Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36 New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 by Various

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"Some officer who knows the family," she concluded. They knew a good many
officers.

The entanglement was but momentary, and might have been accidental, the
person inside having evidently given orders to let them pass. Leaning on
his oar against the out-flowing tide, the gondolier took his hat off and
bowed lowly, smiling at the babe.

"_E riverita, Madama Innocenza_!" he said.

Aurora gave him a kind glance. "But you will be more innocent still in a
few minutes," she said to the infant.

They reached the landing, and walked across the piazza to Saint Mark's,
and entered the baptistery. A good many people gathered about the door
during the ceremony, and among them Aurora was aware of a military officer
who stood leaning against the grating. She did not look at him, or she
would have known that his eyes were fixed on her alone.

When, after holding the infant at the font, and giving it a string of
names as long as a rosary, she turned to restore it to its nurse, and bent
to kiss its rosy face as she released it, the officer smiled, gazing
earnestly at her downcast eyes. He saw her lips move in a whisper.

She was repeating the gondolier's salutation: "_E riverita, Madama
Innocenza!_"

As they went out, her veil brushed the gold-banded sleeve, and she heard a
faint sigh from the wearer. It required a force not to look at him, not to
show that she was conscious of his presence and pleased by it. Any one who
wore a soldier's dress touched her heart, from general down to orderly.

Home through the sunshine, in through the shaded court, up the stair with
its painted lords and ladies looking down upon them from the painted
arcade.

Mrs. Lindsay came out to the stair to receive them, and to embrace her
infant before dismissing it to the nursery.

Mr. Churchill had joined them at Saint Mark's, and returned with them,
sitting beside Aurora at breakfast. Both ignored the serenade as if it had
never been.

"My cousin Edith and Mrs. Graham arrived last evening," he said. "They
will stop here a week or two before returning to England."

"Oh, I should like to see them!" Aurora said cordially. "Tell me where
they are, and I will leave a card today. I am sure, too, that Mrs. Lindsay
will wish to make their acquaintance."

The breakfast ended with coffee in the beautiful garden the dining-room
windows looked into; then one by one the company departed. Mr. Churchill
lingered a few minutes after the others, then went, seeing no hope of an
interview with Aurora.

As soon as he had left the room, Mr. Lindsay accompanying him, Mrs.
Lindsay turned with an almost impatient vivacity to Aurora. "At last I can
tell you!" she exclaimed. "Do you know who is in Venice, who sent me a
note while you were at church, and who will dine with us this evening?"

She looked triumphant and joyful.

Aurora was silent a moment. "I can guess," she said. "And yet--"

"D'Rubiera has come!" Madama announced. "What other coming could be so
joyful to us? He has left the boy in England, has himself been to Rome on
a flying visit for business purposes, and is come back to see us. Is it
not delightful? That was all I needed to make this the loveliest day of my
life."

"Did you see him?" Aurora asked.

"Why, no! His note was left immediately after you started. I sent a reply
instantly to his hotel, asking him to dine with us. His acceptance was
handed me while we were taking coffee. Did you not see Febiano present the
note? It was a comedy. That man cannot resign the idea that we are
official people, I and John both, and he never lets a note wait, whoever
may be with me. He comes with a solemn, gliding discretion, a sort of
secret-stairway manner, and half presents, half slides the note to me, as
if it were a call to a council of inquisitors in the ducal palace."

"I hope that the duke is not so unhappy as he was when last I saw him,"
Aurora said gravely.

"What should he be unhappy about?" demanded Madama, who seemed indeed to
be in the highest of spirits. "He has youth, health, wealth, rank, a
character worthy all these blessings, and a beautiful boy. Do you imagine
that he is going to mourn forever for a woman whom he never really loved,
and who disgraced and tormented him? Poor thing! let her rest. It is
almost a year since she died, and he has paid sufficient respect to her
memory. I take it for granted that the duke is as full of life and spirit
and joy as a man can be."

"Madama Teresa mia," said Aurora, "whom are you scolding? Allow me to
remind you that I expressed a wish that the duke would _not_ prove to be
unhappy."

"And the wish implied a doubt," her friend retorted. "And your reference
to the past was a shadow. And I will have no shadows to-day. Now I am
going to have my repose, and I advise you to do the same. And you will
wear the same dress at dinner, will you not? It is so pretty. Besides, you
are looking rather pale, and it gives you a glow."

