Book: My Novel, Volume 10.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 10.



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BOOK TENTH.

INITIAL CHAPTER.


UPON THIS FACT,--THAT THE WORLD IS STILL MUCH THE SAME AS IT ALWAYS HAS
BEEN.

It is observed by a very pleasant writer, read nowadays only by the brave
pertinacious few who still struggle hard to rescue from the House of
Pluto the souls of departed authors, jostled and chased as those souls
are by the noisy footsteps of the living,--it is observed by the
admirable Charron, that "judgment and wisdom is not only the best, but
the happiest portion God Almighty hath distributed amongst men; for
though this distribution be made with a very uneven hand, yet nobody
thinks himself stinted or ill-dealt with, but he that hath never so
little is contented in this respect."

And, certainly, the present narrative may serve in notable illustration
of the remark so dryly made by the witty and wise preacher. For whether
our friend Riccabocca deduce theories for daily life from the great folio
of Machiavelli; or that promising young gentleman, Mr. Randal Leslie,
interpret the power of knowledge into the art of being too knowing for
dull honest folks to cope with him; or acute Dick Avenel push his way up
the social ascent with a blow for those before, and a kick for those
behind him, after the approved fashion of your strong New Man; or Baron
Levy--that cynical impersonation of Gold--compare himself to the Magnetic
Rock in the Arabian tale, to which the nails in every ship that
approaches the influence of the loadstone fly from the planks, and a
shipwreck per day adds its waifs to the Rock,--questionless, at least; it
is, that each of those personages believes that Providence has bestowed
on him an elder son's inheritance of wisdom. Nor, were we to glance
towards the obscurer paths of life, should we find good Parson Dale deem
himself worse off than the rest of the world in this precious commodity,
--as, indeed, he has signally evinced of late in that shrewd guess of his
touching Professor Moss. Even plain Squire Hazeldean takes it for
granted that he could teach Audley Egerton a thing or two worth knowing
in politics; Mr. Stirn thinks that there is no branch of useful lore on
which he could not instruct the squire; while Sprott the tinker, with his
bag full of tracts and lucifer matches, regards the whole framework of
modern society, from a rick to a constitution, with the profound disdain
of a revolutionary philosopher. Considering that every individual thus
brings into the stock of the world so vast a share of intelligence, it
cannot but excite our wonder to find that Oxenstiern is popularly held to
be right when he said, "See, my son, how little wisdom it requires to
govern States,"--that is, Men! That so many millions of persons, each
with a profound assurance that he is possessed of an exalted sagacity,
should concur in the ascendancy of a few inferior intellects, according
to a few stupid, prosy, matter-of-fact rules as old as the hills, is a
phenomenon very discreditable to the spirit and energy of the aggregate
human species! It creates no surprise that one sensible watch-dog should
control the movements of a flock of silly grass-eating sheep; but that
two or three silly grass-eating sheep should give the law to whole flocks
of such mighty sensible watch-dogs--/Diavolo!/ Dr. Riecabocca, explain
that, if you can! And wonderfully strange it is, that notwithstanding
all the march of enlightenment, notwithstanding our progressive
discoveries in the laws of Nature, our railways, steam-engines, animal
magnetism, and electrobiology,--we have never made any improvement that
is generally acknowledged, since men ceased to be troglodytes and nomads,
in the old-fashioned gamut of flats and sharps, which attunes into
irregular social jog-trot all the generations that pass from the cradle
to the grave; still, "/the desire for something have have not/" impels
all the energies that keep us in movement, for good or for ill, according
to the checks or the directions of each favourite desire.

A friend of mine once said to a millionaire, whom he saw forever engaged
in making money which he never seemed to have any pleasure in spending,
"Pray, Mr ----, will you answer me one question: You are said to have two
millions, and you spend L600 a year. In order to rest and enjoy, what
will content you?"

"A little more," answered the millionaire. That "little more" is the
mainspring of civilization. Nobody ever gets it!

"Philus," saith a Latin writer, "was not so rich as Laelius; Laelius was
not so rich as Scipio; Scipio was not so rich as Crassus; and Crassus was
not so rich--as he wished to be!" If John Bull were once contented,
Manchester might shut up its mills. It is the "little more" that makes
a mere trifle of the National Debt!--Long life to it!

