Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

‘I could not sleep till I had seen you, caro,’ said she fondly. ‘It seemed as if in these few hours years had separated us.’

‘And if they had, Marietta, they could scarcely have brought about anything stranger. Guess where I have been – with whom I have passed this entire evening?’

‘How can I? Was he a prince?’

‘Greater than any prince.’

‘That must mean a king, then.’

‘Kings die, and a few lines chronicle them; but I speak of one whose memory will be graven in his language, and whose noble sentiments will be texts to future generations. What think you of Alfieri?’

‘Alfieri!’

‘Himself. He was the Count who rescued us from the mob, and with him I have passed the hours since I saw you. Not that I ever knew nor suspected it, Marietta: if I had, I had never dared to speak as I did about ourselves and our wayward lives in such a presence. I had felt these themes ignoble.’

‘How so?’ cried she eagerly. ‘You have ever told me that art was an ennobling and a glorious thing; that after those whose genius embodied grand conceptions, came he who gave them utterance. How often have you said, the poet lives but half in men’s hearts whose verses have not found some meet interpreter; with words like these have you stimulated me to study, and now – ’

‘And now,’ said he, sighing drearily, ‘I wake to feel what a mere mockery it is:

‘"Tra l’ombra è bella L’istessa stellaChe in faccia del sole Non si mirô.”

Ah, Marietta mia, he who creates is alone an artist!’

The girl bent her head upon her bosom, and while her long waving curls fell loosely over him, she sobbed bitterly. Gerald clasped her closer to his heart, but never spoke a syllable.

‘I ever thought it would be so,’ murmured she at last: ‘I felt that in this sense of birth and blood you boasted of, would one day come a feeling of shame to be the companion of such as me. It is not from art itself you turn away, it is the company of the strolling actor that you shun.’

‘And who or what am I that I should do so?’ said Gerald boldly. ‘When, or where, have I known such happiness as with you, Marietta? Bethink you of the hours we have passed together, poring over these dear old books there, enriching our hearts with noble thoughts, and making the poet the interpreter between us? Telling, too, in the fervour we spoke his lines, how tenderly we felt them; as Metastasio says:

‘"And as we lisped the verse along,Learning to love.”’

‘And now it is over,’ said she, with a sigh of deep despondency.

‘Why so? Shall I, in learning to know the great and the illustrious – to feel how their own high thoughts sway and rule them – be less worthy of your love? The poet told me, to-night, that I declaimed his lines well; but who taught me to feel them, Marietta mia!’ And he kissed her cheek, bathed as it was and seamed with, hot tears. Again he tried to bring back the dream of the past, and their oft-projected scheme of life; but he urged the theme no longer as of old; and even when describing the world they were about to fly from, his words trembled with the emotion that swelled in his heart. In the midst of all these would he break off suddenly with some recollection of Alfieri, who filled every avenue of his thoughts: his proud but graceful demeanour, his low, deep-toned voice, his smile so kind and yet so sad withal; a gentleness, too, in his manner that invited confidence, seemed to dwell in Gerald’s memory, and shed, as it were, a soft and pleasing light over all that had passed.

‘And I am to see him again to-morrow, Marietta,’ continued he proudly; ‘he is to take me with him to the Galleries. I am to see the Pitti and the Offizzi, where in the Tribune the great triumphs of Raffael are placed, and the statue of Venus, too: he is to show me these, and the portraits of all the illustrious men who have made Italy glorious. How eager I am to know how they looked in life, and if their features revealed the consciousness of the fame they were to inherit! And when I come back at night to thee, Marietta, how full shall I be of all these, and how overjoyed if I can pour into your heart the pleasures that swell in my own! Is it not good, dearest, that I should go forth thus to bring back to you the glad tidings of so many beautiful things – will you not be happier for yourself, prouder in me? Will it not be better to have the love of one whose mind is daily expanding, straining to greater efforts, growing in knowledge and gaining in cultivation? Shall I not be more worthy of you if I win praise from others? And I am resolved to do this, Marietta. I will not be satisfied to be ever the mean, ignoble thing I now am.’

‘Our life did not seem so unworthy in your eyes a day or two ago,’ said she sighing. ‘You told me, as we came up the Val d’Arno, that our wandering, wayward existence had a poetry of its own that you loved dearly. That to you ambition could never offer a path equal to that wayside rambling life, over whose little accidents the softening influences of divine verse shed their mild light, so that the ideal world dominated the actual.’

