The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

To what end should she tell them of kinship if she could not give them a kinswoman's love? And she could not. The girl was a beautiful creature, kindly, gentle, caressing; but she was a peasant, a peasant whose thoughts had never travelled beyond the narrow circle of her hills, whose rough knuckles and thick fingers told of years of toil, who had not one feeling in common with the cousin bred upon books, and plunged in the morning of youth into the most enlightened society in Christendom, the London of Walpoles and Herveys, Carterets and St. Johns, Pitts and Foxes.

She would not tell them. She could not imagine her lips framing the words. She could not say to Francesca, "We are first cousins, the next thing to sisters." But she could make them happy. That was possible. She could take all needful measures to provide them with a substantial income; a competence which should enable them to rebuild the rotten old villa, and spend the rest of their days in ease and plenty.

Lord Dunkeld called on her in the evening, and took a dish of tea with the two ladies in their garden betwixt sunset and moonrise. He found Antonia looking pale and tired.

"She started on one of her solitary rambles early this morning," Sophy said; "as if any one ought to walk in this climate, and she was as white as her muslin gown when she came home. She had much better have idled with me in the boat."

"I did not go far," Antonia said, "but I found some interesting people – only peasants. The girl your lordship noticed yesterday in the procession."

"The girl who is so like you?" exclaimed Dunkeld. "I thought your ladyship was a stranger to at least one of the deadly sins, and knew no touch of vanity. But I find you are mortal, and that you had a fancy to see a face like your own."

"Yes, I had a fancy to see the girl. And now I want to help her, if I can. She is desperately poor."

"Is anybody poor in Italy? I have always thought that Italian peasants live upon sunshine and a few ripe figs, and have no use for money."

"They are very poor. The grandfather is old, and ailing. Can you find me an honest lawyer here, or at Varenna?"

"For your ladyship I would attempt miracles. I will do my best."

"And as quickly as you can, my lord, for I want to go back to England."

"Grant me the felicity of escorting you when you go, and make me your slave in the mean time; though, as I am always that, madam, 'tis a one-sided bargain."

"Oh, pray come in our coach with us, my lord," cried Sophy. "I was in a panic all the way here, on account of the brigands."

"Heavens! Was your coach attacked?"

"No, no, sir," said Antonia, laughing. "The brigands came no nearer than a vague rumour that some of their calling had been heard of above Andermatt."

"But who knows what may happen when we are going home, now that the days are so much shorter?" protested Sophy.

"If one strong arm and a pair of pistols can help you, Miss Potter – "

"Oh, I shall feel ever so much safer with your lordship in our coach. I know if those wretches came – with black masks, perhaps – Giuseppe would run away."

Giuseppe was the Italian footman, whom Sophy suspected of being a poor-spirited creature, in spite of a figure which would have delighted the late King of Prussia.

Antonia went to the villino on the following afternoon, and being unable to shake off Lord Dunkeld, allowed him to accompany her. She liked his conversation, which diverted her thoughts from brooding upon the past, and on George Stobart's peril in the wild world across the Atlantic. He filled the place of that brilliant society which had been her anodyne for every grief; and she was grateful to him for a steadfastness in friendship which promised to last for a lifetime. His colder temperament had allowed him to put off the lover and assume the friend. He had been strong as a granite pillar where George Stobart had proved a broken reed.

They found the girl tying up the vine branches in a long berceau, and the old man sitting by the smouldering ashes as he had sat yesterday, in a monotony of idleness. The windows had not been mended, and the shutters still hung forlornly upon broken hinges.

Antonia asked the girl if she had not been able to find a carpenter to do the work.

"Grandfather would not let a carpenter come. He is afraid of the noise."

"And when bad weather comes the rain will come in."

"Si, signorina; the rain always comes in."

"And your broken shutters cannot keep out the cold winds."

"No, signorina; the wind almost blows grandfather out of his chair sometimes."

"Then he really ought to let a carpenter come."

The old man was listening intently, and Dunkeld was watching his face.

"They are brigands, those carpenters," he said. "'Tis a waste of money to employ them. I don't mind the wind, signorina. Francia can hang up a curtain."