Still, mend our law-books as we will, one is forced to confess that
knaves are often seen in fine linen, and honest men in the most shabby
old rags; and still, notwithstanding the exceptions, knavery is a very
hazardous game, and honesty, on the whole, by far the best policy.
Still, most of the Ten Commandments remain at the core of all the
Pandects and Institutes that keep our hands off our neighbours' throats,
wives, and pockets; still, every year shows that the parson's maxim--"non
quieta movere "--is as prudent for the health of communities as when
Apollo recommended his votaries not to rake up a fever by stirring the
Lake Camarina; still, people, thank Heaven, decline to reside in
parallelograms, and the surest token that we live under a free government
is when we are governed by persons whom we have a full right to imply, by
our censure and ridicule, are blockheads compared to ourselves! Stop
that delightful privilege, and, by Jove! sir, there is neither pleasure
nor honour in being governed at all! You might as well be--a Frenchman!




CHAPTER II.

The Italian and his friend are closeted together.

"And why have you left your home in -----shire, and why this new change
of name?"

"Peschiera is in England."

"I know it."

"And bent on discovering me; and, it is said, of stealing from me my
child."

"He has had the assurance to lay wagers that he will win the hand of your
heiress. I know that too; and therefore I have come to England,--first
to baffle his design--for I do not think your fears altogether
exaggerated,--and next to learn from you how to follow up a clew which,
unless I am too sanguine, may lead to his ruin, and your unconditional
restoration. Listen to me. You are aware that, after the skirmish with
Peschiera's armed hirelings sent in search of you, I received a polite
message from the Austrian government, requesting me to leave its Italian
domains. Now, as I hold it the obvious duty of any foreigner admitted to
the hospitality of a State, to refrain from all participation in its
civil disturbances, so I thought my honour assailed at this intimation,
and went at once to Vienna, to explain to the minister there (to whom I
was personally known), that though I had, as became man to man, aided
to protect a refugee, who had taken shelter under my roof, from the
infuriated soldiers at the command of his private foe, I had not only
not shared in any attempt at revolt, but dissuaded, as far as I could,
my Italian friends from their enterprise; and that because, without
discussing its merits, I believed, as a military man and a cool
spectator, the enterprise could only terminate in fruitless bloodshed.
I was enabled to establish my explanation by satisfactory proof; and my
acquaintance with the minister assumed something of the character of
friendship. I was then in a position to advocate your cause, and to
state your original reluctance to enter into the plots of the insurgents.
I admitted freely that you had such natural desire for the independence
of your native land, that, had the standard of Italy been boldly hoisted
by its legitimate chiefs, or at the common uprising of its whole people,
you would have been found in the van, amidst the ranks of your
countrymen; but I maintained that you would never have shared in a
conspiracy frantic in itself, and defiled by the lawless schemes and
sordid ambition of its main projectors, had you not been betrayed and
decoyed into it by the misrepresentations and domestic treachery of your
kinsman,--the very man who denounced you. Unfortunately, of this
statement I had no proof but your own word. I made, however, so far an
impression in your favour, and, it may be, against the traitor, that your
property was not confiscated to the State, nor handed over, upon the plea
of your civil death, to your kinsman."

"How!--I do not understand. Peschiera has the property?" "He holds the
revenues but of one half upon pleasure, and they would be withdrawn,
could I succeed in establishing the case that exists against him. I was
forbidden before to mention this to you; the minister, not inexcusably,
submitted you to the probation of unconditional exile. Your grace might
depend upon your own forbearance from further conspiracies--forgive the
word. I need not say I was permitted to return to Lombardy. I found, on
my arrival, that--that your unhappy wife had been to my house, and
exhibited great despair at hearing of my departure."

Riccabocca knit his dark brows, and breathed hard.

"I did not judge it necessary to acquaint you with this circumstance, nor
did it much affect me. I believed in her guilt--and what could now avail
her remorse, if remorse she felt? Shortly afterwards, I heard that she
was no more."

"Yes," muttered Riccabocca, "she died in the same year that I left Italy.
It must be a strong reason that can excuse a friend for reminding me even
that she once lived!"

"I come at once to that reason," said L'Estrange, gently. "This autumn I
was roaming through Switzerland, and, in one of my pedestrian excursions
amidst the mountains, I met with an accident, which confined me for some
days to a sofa at a little inn in an obscure village. My hostess was an
Italian; and as I had left my servant at a town at some distance, I
required her attention till I could write to him to come to me. I was
thankful for her cares, and amused by her Italian babble. We became very
good friends. She told me she had been servant to a lady of great rank,
who had died in Switzerland; and that, being enriched by the generosity
of her mistress, she had married a Swiss innkeeper, and his people had
become hers. My servant arrived, and my hostess learned my name, which
she did not know before. She came into my room greatly agitated. In
brief, this woman had been servant to your wife. She had accompanied her
to my villa, and known of her anxiety to see me, as your friend. The
Government had assigned to your wife your palace at Milan, with a
competent income. She had refused to accept of either. Failing to see
me, she had set off towards England, resolved upon seeing yourself; for
the journals had stated that to England you had escaped."

