CHAPTER XIX

THE PRIMA DONNA

'Whover is in my box is my guest,' said the countess, adding a convulsive

imperative pressure on Carlo's arm, to aid the meaning of her deep

underbreath. She was a woman who rarely exacted obedience, and she was

spontaneously obeyed. No questions could be put, no explanations given in

the crash, and they threaded on amid numerous greetings in a place where

Milanese society had habitually ceased to gather, and found itself now in

assembly with unconcealed sensations of strangeness. A card lay on the

table of the countess's private retiring-room: it bore the name of

General Pierson. She threw off her black lace scarf. 'Angelo Guidascarpi

is in Milan,' she said. 'He has killed one of the Lenkensteins, sword to

sword. He came to me an hour after you left; the sbirri were on his

track; he passed for my son. He is now under the charge of Barto Rizzo,

disguised; probably in this house. His brother is in the city. Keep the

cowl on your head as long as possible; if these hounds see and identify

you, there will be mischief.' She said no more, satisfied that she was

understood, but opening the door of the box, passed in, and returned a

stately acknowledgement of the salutations of two military officers.

Carlo likewise bent his head to them; it was like bending his knee, for

in the younger of the two intruders he recognized Lieutenant Pierson. The

countess accepted a vacated seat; the cavity of her ear accepted the

General's apologies. He informed her that he deeply regretted the

intrusion; he was under orders to be present at the opera, and to be as

near the stage as possible, the countess's box being designated. Her face

had the unalterable composure of a painted head upon an old canvas. The

General persisted in tendering excuses. She replied, 'It is best, when

one is too weak to resist, to submit to an outrage quietly.' General

Pierson at once took the position assigned to him; it was not an

agreeable one. Between Carlo and the lieutenant no attempt at

conversation was made.

The General addressed his nephew in English. 'Did you see the girl behind

the scenes, Wilfrid?'

The answer was 'No.'

'Pericles has her fast shut up in the Tyrol: the best habitat for her if

she objects to a whipping. Did you see Irma?'

'No; she has disappeared too.'

'Then I suppose we must make up our minds to an opera without head or

tail. As Pat said of the sack of potatoes, "'twould be a mighty fine

beast if it had them."'

The officers had taken refuge in their opera-glasses, and spoke while

gazing round the house.

'If neither this girl nor Irma is going to appear, there is no positive

necessity for my presence here,' said the General, reduced to excuse

himself to himself. 'I'll sit through the first scene and then beat a

retreat. I might be off at once; the affair looks harmless enough only,

you know, when there's nothing to see, you must report that you have seen

it, or your superiors are not satisfied.'

The lieutenant was less able to cover the irksomeness of his situation

with easy talk. His glance rested on Countess Len a von Lenkenstein, a

quick motion of whose hand made him say that he should go over to her.

'Very well,' said the General; 'be careful that you give no hint of this

horrible business. They will hear of it when they get home: time enough!'

Lieutenant Pierson touched at his sister's box on the way. She was very

excited, asked innumerable things,--whether there was danger? whether he

had a whole regiment at hand to protect peaceable persons? 'Otherwise,'

she said, 'I shall not be able to keep that man (her husband) in Italy

another week. He refused to stir out to-night, though we know that

nothing can happen. Your prima donna celestissima is out of harm's way.'

'Oh, she is safe,--ze minx'; cried Antonio-Pericles, laughing and

saluting the Duchess of Graatli, who presented herself at the front of

her box. Major de Pyrmont was behind her, and it delighted the Greek to

point them out to the English lady, with a simple intimation of the

character of their relationship, at which her curls shook sadly.

'Pardon, madame,' said Pericles. 'In Italy, a husband away, ze friend

takes title: it is no more.'

'It is very disgraceful,' she said.

'Ze morales, madame, suit ze sun.'

Captain Gambier left the box with Wilfrid, expressing in one sentence his

desire to fling Pericles over to the pit, and in another his belief that

an English friend, named Merthyr Powys, was in the house.

