The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

He was six-and-thirty years of age, and that tragedy of his youth had exercised a sobering influence over all his after-life. He was a fine classical scholar, and had read much, and travelled much, but showed himself a true Briton by his ignorance of every living language except his own. A courier and a French valet saved him all communication with innkeepers and their kind, and a smile or a stately wave of the hand sufficed to make his wishes known to his Varenna boatmen. He loved Italy as a picture, without wanting to get any nearer the living figures in the foreground.

There was a festa at Bellagio on the Sunday after his arrival – a festa of thanksgiving for the fruits of the year, and he attended Antonia and Sophy to the church, where there was to be a solemn service, and the priestly benediction upon gifts provided by the faithful, which were afterwards to be sold by auction for the benefit of church and poor.

The piazza in front of the church was dazzling in the fierce afternoon sunshine when Antonia and Sophy climbed the steep street, and found themselves among the populace standing about the square, the women with babies in their arms, and little children at their knees, and the maimed and halt and blind and deaf and dumb, who seem to make up half the population of an Italian town on a Sunday afternoon.

The natives gazed in admiring wonder at the beautiful face under the broad Leghorn hat, with white ostrich feathers and diamond buckle, the tall figure in the straight simplicity of white muslin and a long blue sash, that almost touched the points of the blue kid shoes, the beautiful throat and pearl necklace showing above the modest muslin kerchief. Sophy was in white muslin also, but Sophy being low in figure, must needs affect a triple frilled skirt and a frilled muslin cape, which gave her the shape of a penwiper.

"Did I not know you superior to all petty arts I might say you dressed your waiting-woman to be a foil to your beauty," Lord Dunkeld told Antonia, when Sophy was out of earshot.

"Miss Potter chooses her own clothes, and I can never persuade her to wear anything but the latest fashion. She has but to see the picture of a new mode in the Ladies' Magazine, and she is miserable till she tries it on her own person."

They went into the church, where the hot sunlight was intensified by the pervading decoration, and the high altar glowed like a furnace. The marble pillars were covered with crimson brocade, and long crimson curtains hung from the roof, making a tent of warm rich red, the scarlet vestments of the acolytes striking a harsher note against the crimson glow.

Three priests in richly embroidered copes officiated at the altar, and between the rolling thunder of the organ came the sound of loud strident voices chanting without accompaniment, while children's treble pipes shrilled out alternate versicles. The congregation consisted mostly of women, wearing veils, white or black.

Antonia stood by a pillar near the door, enduring the heated atmosphere as long as she could, but she had to leave the church before the end of the service, followed by Sophy. Lord Dunkeld found them seated in the piazza, where they could wait for the procession, and watch the tributes of the pious being carried into the church by a side door – huge cakes, castles and temples in ornamental pastry, baskets of fruit, a dead hare, live fowls, birds in a cage, a fir tree with grapes and peaches tied to the branches, a family of white kittens mewing and struggling in a basket.

The train of priests and acolytes came pouring out into the sunshine, gorgeous in gold and brocade, the band playing a triumphal march. After the officiating priests came a procession of men in monkish robes, some struggling under the weight of massive crosses, the rest carrying tapers that burnt pale in the vivid light; some with upright form and raven hair, others the veterans of toil, with silvery locks and dark olive faces, strong and rugged features, withered hands seamed with the scars of labour; and following these came women of every age, from fifteen to ninety, their heads draped with white or black veils, but their faces uncovered.

Lord Dunkeld surveyed them with a critical eye. "Upon my soul, I did not think Italy could show so much ugliness," he said.

"Oh, but most of the girls are pretty."

"The girls, yes – but the women! They grow out of their good looks before they are thirty, and are hags and witches when an Englishwoman's mature charms are at the zenith. Stay, there is a pretty roguish face – and – look, look, madam, the girl next her – the tall girl – great Heaven, what a likeness!"

He ran forward a few paces to get a second look at a face that had startled him out of his Scottish phlegm – a face that was like Antonia's in feature and expression, though the colouring was darker and less delicate.

"Did you see that tall girl with the blue bead necklace?" Dunkeld asked Antonia, excitedly.

