And as she spoke, the Cardinal came forward, and with a mingled affection and respect embraced Gerald and kissed him on both cheeks.
CHAPTER XVIII. HOW THE TIME PASSED AT ORVIETO
Orvieto was a true villa palace (which only Italians understand how to build), and the grounds were on a scale of extent that suited the mansion. Ornamental terraces and gardens on every side, with tasteful alleys of trellised vines to give noon-day shade, and farther off again a dense pine forest, traversed by long alleys of grass, which even in the heat of summer were cool and shaded. These narrow roads, barely wide enough for two horsemen abreast, crossed and recrossed in the dark forest, ever leading between walls of the same dusky foliage, with scanty glimpses of a blue sky through the arched branches overhead.
If Guglia rode there for hours long with Gerald; if they strayed—often silently—not even a foot-fall heard on the smooth turf, you perhaps, know why; and if you do not, how am I, unskilled in such descriptions, to make you wiser? Well, it was even as you suspect: the petted child of fortune, the lovely niece of the great Cardinal, the beautiful Guglia, whose hand was the greatest prize of Rome, had conceived such an interest in Gerald, his fortunes and his fate, that she could not leave Orvieto.
In vain came pressing invitations from Albano and Terni, where she had promised to pass part of her autumn. In vain the lively descriptions of friends full of all the delights of Castellamare or Sorrento: the story of festivities and pleasures seemed poor and even vulgar with the life she led. Talk of illusions as you will, that of being in love is the only one that moulds the nature or elevates the heart! Out of its promptings come the heroism of the least venturesome or the poetry of the least romantic! Insensibly stealing into the affections of another, we have to descend into our own hearts for the secrets that win success; and how resolutely we combat all that is mean or unworthy in our nature, simply that we may offer a more pure sacrifice on the altar we kneel to!
And there and thus she lived, the flattered beauty—the young girl, to whom an atmosphere of homage and admiration seemed indispensable—whose presence was courted in the society of the great world, and whose very caprices had grown to become fashions—a sort of strange, half-real existence, each day so like another that time had no measure how it passed.
The library of the villa supplied them with ample material to study the history of the Stuarts; and in these pursuits they passed the mornings, carefully noting down the strange eventualities which determined their fate, and canvassing together in talk the traits which so often had involved them in misfortune. Gerald, now restored to full health, was a perfect type of the illustrious race he had sprung from: and not only was the resemblance in face and figure, but all the mannerisms of Charles Edward were reproduced in the son. The same easy, gentle, yielding disposition, dashed by impulses of the wildest daring, and darkened occasionally by moods of obstinacy; miserable under the thought of having offended, and almost more wretched when the notion of being forgiven imparted a sense of his own inferiority; he was one of those men whose minds are so many-sided that they seem to have no fixed character. Even now, though awakened to the thought of the great destiny that might one day befall him—assured as he felt of his birth and lineage—there were intervals in which no sense of ambition stirred him, when he would willingly accept the humblest lot in life should it only promise peace and tranquillity.
Strangely enough it was by these vacillations and changes of temperament that Guglia had attached herself so decisively to his fortunes. The very want which she supplied to his nature made the tie between them. The theory in her own heart was, that when called on for effort, whenever the occasion should demand the great personal qualities of courage and daring, Gerald would be pre-eminently distinguished, and show himself to the world a true Stuart.
While thus they lived a life of happiness, the Père Massoni was actively engaged in maturing plans for the future. For a considerable time back he had been watching the condition of Ireland with an intense feeling of anxiety. So far from the resistance to England having assumed the character of a struggle in favour of Catholicism, it had grown more and more to resemble the great convulsion in France which promised to ingulf all religions and all creeds. Though in a measure prepared for this in the beginning of the conflict, Massoni steadfastly trusted that the influence of the priests would as certainly bring the people back to the standards of the Church, and that eventually the contest would be purely between Rome and the Reformation. His last news from Ireland grievously damped the ardour of such hopes. The Presbyterians of the North—men called enemies of the ‘Church ‘—were now the most trusted leaders of the movement; and how was he to expect that such men as these would accept a Stuart for their king?