A Fragment
by the author of "Rita," etc. [Hamilton Aidé]
Originally published in Belgravia (John Maxwell) vol.2 #6 (Apr 1867).
My darling stepped out from the little inn-window on to the wooden balcony, draped with vine-leaves and heavy bunches of half-ripened purple grapes, which overhung the door of the osteria. It was a lapis-lazuli night, such as is only known in Italy. Below us lay a great water, calm as that bay of contentment where into our lives had now glided. Stars trembled there, and the moon swung her full-fed lamp on the very edge of the ripple that washed the shore. There came a heavy odour of orange-blossoms from the gardens about us, blent with the less rare odour of tobacco, from the pipes of ostlers and wayfarers seated around the door below. The murmur of their voices was all that broke the silence.
Between the osteria and the lake ran the dusty high-road, where the diligence half an hour ago had passed, and stopped here to change horses. But there was not much traffic, saving a cart or two, oxen-drawn and Jaden with maize, and a curious old vehicle, half-gig, half-chaise, bearing a notary from the neighbouring town to the bedside of some village Dives, cumbered in his last hours with the disposition of his wealth (so the waiter informed me). Saving for these the dust had slept undisturbed, in layers several inches thick, upon the road, during all the hours we had been here. And now the night had come, and even such infrequent traffic would cease.
But, contrary to our expectation, as we two stood there hand-in-hand upon the balcony, listening to a cicala in the dusty roadside grass and a frog in the water-weeds, and the hum of the smokers' voices below us, there fell on our ears the distant cracking of a post-boy's whip, with the familiar accompaniment of jingling harness. A minute more, and in the white moonlight we saw an open travelling-carriage coming rapidly towards us. There was a rush among the smokers to the front; the postillion worked up his whip into a state of frenzy as he neared his goal, and finally-swung himself lightly to the ground, as he pulled up exactly under our window. The carriage was occupied by two persons—a gentleman and lady. The head of the calèche being thrown back, I could see the man's face very distinctly in the moonlight, which was as clear as day. I thought I recognised it: so, perhaps, did my companion, for she drew yet closer to me, and I felt her little hot hand tremble in mine. The doubt, if it was one, lasted but a minute: the lady threw back her veil; the small black-lace bonnet framed—it did not shroud—that carved ivory face on which the moonlight flooded. God forgive me! I had reason to know it too well; and so had she who stood beside me. My poor little darling nestled close to me like a frightened dove, and she pulled me quickly back under the shadow of the vine-leaves, as she murmured: "0, Valerian! that woman again! That woman here!"
"My darling, what are you afraid of? She can do us no harm. Depend on it, she is not troubling her head about me."
"Why does she come here? 0, Valerian, we were so happy!"
"Hush! Let us hear what they say."
"Bring out the livre des étrangers. We will see who has been passing this way." It was the gentleman who spoke.
"Just the romantic spot for a love-sick couple," laughed the lady; and her fine musical laugh fell on my ear like a discordant peal of bells. "I should not wonder if there was some one staying here."
We saw the greasy strangers' book handed to them by their courier, and the lady, by the light of the moon alone, turned over the pages and read the names written there. A dear little curly head was hidden on my breast, and a small voice whispered plaintively:
"You won't go down to her? You won't see her? Promise me. She'll try and take you from me, as she did before. I shall die if you go, Valerian!"
"Never fear, my darling. She bewitched me once;—I was mad then, I believe. But have I not something better now? While I hold my treasure here in my arms, what to me are all the fairest women in the world?"
"Ah! you didn't think so once," she sobbed; "and I know nothing can resist her—nothing! Even now, you cannot take your eyes off her. Ah, Valerian, if she drags you away from me this time—"
I put my hand across her mouth, and listened with hungry eyes and ears.
"Mon Dieu!" cried the lady, clasping her hands and laughing. "Look here!—what a rencontre!—read this: 'Mons. Valerian, peintre, Paris, avec sa femme." Only think of his being here! I have not seen him since he threatened to blow out his brains."
"Poor devil! You treated him very badly, Cora. Who did he marry?"
"0, some little English model, to whom he had been engaged for years—ever since she was a child. I wish her joy of him. Have you a mind to see them? Shall we stop the night here? You wanted a sketch of the lake; he shall make me half-a-dozen."
"That sort of fellow's a bore," said the gentleman, lighting his cigar. "Besides, you'll have to make the fellow believe you're in love with him again, in order to get your sketches; and it isn't worth it. How can you ever have found anything worth it? Gratified vanity, eh? You twisted him round your little finger, the young fool, all the time I was in Russia. Well, I hope you found it amusing. I always think society of that second-rate sort a nuisance."