"I could not help seeing her, when you made such a fuss."

"She is your living image – she ought to be your younger sister."

"I have no sisters."

"Oh, 'tis a chance likeness, no doubt. Such resemblances are often stronger than any you can find in a gallery of family portraits."

Antonia turned to a little group of women close by, whom she had already questioned about the people in the procession. Did they know the girl in the blue necklace?

Yes, she was Francesca Bari. She lived with her grandfather, who had a little vineyard on the hill yonder, about a mile from the piazza where they were standing. The signorina had noticed her? She was accounted the prettiest girl in the district, and she was as good as she was pretty. Her mother and father were dead, and she worked hard to keep her grandfather's house in order, and to bring up her brother and sisters.

Dunkeld's interest in the girl began and ended in her likeness to the woman he loved; but Antonia was keenly interested, and early next morning was on her way to the hill above the Lecco lake, alone and on foot, to search for the dwelling of the Baris. She was ever on the alert to discover any trace of her mother's kindred; and it was possible that some branch of her race had sunk to the peasant class, and that the type which sometimes marks a long line of ancestry might be repeated here. Antonia was not going to shut her eyes to such a possibility, however humiliating it might be. Offshoots of the greatest families may be found in humble circumstances.

She passed a few scattered houses along the crest of the hill, and some women picking grapes in a vineyard close to the road told her the way to Bari's house. His vineyard was on the slope of the hill facing Lierna.

Less than half an hour's walk by steep and rugged paths, up and down hill, brought her to a house with bright ochre walls and dilapidated blue shutters, standing in a patch of garden, where great golden pumpkins sprawled between rows of cabbages and celery, under fig-trees covered with purple fruit, and apple and pear trees bent with age and the weight of their rosy and russet crop. A straggling hedge of roses and oleander divided the garden from the narrow lane, while beyond, the vines joined hands in green alleys along the terraced slope of the hill, sheltered by a little olive wood.

The girl with the blue necklace was digging in the garden. Antonia could see her across the red roses where the hedge was lowest. A child of three or four years old was sitting on a basket close by, and two older children were on their knees, weeding a cabbage bed. They were poorly clad, but they looked clean, healthy, and happy.

The girl heard the flutter of Antonia's muslin gown, and looked up, with her foot upon her spade. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead with a gaudy cotton handkerchief.

"May I take one of your roses?" Antonia asked, smiling at her across the gap in the hedge.

"Si, si," cried Francesca, "as many as the signorina likes. There are plenty of them."

She ran to the hedge and began to pluck the roses, in an eager hospitality. She was dazzled by the vision of the beautiful face, the yellow hat and snowy plumes, the diamond buckle flashing in the sun, and something in the smile that puzzled her. Without being conscious of the likeness between the stranger's face and that one she saw every morning unflatteringly reflected in the dusky little glass under her bedroom window, she had a feeling of familiarity with the violet eyes, the sunny smile.

Antonia thanked her for her roses, admired her garden, questioned her about her brother and sisters, and was at once on easy terms with her. Yes, they were motherless, and she had taken care of them ever since Etta, the baby, was a fortnight old. Yes, she worked hard every day; but she loved work, and when the vintage was good they were all happy. Grandfather had not been able to work for over a year; he was very old – "vecchio vecchio" – and very weak.

"I hope you have relations who help you," said Antonia, "distant relations, perhaps, who are richer than your grandfather?"

"No, there is no one. We had an aunt, but she is dead. She died before I was born. Grandfather says I am like her. It makes him cry sometimes to look at me, and to remember that he will never see her again! She was his favourite daughter."

"And was your grandfather always poor – always living here, on this little vineyard and garden?" Antonia asked, pale, and with an intent look in her eyes.

Had she found them, the kindred for whom she had been looking, in these simple peasants, these sons and daughters of toil, so humbly born, without a history, the very off-scouring of the earth? Was this the end of her father's fairy tale, this the lowly birthplace of the Italian bride, the daughter of a noble house, who had fled with the English tutor, who had stooped from her high estate to make a love match?

