Part 48 (1/2)
He turned round and went with them to the Villa Reale. As they went, Miss K. spoke of the great distress which was then prevalent in Naples, and said that a _gentleman_ had just begged of them in the street, and that they had nothing to give him. 'Before I would be reduced to that,' she said, 'I would drown myself.'--'Yes, and I too would drown myself,' said Mr. K.; but what they said did not strike Francis till afterwards. When they reached the Villa Reale, they walked up and down together under the avenue. Miss K. was more than usually lively and agreeable, and they did not separate till nightfall, when the gates of the Villa were going to be shut.
”At two o'clock the next morning, Francis was awakened by the most dreadful and vivid dream. He dreamt that he stood on the little promontory in the Villa Reale, and that he saw two corpses bobbing up and down a short distance off. The dream so took possession of him, that he jumped up, dressed himself, and rushed down to the Villa, but the gates were shut when he got there, and he had to wait till they were opened at four o'clock in the morning. He then ran down the avenue to the promontory, and thence, exactly as he had seen in his dream, he saw two corpses bobbing up and down on the waves a short distance off. He called to some fishermen, who waded in and brought them to land, and he then at once recognised Mr. and Miss K. They must have concealed themselves in the Villa till the gates were closed, and must then have deliberately climbed over the railing of the promontory, and then tied each other's ankles and wrists, and, after filling their pockets with heavy stones, leapt off into the sea.
”Capua they had vainly hoped would destroy them.
”Some time after Francis found that Mr. K. had once been exceedingly rich, but had been ruined: that his wife, who had a large settlement, had then left him, making him a handsome allowance. A few days before the catastrophe this allowance had been suddenly withdrawn, and Mr. K. with the daughter, who devoted herself to him, preferred death to beggary.”
It may seem odd that I have never mentioned my second brother, William, in these memoirs, but the fact is, that after he grew up, I never saw him for more than a few minutes. It is one of the things I regret most in life that I never made acquaintance with William. I believe now that he was misrepresented to us and that he had many good qualities; and I often feel, had he lived till I had the means of doing so, how glad I should have been to have helped him, and how fond I might have become of him. At Eton he was an excessively good-looking boy, very clever, very mischievous, and intensely popular with his companions. He never had any fortune, so that it was most foolish of his guardian (Uncle Julius) to spend ?2000 which had been bequeathed to him by ”the Bath aunts,” in buying him a commission in the Blues. I only once saw him whilst he was in the army, and only remember him as a great dandy, but I must say that he had the excuse that everything he wore became him. After he left the army he was buffeted about from pillar to post, and lived no one knows where or how. Our cousin Lord Ravensworth was very kind to him, and so was old Lady Paul; but to Hurstmonceaux or Holmhurst he was never invited, and he would never have been allowed to come. I have often thought since how very odd it was that when he died, neither my mother nor I wore the slightest mourning for him; but he was so entirely outside our life and thoughts, that somehow it would never have occurred to us. He had, however, none of the cold self-contained manner which characterised Francis, but was warm-hearted, cordial, affectionate, and could be most entertaining. After his mother's great misfortunes he went to Spain on some temporary appointment, and at Barcelona nearly died of a fever, through which he was nursed by a lady, who had taken an extraordinary fancy to him; but on his return, when it was feared he would marry her, he took every one by surprise in espousing the very pretty portionless daughter of a physician at Clifton.
