Stories By English Authors: Italy Part 2

"That," said I, "is of course."

"It is the truth; and when you have seen her, you will acknowledge that I do not exaggerate. I have known her nearly two months now. I became acquainted with her accidentally--she dropped her handkerchief in a shop, and I took it to her, and so we got to be upon speaking terms, and--and--But I need not give you the whole history. We have discovered that we are all the world to each other; we have sworn to remain faithful to each other all our lives long; and we renew the oath whenever we meet. But that, unhappily, is very seldom! for her father, the Marchese Marinelli, scarcely ever lets her out of his sight; and he is a sour, narrow-minded old fellow, as proud as he is poor, an intense hater of all Austrians; and if he were to discover our attachment, I shudder to think of what the consequences might be."

"And your own father--the stern old general of whom you told me--what would he say to it all?"

"Oh, he, of course, would not hear of such a marriage for a moment. He detests and despises the Venetians as cordially as the marchese abhors the _Tedeschi_; and, as I am entirely dependent upon him, I should not dream of saying a word to him about the matter until I was married, and nothing could be done to separate me from Bianca."

"So that, upon the whole, you appear to stand a very fair chance of starvation, if everything turns out according to your wishes. And pray, in what way do you imagine that I can a.s.sist you toward this desirable end? For I take it for granted that you have some reason for letting me into your secret."

Von Rosenau laughed good-humouredly.

"You form conclusions quickly," he said. "Well, I will confess to you that I have thought lately that you might be of great service to me without inconveniencing yourself much. The other day, when you did me the honour to introduce me to your sister, I was very nearly telling her all. She has such a kind countenance; and I felt sure that she would not refuse to let my poor Bianca visit her sometimes. The old marchese, you see, would have no objection to leaving his daughter for hours under the care of an English lady; and I thought that perhaps when Miss Jenkinson went out to work at her painting--I might come in."

"Fortunate indeed is it for you," I said, "that your confidence in the kind countenance of my sister Anne did not carry you quite to the point of divulging this precious scheme to her. I, who know her pretty well, can tell you exactly the course she would have pursued if you had.

Without one moment's hesitation, she would have found out the address of the young lady's father, hurried off thither, and told him all about it. Anne is a thoroughly good creature; but she has little sympathy with love-making, still less with surrept.i.tious love-making, and she would as soon think of accepting the part you are so good as to a.s.sign to her as of forging a check."

He sighed, and said he supposed, then, that they must continue to meet as they had been in the habit of doing, but that it was rather unsatisfactory.

"It says something for your ingenuity that you contrive to meet at all,"

I remarked.

"Well, yes, there are considerable difficulties, because the old man's movements are so uncertain; and there is some risk too, for, as you heard the other day, we have been seen together. Moreover, I have been obliged to tell everything to my servant Johann, who waylays the marchese's housekeeper at market in the mornings, and finds out from her when and where I can have an opportunity of meeting Bianca. I would rather not have trusted him; but I could think of no other plan."

"At any rate, I should have thought you might have selected some more retired rendezvous than the most frequented church in Venice."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I wish you would suggest one within reach,"

he said. "There are no retired places in this accursed town. But, in fact, we see each other very seldom. Often for days together the only way in which I can get a glimpse of her is by loitering about in my boat in front of her father's house, and watching till she shows herself at the window. We are in her neighborhood now, and it is close upon the hour at which I can generally calculate upon her appearing. Would you mind my making a short detour that way before I set you down at your hotel?"

We had entered the Grand Ca.n.a.l while Von Rosenau had been relating his love-tale, and some minutes before he had lowered his sail and taken to the oars. He now slewed the boat's head round abruptly, and we shot into a dark and narrow waterway, and so, after sundry twistings and turnings, arrived before a grim, time-worn structure, so hemmed in by the surrounding buildings that it seemed as if no ray of suns.h.i.+ne could ever penetrate within its walls.

"That is the Palazzo Marinelli," said my companion. "The greater part of it is let to different tenants. The family has long been much too poor to inhabit the whole of it, and now the old man only reserves himself four rooms on the third floor. Those are the windows, in the far corner; and there--no!--yes!--there is Bianca."

I brought my eyegla.s.s to bear upon the point indicated just in time to catch sight of a female head, which was thrust out through the open window for an instant, and then withdrawn with great celerity.

"Ah," sighed the count, "it is you who have driven her away. I ought to have remembered that she would be frightened at seeing a stranger. And now she will not show herself again, I fear. Come; I will take you home.

Confess now--is she not more beautiful than you expected?"

"My dear sir, I had hardly time to see whether she was a man or a woman; but I am quite willing to take your word for it that there never was anybody like her."

"If you would like to wait a little longer--half an hour or so--she _might_ put her head out again," said the young man, wistfully.

"Thank you very much; but my sister will be wondering why I do not come to take her down to the _table d'hote_. And besides, I am not in love myself, I may perhaps be excused for saying that I want my dinner."

"As you please," answered the count, looking the least bit in the world affronted; and so he pulled back in silence to the steps of the hotel, where we parted.

I don't know whether Von Rosenau felt aggrieved by my rather unsympathetic reception of his confidence, or whether he thought it useless to discuss his projects further with one who could not or would not a.s.sist him in carrying them out; but although we continued to meet daily, as before, he did not recur to the interesting subject, and it was not for me to take the initiative in doing so. Curiosity, I confess, led me to direct my gondolier more than once to the narrow ca.n.a.l over which the Palazzo Martinelli towered; and on each occasion I was rewarded by descrying, from the depths of the miniature mourning-coach which concealed me, the faithful count, seated in his boat and waiting in patient faith, like another Ritter Toggenburg, with his eyes fixed upon the corner window; but of the lady I could see no sign. I was rather disappointed at first, as day after day went by and my young friend showed no disposition to break the silence in which he had chosen to wrap himself; for I had nothing to do in Venice, and I thought it would have been rather amusing to watch the progress of this incipient romance. By degrees, however, I ceased to trouble myself about it; and at the end of a fortnight I had other things to think of, in the shape of plans for the summer, my sister Anne having by that time satisfied herself that, all things considered, t.i.tian's "a.s.sumption" was a little too much for her.

It was Captain Janovicz who informed me casually one evening that Von Rosenau was going away in a few days on leave, and that he would probably be absent for a considerable time.

"For my own part," remarked my informant, "I shall be surprised if we see him back in the regiment at all. He was only sent to us as a sort of punishment for having been a naughty boy, and I suppose now he will be forgiven, and restored to the hussars."

"So much for undying love," thinks I, with a cynical chuckle. "If there is any grat.i.tude in man, that young fellow ought to be showering blessings on me for having refused to hold the noose for him to thrust his head into."

Alas! I knew not of what I was speaking. I had not yet heard the last of Herr von Rosenau's entanglement, nor was I destined to escape from playing my part in it. The very next morning, after breakfast, as I was poring over a map of Switzerland, "Murray" on my right hand and "Bradshaw" on my left, his card was brought to me, together with an urgent request that I would see him immediately and alone; and before I had had time to send a reply, he came clattering into the room, trailing his sabre behind him, and dropped into the first arm-chair with a despairing self-abandonment which shook the house to its foundations.

"Mr. Jenkinson," said he, "I am a ruined man!"

I answered rather drily that I was very sorry to hear it. If I must confess the truth, I thought he had come to borrow money of me.

"A most cruel calamity has befallen me," he went on; "and unless you will consent to help me out of it--"

"I am sure I shall be delighted to do anything in my power," I interrupted, apprehensively; "but I am afraid--"

"You cannot refuse me till you have heard what I have to say. I am aware that I have no claim whatever upon your kindness; but you are the only man in the world who can save me, and, whereas the happiness of my whole life is at stake, the utmost you can have to put up with will be a little inconvenience. Now I will explain myself in as few words as possible, because I have only a minute to spare. In fact, I ought to be out on the ramparts at this moment. You have not forgotten what I told you about myself and the Signorina Martinelli, and how we had agreed to seize the first opportunity that offered to be privately married, and to escape over the mountains to my father's house, and throw ourselves upon his mercy?"

"I don't remember your having mentioned any such plan."

"No matter--so it was. Well, everything seemed to have fallen out most fortunately for us. I found out some time ago that the marchese would be going over to Padua this evening on business, and would be absent at least one whole day, and I immediately applied for my leave to begin to-morrow. This I obtained at once through my father, who now expects me to be with him in a few days, and little knows that I shall not come alone. Johann and the marchese's housekeeper arranged the rest between them. I was to meet my dear Bianca early in the morning on the Lido; thence we were to go by boat to Mestre, where a carriage was to be in waiting for us; and the same evening we were to be married by a priest, to whom I have given due notice, at a place called Longarone. And so we should have gone on, across the Ampezzo Pa.s.s homeward. Now would you believe that all this has been defeated by a mere freak on the part of my colonel? Only this morning, after it was much too late to make any alteration in our plans, he told me that he should require me to be on duty all to-day and to-morrow, and that my leave could not begin until the next day. Is it not maddening? And the worst of it is that I have no means of letting Bianca know of this, for I dare not send a message to the palazzo, and there is no chance of my seeing her myself; and of course she will go to the Lido to-morrow morning, and will find no one there. Now, my dear Mr. Jenkinson--my good, kind friend--do you begin to see what I want you to do for me?"

"Not in the very least."

"No? But it is evident enough. Now listen. You must meet Bianca to-morrow morning; you explain to her what has happened; you take her in the boat, which will be waiting for you, to Mestre; you proceed in the travelling-carriage, which will also be waiting for you, to Longarone; you see the priest, and appoint with him for the following evening; and the next day I arrive, and you return to Venice. Is that clear?"

The volubility with which this programme was enunciated so took away my breath that I scarcely realised its audacity.

"You will not refuse; I am sure you will not," said the count, rising and hooking up his sword, as if about to depart.

"Stop, stop!" I exclaimed. "You don't consider what you are asking.

I can't elope with young women in this casual sort of way. I have a character--and a sister. How am I to explain all this to my sister, I should like to know?"

"Oh, make any excuse you can think of to her. Now, Mr. Jenkinson, you know there cannot be any real difficulty in that. You consent then? A thousand, thousand thanks! I will send you a few more instructions by letter this evening. I really must not stay any longer now. Good-bye."

"Stop! Why can't your servant Johann do all this instead of me?"

"Because he is on duty like myself. Good-bye."

"Stop! Why can't you postpone your flight for a day? I don't so much mind meeting the young lady and telling her all about it."

"Quite out of the question, my dear sir. It is perfectly possible that the marchese may return from Padua to-morrow night, and what should we do then? No, no; there is no help for it. Good-bye."

"Stop! Hi! Come back!"

But it was too late. My impetuous visitor was down the staircase and away before I had descended a single flight in pursuit, and all I could do was to return to my room and register a vow within my own heart that I would have nothing to do with this preposterous scheme.

Looking back upon what followed across the interval of fifteen years, I find that I can really give no satisfactory reason for my having failed to adhere to this wise resolution. I had no particular feeling of friends.h.i.+p for Von Rosenau; I did not care two straws about the Signorina Bianca, whom I had never seen; and certainly I am not, nor ever was, the sort of person who loves romantic adventures for their own sake. Perhaps it was good-nature, perhaps it was only an indolent shrinking from disobliging anybody, that influenced me--it does not much matter now. Whatever the cause of my yielding may have been, I did yield. I prefer to pa.s.s over in silence the doubts and hesitations which beset me for the remainder of the day; the arrival, toward evening, of the piteous note from Von Rosenau, which finally overcame my weak resistance to his will; and the series of circ.u.mstantial false statements (I blush when I think of them) by means of which I accounted to my sister for my proposed sudden departure.

Suffice it to say that, very early on the following morning, there might have been seen, pacing up and down the sh.o.r.e on the seaward side of the Lido, and peering anxiously about him through an eyegla.s.s, as if in search of somebody or something, the figure of a tall, spare Englishman, clad in a complete suit of shepherd's tartan, with a wide-awake on his head, a leather bag slung by a strap across his shoulder, and a light coat over his arm. Myself, in point of act, in the travelling-costume of the epoch.