'He won't be in the city four-and-twenty hours,' said Wilfrid.

'Well; you'll keep your tongue silent.'

'By heavens! Gambier, if you knew the insults we have to submit to! The

temper of angels couldn't stand it. I'm sorry enough for these fellows,

with their confounded country, but it's desperate work to be civil to

them; upon my honour, it is! I wish they would stand up and let us have

it over. We have to bear more from the women than the men.'

'I leave you to cool,' said Gambier.

The delayed absence of the maestro from his post at the head of the

orchestra, where the musicians sat awaiting him, seemed to confirm a

rumour that was now circling among the audience, warning all to prepare

for a disappointment. His baton was brought in and laid on the book of

the new overture. When at last he was seen bearing onward through the

music-stands, a low murmur ran round. Rocco paid no heed to it. His

demeanour produced such satisfaction in the breast of Antonio-Pericles

that he rose, and was guilty of the barbarism of clapping his hands.

Meeting Ammiani in the lobby, he said, 'Come, my good friend, you shall

help me to pull Irma through to-night. She is vinegar--we will mix her

with oil. It is only for to-night, to save that poor Rocco's opera.'

'Irma!' said Ammiani; 'she is by this time in Tyrol. Your Irma will have

some difficulty in showing herself here within sixty hours.'

'How!' cried Pericles, amazed, and plucking after Carlo to stop him. 'I

bet you--'

'How much?'

'I bet you a thousand florins you do not see la Vittoria to-night.'

'Good. I bet you a thousand florins you do not see Irma.'

'No Vittoria, I say!'

'And I say, no Lazzeruola!'

Agostino, who was pacing the lobby, sent Pericles distraught with the

same tale of the rape of Irma. He rushed to Signora Piaveni's box and

heard it repeated. There he beheld, sitting in the background, an old

English acquaintance, with whom Captain Gambier was conversing.

'My dear Powys, you have come all the way from England to see your

favourite's first night. You will be shocked, sir. She has neglected her

Art. She is exiled, banished, sent away to study and to compose her

mind.'

'I think you are mistaken,' said Laura. 'You will see her almost

immediately.'

'Signora, pardon me; do I not know best?'

'You may have contrived badly.'

Pericles blinked and gnawed his moustache as if it were food for

patience.

'I would wager a milliard of francs,' he muttered. With absolute pathos

he related to Mr. Powys the aberrations of the divinely-gifted voice, the

wreck which Vittoria strove to become, and from which he alone was

striving to rescue her. He used abundant illustrations, coarse and

quaint, and was half hysterical; flashing a white fist and thumping the

long projection of his knee with a wolfish aspect. His grotesque

sincerity was little short of the shedding of tears.

'And your sister, my dear Powys?' he asked, as one returning to the

consideration of shadows.

'My sister accompanies me, but not to the opera.'

'For another campaign--hein?'

'To winter in Italy, at all events.'

Carlo Ammiani entered and embraced Merthyr Powys warmly. The Englishman

was at home among Italians: Pericles, feeling that he was not so, and

regarding them all as a community of fever-patients without hospital,

retired. To his mind it was the vilest treason, the grossest selfishness,

to conspire or to wink at the sacrifice of a voice like Vittoria's to

such a temporal matter as this, which they called patriotism. He looked

on it as one might look on the Hindoo drama of a Suttee. He saw in it

just that stupid action of a whole body of fanatics combined to

precipitate the devotion of a precious thing to extinction. And worse;

for life was common, and women and Hindoo widows were common; but a

Vittorian voice was but one in a generation--in a cycle of years. The

religious belief of the connoisseur extended to the devout conception

that her voice was a spiritual endowment, the casting of which priceless

jewel into the bloody ditch of patriots was far more tragic and

lamentable than any disastrous concourse of dedicated lives. He shook the

lobby with his tread, thinking of the great night this might have been

but for Vittoria's madness. The overture was coming to an end. By

tightening his arms across his chest he gained some outward composure,

and fixed his eyes upon the stage.

