CHAPTER XVIII

THE NIGHT OF THE FIFTEENTH

We quit the Piazza d'Armi. Rumour had its home in Milan. On their way to

the caffe La Scala, Luciano and Carlo (who held together, determined to

be taken together if the arrest should come) heard it said that the Chief

was in Milan. A man passed by and uttered it, going. They stopped a

second man, who was known to them, and he confirmed the rumour. Glad as

sunlight once more, they hurried to Count Medole forgivingly. The count's

servant assured them that his master had left the city for Monza. 'Is

Medole a coward?' cried Luciano, almost in the servant's hearing. The

fleeing of so important a man looked vile, now that they were sharpened

by new eagerness. Forthwith they were off to Agostino, believing that he

would know the truth. They found him in bed. 'Well, and what?' said

Agostino, replying to their laughter. 'I am old; too old to stride across

a day and night, like you giants of youth. I take my rest when I can, for

I must have it.'

'But, you know, O conscript father,' said Carlo, willing to fall a little

into his mood, 'you know that nothing will be done to-night.'

'Do I know so much?' Agostino murmured at full length.

'Do you know that the Chief is in the city?' said Luciano.

'A man who is lying in bed knows this,' returned Agostino, 'that he knows

less than those who are up, though what he does know he perhaps digests

better. 'Tis you who are the fountains, my boys, while I am the pool into

which you play. Say on.'

They spoke of the rumour. He smiled at it. They saw at once that the

rumour was false, for the Chief trusted Agostino.

'Proceed to Barto, the mole,' he said, 'Barto the miner; he is the father

of daylight in the city: of the daylight of knowledge, you understand,

for which men must dig deep. Proceed to him;--if you can find him.'

But Carlo brought flame into Agostino's eyes.

'The accursed beast! he has pinned the black butterfly to the signorina's

dress.'

Agostino rose on his elbow. He gazed at them. 'We are followers of a

blind mole,' he uttered with an inner voices while still gazing

wrathfully, and then burst out in grief, '"Patria o mea creatrix, patria

o mea genetrix!"'

'The signorina takes none of his warnings, nor do we. She escaped a plot

last night, and to-night she sings.'

'She must not,' said Agostino imperiously.

'She does.'

'I must stop that.' Agostino jumped out of bed.

The young men beset him with entreaties to leave the option to her.

'Fools!' he cried, plunging a rageing leg into his garments. 'Here, Iris!

Mercury! fly to Jupiter and say we are all old men and boys in Italy, and

are ready to accept a few middleaged mortals as Gods, if they will come

and help us. Young fools! Do you know that when you conspire you are in

harness, and yoke-fellows, every one?'

'Yoked to that Barto Rizzo!'

'Yes; and the worse horse of the two. Listen, you pair of Nuremberg

puppet-heads! If the Chief were here, I would lie still in my bed. Medole

has stopped the outbreak. Right or wrong, he moves a mass; we are

subordinates--particles. The Chief can't be everywhere. Milan is too hot

for him. Two men are here, concealed--Rinaldo and Angelo Guidascarpi. The

rumour springs from that. They have slain Count Paul Lenkenstein, and

rushed to old Milan for work, with the blood on their swords. Oh, the

tragedy!--when I have time to write it. Let me now go to my girl, to my

daughter! The blood of the Lenkenstein must rust on the steel. Angelo

slew him: Rinaldo gave him the cross to kiss. You shall have the whole

story by-and-by; but this will be a lesson to Germans not to court our

Italian damsels. Lift not that curtain, you Pannonian burglars! Much do

we pardon; but bow and viol meet not, save that they be of one wood;

especially not when signor bow is from yonderside the Rhoetian Alps, and

donzella Viol is a growth of warm Lombardy. Witness to it, Angelo and

Rinaldo Guidascarpi! bravo! You boys there--you stand like two Tyrolese

salad-spoons! I say that my girl, my daughter, shall never help to fire

blank shot. I sent my paternal commands to her yesterday evening. Does

the wanton disobey her father and look up to a pair of rocket-headed

rascals like you? Apes! if she sings that song to-night, the ear of Italy

will be deaf to her for ever after. There's no engine to stir to-night;

all the locks are on it; she will send half-a-dozen milkings like you to

perdition, and there will be a circle of black blood about her name in

the traditions of the insurrection--do you hear? Have I cherished her for

that purpose? to have her dedicated to a brawl!'

Agostino fumed up and down the room in a confusion of apparel, savouring

his epithets and imaginative peeps while he stormed, to get a relish out

of something, as beseems the poetic temperament. The youths were silenced

by him; Carlo gladly.

'Troop!' said the old man, affecting to contrast his attire with theirs;

'two graces and a satyr never yet went together, and we'll not frighten

the classic Government of Milan. I go out alone. No, Signor Luciano, I am

not sworn to Count Medole. I see your sneer contain it. Ah! what a thing

is hurry to a mind like mine. It tears up the trees by the roots, floods

the land, darkens utterly my poor quiet universe. I was composing a

pastoral when you came in. Observe what you have done with my "Lovely Age

of Gold!"'

Agostino's transfigurement from lymphatic poet to fiery man of action,

lasted till his breath was short, when the necessity for taking a deep

draught of air induced him to fall back upon his idle irony. 'Heads, you

illustrious young gentlemen!--heads, not legs and arms, move a

conspiracy. Now, you--think what you will of it--are only legs and arms

in this business. And if you are insubordinate, you present the shocking

fabular spirit of the members of the body in revolt; which is not the

revolt we desire to see. I go to my daughter immediately, and we shall

all have a fat sleep for a week, while the Tedeschi hunt and stew and

exhaust their naughty suspicions. Do you know that the Pope's Mouth is

closed? We made it tell a big lie before it shut tight on its teeth--a

bad omen, I admit; but the idea was rapturously neat. Barto, the

sinner--be sure I throttle him for putting that blot on my swan; only,

not yet, not yet: he's a blind mole, a mad patriot; but, as I say, our

beast Barto drew an Austrian to the Mouth last night, and led the dog to

take a letter out of it, detailing the whole plot of tonight, and how men

will be stationed at the vicolo here, ready to burst out on the Corso,

and at the vicolo there, and elsewhere, all over the city, carrying fire

and sword; a systematic map of the plot. It was addressed to Count

Serabiglione--my boys! my boys! what do you think of it? Bravo! though

Barto is a deadly beast if he--'Agostino paused. 'Yes, he went too far!

too far!'

'Has he only gone too far, do you say?'

Carlo spoke sternly. His elder was provoked enough by his deadness of

enthusiasm, and that the boy should dare to stalk on a bare egoistical

lover's sentiment to be critical of him, Agostino, struck him as

monstrous. With the treachery of controlled rage, Agostino drew near him,

and whispered some sentences in his ear.

Agostino then called him his good Spartan boy for keeping brave

countenance. 'Wait till you comprehend women philosophically. All's

trouble with them till then. At La Scala tonight, my sons! We have

rehearsed the fiasco; the Tedeschi perform it. Off with you, that I may

go out alone!'

He seemed to think it an indubitable matter that he would find Vittoria

and bend her will.

Agostino had betrayed his weakness to the young men, who read him with

the keen eyes of a particular disapprobation. He delighted in the dark

web of intrigue, and believed himself to be no ordinary weaver of that

sunless work. It captured his imagination, filling his pride with a

mounting gas. Thus he had become allied to Medole on the one hand, and to

Barto Rizzo on the other. The young men read him shrewdly, but speaking

was useless.

Before Carlo parted from Luciano, he told him the burden of the whisper,

which had confirmed what he had heard on the Piazzi d'Armi. It was this:

Barto Rizzo, aware that Lieutenant Pierson was the bearer of despatches

from the Archduke in Milan to the marshal, then in Verona, had followed,

and by extraordinary effort reached Verona in advance; had there tricked

and waylaid him, and obtained, instead of despatches, a letter of recent

date, addressed to him by Vittoria, which compromised the insurrectionary

project.

'If that's the case, my Carlo!' said his friend, and shrugged, and spoke

in a very worldly fashion of the fair sex.

Carlo shook him off. For the rest of the day he was alone, shut up with

his journalistic pen. The pen traversed seas and continents like an old

hack to whom his master has thrown the reins. Apart from the desperate

perturbation of his soul, he thought of the Guidascarpi, whom he knew,

and was allied to, and of the Lenkensteins, whom he knew likewise, or had

known in the days when Giacomo Piaveni lived, and Bianca von Lenkenstein,

Laura's sister, visited among the people of her country. Countess Anna

and Countess Lena von Lenkenstein were the German beauties of Milan,

lively little women, and sweet. Between himself and Countess Lena there

had been tender dealings about the age when sweetmeats have lost their

attraction, and the charm has to be supplied. She was rich, passionate

for Austria, romantic concerning Italy, a vixen in temper, but with a

pearly light about her temples that kept her picture in his memory. And

besides, during those days when women are bountiful to us as Goddesses,

give they never so little, she had deigned to fondle hands with him; had

set the universe rocking with a visible heave of her bosom; jingled all

the keys of mystery; and had once (as to embalm herself in his

recollection), once had surrendered her lips to him. Countess Lena would

have espoused Ammiani, believing in her power to make an Austrian out of

such Italian material. The Piaveni revolt had stopped that and all their

intercourse by the division of the White Hand, as it was called;

otherwise, the hand of the corpse. Ammiani had known also Count Paul von

Lenkenstein. To his mind, death did not mean much, however pleasant life

might be: his father and his friend had gone to it gaily; and he himself

stood ready for the summons: but the contemplation of a domestic judicial

execution, which the Guidascarpi seemed to have done upon Count Paul,

affrighted him, and put an end to his temporary capacity for labour. He

felt as if a spent shot were striking on his ribs; it was the unknown

sensation of fear. Changeing, it became pity. 'Horrible deaths these

Austrians die!' he said.

For a while he regarded their lot as the hardest. A shaft of sunlight

like blazing brass warned him that the day dropped. He sent to his

mother's stables, and rode at a gallop round Milan, dining alone in one

of the common hotel gardens, where he was a stranger. A man may have good

nerve to face the scene which he is certain will be enacted, who shrinks

from an hour that is suspended in doubt. He was aware of the pallor and

chill of his looks, and it was no marvel to him when two sbirri in mufti,

foreign to Milan, set their eyes on him as they passed by to a vacant

table on the farther side of the pattering gold-fish pool, where he sat.

He divined that they might be in pursuit of the Guidascarpi, and alive to

read a troubled visage. 'Yet neither Rinaldo nor Angelo would look as I

do now,' he thought, perceiving that these men were judging by such

signs, and had their ideas. Democrat as he imagined himself to be, he

despised with a nobleman's contempt creatures who were so dead to the

character of men of birth as to suppose that they were pale and

remorseful after dealing a righteous blow, and that they trembled!

Ammiani looked at his hand: no force of his will could arrest its palsy.

The Guidascarpi were sons of Bologna. The stupidity of Italian sbirri is

proverbial, or a Milanese cavalier would have been astonished to conceive

himself mistaken for a Bolognese. He beckoned to the waiter, and said,

'Tell me what place has bred those two fellows on the other side of the

fountain.' After a side-glance of scrutiny, the reply was, 'Neapolitans.'

The waiter was ready to make an additional remark, but Ammiani nodded and

communed with a toothpick. He was sure that those Neapolitans were

recruits of the Bolognese Polizia; on the track of the Guidascarpi,

possibly. As he was not unlike Angelo Guidascarpi in figure, he became

uneasy lest they should blunder 'twixt him and La Scala; and the notion

of any human power stopping him short of that destination, made Ammiani's

hand perfectly firm. He drew on his gloves, and named the place whither

he was going, aloud. 'Excellency,' said the waiter, while taking up and

pretending to reckon the money for the bill: 'they have asked me whether

there are two Counts Ammiani in Milan.' Carlo's eyebrows started. 'Can

they be after me?' he thought, and said: 'Certainly; there is twice

anything in this world, and Milan is the epitome of it.'

Acting a part gave him Agostino's catching manner of speech. The waiter,

who knew him now, took this for an order to say 'Yes.' He had evidently a

respect for Ammiani's name: Carlo supposed that he was one of Milan's

fighting men. A sort of answer leading to 'Yes' by a circuit and the

assistance of the hearer, was conveyed to the, sbirri. They were true

Neapolitans quick to suspect, irresolute upon their suspicions. He was

soon aware that they were not to be feared more than are the general race

of bunglers, whom the Gods sometimes strangely favour. They perplexed

him: for why were they after him? and what had made them ask whether he

had a brother? He was followed, but not molested, on his way to La Scala.

Ammiani's heart was in full play as he looked at the curtain of the

stage. The Night of the Fifteenth had come. For the first few moments his

strong excitement fronting the curtain, amid a great host of hearts

thumping and quivering up in the smaller measures like his own, together

with the predisposing belief that this was to be a night of events,

stopped his consciousness that all had been thwarted; that there was

nothing but plot, plot, counterplot and tangle, disunion, silly subtlety,

jealousy, vanity, a direful congregation of antagonistic elements;

threads all loose, tongues wagging, pressure here, pressure there, like

an uncertain rage in the entrails of the undirected earth, and no master

hand on the spot to fuse and point the intense distracted forces.

The curtain, therefore, hung like any common opera-screen; big only with

the fate of the new prima donna. He was robbed even of the certainty that

Vittoria would appear. From the blank aspect of the curtain he turned to

the house, which was crowding fast, and was not like listless Milan about

to criticize an untried voice. The commonly empty boxes of the

aristocracy were full of occupants, and for a wonder the white uniforms

were not in excess, though they were to be seen. The first person whom

Ammiani met was Agostino, who spoke gruffly. Vittoria had been invisible

to him. Neither the maestro, nor the impresario, nor the waiting-woman

had heard of her. Uncertainty was behind the curtain, as well as in

front; but in front it was the uncertainty which is tipped with

expectation, hushing the usual noisy chatter, and setting a daylight of

eyes forward. Ammiani spied about the house, and caught sight of Laura

Piaveni with Colonel Corte by her side. The Lenkensteins were in the

Archduke's box. Antonio-Pericles, and the English lady and Captain

Gambier, were next to them. The appearance of a white uniform in his

mother's box over the stage caused Ammiani to shut up his glass. He was

making his way thither for the purpose of commencing the hostilities of

the night, when Countess Ammiani entered the lobby, and took her son's

arm with a grave face and a trembling touch.