Mr Gilfil's Love Story Page 4

had known how to choose a wife, too, for his lady, hanging opposite to him, with

  her sunny brown hair drawn away in bands from her mild grave face, and falling

  in two large rich curls on her snowy gently-sloping neck, which shamed the

  harsher hue and outline of her white satin robe, was a fit mother of

  'large-acred' heirs.

  In this room tea was served; and here, every evening, as regularly as the great

  clock in the court-yard with deliberate bass tones struck nine, Sir Christopher

  and Lady Cheverel sat down to picquet until half-past ten, when Mr Gilfil read

  prayers to the assembled household in the chapel.

  But now it was not near nine, and Caterina must sit down to the harpsichord and

  sing Sir Christopher's favourite airs, by Gluck and Paesiello, whose operas, for

  the happiness of that generation, were then to be heard on the London stage. It

  happened this evening that the sentiment of these airs, 'Che faro senza

  Eurydice?' and 'Ho perduto il bel sembiante', in both of which the singer pours

  out his yearning after his lost love, came very close to Caterina's own feeling.

  But her emotion, instead of being a hindrance to her singing, gave her

  additional power. Her singing was what she could do best; it was her one point

  of superiority, in which it was probable she would excel the highborn beauty

  whom Anthony was to woo; and her love, her jealousy, her pride, her rebellion

  against her destiny, made one stream of passion which welled forth in the deep

  rich tones of her voice. She had a rare contralto, which Lady Cheverel, who had

  high musical taste, had been careful to preserve her from straining.

  'Excellent, Caterina,' said Lady Cheverel, as there was a pause after the

  wonderful linked sweetness of 'Che faro'. 'I never heard you sing that so well.

  Once more! '

  It was repeated; and then came, 'Ho perduto', which Sir Christopher encored, in

  spite of the clock, just striking nine. When the last note was dying out he

  said�

  'There's a clever black-eyed monkey. Now bring out the table for picquet.'

  Caterina drew out the table and placed the cards; then, with her rapid fairy

  suddenness of motion, threw herself on her knees, and clasped Sir Christopher's

  knee. He bent down, stroked her cheek and smiled.

  'Caterina, that is foolish,' said Lady Cheverel. 'I wish you would leave off

  those stage-players' antics.'

  She jumped up, arranged the music on the harpsichord, and then, seeing the

  Baronet and his lady seated at picquet, quietly glided out of the room.

  Captain Wybrow had been leaning near the harpsichord during the singing, and the

  chaplain had thrown himself on a sofa at the end of the room. They both now took

  up a book. Mr Gilfil chose the last number of the Gentleman's Magazine; Captain

  Wybrow, stretched on an ottoman near the door, opened Faublas; and there was

  perfect silence in the room which, ten minutes before, was vibrating to the

  passionate tones of Caterina.

  She had made her way along the cloistered passages, now lighted here and there

  by a small oil-lamp, to the grand-staircase, which led directly to a gallery

  running along the whole eastern side of the building, where it was her habit to

  walk when she wished to be alone. The bright moonlight was streaming through the

  windows, throwing into strange light and shadow the heterogeneous objects that

  lined the long walls Greek statues and busts of Roman emperors; low cabinets

  filled with curiosities, natural and antiquarian; tropical birds and huge horns

  of beasts; Hindoo gods and strange shells; swords and daggers, and bits of

  chain-armour; Roman lamps and tiny models of Greek temples; and, above all

  these, queer old family portraits�of little boys and girls, once the hope of the

  Cheverels, with close-shaven heads imprisoned in stiff ruffs�of faded,

  pink-faced ladies, with rudimentary features and highly-developed

  head-dresses�of gallant gentlemen, with high hips, high shoulders, and red

  pointed beards.

  Here, on rainy days, Sir Christopher and his lady took their promenade, and here

  billiards were played; but, in the evening, it was forsaken by all except

  Caterma�and, sometimes, one other person.

  She paced up and down in the moonlight, her pale face and thin white-robed form

  making her look like the ghost of some former Lady Cheverel come to revisit the

  glimpses of the moon.

  By-and-by she paused opposite the broad window above the portico, and looked out

  on the long vista of turf and trees now stretching chill and saddened in the

  moonlight.

