CHAPTER XLVI

THE LAST

There is hard winter overhead in the mountains when Italian Spring walks

the mountain-sides with flowers, and hangs deep valley-walls with flowers

half fruit; the sources of the rivers above are set about with fangs of

ice, while the full flat stream runs to a rose of sunlight. High among

the mists and snows were the fugitives of Brescia, and those who for love

or pity struggled to save them wandered through the blooming vales,

sometimes hearing that they had crossed the frontier into freedom, and as

often that they were scattered low in death and captivity. Austria here,

Switzerland yonder, and but one depth between to bound across and win

calm breathing. But mountain might call to mountain, peak shine to peak;

a girdle of steel drove the hunted men back to frosty heights and clouds,

the shifting bosom of snows and lightnings. They saw nothing of hands

stretched out to succour. They saw a sun that did not warm them, a home

of exile inaccessible, crags like an earth gone to skeleton in hungry

air; and below, the land of their birth, beautiful, and sown everywhere

for them with torture and captivity, or death, the sweetest. Fifteen men

numbered the escape from Brescia. They fought their way twice through

passes of the mountains, and might easily, in their first dash Northward

from the South-facing hills, have crossed to the Valtelline and Engadine,

but that in their insanity of anguish they meditated another blow, and

were readier to march into the plains with the tricolour than to follow

any course of flight. When the sun was no longer in their blood they

thought of reason and of rest; they voted the expedition to Switzerland,

that so they should get round to Rome, and descended from the crags of

the Tonale, under which they were drawn to an ambush, suffering three of

their party killed, and each man bloody with wounds. The mountain

befriended them, and gave them safety, as truth is given by a bitter

friend. Among icy crags and mists, where the touch of life grows dull as

the nail of a fore-finger, the features of the mountain were stamped on

them, and with hunger they lost pride, and with solitude laughter; with

endless fleeing they lost the aim of flight; some became desperate, a few

craven. Companionship was broken before they parted in three bodies,

commanded severally by Colonel Corte, Carlo Ammiani, and Barto Rizzo.

Corte reached the plains, masked by the devotion of Carlo's band, who

lured the soldiery to a point and drew a chase, while Corte passed the

line and pushed on for Switzerland. Carlo told off his cousin Angelo

Guidascarpi in the list of those following Corte; but when he fled up to

the snows again, he beheld Angelo spectral as the vapour on a jut of rock

awaiting him. Barto Rizzo had chosen his own way, none knew whither.

Carlo, Angelo, Marco Sana, and a sharply-wounded Brescian lad, conceived

the scheme of traversing the South Tyrol mountain-range toward Friuli,

whence Venice, the still-breathing republic, might possibly be gained.

They carried the boy in turn till his arms drooped long down, and when

they knew the soul was out of him they buried him in snow, and thought

him happy. It was then that Marco Sana took his death for an omen, and

decided them to turn their heads once more for Switzerland; telling them

that the boy, whom he last had carried, uttered "Rome" with the flying

breath. Angelo said that Sana would get to Rome; and Carlo, smiling on

Angelo, said they were to die twins though they had been born only

cousins. The language they had fallen upon was mystical, scarce

intelligible to other than themselves. On a clear morning, with the Swiss

peaks in sight, they were condemned by want of food to quit their

fastness for the valley.

Vittoria read the faces of the mornings as human creatures base tried to

gather the sum of their destinies off changing surfaces, fair not meaning

fair, nor black black, but either the mask upon the secret of God's

terrible will; and to learn it and submit, was the spiritual burden of

her motherhood, that the child leaping with her heart might live. Not to

hope blindly, in the exceeding anxiousness of her passionate love, nor

blindly to fear; not to bet her soul fly out among the twisting chances;

not to sap her great maternal duty by affecting false stoical

serenity:--to nurse her soul's strength, and suckle her womanly weakness

with the tsars which are poison--when repressed; to be at peace with a

disastrous world for the sake of the dependent life unborn; lay such pure

efforts she clung to God. Soft dreams of sacred nuptial tenderness,

tragic images, wild pity, were like phantoms encircling her, plucking at

her as she went, lest they were beneath her feet, and she kept them from

lodging between her breasts. The thought that her husband, though he

should have perished, was not a life lost if their child lived, sustained

her powerfully. It seemed to whisper at times almost as it were Carlo's

ghost breathing in her ears: "On thee!" On her the further duty devolved;

and she trod down hope, lest it should build her up and bring a shock to

surprise her fortitude; she put back alarm.

