CHAPTER XXXII.

So long as there was a human eye upon her, Beatrice of Ferrara governed the mingled and passionate feelings that struggled with each other in her bosom, and would fain have had the mastery of her also. After a time, however, when she had preserved her apparent calmness long enough to deceive completely those around her; when she had drawn, with a hand full of grace and fancy, the groups of flowers which were to serve as patterns for her maiden's embroidery--had struck the chords of her lute with a careless but skilful hand, and talked for some ten minutes on a butterfly--she desired to be left alone.

Then however, when, with the door closed and the arras drawn, there was no eye upon her but that of Heaven, she once more gave way to all she felt. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" she cried, clasping her small hands, "to be thus treated by one whom I have so deeply loved--for whom I have done so much--for whose sake I sacrificed my nights and days, scattered my fortunes, left my state and station, took on me menial offices, put my life in peril, and even my good name to risk--and more, far more, for whom I forgot and pardoned those errors that women forget least easily, and loved him still, even when he sported with my love as a thing of nought! Oh, God! oh, God! that he who, if ever man yet believed the love of woman to be a pure and holy thing, should have held the feelings of my heart most sacred--that he should dare to talk to me the words of shame, the vile sophisms of guilt and infamy; that he should dream that I--I who have stood alone, in the midst of a depraved court, the wonder and hatred of them all--that I should become his paramour, his leman, to be held or discarded at his pleasure--to play him sweet airs upon the lute, and sing to him when he was in the mood, and be called the Italian mistress of the gay Count d'Aubin!" and, as she called up all the images of the degradation he had proposed, she strained her hands upon one another till the clear blood vanished from beneath the small finger nails; and she raised her dark eyes to heaven, as if asking, "Is it possible that God can permit such baseness."

"It is my own fault!" she cried at length; "it is my own fault! I should have known too well what a vile slave man is--how he licks the dust beneath our feet, so long as we tread upon his neck, and turns to smite us as soon as we smile upon him. I should have known it, and with haughty dignity and distant sternness commanded the love that I have stooped to win. It is my own fault, weak girl that I am--it is my own fault! He thought that she who could go masquerading in boy's attire, and make herself the companion of grooms and horse-boys for his sake--that she who could dare the perils of the camp in a strange guise--could come and go, at the risk of question and discovery, through the gates of a beleaguered city--could bind up his wounds with her own hands, and watch for fourteen nights by the side of his sick bed,--would surely refuse him nothing--no, not her honour. Or perhaps even now, in his profligacy of heart, he scoffs and jeers at the thought of my fastidiousness; or deems that, by a cunning device and affectation of virtue, I sought to patch up a ruined reputation by a marriage with him. He may hold me as some light wanton! Out upon him! out upon him! Did he but know the heart he tramples on!" and bursting into tears, she covered her face with her hands, and remained thus for several minutes in silent bitterness of heart.

The tears again seemed to relieve her; and at length she wiped them from her eyes, and looked out vacantly upon the gay and sunny landscape that lay stretched in bright confusion from the height on which the chateau stood, to some distant hills, that, rising again on the opposite side of a deep valley, towered up, now covered with green woods, now massed in the grey distance.

However resolutely the soul may hold itself within the citadel of the heart besieged by grief, the garrison of that sad fortress will be affected by the sight of things that pass beyond its limits. Sweet sounds, though we listen to them not, will tend to soothe; and pleasant objects, though the eye appears void of all remark, will tranquillize and calm. There were lovelier scenes to be found on earth, than that which lay beneath her sight, and Beatrice had seen many fairer far: but over it the sun, now slanting down towards his rest, was casting soft broad shadows; and now and then a slow passing cloud came, like the faint and pleasing shade of melancholy that sometimes steals upon our happiest moments, and touched the bright things below with a blue ethereal hue as it flitted on above them. Nothing was seen to move in the sky or on the earth, but that slow cloud and its soft shadow; but, on a bough before the window, a gay-hearted bird carolled volubly to the evening sun, mingling, however, now and then, with its blither notes, a tone or two in a sad minor key, which made its song harmonise both with the scene and with the heart of her who listened. I am wrong; the heart of Beatrice did not harmonise with it,--her bosom was full of griefs too deep, too lasting, to assimilate with the glad voice of nature; but still the melancholy tones so far chastened the cheerful song of the bird, that she could hear it and not think it harsh, and the shadows of that cloud were just sufficient to make her feel the brightness not blighting. She sat and gazed; and though neither her eye nor her ear marked anything with precision, she fell into a dreamy fit of musing, and that musing was softer and less bitter than it had been.