  Suddenly a breath of warmth and roses seemed to float towards her, and an arm

  stole gently round her waist, while a soft hand took up her tiny fingers.

  Caterina felt an electric thrill, and was motionless for one long moment; then

  she pushed away the arm and hand, and, turning round, lifted up to the face that

  hung over her eyes full of tenderness and reproach. The fawn-like

  unconsciousness was gone, and in that one look were the ground tones of poor

  little Caterina's nature�intense love and fierce jealousy.

  'Why do you push me away, Tina?' said Captain Wybrow in a half-whisper; 'are you

  angry with me for what a hard fate puts upon me? Would you have me cross my

  uncle�who has done so much for us both�in his dearest wish? You know I have

  duties�we both have duties�before which feeling must be sacrificed.'

  'Yes, yes,' said Caterina, stamping her foot, and turning away her head; 'don't

  tell me what I know already.'

  There was a voice speaking in Caterina's mind to which she had never yet given

  vent. That voice said continually. 'Why did he make me love him�why did he let

  me know he loved me, if he knew all the while that he couldn't brave everything

  for my sake?' Then love answered, 'He was led on by the feeling of the moment,

  as you have been, Caterina; and now you ought to help him to do what is right.'

  Then the voice rejoined, ' it was a slight matter to him. He doesn't much mind

  giving you up. He will soon love that beautiful woman, and forget a poor little

  pale thing like you.'

  Thus love, anger, and jealousy were struggling in that young soul.

  'Besides, Tina,' continued Captain Wybrow in still gentler tones, 'I shall not

  succeed. Miss Assher very likely prefers some one else; and you know I have the

  best will in the world to fail. I shall come back a hapless bachelor�perhaps to

  find you already married to the good-looking chaplain, who is over head and ears

  in love with you. Poor Sir Christopher has made up his mind that you're to have

  Gilfil.

  'Why will you speak so? You speak from your own want of feeling. Go away from

  me.'

  'Don't let us part in anger, Tina. All this may pass away. It's as likely as not

  that I may never marry any one at all. These palpitations may carry me off, and

  you may have the satisfaction of knowing that I shall never be anybody's

  bride-groom. Who knows what may happen? I may be my own master before I get into

  the bonds of holy matrimony, and be able to choose my little singing-bird. Why

  should we distress ourselves before the time? '

  'It is
easy to talk so when you are not feeling,' said Caterina, the tears

  flowing fast. 'It is bad to bear now, whatever may come after. But you don't

  care about my misery.'

  'Don't I, Tina?' said Anthony in his tenderest tones, again stealing his arm

  round her waist, and drawing her towards him. Poor Tina was the slave of this

  voice and touch. Grief and resentment, retrospect and foreboding, vanished�all

  life before and after melted away in the bliss of that moment, as Anthony

  pressed his lips to hers.

  Captain Wybrow thought, 'Poor little Tina! it would make her very happy to have

  me. But she is a mad little thing.'

  At that moment a loud bell startled Caterina from her trance of bliss. It was

  the summons to prayers in the chapel, and she hastened away, leaving Captain

  Wybrow to follow slowly.

  It was a pretty sight, that family assembled to worship in the little chapel,

  where a couple of wax-candles threw a mild faint light on the figures kneeling

  there. In the desk was Mr Gilfil, with his face a shade graver than usual. On

  his right hand, kneeling on their red velvet cushions, were the master and

  mistress of the household, in their elderly dignified beauty. On his left, the

  youthful grace of Anthony and Caterina, in all the striking contrast of their

  colouring - he, with his exquisite outline and rounded fairness, like an

  Olympian god; she, dark and tiny, like a gypsy changeling. Then there were the

  domestics kneeling on red-covered forms,�the women headed by Mrs Bellamy, the

  natty little old housekeeper, in snowy cap and apron, and Mrs Sharp, my lady's

  maid, of somewhat vinegar aspect and flaunting attire; the men by Mr Bellamy the

  butler, and Mr Warren, Sir Christopher's venerable valet.

  A few collects from the Evening Service was what Mr Gilfil habitually read,

  ending with the simple petition, 'Lighten our darkness.'