"Oh, grandfather, the curtain is an old rag! And the signorina gave you money to pay the carpenter."

"Andiamo adagio, carissima. I am not going to waste the signorina's money on idlers and cheats, nor yet upon doctors. I hate doctors! They are knaves, bloodthirsty rogues that want to be paid for sticking a knife into a man as if he were a pig!"

Antonia did not argue the point, and left the old man after a few kindly words. She was disgusted at his obstinacy, which made it so hard a matter to improve his circumstances. She walked some way in silence, Dunkeld at her side.

"I fear your new protégé is a troublesome subject," he said, "and that you will find a difficulty in helping him."

"I cannot understand his objection to having that wretched old barn made wind and weather tight."

"I can. The man is a miser. You have given him money, and he wants to keep it, to hide it under his mattress, perhaps, and gloat over it in the dead of the night. The miser has a keener joy in the touch of a guinea than in any indulgence of meat or drink, warmth and comfort, that money can buy."

"I fear your lordship has guessed the riddle," Antonia answered, wounded to the quick. "I gave him all the gold in my purse yesterday. 'Twas at least twenty guineas. Well, I must take other means. I will send a carpenter to do all the work that is wanted, and take the Bellagio doctor to the villino to-morrow morning."

"Will your ladyship be offended if I presume to advise?"

"Offended! I shall think you vastly kind."

"Leave these people alone. The old man is unworthy of your protection. The girl is happy in her present condition. Your bounty will but administer to her grandfather's avarice, and will not better her life."

"But I must help them – I must, I must," Antonia protested. "It is my duty. I cannot let them suffer the ills of poverty while I am rich. I must find some way to make their lives easy."

Dunkeld wondered at her vehemence, and pursued the argument no further. This passion of charity was but an instinct of her generous nature, the desire to share fortune's gifts with the unfortunate.

She returned from this second visit dispirited and unhappy. Was she doomed never to be able to esteem those whom she was bound to love? She had loved her father fondly, though she had known him unprincipled and shifty; but what affection could she feel for this old man against whom her class instinct revolted, unless she could find in him humble virtues that could atone for humble birth? And she found him sordid, untruthful, avaricious.

She called on the local doctor next morning, and went with him to the villino, where he diagnosed the old man's ailments as only old age, the weakness induced by poor food, and the rheumatic symptoms that were the natural result of living in a draughty house. He recommended warmth and a generous diet, and promised to call once a week through the coming winter, his fee for each visit being something less than an English shilling.

After he had gone Antonia sat in the garden with Baptisto Bari and his granddaughter for an hour. She had his chair carried into the sunshine, and out of the way of the noise, while a couple of workmen mended the windows and shutters. She had found a builder in Bellagio, and had instructed him to do all that could be done to make the house comfortable before winter. He was to get the work done with the least possible inconvenience to the family.

Sitting in the quiet garden, while Francesca gathered beans for the soup, and while the children sprawled in the sun, playing with some toys Antonia had brought them, Bari was easily lured into talking of the past, and of the daughter he had loved. All that was best in his nature revealed itself when he talked of his sorrow; and Antonia thought that the miser's despicable passion had only grown upon him after the loss that had, perhaps, blighted his life. And then, when he was an old man, death had taken his remaining daughter; and he had been left, lonely and heart-broken, with his orphan grandchildren. He had begun to scrape and pinch for their support, most likely; and then the miser's insane love of money had grown upon him, like some insidious disease.

Antonia tried to interest him, and to make excuses for him, and she spoke to him very plainly upon the money question. She appealed even to his selfishness.

"When I give you money, it is that you may have all the good things that money can buy," she said; "good wine and strengthening food, warm clothes, a comfortable bed. What is the use of a few guineas in a cracked teacup, or hidden in a corner of your mattress?" – Baptisto almost jumped out of his chair, and she knew she had hit upon the place of his treasure. "What is the use of hoarding money that other people will spend and waste, perhaps, when you are dead?"

"No, no, she will not waste it. Che Diavolo! She will give me a handsome funeral, and spend all the rest on masses for the good of my soul. That is what she will have to do."