The mountains and the valleys scarce had names for her understanding;

they were but a scene where the will of her Maker was at work. Rarely has

a soul been so subjected to its own force. She certainly had the image of

God in her mind.

Yet when her ayes lingered on any mountain gorge, the fate of her husband

sang within it a strange chant, ending in a key that rang sounding

through all her being, and seemed to question heaven. This music framed

itself; it was still when she looked at the shrouded mountain-tops. A

shadow meting sunlight on the long green slopes aroused it, and it hummed

above the tumbling hasty foam, and penetrated hanging depths of foliage,

sad-hued rock-clefts, dark green ravines; it became convulsed where the

mountain threw forward in a rushing upward line against the sky, there to

be severed at the head by cloud. It was silent among the vines.

Most painfully did human voices affect her when she had this music;

speech was a scourge to her sense of hearing, and touch distressed her:

an edge of purple flame would then unfold the vision of things to her

eyes. She had lost memory; and if by hazard unawares one idea was

projected by some sudden tumult of her enslaved emotions beyond known and

visible circumstances, her intelligence darkened with am oppressive dread

like that of zealots of the guilt of impiety.

Thus destitute, her eye took innumerable pictures sharp as on a

brass-plate: torrents, goat-tracks winding up red earth, rocks veiled

with water, cottage and children, strings of villagers mounting to the

church, one woman kneeling before a wayside cross, her basket at her

back, and her child gazing idly by; perched hamlets, rolling

pasture-fields, the vast mountain lines. She asked all that she saw,

"Does he live?" but the life was out of everything, and these shows told

of no life, neither of joy nor of grief. She could only distantly connect

the appearance of the white-coated soldiery with the source of her

trouble. They were no more than figures on a screen that hid the flashing

of the sword which renders dumb. She had charity for one who was footsore

and sat cherishing his ankle by a village spring, and she fed him, and

not until he was far behind, thought that he might have seen the white

face of her husband.

Accurate tidings could not be obtained, though the whole course of the

vale was full of stories of escapes, conflicts, and captures. Merthyr

learnt positively that some fugitives had passed the cordon. He came

across Wilfrid and Count Karl, who both verified it in the most sanguine

manner. They knew, however, that Major Nagen continued in the mountains.

Riding by a bend of the road, Merthyr beheld a man playing among

children, with one hand and his head down apparently for concealment at

his approach. It proved to be Beppo. The man believed that Count Ammiani

had fled to Switzerland. Barto Rizzo, he said, was in the mountains

still, and Beppo invoked damnation on him, as the author of those lying

proclamations which had ruined Brescia. He had got out of the city later

than the others and was seeking to evade the outposts, that he might join

his master--"that is, my captain, for I have only one master;" he

corrected the slip of his tongue appealingly to Merthyr. His left hand

was being continually plucked at by the children while he talked, and

after Merthyr had dispersed them with a shower of small coin, he showed

the hand, saying, glad of eye, that it had taken a sword-cut intended for

Count Ammiani. Merthyr sent him back to mount the carriage, enjoining him

severely not to speak.

When Carlo and his companions descended from the mountains, they entered

a village where there was an inn recognized by Angelo as the abode of

Jacopo Cruchi. He there revived Carlo's animosity toward Weisspriess by

telling the tale of the passage to Meran, and his good reasons for

determining to keep guard over the Countess Alessandra all the way.