‘All these will I realise, but in a higher sphere, Marietta. The great Alfieri himself told me that a life without labour is an ignominy and a shame. That he who strains his faculties to attain a goal is nobler far than one whose higher gifts lie rusting in disuse. Man lives not for himself, but for his fellows, said he, nor is there such incarnate selfishness as indolence.’

‘And where, and how, and when is this wondrous life of exertion to be begun?’ said she half-scornfully. ‘Can the great poet pour into your heart out of the fulness of his own, and make you as he is? Or are you suddenly become rich and great, like him?’

The youth started, and an angry flush covered his face, and even his forehead, as he arose and walked the room.

‘I see well what is working within you,’ said the girl. ‘The contrast from that splendour to this misery – these poor bleak walls, where no pictures are hanging, no gilding glitters – is too great for you. It is the same shock to your nature as from the beautiful princess in whose presence you stood to that humble bench beside me.’

‘No, by Heaven! Marietta,’ cried he passionately, ‘I have not an ambition in my heart wherein your share is not allotted. It is that you may walk with me to the goal – ’

A scornful gesture of disbelief, one of those movements which, with Italians, have a significance no words ever convey, interrupted his protestation.

‘This is too bad!’ he cried; ‘nor had you ever conceived such distrust of me if your own heart did not give the prompting. There, there,’ cried he, as he pointed his finger at her, while her eyes flashed and sparkled with a wild and lustrous expression, ‘your very looks betray you.’

‘Betray me! this is no betrayal,’ said she haughtily. ‘I have no shame in declaring that I too covet fame, even as you do. Were some mighty patron to condescend to favour me– to fancy that I resembled, I know not what great personage – to imagine that in my traits of look and voice theirs were reflected, it is just as likely I should thank fortune for the accident, and bid adieu to you, as you intend, to-morrow or next day, to take leave of me.’

She spoke boldly and defiantly, her large, full eyes gazing at his with a steadfast and unflinching look, while Gerald held down his head in sorrow and in shame.

Nor was it alone with himself that Gerald was at war, for Marietta had shocked and startled him by qualities he had never suspected in her. In her passion she had declared that her heart was set upon ambitions daring as his own; and, even granting that much of what she said was prompted by wounded pride, there was in her wildly excited glances and her trembling lips the sign of a temperament that knew little of forgiveness. If he was then amazed by discovering Marietta to be different from all he had ever seen her, he was more in love with her than ever.

She had opened the window, and, with her face between her hands, gazed out upon the silent street. Gerald took his place at her side, and thus they remained for some time without a word. A low, faint sigh at last came from the girl, and, placing his arm around her, Gerald drew her gently to him, murmuring softly in her ear:

‘L’onda che mormora,Tra sponda e sponda;L’aura che tremola,Tra fronda e fronda.E meno instabile,Del vostro cor.’

She never spoke, but, averting her head still farther from him, screened herself from his view. At last a low, soft murmuring broke from her lips, and she sang, in accents scarcely above her breath, one of those little native songs she was so fond of. It was a wild but plaintive air, sounding like the wayward cadences of one who left her fancy free to give music to the verse, each stanza ending with the words:

‘Non ho più remi,Non ho più vele,E al silo talentoMi porta il mar.’

With a touching tenderness that thrilled through Gerald’s heart she sung, with many a faltering accent, and in a tremulous tone, the simple words:

‘In a lone, frail hark, forsaken,I float on a nameless sea,Nor care to what morrow I waken;I drift where the waves bear me.‘I look not up to the starry sky,For I have no course to run,Nor eagerly wait, as the dawn draws nigh,To watch for the rising sun.‘For noon is drear as the night to me,To-day is as dark as to-morrow:Forsaken, I float on the nameless sea,To think and weep over my sorrow.*

‘Oh, Marietta, if thou wouldst not wring my heart, do not sing that sad air,’ cried Gerald, pressing her tenderly to him. ‘I bore it ill in our happiest hours, when all went well and hopefully with us.’

‘It bettor suits the present, then,’ said she calmly; then added, with a sudden energy – ‘at all events, it suits my humour!’

‘Thou wouldst break with me, then, Marietta?’ said Gerald, relaxing his hold on her, and turning his eyes fully upon her face.

