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

together, and the only covering he had for his head was the little skullcap he used to wear in school hours. Even old Pippo began to scoff at his miserable appearance, and hinted a hope, that before the season of the contraband begun Gerald would have taken his departure, or be able to make a more respectable figure. As Gabriel had now been gone many weeks, and no tidings whatever come of him, the old man’s reserve and deference daily decreased. He grumbled at Gerald’s habits of study, profitless and idle as they seemed to him, while there was many a thing to be done about the house and the garden. He was not weak or sickly now: he could help to chop the wood for winter firing; he could raise those heavy water-buckets that swung over the deep well in the garden; he could draw the net in the little stream behind the house, or trench about the few stunted olives that struggled for life on the hillside. Gerald would willingly have done any or all of these, if the idea had occurred to himself. He was not indolent by nature, and liked the very fact of active occupation. As a task, however, he rejected the notion at once. It savoured of servitude to his mind, and who was this same Pippo who aspired to be his master?

      The more the boy’s mind became stored with knowledge, the fuller his intelligence grew of great examples and noble instances – the more indignantly did he repulse the advances of Pippo’s companionship. ‘What!’ he would mutter to himself, ‘leave Bossuet and his divine teachings for his coarse converse! Quit the sarcastic intensity of Voltaire’s ridicule for the vulgar jests of this illiterate boor! Exchange the glorious company of wits and sages, and poets and moralists, for a life of daily drudgery, with a mean peasant to talk to! Besides, I am not his guest, nor a burden upon his charity. It is to Gabriel I owe my shelter here.’

      When driven by many a sarcasm to assume this position, Pippo gravely remarked: ‘True enough, boy, so long as he was here; but he is gone now, and who ‘ll tell us will he ever come back? He may have been sentenced by the tribunal. At the hour we are talking here he may be in prison – at the galleys, for aught we know; and I promise you one thing, there’s many a better man there.’

      ‘And I, too, promise one thing,’ replied Gerald angrily, ‘if he ever do come, he shall hear how you have dared to speak of him.’

      Old Pippo started at the words, and his face became lividly pale, and muttering a few words beneath his breath, he left the spot. Nothing was further from Gerald’s mind than any defence of Gabriel, for whom, do what he might, he could feel neither affection nor gratitude. In what he had said he merely yielded to a momentary impatience to sting the old man by an angry reply. For the remainder of that day not a word was exchanged between them. They met and parted without saluting; they sat silently opposite each other at their meals. The following day opened with the same cold distance between them, the old man barely eyeing Gerald, when the youth was not observing him, and casting toward him glances of doubtful meaning. Too deeply engaged in his books to pay much attention to these signs of displeasure, Gerald passed his hours as usual in Gabriel’s room.

      He was seated, reading, when the door opened gently, and the old man’s niece entered: her step was so noiseless, that she was nearly beside Gerald’s chair before he noticed her.

      ‘What is it, Tina,’ said he, starting; ‘what makes you look so frightened?’

      She placed her finger on her lip, a sign of caution, and looked anxiously around her.

      ‘He has not been cruel or angry with you, poor girl?’ asked the boy; ‘tell me this.’

      ‘No, Gerald,’ said she, in a low and broken voice; ‘but there is danger over you – ay, and near too, if you can’t escape it. He sent me last night over to St. Stephano, twelve weary miles across the mountain, after nightfall, to fetch the Gobbino – ’

      ‘The Gobbino – who is he?’

      ‘The hunch-back, that was at the galleys in Messina,’ said the girl, trembling all over; and then went on, ‘and to tell him to come over to the Tana, for he wanted him.’

      ‘Well, and then – ’

      ‘And then,’ muttered the girl, ‘and then,’ and she made a pantomimic gesture of drawing a knife suddenly across the throat. ‘It is so with him, they say; he ‘d think no more of it than do I of killing a hen!’

      ‘No, no, Tina,’ said the boy, smiling at her fears. ‘You wrong old Pippo and the Gobbo too. Take my word for it, there is something else he wants him for; besides, why should he dislike me? What have I done to provoke such a vengeance?’

      ‘Haven’t you threatened him?’ said the girl eagerly. ‘Have you not said that when Signor Gabriel comes back you will tell him something Pippo said of him?’ Is that not enough? Is the Signor Gabriel one who ever forgives an injury?’

      ‘I ‘ll not believe, I can’t believe it,’ said Gerald musingly.

      ‘But I tell you it is true; I tell you I know it,’ cried the girl passionately.

      ‘But what am I to do, then? How can I defend myself,’’ ‘Fly – leave this – get over to Bolseno, or cross the frontier; neither of them can follow you into Tuscany.’

      ‘Remember, Tina, I have no money. I am almost naked. I know no one.’

      ‘What matters all that if you have life?’ said she boldly.

      ‘Well said, girl!’ cried he, warmed by the same daring spirit that prompted her words. A slight noise in the garden underneath the window startled Tina, and she stepped quietly from the room and closed the door.

      It was some time before Gerald could thoroughly take in the full force of the emergency that threatened him. He knew well that in the Italian nature the sentiment of vengeance occupies no low nor ignominious place, but is classed among high and generous qualities; and that he who submits tamely to an injury is infinitely meaner than the man who, at any cost of treachery, exacts his revenge for it.

      That a terrible vengeance was often exacted for some casual slight, even a random word, the youth well knew. These were the points of honour in that strange national character of which, even to this hour, we know less than of any people’s in Europe; and certainly, no crime could promise an easier accomplishment or less chance of discovery. ‘Who is ever to know if I sunk under the Maremma fever,’ said he, ‘and who to care?’

      He gazed out upon the lonesome waste of mountain and the black and stagnant lake at its foot, and thought the spot, at least, was well chosen for such an incident. If there were moments in which the dread of a terrible fate chilled his blood and made his heart cold with fear, there were others in which the sense of peril rallied and excited him. The stirring incidents of his readings were full of suchlike adventures, and he felt a sort of heroism in seeing himself thus summoned to meet an emergency. ‘With this good rapier,’ said he, taking down Gabriel’s sword from its place, ‘methinks I might offer a stout resistance. That blade, if I mistake not, already knows the way to a man’s heart,’ and he flourished the weapon so as to throw himself into an attitude of defence. Too much excited to read, except by snatches, he imagined to his own mind every possible species of attack that might be made upon him. He knew that a fair fight would never enter into their thoughts; that even before the fate reserved for him would come the plan for their own security; and so he pictured the various ways in which he might be taken unawares and disposed of without even a chance of reprisal. As night drew near his anxieties increased. The book in which from time to time he had been reading was the Life of Benvenuto Cellini, an autobiography filled with the wildest incidents of personal encounter, and well suited to call up ideas of conflict and peril. Not less, however, was it calculated to suggest notions of daring and defiance; for in every perilous strait and hair-breadth emergency the great Florentine displayed the noblest traits of calm and reasoning courage. ‘They shall not do it without cost,’ said Gerald, as he stole up noiselessly to his room, never appearing at the supper-table, but retiring to concert his future steps. Gerald’s first care on entering his room was to search it thoroughly, though there was not a corner nor a cupboard capable of concealing a child. He went through the process of investigation with all the diligence his readings prompted. He sounded the walls for secret panels, and the floor for trapdoors; but all was so far safe. He next proceeded to barricade his door with chairs; not, indeed, to prevent