"My Novel" — Complete

CHAPTER IX.

We are at Norwood in the sage’s drawing-room. Violante has long since retired to rest. Harley, who had accompanied the father and daughter to their home, is still conversing with the former.

“Indeed, my dear Duke,” said Harley

“Hush, hush! Diavolo, don’t call me Duke yet; I am at home here once more as Dr. Riccabocca.”

“My dear doctor, then, allow me to assure you that you overrate my claim to your thanks. Your old friends, Leonard and Frank Hazeldean, must come in for their share. Nor is the faithful Giacomo to be forgotten.”

“Continue your explanation.”

“In the first place, I learned, through Frank, that one Baron Levy, a certain fashionable money-lender, and general ministrant to the affairs of fine gentlemen, was just about to purchase a yacht from Lord Spendquick on behalf of the count. A short interview with Spendquick enabled me to outbid the usurer, and conclude a bargain by which the yacht became mine,—a promise to assist Spendquick in extricating himself from the claws of the money-lender (which I trust to do by reconciling him with his father, who is a man of liberality and sense) made Spendquick readily connive at my scheme for outwitting the enemy. He allowed Levy to suppose that the count might take possession of the vessel; but affecting an engagement, and standing out for terms, postponed the final settlement of the purchase-money till the next day. I was thus master of the vessel, which I felt sure was destined to serve Peschiera’s infamous design. But it was my business not to alarm the count’s suspicions; I therefore permitted the pirate crew he had got together to come on board. I knew I could get rid of them when necessary. Meanwhile, Frank undertook to keep close to the count until he could see and cage within his lodgings the servant whom Peschiera had commissioned to attend his sister. If I could but apprehend this servant, I had a sanguine hope that I could discover and free your daughter before Peschiera could even profane her with his presence. But Frank, alas! was no pupil of Machiavelli. Perhaps the count detected his secret thoughts under his open countenance, perhaps merely wished to get rid of a companion very much in his way; but, at all events, he contrived to elude our young friend as cleverly as you or I could have done,—told him that Beatrice herself was at Roehampton, had borrowed the count’s carriage to go there, volunteered to take Frank to the house, took him. Frank found himself in a drawing-room; and after waiting a few minutes, while the count went out on pretence of seeing his sister, in pirouetted a certain distinguished opera-dancer! Meanwhile the count was fast back on the road to London, and Frank had to return as he could. He then hunted for the count everywhere, and saw him no more. It was late in the day when Frank found me out with this news. I became seriously alarmed. Peschiera might perhaps learn my counter-scheme with the yacht, or he might postpone sailing until he had terrified or entangled Violante into some—In short, everything was to be dreaded from a man of the count’s temper. I had no clew to the place to which your daughter was taken, no excuse to arrest Peschiera, no means even of learning where he was. He had not returned to Mivart’s. The Police was at fault, and useless, except in one valuable piece of information. They told me where some of your countrymen, whom Peschiera’s perfidy had sent into exile, were to be found. I commissioned Giacomo to seek these men out, and induce them to man the vessel. It might be necessary, should Peschiera or his confidential servants come aboard, after we had expelled or drawn off the pirate crew, that they should find Italians whom they might well mistake for their own hirelings. To these foreigners I added some English sailors who had before served in the same vessel, and on whom Spendquick assured me I could rely. Still these precautions only availed in case Peschiera should resolve to sail, and defer till then all machinations against his captives. While, amidst my fears and uncertainties, I was struggling still to preserve presence of mind, and rapidly discussing with the Austrian prince if any other steps could be taken, or if our sole resource was to repair to the vessel and take the chance of what might ensue, Leonard suddenly and quietly entered my room. You know his countenance, in which joy or sadness is not betrayed so much by the evidence of the passions as by variations in the intellectual expression. It was but by the clearer brow and the steadier eye that I saw he had good tidings to impart.”

“Ah,” said Riccabocca,—for so, obeying his own request, we will yet call the sage,—“ah, I early taught that young man the great lesson inculcated by Helvetius. ‘All our errors arise from our ignorance or our passions.’ Without ignorance and without passions, we should be serene, all-penetrating intelligences.”

“Mopsticks,” quoth Harley, “have neither ignorance nor passions; but as for their intelligence—”

“Pshaw!” interrupted Riccabocca,—“proceed.”

