Читать книгу Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier - Charles James Lever - Страница 11

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It was full an hour after the time appointed when the friar, accompanied by young Gerald, entered the arched gate of the Altieri Palace.

‘You have been asked for twice, Frate,’ said the porter; ‘and I doubt if you will be admitted now. It is the time his Royal Highness takes his siesta.’

‘I must only hope for the best,’ sighed out the Fra, as he ascended the wide stairs of white marble, with a sinking heart.

‘Let us go a little slower, Fra Luke,’ whispered the boy; ‘I ‘d like to have a look at these statues. See what a fine fellow that is strangling the serpent; and, oh! is she not beautiful, crouching in that large shell?’

‘Heathen vanities, all of them,’ muttered the Fra; ‘what are they compared to the pure face of our blessed Lady?’

The youth felt rebuked, and was silent. While the friar, however, was communicating with the servant in waiting, the boy had time to stroll down the long gallery, admiring as he went the various works of art it contained. Stands of weapons, too, and spoils of the chase abounded, and these he examined with a wistful curiosity, reading from short inscriptions attached to the cases, which told him how this wolf had been killed by his Royal Highness on such a day of such a year, and how that boar had received his death-wound from the Prince’s hand at such another time.

It almost required force from the friar to tear him away from objects so full of interest, nor did he succeed without a promise that he should see them all some other day. Passing through a long suite of rooms, magnificently furnished, but whose splendour was dimmed and faded by years, they reached an octagonal chamber of small but beautiful proportions; and here the friar was told the youth was to wait, while he himself was admitted to the Prince.

Charles Edward had just dined—and, as was his wont, dined freely—when the Fra was announced. ‘You can retire,’ said the Prince to the servants in waiting, but never turning his head toward where the friar was standing. The servants retreated noiselessly, and all was now still in the chamber. The Prince had drawn his chair toward the fire, and sat gazing at the burning logs in deep reverie. Apparently he followed his thoughts so far as to forget that the poor friar was yet in waiting; for it was only as a low, faint sigh escaped him that the Prince suddenly turning his head, cried out, ‘Ah! our Frate. I had half forgotten you. You are somewhat late, are you not?’

In a voice tremulous with fear and deference Fra Luke narrated how they had been delayed by a misadventure in the Piazza, contriving to interweave in his story an apology for the torn dress and ragged habiliments the boy was to appear in. ‘He is not in a state to be seen by your Royal Highness at all. If it wasn’t that your Royal Highness will think little of the shell where the kernel is sound——’

‘And who is to warrant me that, sir?’ said the Prince angrily. ‘Is it your guarantee I ‘m to take for it?’

The poor friar almost felt as if he were about to faint at the stern speech, nor did he dare to utter a word of reply. So far, this was in his favour, since, when unprovoked by anything like rejoinder, Charles Edward was usually disposed to turn from any unpleasant theme, and address his thoughts elsewhere.

‘I ‘m half relenting, my good friar,’ said he, in a calmer tone, ‘that I should have brought you here on this errand. How am I to burden myself with the care of this boy? I am but a pensioner myself, weighed down already with a mass of followers. So long as hope remained to us we struggled on manfully enough. Present privation was to have had its recompense—at least we thought so.’ He stopped suddenly, and then, as if ashamed of speaking thus confidentially to one he had seen only once before, his voice assumed a harsher, sterner accent as he said: ‘These are not your concerns. What is it you propose I should do? Have you a plan? What is it?’

Had Fra Luke been required to project another scheme of invasion, he could not have been more dumbfounded and confused, and he stood the very picture of hopeless incapacity.

Charles Edward’s temper was in that state when he invariably sought to turn upon others the reproaches his own conscience addressed to him, and he angrily said: ‘It is by this same train of beggarly followers that my fortunes are rendered irretrievable. I am worried and harassed by their importunities; they attach the plague-spot of their poverty to me wherever I go. I should have freed myself from this thraldom many a year ago; and if I had, where and what might I not have been to-day? You, and others of your stamp, look upon me as an almoner, not more nor less.’ His passion had now spent itself, and he sat moodily gazing at the fire.

‘Is the lad here?’ asked he, after a long pause.

‘Yes, your Royal Highness,’ said the friar, while he made a motion toward the door.

