Detmold: A Romance: Part Iii
V.
HIS MOOD.
No plan further than the bent of his own fancy guided Detmold to Verona. His taste as formed by his latest study inclined him strongly towards the rich Lombard architecture. After installing in the place of honor and dethroning one after another of the Classic, Renaissance, Oriental, and Gothic styles in turn, he had come to transfer his affections almost wholly to this. It seemed to him to combine the perfections of all. The territory in which it flourishes has been the battle - ground and dwelling-place of the most diverse peoples, and their influence is strongly impressed upon it. The studied dignity of Greece and Rome, the wild imagination of the barbarians who were conquered by Classic civilization in the very act of destroying it, the mysterious elegance and feeling for color of Saracens and Byzantines, are all discernible. There are monuments showing in mass the Classic purity of line and proportion, in their frame-work and sculptures the Gothic ingenuity and wealth of fancy, and in their minor details of ornament — the rich marbles, mosaics, frescoes, and quaint intertwisted patterns — the subtle Oriental taste brought back by crusaders or by Venetian merchant princes. In others the same elements are seen side by side, as the successive tides of conquest or fashion have left their impress upon structures as durable as the everlasting hills, juxtaposed but not commingled.
The mood of Detmold at Verona resembled some of the darkest of his former life. He had not, except at some rare moments of extreme self-delusion, looked for complete success in his mission, perhaps not even an immediate conditional success, but he had trusted that from the interview, whatever its character, some fragment of hope might be brought away. As it was, nothing remained to the future. He had been not simply rejected but, as it seemed to him, repulsed with cruelty and scorn. His reflections, too, brought him again a vivid realization of the situation which his journey and his ardent passion had for a while obscured. What had he, in fact, to offer Alice in exchange for the comfortable surroundings of her life? He could hardly expect to he able to maintain even a moderate establishment from the earnings of his profession for several years. His small capital was rapidly wasting, and it was to be feared from the tenor of his home advices, which showed his father struggling in serious difficulties, that it might never be replenished with an inheritance of any sort. And then his secret. Obscure it as he might, there would have to come a time when it must be disclosed, when she would be called upon to rest under the shadow with him and would know all of his disingenuousness. Had he, then, any deserts which merited a better result?
Still, love rarely makes a beginning upon the basis of reason alone, and it is rarely to be put au end to simply by reasoning processes. As Detmold had secretly despaired in the midst of his hope, so he secretly hoped a little when there were the best of reasons for despair. It is a beneficent dispensation that human nature derives its sustenance from the circumstances about it, as vegetation from the sun and air and soil, and is not inexorably coerced by some original bias implanted in the germ. Breathing a new atmosphere, surrounded by novel sights and sounds, nourished upon strange viands, speaking and spoken to in an unaccustomed tongue, Detmold was actively conscious of change in himself. There were times when the unhappy past did not seem to attach to his present identity, but to one shuffled off and far distant.
Besides, is it not out of the obstacles in the way of passion that its greatest intensity and sweetness have been evolved ? The stream ripples musically only when it surmounts impediments. It is rarely in the unhampered, business-like joining of equal ranks and fortunes that are developed those instances of devotion and supreme tenderness in the contemplation of which a sympathetic public takes delight. It is the Cindereltas, King Cophetua and the beggar-maid, the romance of the poor young man, the condescension of the noble lady to the page of low degree, to which we extend our most friendly interest.
The unpropitious and apparently impossible inclose the germ of a felicity, vivid and ideal, beyond the conception of ordinary experience.
It is true that the obstacles in Detmold’s way were largely of his own contriving, yet they were not the less formidable. For the reader may as well be told that Alice knew nothing about his fortune, for one thing, and cared less. She was not in the least of a mercenary turn. She was capable, if her affections were enlisted, of generosity, of giving herself without reserve. She would have trusted that the future would be all that honest effort and a devotion implicitly relied upon could make it. and would have asked no more.
In matters of the heart Detmold was little experienced; he too had developed slowly. It is doubtful whether women appreciate too much idealizing. A less distant and romantic policy might have been attended with better results. Nothing had yet transpired to indicate that Alice would have wished her decision to have been different. But it is a phenomenon not entirely unheard of that a lover has been plunged into the deepest gloom when the case really was that the object by whose fancied coldness his misery was caused had scarcely an inkling of the reverence with which she was regarded, or perhaps was no more than gently coy, not to wear the appearance of being too easily won. Detmold combated mainly with himself. It mounts to the same thing, of course, but character is difficult to read, not so much on account of its essential depth and mystery as of the imperfection of the lenses we bring to bear upon it.
Detmold, wavering in his hopes and fears from day to day, and by no means more composed after the arrival of Alice, had set himself to transfer the masterpieces of the beautiful architecture of his sketch-books. The image of Alice was ever present. It dawned upon him in the morning like a more precious sunrise, and rode in his dreams like the moon of midsummer nights.