She remembered her father's reluctance to take her to her mother's home, or even to tell her the locality. She remembered how he had shuffled and prevaricated, and put off the subject, and she thought with bitter shame of his falsehoods, his sophistications. Alas, why had he feared to tell her the truth? Would she have thought less lovingly of her dead mother because of her humble lineage? Surely not! But she had been fooled by lies, had thought of herself as the daughter of a patrician race, and had cherished romantic dreams of a line of soldiers and statesmen, whose ambitions and aspirations, whose courage and genius, were in her blood.

The dilapidated walls yonder, the painted shutters rotten with age, the gaudy daub of Virgin and Child on the plastered façade, the garden of cabbages and pumpkins, and the patch of tall Indian corn! What a disillusion! How sorry an end of her dreams!

"Sicuro!" the girl answered, wondering at the fine lady's keen look. She had been questioned often about herself, often noticed by people of quality, on account of her beauty; but this lady had such an earnest air. "Si, si, signorina," she said; "grandfather has always lived here. He was born in our cottage. His father was gardener to the Marchese" (the grand seigneur of the district, name understood). "And he bought the vineyard with his savings when he was an old man. He was a very good gardener."

"May I see your grandfather?"

"Sicuro! He will be pleased to see the signorina," the girl answered readily, accustomed to be patronized by wandering strangers, and to receive little gifts from them.

Antonia followed her into the cottage. An old man was sitting in an armchair by the hearth, where an iron pot hung over a few smouldering sticks and a heap of grey ashes. He looked up at Antonia with eyes that saw all things dimly. The sunshine streamed into the room from the open door and window; but her face was in shadow as she went towards him with outstretched hand, Francesca explaining that the English lady wished to see him.

The patriarch tried to rise from his chair, but Antonia stopped him, seating herself by his side.

"I saw your grand-daughter at the festa," she said, "and I wanted to see more of her, if I could. Can you guess why I was anxious about her, and anxious to be her friend?"

She took off her hat, while the old man looked at her with a slow wonder, his worn-out eyes gradually realizing the lines in the splendid face.

"I have been told that your Francesca is like me," she said. "Can you see any resemblance?"

"Santo e santissimo! Si, si, the signorina is like Francesca, as two peaches side by side on the wall yonder; and she is like my daughter, my Tonia, my beloved, who died more than twenty years ago. But she is not dead to me – no, not to me. I see her face in my dreams. I hear her voice sometimes as I wake out of sleep, and then I look round, and call her, and she is not there; and I remember that I am an old man, and that she left me many, many years ago."

"You had a daughter called Antonia?"

"Si, signorina. It was her mother's name also. I called her Tonia. She was the handsomest girl between the two lakes. Everybody praised her, a good girl, as industrious as she was virtuous. A good and dutiful daughter till the Englishman stole her from us."

"Your Antonia married an Englishman?"

"Si, signorina! 'Twas thought a fine marriage for her. He wore a velvet coat, and he called himself a gentleman; but he was only a schoolmaster, and he came to Varenna in a coach and six with a young English milord."

"What was the tutor's name?"

"Non posso pronunziar' il suo nome. Tonton, Tonton, Guilliamo."

"Thornton! William Thornton?"

"Ecco!" cried the old man, nodding assent. "We had a dairy then, my wife and I," he continued, "and the young lord and his governor used to leave their boat and walk up the hill to get a drink of milk. They paid us handsomely, and we got to look for them every day, and they would stop and talk and laugh with my two girls. The governor could speak Italian almost like one of us; and the young milord was trying to learn; and they used all of them to laugh at his mistakes, and make a fool of him. Well, well, 'twas a merry time for us all."

"Did you consent to your daughter's marriage?"

"Chi lo sa? Forse! Non diceva nè si nè no. He was a gentleman, and I was proud that she should marry above her station. But he told me a bundle of lies. He pretended to be a rich man, and promised that he would bring her to Italy once a year. And then he took her away, in milord's coach, and they were married at Chiavenna, where he lied to the priest, as he had lied to me, and swore he was a good Catholic. He sent me the certificate of their marriage, so that I might know my daughter was an honest woman; but he never let me see her again."

He paused in a tearful mood.

"Perhaps it was not his own fault that he did not keep his promise," Antonia pleaded. "He may have been too poor to make such a journey."