While sitting with Laura Piaveni and Merthyr Powys, Ammiani saw the

apparition of Captain Weisspriess in his mother's box. He forgot her

injunction, and hurried to her side, leaving the doors open. His passion

of anger spurned her admonishing grasp of his arm, and with his glove he

smote the Austrian officer on the face. Weisspriess plucked his sword

out; the house rose; there was a moment like that of a wild beast's show

of teeth. It passed: Captain Weisspriess withdrew in obedience to General

Pierson's command. The latter wrote on a slip of paper that two pieces of

artillery should be placed in position, and a squad of men about the

doors: he handed it out to Weisspriess.

'I hope,' the General said to Carlo, 'we shall be able to arrange things

for you without the interposition of the authorities.'

Carlo rejoined, 'General, he has the blood of our family on his hands. I

am ready.'

The General bowed. He glanced at the countess for a sign of maternal

weakness, saw none, and understood that a duel was down in the morrow's

bill of entertainments, as well as a riot possibly before dawn. The house

had revealed its temper in that short outburst, as a quivering of quick

lightning-flame betrays the forehead of the storm.

Countess Ammiani bade her son make fast the outer door. Her sedate

energies could barely control her agitation. In helping Angelo

Guidascarpi to evade the law, she had imperilled her son and herself.

Many of the Bolognese sbirri were in pursuit of Angelo. Some knew his

person; some did not; but if those two before whom she had identified

Angelo as being her son Carlo chanced now to be in the house, and to have

seen him, and heard his name, the risks were great and various.

'Do you know that handsome young Count Ammiani?' Countess Lena said to

Wilfrid. 'Perhaps you do not think him handsome? He was for a short time

a play-fellow of mine. He is more passionate than I am, and that does not

say a little; I warn you! Look how excited he is. No wonder. He

is--everybody knows it--he is la Vittoria's lover.'

Countess Lena uttered that sentence in Italian. The soft tongue sent it

like a coiling serpent through Wilfrid's veins. In English or in German

it would not have possessed the deadly meaning.

She may have done it purposely, for she and her sister Countess Anna

studied his face. The lifting of the curtain drew all eyes to the stage.

Rocco Ricci's baton struck for the opening of one of his spirited

choruses; a chorus of villagers, who sing to the burden that Happiness,

the aim of all humanity, has promised to visit the earth this day, that

she may witness the union of the noble lovers, Camillo and Camilla. Then

a shepherd sings a verse, with his hand stretched out to the impending

castle. There lives Count Orso: will he permit their festivities to pass

undisturbed? The puling voice is crushed by the chorus, which protests

that the heavens are above Count Orso. But another villager tells of

Orso's power, and hints at his misdeeds. The chorus rises in reply,

warning all that Count Orso has ears wherever three are congregated; the

villagers break apart and eye one another distrustfully, reuniting to the

song of Happiness before they disperse. Camillo enters solus. Montini, as

Camillo, enjoyed a warm reception; but as he advanced to deliver his

canzone, it was seen that he and Rocco interchanged glances of desperate

resignation. Camillo has had love passages with Michiella, Count Orso's

daughter, and does not hesitate to declare that he dreads her. The orphan

Camilla, who has been reared in yonder castle with her, as her sister, is

in danger during all these last minutes which still retain her from his

arms.

'If I should never see her--I who, like a poor ghost upon the shores of

the dead river, have been flattered with the thought that she would fall

upon my breast like a ray of the light of Elysium--if I should never see

her more!' The famous tenore threw his whole force into that outcry of

projected despair, and the house was moved by it: there were many in the

house who shared his apprehension of a foul mischance.

Thenceforward the opera and the Italian audience were as one. All that

was uttered had a meaning, and was sympathetically translated. Camilla

they perceived to be a grave burlesque with a core to it. The

quick-witted Italians caught up the interpretation in a flash. 'Count

Orso' Austria; 'Michiella' is Austria's spirit of intrigue; 'Camillo' is

indolent Italy, amorous Italy, Italy aimless; 'Camilla' is YOUNG ITALY!

