Perhaps this beneficial change, slight but still delightful, might be attributed to the softness and the splendour of the morn. Before the approach of winter, it seemed that the sun was resolved to remind the Venetians that they were his children; and that, although his rays might be soon clouded for a season, they were not to believe that their parent had deserted them. The sea was like glass, a golden haze suffused the horizon, and a breeze, not strong enough to disturb the waters, was wafted at intervals from the gardens of the Brenta, fitful and sweet.
Venetia had yielded to the suggestion of her mother, and had agreed for the first time to leave the palace. They stepped into their gondola, and were wafted to an island in the Lagune where there was a convent, and, what in Venice was more rare and more delightful, a garden. Its scanty shrubberies sparkled in the sun; and a cypress flanked by a pine-tree offered to the eye unused to trees a novel and picturesque group. Beneath its shade they rested, watching on one side the distant city, and on the other the still and gleaming waters of the Adriatic. While they were thus sitting, renovated by the soft air and pleasant spectacle, a holy father, with a beard like a meteor, appeared and addressed them.
‘Welcome to St. Lazaro!’ said the holy father, speaking in English; ‘and may the peace that reigns within its walls fill also your breasts!’
‘Indeed, holy father,’ said Lady Annabel to the Armenian monk, ‘I have long heard of your virtues and your happy life.’
‘You know that Paradise was placed in our country,’ said the monk with a smile. ‘We have all lost Paradise, but the Armenian has lost his country too. Nevertheless, with God’s blessing, on this islet we have found an Eden, pure at least and tranquil.’
‘For the pious, Paradise exists everywhere,’ said Lady Annabel.
‘You have been in England, holy father?’ said Venetia.
‘It has not been my good fortune,’ replied the monk.
‘Yet you speak our tongue with a facility and accent that surprise me.’
‘I learnt it in America where I long resided,’ rejoined the Armenian.
‘This is for your eye, lady,’ continued the monk, drawing a letter from his bosom.
Lady Annabel felt not a little surprised; but the idea immediately occurred to her that it was some conventual memorial appealing to her charity. She took the paper from the monk, who immediately moved away; but what was the agitation of Lady Annabel when she recognised the handwriting of her husband! Her first thought was to save Venetia from sharing that agitation. She rose quickly; she commanded herself sufficiently to advise her daughter, in a calm tone, to remain seated, while for a moment she refreshed herself by a stroll. She had not quitted Venetia many paces, when she broke the seal and read these lines:
‘Tremble not, Annabel, when you recognise this handwriting. It is that of one whose only aspiration is to contribute to your happiness; and although the fulfilment of that fond desire may be denied him, it never shall be said, even by you, that any conduct of his should now occasion you annoyance. I am in Venice at the peril of my life, which I only mention because the difficulties inseparable from my position are the principal cause that you did not receive this communication immediately after our strange meeting. I have gazed at night upon your palace, and watched the forms of my wife and our child; but one word from you, and I quit Venice for ever, and it shall not be my fault if you are ever again disturbed by the memory of the miserable Herbert.
‘But before I go, I will make this one appeal if not to your justice, at least to your mercy. After the fatal separation of a life, we have once more met: you have looked upon me not with hatred; my hand has once more pressed yours; for a moment I indulged the impossible hope, that this weary and exhausted spirit might at length be blessed. With agony I allude to the incident that dispelled the rapture of this vision. Sufficient for me most solemnly to assure you that four-and-twenty hours had not elapsed without that feeble and unhallowed tie being severed for ever! It vanished instantaneously before the presence of my wife and my child. However you decide, it can never again subsist: its utter and eternal dissolution was the inevitable homage to your purity.
‘Whatever may have been my errors, whatever my crimes, for I will not attempt to justify to you a single circumstance of my life, I humble myself in the dust before you, and solicit only mercy; yet whatever may have been my career, ah! Annabel, in the infinite softness of your soul was it not for a moment pardoned? Am I indeed to suffer for that last lamentable intrusion? You are a woman, Annabel, with a brain as clear as your heart is pure. Judge me with calmness, Annabel; were there no circumstances in my situation to extenuate that deplorable connection? I will not urge them; I will not even intimate them; but surely, Annabel, when I kneel before you full of deep repentance and long remorse, if you could pardon the past, it is not that incident, however mortifying to you, however disgraceful to myself, that should be an impassable barrier to all my hopes!
‘Once you loved me; I ask you not to love me now. There is nothing about me now that can touch the heart of woman. I am old before my time; bent with the blended influence of action and of thought, and of physical and moral suffering. The play of my spirit has gone for ever. My passions have expired like my hopes. The remaining sands of my life are few. Once it was otherwise: you can recall a different picture of the Marmion on whom you smiled, and of whom you were the first love. O Annabel! grey, feeble, exhausted, penitent, let me stagger over your threshold, and die! I ask no more; I will not hope for your affection; I will not even count upon your pity; but endure my presence; let your roof screen my last days!’