"Yes, he was as poor as Job. Tonia wrote to me sometimes, and she told me they were very poor, and that she hated her English home, and pined for the garden and the vineyard, and the hills and lakes. She was afraid she would die without ever seeing us again. Her letters were full of sorrow. I could see her tears upon the page. And then there came a letter from him, with a great black seal. She was dead —Ma non si muove foglia che Iddio non voglia. 'Tis not for me to complain!"

The feeble frame was shaken by the old man's sobs. Antonia knelt on the brick floor by his chair, and soothed him with gentle touches and soft words. She was full of tender pity; but there was the feeling that she was stooping from her natural level to comfort a creature of a lower race, another order of being, with whom she could have no sympathy.

And he was her grandfather. His blood was in her veins. From him she inherited some of the qualities of her heart and brain: not from statesmen or heroes, but from a peasant, whose hands were gnarled and roughened by a lifetime's drudgery, whose thoughts and desires had never travelled beyond his vineyard and patch of Indian corn.

Her grandfather, living in this tumble-down old house, where the rotten shutters offered so poor a defence against foul weather, the floods and winds of autumn and winter, where the crumbling brick floor had sunk below the level of the soil outside: living as peasants live, and suffering all the deprivations and hardships of extreme poverty, while she, his own flesh and blood, had squandered thousands upon the caprices of a woman of fashion. And she found him worn out with toil, old and weak, on the brink of the grave perhaps. Her wealth could do but little for him.

She had no doubt of his identity. The story of his daughter's marriage was her mother's story.

There was no room for doubt, yet she shrank with a curious restraint from revealing the tie that bound her to him. She was full of generous pity for a long life that had known so few of this world's joys; but the feeling of caste was stronger than love or pity. She was ashamed of herself for feeling such bitter mortification, such a cruel disappointment. Oh, foolish pride which she had taken for an instinct of good birth! Because she was beautiful and admired, high-spirited and courageous, she must needs believe that she sprang from a noble line, and could claim all the honour due to race. Her father had lied to her, and she had believed the flattering fable. She could not reconcile herself to the humiliating truth so far as to claim her new-found kindred. But she was bent upon showing them all possible kindness short of that revelation. They were so poor, so humble, that she might safely play the part of benefactress. They had no pride to be crushed by her favours. She questioned the old man about his health, while the girl stood by the doorway listening, and the children's silvery voices sounded in the garden outside. Had he been ill long; did he suffer much; had he a doctor? He had been ailing a long time, but as for suffering, well, he had pains in his limbs, the house was damp in winter, but there was more weakness than suffering. "Also the ass when he is tired lies down in the middle of the road, and can go no farther," he said resignedly. As for a doctor; no, he had no need of one. The doctor would only bleed him; and he had too little blood as it was. One of his neighbours – an old woman that some folks counted a witch, but a good Catholic for all that – had given him medicine of her own making that had done him good.

"I think a doctor would do you more good, if you would see one. There is a doctor at Bellagio who came to see my woman the other day when she had a touch of fever. He seemed a clever man."

"Si signorina, ma senza denari non si canta messa. Clever men want to be paid. Your doctor would cost me the eyes of the head."

"You shall have as much money as ever you want," answered Antonia, pulling a long netted purse from her pocket.

The gold showed through the silken meshes, and the old man's eyes glittered with greed as he looked at it. She filled his tremulous hands with guineas, emptying both ends of the purse into his hollowed palms. He had never seen so much gold. The strangers who came to sit under his pergola, and drink great bowls of new milk from the fawn-coloured cows that were his best source of income, thought themselves generous if they gave him a scudo at parting: but here was a visitor from fairyland raining gold into his hands.

"They are English guineas, and you will gain by the exchange," she said, "so you can have the physician to see you every day. He will not want to bleed you when he sees how weak you are."

The old man shook his head doubtfully. They were so ready with the lancet, those doctors! His eyes were fixed on the guineas, as he tried to reckon them. The coins lay in too close a heap to be counted easily.