"She dared! shameless! And see, but a moment before, I had forgotten all
but her grave in a foreign soil,--and these tears had forgiven her,"
murmured the Italian.

"Let them forgive her still," said Harley, with all his exquisite
sweetness of look and tone. "I resume. On entering Switzerland your
wife's health, which you know was always delicate, gave way. To fatigue
and anxiety succeeded fever, and delirium ensued. She had taken with her
but this one female attendant--the sole one she could trust--on leaving
home. She suspected Peschiera to have bribed her household. In the
presence of this woman she raved of her innocence, in accents of terror
and aversion denounced your kinsman, and called on you to vindicate her
name and your own."

"Ravings indeed! Poor Paulina!" groaned Riccabocca, covering his face
with both hands.

"But in her delirium there were lucid intervals. In one of these she
rose, in spite of all her servants could do to restrain her, took from
her desk several letters, and reading them over, exclaimed piteously,
'But how to get them to him; whom to trust? And his friend is gone!'
Then an idea seemed suddenly to flash upon her, for she uttered a joyous
exclamation, sat down, and wrote long and rapidly, enclosed what she
wrote with all the letters, in one packet, which she sealed carefully,
and bade her servant carry to the post, with many injunctions to take it
with her own hand, and pay the charge on it. 'For oh!' said she (I
repeat the words as my informant told them to me),--'for oh! this is my
sole chance to prove to my husband that, though I have erred, I am not
the guilty thing he believes me; the sole chance, too, to redeem my
error, and restore, perhaps, to my husband his country, to my child her
heritage.' The servant took the letter to the post; and when she
returned, her lady was asleep, with a smile upon her face. But from that
sleep she woke again delirious, and before the next morning her soul had
fled." Here Riccabocca lifted one hand from his face and grasped
Harley's arm, as if mutely beseeching him to pause. The heart of the man
struggled hard with his pride and his philosophy; and it was long before
Harley could lead him to regard the worldly prospects which this last
communication from his wife might open to his ruined fortunes,--not,
indeed, till Riccabocca had persuaded himself, and half persuaded Harley
(for strong, indeed, was all presumption of guilt against the dead), that
his wife's protestations of innocence from all but error had been but
ravings.

"Be this as it may," said Harley, "there seems every reason to suppose
that the letters enclosed were Peschiera's correspondence, and that, if
so, these would establish the proof of his influence over your wife, and
of his perfidious machinations against yourself. I resolved, before
coming hither, to go round by Vienna. There I heard, with dismay, that
Peschiera had not only obtained the imperial sanction to demand your
daughter's hand, but had boasted to his profligate circle that he should
succeed; and he was actually on his road to England. I saw at once that
could this design, by any fraud or artifice, be successful with Violante
(for of your consent, I need not say, I did not dream), the discovery of
the packet, whatever its contents, would be useless; Peschiera's end
would be secured. I saw also that his success would suffice forever to
clear his name; for his success must imply your consent (it would be to
disgrace your daughter, to assert that she had married without it), and
your consent would be his acquittal. I saw, too, with alarm, that to all
means for the accomplishment of his project he would be urged by despair;
for his debts are great, and his character nothing but new wealth can
support. I knew that he was able, bold, determined, and that he had
taken with him a large supply of money borrowed upon usury,--in a word, I
trembled for you both. I have now seen your daughter, and I tremble no
more. Accomplished seducer as Peschiera boasts himself, the first look
upon her face so sweet, yet so noble, convinced me that she is proof
against a legion of Peschieras. Now, then, return we to this all-
important subject,--to this packet. It never reached you. Long years
have passed since then.

"Does it exist still? Into whose hands would it have fallen?

"Try to summon up all your recollections. The servant could not remember
the name of the person to whom it was addressed; she only insisted that
the name began with a B, that it was directed to England, and that to
England she accordingly paid the postage. Whom then, with a name that
begins with B, or (in case the servant's memory here mislead her) whom
did you or your wife know, during your visit to England, with sufficient
intimacy to make it probable that she would select such a person for her
confidant?"

