Sant' Ilario Part 6

"Perhaps it is your turn to be angry, Madame," he said, quietly.

"But you need not be. I would say it to your husband, as I would say it to you in his presence. I wors.h.i.+p you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world, the most n.o.bly good. Everybody knows it, why should I not say it? I wish I were a little child, and that you were my mother. Are you angry still?"

Corona was silent, and her eyes grew soft again as she looked kindly at the man beside her. She did not understand him, but she knew that he meant to express something which was not bad. Gouache waited for her to speak.

"It was not for that I asked you to come with me," she said at last.

"I am glad I said it," replied Gouache. "I am going away to- morrow, and it might never have been said. You asked me if I loved her. I trust you. I say, yes, I do. I am going to say good-bye this afternoon."

"I am sorry you love her. Is it serious?"

"Absolutely, on my part. Why are you sorry? Is there anything unnatural in it?"

"No, on the contrary, it is too natural. Our lives are unnatural.

You cannot marry her. It seems brutal to tell you so, but you must know it already."

"There was once a little boy in Paris, Madame, who did not have enough to eat every day, nor enough clothes when the north wind blew. But he had a good heart. His name was Anastase Gouache."

"My dear friend," said Corona, kindly, "the atmosphere of Casa Montevarchi is colder than the north wind. A man may overcome almost anything more easily than the old-fas.h.i.+oned prejudices of a Roman prince."

"You do not forbid me to try?"

"Would the prohibition make any difference?"

"I am not sure." Gouache paused and looked long at the princess.

"No," he said at last, "I am afraid not."

"In that case I can only say one thing. You are a man of honour.

Do your best not to make her uselessly unhappy. Win her if you can, by any fair means. But she has a heart, and I am very fond of the child. If any harm comes to her I shall hold you responsible.

If you love her, think what it would be should she love you and be married to another man."

A shade of sadness darkened Corona's brow, as she remembered those terrible months of her own life. Gouache knew what she meant and was silent for a few moments.

"I trust you," said she, at last. "And since you are going to- morrow, G.o.d bless you. You are going in a good cause."

She held out her hand as she rose to leave him, and he bent over it and touched it with his lips, as he would have kissed the hand of his mother. Then, skirting the little a.s.sembly of people, Anastase went back towards the piano, in search of Donna Faustina.

He found her alone, as young girls are generally to be found in Roman drawing-rooms, unless there are two of them present to sit together.

"What have you been talking about with the princess?" asked Donna Faustina when Gouache was seated beside her.

"Could you see from here?" asked Gouache instead of answering. "I thought the plants would have hindered you."

"I saw you kiss her hand when you got up, and so I supposed that the conversation had been serious."

"Less serious than ours must be," replied Anastase, sadly. "I was saying good-bye to her, and now--"

"Good-bye? Why--?" Faustina checked herself and looked away to hide her pallor. She felt cold, and a slight s.h.i.+ver pa.s.sed over her slender figure.

"I am going to the front to-morrow morning."

There was a long silence, during which the two looked at each other from time to time, neither finding courage to speak. Since Gouache had been in the room it had grown dark, and as yet but one lamp had been brought. The young man's eyes sought those he loved in the dusk, and as his hand stole out it met another, a tender, nervous hand, trembling with emotion. They did not heed what was pa.s.sing near them.

As though their silence were contagious, the conversation died away, and there was a general lull, such as sometimes falls upon an a.s.semblage of people who have been talking for some time. Then, through the deep windows there came up a sound of distant uproar, mingled with occasional sharp detonations, few indeed, but the more noticeable for their rarity. Suddenly the door of the drawing-room burst open, and a servant's voice was heard speaking in a loud key, the coa.r.s.e accents and terrified tone contrasting strangely with the sounds generally heard in such a place.

"Excellency! Excellency! The revolution! Garibaldi is at the gates! The Italians are coming! Madonna! Madonna! The revolution, Eccellenza mia!"

The man was mad with fear. Every one spoke at once. Some laughed, thinking the man crazy. Others, who had heard the distant noise from the streets, drew back and looked nervously towards the door.

Then Sant' Ilario's clear, strong voice, rang like a clarion through the room.

"Bar the gates. Shut the blinds all over the house--it is of no use to let them break good windows. Don't stand there s.h.i.+vering like a fool. It is only a mob."

Before he had finished speaking, San Giacinto was calmly bolting the blinds of the drawing-room windows, fastening each one as steadily and securely as he had been wont to put up the shutters of his inn at Aquila in the old days.

In the dusky corner by the piano Gouache and Faustina were overlooked in the general confusion. There was no time for reflection, for at the first words of the servant Anastase knew that he must go instantly to his post. Faustina's little hand was still clasped in his, as they both sprang to their feet. Then with a sudden movement he clasped her in his arms and kissed her pa.s.sionately.

"Good-bye--my beloved!"

The girl's arms were twined closely about him, and her eyes looked up to his with a wild entreaty.

"You are safe here, my darling--good-bye!"

"Where are you going?"

"To the Serristori barracks. G.o.d keep you safe till I come back-- good-bye!"

"I will go with you," said Faustina, with a strange look of determination in her angelic face.

Gouache smiled, even then, at the mad thought which presented itself to the girl's mind. Once more he kissed her, and then, she knew not how, he was gone. Other persons had come near them, shutting the windows rapidly, one after the other, in antic.i.p.ation of danger from without. With instinctive modesty Faustina withdrew her arms from the young man's neck and shrank back. In that moment he disappeared in the crowd.