It was read; it was read again, dim as was the sight of Lady Annabel with fast-flowing tears. Still holding the letter, but with hands fallen, she gazed upon the shining waters before her in a fit of abstraction. It was the voice of her child that roused her.
‘Mother,’ said Venetia in a tone of some decision, ‘you are troubled, and we have only one cause of trouble. That letter is from my father.’
Lady Annabel gave her the letter in silence.
Venetia withdrew almost unconsciously a few paces from her mother. She felt this to be the crisis of her life. There never was a moment which she believed required more fully the presence of all her energies. Before she had addressed Lady Annabel, she had endeavoured to steel her mind to great exertion. Yet now that she held the letter, she could not command herself sufficiently to read it. Her breath deserted her; her hand lost its power; she could not even open the lines on which perhaps her life depended. Suddenly, with a rapid effort, she glanced at the contents. The blood returned to her check; her eye became bright with excitement; she gasped for breath; she advanced to Lady Annabel. ‘Ah! mother,’ she exclaimed, ‘you will grant all that it desires!’
Still gazing on the wave that laved the shore of the island with an almost inperceptible ripple, Lady Annabel continued silent.
‘Mother,’ said Venetia, ‘my beloved mother, you hesitate.’ She approached Lady Annabel, and with one arm round her neck, she grasped with the other her mother’s hand. ‘I implore you, by all that affection which you lavish on me, yield to this supplication. O mother! dearest mother! it has been my hope that my life has been at least a life of duty; I have laboured to yield to all your wishes. I have struggled to make their fulfilment the law of my being. Yes! mother, your memory will assure you, that when the sweetest emotions of my heart were the stake, you appealed to me to sacrifice them, and they were dedicated to your will. Have I ever murmured? I have sought only to repay your love by obedience. Speak to me, dearest mother! I implore you speak to me! Tell me, can you ever repent relenting in this instance? O mother! you will not hesitate; you will not indeed; you will bring joy and content to our long-harassed hearth! Tell me so; I beseech you tell me so! I wish, oh! how I wish, that you would comply from the mere impulse of your own heart! But, grant that it is a sacrifice; grant that it may be unwise; that it may be vain; I supplicate you to make it! I, your child, who never deserted you, who will never desert you, pledging my faith to you in the face of heaven; for my sake, I supplicate you to make it. You do not hesitate; you cannot hesitate; mother, you cannot hesitate. Ah! you would not if you knew all; if you knew all the misery of my life, you would be glad; you would be cheerful; you would look upon this as an interposition of Providence in favour of your Venetia; you would, indeed, dear mother!’
‘What evil fortune guided our steps to Italy?’ said Lady Annabel in a solemn tone, and as if in soliloquy.
‘No, no, mother; not evil fortune; fortune the best and brightest,’ exclaimed her daughter, ‘We came here to be happy, and happiness we have at length gained. It is in our grasp; I feel it. It was not fortune, dear mother! it was fate, it was Providence, it was God. You have been faithful to Him, and He has brought back to you my father, chastened and repentant. God has turned his heart to all your virtues. Will you desert him? No, no, mother, you will not, you cannot; for his sake, for your own sake, and for your child’s, you will not!’
‘For twenty years I have acted from an imperious sense of duty,’ said Lady Annabel, ‘and for your sake, Venetia, as much as for my own. Shall the feelings of a moment —’
‘O mother! dearest mother! say not these words. With me, at least, it has not been the feeling of a moment. It haunted my infancy; it harassed me while a girl; it has brought me in the prime of womanhood to the brink of the grave. And with you, mother, has it been the feeling of a moment? Ah! you ever loved him, when his name was never breathed by those lips. You loved him when you deemed he had forgotten you; when you pictured him to yourself in all the pride of health and genius, wanton and daring; and now, now that he comes to you penitent, perhaps dying, more like a remorseful spirit than a breathing being, and humbles himself before you, and appeals only to your mercy, ah! my mother, you cannot reject, you could not reject him, even if you were alone, even if you had no child!’
‘My child! my child! all my hopes were in my child,’ murmured Lady Annabel.
‘Is she not by your side?’ said Venetia.
‘You know not what you ask; you know not what you counsel,’ said Lady Annabel. ‘It has been the prayer and effort of my life that you should never know. There is a bitterness in the reconciliation which follows long estrangement, that yields a pang more acute even than the first disunion. Shall I be called upon to mourn over the wasted happiness of twenty years? Why did he not hate us?’
‘The pang is already felt, mother,’ said Venetia. ‘Reject my father, but you cannot resume the feelings of a month back. You have seen him; you have listened to him. He is no longer the character which justified your conduct, and upheld you under the trial. His image has entered your soul; your heart is softened. Bid him quit Venice without seeing you, and you will remain the most miserable of women.’
‘On his head, then, be the final desolation,’ said Lady Annabel; ‘it is but a part of the lot that he has yielded me.’
‘I am silent,’ said Venetia, relaxing her grasp. ‘I see that your child is not permitted to enter into your considerations.’ She turned away.