"I cannot conceive," said Riccabocca, shaking his head. "We came to
England shortly after our marriage. Paulina was affected by the climate.
She spoke not a word of English, and indeed not even French, as might
have been expected from her birth, for her father was poor, and
thoroughly Italian. She refused all society. I went, it is true,
somewhat into the London world,--enough to induce me to shrink from
the contrast that my second visit as a beggared refugee would have
made to the reception I met with on my first; but I formed no intimate
friendships. I recall no one whom she could have written to as intimate
with me."

"But," persisted Harley, "think again. Was there no lady well acquainted
with Italian, and with whom, perhaps, for that very reason, your wife
became familiar?"

"Ah, it is true. There was one old lady of retired habits, but who had
been much in Italy. Lady--Lady--I remember--Lady Jane Horton."

"Horton--Lady Jane!" exclaimed Harley; "again; thrice in one day!--
is this wound never to scar over?" Then, noting Riccabocca's look of
surprise, he said, "Excuse me, my friend; I listen to you with renewed
interest. Lady Jane was a distant relation of my own; she judged me,
perhaps, harshly--and I have some painful associations with her name;
but she was a woman of many virtues. Your wife knew her?"

"Not, however, intimately; still, better than any one else in London.
But Paulina would not have written to her; she knew that Lady Jane had
died shortly after her own departure from England. I myself was summoned
back to Italy on pressing business; she was too unwell to journey with me
as rapidly as I was obliged to travel; indeed, illness detained her
several weeks in England. In this interval she might have made
acquaintances. Ah, now I see; I guess. You say the name began with
B. Paulina, in my absence, engaged a companion,--a Mrs. Bertram. This
lady accompanied her abroad. Paulina became excessively attached to her,
she knew Italian so well. Mrs. Bertram left her on the road, and
returned to England, for some private affairs of her own. I forget why
or wherefore; if, indeed, I ever asked or learned. Paulina missed her
sadly, often talked of her, wondered why she never heard from her. No
doubt it was to this Mrs. Bertram that she wrote!"

"And you don't know the lady's friends, or address?"

"No."

"Nor who recommended her to your wife?"

"No."

"Probably Lady Jane Horton?"

"It may be so.

"Very likely."

"I will follow up this track, slight as it is."

"But if Mrs. Bertram received the communication, how comes it that it
never reached myself--Oh, fool that I am, how should it! I, who guarded
so carefully my incognito!"

"True. This your wife could not foresee; she would naturally imagine
that your residence in England would be easily discovered. But many
years must have passed since your wife lost sight of this Mrs. Bertram,
if their acquaintance was made so soon after your marriage; and now it is
a long time to retrace,--before even your Violante was born."

"Alas! yes. I lost two fair sons in the interval. Violante was born to
me as the child of sorrow."

"And to make sorrow lovely! how beautiful she is!" The father smiled
proudly.

"Where, in the loftiest houses of Europe, find a husband worthy of such a
prize?"

"You forget that I am still an exile, she still dowerless. You forget
that I am pursued by Peschiera; that I would rather see her a beggar's
wife--than---Pah, the very thought maddens me, it is so foul. /Corpo di
Bacco!/ I have been glad to find her a husband already."

"Already! Then that young man spoke truly?"

"What young man?"

"Randal Leslie. How! You know him?" Here a brief explanation followed.
Harley heard with attentive ear, and marked vexation, the particulars of
Riccabocca's connection and implied engagement with Leslie.

"There is something very suspicious to me in all this," said he.

"Why should this young man have so sounded me as to Violante's chance of
losing fortune if she married, an Englishman?"

"Did he? Oh, pooh! Excuse him. It was but his natural wish to seem
ignorant of all about me. He did not know enough of my intimacy with you
to betray my secret."

But he knew enough of it--must have known enough--to have made it right
that he should tell you I was in England. He does not seem to have done
so."

"No; that is strange--yet scarcely strange; for, when we last met, his
head was full of other things,--love and marriage. /Basta!/ youth will be
youth."

"He has no youth left in him!" exclaimed Harley, passionately. "I doubt
if he ever had any. He is one of those men who come into the world with
the pulse of a centenarian. You and I never shall be as old as he was in
long clothes. Ah, you may laugh; but I am never wrong in my instincts.
I disliked him at the first,--his eye, his smile, his voice, his very
footstep. It is madness in you to countenance such a marriage; it may
destroy all chance of your restoration."