Subsequently Angelo went to Jacopo for food. This he procured, but he was

compelled to leave the man behind, and unpaid. It was dark when he left

the inn; he had some difficulty in evading a flock of whitecoats, and his

retreat from the village was still on the Austrian side. Somewhat about

midnight Merthyr reached the inn, heralding the carriage. As Jacopo

caught sight of Vittoria's face, he fell with his shoulders straightened

against the wall, and cried out loudly that he had betrayed no one, and

mentioned Major Weisspriess by name as having held the point of his sword

at him and extracted nothing better than a wave of the hand and a lie; in

other words, that the fugitives had retired to the Tyrolese mountains,

and that he had shammed ignorance of who they were. Merthyr read at a

glance that Jacopo had the large swallow and calm digestion for bribes,

and getting the fellow alone he laid money in view, out of which, by

doubling the sum to make Jacopo correct his first statement, and then by

threatening to withdraw it altogether, he gained knowledge of the fact

that Angelo Guidascarpi had recently visited the inn, and had started

from it South-eastward, and that Major Weisspriess was following on his

track. He wrote a line of strong entreaty to Weisspriess, lest that

officer should perchance relapse into anger at the taunts of prisoners

abhorring him with the hatred of Carlo and Angelo. At the same time he

gave Beppo a considerable supply of money, and then sent him off, armed

as far as possible to speed Count Ammiani safe across the borders, if a

fugitive; or if a prisoner, to ensure the best which could be hoped for

him from an adversary become generous. That evening Vittoria lay with her

head on Laura's lap, and the pearly little crescent of her ear in

moonlight by the window. So fair and young and still she looked that

Merthyr feared for her, and thought of sending her back to Countess

Ammiani.

Her first question with the lifting of her eyelids was if he had ceased

to trust to her courage.

"No," said Merthyr; "there are bounds to human strength; that is all."

She answered: "There would be to mine--if I had not more than human

strength beside me. I bow my head, dearest; it is that. I feel that I

cannot break down as long as I know what is passing. Does my husband

live?"

"Yes, he lives," said Merthyr; and she gave him her hand, and went to her

bed.

He learnt from Laura that when Beppo mounted the carriage in silence, a

fit of ungovernable wild trembling had come on her, broken at intervals

by a cry that something was concealed. Laura could give no advice; she

looked on Merthyr and Vittoria as two that had an incomprehensible

knowledge of the power of one another's natures, and the fiery creature

remained passive in perplexity of minds as soft an attendant as a

suffering woman could have:

Merthyr did not sleep, and in the morning Vittoria said to him, "You want

to be active, my friend. Go, and we will wait for you here. I know that I

am never deceived by you, and when I see you I know that the truth speaks

and bids me be worthy of it Go up there," she pointed with shut eyes at

the mountains; "leave me to pray for greater strength. I am among

Italians at this inn; and shall spend money here; the poor people love

it." She smiled a little, showing a glimpse of her old charitable humour.

Merthyr counselled Laura that in case of evil tidings during his absence

she should reject her feminine ideas of expediency, and believe that she

was speaking to a brave soul firmly rooted in the wisdom of heaven.

"Tell her?--she will die," said Laura, shuddering.

"Get tears from her," Merthyr rejoined; "but hide nothing from her for a

single instant; keep her in daylight. For God's sake, keep her in

daylight."

"It's too sharp a task for me." She repeated that she was incapable of

it.

"Ah," said he, "look at your Italy, how she weeps! and she has cause. She

would die in her grief, if she had no faith for what is to come. I dare

say it is not, save in the hearts of one or two, a conscious faith, but

it's real divine strength; and Alessandra Ammiani has it. Do as I bid

you. I return in two days."