His apartment was in what had once been a wing of the Grazzini palace, but had long been sequestrated to different uses. The window of a closet attached to his principal chamber looked down into the court-yard. The view showed a quadrangle of buildings, two tall stories and an attic in height. One of the wings which still remained devoted to palatial uses was supported upon an irregular arcade of columns. There was a wide frieze at the top of the stuccoed walls, of frescoed medallions, Cupids, and flowers, all much streaked and faded. Upon the red-tiled roof were small dormers far apart. An old pomegranatetree and some lemon and oleander shrubs in boxes grew by the walls. Underneath one of the windows was a saint upon a bracket. On its head a goodnatured housekeeper occasionally hung towels to dry. There was a well-curb with a tackle so adjusted that it could be swung from above, and buckets of water hoisted to some of the upper rooms. A goat, keeping his head-quarters somewhere under the arcade, patrolled the court with an air of proprietorship; a family cat moved stealthily about, and sometimes clambered into the pomegranate-tree with a tiger-like clutch.
Hyson came quite often to this apartment of Detmold, and so did his neighbor Antonio. It had a balcony in front, where the three sat in the evenings and ranged pleasantly over the subjects young men talk about. Mr. Starfield also came there once and smoked with them, and brought back such an account of the artistic manner in which it was fitted up that Mrs. Starfield, upon Detmold’s next visit, exclaimed that she must be allowed to see it too.
Castelbarco turned the conversation often to the subject of Alice, and descanted upon her beauty and grace. Sometimes at the cafés he raised his glass and drank to the health of la bella Americana.
“ Do you suppose he is going to fall in love with her? ” said Detmold to Hyson, after one of these manifestations, in considerable annoyance.
“ Oh, nothing to signify,” said the other. “ These Italians are all susceptible; they fall in love — as much as they can — with every pretty woman. I do not know but I should make a very tolerable Italian myself. But supposing he should, would you consider him a formidable rival ? ”
“ He is a very handsome fellow,” said Detmold, “and wealthy, and claims to be a kind of royal duke, or marquis, or something of that kind.”
“I should not be at all alarmed if I were you. I think you stand well, as I have told you before. Miss Alice would never marry out of her own country or her own language unless there were extraordinary inducements. Antonio is handsome enough, but that amounts to very little, and he takes himself seriously, which is a good point, — but so do you, for that matter, except in a much better way. Women like to be imposed upon with an appearance of importance. They will carry on and have a good time with a fellow like me, for instance, but they don’t wish really to tie up to a person who thinks almost everything a farce, and himself as much of a one as the rest. That is the reason I have such confounded poor luck with them when I really mean business.”
“ Why, your luck is the admiration of all your acquaintances. ”
“ Oh, well, it looks pretty fair, but there are particular cases that they know nothing at all about.”
Hyson was getting on tolerably well with his irrigation, studying the language to be able to read works on the subject in the original, — for there are scarcely any to be had in translations, — and making frequent excursions into the country. Still he was annoyed by his linguistic deficienciesIn his journeys he could rarely ask the questions or receive the answers he desired with any degree of satisfaction. He wished he might have the advantage of examining some extensive properties treated by irrigation, with the friendly explanations of some one of authority with whom he was perfectly at ease.
“ I can put you in the way of what you want,” said Antonio, upon hearing him express this desire. “ Why did I not know of it before? You must go to Signor Niceolo. ”
“By all means; but who is Signor Niceolo? ”
“ He is a rich farmer on the canal of Este, near Vieenza. He has all kinds of crops, — Indian corn, wheat, millet, colza, panico, and vegetables; marcite meadows; fruits, — figs, apples, peaches, melons, everything; rice-swamps, too; but above all his white mulberry-trees, from which he raises the fine silk of which we buy considerable quantities at our factory. I used to go there often in my boyhood to enjoy rural pleasures, and still I go sometimes for a day to taste the Signor Niccolo’s good wine. He has a pretty daughter, too, who is very quick in languages. She will interpret for you, or, for that matter, I will go with you myself.”
“ The sooner the better,” said Hyson. “ It is precisely the opportunity I have been seeking.”
“ He is often in town, and I will arrange it,” said Castelbarco.
Not long afterwards he brought the farmer he had spoken of to Detmold’s apartment to see if perhaps Hyson were there, where he indeed found him. The Signor Niccolo was a short, round, very vivacious old gentleman, with a pleasant face, and white hair upon which he wore, under his hat, a skull cap. When his talk was obscure, Castelbarco explained it.
The evening was sultry, and at the suggestion of Hyson the party adjourned to a café. “ It will delight me beyond measure,” said Signor Niccolo, “ to show you my poor estate. Do you know you could not have done better? I have the temerity to say I am no common farmer. I have made it a study. I have made it a science. I have traveled in the south of France where there are irrigated farms; in the Netherlands also, — it was there I got the idea of my windmill for cleaning the rice. As to water I can tell you everything. Ask me wliat you will. More than forty millions of tons of water are spread over the surface of Lombardy every day. Does it produce a damp and humid atmosphere? Not in the least. The hygrometer rarely rises above zero of its scale; it shows excessive dryness. You may imagine what we would be without irrigation. You shall have a detailed account of the canal of Este, —plans, sections, everything will be shown you. It is now twenty years that I have been the general deputy of our consorzio, and sit as such in the council by which the whole canal is controlled.”