‘Venetia!’ said her mother.
‘Mother!’ said Venetia, looking back, but not returning.
‘Return one moment to me.’
Venetia slowly rejoined her. Lady Annabel spoke in a kind and gentle, though serious tone.
‘Venetia,’ she said, ‘what I am about to speak is not the impulse of the moment, but has been long revolved in my mind; do not, therefore, misapprehend it. I express without passion what I believe to be truth. I am persuaded that the presence of your father is necessary to your happiness; nay, more, to your life. I recognise the mysterious influence which he has ever exercised over your existence. I feel it impossible for me any longer to struggle against a power to which I bow. Be happy, then, my daughter, and live. Fly to your father, and be to him as matchless a child as you have been to me.’ She uttered these last words in a choking voice.
‘Is this, indeed, the dictate of your calm judgment, mother?’ said Venetia.
‘I call God to witness, it has of late been more than once on my lips. The other night, when I spoke of Rovigo, I was about to express this.’
‘Then, mother!’ said Venetia, ‘I find that I have been misunderstood. At least I thought my feelings towards yourself had been appreciated. They have not; and I can truly say, my life does not afford a single circumstance to which I can look back with content. Well will it indeed be for me to die?’
‘The dream of my life,’ said Lady Annabel, in a tone of infinite distress, ‘was that she, at least, should never know unhappiness. It was indeed a dream.’
There was now a silence of several minutes. Lady Annabel remained in exactly the same position, Venetia standing at a little distance from her, looking resigned and sorrowful.
‘Venetia,’ at length said Lady Annabel, ‘why are you silent?’
‘Mother, I have no more to say. I pretend not to act in this life; it is my duty to follow you.’
‘And your inclination?’ inquired Lady Annabel.
‘I have ceased to have a wish upon any subject,’ said Venetia.
‘Venetia,’ said Lady Annabel, with a great effort, ‘I am miserable.’
This unprecedented confession of suffering from the strong mind of her mother, melted Venetia to the heart. She advanced, and threw her arms round her mother’s neck, and buried her weeping face in Lady Annabel’s bosom.
‘Speak to me, my daughter,’ said Lady Annabel; ‘counsel me, for my mind trembles; anxiety has weakened it. Nay, I beseech you, speak. Speak, speak, Venetia. What shall I do?’
‘Mother, I will never say anything again but that I love you!’
‘I see the holy father in the distance. Let us walk to him, my child, and meet him.’
Accordingly Lady Annabel, now leaning on Venetia, approached the monk. About five minutes elapsed before they reached him, during which not a word was spoken.
‘Holy father,’ said Lady Annabel, in a tone of firmness that surprised her daughter and made her tremble with anticipation, ‘you know the writer of this letter?’
‘He is my friend of many years, lady,’ replied the Armenian; ‘I knew him in America. I owe to him my life, and more than my life. There breathes not his equal among men.’
A tear started to the eye of Lady Annabel; she recalled the terms in which the household at Arqua had spoken of Herbert. ‘He is in Venice?’ she inquired.
‘He is within these walls,’ the monk replied.
Venetia, scarcely able to stand, felt her mother start. After a momentary pause, Lady Annabel said, ‘Can I speak with him, and alone?’
Nothing but the most nervous apprehension of throwing any obstacle in the way of the interview could have sustained Venetia. Quite pale, with her disengaged hand clenched, not a word escaped her lips. She hung upon the answer of the monk.
‘You can see him, and alone,’ said the monk. ‘He is now in the sacristy. Follow me.’
‘Venetia,’ said Lady Annabel, ‘remain in this garden. I will accompany this holy man. Stop! embrace me before I go, and,’ she added, in a whisper, ‘pray for me.’
It needed not the admonition of her mother to induce Venetia to seek refuge in prayer, in this agony of her life. But for its salutary and stilling influence, it seemed to her that she must have forfeited all control over her mind. The suspense was too terrible for human aid to support her. Seated by the sea-side, she covered her face with her hands, and invoked the Supreme assistance. More than an hour passed away. Venetia looked up. Two beautiful birds, of strange form and spotless plumage, that perhaps had wandered from the Aegean, were hovering over her head, bright and glancing in the sun. She accepted their appearance as a good omen. At this moment she heard a voice, and, looking up, observed a monk in the distance, beckoning to her. She rose, and with a trembling step approached him. He retired, still motioning to her to follow him. She entered, by a low portal, a dark cloister; it led to an ante-chapel, through which, as she passed, her ear caught the solemn chorus of the brethren. Her step faltered; her sight was clouded; she was as one walking in a dream. The monk opened a door, and, retiring, waved his hand, as for her to enter. There was a spacious and lofty chamber, scantily furnished, some huge chests, and many sacred garments. At the extreme distance her mother was reclined on a bench, her head supported by a large crimson cushion, and her father kneeling by her mother’s side. With a soundless step, and not venturing even to breathe, Venetia approached them, and, she knew not how, found herself embraced by both her parents.
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |