A Siren

  CHAPTER IV

  What Ravenna thought of it

  Signor Fortini had rather mitigated than exaggerated the truth inspeaking to the Marchese Ludovico of his uncle's state of mind. Duringall these days his condition was truly deplorable. He had never, in allthis time, left the Palazzo, and had scarcely left his own chamber. Heabsolutely refused to see anybody save Signor Fortini. He could notsleep by night, or remain at rest in the same place for half-an-hourtogether during the day.

  Of course he could attend to none of the numerous duties--mostly laboursof benevolence--that usually occupied his time. His servants thoughtthat he was losing his reason; yet, in the midst of all the terribledistress that was weighing him down, the usual kindness and consideratebenevolence of his nature and habitual conduct had shone out. The onlyone thing that he had given any attention to was the gratification ofthe wishes, and the promotion of the welfare, of an old servant.

  Niccolo, the old groom who was mentioned, as the reader may, perhaps,remember, on the occasion of a certain conversation which Lawyer Fortinihad with him, as having been all his life in the service of theMarchese, and of his father before him, was getting, as he had himselfremarked to the lawyer, almost too old for his work. He had alwayshitherto absolutely refused, with the masterful obstinacy of an oldfavourite, all proposals of retirement; but, on the next morning but oneafter the fatal Ash Wednesday, while the Marchese had been in such astate of painful agitation that he could hardly bear to be addressed byhis own servant, he had, to the great surprise of all the household,sent for old Niccolo, who had remained with him more than an hour.

  On coming out from the interview the old groom said that he had himselfasked for the audience his master had given him; but it did not seem atall clear to the other servants when or how he could have done so. Hesaid that he had spoken to his master on the subject long before; andhow kind and good it was of the Marchese to think of his old servant'saffairs in all his trouble. His master had arranged for him, he said,what he had long wished for, though it seemed to all the household thatold Niccolo had always rejected any proposal of the sort. He was to havea pension, and go to live with a niece of his who was married in Rome.

  It was odd that none of his fellow-servants had ever heard anything ofany such niece. But old Niccolo was not a man of a communicative turn;and perhaps nothing had ever chanced to lead him to speak of her. Now hewas to join her at once; he was to start for Faenza that very afternoon,so as to catch there the diligence from Bologna to Rome.

  But why such a sudden start? Why should he go off and leave them all, ata few hours' notice.

  Well, the fact was, that the day after the morrow was his niece'sbirthday. And he thought he should like to give her the joyful surpriseof seeing her old uncle and learning the new arrangements on that day.And his dear thoughtful master, who was always so kind to everybody, hadentered into his scheme, and so arranged it.

  And so it was; old Niccolo was gone to Rome as he had said. But he hadgiven nobody any address by which to find him in the Eternal City. And alittle jealousy, perhaps, was felt at the good fortune which had thusbefallen one out of several who would have liked the same. But alladmitted that it was a remarkable proof of the thoughtful kindness ofthe Marchese in the midst of his own troubles.

  And how terribly those troubles pressed on him was evident to the wholehousehold; and, by means of their reports, to the entire city. Everybodyin Ravenna knew with how heavy a hand affliction had fallen upon theMarchese Lamberto. And everybody talked of it. Sympathizing pity andblame were mingled in the judgments which were being passed on theMarchese every hour, and in every place where men or women met; and theproportions in which they were mingled differed greatly. None, however,could fail to see and to admit that the fall from the high pinnacle, onwhich the Marchese had stood, had been a very terrible one. It was feltthat it was a fall from which he could never, under any circumstances,entirely recover.

