Vittoria — Complete by George Meredith (e novels for free .TXT) 📕

“What of your mistress?” said Merthyr.

“When she dies, my dear master, there's no one for me but the Madonna to serve.”

“Why should she die, silly fellow?”

“Because she never cries.”

Merthyr was on the point of saying, “Why should she cry?” His heart was too full, and he shrank from inquisitive shadows of the thing known to him.

“Sit down at this caffe with me,” he said. “It's fine weather for March. The troops will camp comfortably. Those Hungarians never require tents. Did you see much sacking of villages last year?”

“Padrone, the Imperial command is always to spare the villages.”

“That's humane.”

“Padrone, yes; if policy is humanity.”

“It's humanity not carried quite as far as we should wish it.”

Beppo shrugged and said: “It won't leave much upon the conscience if we kill them.”

“Do you expect a rising?” said Merthyr.

“If the Ticino overflows, it will flood Milan,” was the answer.

“And your occupation now is to watch the height of the water?”

“My occupation, padrone? I am not on the watch-tower.” Beppo winked, adding: “I have my occupation.” He threw off the effort or pretence to be discreet. “Master of my soul! this is my occupation. I drink coffee, but I do not smoke, because I have to kiss a pretty girl, who means to object to the smell of the smoke. Via! I know her! At five she draws me into the house.”

“Are you relating your amours to me, rascal?” Merthyr interposed.

“Padrone, at five precisely she draws me into the house. She is a German girl. Pardon me if I make no war on women. Her name is Aennchen, which one is able to say if one grimaces;—why not? It makes her laugh; and German girls are amiable when one can make them laugh. 'Tis so that they begin to melt. Behold the difference of races! I must kiss her to melt her, and then have a quarrel. I could have it after the first, or the fiftieth with an Italian girl; but my task will be excessively difficult with a German girl, if I am compelled to allow myself to favour her with one happy solicitation for a kiss, to commence with. We shall see. It is, as my abstention from tobacco declares, an anticipated catastrophe.”

“Long-worded, long-winded, obscure, affirmatizing by negatives, confessing by implication!—where's the beginning and end of you, and what's your meaning?” said Merthyr, who talked to him as one may talk to an Italian servant.

“The contessa, my mistress, has enemies. Padrone, I devote myself to her service.”

“By making love to a lady's maid?”

“Padrone, a rat is not born to find his way up the grand staircase. She has enemies. One of them was the sublime Barto Rizzo—admirable—though I must hate him. He said to his wife: 'If a thing happens to me, stab to the heart the Countess Alessandra Ammiani.'”

“Inform me how you know that?” said Merthyr.

Beppo pointed to his head, and Merthyr smiled. To imagine, invent, and believe, were spontaneous with Beppo when has practical sagacity was not on the stretch. He glanced at the caffe clock.

“Padrone, at eleven to-night shall I see you here? At eleven I shall come like a charged cannon. I have business. I have seen my mistress's blood! I will tell you: this German girl lets me know that some one detests my mistress. Who? I am off to discover. But who is the damned creature? I must coo and kiss, while my toes are dancing on hot plates, to find her out. Who is she? If she were half Milan...”

His hands waved in outline the remainder of the speech, and he rose, but sat again. He had caught sight of the spy, Luigi Saracco, addressing the signor Antonio-Pericles in his carriage. Pericles drove on. The horses presently turned, and he saluted Merthyr.

“She has but one friend in Milan: it is myself,” was his introductory remark. “My poor child! my dear Powys, she is the best—'I cannot sing to you to-day, dear Pericles'—she said that after she had opened her eyes; after the first mist, you know. She is the best child upon earth. I could wish she were a devil, my Powys. Such a voice should be in an iron body. But she has immense health. The doctor, who is also mine, feels her pulse. He assures me it goes as Time himself, and Time, my friend, you know, has the intention of going a great way. She is good: she is too good. She makes a baby of Pericles, to whom what is woman? Have I not the sex in my pocket? Her husband, he is a fool, ser.” Pericles broke thundering into a sentence of English, fell in love with it, and resumed in the same tongue: “I—it is I zat am her guard, her safety. Her husband—oh! she must marry a young man, little donkey zat she is! We accept it as a destiny, my Powys. And he plays false to her. Good; I do not object. But, imagine in your own mind, my Powys—instead of passion, of rage, of tempest, she is frozen wiz a repose. Do you, hein? sink it will come out,”—Pericles eyed Merthyr with a subtle smile askew,—“I have sot so;—it will come out when she is one day in a terrible scene ... Mon Dieu! it was a terrible scene for me when I looked on ze clout zat washed ze blood of ze terrible assassination. So goes out a voice, possibly! Divine, you say? We are a machine. Now, you behold, she has faints. It may happen at my concert where she sings to-morrow night. You saw me in my carriage speaking to a man. He is my spy—my dog wiz a nose. I have set him upon a woman. If zat woman has a plot for to-morrow night to spoil my concert, she shall not know where she shall wake to-morrow morning after. Ha! here is military music—twenty sossand doors jam on horrid hinge; and right, left, right, left, to it, confound! like dolls all wiz one face. Look at your soldiers, Powys. Put zem on a stage, and you see all background people—a bawling chorus. It shows to you how superior it is—a stage to life! Hark to such music! I cannot stand it; I am driven away; I am violent; I rage.”

Pericles howled the name of his place of residence, with an offer of lodgings in it, and was carried off writhing his body as he passed a fine military marching band.

The figure of old Agostino Balderini stood in front of Merthyr. They exchanged greetings. At the mention of Rome, Agostino frowned impatiently. He spoke of Vittoria in two or three short exclamations, and was about to speak of Carlo, but checked his tongue. “Judge for yourself. Come, and see, and approve, if you can. Will you come? There's a meeting; there's to be a resolution. Question—Shall we second the King of Sardinia, Piedmont, and Savoy? If so, let us set this pumpkin, called Milan, on its legs. I shall be an attentive listener like you, my friend. I speak no more.”

Merthyr went with him to the house of a carpenter, where in one of the