Vittoria — Complete

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE NIGHT OF THE FIFTEENTH

  We quit the Piazza d'Armi. Rumour had its home in Milan. On their way tothe caffe La Scala, Luciano and Carlo (who held together, determinedto be taken together if the arrest should come) heard it said that theChief was in Milan. A man passed by and uttered it, going. They stoppeda second man, who was known to them, and he confirmed the rumour. Gladas sunlight once more, they hurried to Count Medole forgivingly. Thecount's servant assured them that his master had left the city forMonza. 'Is Medole a coward?' cried Luciano, almost in the servant'shearing. The fleeing of so important a man looked vile, now that theywere sharpened by new eagerness. Forthwith they were off to Agostino,believing that he would know the truth. They found him in bed. 'Well,and what?' said Agostino, replying to their laughter. 'I am old; too oldto stride across a day and night, like you giants of youth. I take myrest when I can, for I must have it.'

  'But, you know, O conscript father,' said Carlo, willing to fall alittle into his mood, 'you know that nothing will be done to-night.'

  'Do I know so much?' Agostino murmured at full length.

  'Do you know that the Chief is in the city?' said Luciano.

  'A man who is lying in bed knows this,' returned Agostino, 'that heknows less than those who are up, though what he does know he perhapsdigests better. 'Tis you who are the fountains, my boys, while I am thepool into which you play. Say on.'

  They spoke of the rumour. He smiled at it. They saw at once that therumour was false, for the Chief trusted Agostino.

  'Proceed to Barto, the mole,' he said, 'Barto the miner; he is thefather of daylight in the city: of the daylight of knowledge, youunderstand, for which men must dig deep. Proceed to him;--if you canfind him.'

  But Carlo brought flame into Agostino's eyes.

  'The accursed beast! he has pinned the black butterfly to thesignorina's dress.'

  Agostino rose on his elbow. He gazed at them. 'We are followers ofa blind mole,' he uttered with an inner voices while still gazingwrathfully, and then burst out in grief, '"Patria o mea creatrix, patriao mea genetrix!"'

  'The signorina takes none of his warnings, nor do we. She escaped a plotlast night, and to-night she sings.'

  'She must not,' said Agostino imperiously.

  'She does.'

  'I must stop that.' Agostino jumped out of bed.

  The young men beset him with entreaties to leave the option to her.

  'Fools!' he cried, plunging a rageing leg into his garments. 'Here,Iris! Mercury! fly to Jupiter and say we are all old men and boys inItaly, and are ready to accept a few middleaged mortals as Gods, if theywill come and help us. Young fools! Do you know that when you conspireyou are in harness, and yoke-fellows, every one?'

  'Yoked to that Barto Rizzo!'

  'Yes; and the worse horse of the two. Listen, you pair of Nurembergpuppet-heads! If the Chief were here, I would lie still in my bed.Medole has stopped the outbreak. Right or wrong, he moves a mass; we aresubordinates--particles. The Chief can't be everywhere. Milan is too hotfor him. Two men are here, concealed--Rinaldo and Angelo Guidascarpi.The rumour springs from that. They have slain Count Paul Lenkenstein,and rushed to old Milan for work, with the blood on their swords. Oh,the tragedy!--when I have time to write it. Let me now go to my girl, tomy daughter! The blood of the Lenkenstein must rust on the steel. Angeloslew him: Rinaldo gave him the cross to kiss. You shall have the wholestory by-and-by; but this will be a lesson to Germans not to court ourItalian damsels. Lift not that curtain, you Pannonian burglars! Muchdo we pardon; but bow and viol meet not, save that they be of one wood;especially not when signor bow is from yonderside the Rhoetian Alps, anddonzella Viol is a growth of warm Lombardy. Witness to it, Angelo andRinaldo Guidascarpi! bravo! You boys there--you stand like two Tyrolesesalad-spoons! I say that my girl, my daughter, shall never help to fireblank shot. I sent my paternal commands to her yesterday evening. Doesthe wanton disobey her father and look up to a pair of rocket-headedrascals like you? Apes! if she sings that song to-night, the ear ofItaly will be deaf to her for ever after. There's no engine to stirto-night; all the locks are on it; she will send half-a-dozen milkingslike you to perdition, and there will be a circle of black blood abouther name in the traditions of the insurrection--do you hear? Have Icherished her for that purpose? to have her dedicated to a brawl!'

  Agostino fumed up and down the room in a confusion of apparel, savouringhis epithets and imaginative peeps while he stormed, to get a relishout of something, as beseems the poetic temperament. The youths weresilenced by him; Carlo gladly.

  'Troop!' said the old man, affecting to contrast his attire with theirs;'two graces and a satyr never yet went together, and we'll not frightenthe classic Government of Milan. I go out alone. No, Signor Luciano, Iam not sworn to Count Medole. I see your sneer contain it. Ah! what athing is hurry to a mind like mine. It tears up the trees by the roots,floods the land, darkens utterly my poor quiet universe. I was composinga pastoral when you came in. Observe what you have done with my "LovelyAge of Gold!"'

