. He confessed that he was irritated when he met the Countess d'Isorella, with whom, to his astonishment, he found Barto Rizzo. She had picked him up, weak from a paroxysm, on the high-road to Milan. ”And she tamed the brute,” said Carlo, in admiration of her ability; ”she saw that he was plot-mad, and she set him at work on a stupendous plot; agents running nowhere, and scribblings concentring in her work-basket. You smile at me, as if I were a similar patient, signora. But I am my own agent. I have personally seen all my men in Turin and elsewhere. Violetta has not one grain of love for her country; but she can be made to serve it. As for me, I have gone too far to think of turning aside and drilling with Luciano. He may yet be diverted from Rome, to strike another blow for Lombardy. The Chief, I know, has some religious sentiment about Rome. So might I have; it is the Head of Italy. Let us raise the body first. And we have been beaten here. Great G.o.ds! we will have another fight for it on the same spot, and quickly. Besides, I cannot face Luciano and tell him why I was away from him in the dark hour. How can I tell him that I was lingering to bear a bride to the altar? while he and the rest-poor fellows! Hard enough to have to mention it to you, signora!”
She understood his boyish sense of shame. Making smooth allowances for a feeling natural to his youth and the circ.u.mstances, she said, ”I am your sister, for you were my husband's brother in arms, Carlo. We two speak heart to heart: I sometimes fancy you have that voice: you hurt me with it more than you know; gladden me too! My Carlo, I wish to hear why Countess d'Isorella objects to your marriage.”
”She does not object.”
”An answer that begins by quibbling is not propitious. She opposes it.”
”For this reason: you have not forgotten the bronze b.u.t.terfly?”
”I see more clearly,” said Laura, with a start.
”There appears to be no cure for the brute's mad suspicion of her,” Carlo pursued: ”and he is powerful among the Milanese. If my darling takes my name, he can damage much of my influence, and-you know what there is to be dreaded from a fanatic.”
Laura nodded, as if in full agreement with him, and said, after meditating a minute, ”What sort of a lover is this!”
She added a little laugh to the singular interjection.
”Yes, I have also thought of a secret marriage,” said Carlo, stung by her penetrating instinct so that he was enabled to read the meaning in her mind.
”The best way, when you are afflicted by a dilemma of such a character, my Carlo,” the signora looked at him, ”is to take a chess-table and make your moves on it. 'King-my duty;' 'Queen-my pa.s.sion;' 'Bishop-my social obligation;' 'Knight-my what-you-will and my round-the-corner wishes.' Then, if you find that queen may be gratified without endangering king, and so forth, why, you may follow your inclinations; and if not, not. My Carlo, you are either enviably cool, or you are an enviable hypocrite.”
”The matter is not quite so easily settled as that,” said Carlo.
On the whole, though against her preconception, Laura thought him an honest lover, and not the player of a double game. She saw that Vittoria should have been with him in the critical hour of defeat, when his pa.s.sions were down, and heaven knows what weakness of our common manhood, that was partly pride, partly love-craving, made his nature waxen to every impression; a season, as Laura knew, when the mistress of a loyal lover should not withhold herself from him. A nature tender like Carlo's, and he bearing an enamoured heart, could not, as Luciano Romara had done, pa.s.s instantly from defeat to drill. And vain as Carlo was (the vanity being most intricate and subtle, like a nervous fluid), he was very open to the belief that he could diplomatize as well as fight, and lead a movement yet better than follow it. Even so the signora tried to read his case.
They were all, excepting Countess Ammiani (”who will never, I fear, do me this honour,” Violetta wrote, and the countess said, ”Never,” and quoted a proverb), about to pa.s.s three or four days at the villa of Countess d'Isorella. Before they set out, Vittoria received a portentous envelope containing a long scroll, that was headed ”YOUR CRIMES,” and detailing a lest of her offences against the country, from the revelation of the plot in her first letter to Wilfrid, to services rendered to the enemy during the war, up to the departure of Charles Albert out of forsaken Milan.
”B. R.” was the undisguised signature at the end of the scroll.
Things of this description restored her old war-spirit to Vittoria. She handed the scroll to Laura; Laura, in great alarm, pa.s.sed it on to Carlo. He sent for Angelo Guidascarpi in haste, for Carlo read it as an ante-dated justificatory doc.u.ment to some mischievous design, and he desired that hands as sure as his own, and yet more vigilant eyes, should keep watch over his betrothed.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII