Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

‘Well, said the boy, smiling good-humouredly, ‘what is your business with me, for it is nigh bed-time, and I must be going?’

‘It was your voice I heard in the solo a few minutes ago,’ cried the Fra eagerly; ‘I know it was. It was you who sang the

‘Virgo virginum præclara, Mihi jam non sis amara?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the youth, reddening. ‘But what of that? You never came here to-night to ask me this question.’

‘True enough,’ said the Fra, sighing painfully – less, indeed at the rebuke than the hot-tempered tone of the boy as he spoke it. ‘I came here to-night to fetch you along with me, to see one who was a friend of your family long, long ago; he has heard of you here, and wishes to see and speak with you. He is a person of great rank and high station, so that you will show him every deference, and demean yourself toward him respectfully and modestly; for he means you well, Gerald; he will befriend you.’

‘But what need have I of his friendship or his good offices?’ said the youth, growing deadly pale as he spoke. ‘Look at this serge gown – see this cap – they can tell you what I am destined for. I shall be a priest one of these days, Fra; and what has a priest to do with ties of affection or friendship?’

‘Oh! for the blessed Joseph’s sake,’ whispered the Fra, ‘be careful what you say. These are terrible words to speak – and to speak them here, too,’ added he, as he threw his eyes over the walls of the room.

‘Is this man a cardinal?’

‘No,’ said the Fra; ‘he is a layman, and a count.’

‘Better that; had he been a cardinal, I ‘d not have gone. Whenever the old cardinal, Caraffa, comes here, I’m sure to have a week’s punishment; and I hate the whole red-stockinged race – ’

‘There, there – let us away at once,’ whispered the Fra. ‘Such discourse as this will bring misfortune upon us both.’

‘Have you the superior’s permission for my going out with you?’ asked Gerald.

‘Yes; I have his leave till eleven o’clock – we shall be back here before that time.’

‘I’m sorry for it,’ said the boy sternly. ‘I’d like to think I was crossing that old courtyard there for the last time.’

‘You will be cold, my poor boy,’ said the friar, ‘with no other covering but that light frock; but we shall find a carriage as we go along.’

‘No, no, no,’ cried the boy eagerly. ‘Let us walk, Fra; let us walk, and see everything. It’s like one of the old fairy tales nurse used to tell me long ago – to see the city all alight thus, and the troops of people moving on, and all these bright shops with the rich wares so temptingly displayed. Ah! how happy must they be who can wander at will among all these – exchanging words and greetings, and making brotherhood with their fellows! See, Fra – see!’ cried he, ‘what is it comes yonder, with all the torches, and the men in white?’

‘It is some great man’s funeral, my child. Let us say a Pax eterna,’ and he fumbled for his beads as he spoke.

‘Let us follow them,’ said the boy; ‘they are bearing the catafalque into that small church – how grand and solemn it all is!’ and now, attaching himself to the long line of acolytes, the boy walked step for step with the procession, mingling his clear and liquid notes in the litany they were chanting. While he sang with all the force of intense expression, it was strange to mark how freely his gaze wandered over all the details of the scene – his keen eyes scrutinised everything – the costumes, the looks, the gestures of all; the half tawdry splendour below – the dim and solemn grandeur of the Gothic roof overhead. If there was nothing of levity, as little was there anything of reverence in his features. The sad scene, with all its trappings of woe, was a spectacle, and no more, to him; and, as he turned away to leave the spot, his face betrayed the desire he felt for some new object of interest. Nor had he long to search for such; for, just as they entered the Piazza di Spagna, they found a dense crowd gathered around a group of those humble musicians from Calabria – the Pifferari, they call them – stunted in form, and miserably clad: these poor creatures, whose rude figures recall old pictures of the ancient Pan, have a wonderful attraction for the populace. They were singing some wild, rude air of their native mountains, accompanying the refrain with a sort of dance, while their uncouth gestures shook the crowd with laughter.

‘Oh! I love these fellows, but I never have a chance of seeing them,’ cried the boy; so bursting away, he dashed into the thick of the assembled throng. It was not without a heartfelt sense of shame that the poor friar found himself obliged to follow his charge, whom he now began to fear might be lost to him.

‘Per Bacco! cried one of the crowd, ‘here’s a Frate can’t resist the charms of profane melody, and is elbowing his way, like any sinner, among us.’

‘It’s the cachuca he wants to see,’ exclaimed another; ‘come, Marietta, here’s a connoisseur worth showing your pretty ankles to.’

‘By the holy rosary!’ cried a third, ‘she is determined on the conquest.’

This outburst was caused by the sudden appearance of a young girl, who, though scarcely more than a child, bore in her assured look and flashing eyes all the appearances of more advanced years. She was a deep brunette in complexion, to which the scarlet cloth that hung from her black hair gave additional brilliancy. Her jupe, of the same colour, recrossed and interlaced with tawdry gold tinsel, came only to the knee, below which appeared limbs that many a Roman statuary had modelled, so perfect were they in every detail of symmetry and beauty. Her whole air was redolent of that beauté du diable, as the French happily express it, which seems never to appeal in vain to the sympathies of the populace. It was girlhood, almost childlike girlhood, but dashed with a conscious effrontery that had braved many a libertine stare – many a look significant in coarseness.

With one wild spring she bounded into the open space, and there she stood now on tiptoe, her arms extended straight above her head, while with clasped hands she remained motionless, so that every line and lineament of her faultless figure might be surveyed in unbroken symmetry.

‘Ah carina – che bellezza! come e graziosa!’ broke from those who, corrupt, debased, and degraded in a hundred ways as they were, yet inherited that ancient love of symmetry in form which the games and the statues of antique Rome had fostered. With a graceful ease no ballarina of the grand opera could have surpassed, she glided into those slow and sliding movements which precede the dance – movements meant to display the graces of form, without the intervention of action. Gradually, however, the time of the music grew quicker, and now her heightened colour and more flashing eye bespoke how her mind lent itself to the measure. The dance was intended to represent the coy retirings of a rustic beauty from the advances of an imaginary lover; and, though she was alone, so perfectly did she convey the storied interest of the scene, that the enraptured audience could trace every sentiment of the action. At one moment her gestures depicted the proudest insolence and disdain; at the next a half-yielding tenderness – now, it was passion to the very verge of madness – now, it was a soul-subduing softness, that thrilled through every heart around her. Incapable, as it seemed, of longer resisting the solicitations of love, her wearied steps grew heavier, her languid head drooped, and a look of voluptuous waywardness appeared to steal over her. Wherever her eye turned a murmured sigh acknowledged how thoroughly the captivation held enthralled every bosom around, when suddenly, with a gesture that seemed like a cry – so full of piercing agony it seemed – she dashed her hands across her forehead and stared with aching eye-balls into vacancy, – it was jealousy: the terrible pang had shot through her heart, and she was wild. The horrible transitions from doubt to doubt, until full conviction forced itself upon her, were given with extraordinary power. Over her features, in turn, passed every expression of passion. The heartrending tenderness of love – the clinging to a lost affection – the straining effort to recall him who had deserted her – the black bitterness of despair – and then, with a wild spring, like the bound of a tiger, she counterfeited a leap over a precipice to death!

She fell upon the ground, and as the mingled sobs and cries rose through the troubled crowd, a boy tore his way through the dense mass, and fighting with all the energy of infuriated strength, gained the open space where she lay. Dropping on his knees, he bent over, and clasping her hand kissed it wildly over and over, crying out in a voice of broken agony, ‘Oh! Marietta, Marietta mia, come back to us – come back, we will love you and cherish you.’

A great roar of laughter – the revulsion to that intensity of feeling so lately diffused among them – now shook the mob. Revenging, as it were, the illusion that had so enthralled themselves, they now turned all their ridicule upon the poor boy.

‘Santissima Virginia! if he isn’t a scholar of the Holy Order!’ shouted one.

‘Ecco! a real Jesuit!’ said another; ‘had he been a little older, though, he ‘d have done it more secretly.’

‘The little priest is offering the consolation of his order,’ cried a third; and there rained upon him, from every side, words of mockery and sarcasm.

‘Don’t you see that he is a mere boy – have you no shame that you can mock a simple-hearted child like this?’ said the burly Fra, as he pushed the crowd right and left, and forced a passage through the mob. ‘Come along, Gerald, come along. They are a cowardly pack, and if they were not fifty to one, they ‘d think twice ere they ‘d insult us.’ This speech he delivered in Italian, with a daring emphasis of look and gesture that made the craven listeners tremble. They opened a little path for the friar and his charge to retire; nor was it until they had nearly gained the corner of the Piazza that they dared to yell forth a cry of insult and derision.

The boy grasped the Fra’s hand as he heard it, and looked up in his face with an expression there was no mistaking, so full was it of wild and daring courage.

‘No, no, Gerald,’ said he, ‘there are too many of them, and what should we get by it after all? See, too, how they have torn your soutane all to pieces. I almost suspect we ought to go back again to the college, my boy. I scarcely like to present you in such a state as this.’

Well indeed might the Fra have come to this doubtful issue, for the youth’s gown hung in ribbons around him, and his cap was flattened to his head.

‘I wish I knew what was best to be done, Gerald,’ said he, wiping the sweat from his brawny face. ‘What do you advise yourself?’

‘I’d say, go on,’ cried the youth. ‘Will a great signor think whether my poor and threadbare frock be torn or whole? – he ‘ll not know if I be in rags or in purple. Tell him, if you like, that we met with rough usage in the streets. Tell him, that in passing through the crowd they left me thus. Say nothing about Marietta, Fra; you need not speak of her.’

The boy’s voice, as he uttered the last words, became little louder than a mere whisper.

‘Come along then; and, with the help of the saints, we ‘ll go through with what we ‘ve begun.’

And with this vigorous resolve the stout friar strode along down the Corso.

CHAPTER VI. THE INTERVIEW

It was full an hour after the time appointed when the friar, accompanied by young Gerald, entered the arched gate of the Altieri Palace.

‘You have been asked for twice, Frate,’ said the porter; ‘and I doubt if you will be admitted now. It is the time his Royal Highness takes his siesta.’

‘I must only hope for the best,’ sighed out the Fra, as he ascended the wide stairs of white marble, with a sinking heart.

‘Let us go a little slower, Fra Luke,’ whispered the boy; ‘I ‘d like to have a look at these statues. See what a fine fellow that is strangling the serpent; and, oh! is she not beautiful, crouching in that large shell?’

‘Heathen vanities, all of them,’ muttered the Fra; ‘what are they compared to the pure face of our blessed Lady?’

The youth felt rebuked, and was silent. While the friar, however, was communicating with the servant in waiting, the boy had time to stroll down the long gallery, admiring as he went the various works of art it contained. Stands of weapons, too, and spoils of the chase abounded, and these he examined with a wistful curiosity, reading from short inscriptions attached to the cases, which told him how this wolf had been killed by his Royal Highness on such a day of such a year, and how that boar had received his death-wound from the Prince’s hand at such another time.

It almost required force from the friar to tear him away from objects so full of interest, nor did he succeed without a promise that he should see them all some other day. Passing through a long suite of rooms, magnificently furnished, but whose splendour was dimmed and faded by years, they reached an octagonal chamber of small but beautiful proportions; and here the friar was told the youth was to wait, while he himself was admitted to the Prince.

Charles Edward had just dined – and, as was his wont, dined freely – when the Fra was announced. ‘You can retire,’ said the Prince to the servants in waiting, but never turning his head toward where the friar was standing. The servants retreated noiselessly, and all was now still in the chamber. The Prince had drawn his chair toward the fire, and sat gazing at the burning logs in deep reverie. Apparently he followed his thoughts so far as to forget that the poor friar was yet in waiting; for it was only as a low, faint sigh escaped him that the Prince suddenly turning his head, cried out, ‘Ah! our Frate. I had half forgotten you. You are somewhat late, are you not?’

In a voice tremulous with fear and deference Fra Luke narrated how they had been delayed by a misadventure in the Piazza, contriving to interweave in his story an apology for the torn dress and ragged habiliments the boy was to appear in. ‘He is not in a state to be seen by your Royal Highness at all. If it wasn’t that your Royal Highness will think little of the shell where the kernel is sound – ’

‘And who is to warrant me that, sir?’ said the Prince angrily. ‘Is it your guarantee I ‘m to take for it?’

The poor friar almost felt as if he were about to faint at the stern speech, nor did he dare to utter a word of reply. So far, this was in his favour, since, when unprovoked by anything like rejoinder, Charles Edward was usually disposed to turn from any unpleasant theme, and address his thoughts elsewhere.

‘I ‘m half relenting, my good friar,’ said he, in a calmer tone, ‘that I should have brought you here on this errand. How am I to burden myself with the care of this boy? I am but a pensioner myself, weighed down already with a mass of followers. So long as hope remained to us we struggled on manfully enough. Present privation was to have had its recompense – at least we thought so.’ He stopped suddenly, and then, as if ashamed of speaking thus confidentially to one he had seen only once before, his voice assumed a harsher, sterner accent as he said: ‘These are not your concerns. What is it you propose I should do? Have you a plan? What is it?’

Had Fra Luke been required to project another scheme of invasion, he could not have been more dumbfounded and confused, and he stood the very picture of hopeless incapacity.

Charles Edward’s temper was in that state when he invariably sought to turn upon others the reproaches his own conscience addressed to him, and he angrily said: ‘It is by this same train of beggarly followers that my fortunes are rendered irretrievable. I am worried and harassed by their importunities; they attach the plague-spot of their poverty to me wherever I go. I should have freed myself from this thraldom many a year ago; and if I had, where and what might I not have been to-day? You, and others of your stamp, look upon me as an almoner, not more nor less.’ His passion had now spent itself, and he sat moodily gazing at the fire.

‘Is the lad here?’ asked he, after a long pause.

‘Yes, your Royal Highness,’ said the friar, while he made a motion toward the door.

Charles Edward stopped him quickly as he said, ‘No matter, there is not any need that I should see him. He and his aunt – she is his aunt, you said – must return to Ireland; this is no place for them. I will see Kelly about it to-morrow, and they shall have something to pay their journey. This arrangement does not please you, Frate, eh? Speak out, man. You think it cold, unnatural, and unkind – is it not so?’

‘If your gracious Highness would just condescend to say a word to him – one word, that he might carry away in his heart for the rest of his days.’

‘Better have no memory of me,’ sighed the Prince drearily. ‘Oh, don’t say so, your Royal Highness; think what pride it will be to him yet, God knows in what far-away country, to remember that he saw you once, that he stood in your presence, and heard you speak to him.’

‘It shall be as you wish, Frate; but I charge you once more to be sure that he may not know with whom he is speaking.’

‘By this holy Book,’ said the Fra, with a gesture implying a vow of secrecy.

‘Go now; send him hither, and wait without till I send for you.’

The door had scarcely closed behind the friar when it opened again to admit the entrance of the youth. The Prince turned his head, and, whether it was the extreme poverty of the lad’s appearance, more striking from the ragged and torn condition of his dress, or that something in Gerald’s air and look impressed him painfully, he passed his hand across his eyes and averted his glance from him.

‘Come forward, my boy,’ said he at last. ‘How are you called?’

‘Gerald Fitzgerald, Signor Conte,’ said he, firmly but respectfully.

‘You are Irish by birth?’ said the Prince, in a voice slightly tremulous.

‘Yes, Signor Conte,’ replied he, while he drew himself up with an air that almost savoured of haughtiness.

‘And your friends have destined you for the priesthood, it seems.’

‘I never knew I had friends,’ said the boy; ‘I thought myself a sort of castaway.’

‘Why, you have just told me of your Irish blood – how knew you of that?’

‘So long as I can remember I have heard that I was a Géraldine, and they call me Irish in the college.’

There was a frank boldness in his manner, totally removed from the slightest trace of rudeness or presumption, that already interested the Prince, who now gazed long and steadily on him.

‘Do I remind you of any one you ever saw or cared for, Signor Conte?’ asked the boy, with an accent of touching gentleness.

‘That you do, child,’ said he, laying his hand on the youth’s shoulder, while he passed the other across his eyes.

‘I hope it was of none who ever gave you sorrow,’ said the boy, who saw the quivering motion of the lip that indicates deep grief.

Charles Edward now removed his hand, and turned away his head for some seconds.

At last he arose suddenly from his chair, and with an effort that seemed to show he was struggling for the mastery over his own emotions, said, ‘Is it your own choice to be a priest, Gerald?’

‘No; far from it. I ‘d rather be a herd on the Campagna! You surely know little of the life of the convent, Signor Conte, or you had not asked me that question.’

Far from taking offence at the boy’s boldness, the Prince smiled good-naturedly at the energy of his reply.

‘Is it the stillness, the seclusion that you dislike?’ asked he, evidently wanting the youth to speak of himself and of his temperament.

‘No, it is not that,’ said Gerald thoughtfully. ‘The quiet, peaceful hours, when we are left to what they call meditation, are the best of it. Then one is free to range where he will, in fancy. I ‘ve had as many adventures, thus, as any fortune-seeker of the Arabian Nights. What lands have I not visited! what bold things have I not achieved! ay, and day after day, taken up the same dream where I had left it last, carrying on its fortunes, till the actual work of life seemed the illusion, and this, the dream-world, the true one.’

‘So that, after all, this same existence has its pleasures, Gerald?’

‘The pleasures are in forgetting it! ignoring that your whole life is a falsehood! They make me kneel at confession to tell my thoughts, while well I know that, for the least blamable of them, I shall be scourged. They oblige me to say that I hate everything that gives a charm to life, and cherish as blessings all that can darken and sadden it. Well, I swear the lie, and they are satisfied! And why are they satisfied? – because out of this corrupt heart, debased by years of treachery and falsehood, they have created the being that they want to serve them.’

‘What has led you to think thus hardly of the priesthood?’

‘One of themselves, Signor Conte. He told me all that I have repeated to you now, and he counselled me, if I had a friend – one friend on earth – to beseech him to rescue me ere it was too late, ere I was like him.’

‘And he – what became of him?’

‘He died, as all die who offend the Order, of a wasting fever. His hair was white as snow, though he was under thirty, and his coffin was light as a child’s. Look here, Signor Conte,’ cried he, as a smile of half incredulity, half pity, curled the Prince’s lip, ‘look here. You are a great man and a rich: you never knew what it was in life to suffer any, the commonest of those privations poor men pass their days in – ’

‘Who can dare to say that of me?’ cried Charles Edward passionately. ‘There’s not a toil I have not tasted, there’s not a peril I have not braved, there’s not a sorrow nor a suffering that have not been my portion; ay, and, God wot, with heavier stake upon the board than ever man played for!’

‘Forgive me, Signor Conte,’ stammered out the boy, as his eyes filled up at the sight of the emotion he had caused, ‘I knew not what I was saying.’

The Prince took little heed of the words, for his aroused thoughts bore him sadly to the mist-clad mountain and the heathery gorges far away; and he strode the room in deep emotion. At last his glance fell upon the youth as, pale and terror-stricken, he stood watching him, and he quickly said: ‘I’m not angry with you, Gerald; do not grieve, my poor boy. You will learn, one of these days, that sorrow has its place at fine tables, just as at humbler boards. It helps the rich man to don his robe of purple, just as it aids the beggar to put on his rags. It’s a stern conscription that calls on all to serve. But to yourself: you will not be a priest, you say? What, then, would you like – what say you to the life of a soldier?’

‘But in what service, Signor Conte?’

‘That of your own country, I suppose.’

‘They tell me that the king is a usurper, who has no right to be king; and shall I swear faith and loyalty to him?’

‘Others have done so, and are doing it every day, boy. It was but yesterday, Lord Blantyre made what they call his submission; and he was the bosom friend of – the Pretender’; and the last words were uttered in a half-scornful laugh.

‘I will not hear him called by that name, Signor Conte. So long as I remember anything, I was taught not to endure it.’

‘Was that your mother’s teaching, Gerald?’ said the Prince tenderly.

‘It was, sir. I was a very little child; but I can never forget the last prayer I made each night before bed: it was for God’s protection to the true Prince; and when I arose I was to say, “Confusion to all who call him the Pretender!”’

‘He is not even that now,’ muttered Charles Edward, as he leaned his head on the mantelpiece.

‘I hope, Signor Conte,’ said the boy timidly, ‘that you never were for the Elector.’

‘I have done little for the cause of the Stuarts,’ said Charles, with a deep sigh.

‘I wish I may live to serve them,’ cried the youth, with energy.

The Prince looked long and steadfastly at the boy, and, in a tone that bespoke deep thought, said:

‘I want to befriend you, Gerald, if I but knew how. It is clear you have no vocation for the church, and we are here in a land where there is little other career. Were we in France something might be done. I have some friends, however, in that country, and I will see about communicating with them. Send the Frate hither.’