  The women were, for the most part, more indulgent to him than the men.As for the unfortunate Bianca, they held that a righteous and deservedjudgment had fallen upon her, in which the operation of the finger ofProvidence was distinctly visible. To be sure it was a signal warning toall men, as to the evils which might be expected to flow from anysipping of the Circean cup which such creatures proffered to their lips.But what fate could be too bad for the Siren herself? To think of theaudacity, the shameless effrontery of such an one in daring to spreadher lures, and wind her enchantments around such a man as the Marchesedi Castelmare. Of course he, poor man, could not but feel her death as aterrible shock. What he had set his heart on had been violently andawfully taken away from him. And how true it is that the blessed Saintsknow what is most truly for our good! But what is all that to thedreadful accusation hanging over the Marchese Ludovico? A Castelmare inthe prison of Ravenna under accusation of murder! And if it really werethe case, that the unfortunate young man, driven by the prospect ofbeing hurled down from his position and robbed of his inheritance, haddone this deed, how great, how terrible, must be the remorse of theMarchese Lamberto!

  It was curiously characteristic of the moral nature and habits ofthought of the people, that the Marchese Ludovico, even on thehypothesis that he had committed the murder, was very leniently judgedfor his share in the tragedy.

  The men were more inclined to bear hard on the Marchese Lamberto. An oldfool! at his time of life, to offer marriage to such a woman as LaBianca. To disgrace his name; to cover himself with ridicule; and aboveall, and worst of all, to behave with such infamous injustice to hisnephew. Nevertheless the tragedy was so shocking and so complete, thateven those who were disposed to condemn his conduct the most severely,could not but feel compassion for so crushing a weight of misfortune.

  As the opinion, however, began to gain ground in the city, that theMarchesino Ludovico had, after all, not been the author of the murder;that the first impression, however clearly the circumstances seemed, atthe first blush of the thing, to point to it, was a mistaken one; andthat the far more probable opinion was that the Venetian girl, PaolinaFoscarelli, was the murderess, and jealousy the incentive to her crime,the compassion for the Marchese Lamberto became proportionably less. Thefeeling was rather, that as far as he was concerned he had got nothingworse than what he richly deserved. And who should say that all was notupon the whole for the best as it had pleased heaven to cause it to fallout? The Marchese Lamberto was saved, despite his own folly, from adisgraceful and degrading marriage; and Ludovico was saved from the ruinwhich threatened him.

  Nor, muttered the more cynical, was that all the good that was involvedin what, at first sight, seemed so great a misfortune. Ludovico, too,was prevented from doing a foolish thing. It was a very different matterin his case from that of his uncle: he would be doing no wrong to anyheir; and he was at that time of life when men do fall in love, and areexcusable if they are led by it into doing foolish things; not tomention that, after all, the marriage he had proposed to make was a verydifferent one from such a monstrous alliance as the Marchese Lambertohad meditated.

  But still was it not a great blessing that the Marchesino should beprevented from throwing himself away in that manner? The first match inRavenna to be carried off by an obscure and plebeian Venetian artist.Truly it was all for the best as it was.

  In their different degree these two stranger women were both noxious,dangerous, and had done more mischief in Ravenna than the lives ofeither of them were worth. And if Providence had in its wisdom decreedthat they should mutually counteract and abolish each other--why itwould behove them to see in it a signal instance of the overrulingwisdom of Heaven.

  In the meantime, however, while every imaginable variety andmodification of the above ideas and opinions were forming the staple ofevery conversation in every street, house, cafe, and piazza of Ravenna,the two men, whose conduct was thus canvassed, were assuredly sufferingno light measure of retribution for aught that they had done amiss.

  To Ludovico the tidings which reached him of th
e favourable turn matterswere taking as to the probability of his having himself to answer forthe murder of the singer, were neutralized in any effect they mightotherwise have had of bringing him happiness, by the fact that he wasexculpated only in exact proportion to the increasing probability thatPaolina might be held guilty of the crime.

  If, in truth, he carried in his own bosom the consciousness of his ownguilt, it may easily be imagined how horrible to him would appear theprospect of escaping from the consequences of it by such means. And ifthat were, indeed, the dreadful truth, the repeated declarations whichhe had made to Signor Fortini to the effect that, rather than seePaolina condemned as guilty, he would confess himself to be themurderer, would in no wise appear as mere ebullitions of hisdetermination to save at all price the girl he loved.

