Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ Highness will think little of the shell where the kernel is sound – ’

      ‘And who is to warrant me that, sir?’ said the Prince angrily. ‘Is it your guarantee I ‘m to take for it?’

      The poor friar almost felt as if he were about to faint at the stern speech, nor did he dare to utter a word of reply. So far, this was in his favour, since, when unprovoked by anything like rejoinder, Charles Edward was usually disposed to turn from any unpleasant theme, and address his thoughts elsewhere.

      ‘I ‘m half relenting, my good friar,’ said he, in a calmer tone, ‘that I should have brought you here on this errand. How am I to burden myself with the care of this boy? I am but a pensioner myself, weighed down already with a mass of followers. So long as hope remained to us we struggled on manfully enough. Present privation was to have had its recompense – at least we thought so.’ He stopped suddenly, and then, as if ashamed of speaking thus confidentially to one he had seen only once before, his voice assumed a harsher, sterner accent as he said: ‘These are not your concerns. What is it you propose I should do? Have you a plan? What is it?’

      Had Fra Luke been required to project another scheme of invasion, he could not have been more dumbfounded and confused, and he stood the very picture of hopeless incapacity.

      Charles Edward’s temper was in that state when he invariably sought to turn upon others the reproaches his own conscience addressed to him, and he angrily said: ‘It is by this same train of beggarly followers that my fortunes are rendered irretrievable. I am worried and harassed by their importunities; they attach the plague-spot of their poverty to me wherever I go. I should have freed myself from this thraldom many a year ago; and if I had, where and what might I not have been to-day? You, and others of your stamp, look upon me as an almoner, not more nor less.’ His passion had now spent itself, and he sat moodily gazing at the fire.

      ‘Is the lad here?’ asked he, after a long pause.

      ‘Yes, your Royal Highness,’ said the friar, while he made a motion toward the door.

      Charles Edward stopped him quickly as he said, ‘No matter, there is not any need that I should see him. He and his aunt – she is his aunt, you said – must return to Ireland; this is no place for them. I will see Kelly about it to-morrow, and they shall have something to pay their journey. This arrangement does not please you, Frate, eh? Speak out, man. You think it cold, unnatural, and unkind – is it not so?’

      ‘If your gracious Highness would just condescend to say a word to him – one word, that he might carry away in his heart for the rest of his days.’

      ‘Better have no memory of me,’ sighed the Prince drearily. ‘Oh, don’t say so, your Royal Highness; think what pride it will be to him yet, God knows in what far-away country, to remember that he saw you once, that he stood in your presence, and heard you speak to him.’

      ‘It shall be as you wish, Frate; but I charge you once more to be sure that he may not know with whom he is speaking.’

      ‘By this holy Book,’ said the Fra, with a gesture implying a vow of secrecy.

      ‘Go now; send him hither, and wait without till I send for you.’

      The door had scarcely closed behind the friar when it opened again to admit the entrance of the youth. The Prince turned his head, and, whether it was the extreme poverty of the lad’s appearance, more striking from the ragged and torn condition of his dress, or that something in Gerald’s air and look impressed him painfully, he passed his hand across his eyes and averted his glance from him.

      ‘Come forward, my boy,’ said he at last. ‘How are you called?’

      ‘Gerald Fitzgerald, Signor Conte,’ said he, firmly but respectfully.

      ‘You are Irish by birth?’ said the Prince, in a voice slightly tremulous.

      ‘Yes, Signor Conte,’ replied he, while he drew himself up with an air that almost savoured of haughtiness.

      ‘And your friends have destined you for the priesthood, it seems.’

      ‘I never knew I had friends,’ said the boy; ‘I thought myself a sort of castaway.’

      ‘Why, you have just told me of your Irish blood – how knew you of that?’

      ‘So long as I can remember I have heard that I was a Géraldine, and they call me Irish in the college.’

      There was a frank boldness in his manner, totally removed from the slightest trace of rudeness or presumption, that already interested the Prince, who now gazed long and steadily on him.

      ‘Do I remind you of any one you ever saw or cared for, Signor Conte?’ asked the boy, with an accent of touching gentleness.

      ‘That you do, child,’ said he, laying his hand on the youth’s shoulder, while he passed the other across his eyes.

      ‘I hope it was of none who ever gave you sorrow,’ said the boy, who saw the quivering motion of the lip that indicates deep grief.

      Charles Edward now removed his hand, and turned away his head for some seconds.

      At last he arose suddenly from his chair, and with an effort that seemed to show he was struggling for the mastery over his own emotions, said, ‘Is it your own choice to be a priest, Gerald?’

      ‘No; far from it. I ‘d rather be a herd on the Campagna! You surely know little of the life of the convent, Signor Conte, or you had not asked me that question.’

      Far from taking offence at the boy’s boldness, the Prince smiled good-naturedly at the energy of his reply.

      ‘Is it the stillness, the seclusion that you dislike?’ asked he, evidently wanting the youth to speak of himself and of his temperament.

      ‘No, it is not that,’ said Gerald thoughtfully. ‘The quiet, peaceful hours, when we are left to what they call meditation, are the best of it. Then one is free to range where he will, in fancy. I ‘ve had as many adventures, thus, as any fortune-seeker of the Arabian Nights. What lands have I not visited! what bold things have I not achieved! ay, and day after day, taken up the same dream where I had left it last, carrying on its fortunes, till the actual work of life seemed the illusion, and this, the dream-world, the true one.’

      ‘So that, after all, this same existence has its pleasures, Gerald?’

      ‘The pleasures are in forgetting it! ignoring that your whole life is a falsehood! They make me kneel at confession to tell my thoughts, while well I know that, for the least blamable of them, I shall be scourged. They oblige me to say that I hate everything that gives a charm to life, and cherish as blessings all that can darken and sadden it. Well, I swear the lie, and they are satisfied! And why are they satisfied? – because out of this corrupt heart, debased by years of treachery and falsehood, they have created the being that they want to serve them.’

      ‘What has led you to think thus hardly of the priesthood?’

      ‘One of themselves, Signor Conte. He told me all that I have repeated to you now, and he counselled me, if I had a friend – one friend on earth – to beseech him to rescue me ere it was too late, ere I was like him.’

      ‘And he – what became of him?’

      ‘He died, as all die who offend the Order, of a wasting fever. His hair was white as snow, though he was under thirty, СКАЧАТЬ