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CAPÍTULO XVI

LA PEINE FORTE ET DURE

            “WHEN I came here two months since, Ella, I broke a law I had long ago imposed upon myself to avoid Rome. In that resolution I had persevered for twenty years, and to-night in telling you why it was ever made I shall recount a part of my own history which, as yet, is known only to two persons now living, besides myself. Those two are Baldassare and Le Rodeur.

            “In the spring of the year 1847 I came of age in this city. Your grandfather, Baron Fergus of Arisaig, and I, had passed the winter of that year in Rome, because for family reasons which are familiar to you, Rome was one of his favourite haunts. My father seldom saw me. Although I accompanied him on his travels he dined alone, and passed his days in solitude, while I was committed wholly to the care of my governess, Frau Gretel Engel, whose name you have heard Le Rodeur mention. She died only a few months ago in this city. You, Ella, must often have heard what a crushing disappointment my unhappy birth was to the hopes of both my parents, and with what shame and self-reproach I learned in consequence to regard my very existence, so it cannot surprise you to hear that my father was always infinitely terrible to me, that I never dared or wished to venture unbidden into his presence, and that the very sound of his voice or footstep was sufficient to inspire me with overwhelming dismay. But proportionately as I feared my father I loved my governess. A hand more merciless and awful than that of Death, had from the day of my miserable birth, deprived me of my mother, and Frau Gretel was to me not only a preceptor but a tender guardian and nurse. Under her chaperonage I strolled about the picture-galleries of the Roman palaces,

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wandered among the ruins of Veü and Ostia, and climbed the great lonely crag of Isola Farnese. One day late in the February of 1847, Frau Gretel and I amused ourselves by making an excursion to the monastery of S. Nilus at Grotto Ferrata. The weather was perfect, and several landscape painters had taken advantage of it to obtain sketches of the lovely scenery which surrounds the Basilian retreat, and were dotted here and there about the hill with their camp-stools and canvas tents, like so many flies in the sunshine. My governess, as are most Germans, was warmly disposed towards art and its professors, and I united with a passionate love of Nature a strong inclination for inquiry and adventure, so that our respective dispositions entangled us before the morning was half spent, in an interested conversation with two artists, who were painting upon the brink of the ravine, just beneath the shadow of the monastery walls. One of these was the Italian, Baldassare, then in the prime of middle age, the other was his friend Jean Le Rodeur, a mere youth just past his majority, who told us, when we remarked the foreign accent with which he spoke, that he had only been in Italy since the previous September, that he came originally from Paris, and that it was his intention to study painting for a few years in Rome. I do not remember, Ella, that I had ever had an opportunity before this, of conversing intelligently with any man of my own age. Jean enchanted me; I thought there could not be in the whole world another face as handsome as his, a voice as pleasant or other eyes with half the bright merry vivacious light that shone in his. The heavenly beauty, too, of the landscape about us, hallowed my romantic fancy and mingled the glory of its loveliness with the impression which my mind received of that day’s delight. The sloping olive yards, the steep-riddled cliffs draped with ilexes, vines, and rosemary, the great castellated towers of the monastery, the silver tinkling of the stream in the glen below, and the serene eternal calm of the grand blue hills which encircled us – all these had their share in subduing my heart. From that day Jean Le Rodeur and I became great friends. He told

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me where he principally studied, and at what hours, and begged that as often as we could, Frau Gretel and I would bring our books or embroidery and bear him company while he painted. Such a request was only too delightful to me, whose liveliest minutes were wont to be as gloomy as those of a nun, and my governess – whether wisely or not, it is too late to judge now – acceded to my eager acceptance of the tempting invitation.

