To Ellena’s tender reproach for this melancholy suggestion Bianchi replied only by expressing an earnest wish to witness the certainty of her being protected; adding, that this must be soon, or she should not live to see it. Ellena, extremely shocked both by this presage of her aunt’s fate, and by the direct reference made to her own condition in the presence of Vivaldi, burst into tears, while he, supported by the wishes of Signora Bianchi, urged his suit with encreased interest.
“This is not a time for fastidious scruples,” said Bianchi, “now that a solemn truth calls out to us. My dear girl, I will not disguise my feelings; they assure me I have not long to live. Grant me then the only request I have to make, and my last hours will be comforted.”
After a pause she added, as she took the hand of her niece, “This will, no doubt, be an awful separation to us both; and it must also be a mournful one, Signor,” turning to Vivaldi, “for she has been as a daughter to me, and I have, I trust, fulfilled to her the duties of a mother. Judge then, what will be her feelings when I am no more. But it will be your care to sooth them.”
Vivaldi looked at Ellena, and would have spoken; her aunt, however, proceeded. “My own feelings would now be little less poignant, if I did not believe that I was confiding her to a tenderness, which cannot diminish; that I should prevail with her to accept the protection of a husband. To you, Signor, I commit the legacy of my child. Watch over her future moments, guard her from inquietude as vigilantly as I have done, and, if possible, from misfortune! I have yet much to say, but my spirits are exhausted.”
While he listened to this sacred charge, and recollected the injury Ellena had already sustained for his sake, by the cruel obliquy which the Marchese had thrown upon her character, he suffered a degree of generous indignation, f which he scarcely could conceal the cause, and a succeeding tenderness that almost melted him to tears; and he secretly vowed to defend her fame and protect her peace, at the sacrifice of every other consideration.
Bianchi, as she concluded her exhortation, gave Ellena’s hand to Vivaldi, who received it with emotion such as his countenance, only, could express, and with solemn fervour raising his eyes to heaven, vowed that he never would betray the confidence thus reposed in him, but would watch over the happiness of Ellena with a care as tender, as anxious, and as unceasing as her own; that from this moment he considered himself bound by ties not less sacred than those which the church confers, to defend her as his wife, and would do so to the latest moment of his existence. As he said this, the truth of his feelings appeared in the energy of his manner.
Ellena, still weeping, and agitated by various considerations, spoke not, but with drawing the handkerchief from her face, she looked at him through her tears, with a smile so meek, so affectionate, so timid, yet so confiding, as expressed all the mingled emotions of her heart, and appealed more eloquently to his, than the most energetic language could have done.
Before Vivaldi left the villa, he had some further conversation with Signora Bianchi, when it was agreed that the nuptials should be solemnized on the following week, if Ellena could be prevailed on to confirm her consent so soon; and that when he returned the next day, her determination would probably be made known to him.
He departed for Naples once more with the lightly-bounding steps of joy, which, however, when he arrived there, was somewhat alloyed by a message from the Marchese, demanding to see him in his cabinet. Vivaldi anticipated the subject of the interview, and obeyed the summons with reluctance.
He found his father so absorbed in thought, that he did not immediately perceive him. On raising his eyes from the floor, where discontent and perplexity seemed to have held them, he fixed a stern regard on Vivaldi. “I understand,” said he, “that you persist in the unworthy pursuit against which I warned you. I have left you thus long to your own discretion, because I was willing to afford you an opportunity of retracting with grace the declaration, which you have dared to make me of your principles and intentions; but your conduct has not therefore been the less observed. I am informed that your visits have been as frequent at the residence of the unhappy young woman, who was the subject of our former conversation, as formerly, and that you are as much insatuated.”
“If it is Signora Rosalba, whom your lordship means,” said Vivaldi, “she is not unhappy; and I do not scruple to own, that I am as sincerely attached to her as ever. Why, my dear father,” continued he, subduing the feelings which this degrading mention of Ellena had aroused, “why will you persist in opposing the happiness of your son; and above all, why will you continue to think unjustly of her, who deserves your admiration, as much as my love?”
“As I am not a lover,” replied the Marchese, “and that the age of boyish credulity is past with me, I do not wilfully close my mind against examination, but am directed by proof and yield to conviction.”
“What proof is it, my Lord, that has thus easily convinced you?” said Vivaldi; “Who is it that persists in abusing your confidence, and in destroying my peace?”
The Marchese haughtily reproved his son for such doubts and questions, and a long conversation ensued, which seemed neither to reconcile the interests or the opinions of either party. The Marchese persisted in accusation and menace; and Vivaldi in defending Ellena, and in affirming, that his affections and intentions were irrecoverable.