  Agostino's transfigurement from lymphatic poet to fiery man of action,lasted till his breath was short, when the necessity for taking a deepdraught of air induced him to fall back upon his idle irony. 'Heads,you illustrious young gentlemen!--heads, not legs and arms, move aconspiracy. Now, you--think what you will of it--are only legs and armsin this business. And if you are insubordinate, you present the shockingfabular spirit of the members of the body in revolt; which is not therevolt we desire to see. I go to my daughter immediately, and we shallall have a fat sleep for a week, while the Tedeschi hunt and stew andexhaust their naughty suspicions. Do you know that the Pope's Mouth isclosed? We made it tell a big lie before it shut tight on its teeth--abad omen, I admit; but the idea was rapturously neat. Barto, thesinner--be sure I throttle him for putting that blot on my swan; only,not yet, not yet: he's a blind mole, a mad patriot; but, as I say, ourbeast Barto drew an Austrian to the Mouth last night, and led the dogto take a letter out of it, detailing the whole plot of tonight, andhow men will be stationed at the vicolo here, ready to burst out onthe Corso, and at the vicolo there, and elsewhere, all over the city,carrying fire and sword; a systematic map of the plot. It was addressedto Count Serabiglione--my boys! my boys! what do you think of it? Bravo!though Barto is a deadly beast if he--'Agostino paused. 'Yes, he wenttoo far! too far!'

  'Has he only gone too far, do you say?'

  Carlo spoke sternly. His elder was provoked enough by his deadness ofenthusiasm, and that the boy should dare to stalk on a bare egoisticallover's sentiment to be critical of him, Agostino, struck him asmonstrous. With the treachery of controlled rage, Agostino drew nearhim, and whispered some sentences in his ear.

  Agostino then called him his good Spartan boy for keeping bravecountenance. 'Wait till you comprehend women philosophically. All'strouble with them till then. At La Scala tonight, my sons! We haverehearsed the fiasco; the Tedeschi perform it. Off with you, that I maygo out alone!'

  He seemed to think it an indubitable matter that he would find Vittoriaand bend her will.

  Agostino had betrayed his weakness to the young men, who read him withthe keen eyes of a particular disapprobation. He delighted in the darkweb of intrigue, and believed himself to be no ordinary weaver of thatsunless work. It captured his imagination, filling his pride with amounting gas. Thus he had become allied to Medole on the one hand,and to Barto Rizzo on the other. The young men read him shrewdly, butspeaking was useless.

  Before Carlo parted from Luciano, he told him the burden of the whisper,which had confirmed what he had heard on the Piazzi d'Armi. It was this:Barto Rizzo, aware that Lieutenant Pierson was the bearer of despatchesfrom the Archduke in Milan to the marshal, then in Verona, had followed,and by extraordinary effort reached Verona in advance; had there trickedand waylaid him, and obtained, instead of despatches, a letter ofrecent date, addressed to him by Vittoria, which compromised theinsurrectionary project.

  'If that's t
he case, my Carlo!' said his friend, and shrugged, and spokein a very worldly fashion of the fair sex.

  Carlo shook him off. For the rest of the day he was alone, shut up withhis journalistic pen. The pen traversed seas and continents like an oldhack to whom his master has thrown the reins. Apart from the desperateperturbation of his soul, he thought of the Guidascarpi, whom he knew,and was allied to, and of the Lenkensteins, whom he knew likewise,or had known in the days when Giacomo Piaveni lived, and Bianca vonLenkenstein, Laura's sister, visited among the people of her country.Countess Anna and Countess Lena von Lenkenstein were the German beautiesof Milan, lively little women, and sweet. Between himself and CountessLena there had been tender dealings about the age when sweetmeats havelost their attraction, and the charm has to be supplied. She was rich,passionate for Austria, romantic concerning Italy, a vixen in temper,but with a pearly light about her temples that kept her picture in hismemory. And besides, during those days when women are bountiful to usas Goddesses, give they never so little, she had deigned to fondlehands with him; had set the universe rocking with a visible heave ofher bosom; jingled all the keys of mystery; and had once (as to embalmherself in his recollection), once had surrendered her lips to him.Countess Lena would have espoused Ammiani, believing in her power tomake an Austrian out of such Italian material. The Piaveni revolt hadstopped that and all their intercourse by the division of the WhiteHand, as it was called; otherwise, the hand of the corpse. Ammiani hadknown also Count Paul von Lenkenstein. To his mind, death did not meanmuch, however pleasant life might be: his father and his friend hadgone to it gaily; and he himself stood ready for the summons: but thecontemplation of a domestic judicial execution, which the Guidascarpiseemed to have done upon Count Paul, affrighted him, and put an endto his temporary capacity for labour. He felt as if a spent shot werestriking on his ribs; it was the unknown sensation of fear. Changeing,it became pity. 'Horrible deaths these Austrians die!' he said.