“Leonard had parted from us some hours before. I had commissioned him to call at Madame di Negra’s, and, as he was familiarly known to her servants, seek to obtain quietly all the information he could collect, and, at all events, procure (what in my haste I had failed to do) the name and description of the man who had driven her out in the morning, and make what use he judged best of every hint he could gather or glean that might aid our researches. Leonard only succeeded in learning the name and description of the coachman, whom he recognized as one Beppo, to whom she had often given orders in his presence. None could say where he then could be found, if not at the count’s hotel. Leonard went next to that hotel. The man had not been there all the day. While revolving what next he should do, his eye caught sight of your intended son-in-law, gliding across the opposite side of the street. One of those luminous, inspiring conjectures, which never occur to you philosophers, had from the first guided Leonard to believe that Randal Leslie was mixed up in this villanous affair.”

“Ha! He?” cried Riccabocca. “Impossible! For what interest, what object?”

“I cannot tell, neither could Leonard; but we had both formed the same conjecture. Brief: Leonard resolved to follow Randal Leslie, and track all his movements. He did then follow him, unobserved,—and at a distance, first to Audley Egerton’s house, then to Eaton Square, thence to a house in Bruton Street, which Leonard ascertained to be Baron Levy’s. Suspicious that, my clear sage?”

“Diavolo, yes!” said Riccabocca, thoughtfully.

“At Levy’s, Randal stayed till dusk. He then came out, with his cat-like, stealthy step, and walked quickly into the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. Leonard saw him enter one of those small hotels which are appropriated to foreigners. Wild, outlandish fellows were loitering about the door and in the street. Leonard divined that the count or the count’s confidants were there.”

“If that can be proved,” cried Riccabocca, “if Randal could have been thus in communication with Peschiera, could have connived at such perfidy, I am released from my promise. Oh, to prove it!”

“Proof will come later, if we are on the right track. Let me go on. While waiting near the door of this hotel, Beppo himself, the very man Leonard was in search of, came forth, and, after speaking a few words to some of the loitering foreigners, walked briskly towards Piccadilly. Leonard here resigned all further heed of Leslie, and gave chase to Beppo, whom he recognized at a glance. Coming up to him, he said quietly, ‘I have a letter for the Marchesa di Negra. She told me I was to send it to her by you. I have been searching for you the whole day.’ The man fell into the trap, and the more easily, because—as he since owned in excuse for a simplicity which, I dare say, weighed on his conscience more than any of the thousand-and-one crimes he may have committed in the course of his illustrious life—he had been employed by the marchesa as a spy upon Leonard, and, with an Italian’s acumen in affairs of the heart, detected her secret.”

“What secret?” asked the innocent sage.

“Her love for the handsome young poet. I betray that secret, in order to give her some slight excuse for becoming Peschiera’s tool. She believed Leonard to be in love with your daughter, and jealousy urged her to treason. Violante, no doubt, will explain this to you. Well, the man fell into the trap. ‘Give me the letter, Signor, and quick.’

“‘It is at a hotel close by; come there, and you will have a guinea for your trouble.’