Faustina stared wildly about her for a few seconds, confused and stunned by the suddenness of what had pa.s.sed, above all by the thought that the man she loved was gone from her side to meet his death. Then without hesitation she left the room. No one hindered her, for the Saracinesca men were gone to see to the defences of the house, and Corona was already by the cradle of her child. No one noticed the slight figure as it slipped through the door and was gone in the darkness of the unlighted halls. All was confusion and noise and flas.h.i.+ng of pa.s.sing lights as the servants hurried about, trying to obey orders in spite of their terror. Faustina glided like a shadow down the vast staircase, slipped through one of the gates just as the bewildered porter was about to close it, and in a moment was out in the midst of the mult.i.tude that thronged the dim streets--a mere child and alone, facing a revolution in the dark.

CHAPTER V.

Gouache made his way as fast as he could to the bridge of Sant'

Angelo, but his progress was constantly impeded by moving crowds-- bodies of men, women, and children rus.h.i.+ng frantically together at the corners of the streets and then surging onward in the direction of the resultant produced by their combined forces in the shock. There was loud and incoherent screaming of women and shouting of men, out of which occasionally a few words could be distinguished, more often "Viva Pio Nono!" or "Viva la Repubblica!" than anything else. The scene of confusion baffled description. A company of infantry was filing out of the castle of Sant' Angelo on to the bridge, where it was met by a dense mult.i.tude of people coming from the opposite direction. A squadron of mounted gendarmes came up from the Borgo Nuovo at the same moment, and half a dozen cabs were jammed in between the opposing ma.s.ses of the soldiers and the people. The officer at the head of the column of foot-soldiers loudly urged the crowd to make way, and the latter, consisting chiefly of peaceable but terrified citizens, attempted to draw back, while the weight of those behind pushed them on. Gouache, who was in the front of the throng, was allowed to enter the file of infantry, in virtue of his uniform, and attempted to get through and make his way to the opposite bank. But with the best efforts he soon found himself unable to move, the soldiers being wedged together as tightly as the people.

Presently the crowd in the piazza seemed to give way and the column began to advance again, bearing Gouache backwards in the direction he had come. He managed to get to the parapet, however, by edging sideways through the packed ranks.

"Give me your shoulder, comrade!" he shouted to the man next to him. The fellow braced himself, and in an instant the agile Zouave was on the narrow parapet, running along as nimbly as a cat, and winding himself past the huge statues at every half-dozen steps.

He jumped down at the other end and ran for the Borgo Santo Spirito at the top of his speed. The broad s.p.a.ce was almost deserted and in three minutes he was before the gates of the barracks, which were situated on the right-hand side of the street, just beyond the College of the Penitentiaries and opposite the church of San Spirito in Sa.s.sia.

Meanwhile Donna Faustina Montevarchi was alone in the streets. In desperate emergencies young and nervously-organised people most commonly act in accordance with the dictates of the predominant pa.s.sion by which they are influenced. Very generally that pa.s.sion is terror, but when it is not, it is almost impossible to calculate the consequences which may follow. When the whole being is dominated by love and by the greatest anxiety for the safety of the person loved, the weakest woman will do deeds which might make a brave man blush for his courage. This was precisely Faustina's case.

If any man says that he understands women he is convicted of folly by his own speech, seeing that they are altogether incomprehensible. Of men, it may be sufficient for general purposes to say with David that they are all liars, even though we allow that they may be all curable of the vice of falsehood. Of women, however, there is no general statement which is true. The one is brave to heroism, the next cowardly in a degree fantastically comic. The one is honest, the other faithless; the one contemptible in her narrowness of soul, the next supremely n.o.ble in broad truth as the angels in heaven; the one trustful, the other suspicious; this one gentle as a dove, that one grasping and venomous as a strong serpent. The hearts of women are as the streets of a great town--some broad and straight and clean; some dim and narrow and winding; or as the edifices and buildings of that same city, wherein there are holy temples, at which men wors.h.i.+p in calm and peace, and dens where men gamble away the souls given them by G.o.d against the living death they call pleasure, which is doled out to them by the devil; in which there are quiet dwellings, and noisy places of public gathering, fair palaces and loathsome charnel-houses, where the dead are heaped together, even as our dead sins lie ghastly and unburied in that dark chamber of the soul, whose gates open of their own selves and shall not be sealed while there is life in us to suffer. Dost thou boast that thou knowest the heart of woman? Go to, thou more than fool! The heart of woman containeth all things, good and evil; and knowest thou then all that is?

Donna Faustina was no angel. She had not that lofty calmness which we attribute to the angelic character. She was very young, utterly inexperienced and ignorant of the world. The idea which over- towers all other ideas was the first which had taken hold upon her, and under its strength she was like a flower before the wind.

She was not naturally of the heroic type either, as Corona d'Astrardente had been, and perhaps was still, capable of sacrifice for the ideal of duty, able to suffer torment rather than debase herself by yielding, strong to stem the torrent of a great pa.s.sion until she had the right to abandon herself to its mighty flood. Faustina was a younger and a gentler woman, not knowing what she did from the moment her heart began to dictate her actions, willing, above all, to take the suggestion of her soul as a command, and, because she knew no evil, rejoicing in an abandonment which might well have terrified one who knew the world.