He broke into a rapture of gratitude, invoking every saint in the calendar, and Antonia shivered with pain at the exaggeration of his acknowledgments. He thanked her as a wayside beggar would have done. His benedictions were the same as the professional mendicants, the maimed and halt and blind, gave her when she dropped a coin into a basket or a hat. He belonged to the race which is accustomed to taking favours from strangers. He belonged to the sons of bondage, poverty's hereditary slaves.

She appealed to Francesca.

"Would it not be better for your grandfather if he lived at Bellagio, where he would have a comfortable house in a street, and plenty of neighbours?" she asked.

"I don't think he would like to leave the vineyard, Signorina; though it would be very pleasant to live in the town," answered Francesca.

Her dark eyes sparkled at the thought. It was lonely on the hill, where she had only the children to talk to, and her grandfather, whose conversation was one long lamentation.

The old man looked up with a scared expression.

"Ohime! Non posso!" he exclaimed, "I could not leave the villino. I shall die as I have lived, in the villino!"

"Well, you must do what is best pleasing to yourself," Antonia said. "All I desire is that you should be happy, and enjoy every comfort that money can buy."

She bent down and kissed the sunburnt forehead, so wrinkled and weather-beaten after the long life of toil. She asked Francesca to walk a little way with her; and they went out into the lane together.

"Your house looks comfortless even in sunshine," Antonia said. "It must be worse in winter!"

"Si, signorina. It is very cold in bad weather, but grandfather loves the villino."

"You might get a carpenter to mend the windows and put new hinges on the shutters. They look as if they would hardly shut."

"Indeed, signorina, 'tis long since our shutters have been shut. Grandfather is too poor to pay a carpenter. Nothing in the house has been mended since I can remember."

"But you have your cows and your vineyard. How is it that he is so poor?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders. She knew nothing.

"Is it you who keeps the purse?"

"No, no, signorina, non so niente. Grandfather gives me money to pay the baker – "

"And the butcher?"

"We do not buy meat. I kill a fowl sometimes, or a rabbit; but for the most part we have cabbage soup and polenta."

"Well, you will have plenty of money in future. I shall see to that; and you must take care that your grandfather has good food every day, and a doctor when he is ailing, and warm blankets for winter. I want you both to be happy and well cared for. And you must get a man to dig in the garden and carry water for you. I don't like to see a girl work as you do."

Francesca stared at the beautiful lady in open wonder. She was doubtless mad as a March hare, la Poverina; but what a delightful form her madness had taken. It might be that the Blessed Virgin had inspired this madness, and sent this lovely lunatic wandering from house to house among the deserving poor, scattering gold wherever she found want and piety. It was almost a miracle. Indeed, who could be sure that this benign lady was not the Blessed One herself, who could appear in any manner she pleased, even arrayed in the latest fashion of plumed hats and India muslin négligées?

Antonia left the girl a little way from the villino, and walked slowly down the hill to Bellagio, deep in thought. Alas, alas, to have found her mother's kindred, and to feel no thrill of love, no yearning to take them to her heart, only the same kind of pity she had felt for those poor wretches in Lambeth Marsh, only an eager desire to make their lot happier, to give them all good things that money can buy.

"Should I grow to love that old man if I knew him better?" she wondered. "Is there some dormant affection in my heart, some hereditary love that needs but to be warmed into life by time and custom? God knows what I am made of. I do not feel as if I could ever care for that poor old man as grandfathers are cared for. My mother's father, and he loved her dearly! It is base ingratitude in me not to love him."

She recalled the greedy look that came into the withered old face at sight of the gold. A painter need have asked no better model for Harpagon. She would have given much not to have seen that look.

She would visit them often, she thought, and would win him to softer moods. She would question him about her mother's girlhood, beguile him into fond memories of the long-lost daughter, memories of his younger days, before grinding poverty had made him so eager for gold. She would make herself familiar with Bari and his granddaughter, find out all their wants, all their desires, and provide for the welfare of the old life that was waning, and the young life with a long future before it. She would make age and youth happy, if it were possible. But she would not tell them of the relationship that made it her duty to care for them. She would let them remember her as the eccentric stranger, who had found them in poverty, and left them in easy circumstances; the benefactress dropped from the clouds.