She went; and Aurora, instead of following her advice to go to rest, took
refuge in the ball-room, which was her in-door promenade. She was never
interrupted there. When she was in the ball-room, and they heard her light
step going to and fro, it was taken for granted that she was composing,
and the room became a sanctuary. No profane foot must cross the threshold.

She was very far from composing verses on this May afternoon. She was
trying to tranquillize her mind, which Mrs. Lindsay's news had disturbed.
She would be glad to see the duke, surely, dear kind friend that he was!
Yet what meant the shrinking which accompanied that pleasant anticipation?
She felt that she should tremble at his approach, and that her voice would
falter. It would be a strange folly; and yet she feared that it would be
impossible to control herself.

"It is because of all that happened before I left Sassovivo," she murmured
to herself. "I have got him tangled up in my mind with those miserable
affairs. I am certainly growing nervous, and it will never do. Away with
all that has passed since he became Duke of Sassovivo! _Su_, Rubiera, whom
I knew a soldier years ago, who bade me sing, and laid your drawn sword
across the keys of my piano-forte for a motive, --Rubiera, who came across
a chasm to me as I stood clinging to the broken wall, and smiled courage
into my sinking heart. _Su_, Rubiera, who divided the olive-twig with me,
promising to challenge me when we met again with _Fuori il verde!_ It was
I who showed the green and gave the challenge when we met, and I have the
three leaves yet." She drew a locket from her breast, and opened it to
look at the memento, and at her mother's miniature enclosed with it.

She was smiling now. That bright past had thrust aside all painful
recollections, and the old cordial, loving confidence was coming up again.

The sun, declining to the palace roofs opposite, flooded the room with
light. It made Aurora's red dress brilliant, and played and sparkled on
the gold she wore. Twenty little golden chains of Venice hung around her
neck, slender thread after thread from throat to girdle, invisible now
with fineness, and now showing a misty flash in the sun. There was a gold
filigree rose in her hair, which at certain movements changed to a red
rose, and then to a pallid flame, and in the shadow it had all the
softness of a yellow rose just blown.

Aurora walked to and fro in the light, a brilliant figure, counting over
the treasures of her memory.

"I wonder what I sang that night!" she murmured. "I never copied it. It
was something about my country. When I ended they crossed their swords
above my head, D'Rubiera and General Pampara. What did I sing? I wish I
could remember."

She was so absorbed that a step crossing the next room failed to attract
her attention. She did not even hear the light tap at the door. But when
it opened, and some one entered, closing the door behind him, she turned
abruptly and faced the intruder, fully conscious now.

He was an officer, who tossed his cap away at sight of her, and he had the
face she had been thinking of,--the same face, full of life, and more full
of joyous excitement than she had ever seen it.

They stood so for a moment, the length of the room between them, gazing at
each other, with some sense of floating in all that light, as if they were
far up in the sky, they two alone, on their way to heaven.

Then the soldier held up some tiny object in his hand, and came rapidly
forward.

"_Fuori il verde!_!" he cried out.

As in a dream, as though they were indeed being sucked up through the blue
unsteady air, Aurora tried to pull the locket from her bosom, and desisted,
for, throwing aside the faded leaf, D'Rubiera extended his arms with an
"Aurora!" which held all pleading and all command, all passion and all
delight, that love can give to the human voice.

Light as a gazelle she rushed into his embrace, pressing her cheek to his.

"Oh, my soldier! my soldier!" she murmured. "My soldier and my Love!"

"What a circuit I have made to reach you!" D'Rubiera said at length,
holding her back at arm's length to look at her. "Are you glad to have me
back, signora duchessa? Are you happy, my red rose?"

"And to think that you have entered the army again!" she said, drawing a
caressing finger-tip along the gold-work on his sleeve.

"I did it to please you," he declared.

The sudden tide of joy and surprise made speech and thought almost
impossible.

"I do not believe it all," Aurora said. "It is a dream I have been
conjuring up." She withdrew from him. "Stay here, vision of a soldier. Do
not stir. I am going to get my reason back." She turned, and walked slowly
away the length of the room. "He is not here: it was a dream," she said,
then turned again, uttered a sweet cry of joy, and, holding her arms out,
met him half-way, and dropped against his breast again.

"I feel the motions of the earth as it flies around the sun and turns on
itself," she said,--"two dizzinesses in one. As at first, so now, and so
forever, without you I fall, D'Rubiera."

CHAPTER XXXV.

A FOUNTAIN.

That evening Mr. Churchill dined with his cousin and Mrs. Graham at their
hotel, and afterward sat with his cousin in their balcony.

He found Edith wonderfully improved. She was either prettier, or her
educated taste made her look so. She knew how to dress now, and her manner
was better. She was cheerful, and she carried her head higher. The hair he
once had thought red he knew now was the color the Venetian painters loved,
and he looked admiringly at the rich coils that crowned her graceful head.

Besides, there was no sign of that too evident love which had driven him
from her. She looked at him calmly, and spoke with a familiarity which had
an undefined coolness in it.

While they sat there alone, talking pleasantly, a servant brought a note
for Mr. Churchill. It had been taken to his house and forwarded to him.
Excusing himself, he went into the room to read it by the shaded lamp.

His cousin turned her head, and watched him unseen. She saw his face grow
crimson as he read, the veins standing out on his forehead, then grow pale
again. She had thought while they sat at dinner that he was looking pale.

He stood bent down, with his eyes fixed on the page, and, without turning
the leaf, gazing at what he had read as if he did not understand it.

"My dear friend," Mrs. Lindsay had written, "after a certain conversation
which we had some time ago, I think I ought to tell you my news without
delay. The Duke of Sassovivo is with us, and this evening he has presented
Aurora to us as his future wife."

He stood so long gazing at the words that his cousin went to him.

"Excuse me, Edith, I must go out," he said, in a stifled voice.

"Good-night, Edward," she said, and asked no questions, but held out her
hand.

The hand that took hers was cold, and her good-night received not a word
of response.

He went out and called a gondola.

"Where to?" the gondolier asked.

"Anywhere!"

They went up and down, and across to the Giudecca, and down again, and
turned the point of the Public Garden, and the gondolier was about
returning, when for the first time his passenger spoke:

"Go round by San Pietro and inside by San Daniele. Go where it is dark."

"He is disappointed in love, or jealous," the man thought as they threaded
the inner ways of the city, now by a lighted piazza, now under shadowing
bridges, or along the gloomy, silent walls of palaces that shut them in.

"Where shall I go now?" he ventured to ask, when they had gone the whole
length of the city. "We are in the Cannareggio."

The passenger raised himself. He had sat all the time with his head bowed
down. "Let her drop down the canal," he said, his voice grown gentler.
"Keep well to the left."

They went out into the canal and downward. Passing under the Rialto, there
rose a deep sigh from the gondola, and the echoing arch whispered back a
sigh.

The passenger was alert now, looking at all the palaces at the left, as
though he had never seen them before. As they passed Palazzo Pesaro a
gondola touched its steps, and a lady and gentleman got out and walked up
to the portone. The moonlight sparkled on, the uniform of one and on the
gilded fan of the other. They had been out together, and alone, drawing
sweetness from the same air where he had breathed in bitterness.

"Well, it is fitting," he sighed. "Her head was made to wear a coronet.
God bless her!--and him."

He looked at them standing in the archway of the palace saying good-night
till distance hid them from him. He was in front of his cousin's hotel,
and, looking up, he saw her still sitting in the balcony where he had left
her.

Late as it was, he landed and went up to her again. She recognized him
when he stepped out of the gondola, and was not too much surprised when he
appeared. He seated himself beside her, and looked out over the water
without saying a word.

"Are you not well?" she asked at length, timidly.

He started. "Why do you ask?"

"You look pale," she answered.

For a moment he did not speak. Then he said, "I have had a disappointment,
Edith."

She leaned toward him with a sigh and a hand half extended, compassion in
all her attitude.

He took the hand, and rose. "Let me tell you all, dear," he said. "I need
comfort. Come and let me tell you,--if it will not be a bore,"

She went at once, pain and delight struggling together in her heart. He
led her to the sofa, and sank down to the cushion at her feet, bowing his
head to her knees. And there he poured out his whole story, sparing her
nothing.

Perhaps an instinct of justice and mercy ran through his passion. Perhaps,
guessing in the soft, tremulous, soothing hands that touched his hair and
forehead the love that he had believed to be dead, and with an unconscious
feeling that she was to be the consoler and companion of his future life,
he felt also that all the pain she was to suffer for this love of his must
be gone through with now.

He could not understand that her only pain was for him, and that for
herself she was blest. For she had his confidence, and she could console
him.

From that night he became her constant escort and companion. He wrote a
brief note in answer to Mrs. Lindsay's, and then he seemed to forget that
he knew any one in Palazzo Pesaro.

"For the present I am _de trop_" he wrote, "but I will see you before you
go away. All happiness to Aurora and her chosen husband."