Not any art of persuasion could prevail with the Marchese to adduce his proofs, or deliver up the name of his informer; nor any menace awe Vivaldi into a renunciation of Ellena; and they parted mutually dissatisfied. The Marchese had failed on this occasion to act with his usual policy, for his menaces and accusations had aroused spirit and indignation, when kindness and gentle remonstrance would certainly have awakened filial affection, and might have occasioned a contest in the breast of Vivaldi, Now, no struggle of opposing duties divided his resolution. He had no hesitation on the subject of their dispute; but, regarding his father as a haughty oppressor who would rob him of his most sacred right; and as one who did not scruple to stain the name of the innocent and the defenceless, when his interest required it, upon the doubtful authority of a base informer, he suffered neither pity or remorse to mingle with the resolution of asserting the freedom of his nature; and was even more anxious than before, to conclude a marriage which he believed would secure his own happiness, and the reputation of Ellena.
He returned, therefore, on the following day to the villa Altieri, with encreased impatience to learn the result of Signora Bianchi’s further conversation with her niece, and the day on which the nuptials might be solemnized. On the way thither, his thoughts were wholly occupied by Ellena, and he proceeded mechanically, and without observing where he was, till the shade which the wellknown arch threw over the road recalled him to local circumstances, and a voice instantly arrested his attention. It was the voice of the monk, whose figure again passed before him. “Go not to the villa Altieri,” it said solemnly, “for death is in the house!”
Before Vivaldi could recover from the dismay into which this abrupt assertion and sudden appearance had thrown him, the stranger was gone. He had escaped in the gloom of the place, and seemed to have retired into the obscurity, from which he had so suddenly emerged, for he was not seen to depart from under the archway. Vivaldi pursued him with his voice, conjuring him to appear, and demanding who was dead; but no voice replied.
Believing that the stranger could not have escaped unseen from the arch by any way, but that leading to the fortress above, Vivaldi began to ascend the steps, when, considering that the more certain means of understanding this awful assertion would be, to go immediately to the villa Altieri, he left this portentous ruin, and hastened thither.
An indifferent person would probably have understood the words of the monk to allude to Signora Bianchi, whose infirm state of health rendered her death, though sudden, not improbable; but to the affrighted fancy of Vivaldi, the dying Ellena only appeared. His fears, however probabilities might sanction, or the event justify them, were natural to a
rdent affection; but they were accompanied by a presentiment as extraordinary as it was horrible; — it occurred to him more than once, that Ellena was murdered. He saw her wounded, and bleeding to death; saw her ashy countenance, and her wasting eyes, from which the spirit of life was fast departing, turned piteously on himself, as if imploring him to save her from the fate that was dragging her to the grave. And, when he reached the boundary of the garden, his whole frame trembled so, with horrible apprehension, that he rested a while, unable to venture further towards the truth. At length, he summoned courage to dare it, and, unlocking a private gate, of which he had lately received the key, because it spared him a considerable distance of the road to Naples, he approached the house. Every place around it was silent and forsaken; many of the lattices were closed, and, as he endeavoured to collect from every trivial circumstance some conjecture, his spirits still sunk as he advanced, till, having arrived within a few paces of the portico, all his fears were confirmed. He heard from within a feeble sound of lamentation, and then some notes of that solemn and peculiar kind of recitative, which is in some parts of Italy the requiem of the dying. The sounds were so low and distant that they only murmured on his ear; but, without pausing for information, he rushed into the portico, and knocked loudly at the folding doors, now closed against him.
After repeated summonses, Beatrice, the old housekeeper, appeared. She did not wait for Vivaldi’s enquiries. “Alas! Signor,” said she, “alas-a-day! who would have thought it; who would have expected such a change as this! It was only yester-evening that you was here, — she was then as well as I am; who would have thought that she would be dead to-day?”
“She is dead, then!” exclaimed Vivaldi, struck to the heart; “she is dead!” staggering towards a pillar of the hall, and endeavouring to support himself against it. Beatrice, shocked at his condition, would have gone for assistance, but he waved her to stay. “When did she die,” said he, drawing breath with difficulty, “how and where?”
“Alas! here in the villa, Signor,” replied Beatrice, weeping; “who would have thought that I should live to see this day! I hoped to have laid down my old bones in peace.”
“What has caused her death?” interrupted Vivaldi impatiently, “and when did she die?”
“About two of the clock this morning, Signor; about two o’clock. O miserable day, that I should live to see it!”
“I am better,” said Vivaldi, raising himself; “lead me to her apartment, — I must see her. Do not hesitate, lead me on.”
“Alas! Signor, it is a dismal sight; why should you wish to see her? Be persuaded; do not go, Signor; it is a woeful sight!”
“Lead me on,” repeated Vivaldi sternly; “or if you refuse, I will find the way myself.”
Beatrice, terrified by his look and gesture, no longer opposed him, begging only that he would wait till she had informed her lady of his arrival; but he followed her closely up the staircase and along a corridor that led round the west side of the house, which brought him to a suite of chambers darkened by the closed lattices, through which he passed towards the one where the body lay. The requiem had ceased, and no sound disturbed the awful stillness that prevailed in these deserted rooms. At the door of the last apartment, where he was compelled to stop, his agitation was such, that Beatrice, expecting every instant to see him sink to the floor, made an effort to support him with her feeble aid, but he gave a signal for her to retire. He soon recovered himself and passed into the chamber of death, the solemnity of which might have affected him in any other state of his spirits; but these were now too severely pressed upon by real suffering to feel the influence of local circumstances. Approaching the bed on which the corpse was laid, he raised his eyes to the mourner who hung weeping over it, and beheld — Ellena! who, surprized by this sudden intrusion, and still more by the agitation of Vivaldi, repeatedly demanded the occasion of it. But he had neither power or inclination to explain a circumstance, which must deeply would the heart of Ellena, since it would have told that the same event, which excited her grief, accidentally inspired his joy.