“So Leonard walked our gentleman into my hotel; and having taken him into my dressing-room, turned the key and there left him. On learning this capture, the prince and myself hastened to see our prisoner. He was at first sullen and silent; but when the prince disclosed his rank and name (you know the mysterious terror the meaner Italians feel for an Austrian magnate), his countenance changed, and his courage fell. What with threats and what with promises, we soon obtained all that we sought to know; and an offered bribe, which I calculated at ten times the amount the rogue could ever expect to receive from his spendthrift master, finally bound him cheerfully to our service, soul and body. Thus we learned the dismal place to which your noble daughter had been so perfidiously ensnared. We learned also that the count had not yet visited her, hoping much from the effect that prolonged incarceration might have in weakening her spirit and inducing her submission. Peschiera was to go to the house at midnight, thence to transport her to the vessel. Beppo had received orders to bring the carriage to Leicester Square, where Peschiera would join him. The count (as Leonard surmised) had taken skulking refuge at the hotel in which Randal Leslie had disappeared. The prince, Leonard, Frank (who was then in the hotel), and myself held a short council. Should we go at once to the house, and, by the help of the police, force an entrance, and rescue your daughter? This was a very hazardous resource. The abode, which, at various times, had served for the hiding-place of men haunted by the law, abounded, according to our informant, in subterranean vaults and secret passages, and had more than one outlet on the river. At our first summons at the door, therefore, the ruffians within might not only escape themselves, but carry off their prisoner. The door was strong, and before our entrance could be forced, all trace of her we sought might be lost. Again, too, the prince was desirous of bringing Peschiera’s guilty design home to him,—anxious to be able to state to the emperor, and to the great minister his kinsman, that he himself had witnessed the count’s vile abuse of the emperor’s permission to wed your daughter. In short, while I only thought of Violante, the prince thought also of her father’s recall to his dukedom. Yet, still to leave Violante in that terrible house, even for an hour, a few minutes, subjected to the actual presence of Peschiera, unguarded save by the feeble and false woman who had betrayed and might still desert her—how contemplate that fearful risk? What might not happen in the interval between Peschiera’s visit to the house and his appearance with his victim on the vessel? An idea flashed on me: Beppo was to conduct the count to the house; if I could accompany Beppo in disguise, enter the house, myself be present?—I rushed back to our informant, now become our agent; I found the plan still more feasible than I had at first supposed. Beppo had asked the count’s permission to bring with him a brother accustomed to the sea, and who wished to quit England. I might personate that brother. You know that the Italian language, in most of its dialects and varieties of patois—Genoese, Piedmontese, Venetian—is as familiar tome as Addison’s English! Alas! rather more so. Presto! the thing was settled. I felt my heart, from that moment, as light as a feather, and my sense as keen as the dart which a feather wings. My plans now were formed in a breath, and explained in a sentence. It was right that you should be present on board the vessel, not only to witness your foe’s downfall, but to receive your child in a father’s arms. Leonard set out to Norwood for you, cautioned not to define too precisely for what object you were wanted, till on board.

“Frank, accompanied by Beppo (for there was yet time for these preparations before midnight), repaired to the yacht, taking Giacomo by the way. There our new ally, familiar to most of that piratical crew, and sanctioned by the presence of Frank, as the count’s friend and prospective brother-in-law, told Peschiera’s hirelings that they were to quit the vessel, and wait on shore under Giacomo’s auspices till further orders; and as soon as the decks were cleared of these ruffians (save a few left to avoid suspicion, and who were afterwards safely stowed down in the hold), and as soon as Giacomo had lodged his convoy in a public house, where he quitted them drinking his health over unlimited rations of grog, your inestimable servant quietly shipped on board the Italians pressed into the service, and Frank took charge of the English sailors.

“The prince, promising to be on board in due time, then left me to make arrangements for his journey to Vienna by the dawn. I hastened to a masquerade warehouse, where, with the help of an ingenious stagewright artificer, I disguised myself into a most thorough-paced-looking cut-throat, and then waited the return of my friend Beppo with the most perfect confidence.”

“Yet, if that rascal had played false, all these precautions were lost. Cospetto! you were not wise,” said the prudent philosopher.

“Very likely not. You would have been so wise, that by this time your daughter would have been lost to you forever.”

“But why not employ the police?”

“First, Because I had already employed them to little purpose; secondly, Because I no longer wanted them; thirdly, Because to use them for my final catastrophe would be to drag your name, and your daughter’s perhaps, before a police court,—at all events, before the tribunal of public gossip; and lastly, Because, having decided upon the proper punishment, it had too much of equity to be quite consistent with law; and in forcibly seizing a man’s person, and shipping him off to Norway, my police would have been sadly in the way. Certainly my plan rather savours of Lope de Vega than of Blackstone. However, you see success atones for all irregularities. I resume: Beppo came back in time to narrate all the arrangements that had been made, and to inform me that a servant from the count had come on board just as our new crew were assembled there, to order the boat to be at the place where we found it. The servant it was deemed prudent to detain and secure. Giacomo undertook to manage the boat.

“I am nearly at the close of my story. Sure of my disguise, I got on the coach-box with Beppo. The count arrived at the spot appointed, and did not even honour myself with a question or glance. ‘Your brother?’ he said to Beppo; ‘one might guess that; he has the family likeness. Not a handsome race yours! Drive on.’

“We arrived at the house. I dismounted to open the carriage-door. The count gave me one look. ‘Beppo says you have known the sea.’