            Perhaps, Ella, the uniform dullness and adversity of my life up to that time made the joy which followed, brighter and sweeter to me than it might otherwise have seemed. A ray of sunshine is more welcome and brilliant in a dungeon than in a drawing-room, and happiness was so rare a spice in the bitter cup of my girlhood that I was willing to make the most of the new flavour, and strangely loth to lose the taste of it. I opened my heart to Jean Le Rodeur and told him all my history, but I never learned his in return. That was to have been told me – but first, Ella, you must hear how my romance ended. Two months passed away in the enjoyment of this fool’s paradise, my twenty-first birthday came and passed, the flowers of April bloomed, and we awoke from our day-dream, Jean and I, to find that our friendship like the flowers, had blossomed already into love. We told each other so first, and then we told Frau Gretel and Baldassare. These two people, my governess and Jean’s friend, were the most unworldly in existence, mere babes in the social wood, unwise advisers and sympathetic confidants, in whose ethical codes, expedience and prudence found no place. They remonstrated of course, and even scolded, but Jean and I minded that very little. Frau Gretel had always pitied me with all the might of her great German heart, and now that I had found myself a refuge where at last I could rest in peace, she certainly was not the woman to destroy my new-found repose, and thrust me back again into my old joyless life. As for Baldassare, he was simply and profoundly ignorant of all the class rules of society, and neither believed nor knew any other laws than those of

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“natural selection.” Love, and love only, was in his opinion sufficient reason for marriage; and when he found that we were steadily and mutually resolved in our passion, he ceased to urge anything against it. So the Frau’s opposition lasted longer than his, solely because she feared my father’s displeasure; for the poetic character of the alliance we desired to make, pleased her fancy, and she confessed that it was impossible to help loving Jean. He was so frank and gay, and bright-faced, with such a blithe ringing voice and insouciant way, that his very presence seemed to inspire hope and courage in every one with whom he associated. He had Zingaro blood in him, he said, but though to this day I know nothing of his parentage, I believe, if he spoke the truth, that the gipsy ichor was more in his heart than in his veins, for he had all the air and appearance of high education and refinement, and though he affected to despise the distinctions of class, he made no secret of preferring my society to that of the Italian contadine.

            One evening I attacked Frau Gretel when she was in a particularly yielding mood. She had just ratified with her consent a still more foolish love affair than ours, which concerned her own child Dorothea, a girl of sixteen who was being educated in a convent in Germany; but of this matter I knew nothing then, and have only learned but very lately, how much my success with the Frau was due to the similarity existing between my petition and that which at the same time was preferred by her daughter. With all the eloquence of tears and adjurations I represented to my good governess the cruel extremity to which Le Rodeur and I were reduced. I quoted Baldassare’s pretty observations about love, and the dignity of natural impulse. I conjured up doleful visions of the blank and desolate future in store for me if Jean and I were torn asunder; of the blissful days and perfect peace she had in her power to give us by one gracious word. I reminded her of my father’s utter indifference regarding me and my actions, and observed that as I could never be of any value to him as an heir, and possessed no interest for him as a child, my marriage

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could not be a matter of much consequence to him, nor would he be likely to care on whom I chose to bestow myself as a wife. I urged further that the formal consent of my father was not required in the matter, and need not be sought, since both Jean and I were legally of age, and that as from my very babyhood I had been abandoned by my real parents and transmitted to her sole care and guardianship, I naturally looked on her as my adopted mother, and implored of her the dowry of a mother’s blessing.

            “Frau Gretel yielded. ‘If the dear God,’ she said, ‘taking pity on my desolate life, desired to give me a husband’s love in place of a father’s, should she oppose His design? Should she beat back from its refuge the poor weary dove with bruised drooping wings and panting heart eager for rest and peace? No; marriages were made in heaven, and married love was the gift of God.’ So she laid me against her heart and kissed me, and quoted Schiller and wept, and we were very happy all that night. Poor simple Frau Gretel, she had always the heart of a child! Amen – ‘of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!’

            “Jean and I were married. Here in Rome, Ella, for he came of a Catholic race as well as I. Beside the priest’s acolytes, Baldassare and Frau Gretel were the only witnesses of the quiet ceremony. There was no difficulty in keeping the marriage concealed from my father, for he never inquired where I was, nor how I was occupied, and his apartments were far removed from those allotted to my governess and to me. I hasten to the end of my story, Ella, there is little more to tell.

            “One day, barely a month after our marriage, the Baron abruptly announced his intended return to Arisaig Towers, and his request that I would be prepared for the journey within a week. On the evening upon which this news was communicated to us, we held counsel – we four – upon the course proper to be pursued, but we could not agree, and were still dreadfully embarrassed and distressed, when my husband, who had

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remained unusually silent for some time, rose from his seat, laid his hand on my arm and said with a peculiar air:

            “ ‘Let Lora take me to her father to-morrow. In her presence I will tell him my history, and I have no fear for the result. For her sake alone and for the sake of her love I will break a silence which but last autumn I swore never to break until the day of my death. Death only, I thought, would have strength enough to wrest my secret from me, God pardon me the violation of that oath! I did not know when I made it that Love is more powerful than Death!’

            “When he had said this he went out of the room and left us, nor did he return all that night. Towards noon next day Baldassare came to me with sad tidings. Jean after quitting us last night, had gone to visit a poor boy who lay ill of a fever in one of the worst and most noisome purlieus of the city, whither my husband was often led by his generous heart and romantic theories of universal brotherhood. When he had bidden his patient goodnight he would have returned to me, but finding himself unwell he apprehended he was fever-stricken, and fearing to infect me with the contagion, returned to his own lodgings. During the night his illness increased with all the rapidity of malignant disease, and Baldassare visiting him early is the morning found him violently affected by the malaria, that horrible disorder which so often seizes foreigners in Rome during the first spring they venture to pass there. Notwithstanding Baldassare’s protests and entreaties, I refused to be withheld from Jean, and insisted on installing myself as his attendant and nurse that very hour. But Roman malaria is a demon of puissant and obstinate temper. For three days the brave resolute youth of my boy-husband wrestled with the power that was crushing and grinding out his life, but the struggle was too terrible to last, and on the fourth day we knew that there was no hope. When I knew that, Ella, I thought I should have gone mad. O God, that which most astonishes me among all the

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phenomena of life, is the vast amount of misery a single human heart can endure without breaking! In fictitious tragedies, heroines die upon the stage from such shocks as these; in real life we die only of colds caught by walking out in an east wind, or of a surfeit, or an untimely attack of the measles. And so, though my husband died, I lived; and went back again with my governess and my father to the old desolate life in Scotland. When I saw the frank bright sunshine die out for ever in the eyes which had been my only light in the world, when I heard the last breath quiver between the lips that had first taught me the precious meaning of human love, when I knew that the heart that had beat for me, the hand that had lain in mine, the life that had been lived for me, were still – were silent – were dead, – O then, Ella! how I prayed, how I shrieked for death to take me also! They could not leave me, I cried in despair, they could not leave me to live without Jean! I should have killed myself then, but that I feared to lose by the act of self-murder, my place in Paradise beside my darling.

            “How slowly after that the terrible, deathly months glided away when we had left Rome, how grimly the haunting phantom of my miserable race overshadowed my girlhood, how pallid and old and fearful-hearted I grew day by day in the gloomy house in the heart of the bleak northern moorlands, you, Ella, can better guess than I can tell. No spectre footstep pursued me when I passed down the long resounding corridors, and yet I learned to look behind me with a sickly terror no words can describe; no ghastly whispers thrilled the aching silence of my dim tapestried chamber at night, and yet I lay awake hour after hour and listened in an agony of dread, for the sound of a voice that never came; no touch disturbed me as I bent over the embroidery frame in my lonely cabinet, and yet I shuddered to think of a Hand that might suddenly be laid on mine, or a Face that might meet my own as I looked up from my work. I brooded on magicians and magic lore continually, I speculated upon the unseen and the extra-natural;

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I read musty volumes of gruesome tradition and ancient treatises on necromancy, I invoked the spirits of the air, drew pentagrams, and tampered with charms and obsolete conjurations culled from curious books. Out of such feverish dreams as these, Ella, there was only one touch that could awaken me, only one cry that could summon me – the touch of baby hands – the cry of my child. On the morning of the first day of January, Jean’s little son lay in my bosom, and smiled upon me with his father’s eyes; a living keepsake from my buried darling, – God’s New Year gift to my wounded heart. Ella, come nearer to me, give me your hand, try not to tremble, – I am going to speak very slowly. I said, ‘My child is the child of grief and disaster, he is the son of a doomed race, and his name should fit his ill-fortune. The heir of Dolores Le Rodeur should inherit at least as sorrowful a name as hers. Listen, Ella, – I called him Tristan.' ”

            Silence. Silence more terrible, more significant than any words. Then the hand which the Countess held, relaxed its grasp, and the pulse grew faint and uncertain.