Without understanding him, Laura promised that she would do her utmost to

obey, and he left her muttering to herself as if she were schooling her

lips to speak reluctant words. He started for the mountains with

gladdened limbs, taking a guide, who gave his name as Lorenzo, and talked

of having been 'out' in the previous year. "I am a patriot, signore! and

not only in opposition to my beast of a wife, I assure you: a downright

patriot, I mean." Merthyr was tempted to discharge him at first, but

controlled his English antipathy to babblers, and discovered him to be a

serviceable fellow. Toward nightfall they heard shots up a rock-strewn

combe of the lower slopes; desultory shots indicating rifle-firing at

long range. Darkness made them seek shelter in a pine-hut; starting from

which at dawn, Lorenzo ran beating about like a dog over the place where

the shots had sounded on the foregoing day; he found a stone spotted with

blood. Not far from the stone lay a military glove that bore

brown-crimson finger-ends. They were striking off to a dairy-but for

fresh milk, when out of a crevice of rock overhung by shrubs a man's

voice called, and Merthyr climbing up from perch to perch, saw Marco Sana

lying at half length, shot through hand and leg. From him Merthyr learnt

that Carlo and Angelo had fled higher up; yesterday they had been

attacked by coming who tried to lure there to surrender by coming forward

at the head of his men and offering safety, and "other gabble," said

Marco. He offered a fair shot at his heart, too, while he stood below a

rock that Marco pointed at gloomily as a hope gone for ever; but Carlo

would not allow advantage to be taken of even the treacherous simulation

of chivalry, and only permitted firing after he had returned to his men.

"I was hit here and here," said Marco, touching his wounds, as men can

hardly avoid doing when speaking of the fresh wound. Merthyr got him on

his feet, put money in his pocket, and led him off the big stones

painfully. "They give no quarter," Marco assured him, and reasoned that

it must be so, for they had not taken him prisoner, though they saw him

fall, and ran by or in view of him in pursuit of Carlo. By this Merthyr

was convinced that Weisspriess meant well. He left his guide in charge of

Marco to help him into the Engadine. Greatly to his astonishment, Lorenzo

tossed the back of his hand at the offer of money. "There shall be this

difference between me and my wife," he remarked; "and besides, gracious

signore, serving my countrymen for nothing, that's for love, and the

Tedeschi can't punish me for it, so it's one way of cheating them, the

wolves!" Merthyr shook his hand and said, "Instead of my servant, be my

friend;" and Lorenzo made no feeble mouth, but answered, "Signore, it is

much to my honour," and so they went different ways.

Left to himself Merthyr set step vigorously upward. Information from

herdsmen told him that he was an hour off the foot of one of the passes.

He begged them to tell any hunted men who might come within hail that a

friend ran seeking them. Farther up, while thinking of the fine nature of

that Lorenzo, and the many men like him who could not by the very

existence of nobility in their bosoms suffer their country to go through

another generation of servitude, his heart bounded immensely, for he

heard a shout and his name, and he beheld two figures on a rock near the

gorge where the mountain opened to its heights. But they were not Carlo

and Angelo. They were Wilfrid and Count Karl, the latter of whom had

discerned him through a telescope. They had good news to revive him,

however: good at least in the main. Nagen had captured Carlo and Angelo,

they believed; but they had left Weisspriess near on Nagen's detachment,

and they furnished sound military reasons to show why, if Weisspriess

favoured the escape, they should not be present. They supposed that they

were not half-a-mile from the scene in the pass where Nagen was being

forcibly deposed from his authority: Merthyr borrowed Count Karl's glass,

and went as they directed him round a bluff of the descending hills, that

faced the vale, much like a blown and beaten sea-cliff. Wilfrid and Karl

were so certain of Count Ammiani's safety, that their only thought was to

get under good cover before nightfall, and haply into good quarters,

where the three proper requirements of the soldier-meat, wine, and

tobacco--might be furnished to them. After an imperative caution that

they should not present themselves before the Countess Alessandra,

Merthyr sped quickly over the broken ground. How gaily the two young men

cheered to him as he hurried on! He met a sort of pedlar turning the

bluntfaced mountain-spur, and this man said, "Yes, sure enough, prisoners

had been taken," and he was not aware of harm having been done to them;

he fancied there was a quarrel between two captains. His plan being

always to avoid the military, he had slunk round and away from them as

fast as might be. An Austrian common soldier, a good-humoured German,

distressed by a fall that had hurt his knee-cap, sat within the gorge,

which was very wide at the mouth. Merthyr questioned him, and he, while

mending one of his gathered cigar-ends, pointed to a meadow near the

beaten track, some distance up the rocks. Whitecoats stood thick on it.