“‘Excellency, yes. I am a Genoese.’

“‘Ha! how is that? Beppo is a Lombard.’—Admire the readiness with which I redeemed my blunder.

“‘Excellency, it pleased Heaven that Beppo should be born in Lombardy, and then to remove my respected parents to Genoa, at which city they were so kindly treated that my mother, in common gratitude, was bound to increase its population. It was all she could do, poor woman. You see she did her best.’

“The count smiled, and said no more. The door opened, I followed him; your daughter can tell you the rest.”

“And you risked your life in that den of miscreants! Noble friend!”

“Risked my life,—no; but I risked the count’s. There was one moment when my hand was on my trigger, and my soul very near the sin of justifiable homicide. But my tale is done. The count is now on the river, and will soon be on the salt seas, though not bound to Norway, as I had first intended. I could not inflict that frigid voyage on his sister. So the men have orders to cruise about for six days, keeping aloof from shore, and they will then land the count and the marchesa, by boat, on the French coast. That delay will give time for the prince to arrive at Vienna before the count could follow him.”

“Would he have that audacity?”

“Do him more justice! Audacity, faith! he does not want for that. But I dreaded not his appearance at Vienna with such evidence against him. I dreaded his encountering the prince on the road, and forcing a duel, before his character was so blasted that the prince could refuse it; and the count is a dead shot of course,—all such men are!”

“He will return, and you—”

“I! Oh, never fear; he has had enough of me. And now, my dear friend,—now that Violante is safe once more under your own roof; now that my honoured mother must long ere this have been satisfied by Leonard, who left us to go to her, that our success has been achieved without danger, and, what she will value almost as much, without scandal; now that your foe is powerless as a reed floating on the water towards its own rot, and the Prince Von ———-is perhaps about to enter his carriage on the road to Dover, charged with the mission of restoring to Italy her worthiest son,—let me dismiss you to your own happy slumbers, and allow me to wrap myself in my cloak, and snatch a short sleep on the sofa, till yonder gray dawn has mellowed into riper day. My eyes are heavy, and if you stay here three minutes longer, I shall be out of reach of hearing, in the land of dreams. Buona notte!”

“But there is a bed prepared for you.”

Harley shook his head in dissent, and composed himself at length on the sofa.

Riccabocca, bending, wrapped the cloak round his guest, kissed him on the forehead, and crept out of the room to rejoin Jemima, who still sat up for him, nervously anxious to learn from him those explanations which her considerate affection would not allow her to ask from the agitated and exhausted Violante. “Not in bed!” cried the sage, on seeing her. “Have you no feelings of compassion for my son that is to be? Just, too, when there is a reasonable probability that we can afford a son?”

Riccabocca here laughed merrily, and his wife threw herself on his shoulder, and cried for joy.

But no sleep fell on the lids of Harley L’Estrange. He started up when his host had left him, and paced the apartment, with noiseless but rapid strides. All whim and levity had vanished from his face, which, by the light of the dawn, seemed death-like pale. On that pale face there was all the struggle and all the anguish of passion.

“These arms have clasped her,” he murmured; “these lips have inhaled her breath! I am under the same roof, and she is saved,—saved evermore from danger and from penury, and forever divided from me. Courage, courage! Oh, honour, duty; and thou, dark memory of the past,—thou that didst pledge love at least to a grave,—support, defend me! Can I be so weak!”

The sun was in the wintry skies when Harley stole from the house. No one was stirring except Giacomo, who stood by the threshold of the door, which he had just unbarred, feeding the house-dog. “Good-day,” said the servant, smiling. “The dog has not been of much use, but I don’t think the padrone will henceforth grudge him a breakfast. I shall take him to Italy, and marry him there, in the hope of improving the breed of our native Lombard dogs.”

“Ah,” said Harley, “you will soon leave our cold shores. May sunshine settle on you all!” He paused, and looked up at the closed windows wistfully.

“The signorina sleeps there,” said Giacomo, in a husky voice, “just over the room in which you slept.”

“I knew it,” muttered Harley. “An instinct told me of it. Open the gate; I must go home. My excuses to your lord, and to all.”

He turned a deaf ear to Giacomo’s entreaties to stay till at least the signorina was up,—the signorina whom he had saved. Without trusting himself to speak further, he quitted the demesne, and walked with swift strides towards London.