Vittoria — Complete

  CHAPTER XXII

  WILFRID COMES FORWARD

  An order for the immediate arrest of Vittoria was brought round to thestage at the fall of the curtain by Captain Weisspriess, and deliveredby him on the stage to the officer commanding, a pothered lieutenant ofCroats, whose first proceeding was dictated by the military instinct toget his men in line, and who was utterly devoid of any subsequent idea.The thunder of the house on the other side of the curtain was enough todisconcert a youngster such as he was; nor have the subalterns ofCroat regiments a very signal reputation for efficiency in the AustrianService. Vittoria stood among her supporters apart; pale, and 'only verythirsty,' as she told the enthusiastic youths who pressed near her, andimplored her to have no fear. Carlo was on her right hand; Lucianoon her left. They kept her from going off to her room. Montini wasdespatched to fetch her maid Giacinta with cloak and hood for hermistress. The young lieutenant of Croats drew his sword, but hesitated.Weisspriess, Wilfrid, and Major de Pyrmont were at one wing, between theItalian gentlemen and the soldiery. The operatic company had fallen intothe background, or stood crowding the side places of exit. Vittoria'sname was being shouted with that angry, sea-like, horrid monotonyof iteration which is more suggestive of menacing impatience and thepositive will of the people, than varied, sharp, imperative calls. Thepeople had got the lion in their throats. One shriek from her wouldbring them, like a torrent, on the boards, as the officers well knew;and every second's delay in executing the orders of the General added tothe difficulty of their position. The lieutenant of Croats strode upto Weisspriess and Wilfrid, who were discussing a plan of actionvehemently; while, amid hubbub and argument, De Pyrmont studiedVittoria's features through his opera-glass, with an admirable simplelanguor.

  Wilfrid turned back to him, and De Pyrmont, without altering the levelof his glass, said, 'She's as cool as a lemon-ice. That girl will be amother of heroes. To have volcanic fire and the mastery of her nerves atthe same time, is something prodigious. She is magnificent. Take a peepat her. I suspect that the rascal at her right is seizing his occasionto plant a trifle or so in her memory--the animal! It's just the moment,and he knows it.'

  De Pyrmont looked at Wilfrid's face.

  'Have I hit you anywhere accidentally?' he asked, for the face had growndead-white.

  'Be my friend, for heaven's sake!' was the choking answer. 'Save her!Get her away! She is an old acquaintance of mine--of mine, in England.Do; or I shall have to break my sword.'

  'You know her? and you don't go over to her?' said De Pyrmont.

  'I--yes, she knows me.'

  'Then, why not present yourself?'

  'Get her away. Talk Weisspriess down. He is for seizing her at allhazards. It 's madness to provoke a conflict. Just listen to the house!I may be broken, but save her I will. De Pyrmont, on my honour, I willstand by you for ever if you will help me to get her away.'

  'To suggest my need in the hour of your own is not a bad notion,' saidthe cool Frenchman. 'What plan have you?'

  Wilfrid struck his forehead miserably.

  'Stop Lieutenant Zettlisch. Don't let him go up to her. Don't--'

  De Pyrmont beheld in astonishment that a speechlessness such as affectscondemned wretches in the supreme last minutes of existence had comeupon the Englishman.

  'I'm afraid yours is a bad case,' he said; 'and the worst of it is, it'sjust the case women have no compassion for. Here comes a parlementairefrom the opposite camp. Let's hear him.'

  It was Luciano Romara. He stood before them to request that the curtainshould be raised. The officers debated together, and deemed it prudentto yield consent.

  Luciano stipulated further that the soldiers were to be withdrawn.

  'On one wing, or on both wings?' said Captain Weisspriess, twinklingeyes oblique.

  'Out of the house,' said Luciano.

  The officers laughed.

  'You must confess,' said De Pyrmont, affably, 'that though the drum doesissue command to the horse, it scarcely thinks of doing so after a rentin the skin has shown its emptiness. Can you suppose that we arelikely to run when we see you empty-handed? These things are matters ofcalculation.'

  'It is for you to calculate correctly,' said Luciano.

  As he spoke, a first surge of the exasperated house broke upon the stageand smote the curtain, which burst into white zigzags, as it were abreast stricken with panic.

  Giacinta came running in to her mistress, and cloaked and hooded herhurriedly.

  Enamoured; impassioned, Ammiani murmured in Vittoria's ear: 'My ownsoul!'

  She replied: 'My lover!'

  So their first love-speech was interchanged with Italian simplicity, andmade a divine circle about them in the storm.

  Luciano returned to his party to inform them that they held the key ofthe emergency.

  'Stick fast,' he said. 'None of you move. Whoever takes the first steptakes the false step; I see that.'

  'We have no arms, Luciano.'

  'We have the people behind us.'