Merthyr lifted his telescope and perceived an eager air about the men,

though they stood ranged in careless order. He began to mount forthwith,

but amazed by a sudden ringing of shot, he stopped, asking himself in

horror whether it could be an execution. The shots and the noise

increased, until the confusion of a positive mellay reigned above. The

fall of the meadow swept to a bold crag right over the pathway, and with

a projection that seen sideways made a vulture's head and beak of it.

There rolled a corpse down the precipitous wave of green grass on to the

crag, where it lodged, face to the sky; sword dangled from swordknot at

one wrist, heels and arms were in the air, and the body caught midway

hung poised and motionless. The firing deadened. Then Merthyr drawing

nearer beneath the crag, saw one who had life in him slipping down toward

the body, and knew the man for Beppo. Beppo knocked his hands together

and groaned miserably, but flung himself astride the beak of the crag,

and took the body in his arms, sprang down with it, and lay stunned at

Merthyr's feet. Merthyr looked on the face of Carlo Ammiani.

EPILOGUE

No uncontested version of the tragedy of Count Ammiani's death passed

current in Milan during many years. With time it became disconnected from

passion, and took form in a plain narrative. He and Angelo were captured

by Major Nagen, and were, as the soldiers of the force subsequently let

it be known, roughly threatened with what he termed I 'Brescian short

credit.' The appearance of Major Weisspriess and his claim to the command

created a violent discussion between the two officers. For Nagen, by all

military rules, could well contest it. But Weisspriess had any body of

the men of the army under his charm, and seeing the ascendency he gained

with them over an unpopular officer, he dared the stroke for the

charitable object he had in view. Having established his command, in

spite of Nagen's wrathful protests and menaces, he spoke to the

prisoners, telling Carlo that for his wife's sake he should be spared,

and Angelo that he must expect the fate of a murderer. His address to

them was deliberate, and quite courteous: he expressed himself sorry that

a gallant gentleman like Angelo Guidascarpi should merit a bloody grave,

but so it was. At the same time he entreated Count Ammiani to rely on his

determination to save him. Major Nagen did not stand far removed from

them. Carlo turned to him and repeated the words of Weisspriess; nor

could Angelo restrain his cousin's vehement renunciation of hope and life

in doing this. He accused Weisspriess of a long evasion of a brave man's

obligation to repair an injury, charged him with cowardice, and requested

Major Nagen, as a man of honour, to drag his brother officer to the duel.

Nagen then said that Major Weisspriess was his superior, adding that his

gallant brother officer had only of late objected to vindicate his

reputation with his sword. Stung finally beyond the control of an

irritable temper, Weisspriess walked out of sight of the soldiery with

Carlo, to whom, at a special formal request from Weisspriess, Nagen

handed his sword. Again he begged Count Ammiani to abstain from fighting;

yea, to strike him and disable him, and fly, rather--than provoke the

skill of his right hand. Carlo demanded his cousin's freedom. It was

denied to him, and Carlo claimed his privilege. The witnesses of the duel

were Jenna and another young subaltern: both declared it fair according

to the laws of honour, when their stupefaction on beholding the proud

swordsman of the army stretched lifeless on the brown leaves of the past

year left them with power to speak. Thus did Carlo slay his old enemy who

would have served as his friend. A shout of rescue was heard before Carlo

had yielded up his weapon. Four haggard and desperate men, headed by

Barto Rizzo, burst from an ambush on the guard encircling Angelo. There,

with one thought of saving his doomed cousin and comrade, Carlo rushed,

and not one Italian survived the fight.

An unarmed spectator upon the meadow-borders, Beppo, had but obscure

glimpses of scenes shifting like a sky in advance of hurricane winds.

Merthyr delivered the burden of death to Vittoria. Her soul had crossed

the darkness of the river of death in that quiet agony preceding the

revelation of her Maker's will, and she drew her dead husband to her

bosom and kissed him on the eyes and the forehead, not as one who had

quite gone away from her, but as one who lay upon another shore whither

she would come. The manful friend, ever by her side, saved her by his

absolute trust in her fortitude to bear the burden of the great sorrow

undeceived, and to walk with it to its last resting-place on earth

unobstructed. Clear knowledge of her, the issue of reverent love, enabled

him to read her unequalled strength of nature, and to rely on her

fidelity to her highest mortal duty in a conflict with extreme despair.