During the year 1864 I constantly saw my Lefevre cousins and found an increasing friends.h.i.+p for them. Sir John always showed me the greatest kindness, being full of interest in all my concerns. I consulted him on many subjects, feeling that he was the only person I had ever known, except my mother, willing to take the trouble of _thinking_ how to give the best advice and perfectly disinterested in giving it: consequently I always took _his_ advice and his only. His knowledge was extraordinary, and was only equalled by his humility and self-forgetfulness. Many were the interesting reminiscences of other days which he delighted to call up--many the remarkable parallels he drew between present events and those he remembered--many the charming stories he told me. One of these, which has always struck me as very grand and dramatic, I have so often repeated that I will make a note of it here:--
”Within the memory of those still living there resided in Madrid a family called Benalta. It consisted of Colonel Benalta, a man of choleric and sharp disposition; of his wife, Madame Benalta; of his young daughter; of his little son Carlos, a boy ten years old; and of the mother of Madame Benalta, who was a woman of large property and of considerable importance in the society at Madrid. On the whole, they were quoted as an example of a happy and harmonious family. It is true that there were, however, certain drawbacks to their being completely happy, entirely harmonious, and the chief of these was that Colonel Benalta, when his temper was not at its best, would frequently, much more often than was agreeable, say to his wife, 'My dear, you know nothing: my dear, you know nothing at all: you know nothing whatever.' This was very disagreeable to Madame Benalta, but it was far more unpleasant to the mother of Madame Benalta, who considered her daughter to be a very distinguished and gifted woman, and who did not at all like to have it said, especially in public, that she knew--nothing!
”However, as I have said, on the whole, as Madrid society went, the Benaltas were quoted as an example of a happy and harmonious family.
”One day Colonel Benalta was absent on military duty, but the rest of the family were a.s.sembled in the drawing-room at Madrid. In the centre of the room, at a round table, sat Madame Benalta and her daughter working. At a bureau on one side of the room sat the mother of Madame Benalta, counting out the money which she had just received for the rents of her estates in Andalusia, arranging the louis-d'ors in piles of tens before her, and eventually putting them away in a strong box at her side. At another table on the other side of the room sat little Carlos Benalta writing a copy.
”Now I do not know the exact words of the Spanish proverb which formed the copy that Carlos Benalta wrote, but it was something to the effect of 'Work while it is to-day, for thou knowest not what may happen to-morrow.' And the child wrote it again and again till the page was full, and then he signed it, 'Carlos Benalta, Sept.
22nd,' and he took the copy to his mother.
”Now the boy had signed his copy 'Carlos Benalta, Sept. 22nd,' but it really was Sept. 21. And Madame Benalta was a very superst.i.tious woman; and when she saw that in his copy Carlos had antic.i.p.ated the morrow--the to-morrow on which 'thou knowest not what may happen'--it struck her as an evil omen, and she was very much annoyed with Carlos, and spoke sharply, saying that he had been very careless, and that he must take the copy back and write it all over again. And Carlos, greatly crestfallen, took the copy and went back to his seat. But the mother of Madame Benalta, who always indulged and petted Carlos, looked up from her counting and said, 'Bring the copy to me.' And when she saw it she said to her daughter, 'I think you are rather hard upon Carlos, my dear; he has evidently taken pains with his copy and written it very well; and as for the little mistake at the end, it really does not signify; so I hope you will forgive him, and not expect him to write it again.' Upon which Madame Benalta, but with a very bad grace, said, 'Oh, of course, if his grandmother says he is not to write it again, I do not expect him to do it; but I consider, all the same, that he ought to have been obliged to do it for his carelessness.'
Then the grandmother took ten louis-d'ors from the piles before her, and she tore the copy out of the book and rolled them up in it, and sealed the parcel, and she wrote upon the outside, 'For my dear grandson, Carlos Benalta; to be given to him when I am dead!'
And she showed it to her daughter and her grand-daughter, and said, 'Some day when I am pa.s.sed away, this will be a little memorial to Carlos of his old grandmother, who loved him and liked to save him from a punishment.' And she put the packet away in the strong box with the rest of the money.
”The next morning the news of a most dreadful tragedy startled the people of Madrid. The mother of Madame Benalta, who inhabited an apartment in the same house above that of her daughter and son-in-law, was found murdered in her room under the most dreadful circ.u.mstances. She had evidently fought hard for her life. The whole floor was in pools of blood. She had been dragged from one piece of furniture to another, and eventually she had been butchered lying across the bed. There were the marks of a b.l.o.o.d.y hand all down the staircase, and the strong box was missing.
Everything was done that could be done to discover the murderer, but unfortunately he had chosen the one day in the year when such a crime was difficult to trace. As Mademoiselle Benalta was not yet 'out,' and as the family liked a quiet domestic life, they never went out in the evening, and the street door was known to be regularly fastened. Therefore, on this one day in the year, when the servants went on their annual picnic to the Escurial, it was supposed to be quite safe to leave the street door on the latch, that they might let themselves in when they returned very late. The murderer must have known this and taken advantage of it; therefore, though Colonel Benalta offered a very large reward, and though the Spanish Government--so great was the public horror--offered, for them, a very large reward, no clue whatever was ever obtained to the murderer.
”A terrible shadow naturally hung over the house in Madrid, and the Benalta family could not bear to remain in a scene which to them was filled with such a.s.sociations of horror. By the death of the poor lady, Madame Benalta's mother, they had inherited her estates in Andalusia, and they removed to Cordova. There they lived very quietly. From so great a shock Madame Benalta could not entirely rally, and she shrank more than ever from strangers. Besides, her home life was less pleasant than it had been, for Colonel Benalta's temper was sharper and sourer than ever, and even more frequently than before he said to her, 'My dear, you know nothing: you really know nothing at all.'
”Eleven years pa.s.sed away, melancholy years enough to the mother, but her children grew up strong and happy, and naturally on them the terrible event of their childhood seemed now quite in the far-away past. One day Colonel Benalta was again absent on military duty. Madame Benalta was sitting in her usual chair in her drawing-room at Cordova, and Carlos, then a young man of one-and-twenty, was standing by her, when the door opened and Mademoiselle Benalta came in. 'Oh, mother,' she said, 'I've been taking advantage of our father's absence to arrange his room, and in one of his drawers I have found a little relic of our childhood, which I think perhaps may be interesting to you: it seems to be a copy which Carlos must have written when he was a little boy.'
Madame Benalta took the paper out of her daughter's hand and saw, 'Work while it is to-day, for thou knowest not what may happen to-morrow,' and at the bottom the signature 'Carlos Benalta, September 22nd,' and she turned it round, and there, at the back, in the well-known trembling hand, was written, 'For my dear grandson Carlos Benalta, to be given to him when I am dead.' Madame Benalta had just presence of mind to crumple up the paper and throw it into the back of the fire, and then she fell down upon the floor in a fit.
”From that time Madame Benalta never had any health. She was unable to take any part in the affairs of the house, and scarcely seemed able to show any interest in anything. Her husband had less patience than ever with her, and more frequently abused her and said, 'My dear, you know nothing;' but it hardly seemed to affect her now; her life seemed ebbing away together with its animation and power, and she failed daily. That day-year Madame Benalta lay on her death-bed, and all her family were collected in her room to witness her last moments. She had received the last sacraments, and the supreme moment of life had arrived, when she beckoned her husband to her. As he leant over her, in a calm solemn voice, distinctly audible to all present, she said, 'My dear, you have always said that I knew nothing: now I have known two things: I have known how to be silent in life, and how to pardon in death,'
and so saying, she died.
”It is unnecessary to explain what Madame Benalta knew.”
In later years, in Spain, I have read a little book by Fernan Caballero, ”El Silencio en la Vita, e el Perdono en la Muerte,” but even in the hands of the great writer the story wants the simple power which it had when told by Sir John.
The winter of 1864-65 was a terribly anxious one at Holmhurst. My mother failed daily as the cold weather came on, and was in a state of constant and helpless suffering. I never could bear to be away from her for a moment, and pa.s.sed the whole day by the side of her bed or chair, feeding her, supporting her, chafing her inanimate limbs, trying by an energy of love to animate her through the weary hours of sickness, giddiness, and pain. We were seldom able to leave one room, the central one in the house, and had to keep it as warm as was possible. My recollection lingers on the months of entire absence from all external life spent in that close room, sitting in an armchair, pretending to read while I was ceaselessly watching. My mother was so much worse than she had ever been before, that I was never very hopeful, but strove never to look beyond the present into the desolate future, and, while devoting my whole thoughts and energies to activity for her, was always able to be cheerful. Still I remember how, in that damp and misty Christmas, I happened to light upon the lines in ”In Memoriam”--
”With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round our Christmas hearth; A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, And sadly fell our Christmas Eve.”
And how wonderfully applicable they seemed to our case.
_To_ MY SISTER.