Part 23 (1/2)
”My friend,” said he, ”the heritage would pa.s.s to my son--a dowry only goes to the daughter.”
”But you have no son.”
”Hus.h.!.+ I am going to have one; my Jemima informed me of it yesterday morning; and it was upon that information that I resolved to speak to Leslie. Am I a simpleton now?”
”Going to have a son,” repeated Harley, looking very bewildered; ”how do you know it is to be a son?”
”Physiologists are agreed,” said the sage positively, ”that where the husband is much older than the wife, and there has been a long interval without children before she condescends to increase the population of the world--she (that is, it is at least as nine to four)--she brings into the world a male. I consider that point, therefore, as settled, according to the calculations of statistics and the researches of naturalists.”
Harley could not help laughing, though he was still angry and disturbed.
”The same man as ever; always the fool of philosophy.”
”_Cospetto!_” said Riccabocca, ”I am rather the philosopher of fools.
And talking of that, shall I present you to my Jemima?”
”Yes; but in turn I must present you to one who remembers with grat.i.tude your kindness, and whom your philosophy, for a wonder, has not ruined.
Some time or other you must explain that to me. Excuse me for a moment; I will go for him.”
”For him;--for whom? In my position I must be cautious; and--”
”I will answer for his faith and discretion. Meanwhile, order dinner, and let me and my friend stay to share it.”
”Dinner? _Corpo di Bacco!_--not that Bacchus can help us here. What will Jemima say?”
”Henpecked man, settle that with your connubial tyrant. But dinner it must be.”
I leave the reader to imagine the delight of Leonard at seeing once more Riccabocca unchanged, and Violante so improved; and the kind Jemima, too. And their wonder at him and his history, his books and his fame. He narrated his struggles and adventures with a simplicity that removed from a story so personal the character of egotism. But when he came to speak of Helen, he was brief and reserved.
Violante would have questioned more closely; but, to Leonard's relief, Harley interposed.
”You shall see her whom he speaks of, before long, and question her yourself.”
With these words, Harley turned the young man's narrative into new directions; and Leonard's words again flowed freely. Thus the evening pa.s.sed away, happily to all save Riccabocca. But the thought of his dead wife rose ever and anon before him; and yet when it did, and became too painful, he crept nearer to Jemima, and looked in her simple face, and pressed her cordial hand. And yet the monster had implied to Harley that his comforter was a fool--so she was, to love so contemptible a slanderer of herself, and her s.e.x.
Violante was in a state of blissful excitement; she could not a.n.a.lyze her own joy. But her conversation was chiefly with Leonard; and the most silent of all was Harley. He sat listening to Leonard's warm, yet unpretending eloquence--that eloquence which flows so naturally from genius, when thoroughly at its ease, and not chilled back on itself by hard, unsympathizing hearers--listened, yet more charmed, to the sentiments less profound, yet no less earnest--sentiments so feminine, yet so n.o.ble, with which Violante's fresh virgin heart responded to the poet's kindling soul. Those sentiments of hers were so unlike all he heard in the common world--so akin to himself in his gone youth!
Occasionally--at some high thought of her own, or some lofty line from Italian song, that she cited with lighted eyes and in melodious accents--occasionally he reared his knightly head, and his lips quivered, as if he had heard the sound of a trumpet. The inertness of long years was shaken. The Heroic, that lay deep beneath all the humors of his temperament, was reached, appealed to; and stirred within him, rousing up all the bright a.s.sociations connected with it, and long dormant. When he rose to take leave, surprised at the lateness of the hour, Harley said, in a tone that bespoke the sincerity of the compliment, ”I thank you for the happiest hours I have known for years.” His eye dwelt on Violante as he spoke. But timidity returned to her with his words--at his look; and it was no longer the inspired muse, but the bashful girl that stood before him.
”And when shall I see you again?” asked Riccabocca disconsolately, following his guest to the door.
”When? Why, of course, to-morrow. Adieu! my friend. No wonder you have borne your exile so patiently,--with such a child!”
He took Leonard's arm, and walked with him to the inn where he had left his horse. Leonard spoke of Violante with enthusiasm. Harley was silent.
CHAPTER III.
The next day a somewhat old-fas.h.i.+oned, but exceedingly patrician, equipage stopped at Riccabocca's garden-gate. Giacomo, who, from a bedroom window, had caught sight of it winding towards the house, was seized with undefinable terror when he beheld it pause before their walls and heard the shrill summons at the portal. He rushed into his master's presence, and implored him not to stir--not to allow any one to give ingress to the enemies the machine might disgorge. ”I have heard,”
said he, ”how a town in Italy--I think it was Bologna--was once taken and given to the sword, by incautiously admitting a wooden horse, full of the troops of Barbarossa, and all manner of bombs and Congreve rockets.”