"You need not save money for that. If you live comfortably your life will be prolonged, most likely; and I promise that you shall have a handsome funeral, and the – the masses."

She went again next day, and on the day after, always alone; and the old man became more and more at his ease with her; but all that she did was done for duty's sake, and she found it harder work to talk to him than it had been to talk with poor dying Sally Dormer, by whose bedside she had spent many quiet hours. The abyss between them was wider. But she felt more affectionately towards Francesca, who adored her almost as if she were indeed the celestial lady whose miraculous presence every good Catholic is prepared to meet at any solemn crisis of life.

Antonia did not rest till, with the assistance of a banker and lawyer at Varenna, she had settled an income of three hundred pounds a year upon Baptisto, with reversion to his grandchildren, she herself acting as trustee in conjunction with the banker, who was partner in an old-established banking house at Milan, of which the Varenna bank – in a pavilion in an angle of a garden wall – was a branch.

This done, her mind was at ease, and she prepared for her journey to England. She would return, as she had come, by the Low Countries, avoiding France on account of the war.

Lord Dunkeld had advised and assisted her in making the settlement on the Baris, but she knew that he thought her foolish and quixotic in her determination to provide for this particular family.

"I could find you a score of claimants for your bounty, far more pathetic cases than Baptisto, if you are so set upon playing the good angel," he said. "'Tis a mercy you do not want to provide for the whole pauper population upon the same magnificent scale. Three hundred a year for an Italian peasant! But a woman's charity is ever a romantic impulse; and one can but admire her tenderness, though one may question her discretion."

"I may have a reason you cannot fathom," Antonia said gravely.

"Oh, 'tis the heart moves you to this act, not the reason! This world would be happier if all women were as unreasonable."

She despised herself for suppressing the motive of her bounty. To be praised for generosity, while she was ashamed to acknowledge her own kindred, ashamed of her own lowly origin! What could be meaner or more degrading? But she thought of Dunkeld's thousand years' pedigree, the pride of birth, the instinct of race, which he had so often revealed unconsciously in their familiar talk; and it was difficult to sink her own pride before so proud a man.

The last day came, and he insisted on accompanying her in her farewell visit. She had given him the privileges of a trusted friend, and had no excuse for refusing his company.

She told Baptisto Bari what she had done for him.

"You will have seventy-five pounds paid you every quarter," she said; "and all you have to do is to spend your money freely, and let Francesca buy everything that is wanted for you, and the children, and herself. I shall come back next year, and I shall be very sorry and very angry if I do not find you living in comfort, and the villino looking as handsome as a nobleman's villa."

The old man protested his gratitude, with tears. Yes, he would spend his money. He had been spending it. See, there was the magnificent new curtain; and he had a pillow for his bed; and a barrel of oil for the lamp. They had the lamp lighted every night. And he had coffee – a dish of coffee on Sunday – and they had been drinking their milk, and making butter for themselves, instead of selling all the milk to the negozio in Bellagio. Indeed, he had discovered that money was a very useful thing when one spent it; though it was also useful to keep it against the day of misfortune or death.

"True, m'amico; but it is bad economy to keep your money under your pillow, and let your house fall over your ears for want of mending," answered Antonia; and then she bade him good-bye – good-bye till next year, and bent down to kiss the withered forehead, above white pent-house eyebrows.

The keen old eyes clouded over with tears as her lips touched him, and the tremulous old hands were joined in prayer that God and the Saints might reward her piety.

She opened her arms to Francesca, who fell upon her breast, sobbing.

"Ah, sweetest lady, had the poor ever such a friend, ever such a benefactor? Heaven sent you to us. We pray for you night and day, for your happiness on earth, for your soul's bliss in heaven," cried the girl, in her melodious Italian.

Antonia could scarcely drag herself away from the clinging arms, the tears and benedictions; but she left Francesca at the garden gate, and amid all those tears and kisses had not revealed herself to her kindred.

She crossed the hill in silence, Dunkeld at her side, watching her thoughtful countenance, and perplexed by its almost tragic gloom.