            My Lady glanced at her daughter, and rose hastily.

            “Do not be alarmed, mamma – I am not going to faint – I want nothing – nothing, at least, but to hear you tell me again – is Tristan Le Rodeur, the artist, really my brother?”

            “He is your brother, my child.”

            “Does he know it, has he ever thought otherwise?”

            A sudden and awful light passed into my Lady’s glittering eyes.

            “He has known all his life that I am his mother, and that you also are my child. When he first saw you, he saw in you his sister.”

            “Thank God for that! Oh, thank God!”

            Poor child! She knew now of what sweet trespass her heart had been guilty, but the knowledge did not come to her as it comes so often to other maids, wiser in their instincts, more blest in their choice than she. Nor for her the delicious hour in which

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“Lovers deep in thought

Give themselves for life,”

nor for her that unutterable joy of sympathy and perfect peace which passeth understanding. Those two tender words, “I love,” repeated so many thousand times by happier lips, murmured so often into listening ears impatient to hear them uttered, were but as the sound of a passing bell in Ella’s heart, the tolling of muffled chimes for a dear and dying hope. Poor child!

            With a touching and significant gesture, Ella raised her hand and brushed from her face the bright colour she had laid there with so much artistic care to catch the eyes of Tristan. Let the tears have their way with the pale, rose-less cheeks! Ella’s desire for beauty is over – the brief fantastic fever-dream is past, she is awake now and well content with her homeliness. Better so.

            For the first time that evening there were tears also in my Lady’s eyes, but they did not fall like Ella’s, she sat still, with her arm about her daughter’s waist, repeating continually to herself these prophetic words of Baldassare’s letter; “No good can ever come of a secret; it is inexcusably foolish to make mysteries.”

            There was a long pause, and presently the rapid musical pulse of the French clock on the mantlepiece beat eight.

            “Ella, our time is short, shall I go on?”

            “Yes, mamma.”

            My Lady resumed, but the voice was softer now, and the hand that was still clasped upon Ella’s, trembled.

            “I dared not keep Tristan with me. I was afraid that the Baron, even in the gloomy recesses of Arisaig Towers, remote as his rooms were from the wing of the mansion which Frau Gretel and I inhabited – might some day hear the cry of my child, and I feared his anger, not for myself but for the little one whose mother I had dared to become. Nevertheless, we managed well enough for a year, but then Tristan’s voice grew

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stronger, and he began to take a fancy for climbing up and shewing his baby face at the mullioned windows. We could not longer conceal our Moses, and there was no Egyptian princess at hand to adopt him.

            But at last, just before my twenty-third birthday, while my governess and I were puzzling our heads what to do with little Tristan, my father suddenly remembered me and sent his valet to my rooms with a note, in which he desired me to dine with him that evening, as he had an affair of some importance to communicate. Frau Gretel was not included in the invitation, so I prepared to obey the summons alone. I learned from the valet that our dinner was to be strictly tête-à-tête, and having attired myself with peculiar care I kissed my tiny son, and went, in more terror than I can express, to present myself before the Baron. He received me with far greater kindness than I had expected, and seemed satisfied with my appearance, for he paid me some compliments, but we were such utter strangers to each other, and the cause of that estrangement was so vividly present in my remembrance during the whole evening, that I could scarcely suppress an open display of my discomfiture. He told me he hoped the affair he had to communicate to me would meet with my approbation, since his was already given on the sole condition that mine followed, and he saw no just reason for refusal on my part to confirm his decision. In fact, I had been asked in marriage by the young Viscount Oronsay, only son of Earl Cairnsmuir, who desired both in compliance with the wish of his father and in pursuance of his own inclination to ally himself, if possible, with a daughter of some noble Scottish family professing the Catholic faith. Under these circumstances, Lord Hubert had made formal proposals for the honour of my hand. He was even graceful enough to make a pretence of having fallen in love with me, but if he had done so, it must have been from sheer report; for I hardly remembered to have met him twice in my life so rigorously had I always been secluded within the Arisaig desmesnes. The alliance thus suddenly proffered for my consideration