‘Look down there,’ cried she, pointing with her finger: ‘that street beneath us is narrow enough, but it has two exits: why shouldn’t you take one road, and I the other?’

‘Agreed: so be it, then!’ said Gerald passionately, ‘only remember, this project never came from me.’

‘If there be blame for it, I accept it all,’ said she calmly. ‘These things come ever of caprice, and they go as they come. As your own poet has it:

‘"Si sente che diletta Ma non si sa perché.”’

And with a cold smile and a light motion of the hand, as in adieu, she turned away and left the room. Gerald buried his face between his hands and sobbed as though his heart was breaking. Alternately accusing Marietta and himself of cruelty and injustice, his mind was racked by a conflict, to which nothing offered consolation.

He tried to compose himself to sleep: he lay down on his bed, and endeavoured in many ways to induce that calm spirit which leads to slumber; he even murmured to himself the long-forgotten litanies he had learned, as a student, in the college; but the fever that raged within defied all these attempts, and, foiled in his efforts, he arose and left the house. The day was just dawning, and a pinkish streak of sky could be seen over the mountains of Vail’ Ombrosa, while all the vale of the Arno and Florence itself lay in deep shadow, the great ‘Duomo’ and the tall tower at its side not yet catching the first gleam of the rising sun.

Gerald left the gates of the city, and strode on manfully till he gained the crest of the ‘Bello Sguardo,’ whence the view of the city and its environs is peculiarly fine. Here he sat down to gaze on the scene beneath him; that wondrous map, whose history contains records of mingled greatness, crime, genius, noble patriotism, and of treachery so base that all Europe cannot show its equal; and thus gazing, and thus musing, he sank into deep sleep.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE DROP

The morning was already far advanced and the sun high when Gerald awoke. The heavy dews had penetrated his frail clothing and chilled him, while the hot gleam of the sun glowed fiercely on his face and temples. He was so confused besides, by his dream and by the objects about him, that he sat vainly endeavouring to remember how and why he had come there.

One by one, like stragglers falling into line, his wandering faculties came back, and he bethought him of the poet’s house, Alfieri himself, the Duchess, and lastly, of his quarrel with Marietta – an incident which, do what he might, seemed utterly unaccountable to him. If he felt persuaded that he was in the right throughout, the persuasion gave him no pleasure – far from it. It had been infinitely easier for him now, if he had wronged her, to seek her forgiveness, than forgive himself for having offended her. She, so devoted to him! She, who had taken such pains to teach him all the excellences of the poets she loved; who had stored his mind with Petrarch, and filled his imagination with Ariosto; who taught him to recognise in himself feelings, and thoughts, and hopes akin to those their heroes felt, and thus elevated him in his own esteem. And what a genius was hers! – how easily she adapted herself to each passing mood, and was gay or sorrowful, volatile or passionate, as fancy inclined her. How instinctively her beautiful features caught up the expression of each passion; how wild the transports of her joy; how terrible the agonies of her hatred!

With what fine subtlety, too, she interpreted all she read, discovering hidden meanings, and eliciting springs of action from words apparently insignificant; and then her memory, was it not inexhaustible? An image, a passing simile from a poet she loved, was enough to bring up before her whole cantos; and thus, stored with rich gems of thought, her conversation acquired a grace and a charm that were actual fascination. And was he now to tear himself away from charms like these, and for ever, too? But why was she displeased with him? how had he offended her? Surely it was not the notice of the great poet had awakened her jealousy; and yet, when she thought over her own great gifts, the many attractions she herself possessed – claims to notice far greater than his could ever be – Gerald felt that she might well have resented this neglect.

‘And how much of this is my own fault?’ cried he aloud. ‘Why did I not tell the poet of her great genius? Why not stimulate his curiosity to see and hear her? How soon would he have recognised the noble qualities of her nature!’

Angry with himself, and eager to repair the injustice he had done, he arose and set out for the city, resolved to see Alfieri, and proclaim all Marietta’s accomplishments and talents.

‘He praised me last night,’ muttered he, as he went along; ‘but what will he say of her? She shall recite for him the “Didone,” the lines beginning,

‘"No! sdegnata non sono!”

If his heart does not thrill as he listens, he is more or less than man! He shall hear, too, his own “Cleopatra” uttered in accents that he never dreamed of. And then she shall vary her mood, and sing him one of ter Sicilian barcarolles, or dance the Tiranna. Ah, Signor Poeta,’ said he aloud, * even thy lofty imagination shall gain by gazing upon one gifted and beautiful as she is.’

When Gerald reached the Roman gate he found a large cavalcade making its exit through the deep archway, and the crowd, falling back, made way for the mounted party. Upward of twenty cavaliers and ladies rode past, each mounted and followed by a numerous suite, whose equipment proclaimed the party to be of rank and consideration. As Gerald stood aside to make place for them to pass, a pair of dark eyes were darted keenly toward him, and a deep voice called out:

‘There’s my Cerretano, that I was telling you about! Gherardi, boy, what brings thee here?’

Gerald looked up and saw it was the poet who addressed him; but before he could summon courage to answer, Alfieri said:

‘Thou didst promise to be with me this morning early, and hast forgotten it all, not to say that thou wert to equip thyself in something more suitable than this motley. Never mind, come along with us. Cesare, give him your pony; he is quiet and easy to ride. Fair ladies all,’ added he, addressing the party, ‘this youth declaims the verse of Alfieri as such a great poet merits. Gherardi mio, this is a public worthy of thy best efforts to please. Get into the saddle; it’s the surest, not to say the pleasantest, way to jog toward Parnassus!’

Gerald was not exactly in the mood to like this bantering; he was ill at ease with himself, and not over well satisfied with the world at large, and he had half turned to decline the poet’s invitation, when a gentle voice addressed him, saying:

‘Pray be my cavalier, Signorino; you see I have none.’

‘Not ours the fault, Madame la Marquise,’ quickly retorted Alfieri; ‘you rejected us each in turn. Felice was too dull, Adriano too lively, Giorgio was vain, and I – I forget what I was.’

‘Worst of all, a great genius in the full blaze of his glory. No; I ‘ll take Signor Gherardi – that is, if he will permit me.’

Gerald took off his cap and bowed deeply in reply; as he lifted his head he beheld for the first time the features of her who addressed him. She was a lady no longer young, past even the prime of life, but retaining still something more than the traces of what had once been great beauty: fair brown hair, and blue eyes shaded by long dark lashes, preserved to her face a semblance of youthfulness; and there was a coquetry in her riding-dress – the hat looped up with a richly jewelled band, and the front of her habit embroidered in gold – which showed that she maintained pretensions to be noticed and honoured.

As Gerald rode along at her side, she drew him gradually and easily into conversation, with the consummate art of one who had brought the gift to high perfection. She knew how to lead a timid talker on, to induce him to venture on opinions, and even try and sustain them. She understood well, besides, when and how, and how far, to offer a dissent, and at what moments to appear to yield convictions to another. She possessed all that graceful tact which supplies to mere chit-chat that much of epigram that elevates, without pedantry; a degree of point that stimulates, yet never wounds.

‘The resemblance is marvellous!’ whispered she to Alfieri, as he chanced to ride up beside her; ‘and not only in look, but actually in voice, and in many a trick of gesture.’

‘I knew you ‘ll see it!’ cried the poet triumphantly.

‘And can nothing be known about his history? Surely we could trace him.’

‘I like the episode better as it is,’ said he carelessly. ‘Some vulgar fact might, like a rude blow, demolish the whole edifice one’s fancy had nigh completed. There he stands now, handsome, gifted, and a mystery. What could add to the combination?’

‘The secret of an illustrious birth,’ whispered the Marquise.

‘I lean to the other view. I ‘d rather fancy nature had some subtle design of her own, some deep-wrought scheme to work out by this strange counterfeit.’

‘Yes, Gherardi,’ as the youth looked suddenly around; ‘yes, Gherardi,’ said she, ‘we were talking of you, and of your likeness to one with whom we were both acquainted.’

‘If it be to that prince whose picture I saw last night,’ replied he, ‘I suspect the resemblance goes no further than externals. There can be, indeed, little less like a princely station than mine.’

‘Ah, boy!’ broke in the poet, ‘there will never be in all your history as sad a fate as has befallen him.’

‘I envy one whose fortune admits of reverses!’ said Gerald peevishly. ‘Better be storm-tossed than never launched.’

‘I declare,’ whispered the Marquise, ‘as he spoke there, I could have believed it was Monsieur de Saint George himself I was listening to. Those little wayward bursts of temper – ’

‘Summer lightnings,’ broke in Alfieri.