True, she thought of the course of her love, and of that love's blight. She knew that for her joys of life, the dreams, the hopes, the imaginings--all the green things of a happy heart, in short--were withered, and blasted, and shrivelled up, like the leaves of a bough broken off by the lightning. To be calm and passionless, sad and solitary, were the brightest aspirations which her once ardent bosom could harbour now; but still to think over such a state, was peace, to the bitter paroxysm that went before. Did she ever think that hope might revive in regard to him she had loved? Never! For though her love was not over--ah, no! and she would have given her fortune and her life to have blessed him; yet so lost was all her esteem and all her confidence, that could she have thought her heart would ever betray her into one weak fancy in regard to him, she would have torn it out to trample it beneath her feet. She loved him still, she knew, she felt she loved him; for her heart was as a pile of incense which that passion had lighted, and the fire could only be extinguished by the end of her own being; but still the dream, the bright and golden dream, of happiness was over; and not even love--that ardent and undying love, which was now an indivisible part of her being and her soul--could have bribed her, by the brightest promises of hope, to see that man again, or hear his lips pronounce one other word. No! bitterly, but fully, was she convinced at last of his unworthiness; and though she still loved the erring and earthly being whom her own imagination had purified and adorned, the dream of hope was at an end--the voice of the syren was mute: and yet a consolation gradually stole upon her heart, soothed the anguish and disappointment, and did away the indignation and disdain. On it, too, she framed the scheme of her future life, as she paused and thought of the coming years. That consolation was the conviction, the certainty, the indubitable assurance, that she was beloved; that he who had insulted and injured her--who had repaid her tenderness with ingratitude, and her confidence by baseness--still loved her deeply, passionately, and alone. What then was her resolution? Not to watch him farther, even through the eyes of others--not to seek for tidings of his actions, or to dream that he would amend; but on the contrary, to fly him far and for ever; to shut her ears against every rumour from the land in which he lived, and dead as he was to her, to consider him no more amongst the living; but still, as the balm and the comfort of the long after-years, to remember that she had been beloved--that, impure and dark as was the flame that had been lighted upon the altar of his heart, still it had been kindled, and had burned for her. This was to be the theme of memory--the occupation of her long, lonely hours--the matter for the immortal working of thought--the balsam for her wounded heart--the light of her long night of maiden widowhood,--that she had been loved by him she loved!

As she thus thought, and as she thus determined, the bitterness of her grief diminished. Dark and melancholy, indeed, was the fate that she pictured for herself, but yet it was relief, for it offered her tranquillity at least; and she had learned, amidst the strife of hope, and fear, and passion, to value God's best blessing--peace. Her meditations had been long, and had not exactly followed the even course in which they have been here detailed; for tears were not wanting to chequer them, nor many an angry and a bitter thought to struggle hard against the not unsound philosophy with which she sought to preserve, for future years, all, out of the bright harvest of her hopes now blighted, that had escaped the storm. But the tears grew less frequent, and the bitter pangs of disappointment waxed fainter, as the minutes flew; and at length, when she had determined how to shape her course through the rest of life's long and dangerous voyage, she raised her eyes once more to the heaven above and the landscape below; and the objects which met her gaze were more marked and noted now, than they had been not long before.

The change upon the scene, however, was but slight--the same bird was still tuning its unwearied throat in the tree hard by--the same unmoving stillness dwelt over the whole view--and not a living object was to be seen upon the solitary road that wound away through a thinly peopled part of the much-depopulated realm of France. But the shadows had grown longer, and the little stream which had lately glistened in the sunshine, now rested scarcely visible in the brown shade of the hills; and those changes, slight as they were, to a quick and imaginative mind like that of Beatrice, might well speak of time's rapid pace, and man's slow resolves. Stretching forth her hand to a small silver bell, she rung is sharply; and when the girl Annette appeared, bade her call Bartholo instantly.