  For a while he regarded their lot as the hardest. A shaft of sunlightlike blazing brass warned him that the day dropped. He sent to hismother's stables, and rode at a gallop round Milan, dining alone in oneof the common hotel gardens, where he was a stranger. A man may havegood nerve to face the scene which he is certain will be enacted, whoshrinks from an hour that is suspended in doubt. He was aware of thepallor and chill of his looks, and it was no marvel to him when twosbirri in mufti, foreign to Milan, set their eyes on him as they passedby to a vacant table on the farther side of the pattering gold-fishpool, where he sat. He divined that they might be in pursuit of theGuidascarpi, and alive to read a troubled visage. 'Yet neither Rinaldonor Angelo would look as I do now,' he thought, perceiving that thesemen were judging by such signs, and had their ideas. Democrat as heimagined himself to be, he despised with a nobleman's contempt creatureswho were so dead to the character of men of birth as to suppose thatthey were pale and remorseful after dealing a righteous blow, and thatthey trembled! Ammiani looked at his hand: no force of his will couldarrest its palsy. The Guidascarpi were sons of Bologna. The stupidityof Italian sbirri is proverbial, or a Milanese cavalier would have beenastonished to conceive himself mistaken for a Bolognese. He beckoned tothe waiter, and said, 'Tell me what place has bred those two fellows onthe other side of the fountain.' After a side-glance of scrutiny, thereply was, 'Neapolitans.' The waiter was ready to make an additionalremark, but Ammiani nodded and communed with a toothpick. He was surethat those Neapolitans were recruits of the Bolognese Polizia; onthe track of the Guidascarpi, possibly. As he was not unlike AngeloGuidascarpi in figure, he became uneasy lest they should blunder 'twixthim and La Scala; and the notion of any human power stopping him shortof that destination, made Ammiani's hand perfectly firm. He drew on hisgloves, and named the place whither he was going, aloud. 'Excellency,'said the waiter, while taking up and pretending to reckon the money forthe bill: 'they have asked me whether there are two Counts Ammiani inMilan.' Carlo's eyebrows started. 'Can they be after me?' he thought,and said: 'Certainly; there is twice anything in this world, and Milanis the epitome of it.'

  Acting a part gave him Agostino's catching manner of speech. The waiter,who knew him now, took this for an order to say 'Yes.' He had evidentlya respect for Ammiani's name: Carlo supposed that he was one of Milan'sfighting men. A sort of answer leading to 'Yes' by a circuit and theassistance of the hearer, was conveyed to the sbirri. They were trueNeapolitans quick to suspect, irresolute upon their suspicions. He wassoon aware that they were not to be feared more than are the generalrace of bunglers, whom the Gods sometimes strangely favour. Theyperplexed him: for why were they after him? and what had made them askwhether he had a brother? He was followed, but not molested, on his wayto La Scala.

  Ammiani's heart was in full play as he looked at the curtain of thestage. The Night of the Fifteenth had come. For the first few momentshis strong excitement fronting the curtain, amid a great host of heartsthumping and quivering up in the smaller measures like his own, togetherwith the predisposing belief that this was to be a night of events,stopped his consciousness that all had been thwarted; that therewas nothing but plot, plot, counterplot and tangle, disunion, sillysubtlety, jealousy, vanity, a direful congregation of antagonisticelements; threads all loose, tongues wagging, pressure here, pressurethere, like an uncertain rage in the entrails of the undirected earth,and no master hand on the spot to fuse and point the intense distractedforces.

  The curtain, therefore, hung like any common opera-screen; big only withthe fate of the new prima donna. He was robbed even of the certaintythat Vittoria would appear. From the blank aspect of the curtain heturned to the house, which was crowding fast, and was not like listlessMilan about to criticize an untried voice. The commonly empty boxesof the aristocracy were full of occupants, and for a wonder the whiteuniforms were not in excess, though they were to be seen. The firstperson whom Ammiani met was Agostino, who spoke gruffly. Vittoria hadbeen invisible to him. Neither the maestro, nor the impresario, nor thewaiting-woman had heard of her. Uncertainty was behind the curtain, aswell as in front; but in front it was the uncertainty which is tippedwith expectation, hushing the usual noisy chatter, and setting adaylight of eyes forward. Ammiani spied about the house, and caughtsight of Laura Piaveni with Colonel Corte by her side. The Lenkensteinswere in the Archduke's box. Antonio-Pericles, and the English lady andCaptain Gambier, were next to them. The appearance of a white uniform inhis mother's box over the stage caused Ammiani to shut up his glass. Hewas making his way thither for the purpose of commencing the hostilitiesof the night, when Countess Ammiani entered the lobby, and took herson's arm with a grave face and a trembling touch.