He did not long intrude upon the sacredness of sorrow, and the short time he remained was employed in endeavours to command his own emotion and to soothe her’s.
When he left Ellena, he had some conversation with Beatrice, as to the death of Signora Bianchi, and understood that she had retired to rest on the preceding night apparently in her usual state of health. “It was about one in the morning, Signor,” continued Beatrice, “I was waked out of my first sleep by a noise in my lady’s chamber. It is a grievous thing to me, Signor, to be waked from my first sleep, and I, Santa Maria forgive me! was angry at being disturbed! So I would not get up, but laid my head upon the pillow again, and tried to sleep; but presently I heard the noise again; nay now, says I, somebody must be up in the house, that’s certain. I had scarcely said so, Signor, when I heard my young lady’s voice calling ‘Beatrice! Beatrice!’Ah! poor young lady! she was indeed in a sad fright, as well she might. She was at my door in an instant, and looked as pale as death, and trembled so!’Beatrice,’ said she,’rise this moment; my aunt is dying.’She did not stay for my answer, but was gone directly. Santa Maria protect me! I thought I should have swooned outright.”
“Well, but your lady?” said Vivaldi, whose patience the tedious circumlocution of old Beatrice had exhausted.
“Ah! my poor lady! Signor, I thought I never should have been able to reach her room; and when I got there, I was scarcely more alive than herself. — There she lay on her bed! O it was a grievous sight to see! there she lay, looking so piteously; I saw she was dying. She could not speak, though she tried often, but she was sensible, for she would look so at Signora Ellena, and then try again to speak; it almost broke one’s heart to see her. Something seemed to lie upon her mind, and she tried almost to the last to tell it; and as she grasped Signora Ellena’s hand, she would still look up in her face with such doleful expression as no one who had not a heart of stone could bear. My poor young mistress was quite overcome by it, and cried as if her heart would break. Poor young lady! she has lost a friend indeed, such a one as she must never hope to see again.”
“But she shall find one as firm and affectionate as the last!” exclaimed Vivaldi fervently.
“The good Saint grant it may prove so!” replied Beatrice, doubtingly. “All that could be done for our dear lady,” she continued, “was tried, but with no avail. She could not swallow what the Doctor offered her. She grew fainter and fainter, yet would often utter such deep sighs, and then would grasp my hand so hard! At last she turned her eyes from Signora Ellena, and they grew duller and fixed, and she seemed not to see what was before her. Alas! I knew then she was going; her hand did not press mine as it had done a minute or two before, and a deadly coldness was upon it. Her face changed so too in a few minutes! This was about two o’clock, and she died before her confessor could administer.”
Beatrice ceased to speak, and wept; Vivaldi almost wept with her, and it was some time before he could command his voice sufficiently to enquire, what were the symptoms of Signora Bianchi’s disorder, and whether she had ever been thus suddenly attacked before.
“Never, Signor!” replied the old housekeeper; “and though, to be sure, she has long been very infirm, and going down, as one may say, yet,” —
“What is it you mean?” said Vivaldi. “Why, Signor, I do not know what to think about my lady’s death. To be sure, there is nothing certain; and I may only get scoffed at, if I speak my mind abroad, for nobody would believe me, it is so strange, yet I must have my own thoughts, for all that.”
“Do speak intelligibly,” said Vivaldi, “you need not apprehend censure from me.”
“Not from you, Signor, but if the report should get abroad, and it was known that I had set it a-going.”
“That never shall be known from me,” said Vivaldi, with encreased impatience, “tell me, without fear, all that you conjecture.”
“Well then, Signor, I will own, th
at I do not like the suddenness of my lady’s death, no, nor the manner of it, nor her appearance after death!”
“Speak explicitly, and to the point,” said Vivaldi.
“Nay, Signor, there are some folks that will not understand if you speak ever so plain, I am sure I speak plain enough. If I might tell my mind, — I do not believe she came fairly by her death at last!”
“How!” said Vivaldi, “your reasons?”
“Nay, Signor, I have given them already; I said I did not like the suddenness of her death, nor her appearance after, nor” —
“Good heaven!” interrupted Vivaldi, “you mean poison!”
“Hush, Signor, hush! I do not say that; but she did not seem to die naturally.”
“Who has been at the villa lately?” said Vivaldi, in a tremulous voice.
“Alas! Signor, nobody has been here; she lived so privately that she saw nobody.”
“Not one person?” said Vivaldi, “consider well, Beatrice, had she no visitor?”
“Not of a long while, Signor, no visitors but yourself and her cousin Signor Giotto. The only other person that has been within these walls for many weeks, to the best of my remembrance, is a sister of the Convent, who comes for the silks my young lady embroiders.”
Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) Page 169