‘Just so: they mean nothing, they herald nothing:

‘"They flash like anger o’er the sky,And then dissolve in tears.”’

‘True,’ said the poet; ‘but, harmless as these elemental changes seem, we forget how they affect others – what blights they often leave in their track:

‘"The sport the gods delight inMakes mortals grieve below.”’

‘It was Fabri wrote that line,’ said Gerald, catching at the quotation.

‘Yes, Madame la Marquise,’ said Alfieri, answering the quickly darted glances of the lady’s eyes, ‘this youth has read all sorts of authors. A certain Signor Gabriel, with whom he sojourned months long in the Maremma, introduced him to Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau: his own discursive tastes added others to the list.’

‘Gabriel! Gabriel! It could not be that it was – ’ and here she bent over and whispered a word in Alfieri’s ear.

A sudden start and an exclamation of surprise burst from the poet.

‘Tell us what your friend Gabriel was like.’

‘I can tell you how he described himself,’ said Gerald. ‘He said he was:

“Un sanglier marqué de petite vérole.”’

‘Oh, then, it was he!’ exclaimed the Marquise. ‘Tell us, I pray you, how fortune came to play you so heartless a trick as to make you this man’s friend?’

Half reluctantly, almost resentfully, Gerald replied to this question by relating the incidents that had befallen him in the Maremma, and how he had subsequently lived for months the companion of this strange associate.

‘What marvellous lessons of evil, boy, has he not instilled into you! Tell me frankly, has he not made you suspectful of every one – distrusting all friendship, disowning all obligations, making affection seem a mockery, and woman a cheat?’

‘I have heard good and bad from his lips. If he spoke hastily of the world at times, mayhap it had not treated him with too much kindness. Indeed he said as much to me, and that it was not his fault that he thought so meanly of mankind.’

‘What poison this to pour into a young heart!’ broke in Alfieri. ‘The cattle upon the thousand hills eat not of noxious herbage; their better instincts protect them, even where seductive fruits and flowers woo their tastes. It is man alone is beguiled by false appearances, and this out of the very subtlety of his own nature. The plague-spot of the heart is distrust!’

‘These are better teachings, boy, than Signor Gabriel’s,’ said the lady.

‘You know him, then?’ asked Gerald.

‘I have little doubt that we are speaking of the same person; and if so, not I alone, but all Europe knows him.’

Gerald burned to inquire further, to know who and what this mysterious man was, how he had earned the terrible reputation that attended him, and what charges were alleged against him. He could not dare, however, to put questions in such a presence, and he sat moodily thinking over the issue.

Diverging from the high-road, they now entered a pathway which led through the vineyards and the olive groves, and, being narrow, Gerald found himself side by side with the Marquise, without any other near. Here, at length, his curiosity mastered all reserve, and plucking up courage for the effort, he said —

‘If my presumption were not too bold, madame, I would deem it a great favour to be permitted to ask you something of this Signor Gabriel. I know and feel that, do what I will, reason how I may, reject what I can, yet still his words have eaten down deep into my heart; and if I cannot put some antidote there against their influence, that they will sway me even against myself,’

‘First, let me hear how he represented himself to you. Was he as a good man grossly tricked and cheated by the world, his candour imposed on, his generosity betrayed? Did he picture a noble nature basely trifled with?’

‘No, no,’ broke in Gerald; ‘he said, indeed, at first he felt disposed to like his fellow-men, but that the impulse was unprofitable; that the true philosophy was unbelief. Still he avowed that he devoted himself to every indulgence; that happiness meant pleasure, pleasure excess; that out of the convulsive throes of the wildest debauchery, great and glorious sensations, ennobling thoughts spring – just as the volcano in full eruption throws up gold amid the lava: and he bade me, if I would know myself, to taste of this same existence.’

‘Poor boy, these were trying temptations,’

‘Not so,’ broke in Gerald proudly; ‘I wanted to be something better and greater than this,’

‘And what would you be?’ asked the Marquise, as she turned a look of interest on him.

‘Oh, if a heart’s yearning could do it,’ cried Gerald warmly, ‘I would be like him who rides yonder; I would be one whose words would give voice to many an unspoken emotion – who could make sad men hopeful, and throw over the dreariest waste of existence the soft, mild light of ideal happiness.’