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.'
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
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