  There was a fiercer tempest in the body of the house, and, on asudden, silence. Men who had invaded the stage joined the Italian guardsurrounding Vittoria, telling that the lights had been extinguished;and then came the muffled uproar of universal confusion. Some were forhanding her down into the orchestra, and getting her out through thegeneral vomitorium, but Carlo and Luciano held her firmly by them. Thetheatre was a rageing darkness; and there was barely a light on thestage. 'Santa Maria!' cried Giacinta, 'how dreadful that steel doeslook in the dark! I wish our sweet boys would cry louder.' Her mistress,almost laughing, bade her keep close, and be still. 'Oh! this must belike being at sea,' the poor creature whined, stopping her ears andshutting her eyes. Vittoria was in a thick gathering of her defenders;she could just hear that a parley was going on between Luciano and theAustrians. Luciano made his way back to her. 'Quick!' he said; 'nothingcows a mob like darkness. One of these officers tells me he knows you,and gives his word of honour--he's an Englishman--to conduct you out:come.'

  Vittoria placed her hands in Carlo's one instant. Luciano cleared aspace for them. She heard a low English voice.

  'You do not recognize me? There is no time to lose. You had another nameonce, and I have had the honour to call you by it.'

  'Are you an Austrian?' she exclaimed, and Carlo felt that she wasshrinking back.

  'I am the Wilfrid Pole whom you knew. You are entrusted to my charge; Ihave sworn to conduct you to the doors in safety, whatever it may costme.'

  Vittoria looked at him mournfully. Her eyes filled with tears. 'Thenight is spoiled for me!' she murmured.

  'Emilia!'

  'That is not my name.'

  'I know you by no other. Have mercy on me. I would do anything in theworld to serve you.'

  Major de Pyrmont came up to him and touched his arm. He said briefly:'We shall have a collision, to a certainty, unless the people hear fromone of her set that she is out of the house.'

  Wilfrid requested her to confide her hand to him.

  'My hand is engaged,' she said.

  Bowing ceremoniously, Wilfrid passed on, and Vittoria, with Carloand Luciano and her maid Giacinta, followed between files of bayonetsthrough the dusky passages, and downstairs into the night air.

  Vittoria spoke in Carlo's ear: 'I have been unkind to him. I had a greataffection for him in England.'

  'Thank him; thank him,' said Carlo.

  She quitted her lover's side and went up to Wilfrid with a shylyextended hand. A carriage was drawn up by the kerbstone; the doors ofit were open. She had barely made a word intelligible; when Major dePyrmont pointed to some officers approaching. 'Get her out of theway while there's time,' he said in French to Luciano. 'This is hercarriage. Swiftly, gentlemen, or she's lost.'

  Giacinta read his meaning by signs, and caught her mistress bythe sleeve, using force. She and Major de Pyrmont placed Vittoria,bewildered, in the carriage; De Pyrmont shut the door, and signalled tothe coachman. Vittoria thrust her head out for a last look at her
lover,and beheld him with the arms of dark-clothed men upon him. La Scalawas pouring forth its occupants in struggling roaring shoals from everydoor. Her outcry returned to her deadened in the rapid rolling of thecarriage across the lighted Piazza. Giacinta had to hold her down withall her might. Great clamour was for one moment heard by them, and thena rushing voicelessness. Giacinta screamed to the coachman till she wasexhausted. Vittoria sank shuddering on the lap of her maid, hiding herface that she might plunge out of recollection.

  The lightnings shot across her brain, but wrote no legible thing; thescenes of the opera lost their outlines as in a white heat of fire.She tried to weep, and vainly asked her heart for tears, that this drydreadful blind misery of mere sensation might be washed out of her, andleave her mind clear to grapple with evil; and then, as the lurid breakscome in a storm-driven night sky, she had the picture of her lover inthe hands of enemies, and of Wilfrid in the white uniform; the tormentof her living passion, the mockery of her passion by-gone. Recollection,when it came back, overwhelmed her; she swayed from recollection tooblivion, and was like a caged wild thing. Giacinta had to be as amother with her. The poor trembling girl, who had begun to perceive thatthe carriage was bearing them to some unknown destination, tore open thebands of her corset and drew her mistress's head against the fullwarmth of her bosom, rocked her, and moaned over her, mixing comfort andlamentation in one offering, and so contrived to draw the tears out fromher, a storm of tears; not fitfully hysterical, but tears that poured ablack veil over the eyeballs, and fell steadily streaming. Once subduedby the weakness, Vittoria's nature melted; she shook piteously withweeping; she remembered Laura's words, and thought of what she had done,in terror and remorse, and tried to ask if the people would be fightingnow, but could not. Laura seemed to stand before her like a Furystretching her finger at the dear brave men whom she had hurled uponthe bayonets and the guns. It was an unendurable anguish. Giacintawas compelled to let her cry, and had to reflect upon their presentsituation unaided. They had passed the city gates. Voices on thecoachman's box had given German pass-words. She would have screamed thenhad not the carriage seemed to her a sanctuary from such creatures asforeign soldiers, whitecoats; so she cowered on. They were in the starryopen country, on the high-road between the vine-hung mulberry trees. Sheheld the precious head of her mistress, praying the Saints that strengthwould soon come to her to talk of their plight, or chatter a littlecomfortingly at least; and but for the singular sweetness which itshot thrilling to her woman's heart, she would have been fretted whenVittoria, after one long-drawn wavering sob, turned her lips to thebared warm breast, and put a little kiss upon it, and slept.