Impossibility is a wonderful extinguisher of desire; and what suffering
was left to him was not so much a sickness as the languor of
convalescence. He saw Aurora but seldom, and always at a distance; but he
knew that Venetian society was rejoicing over the engagement, and that the
duke was a devoted lover.

Once, in passing by, he glanced involuntarily at the windows, and saw a
group inside, the sight of which gave him a momentary pang. D'Rubiera
seemed to be placing something on Aurora's head, and Mrs. Lindsay clapped
her hands.

The duke was, in fact, trying a coronet on his future wife. He had sent
for the family jewels, and was to have them reset, and Mrs. Lindsay
clapped her hands at seeing the diamonds on Aurora's hair.

D'Rubiera was an impatient and peremptory wooer, and he won the day. They
were to be married in June; and the Lindsays would stay in Venice a month
longer to witness the ceremony.

Fra Antonio came from Sassovivo and joined their hands in Saint Mark's,
gold and rank smoothing away all obstacles. Then they went to England for
the boy, and came back in time for a week at Bellmar. After Bellmar, they
went to Sassovivo, unannounced, to break open the walled-up gate and carry
jubilee into the castle, the duke said.

In fact, they spent a whole day long in the castle, tranquilly watching
from its windows the visitors who went to the villa in vain to
_ossequiare_ the master and his new duchess. It was the last time that
they would enter the castle as master and mistress; for the Signora Paula
and Martina were coming to live there,--forever, if they pleased.

The Signora Paula had found herself _de trop_ in her brother's house. The
Count Clemente had offered himself to the younger of his two first lodgers,
the girl of fifty, and been beamingly accepted; and, though months must
elapse before all the necessary preparations could be made for their
marriage, the Sposa was now mistress of the house. She smiled as before,
but she had her way. The sacred dirt of centuries was being cleaned out,
and immemorial grime was growing pale before the soap and sand of a
civilization to which the Signora Paula was a stranger. Where duchesses
had swept their silks in uncomplaining tranquillity, the smiling Americana
walked on tiptoe with her skirts upheld, and pointed out her orders to the
wondering scrubbers with the toe of her slipper, both hands being employed.

In all these innovations every care was taken that the count should not be
disturbed. But he had his cross, and an unexpected one. When it became
time to talk of settlements, and it had to be owned that the gentleman had
nothing to settle on his wife but the shadow of a coronet, of which she
would have to buy the substance if she ever wore it, the lady announced
blandly that she would pay all their living-expenses and give her husband
five hundred dollars a year spending-money if he would pay the rent to the
duke,--this arrangement to hold as long as they should live together.

"But we shall always live together," said the count, with a contortion
meant for a smile.

"If we should live," the lady said. "But life is uncertain."

"Oh, in case of death, one makes different arrangements," the count said,
somewhat impatiently. "That is another question."

"But I want it so," persisted the lady coquettishly; "and I must have my
way. I have always had my way."

And, ever smiling, never appearing to dream that he was in earnest or to
suspect the rage that was gnawing his heart, she had her way. She smiled
at his coarse and open grasping, smiled at his scarcely hidden anger, and
smiled at the half-insulting consent he flung at her, as if it were all a
jest. And he believed her the simpleton she seemed, and did not know that
he had found a mistress who would rule him with a rod of iron.

On the second day of their stay in Sassovivo the duke and duchess drove
down early in the morning to the campagna, and left another brewing of
_ossequii_ to fizz itself out in unresponsive air.

Aurora was going to erect a memorial fountain to her mother in the midst
of the long, hot, dusty road to the station. A wild spring of delicious
water lay back in a rocky pasture. This was to be brought forward and run
into marble basins for man and beast. Above should be a carved relief of
Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well, with, underneath, "And the
woman said, Lord, give me of this water to drink, that I may never thirst
again."

An artist had come out from Rome to see the place and make suggestions;
and they walked over the green grass, and visited the spring in its own
home, and drank of its sparkling tide.

"Would you like to be a missionary, little spring?" Aurora asked, bending
toward it. "Many will call you blessed, and the image of your Master will
forever look down upon you."

The artist looked at her in surprise and smiling admiration. He had found
her a very dignified lady, and this unexpected turn reminded him that she
was a poetess as well as a duchess.

"What does it say?" D'Rubiera asked.

She took his arm, smiled into his face, but made no answer.

They went back to the carriage, took leave of their artist, and drove
slowly to the town.

"I hope that mamma likes the idea of the fountain," the duchess said
thoughtfully.

MARY AGNES TINCKER.