“ I do not understand consorzio,” said Hyson.
“ Do you not? You shall hear. The country irrigated by each main canal is divided into a number of districts. In each district a body of six or nine persons is chosen. It is called a consorzio. We make repairs and improvements, arrange what tax it is right for each proprietor who uses water to pay, and manage the water affairs in general. The chairmen of the consorzios form a superior body which supervises the canal as a whole. ”
“ You cultivate rice also. Is it not very unhealthy for the laborers? ”
“ It is bad for those who come from the high country, and so are the winter meadows. In the fall there is considerable malaria. Still in that we are fortunate, too. My rice-swamps are located on the borders only of the estate, remote from our buildings, and I work them generally with hands who are acclimated, so that there is very little trouble. You shall see how I clean my rice with my windmill. That is my own idea. My neighbors use mills run by water diverted from the canal. But suppose there comes a drought. A head of water for such a purpose costs something then, I can tell you, — even if you are fortunate enough to get it at all. Besides, another thing. Here is my principal channel.”
The demonstrative old gentleman suddenly stopped, laid down his stick upon the pavement, and made explanatory gestures over it, while passers-by were obliged to turn out to the right and left.
“ Good! Here are the secondary channels — so,” drawing imaginary lines at right angles to the stick with the toe of his boot. “But now, here is a knoll far distant, which is near to my barns and my road, and is much the most convenient place for me to prepare my rice for the market. The water from the streams does not rise high enough to turn a mill here. Well, what do I do? Go down to the low ground with my mills, where it is very inconvenient? No, I simply recall what I have seen. I remember the Netlierland mills. Signor Castelbarco can tell you. It costs nothing to run; but when the wind does not blow, then I have my water-mills elsewhere, like the rest.” Signor Niccolo took up his stick and placed it again under his arm, with the air of having elucidated a very knotty problem.
“ And how is pretty Emilia, Signor Niccolo? ” inquired Castelbarco.
“ She is well, but she is not with me now, though I expect her soon. You have not then heard that she is again at Milan to study her music. I have given her the best master in the city.”
“Bravo!” said Castelbarco. “She will be a famous cantatrice.”
“ I know not what she will be, but she is a very good child,” said the old man.
Upon taking leave, he cordially extended an invitation to the three to pay him a visit. They should have his best wine and his new horses, and llyson should examine the irrigation to his heart’s content.
“ If you will let me choose a time,” said he, “ let me pray you to come when the early wheat is ripe. You shall see some fine stalks, I promise you.”
Before they parted, a date not far distant was fixed upon for the excursion.
VI.
THE TORRE D’ORO.
The weather was at times excessively warm, and the hotel Torre d'Oro al gran Parigi was not in all respects as grand and airy as its title. Still, the streets were often freshened; the fountain splashed in the Piazza Erbe; our friends partook copiously of the halffrozen ices (granita) and of aqua marena, which is ice-water mingled with syrups, and were upon the whole sufficient ly comfortable. Alice brought down to the breakfast table the morning after their arrival, and preserved afterwards as a memento of the Torre d’Oro, a copy of a cautionary notice affixed to the door of her chamber. It was a monument of ambitious but misguided etymology and spelling, apparently aggravated by reckless type-setting. It was the production of tlie secretary of the hotel, who acknowledged its authorship with pardonable pride.
“In order to avoiwhod,” said this interesting notice, “ any trouble which might arise, Mr. Mr. Canti et Gambogi beg to inform those Gentelmen who patronise their hôtel that they will not behold themselves rcsponseble for voluable propriety unless deposeted with them and a receipt taken.”
“ “ ‘ Voluable propriety ’ is good,” said Hyson, “ and Messrs. Canti and Gambogi do quite right not to be responsible for anything of the sort.”
The phrase became a merry by-word. When anybody rattled on too fast in the flow of animated talk, or trenched upon a subject to which there were objections, it was common to hear “ voluable propriety ” interjected at him by some, of the others.
Mrs. Starfield cared little for sightseeing. She suffered herself to be driven about occasionally, took a nap in the afternoons, walked with the girls in the cool part of the day to see the shops, or sat in her room reading or knitting. The young ladies, who had seen most of the great show places, were pleased with the quaintness of Verona, but looked upon their stay there as a sort of respite. They were rather glad that the sights were not too numerous and engrossing. Alice had obtained permission to copy at the Museo Civico. She had chosen a subject, and went quite regularly to work at it. Miss Lonsdale sometimes accompanied her, or sat with Mrs. Starfield, or wrote in a voluminous journal, or went out with a lady cicerone who explained things to her in French at a lira an hour.
Mr. Starfield was much absent in his researches among the filande and filatorie, the factories for winding and spinning silk. He went to Mantua and Brescia and back to Milan, and again to Roveredo, on the road to Trent. With the elder Castelbarco he spent several days at Iseo on Lake Guarda, where the latter had considerable interests. The country between Verona and Mantua produces the best twist and sewing silk, to which Mr. Starfield was giving especial attention.
On the trip to Mantua he was accompanied by the entire party, who, however, spent the day among the antiquities while he pursued his affairs.
Owing to the prolonged absences of Mr. Starfield, the young men organized and conducted much of the sight-seeing that was done. Detmold, by Hyson’s advice, had taken early advantage of the invitation extended to him by Alice, and they were again upon a friendly footing. In spite of what had passed there was soon even greater ease between them than ever before. Detmold noted this, and ascribed it to the hopeless indifference of Alice, unembarrassed by a trace of constraint. He had decided within himself that no further advances could be made towards the all-important subject unless in the wild contingency of some direct encouragement from her. It was perhaps an instinctive apprehension of this, on her side, and a trust in Detmold’s delicacy, upon which the renewed intimacy was based. There was a tacit agreement that they were to be friends and nothing more. To natures more impatient and more completely penetrated with a sense of their own merits than Detmold’s, such a footing might have seemed irksome and humiliating, but he found it happiness to be with her on any terms.
Among other changes Alice was now less scrupulous in her adherence to foreign conventionalisms. She excepted Castelbarco, who would have been likely to misconstrue any other manners than those to which he was accustomed, but did not refuse to take such short jaunts alone with Detmold or Hyson as might have been permitted in accordance with American usage. The presence of her family gave her a greater sense of security, and the possibly unfavorable comments of persons among whom she was to make so brief a stay were less an object of deference.
In the evenings there was a sort of familiar levee in the apartment of Mrs. Starfield. Our friends compared the experiences of the day, played cards, made caricatures, examined the additions to Alice’s collection of photographs, and discussed the personal intelligence in the American Register.
Other pleasant travelers stopped at the hotel, and an acquaintance was sometimes formed at table d’hôte. They met the Blumenthals and Lilienthals, wealthy German families of Lakeport, who were revisiting the fatherland after having made fortunes in America. They had not known them before, but now agreed that they were very interesting, and regretted that the diverse elements were not more fully mingled in the society of Lakeport.
There was the Honorable Hard-Pan Battledore, a member of Congress, who had come over the Brenner pass with his family. When asked by Alice if he did not find these old cities delightful, he gave the extreme opposite view of the subject.
“Frankly,” replied he, “I do not. They are not comfortable. They are not active in a commercial way. There is nothing to be learned from them about the present, in which our important interests are vested. Why should wc delight in what is old and decrepit in towns more than in men? We sympathize with it in the latter, but after a certain stage of having outlived their usefulness, they become painful. Our fancy turns rather to what is young and blooming. I would rather look at you than at a quarter section of noseless statues ” —
“ Thank you, ” said Alice.
“ I find no fault with people who like such things, but to me it seems a species of shiftlessness. I do not live near it myself, but I like to hear the rattle of the axe in the backwoods — progress — continually pushing on. When I want amusement I go to Lake Superior and fish. I am taking my family home as quickly as lean induce them to go.”
A young Mr. Gilderoy, an artist and an acquaintance of Hyson’s, came up to Verona to spend a day or two, and was introduced. He was preparing to paint a picture of The Ships of Tarshish. and was studying effects of color, and the models of antique galleys in the marine arsenal at Venice. He was enthusiastic in his talk, and Mrs. Starfield predicted a great future for him. But Hyson said he was an æsthetic loafer, without fixity of purpose, even if he had the disposition to accomplish anything. He merely made a pretext of his art to sponge upon his wealthy relatives.
At another time there arrived a mildeyed young man in glasses, an ex-divinity student, Mr. Acolyte Dean, also of Lake port. He had been an inmate of an Episcopal seminary, had become infected with extreme ritualistic notions, — an idea of the substantial unity of all branches of the ancient church, — and like Miss Lonsdale had become a Catholic. He was then on his way to visit Rome. He inquired of the young ladies with much particularity concerning their experiences there. Alice mentioned to him that they had had two audiences with the Pope, and that she as well as Miss Lonsdale had taken his hand and kissed it.
“ Oh, have you indeed?” cried the young divinity student, with an enthusiasm that was entirely artless and unreflecting. “ Do you know, I could kiss your hand with the greatest honor because it has touched his.”
“ Ho!” scoffed Hyson, who was sitting by, practicing a new method of stacking cards, “ I lay no claim to reverence, but I will offer to do that much myself, out of pure good-nature.”
But Alice folded her pretty hands demurely out of sight, and projecting her head, with the chin a little in advance, said, “None of you shall do anything of the kind,” while Detmold thought of getting up in a Berserker rage and slaughtering everybody.
Castelbarco was present at these informal receptions nearly as often as the rest. He spoke both English and French, and had therefore no difficulty in holding his part in the conversations. Detmold remembered him well as a schoolboy at Wardham. He was then a dark and unhappy little foreigner, in nankeen pantaloons, with his shoe-strings always untied, his fingers and thumb stained with ink, and his tasks in a state of backwardness. He had been noted for a quaint and amusing dialect which it had been the study of his companions to draw out. He said upon his first arrival that he spoke English “a lector one.” If he knocked at a door and one asked, “ Who is there?” he answered, “It is this.”