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was not distasteful to me. I hungered for some new life to break the dreamy monotony of my vegetation at the Towers, and longed for an opportunity to get little Tristan safely delivered from the power of Pharaoh. If my governess were to be dismissed, this opportunity would be mine. I am not sure that I knew what I meant to do with Tristan after my marriage with the Viscount, or how I expected to be able to arrange with Frau Gretel for the education of my child; but at any rate my anxiety for the present would be set at rest by accepting Lord Hubert’s proposal. Alas, Ella! why had I not courage then to confess the truth to my father? But I no more dared to open my lips on the matter than I should have dared to strike him! So I formally notified my consent to become Lady Oronsay, as soon as my bridegroom pleased; and from that hour my seclusion and my obscurity ceased. Presents, congratulations, and visits poured in upon me from all sides; every day I dined in my father’s apartments, and frequently on these occasions met Lord Hubert, and the old Earl of Cairnsmuir, who had been a widower many years. I liked my bridegroom well enough, but was not a little surprised to learn that he was not only, like myself, the last of a direct line, but last also of his very race. There had been another brother John, older than he, who two years since had left his home without bidding any one farewell, had set sail for America and perished at sea in a collision, which occurred during a fog between the steamer in which he had embarked, and another vessel bound for Liverpool. This news was communicated to the old Earl by a stranger, one of the passengers of the foundered ship, who returning to England on board the Liverpool barque, brought home a watch belonging to the dead Viscount and some letters bearing his name, which had been found in the pocket of his overcoat. The body itself had not been recovered, but the description given of it established Oronsay’s identity beyond possibility of doubt, and the coat, Scotch cap, and watch, which, as he was not in the habit of wearing them, had been found in the cabin of the broken steamer after the

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accident, were immediately recognised by the Earl. So much as this I learned from my own father, since Hubert never mentioned his dead brother’s name, and has always, for some inscrutable reason preserved an inviolable silence on the subject. I fancy they must have loved each other with unusual tenderness, and I have accounted to myself for your father’s melancholy temperament and his strict avoidance of any subject connected with the drowned man, by my belief in the intensity of his regret for the loss of his runaway brother. So to this day I have never heard more than I tell you now, and indeed I never cared to inquire. But I knew Earl Cairnsmuir was anxious that his only surviving son should marry soon, and I was in no mood myself to prolong unnecessarily the probationary interval of engagement, for I longed to see Tristan safely out of Arisaig Towers. In short, therefore, barely a fortnight after the preliminary arrangements for my wedding were concluded, the dear Frau Gretel departed for Germany, taking with her my baby-boy; and I soon after entered upon my second married life burdened with the load of a secret, which the years instead of lightening, have made continually heavier and harder to bear. For I am pursued, Ella, by horrible doubts and terrors which I have neither courage to reveal, nor strength of mind to subdue. But the misfortune which chiefly afflicts your father, is the only circumstance of my life for which I am ever tempted to feel grateful. Ella, can you guess what it is?”

            My Lady’s voice sank to a thin whisper as she put the question, and Ella replied slowly in the same suppressed tone – awful to bear because of its unhesitating certainty and its exquisite pain.

            “That I was not born a boy, mamma.”

            They both knew why, and no reason for the answer was either asked or offered. It was enough that Ella divined the fact.

            Again the Countess continued:

            “By and by the Earl and the Baron both died – my father first – then Hubert’s. All the rest of Tristan’s history you know. Frau Gretel and

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Baldassare were mother and father to him, but they – wiser and braver than I – concealed from him nothing that related to his birth or to me. Had they kept the truth from him as I have kept it from you and your father, God only knows whither the mystery might have led us! God only knows indeed, whither it may lead us even now! See, Ella, how foolish it is to have secrets!