"Better that than infringe my word once passed."

"No, no," exclaimed Harley; "your word is not passed, it shall not be
passed. Nay, never look so piteously at me. At all events, pause till
we know more of this young man. If he be worthy of her without a dower,
why, then, let him lose you your heritage. I should have no more to
say."

"But why lose me my heritage? There is no law in Austria which can
dictate to a father what husband to choose for his daughter."

"Certainly not. But you are out of the pale of law itself just at
present; and it would surely be a reason for State policy to withhold
your pardon, and it would be to the loss of that favour with your own
countrymen, which would now make that pardon so popular, if it were known
that the representative of your name were debased by your daughter's
alliance with an English adventurer,--a clerk in a public office. Oh,
sage in theory, why are you such a simpleton in action?"

Nothing moved by this taunt, Riceabocca rubbed his hands, and then
stretched them comfortably over the fire.

"My friend," said he, "the representation of my name would pass to my
son."

"But you have no son."

"Hush! I am going to have one; my Jemima informed me of it yesterday
morning; and it was upon that information that I resolved to speak to
Leslie. Am I a simpleton now?"

"Going to have a son," repeated Harley, looking very bewildered; "how do
you know it is to be a son?"

"Physiologists are agreed," said the sage, positively, "that where the
husband is much older than the wife, and there has been a long interval
without children before she condescends to increase the population of the
world, she (that is, it is at least as nine to four)--she brings into the
world a male. I consider that point therefore as settled, according to
the calculations of statisticians and the researches of naturalists."

Harley could not help laughing, though he was still angry and disturbed.

"The same man as ever; always the fool of philosophy."

"/Cospetto!/" said Riccabocca. "I am rather the philosopher of fools.
And talking of that, shall I present you to my Jemima?"

"Yes; but in turn I must present you to one who remembers with gratitude
your kindness, and whom your philosophy, for a wonder, has not ruined.
Some time or other you must explain that to me. Excuse me for a moment;
I will go for him.

"For him,--for whom? In my position I must be cautious; and--"

"I will answer for his faith and discretion. Meanwhile order dinner, and
let me and my friend stay to share it."

"Dinner? /Corpo di Bacco!/---not that Bacchus can help us here. What
will Jemima say?"

"Henpecked man, settle that with your connubial tyrant. But dinner it
must be."

I leave the reader to imagine the delight of Leonard at seeing once more
Riccabocca unchanged and Violante so improved, and the kind Jemima too;
and their wonder at him and his history, his books and his fame. He
narrated his struggles and adventures with a simplicity that removed from
a story so personal the character of egotism. But when he came to speak
of Helen he was brief and reserved.

Violante would have questioned more closely; but, to Leonard's relief,
Harley interposed.

"You shall see her whom he speaks of before long, and question her
yourself."

With these words, Harley turned the young man's narrative into new
directions; and Leonard's words again flowed freely. Thus the evening
passed away happily to all save Riccabocca. For the thought of his dead
wife rose ever and anon before the exile; but when it did, and became too
painful, he crept nearer to Jemima, and looked in her simple face, and
pressed her cordial hand. And yet the monster had implied to Harley that
his comforter was a fool,--so she was, to love so contemptible a
slanderer of herself and her sex.

Violante was in a state of blissful excitement; she could not analyze her
own joy. But her conversation was chiefly with Leonard; and the most
silent of all was Harley. He sat listening to Leonard's warm yet
unpretending eloquence,--that eloquence which flows so naturally from
genius, when thoroughly at its ease, and not chilled back on itself by
hard, unsympathizing hearers; listened, yet more charmed, to the
sentiments less profound, yet no less earnest,--sentiments so feminine,
yet so noble, with which Violante's fresh virgin heart responded to the
poet's kindling soul. Those sentiments of hers were so unlike all he
heard in the common world, so akin to himself in his gone youth!
Occasionally--at some high thought of her own, or some lofty line from
Italian song, that she cited with lighted eyes, and in melodious accents
--occasionally he reared his knightly head, and his lip quivered, as if
he had heard the sound of a trumpet. The inertness of long years was
shaken. The Heroic, that lay deep beneath all the humours of his
temperament, was reached, appealed to; and stirred within him, rousing up
all the bright associations connected with it, and long dormant. When he
arose to take leave, surprised at the lateness of the hour, Harley said,
in a tone that bespoke the sincerity of the compliment, "I thank you for
the happiest hours I have known for years." His eye dwelt on Violante as
he spoke.

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