Once, when he had performed some feat that brought him into momentary prominence, the by-standers said in surprise, “ Is that you, Antonio? ” He replied, “ Yes, I am.”
He had grown up to be a tall and handsome young man. His card bore the imposing superscription, Antonio Castelbarco di Gualterio, which meant simply that he was Anthony Castelbarco, the son of Walter, and indicated that there were others of the name.
He had, out of his own language at least, no sense of humor. At the flippant, sallies of Hyson, at which the rest laughed, he remained grave, somewhat puzzled, and even at times frowned. He spoke of his own concerns with naive confidence. His conversation consisted largely of disquisitions upon political, literary, or historical subjects. He made critical remarks upon Manzoni, — the Italian Walter Scott, — the modern poet, Giusti, and others, and was also forward to show his acquaintance with English and American writers. He made severe strictures upon ecclesiastics, which displeased Miss Lonsdale.
One evening they read among the arrivals at Paris the name Wyman, of Lakeport. “It is Monroe Wyman and Florence, on their wedding trip,” said Mrs. Starfield. “ I hope we shall meet them.”
“ They have been engaged so long that it almost seems as if they were married a good while ago,” said Alice.
“ Their engagement was nearly broken last winter; they came near not being married at all,” said Mrs. Starfield. “ How, mamma ? ”
“ It was about oval windows, — Mr. Detmold, as an architect, will appreciate this. You see, they were building a house, to have everything in readiness after their marriage. Florence was very partial to oval windows, — to light the hall, and so on, you know; Monroe did not like them. They compromised by agreeing to have two on one side and one on the other, but on the side on which there were two, Monroe was to be allowed shrubbery partly to conceal one of them. He was called away for a week, and upon his return ho passed by the house on his way to see Florence. By some blunder of the builders all three oval windows had been put upon the same side. He jumped to the conclusion that it was Florence’s doing, and was so hurt by this unkindness and evidence of self-will on her part that, without assigning any reason, he did not go to see her for a long time. It was very serious, I assure you, and it was only by accident that things were explained.”
“ Lovers are so absurd,” was the extraordinary comment of Alice, considering the presence of Detmold.
“ That is a pretty sentiment, at the head - quarters of Rorneo and Juliet!” said Hyson. “ It is rank impiety.”
“I do not think you have chosen much of an example,” said Alice. “ I have been reading over the play to-day, after a visit to the shabby garden where they pretend to show you Juliet’s tomb. They were absurd, if no other lovers ever were. The idea of persons falling in love without knowing the first thing about each other, — without having exchanged a word ! And the extravagant way in which they began to talk! Imagine anybody you know doing so at an evening party in these days.”
“ But it was not in these days,” said Hyson.
“ That is the point,” said Detmold. “ The better class then made an exclusive business of fighting and falling in love; they had nothing else to occupy themselves with. Exaggeration of speech was another of their habits, I imagine their talk matched their trunk hose and satin doublets and ostrich plumes. Modern speech tends towards plain black and white, like its dress. Besides, here in Italy the custom of complimenting women within an inch of their lives has not disappeared yet. You yourself have probably heard some of the impertinences the gentlemen utter to unknown ladies on the streets.”
“ Still, with all allowances,” persisted Alice, “for us, at any rate, the story is silly. I do not mean all of it, — only the first part, where they fall in love without any reason. There is neither dignity nor sense in it.”
“ It is pretty hard to tell what makes people fall in love,” said Detmold, with a sense of treading on very delicate ground, while Hyson regarded him with curiosity, to see how he was coming put. “ This play Is not merely a story; it is a poem. The falling in love is a fatality, in spite of logic, which is perhaps not entirely unknown in modern times. The friar, in summing up the tragedy at the close, recognizes it in a very sublime sentence: ‘ A greater power than we can contradict hath thwarted our intents.’ ”
“ Mr. Detmold’s opinion agrees with my own,” said the good Mrs. Starfield. “ There is a fatality. In these matters I always say, ‘ Whatever is to be, will be.’ I have seen so much of it. You cannot hurry anything or force it.”
This doctrine found in Detmold a ready disciple.
“These matters have to take their course,” continued the motherly lady. “ I know it from my own experience. The first engagement of Mr. Starfield with myself was broken off. We sent back each other’s letters and gifts. He went East, and was gone several years. I heard that he was married, and he thought I was married. We met again, and the result was doubtless what it was always intended to be.”
“ I have seen my papa’s letters, too,” continued Alice, with an audacious raillery; “ they were like all the rest, — so sentimental, so — oh!” A musical rising inflection could alone express the character of these letters.
“ Why, you atrocious girl,” said the horrified mamma, “you shall not talk so.”
“ Valuable propriety, my dear! ” said Miss Lonsdale.
Detmold decided indubitably that this ridicule of passion meant more than mere flippancy. Was it not aimed especially at him ? He could not but construe it as another of those indications — of which he had observed so many — of the absence of any depth of sentiment on her part, or of any comprehension of the seriousness of his.