She lived through it as her Italy had lived through the hours which

brought her face to face with her dearest in death; and she also on the

day, ten years later, when an Emperor and a King stood beneath the vault

of the grand Duomo, and the organ and a peal of voices rendered thanks to

heaven for liberty, could show the fruit of her devotion in the dark-eyed

boy, Carlo Merthyr Ammiani, standing between Merthyr and her, with old

blind Agostino's hands upon his head. And then once more, and but for

once, her voice was heard in Milan.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE COMPLETE VITTORIA:

A common age once, when he married her; now she had grown old

A fortress face; strong and massive, and honourable in ruin

Agostino was enjoying the smoke of paper cigarettes

An angry woman will think the worst

Anguish to think of having bent the knee for nothing

Art of despising what he coveted

As the Lord decided, so it would end! "Oh, delicious creed!"

Be on your guard the next two minutes he gets you alone

But is there such a thing as happiness

By our manner of loving we are known

Compliment of being outwitted by their own offspring

Conduct is never a straight index where the heart's involved

Confess no more than is necessary, but do everything you can

Critical in their first glance at a prima donna

Deep as a mother's, pure as a virgin's, fiery as a saint's

Defiance of foes and (what was harder to brave) of friends

Do I serve my hand? or, Do I serve my heart?

English antipathy to babblers

Every church of the city lent its iron tongue to the peal

Fast growing to be an eccentric by profession

Foolish trick of thinking for herself

Forgetfulness is like a closing sea

Fortitude leaned so much upon the irony

Good nerve to face the scene which he is certain will be enacted

Government of brain; not sufficient Insurrection of heart

Grand air of pitying sadness

Had taken refuge in their opera-glasses

Hated tears, considering them a clog to all useful machinery

He is in the season of faults

He is inexorable, being the guilty one of the two

He postponed it to the next minute and the next

Her singing struck a note of grateful remembered delight

I always respected her; I never liked her

I hope I am not too hungry to discriminate

I know nothing of imagination

Impossible for us women to comprehend love without folly in man

In Italy, a husband away, ze friend takes title

Intentions are really rich possessions

Ironical fortitude

It rarely astonishes our ears It illumines our souls

Italians were like women, and wanted--a real beating

Longing for love and dependence

Love of men and women as a toy that I have played with

Madness that sane men enamoured can be struck by

Morales, madame, suit ze sun

Necessary for him to denounce somebody

Never, never love a married woman

No intoxication of hot blood to cheer those who sat at home

No word is more lightly spoken than shame

Not to be feared more than are the general race of bunglers

O heaven! of what avail is human effort?

Obedience oils necessity

Our life is but a little holding, lent To do a mighty labour

Pain is a cloak that wraps you about

Patience is the pestilence

People who can lose themselves in a ray of fancy at any season

Profound belief in her partiality for him

Question with some whether idiots should live

Rarely exacted obedience, and she was spontaneously obeyed

She thought that friendship was sweeter than love

She was sick of personal freedom

Simple obstinacy of will sustained her

Speech was a scourge to her sense of hearing

Taint of the hypocrisy which comes with shame

The devil trusts nobody

The divine afflatus of enthusiasm buoyed her no longer

They take fever for strength, and calmness for submission

Too weak to resist, to submit to an outrage quietly

Too well used to defeat to believe readily in victory

Was born on a hired bed

Watch, and wait

We are good friends till we quarrel again

We can bear to fall; we cannot afford to draw back

Went into endless invalid's laughter

Who shrinks from an hour that is suspended in doubt

Whole body of fanatics combined to precipitate the devotion

Why should these men take so much killing?

Will not admit the existence of a virtue in an opposite opinion

Women and men are in two hostile camps

You can master pain, but not doubt

Youth will not believe that stupidity and beauty can go together

THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND

By George Meredith

CONTENTS