"You are a wonderful woman," he said lightly, by-and-by, to break the spell of silence. "You take these Italian peasants to your heart as if they were your own flesh and blood. Is it the Italian blood in your veins that opens your heart to beings of so different a race?"

"Perhaps."

"I could understand your letting the girl hug you – a creature so lovely, and in the bloom and freshness of youth. But that wrinkled old miser! Well, 'twas a divine charity that moved you to squander a kiss upon that parchment brow."

Antonia turned to him in a sudden tumult of feeling, remorse, shame, self-disparagement.

"Oh, stop, stop!" she cried. "Your words scald me like molten lead. Divine charity! Why, I am the most despicable of women. I hate myself for my paltry pride. I can bear the shame of it no longer. 'Twill be your lordship's turn to scorn me as I scorn myself. That old man is my mother's father. I came to Italy to hunt for her kindred, to find in what palace she was reared, from what princely race I inherited my haughty spirit. And a chance, the chance likeness between Francesca and me, resulted in the discovery that I came of a long line of peasants, servants, the tillers of the ground, the race that lives by submissive toil, that has never known independence. And I was ashamed of them – bitterly ashamed. It was anguish to me to know that I sprang from that humble stock, most of all when I thought of you, your warriors, and statesmen, bishops, judges – all the long line of rulers and master minds, stretching back into the dark night of history, part of yourself; for if they had never lived you could not be what you are."

"Oh, madam, you own a more noble lineage than Scottish Thanes can boast of. The seaborn Venus had no ancestors, but was queen of the earth by the divine right of beauty. You are a daughter of the gods, and may easily dispense with a parchment pedigree."

"Oh, pray, sir, no idle compliments! I would rather suffer your contempt than your mocking praise. I can scarcely be more despicable in your esteem than I am in my own."

"I could never think ill of you, my sweet friend; never doubt the nobility of your heart and mind. The test has been a severe one; for to a woman the death of a romantic dream means much; but the gold rings true. You had a right to keep this secret from me if you pleased."

"And from them?"

"That is a nicer question. I doubt it is your duty to make them happier by the knowledge that they have a legitimate claim to your bounty. I think you would do well to disclose your relationship to them before you leave Italy. The old man may not live till your return; and the thought that pride had come between you and one so near in blood might be a lasting regret."

"Yes, yes, your lordship is right. I will see them again this evening. I will tell my grandfather who and what I am. Yes, it was odious of me to play the Lady Bountiful, to let him praise me for generosity – me, his daughter's child. Sure I am glad I made my confession to you, for now I know that you are my true friend."

"I will never advise you ill, if I can help it, madam," he said, stooping to kiss her hand. "And doubt not that you can trust me with every secret of your heart and mind, for there can exist no feeling or thought in either that is not common to generous natures."

Lady Kilrush spent the sunset hour with her kindred, and was touched by the old man's delight when he clasped to his heart the child of that daughter he had loved and mourned. She knelt beside him with uncovered head as she told him the story of her childhood, her love for the mother she had lost before memory began. He turned her face to the sunset glow, and gazed at her with eyes drowned in tears. He was no longer the money-grubber, keenly expectant of a stranger's bounty. The whole nature of the man seemed changed by the awakening of an unforgotten love.

"Yes, it is Tonia's face," he cried. "I knew you were beautiful; I knew you were like her; but not how like. Your brow has the same lines, your lips have the same curves. Yes, now, as you smile at me, I see my beloved one again."

There was nothing sordid or vulgar in the peasant now. His countenance shone with the pure light of love, and Antonia's heart went out to him with some touch of filial affection.

Before they parted he gave her a letter – the ink dim with age – her mother's last letter, written from the Lincolnshire homestead where she died; and Antonia read of the love that had hung over her cradle, that tender maternal love she had been fated never to know.

She deferred her journey for a few days, at her grandfather's entreaty, and spent many hours at the villino. She encouraged Baptisto and Francesca to talk to her of all the details of their lives. She drew nearer to them in thought and feeling, and made new plans for their happiness, promising to come to Bellagio every autumn, and offering to build them a new house next year at the other end of their garden where the view was finer. But the old man protested that the villino would last his time, and that he would never like any house as well.