Charles Edward stopped him quickly as he said, ‘No matter, there is not any need that I should see him. He and his aunt—she is his aunt, you said—must return to Ireland; this is no place for them. I will see Kelly about it to-morrow, and they shall have something to pay their journey. This arrangement does not please you, Frate, eh? Speak out, man. You think it cold, unnatural, and unkind—is it not so?’

‘If your gracious Highness would just condescend to say a word to him—one word, that he might carry away in his heart for the rest of his days.’

‘Better have no memory of me,’ sighed the Prince drearily. ‘Oh, don’t say so, your Royal Highness; think what pride it will be to him yet, God knows in what far-away country, to remember that he saw you once, that he stood in your presence, and heard you speak to him.’

‘It shall be as you wish, Frate; but I charge you once more to be sure that he may not know with whom he is speaking.’

‘By this holy Book,’ said the Fra, with a gesture implying a vow of secrecy.

‘Go now; send him hither, and wait without till I send for you.’

The door had scarcely closed behind the friar when it opened again to admit the entrance of the youth. The Prince turned his head, and, whether it was the extreme poverty of the lad’s appearance, more striking from the ragged and torn condition of his dress, or that something in Gerald’s air and look impressed him painfully, he passed his hand across his eyes and averted his glance from him.

‘Come forward, my boy,’ said he at last. ‘How are you called?’

‘Gerald Fitzgerald, Signor Conte,’ said he, firmly but respectfully.

‘You are Irish by birth?’ said the Prince, in a voice slightly tremulous.

‘Yes, Signor Conte,’ replied he, while he drew himself up with an air that almost savoured of haughtiness.

‘And your friends have destined you for the priesthood, it seems.’

‘I never knew I had friends,’ said the boy; ‘I thought myself a sort of castaway.’

‘Why, you have just told me of your Irish blood—how knew you of that?’

‘So long as I can remember I have heard that I was a Géraldine, and they call me Irish in the college.’

There was a frank boldness in his manner, totally removed from the slightest trace of rudeness or presumption, that already interested the Prince, who now gazed long and steadily on him.

‘Do I remind you of any one you ever saw or cared for, Signor Conte?’ asked the boy, with an accent of touching gentleness.

‘That you do, child,’ said he, laying his hand on the youth’s shoulder, while he passed the other across his eyes.

‘I hope it was of none who ever gave you sorrow,’ said the boy, who saw the quivering motion of the lip that indicates deep grief.

Charles Edward now removed his hand, and turned away his head for some seconds.

At last he arose suddenly from his chair, and with an effort that seemed to show he was struggling for the mastery over his own emotions, said, ‘Is it your own choice to be a priest, Gerald?’

‘No; far from it. I ‘d rather be a herd on the Campagna! You surely know little of the life of the convent, Signor Conte, or you had not asked me that question.’

Far from taking offence at the boy’s boldness, the Prince smiled good-naturedly at the energy of his reply.

‘Is it the stillness, the seclusion that you dislike?’ asked he, evidently wanting the youth to speak of himself and of his temperament.

‘No, it is not that,’ said Gerald thoughtfully. ‘The quiet, peaceful hours, when we are left to what they call meditation, are the best of it. Then one is free to range where he will, in fancy. I ‘ve had as many adventures, thus, as any fortune-seeker of the Arabian Nights. What lands have I not visited! what bold things have I not achieved! ay, and day after day, taken up the same dream where I had left it last, carrying on its fortunes, till the actual work of life seemed the illusion, and this, the dream-world, the true one.’

‘So that, after all, this same existence has its pleasures, Gerald?’

‘The pleasures are in forgetting it! ignoring that your whole life is a falsehood! They make me kneel at confession to tell my thoughts, while well I know that, for the least blamable of them, I shall be scourged. They oblige me to say that I hate everything that gives a charm to life, and cherish as blessings all that can darken and sadden it. Well, I swear the lie, and they are satisfied! And why are they satisfied?—because out of this corrupt heart, debased by years of treachery and falsehood, they have created the being that they want to serve them.’

‘What has led you to think thus hardly of the priesthood?’

‘One of themselves, Signor Conte. He told me all that I have repeated to you now, and he counselled me, if I had a friend—one friend on earth—to beseech him to rescue me ere it was too late, ere I was like him.’

‘And he—what became of him?’