  And then they all rose, the servants turning to curtsy and bow as they went out.

  The family returned to the drawing-room, said good-night to each other, and

  dispersed�all to speedy slumber except two. Caterina only cried herself to sleep

  after the clock had struck twelve. Mr Gilfil lay awake still longer, thinking

  that very likely Caterina was crying.

  Captain Wybrow, having dismissed his valet at eleven. was soon in a soft

  slumber, his face looking like a fine cameo in high relief on the slightly

  indented pillow.

  Chapter 3

  THE last chapter has given the discerning reader sufficient insight into the

  state of things at Cheverel Manor in the summer of 1788. In that summer, we

  know, the great nation of France was agitated by conflicting thoughts and

  passions, which were but the beginning of sorrows. And in our Caterina's little

  breast, too, there were terrible struggles. The poor bird was beginning to

  flutter and vainly dash its soft breast against the hard iron bars of the

  inevitable, and we see too plainly the danger, if that anguish should go on

  heightening instead of being allayed, that the palpitating heart may be fatally

  bruised.

  Meanwhile, if, as I hope, you feel some interest in Caterina and her friends at

  Cheverel Manor, you are perhaps asking, How came she to be there? How was it

  that this tiny, dark-eyed child of the south, whose face was immediately

  suggestive of olive-covered hills and taper-lit shrines, came to have her home

  in that stately English manor-house, by the side of the blonde matron, Lady

  Cheverel�almost as if a humming-bird were found perched on one of the elm-trees

  in the park, by the side of her ladyship's handsomest pouter-pigeon? Speaking

  good English, too, and joining in Protestant prayers! Surely she must have heen

  adopted and brought over to England at a very early age. She was.

  During Sir Christopher's last visit to Italy with his lady, fifteen years

  before, they resided for some time at Milan, where Sir Christopher. who was an

  enthusiast for Gothic architecture, and was then entertaining the project of

  metamorphosing his plain brick family mansion into the model of a Gothic

  manor-house, was bent on studying the details of that marble miracle, the

  Cathedral. Here Lady Cheverel, as at other Italian cities where she made any

  protracted stay, engaged a maestro to give her lessons in singing, for she had

  then not only fine musical taste, but a fine soprano voice. Those were days when

  very rich people used manuscript music, and many a man who resembled Jean

  Jacques in nothing else, resembled him in getting a livelihood 'a copier la

  musique a tant la page'. Lady Cheverel having need of this service, Maestro

  Albani told her he would send her a poveraccio of his acquaintance, whose

  manuscript was the neatest and most correct he knew of. Unhappily, the

  poveraccio was not always in his best wits, and was sometimes rather slow in

  consequence; but it would be a work of Christian charity worthy of the beautiful

  Signora to employ poor Sarti.

  The next morning, Mrs Sharp, then a blooming abigail of three-and-thirty,

  entered her lady's private room and said, 'If you please, my lady, there's the

  frowsiest, shabbiest man you ever saw, outside, and he's told Mr Warren as the

  singing-master sent him to see your ladyship. But I think you'll hardly like him

  to come in here. Belike he's only a beggar.'

  'O yes, show him in immediately.'

  Mrs Sharp retired, muttering something about 'fleas and worse'. She had the

  smallest possible admiration for fair Ausonia and its natives, and even her

  profound deference for Sir Christopher and her lady could not prevent her from

  expressing her amazement at the infatuation of gentlefolks in choosing to

  sojourn among 'Papises, in countries where there was no getting to air a bit o'

  linen, and where the people smelt o' garlick fit to knock you down.'

  However she presently reappeared, ushering in a small meagre man, sallow and

  dingy, with a restless wandering look in his dull eyes, and an excessive

  timidity about his deep reverences, which gave him the air of a man who had been

  long a solitary prisoner. Yet through all this squalor and wretchedness there

  were some traces discernible of comparative youth and former good looks. Lady

  Cheverel, though not very tender-hearted, still less sentimental, was

  essentially kind, and liked to dispense benefits like a goddess, who looks down

  benignly on the halt, the maimed, and the blind that approach her shrine. She

  was smitten with some compassion at the sight of poor Sarti, who struck her as

  the mere battered wreck of a vessel that might have once floated gaily enough on

  its outward voyage to the sound of pipes and tabors. She spoke gently as she

  pointed out to him the operatic selections she wished him to copy, and he seemed

  to sun himself in her auburn, radiant presence, so that when he made his exit

  with the music-books under his arm, his bow, though not less reverent, was less

  timid.

