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

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СКАЧАТЬ are a great man and a rich: you never knew what it was in life to suffer any, the commonest of those privations poor men pass their days in – ’

      ‘Who can dare to say that of me?’ cried Charles Edward passionately. ‘There’s not a toil I have not tasted, there’s not a peril I have not braved, there’s not a sorrow nor a suffering that have not been my portion; ay, and, God wot, with heavier stake upon the board than ever man played for!’

      ‘Forgive me, Signor Conte,’ stammered out the boy, as his eyes filled up at the sight of the emotion he had caused, ‘I knew not what I was saying.’

      The Prince took little heed of the words, for his aroused thoughts bore him sadly to the mist-clad mountain and the heathery gorges far away; and he strode the room in deep emotion. At last his glance fell upon the youth as, pale and terror-stricken, he stood watching him, and he quickly said: ‘I’m not angry with you, Gerald; do not grieve, my poor boy. You will learn, one of these days, that sorrow has its place at fine tables, just as at humbler boards. It helps the rich man to don his robe of purple, just as it aids the beggar to put on his rags. It’s a stern conscription that calls on all to serve. But to yourself: you will not be a priest, you say? What, then, would you like – what say you to the life of a soldier?’

      ‘But in what service, Signor Conte?’

      ‘That of your own country, I suppose.’

      ‘They tell me that the king is a usurper, who has no right to be king; and shall I swear faith and loyalty to him?’

      ‘Others have done so, and are doing it every day, boy. It was but yesterday, Lord Blantyre made what they call his submission; and he was the bosom friend of – the Pretender’; and the last words were uttered in a half-scornful laugh.

      ‘I will not hear him called by that name, Signor Conte. So long as I remember anything, I was taught not to endure it.’

      ‘Was that your mother’s teaching, Gerald?’ said the Prince tenderly.

      ‘It was, sir. I was a very little child; but I can never forget the last prayer I made each night before bed: it was for God’s protection to the true Prince; and when I arose I was to say, “Confusion to all who call him the Pretender!”’

      ‘He is not even that now,’ muttered Charles Edward, as he leaned his head on the mantelpiece.

      ‘I hope, Signor Conte,’ said the boy timidly, ‘that you never were for the Elector.’

      ‘I have done little for the cause of the Stuarts,’ said Charles, with a deep sigh.

      ‘I wish I may live to serve them,’ cried the youth, with energy.

      The Prince looked long and steadfastly at the boy, and, in a tone that bespoke deep thought, said:

      ‘I want to befriend you, Gerald, if I but knew how. It is clear you have no vocation for the church, and we are here in a land where there is little other career. Were we in France something might be done. I have some friends, however, in that country, and I will see about communicating with them. Send the Frate hither.’

      The boy left the room, and speedily returned with Fra Luke, whose anxious glances were turned from the Prince to the youth, in eager curiosity to learn how their interview had gone off.

      ‘Gerald has no ambition to be a monsignore, Frate,’ said the Prince laughingly, ‘and we mustn’t constrain him. They who serve the church should have their hearts in the calling. Do you know of any honest family with whom he might be domesticated for a short time – not in Rome, of course, but in the country; it will only be for a month or two at farthest?’

      ‘There is a worthy family at Orvieto, if it were not too far – ’

      ‘Nothing of the kind; Orvieto will suit admirably. Who are these people?’

      ‘The father is the steward of Cardinal Caraffa; but it is a villa that his eminence never visits, and so they live there as in their own palace; and the mountain air is so wholesome there, sick people used to seek the place; and so Tonino, as they call him, takes a boarder, or even two – ’

      ‘That is everything we want,’ said the Prince, cutting short what he feared might be a long history. ‘Let the boy go back now to the college, and do you yourself come here on Saturday morning, and Kelly will arrange all with you.’

      ‘I wish I knew why you are so good to me, Signor Conte,’ said the boy, as his eyes filled up with tears.

      ‘I was a friend of your family, Gerald,’ said Charles, as he fixed his eyes on the friar, to enforce his former caution.

      ‘And am I never to see you again, signor,’ cried he eagerly.

      ‘Yes, to be sure, you shall come here; but I will settle all that another time – on Saturday, Fra; and now, good-bye.

      The boy grasped the hand with which the Prince waved his farewell, and kissed it rapturously; and Charles, overcome at length by feelings he had repressed till then, threw his arms around the boy’s neck, and pressed him to his bosom.

      Fra Luke, terrified how such a moment might end, hurried the youth from the room, and retired.

      CHAPTER VII. THE VILLA AT ORVIETO

      If the villa life of Italy might prove a severe trial of temper and spirits to most persons, to young Gerald, trained in all the asceticism of a convent, it was a perfect paradise. The wild and far-spreading landscape imparted a glorious sense of liberty, which grew with each day’s enjoyment of it. It was a land of mountain and forest – those deep, dark woods of chestnut-trees traversed with the clear and rapid rivulets so common in the Roman States, with here and there, at rare intervals, the solitary hut of a charcoal-burner. In these vast solitudes, silent as the great savannahs of the South, he passed his days – now roaming in search of game, now dreamily lying, book in hand, beside a river’s bank, or strolling listlessly along, tasting, in the very waywardness of an untrammelled will, an ecstasy only known to those who have felt captivity.

      Though there were several young people in the family of the Intendente, Gerald had no companionship with any of them: the boys were boorish, uneducated, and coarse-minded, and the girls, with one exception, were little better. Ninetta, it is true, was gentler; her voice was soft, and her silky hair and soft, dark eyes had a strange, subduing influence about them; but even she was far from that ideal his imagination had pictured, nor could he, by all his persuasions, induce her to share his raptures for Ariosto, or the still more passionate delight that Petrarch gave him. He was just opening that period of youth when the heart yearns for some object of affection – some centre around which its own hopes and fears, its wishes and aspirations, may revolve. It is wonderful how much imagination contributes in such cases, supplying graces and attractions where nature has been a niggard, and giving to the veriest commonplace character traits of distinctive charm.

      Ninetta was quite pretty enough for all this, but she was no more. Without a particle of education, she had never raised her mind beyond the commonest daily cares; and what with the vines, the olives, the chestnuts, the festivals of the church, and little family gatherings, her life had its sphere of duties so full as to leave no time for the love-sick wanderings of an idle boy.

      If she was disposed to admire him when, in fits of wild energy, he would pass nights and days in chase of the wild boar, or follow the track of a wolf, with the steadfast tenacity of a hound, she cared little for his intervals of dreamy fancy, nor lent any sympathy to joys or sorrows which had no basis in reality; and when СКАЧАТЬ