Yet he did not construe it rightly. Whatever might have caused the levity of Alice on this and other occasions, she had reflected about Detmold very much since his proposal, and had decided that she liked him. To what extent, — or indeed anything definite further than this, — it would be difficult to say. Perhaps a second attempt on his part to draw from her some favorable expression would not have succeeded better than the first. She would have been glad, in truth, to postpone the subject of marriage indefinitely. Her life was very pleasant as it was. In such a great change there was — how could one tell what! There was room for grave apprehensions. If there could be a husband who was a kind of brother, and her papa and mamma and all the people she knew were to remain about her just the same, why, then it might not be so formidable, and might be thought of. She had as yet. no comprehension of the devotion that is stronger than all else and makes the woman say to him she loves, “ Whither thou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
Still, in these days together at Verona Alice saw more of him than in years before, and the intimacy was not without its effects. She found herself contemplating him critically, and not any longer as an indifferent portion of the furniture of society. The scrutiny did him no harm. She could admire in him elevation of sentiment and an honorable ambition for distinction. There were minor traits: he was charitable, good-tempered, dignified without pretense, and when entirely at ease could be humorous and vivacious. She asked herself in a speculative way, “ How would it be to have him always around? ”
Physically, Detmold was not disagreeable. He was tall, square-shouldered, and muscular, without heaviness. He had an honest expression, a clear skin, good teeth, and warm blood. It was not unpleasant to be touched by such a person. His hand when it met hers was dry and firm. Hers was soft, and shrank a little from a grasp which she must say was at times unwarrantably close. His dress was less scrupulously fashionable than Hyson’s, but well fitting and in good taste.
His devotion to her was complete: he was ready to fetch and carry, to .shift her chair into a better light, to find her the proper shop in the Corso for canvas and tubes of colors, to explain the money and the language, to find her little curiosities, and to send her flowers from the Piazza Erbe,
Perhaps there are natures that leap to an intuitive appreciation of each other in the sudden ignition of an intense flame of passion; but for humanity in general, fear and strangeness are laid aside, an adequate comprehension of character is obtained, and a happy future prepared, by such gradually advancing intimacies as this.
VII.
THE CASTELBARCOS.
The Castelbarcos were the owners and operators of one of the principal silk-spinning establishments at Verona, and were pecuniarily interested in others at a distance. The senior Castelbarco was a business man somewhat after the American style. He was an excellent calculator, skilled to feel the delicate pulses of the market and quick to seize its most favorable moment. He had purchased the venture in which he was engaged at a low ebb of its fortunes, and had built, it up by his good management into a flourishing concern. He was enterprising and public spirited as a citizen. He talked much of the advantages of Verona as a commercial point and as a place of residence. He even wrote communications for the journals, which had the ring of articles in the press of some of the thriving towns of our own West.
“We have a population of seventy thousand souls,” he would say; “why is it not one hundred thousand? We must have eventually thrice that number. Everything points to the future of Verona as a great metropolitan point: the railroads centring in our midst, the limitless water-power of the Adige, the valuable mines and inexhaustible marble quarries in the neighborhood, our silk of unsurpassed quality, and the attractiveness of our well-governed and healthful city, in which the taxes are low and no trace of malaria can be detected. A united effort must be made to disseminate a knowledge of these advantages. A partial impulse has been given of late to some of our industries by enterprising individuals, — notably to the silk manufacture; but this is not enough. Many of those whose interests are most nearly concerned manifest no conception of the need of activity. United and persistent effort is called for. All must put their shoulders to the wheel. Let the contest be henceforth, not who shall hold back the longest, but who shall most energetically take the lead.”
Signor Castelbarco had spent some years of his youth in the United States. He had been thrown mainly upon his own resources, and it was to this fact that he considered himself indebted for his industrious and accurate business habits, it was as a clerk in a silk-importing house at New York that he had made the acquaintance of Mr. Starfield, who was a nephew of one of the members of the firm, and a fellow employee. With some means acquired in various enterprises there and afterwards in Montevideo, where there is a body of Italians who keep up a close connection with the mother country, he made upon his return the investment which had now advanced him so well upon the high road to fortune.
He had continued his relations with America for some time after leaving it, and had made occasional visits thither. Upon one of these he brought with him his eldest son, a boy of twelve, and left him during two years at an American school, in the hope that he would acquire something of the energetic spirit and dexterous methods which had proved invaluable in his own case. He wrote to Mr. Starfield, who was long since established as a prosperous manufacturer at Lakeport, and asked him to take a general cognizance of the boy. He did so, and, having a daughter at an institution nearby, paid young Castelbarco occasional visits. Sometimes he took him with him on his visits to Alice, on halfholidays. The walk in the spacious grounds, which had once been those of the country-seat of an opulent Knickerbocker family; the parlors full of bright and modest young girls chatting with their friends, whom they were allowed to receive on these days; but above all the pretty face and manners of Alice, were extraordinary events in the monotonous life of the school-boy, and they made a profound impression upon him. He believed himself in love with Alice. He planned to run away to sea, discover a sunken treasure, and return and marry her.