  It was ten years at least since Sarti had seen anything so bright and stately

  and beautiful as Lady Cheverel. For the time was far off in which he had trod

  the stage in satin and feathers, the primo tenore of one short
season. He had

  completely lost his voice in the following winter, and had ever since been

  little better than a cracked fiddle, which is good for nothing but firewood.

  For, like many Italian singers, he was too ignorant to teach, and if it had not

  been for his one talent of penmanship, he and his young helpless wife might have

  starved. Then, just after their third child was born, fever came, swept away the

  sickly mother and the two eldest children, and attacked Sarti himself, who rose

  from his sick-bed with enfeebled brain and muscle, and a tiny baby on his hands,

  scarcely four months old. He lodged over a fruit-shop kept by a stout virago,

  loud of tongue and irate in temper, but who had had children born to her, and so

  had taken care of the tiny yellow, black-eyed bambinetta, and tended Sarti

  himself through his sickness. Here he continued to live, earning a meagre

  subsistence for himself and his little one by the work of copying music, put

  into his hands chiefly by Maestro Albani. He seemed to exist for nothing but the

  child: he tended it, he dandled it, he chatted to it, living with it alone in

  his one room above the fruit-shop, only asking his landlady to take care of the

  marmoset during his short ahsences in fetching and carrying home work. Customers

  frequenting that fruit-shop might often see the tiny Caterina seated on the

  floor with her legs in a heap of pease, which it was her delight to kick about;

  or perhaps deposited, like a kitten, in a large basket out of harm's way.

  Sometimes, however, Sarti left his little one with another kind of protectress.

  He was very regular in his devotions, which he paid thrice a-week in the great

  cathedral, carrying Caterina with him. Here, when the high morning sun was

  warming the myriad glittering pinnacles without, and struggling against the

  massive gloom within, the shadow of a man with a child on his arm might be seen

  flitting across the more stationary shadows of pillar and mullion, and making

  its way towards a little tinsel Madonna hanging in a retired spot near the

  choir. Amid all the sublimities of the mighty cathedral, poor Sarti had fixed on

  this tinsel Madonna as the symbol of divine mercy and protection,�just as a

  child, in the presence of a great landscape, sees none of the glories of wood

  and sky, but sets its heart on a floating feather or insect that happens to be

  on a level with its eye. Here, then, Sarti worshipped and prayed, setting

  Caterina on the floor by his side; and now and then, when the cathedral lay near

  some place where he had to call, and did not like to take her, he would leave

  her there in front of the tinsel Madonna, where she would sit, perfectly good,

  amusing herself with low crowing noises and see-sawings of her tiny body. And

  when Sarti came back, he always found that the Blessed Mother had taken good

  care of Caterina.

  That was briefly the history of Sarti, who fulfilled so well the orders Lady

  Cheverel gave him, that she sent him away again with a stock of new work. But

  this time, week after week passed, and he neither reappeared nor sent home the

  music intrusted to him. Lady Cheverel began to be anxious, and was thinking of

  sending Warren to inquire at the address Sarti had given her, when one day, as

  she was equipped for driving out, the valet brought in a small piece of paper,

  which, he said, had been left for her ladyship by a man who was carrying fruit.

  The paper contained only three tremulous lines, in Italian:�

  'Will the Eccelentissima, for the love of God, have pity on a dying man, and

  come to him?'

  Lady Cheverel recognized the handwriting as Sarti's in spite of its

  tremulousness, and, going down to her carriage, ordered the Milanese coachman to

  drive to Strada Quinquagesima, Numero 10. The coach stopped in a dirty narrow

  street opposite La Pazzini's fruit-shop, and that large specimen of womanhood

  immediately presented herself at the door, to the extreme disgust of Mrs Sharp,

  who remarked privately to Mr Warren that La Pazzini was a 'hijeous porpis'. The