[THE END.]

* * * * *

EPITAPH WRITTEN IN THE SAND ON A BUTTERFLY DROWNED IN THE SEA.

Poor Psyche, to a Power supernal wed,
How strong a fate on this thy frailness fell!
What strange ironic word shall here be read?
Dead sign of immortality, farewell!

I sigh not that the summer fields have lost
One flying flower: who counts the butterflies?
I sigh not that thy sunny hour was crossed:
The self-same Shadow surely waits mine eyes,

Thy piteous terror of the appointed end,
For this I sigh! The billow, poised above,
Fell on thee like a beast that leaps to rend:
Thou couldst not know thy bridegroom Death was Love!

How otherwise thy sister, yea, the Soul,
Bent brooding o'er these broken wings of thine!
Through all her house of mystery once she stole
To the inmost room, and found a Face benign.

Now whirl her where ye must, ye waves of Law,--
Ay, tear her vans, her painted hopes, apart!
She cannot fear, remembering what she saw:
Dark bridegroom Death, she knows thee who thou art!

HELEN GRAY CONE.

* * * * *

THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

TWO PAPERS.--I.

It is related of Daniel Boone that when (in 1764) he climbed to the summit
of the Alleghanies and looked down upon the vast herds of deer and buffalo
that were grazing at his feet, he said to his companion Callaway, "I am
richer than the man in Scripture who owned the cattle on a thousand hills:
I own the wild beasts in a thousand valleys."

It may be questioned if Boone had an adequate conception of the stupendous
possessions of the "man in Scripture," but he was certainly justified in
boasting of the wide magnificence of this domain which, by right of
discovery, he claimed as his own. An Indian might have told him that it
would require "three moons, two paddles, and two stout braves" to skirt
its southern and western boundaries and reach its northern limit on the
Ohio; but no phraseology known to the Red Man could have expressed the
boundless wealth, animate and inanimate, that lay hidden in its unexplored
recesses. By the leaves on the trees, or the stars in a cloudless night,
he might have indicated the countless herds of wild animals that roamed
upon it; but how would he picture the leafy magnificence of its forests,
or the grassy luxuriance of the many "openings" that everywhere dotted its
surface?

It was a tract of country larger than the combined kingdoms of England and
Scotland, and, from the exceeding richness of its soil, it was capable of
sustaining a far denser population than now inhabits the British Islands.
And yet throughout its entire extent there was at this period not a single
human habitation, not the solitary hut of a white settler nor the smoky
wigwam of a roving Indian. It was the hunting-ground and battle-field of
the Indians, claimed by hostile tribes, but occupied by none, and hence
the more inviting as a field for civilized settlement.

It is difficult for us to conceive of the enthusiasm which this new
country awoke in the mind of the primitive explorer. To him it was a new
world, more genial in climate, more beautiful in scenery, and more
magnificent in extent than any he had ever beheld; and it is not
surprising that the glowing accounts he gave of it on his return were
received with wondering incredulity by the simple farmers on the sterile
banks of the Yadkin. Accustomed to a sandy soil a few inches in thickness
and covered with a scanty growth of slender pines, how could they believe
in a yellow loam four feet or more in depth, and supporting dense forests
of oak and poplar ten feet in diameter and towering aloft a hundred feet
before they broke into branches? The tale was incredible, and it was years
before the wonderful story was believed among the rural population of
North Carolina, and then not until it was confirmed by the report of one
of their number,--a young farmer, selected by themselves to accompany
Boone on his third exploration, in 1769.

This young man was James Robertson, of Wake County, North Carolina, and,
as he was to become a principal agent in the settlement of the Southwest,
he requires here a few words of description. He was at this time about
twenty-seven years of age, a little above the medium height, and of a
well-knit, robust, manly frame. He had prominent features, and thick dark
hair falling loosely over a square, full forehead which rose in the
coronal region into an almost abnormal development. His eyes were large,
of a light blue, and shaded by heavy dark eyebrows; and they had an
habitual look of introspection, showing a mind of more than common
thoughtfulness. He was grave, earnest, self-contained, with the quiet
consciousness of power which is natural to a born leader of men. And yet
there was in his manner no self-assumption or arrogance. On the contrary,
he was courteous and conciliatory, and had that rare blending of
self-respect and deference for others which, while it repelled undue
familiarity, put the rudest at his ease, and extracted from an old
Cherokee chieftain, who all his life had been the enemy of the white race,
the unwilling praise, "He has winning ways, and he makes no fuss."

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