It was not long before the dwarf obeyed the summons; and though he entered with that air of deference and respect, which was habitual to him in the presence of Beatrice, yet there was a gleam of satisfaction in his eye which he could not quell; and which, had she been in her usual keen and observing state of mind, would not have escaped the glance of his mistress. But Beatrice scarcely saw him as he stood before her; but sat with her eyes bent upon the ground, and her busy thoughts straying sorrowfully over the past.

"You sent for me, Madam," said the dwarf at length; "and I come joyfully, because I have not been thus honoured of late so often as I used formerly to be, when Bartholo's scheme, or Bartholo's advice was well nigh his lady's oracle."

"I have somewhat distrusted thee, Bartholo!" said Beatrice, gravely. "Many of my plans have failed in thy hands----"

"But by no fault of mine, lady!" cried the dwarf, eagerly. "What have I done to be distrusted? How have I deserved to lose your confidence? What secret have I betrayed? How have I acted to frustrate anything that you proposed?"

"Those, Bartholo," replied the lady, "those who suffer themselves to be discovered in their art, by open acts or heedless words, are politicians of a different stuff from that of which thou art made. But there are such things as looks, and smiles, and frowns, and curlings of the upper lip, which, to the eye of Beatrice of Ferrara, are often as legible as a book fairly printed in the language of her native land. I have somewhat doubted thee; but I may have been deceived--and God send it may be so! for I would not willingly believe that any one whom I have nourished with my bread, and have rewarded not only with dull gold, but also with inestimable favour and affection, would deceive or betray me; far less could I wish to think, that one who has known me from infancy, and on whom my parents, as well as myself, have rained benefits, would wrong my confidence."

"Lady!" replied the dwarf vehemently, "so help me Heaven, as I would sooner die than do ought that you do not wish, except for your own good!"

"Ay, there may we bitterly fall out, good Bartholo, if we speak farther!" replied Beatrice. "What I require is service, and not judgment of my actions; and henceforth let me but see that you even waver in obeying, or fulfil not my behest, whatever it may be, to the very letter, and I will send you from me never to return again. However, I somewhat doubted thee, and therefore have not trusted thee in matters where I required uninquiring promptitude and exact obedience. Those matters now are over, and a smoother trodden path lies out before me."

Bartholo started, for he had heard and marked much that had passed; and yet she spoke so calmly, that he deemed it impossible one of her passionate nature could bear the blight of all her hopes so meekly. "It has wrung my heart, lady," he said, in a tone of deep despondency, that touched Beatrice more at this moment than it might have done at any other, because grief is credulous of grief. "It has wrung my heart, lady, to have been distrusted by you for an hour, though the wound would have gone deeper had I deserved it. But you know not, lady, what it is, when one has been brought up from boyhood near so bright and good a person as yourself; has been habituated to watch your every word, to obey you, and to hasten before your wishes to please you; has become keen of wit and daring of execution for the sole service of your behests; and has watched you expand from loveliness to loveliness, like a flower in the spring tide--you know not what it is to be looked coldly on, even for a moment; to be distrusted by her whom one would give the inmost heart's best blood to serve."

The tone touched Beatrice, for it was unlike the dwarf's ordinary cynicism: but there was something in the words, though they were respectfully spoken, which did not please her; and she might have replied more coldly than the kindness of her heart approved, had not the dwarf gone on rapidly:--"At your birth, lady, I was little more than twelve years old; and from that hour to this, I have followed your fortunes and obeyed you in every word, even to quitting you when you bade me quit you, and taking apparent service, once with a man I hated, and once with a man I despised; and now I find that you have distrusted me, you have looked cold upon me, you have kept me from your presence! Lady, I beseech you, do not so again; rather as you say, send me from you for ever. Call me to you, and say, 'Bartholo, thou pleasest me no longer, get thee gone, and take thy stinted and misshapen form from before my eyes; let me see no more thy apish countenance! Despised of all the world, thou art despised of me also; and though the dwarf has been my sport and mockery, has stood in the place of parrot, or lapdog, or marmoset, I am now tired of the goblin; so get thee hence!' Say this! say a thousand things more biting and bitter still, but never, oh never, lady, distrust me again."