"He was really very tolerable; the whole thing rather amused me, for a time—until he began to take it au grand sérieux. When he grew dull and taciturn, talked of nothing but death and despair, of course I was obliged to shut the door in his face. It would rather interest me to see him again, though," added the lady, carefully buttoning her glove. "Let us send for him."
And this was the woman for whom, one short year ago, I would have laid down my life—for whose sake I had cast aside the treasure which, undeserving as I was, I had found nestling in my heart once more! Blind fool that I had been! O, for those wasted, worse than wasted, hours! I felt, in that moment, how one burning drop of shameful memory may embitter a whole cupful of present happiness. Else were there no justice under heaven; while faithful men, whose love has never swerved, are for ever severed, this side the grave, from all they have best loved on earth. Was it my darling's avenging angel who had brought this couple here to-night, that my ears might testify to the baseness of her who had seduced me from my heart's first allegiance?
This is what I heard the husband reply:
"Ma chère, it would be dull work for me watching you try to rehook your fish. No doubt you would succeed—you always do. But I put it to you fairly—est-ce gue cela vaut la peine? You, who have had emperors at your feet,—you may leave your poor artist in peace at last, eh, to the miserable enjoyment of his model wife. She punishes him enough for his infidelity before marriage, depend on it."
"No doubt; and I should like to have seen my friend henpecked," replied the lady with a smile. "It was just because he was so different from all the men of one's own set that I amused myself with him, mon cher, during your absence. I knew you would never have tolerated him in the house—as he never plays écarté; but as you were in Russia, it was rather an amusing change, after all the blasés men of the Jockey Club, to listen to this passionate sentimental painter, with his talk about Christian art, and his enthusiasm about the colour of one's hair and the turn of one's neck, and his utter absence of all conventionality. He was quite refreshing, I assure you, until he came to be a bore. By the bye, you never saw the picture he did of me, in the dress I wore at the Princesse Mathilde's bal costumé? If we stayed here the night—"
Here the fresh horses were brought out; and in the imprecations which accompanied the tugging at the rope harness and the shoving of the beasts into their places at the pole, I lost the remainder of this sentence.
"If I have any luck, before we return to Paris I'll send to the fellow and buy his picture," said the husband; "but to-night, remember that Schwartzenheim is to meet us at Como."
"And he plays at écarté! I will get the miniature from Valerian, however, without your buying it, mon ami."
"You shall not have long to wait," I murmured; and disengaging myself from the arms of my darling, who followed me, pale and bathed in tears, I entered our little room, and ran to a case which stood near the bed. Among a number of other miniatures was one half-finished, which I had not looked at for months. I seized a sponge full of water, and passed it several times across the hard, beautiful, white face, that looked out at me less and less distinctly, until nothing but the faintest shadow of a face was left. Then I wrote with my pencil across it:
VALERIAN'S LAST GIFT.
I ran into the balcony. They were just starting. The padrone, surrounded by his satellites, stood cringing and congéing at the door: the postillion was already in his saddle, the courier climbing deftly into his rumble. I took my aim just as the whip went ‘crack!' and the wheels, with a sudden jerk, began revolving: the bit of ivory dropped straight into her lap. She was startled, and looked quickly up. Our eyes met. I was leaning well over the balcony this time, with my arm around my angel's neck; and it was with no feigned fervour of passion that I pressed my lips to hers. The carriage was rolling out of sight in the moonlight and the dust, but I could just catch the scornful smile on that pale sculptured face, under its black-lace bonnet, before a turn of the road hid the woman from me—for ever.Yes, for ever on this side the grave; for I learn that she is now dead. It was a painful lingering end; some internal torture eating away her life, and with it her dearly-cherished beauty. What comfort had she in those last hours, when her husband was playing écarté at his club, and her admirers had all deserted her, with no baby-fingers clasped about her neck, no children's voices to cheer the love-forgotten silence? Was the solitary woman haunted by the memory of lives she had ruined, of hearts she had burned up and laid desolate?
Why have I written down the story of those few moments in a balcony? Because I look back to them with thankfulness, as to the crisis when my eyes were fully opened. I know myself. I know that until then, blinded by the woman's beauty, I never really saw her as she was. But for this, there have been times haply when I might have regretted that my little angel lacked the Athenian grace and brilliancy that in another exercised so fatal a spell over me. As it is, I thank God for the helpmate He has given me; for her sweet trusting nature, for the heaven of her face, which always brings me peace when I look into it. And when I see her baby curled like a rose-leaf on her bosom, and her two sturdy boys, who clean father's palette and mimic father's pictures in chalk upon the studio-wall,—ah, well, I say to myself, there is nothing the Schwartzenheim palace contains, nothing that poor dead woman's life ever compassed, that I would take in exchange for the joys my wife has given me!