Their eagerness for sight of Vittoria was now red-hot, and when Camillo

exclaimed 'She comes!' many rose from their seats.

A scrap of paper was handed to Antonio-Pericles from Captain Weisspriess,

saying briefly that he had found Irma in the carriage instead of the

little 'v,' thanked him for the joke, and had brought her back. Pericles

was therefore not surprised when Irma, as Michiella, came on, breathless,

and looking in an excitement of anger; he knew that he had been tricked.

Between Camillo and Michiella a scene of some vivacity

ensued--reproaches, threats of calamity, offers of returning endearment

upon her part; a display of courtly scorn upon his. Irma made her voice

claw at her quondam lover very finely; it was a voice with claws, that

entered the hearing sharp-edged, and left it plucking at its repose. She

was applauded relishingly when, after vainly wooing him, she turned aside

and said--

'What change is this in one who like a reed

Bent to my twisting hands? Does he recoil?

Is this the hound whom I have used to feed

With sops of vinegar and sops of oil?'

Michiella's further communications to the audience make it known that she

has allowed the progress toward the ceremonies of espousal between

Camillo and Camilla, in order, at the last moment, to show her power over

the youth and to plunge the detested Camilla into shame and wretchedness.

Camillo retires: Count Orso appears. There is a duet between father and

daughter: she confesses her passion for Camillo, and entreats her father

to stop the ceremony; and here the justice of the feelings of Italians,

even in their heat of blood, was noteworthy. Count Orso says that he

would willingly gratify his daughter, as it would gratify himself, but

that he must respect the law. 'The law is of your own making,' says

Michiella. 'Then, the more must I respect it,' Count Orso replies.

The audience gave Austria credit for that much in a short murmur.

Michiella's aside, 'Till anger seizes him I wait!' created laughter; it

came in contrast with an extraordinary pomposity of self-satisfaction

exhibited by Count Orso--the flower-faced, tun-bellied basso, Lebruno. It

was irresistible. He stood swollen out like a morning cock. To make it

further telling, he took off his yellow bonnet with a black-gloved hand,

and thumped the significant colours prominently on his immense chest--an

idea, not of Agostino's, but Lebruno's own; and Agostino cursed with

fury. Both he and Rocco knew that their joint labour would probably have

only one night's display of existence in the Austrian dominions, but they

grudged to Lebruno the chief merit of despatching it to the Shades.

The villagers are heard approaching. 'My father!' cries Michiella,

distractedly; 'the hour is near: it will be death to your daughter!

Imprison Camillo: I can bring twenty witnesses to prove that he has sworn

you are illegally the lord of this country. You will rue the marriage. Do

as you once did. Be bold in time. The arrow-head is on the string-cut the

string!'

'As I once did?' replies Orso with frown terrific, like a black crest. He

turns broadly and receives the chorus of countrymen in paternal

fashion--an admirably acted bit of grave burlesque.

By this time the German portion of the audience had, by one or other of

the senses, dimly divined that the opera was a shadow of something

concealed--thanks to the buffo-basso Lebruno. Doubtless they would have

seen this before, but that the Austrian censorship had seemed so absolute

a safeguard.

'My children! all are my children in this my gladsome realm!' Count Orso

says, and marches forth, after receiving the compliment of a choric song

in honour of his paternal government. Michiella follows him.

Then came the deep suspension of breath. For, as upon the midnight you

count bell-note after bell-note of the toiling hour, and know not in the

darkness whether there shall be one beyond it, so that you hang over an

abysm until Twelve is sounded, audience and actors gazed with equal

expectation at the path winding round from the castle, waiting for the

voice of the new prima donna.

'Mia madre!' It issued tremblingly faint. None could say who was to

appear.

Rocco Ricci struck twice with his baton, flung a radiant glance across

his shoulders for all friends, and there was joy in the house. Vittoria

stood before them.