‘He died, as all die who offend the Order, of a wasting fever. His hair was white as snow, though he was under thirty, and his coffin was light as a child’s. Look here, Signor Conte,’ cried he, as a smile of half incredulity, half pity, curled the Prince’s lip, ‘look here. You are a great man and a rich: you never knew what it was in life to suffer any, the commonest of those privations poor men pass their days in——’

‘Who can dare to say that of me?’ cried Charles Edward passionately. ‘There’s not a toil I have not tasted, there’s not a peril I have not braved, there’s not a sorrow nor a suffering that have not been my portion; ay, and, God wot, with heavier stake upon the board than ever man played for!’

‘Forgive me, Signor Conte,’ stammered out the boy, as his eyes filled up at the sight of the emotion he had caused, ‘I knew not what I was saying.’

The Prince took little heed of the words, for his aroused thoughts bore him sadly to the mist-clad mountain and the heathery gorges far away; and he strode the room in deep emotion. At last his glance fell upon the youth as, pale and terror-stricken, he stood watching him, and he quickly said: ‘I’m not angry with you, Gerald; do not grieve, my poor boy. You will learn, one of these days, that sorrow has its place at fine tables, just as at humbler boards. It helps the rich man to don his robe of purple, just as it aids the beggar to put on his rags. It’s a stern conscription that calls on all to serve. But to yourself: you will not be a priest, you say? What, then, would you like—what say you to the life of a soldier?’

‘But in what service, Signor Conte?’

‘That of your own country, I suppose.’

‘They tell me that the king is a usurper, who has no right to be king; and shall I swear faith and loyalty to him?’

‘Others have done so, and are doing it every day, boy. It was but yesterday, Lord Blantyre made what they call his submission; and he was the bosom friend of—the Pretender’; and the last words were uttered in a half-scornful laugh.

‘I will not hear him called by that name, Signor Conte. So long as I remember anything, I was taught not to endure it.’

‘Was that your mother’s teaching, Gerald?’ said the Prince tenderly.

‘It was, sir. I was a very little child; but I can never forget the last prayer I made each night before bed: it was for God’s protection to the true Prince; and when I arose I was to say, “Confusion to all who call him the Pretender!”’

‘He is not even that now,’ muttered Charles Edward, as he leaned his head on the mantelpiece.

‘I hope, Signor Conte,’ said the boy timidly, ‘that you never were for the Elector.’

‘I have done little for the cause of the Stuarts,’ said Charles, with a deep sigh.

‘I wish I may live to serve them,’ cried the youth, with energy.

The Prince looked long and steadfastly at the boy, and, in a tone that bespoke deep thought, said:

‘I want to befriend you, Gerald, if I but knew how. It is clear you have no vocation for the church, and we are here in a land where there is little other career. Were we in France something might be done. I have some friends, however, in that country, and I will see about communicating with them. Send the Frate hither.’

The boy left the room, and speedily returned with Fra Luke, whose anxious glances were turned from the Prince to the youth, in eager curiosity to learn how their interview had gone off.

‘Gerald has no ambition to be a monsignore, Frate,’ said the Prince laughingly, ‘and we mustn’t constrain him. They who serve the church should have their hearts in the calling. Do you know of any honest family with whom he might be domesticated for a short time—not in Rome, of course, but in the country; it will only be for a month or two at farthest?’

‘There is a worthy family at Orvieto, if it were not too far——’

‘Nothing of the kind; Orvieto will suit admirably. Who are these people?’

‘The father is the steward of Cardinal Caraffa; but it is a villa that his eminence never visits, and so they live there as in their own palace; and the mountain air is so wholesome there, sick people used to seek the place; and so Tonino, as they call him, takes a boarder, or even two——’

‘That is everything we want,’ said the Prince, cutting short what he feared might be a long history. ‘Let the boy go back now to the college, and do you yourself come here on Saturday morning, and Kelly will arrange all with you.’

‘I wish I knew why you are so good to me, Signor Conte,’ said the boy, as his eyes filled up with tears.

‘I was a friend of your family, Gerald,’ said Charles, as he fixed his eyes on the friar, to enforce his former caution.

‘And am I never to see you again, signor,’ cried he eagerly.

‘Yes, to be sure, you shall come here; but I will settle all that another time—on Saturday, Fra; and now, good-bye.

The boy grasped the hand with which the Prince waved his farewell, and kissed it rapturously; and Charles, overcome at length by feelings he had repressed till then, threw his arms around the boy’s neck, and pressed him to his bosom.

Fra Luke, terrified how such a moment might end, hurried the youth from the room, and retired.