"Nay, Bartholo, nay!" replied Beatrice, better pleased with his last words than those that preceded them. "Thou goest too far, in the bitterness of thine anger. I have never contemned, I have never despised thee! and have felt pity for thy fate, less because it truly deserved pity, than because it grieved thee. As to the past, thou ownest thyself, that if thou hadst deemed my interest required it, thou wouldest have betrayed my confidence; I was just, therefore, in mistrusting thee; but it was thy vanity I doubted--vanity that must judge of my happiness better than I can myself--and not thy love, Bartholo, which I do verily believe would seek that happiness for me at the risk of life."

"Oh! never, never doubt that, lady!" cried the dwarf, casting himself at her feet, and kissing her hand; "never, never doubt that; for your utmost trust therein can only do me scanty justice."

Beatrice withdrew her hand. "Enough, enough!" she said. "We understand each other for the future. You always remember, that I am the best judge of my own happiness; and I----" He shook his head with a mournful look, and clasping his hands together, cast his eyes upon the ground. "What mean you, knave?" cried Beatrice, for his action interrupted her more than words could have done. "What would you by that gesture?"

"I would ask, lady," said the dwarf, in a firm but melancholy tone,--"If you have lately proved yourself so good a judge of your own happiness? Pardon me, my noble lady! Pardon me! but did I not long since predict all that has happened? Did I not tell you, when first you fixed your love on one whose name I will not pronounce, so deeply do I hate him for his conduct towards you----"

"Hate him not, Bartholo!" interrupted Beatrice, fixing her bright dark eyes upon the dwarf as she spoke--"hate him not, Bartholo; for I love him still! and he loves me!"

A bright flush played over the pale cheek of the dwarf, like a gleam of summer lightning upon the twilight sky, and his nether lip quivered; but for some moments he made no reply, except by again clasping his hands together, and gazing down upon the ground, as if in deep meditation. "Lady!" he said at length, "you love him still! I doubt it not; for yours is one of those firm hearts, on which a line once engraved can never be effaced. But alas, alas! he loves not you; and all your sad experience will not convince you, solely because you still love him."

"Not so, Bartholo," replied Beatrice. "All my experience convinces me that he does love me; and I thank God for it, though most likely I shall never see his face again. Do not interrupt me! For once I condescend to speak to you of my past and my future actions; but after this, we mention such things no more. I am not the weak being you believe me. I placed you in the service of Philip d'Aubin, now years ago, not that you might act as a spy for me upon each pitiful and insignificant occurrence of his life, or note every failing or every falsehood he committed against the vows he had plighted to me; but, on the contrary, to satisfy myself on two great points, whereon my future happiness depended, first, whether he loved me, and next, whether he might not become worthy of my love. When he left Paris and retired into Maine, shaken by still greater doubts, I determined to watch him myself more nearly, and made you prepare me an entrance into the family of his uncle; but it was still for those two great objects that I risked so much. Circumstances rendered this scheme nearly fruitless: the death of his uncle, his return towards Paris, his separation from his cousin, all thwarted me; but still, step by step, and little by little, his character developed itself before me. At length, hoping and confiding still, I had the man I loved, followed by my emissaries, traced from place to place, withdrawn from the fatal battle which ruined the cause he had espoused, and brought hither as thou knowest. Here I watched him from sickness unto health. Here the last trait of his character displayed itself. All is open--all is clear! My two questions are resolved! I am satisfied. He loves me, Bartholo! He does love me! But he is unworthy of my love!"

She spoke rapidly and eagerly, but she had by this time regained her command over herself; and not a tear rose in her eye, as she briefly touched upon the various efforts which love, deeper, stronger than even she herself believed, had urged her on to make, and upon the sad result of all her endeavours. As she ended, indeed, she raised her eyes to the sky; and, led away by memory, forgot the presence of the page and the conclusion of her speech, and, gazing out for many minutes, remained in silent but painful meditation. Still she gave no way to grief; and, after awhile, again turned towards the dwarf, saying--"Well, Bartholo, so much for the past! Now for the future. For eleven long years have I sojourned in this fair realm of France, but my stay therein draws towards an end. The last tie that bound me to this place is broken! My soul yearns towards my native land. Bartholo, I am about to tread back my way to Italy."