The boy proved different in many respects from what his father would have desired. He brought back none of the commercial briskness or business tact which the senior Castelbarco looked for. His spirit was even injured instead of improved by his American schooling. The effect with him was precisely the reverse of that which had operated in Detmold’s case. Detmold had been received upon terms of equality, and found a relief from persecutions at home. Castelbarco was a foreigner and an eccentricity among a troop of thoughtless boys. He learned timidity and self-distrust instead of the ease and confidence natural in more normal surroundings. He became reserved, sometimes to the point of moroseness, while under the surface lay a sensitiveness keenly played upon by every passing circumstance. The annoyances to which he was subjected caused him to abstain from the rougher sports of the school. This, together with some instances when in extreme anger or disappointment he had been known to burst into tears, was looked upon as a feminine trait, and gained him the nickname of the Signonna. Once, in a paroxysm of rage, he pursued a boy with a pocket-knife, after which care was taken to stop short of the point of driving the Signorina to desperation. Detmold was pained at such scenes from the recollection of his own early sufferings, and he used what small influence he had to abate them. Castelbarco was duly grateful, and a kind of friendship sprang up between them.
Antonio pursued his schooling further at home, and spent some time in the sculptured courts of the University of Padua, after which he was appointed his father’s lieutenant in the factory. Whether from incompetency or disinclination for the duties of the place, he fell presently to a subordinate position. His lack of aptitude for commercial success excited the disgust of his driving parent, and was the occasion at times of stormy reproaches. His mother, meanwhile, a stately old lady, devoted to ideas of ancestry and family dignity, wished that he need have nothing to do with the factory. She continually solicited her husband to put back less of his profits into trade, and to use them to restore something of the State and consideration which their family had once enjoyed. She would have liked to have her son more bold and dashing, displaying in his manner a patrician haughtiness. She wished him to make an aristocratic marriage, and urged him much into society with that end in view.
The young man read with interest the biographies of his ancestors. All had been dignified, and some eminent. The Castelbareos had no title, though they claimed connection — through descent from some far remote younger brother — with the counts of that name, the quaint sarcophagus of one of whom is bracketed out over the gate - way close to St. Anastasia. On the maternal side the descent was as good, and more clearly established. A Grazzini in the thirteenth century had been the chamberlain of the Duke of Modena, and had married a daughter of the counts of Novellara. Another, at a later date, had served with distinction under the great captain Gonsalvo de Cordova, and had married into a Spanish family at Naples. There were portraits of this couple in the collection that still remained at the Grazzini palace. Few of these ancestors had been remarkable in any civilian capacity. Their specialty was fighting. They had fought against the Turks, against the Paduans, against the Bergamasks, and against the Venetians and for the Venetians by turns, participating in the mediæval taste for hard knocks to the full. Under the long Austrian domination the fortunes of the Grazzini had declined. From a noble castle in the mountains they were reduced to a palazzino, and then to a small casino, while their city property disappeared altogether. The history of the Castelbarco side of the house was not very different. While the blood of these two fine families flowed as pure as ever, it happened that the grandparents of Antonio on both sides had barely sufficient means to maintain their families in a style of moderate respectability. It was poverty, in fact, and nothing less, that drove the elder Castelbarco upon the wanderings in the New World which had resulted so prosperously. He returned with democratic notions and little respect for finical traditions which could not give a man a coat to his back or a roof over his head, though he were a cousin of all the Cæsars. The Signora Carmosina, his wife, retained, however, enough for both. It was at her instance that he repurchased, at a favorable moment, the main portion of the Grazzini palace. It was much dilapidated, had been out of the family for long generations, and had even passed under another name.
There were in the Antonio of the present few traces of the slouehy little scliool-boy of years past. In an atmosphere of respect and consideration he had returned to a juster appreciation of himself. He was one of the fashionable young men of the day, elegant in manners, at home in the cafés and at his circle or club. He was open-handed with his money, scattering it in cases of apparent distress to deserving and unworthy alike.
Notwithstanding the changes and improvements noted by our friends upon the renewal of the acquaintance, Castelbarco was still far from being a harmonious and well-balanced character. Iu the presence of his father he was morose, and at other times imperious and willful. His irregular process of education had resulted in nothing like discipline. He was not lacking in generous traits, but all was disorderly. He was spoiled and passionate. The good and evil in him were not comminuted and mingled, but seemed to rest side by side, in chaotic portions. Either was likely to have the upper hand of the other on any given occasion. At the time of the arrival of the Starfields he was drifting with events, displeased with himself, without knowing how to he different, and wishing vaguely — he knew not what.
The sight of Alice affected him with a new and lively emotion. It brought back the. memory of his unhappy schooldays. He compared the actual events of his life with the imaginings of that remote period. There was but one bright spot, one tender reminiscence in it, and it was Alice herself. She was not more beautiful now than he had thought her then. He recalled his romantic plans, in which she had been so conspicuous a figure. What if they might yet be realized? Things as strange had happened.
