Part 110 (2/2)
CHAPTER XVII.
Lord L'Estrange did not proceed at once to Riecabocca's house. He was under the influence of a remembrance too deep and too strong to yield easily to the lukewarm claim of friends.h.i.+p. He rode fast and far; and impossible it would be to define the feelings that pa.s.sed through a mind so acutely sensitive, and so rootedly tenacious of all affections. When, recalling his duty to the Italian, he once more struck into the road to Norwood, the slow pace of his horse was significant of his own exhausted spirits; a deep dejection had succeeded to feverish excitement.
”Vain task,” he murmured, ”to wean myself from the dead! Yet I am now betrothed to another; and she, with all her virtues, is not the one to--” He stopped short in generous self-rebuke. ”Too late to think of that! Now, all that should remain to me is to insure the happiness of the life to which I have pledged my own. But--” He sighed as he so murmured. On reaching the vicinity of Riccabocca's house, he put up his horse at a little inn, and proceeded on foot across the heathland towards the dull square building, which Leonard's description had sufficed to indicate as the exile's new home. It was long before any one answered his summons at the gate. Not till he had thrice rung did he hear a heavy step on the gravel walk within; then the wicket within the gate was partially drawn aside, a dark eye gleamed out, and a voice in imperfect English asked who was there.
”Lord L'Estrange; and if I am right as to the person I seek, that name will at once admit me.”
The door flew open as did that of the mystic cavern at the sound of ”Open, Sesame;” and Giacomo, almost weeping with joyous emotion, exclaimed in Italian, ”The good Lord! Holy San Giacomo! thou hast heard me at last! We are safe now.” And dropping the blunderbuss with which he had taken the precaution to arm himself, he lifted Harley's hand to his lips, in the affectionate greeting familiar to his countrymen.
”And the padrone?” asked Harley, as he entered the jealous precincts.
”Oh, he is just gone out; but he will not be long. You will wait for him?”
”Certainly. What lady is that I see at the far end of the garden?”
”Bless her, it is our signorina. I will run and tell her you are come.”
”That I am come; but she cannot know me even by name.”
”Ah, Excellency, can you think so? Many and many a time has she talked to me of you, and I have heard her pray to the holy Madonna to bless you, and in a voice so sweet--”
”Stay, I will present myself to her. Go into the house, and we will wait without for the padrone. Nay, I need the air, my friend.” Harley, as he said this, broke from Giacomo, and approached Violante.
The poor child, in her solitary walk in the obscurer parts of the dull garden, had escaped the eye of Giacomo when he had gone forth to answer the bell; and she, unconscious of the fears of which she was the object, had felt something of youthful curiosity at the summons at the gate, and the sight of a stranger in close and friendly conference with the unsocial Giacomo.
As Harley now neared her with that singular grace of movement which belonged to him, a thrill shot through her heart, she knew not why. She did not recognize his likeness to the sketch taken by her father from his recollections of Harley's early youth. She did not guess who he was; and yet she felt herself colour, and, naturally fearless though she was, turned away with a vague alarm.
”Pardon my want of ceremony, Signorina,” said Harley, in Italian; ”but I am so old a friend of your father's that I cannot feel as a stranger to yourself.”
Then Violante lifted to him her dark eyes so intelligent and so innocent,--eyes full of surprise, but not displeased surprise. And Harley himself stood amazed, and almost abashed, by the rich and marvellous beauty that beamed upon him. ”My father's friend,” she said hesitatingly, ”and I never to have seen you!”
”Ah, Signorina,” said Harley (and something of its native humour, half arch, half sad, played round his lip), ”you are mistaken there; you have seen me before, and you received me much more kindly then.”
”Signor!” said Violante, more and more surprised, and with a yet richer colour on her cheeks.
Harley, who had now recovered from the first effect of her beauty, and who regarded her as men of his years and character are apt to regard ladies in their teens, as more child than woman, suffered himself to be amused by her perplexity; for it was in his nature that the graver and more mournful he felt at heart, the more he sought to give play and whim to his spirits.
”Indeed, Signorina,” said he, demurely, ”you insisted then on placing one of those fair hands in mine; the other (forgive me the fidelity of my recollections) was affectionately thrown around my neck.”
”Signor!” again exclaimed Violante; but this time there was anger in her voice as well as surprise, and nothing could be more charming than her look of pride and resentment.
Harley smiled again, but with so much kindly sweetness, that the anger vanished at once, or rather Violante felt angry with herself that she was no longer angry with him. But she had looked so beautiful in her anger, that Harley wished, perhaps, to see her angry again. So, composing his lips from their propitiatory smile, he resumed gravely,
”Your flatterers will tell you, Signorina, that you are much improved since then, but I liked you better as you were; not but what I hope to return some day what you then so generously pressed upon me.”
”Pressed upon you!--I? Signor, you are under some strange mistake.”
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