"Indeed! indeed!" cried the dwarf, his whole face brightening. "Then all is right, indeed. But when, lady--oh, tell me when?"

"I knew not that thou wert such a lover of thy native land!" replied Beatrice, as she gazed upon his small features beaming with a sort of triumphant joy. "I have heard thee call thyself a citizen of the world; and vow that nature, when she made thee smaller than the common race of other countries, by unfitting thee for any, had fitted thee for all alike. But I see that, smother our feelings however we may, the love of our own land will not give way so long as memory binds us to it with the thousand ties of sweet associations and early happiness. Well, be thy mind at ease! Eight days, eight short days, and I am on my way hence, unless some unforeseen event delay me. I have but to withdraw my poor girls from Paris, at least those that like to follow me; to place the somewhat wasted wealth which I have here under the protection of the laws, if the laws, indeed, can give protection now-a-day; to make sure of one point more, which will soon be settled, and then to depart."

The face of the dwarf, which, during the whole of his interview with his lady, had been agitated with strong feelings either of mortification or of joy, now at once resumed the look of calm bitter cynicism, which, though perhaps more natural to his features, was, at all events, more habitual. "Ay, lady!" he said, "so it is ever! There is ever one point more to be made sure of when a lady's love and her judgment lead her different ways; and that one point more will very surely keep your steps from Italy. So I will e'en go and sing."

"Knave, thou art somewhat too bold!" cried Beatrice. "I have pampered thee too much, and made thee insolent; but thou shalt be better taught in future!"

"Not so, lady, not so!" cried the dwarf, in a deprecatory tone. "Forgive the first outbreaking of my disappointment. I thought our journey to Italy sure, when suddenly came that '_one point more_;' and I know human nature all too well to doubt, that upon one small point love can raise up such mighty prison-walls, that the best climber, ere he could escape, would break his neck in the attempt to scale them."

"Like others who fancy they know human nature well," answered Beatrice, "thou cheatest thyself with thine own imaginations. That one point more will not detain me here; but whether thy curiosity regarding it--and which I clearly see--originate in folly or in policy, it shall not be gratified. Content thyself with what I choose to tell thee, and ask no more! And now listen to my commands. Make every preparation for a journey; and in regard to this house, on which I have wasted so much wealth that might have been better spent, take order that, if possible, it be guarded against the chances of these civil wars till peace be again established. You understand what I would have. When law is once more recognised in France, perchance it and the hotel in Paris may be sold, and I have nothing more in a land that I no longer love. Now get thee hence and leave me; but let all things be done quickly."

The dwarf replied nothing, but retired at once; and Beatrice, after following him with her eyes to the door, sat for several moments in silence, with an air of anxious thought. "I doubt that imp!" she said at length. "I doubt that imp! There has of late been a fire and an eagerness in his words when he speaks to me that I love not; and I have remarked that his eyes, when he thinks that mine are not on him, have a somewhat bold familiarity with my person." And as she thus thought, a slight shudder passed over her. "I doubt him," she went on; "and he is bold, and cunning, and politic, to a point rarely reached by those whose communion with their fellow-men is more extended than his, and who, consequently, find a thousand things to call their attention from their darling schemes. I doubt him, and will have him watched! I fear he may have betrayed me already, but he shall do so no more. Annette!" she cried aloud, "Annette!"

The girl appeared, and her mistress bade her send Joachim to her. Some minutes then elapsed; but at length appeared the old man who had so skilfully managed the little comedy which had enabled Beatrice and Eugenie de Menancourt to pass the gates of Paris. "Joachim!" said his mistress, as he entered, "have a strict watch put upon the dwarf Bartholo: I doubt him; I doubt his faith and honesty."

"And so do I, lady," replied the man. "I myself heard you command him not to show himself in the sight of the Count d'Aubin, and to my certain knowledge he visited him alone in his chamber."

"Indeed!" said Beatrice, thoughtfully; "indeed! That may mean much! But have him watched, without making it apparent. Quick, Joachim! You, at least, I can trust."

"You may, dear lady!" replied the old man, laying his hand upon his breast; and then, bowing low, he left Beatrice to long, deep, anxious thought.