He saw her almost daily, and her kindness charmed him. Suddenly he said to himself, “ I love her still.” He persuaded himself that it was the same old passion that had only slept, and was now again awake. As if it had been really cherished all these years it seemed to take at once the strength and fixity of long duration. Here was at last an object and a purpose. He shared the not uncommon belief of ardent suitors, that could he but win the companionship of her he loved he should be filled with irrepressible ambition; everything would be open to him. He began to send her gifts — flowers, photographs, pretty scarfs and trinkets — in such profusion that Alice was obliged to go to the verge of rudeness to check his unwelcome liberality.
Somewhat more than a fortnight after the arrival of the Starfields, Detmold, one afternoon, crossing the Piazza Erbe, paused a moment to glance at the ancient Madonna Verona, presiding in the sunshine over her fountain and the now comparatively idle market-place. He was accosted by Castelbarco, who drew him into the arcade of the Casa dei Mereanti. It is the chamber of commerce of Verona, a picturesque brick building of the fourteenth century, resting upon an arcade of red marble columns. It is one of the few that retains its bright external frescoing. It has a long balcony, a battlemented cornice, and at one corner, in a niche, a statue of the Virgin.
Castelbarco was there with some of his brother merchants on ’Change. But it was matter far different from quotations of staple goods or the fluctuations of corn and oil that he poured into the unwilling ear of Detmold.
“I am moved by an impulse of the moment, my dear friend,” said he, “to seek your counsel; I think you will not refuse it to me. I am moved to it by a sudden impulse of the moment.”
“ I am not much of a counselor, ” said Detmold, “ but I will do my best.”
“I would learn of your social customs in respect to marriage,” began Castelbarco. “ I was too young, and saw nothing of them, when present in your country. Do you know what I intend? I will not delay to say to you. I will marry the Signorina Starfield. ”
“ Marry Alice? Marry Miss Starfield?” exclaimed Detmold, in consternation.
“ It astonishes you, does it not? But see, now; my regard for this beautiful girl is not a new thing. It does not now commence. It is of years, — of the date when I was your companion of school in a distant land. Since she comes here it is only renewed — not for the first time commenced — you understand. It is strong now with the strength of a man. She has possessed me so fully that I think of nothing else. Her eyes set my heart on fire, and her lips speak sweeter accents than music.”
“ Have you proposed to her? ” said Detmold.
“ It is in that respect that I would consult your friendly advice. I have not. I do not know whether she divines of my purpose, though I have tried that it should be so. She does manifest to me unvarying kindness. Do you not think she would be content to remain in our Italy, which she thinks so beautiful?”
“ I do not know, I am sure.”
“It is only last night, at our parting, that she did express her sorrow to leave it. As for me, it never was beautiful till now. You cannot know how fine is everything that was before nothing, since I love her, and will make her my bride.”
Ah, only too well did Detmold know this, — how the sun shines with a more genial light, how the heaven is bluer, how all nature is joyous, when the golden wine of a noble passion pulses in the veins!
“ You do not reply anything,” said Castelbarco.
“ Why, man ” — began Detmold, with an irritated impulse. He checked it, and said in a tone that he endeavored to make argumentative, “ You must see that you are asking things to which any answer from me would be perfectly useless.”
He found in the announcement made to him a cause for new alarm and despondency. Here was a love as ardent as his own. If love constitutes a claim upon its object, here was a claim as valid as his own. In what respect was he more favored than the young Italian ? In how many respects was he not far less favored? Castelbarco was handsome, well-born, wealthy, and capable of generous devotion. His father, too. was her father’s friend. This old acquaintance would abridge the interval between their so widely separated nationalities.
“ That is right. Of course,” said the Italian, it was not that, but of the American custom to make the marriage proposal, that I wished to converse. I can ask you only without embarrassment. Is it, as with us, conveyed by means of the families of both, or must the signorina herself be supplicated, or are there other methods? ”
“ It is most usual to obtain the consent of the young lady; then her parents are consulted.”
“ Do not think me foolish, if you can avoid it. You have a thousand times obliged me. I will throw myself at her feet. She shall not refuse me. Say that you do not think she will, my dear friend. ”
“ I have not the slightest idea,” said Detmold, coldly. “ There may be others — elsewhere — that love Miss Starfield, also. Her affections may be already engaged.”
Castelbarco darted at him a glance of sharp resentment. Then he said, passionately, “ I know not what you mean. There can be no others, — there shall be no others. I have not loved before. Now I will not fail.”
He conferred no more with Detmold. He began to suspect a rivalry, which had he not been so blinded by his own impetuosity he could have plainly seen. But if he had it is probable that he would not have considered Detmold formidable — as compared with the dashing Hyson, for instance. He knew something of his pecuniary circumstances, and felt that they would not commend him to the much-indulged Alice, or at any rate to her family. Furthermore, the architect was a heavy fellow, and not at all loverlike.
But as to Hyson, if there were no other rival in the field, he might easily rest secure. What devotion that studious young gentleman had to spare from his pursuit of irrigation was distributed in impartial shares to every pretty face he met.
W. H. Bishop.