"Then the new house must be built for Francesca when she marries," Antonia told him gaily. "We will wait till she has a suitor she loves."

CHAPTER XVI.

DEATH AND VICTORY

It was late in October when Lady Kilrush arrived at her house in St. James's Square. What a gloomy splendour, what an unromantic luxury the spacious mansion presented after the lake and mountains, the chestnut woods and rose gardens of Lombardy. Yet this old English comfort within doors, while the grey mists of autumn brooded over the square where the oil lamps made spots of quivering golden light amidst the deepening gloom, had a certain charm, and Antonia was not ill pleased to find herself taking a dish of tea by the fire in the library with her old friend Patty Granger, who brought her the news of the town, the weddings and elopements, the duels and law-suits, the beauties who had lost their looks, and the prodigals who had anticipated their majority and ruined an estate by a single cast at hazard.

"And so Lord Dunkeld travelled all the way from Como with you and Mrs. Potter?" said Patty, when she had emptied her budget. "You must have been vastly tired of him by the time you got home, after being boxed in a travelling chariot for over a se'nnight."

"There are people of whose company one does not easily tire, Patty."

"Then my old General ain't one of 'em; for I yawn till my jaws ache whenever we spend an evening together, and he sits and proses over Marlborough's wars and the two chargers he had shot under him at Malplaquet. Sure I knew all his stories by heart long before we were married; and 'tain't likely I'll listen to 'em now. But if you can relish Lord Dunkeld's conversation for a week in a chaise, perhaps you'll be able to endure it from year's end to year's end when you're his wife."

"What are you thinking of, child? I am not going to marry Lord Dunkeld, or any other man living."

"Then I think you ought to have put the poor wretch out of his pain a year ago, and not let him dance attendance on you half over Europe."

"His lordship has known my mind for a long time, and is pleased to honour me with his friendship."

"Ah, you have a knack of turning lovers into friends. You was friends with Mr. Stobart till you quarrelled with him and sent him off to the wars. And I doubt he's killed by this time, if he was with Wolfe; for the General tells me our soldiers haven't a chance against the French."

"Does the General say that, Patty?" Antonia asked anxiously.

She had read all the newspapers on her home-coming. There was no fresh news from America; but the tone about the war was despondent. Wolfe's army before Quebec was but nine thousand, the enemy's force nearly double. Amherst was at a distance, winter approaching, the outlook of a universal blackness.

"The General has hardly any hopes," said Patty. "He has seen Wolfe's last letter, such a down-hearted letter; and the poor man is fitter to lie a-bed in a hospital than to storm a city. He has always been a sickly wretch; never could abide the sea, and suffers more on a voyage than a delicate young woman."

Antonia lay awake half that night, despondent and uneasy, and in her troubled morning sleep dreamt of George Stobart, in a grenadier's uniform, with an ashen countenance, the blood streaming from a sabre cut on his forehead. He looked at her with fading eyes, and reproached her for her cruelty. 'Twas her unkindness had sent him to his doom.

She woke out of this nightmare vision to hear news-boys yelling in the square. "Taking of Quebec. A glorious victory. Death of General Wolfe. Death of General Montcalm." She sprang from her bed, threw up a window, and looked down into the square. It was hardly light. The news-boys were bawling as if they were mad, and street doors and area gates were opening, and eager hands were stretched out to snatch the papers. A ragamuffin crowd was following the news-boys, the crowd that is afoot at all hours, and comes from nowhere. "Great English victory – Slaughter of the enemy. Death of General Wolfe on the field of battle. Death of General Montcalm. Destruction of the French. Quebec taken."

Mr. Pitt had received the news late last night, and this morning 'twas in all the papers. The shouting of the news-vendors made a confusion of harsh noises, each trying to bawl louder than his fellows. And then came the sound of trumpet and drum in Pall Mall, as the guard marched to the Palace, and anon loud hurrahs from the excited crowd in the square, in Pall Mall, everywhere, filling the air with vociferous exultation.