  But, during those days Ludovico suffered, he either bore his sufferingswith much more of manly self-command than did his uncle, or else hisagony was (as Signor Fortini, who saw them both, could testify) muchless severe than that which seemed to be slowly dragging down theMarchese Lamberto to the grave.

  The lawyer had told Ludovico that he was then going to his uncle; and,in fact, he did so. But the old man dreaded doing so more than he couldhave himself believed that he could have feared any similar duty.

  In truth, the condition of the Marchese Lamberto was pitiable.

  He would see no one, save Fortini; but he was most anxious for hisvisits--very naturally anxious to hear from day to day, and almost fromhour to hour, how matters were going--whether any new circumstances hadbeen discovered; what change there was in the probabilities as to thefinal judgment respecting the crime; and there was a restlessfeverishness in his anxiety, a shattered condition of the nervous systemthat made the lawyer seriously fear that the Marchese's reason wouldsink under the strain.

  He had again and again urged him to allow a medical man to see him; andhad once mentioned the Marchese's old friend Professor Tomosarchi. Butthe irritated violence with which the suffering man had rejected theproposal, had been such as to lead the lawyer to think that he should bedoing more harm than good by reiterating it.

  It was not surprising, indeed, that the Marchese should be utterlybeaten down and vanquished by the misfortunes that had fallen upon him;they attacked him from such various and opposite sides. His love forBianca--or, let me say (in order to satisfy readers who are wont toweigh the real meaning of words as well as those who are in the habit oftaking them unexamined at their current value), his longing to possessher--was genuine and intense. The step he had determined to take givesthe measure of his eagerness in the pursuit of her--of his convictionthat he could not live without her; and the object of this great, thisintense, this all-mastering passion had been snatched away from him; theunappeasable agony of such a bereavement can, perhaps, only beadequately measured by those who have felt it.

  Then all the evils which, despite his shrinking from them, he had facedfor the sake of gratifying this imperious passion, had fallen upon himas fatally of though the price of his facing them had been paid to him.All the loss of credit, of respect, of social station, which he hadfound it so dreadful to contemplate, had been incurred--and for nothing.How long and terrible had been the struggle, which of those twoincompatible objects of his intense desire--Bianca, or the socialposition he held in the eyes of his fellow-citizens--he should sacrificeto the other; it had seemed to him so impossible to give up either thatthe necessity of choosing between them had almost unhinged his reason.And now he was doomed to forego them both.

  Then, again, Ludovico, and the dreadful position in which he stood! and,if he were condemned, on whose head would fall the blame of the disgracewhich would thus overwhelm the family name? If his nephew were held tobe guilty of this crime, would not all the odium of having driven him toit fall on him?

  Truly there was wherewithal to bow down a stronger heart and head thanthose of the Marchese Lamberto.

  According to Fortini's view of the matter, the tidings which he had tobring the Marchese that morning ought to have gone far to tranquillizeand comfort him. Let it be shown that the heir to the Castelmare nameand honours had not committed a terrible crime, and was not in danger ofbeing convicted of it, and, in his opinion, all the worst of the evilswhich had fallen on the Marchese were at an end. That was the onlyreally irreparable mischief; the city would have its laugh at theMarchese for his sensibility to the charms of such a charmer as thesinger. But even that would be quenched by the startling change of thecomedy into a tragedy. The Marchese had shown that he was no wiser thanmany another man; and it would be but a nine days' wonder; and as to themere loss of the woman who had done all the mischief, the lawyer had nopatience with the mention of it as a loss at all.

  Pshaw! The one really important matter was to clear the heir of thehouse of all complicity in the crime of murder; and yet the lawyer had astrong feeling, from what he had already seen of the Marchese, that thegood news of which he was the bearer in that respect would not give theMarchese all the comfort that it ought to give him.

  And the result of the visit to the Palazzo Castelmare, which he paidimmediately after leaving the Marchesino Ludovico in his prison,perfectly responded to his anticipations in this respect.