“I can forbid it,” he said, in a tone of pain.
“And I can follow all the same,” she answered. He looked at her with a glance in which I read both surprise and grief, and for a minute he found no answer. When she moved to look at him he had turned away, and did not see how timid and beseeching her eyes were, for all the rebellion in her words.
“My child,” he said, “I am at a grave disadvantage. It pleased God to part us, and to deny us even the knowledge of each other's existence. I am still a stranger.”
“No, no, no!” she cried. She turned and ran to him, and it was plain that an appeal couched in such terms was more than she could bear. “You are my father,” she sobbed, “my dear, dear father! All the dearer,” she went on, in words made half inarticulate by her tears, and all the more expressive and affecting—“all the dearer because we never knew each other through all those dreadful years! I love you, dear, and I am not undutiful, and I will do whatever you ask me; but I want to be with you, I want to be with you. I have had you for such a little time. I want you—I want you always!”
“You must spare me to Italy,” said her father, kissing her hands and stroking them within his own.
“Italy! What would Italy be to me if you were not a part of it?” The Southern blood broke out there plain to see, and in her flashing eyes and vivid face and the free gesture with which she spoke she was Italian all over. “Do you think a girl can love a country or a name as she loves her father? Do you think she cares about your houses and intrigues, your Piedmonts and Savoys, your Cavours and Metterniches? I would give everything I have to Italy, but I would give it all to Austria just as soon if you were on her side!”
The count stood as if stricken dumb. I do not believe that this human natural aspect of the case had ever occurred to him as being within the broadest limits of possibility. Italy had come to mean everything in the world to him. The word meant love, revenge, ambition, the very daily bread and water of his heart and soul. The fate of Italy overrode, in his mind, every personal consideration—not only for himself, but, unconsciously, for every living creature. It was natural that it should be so. It would have been strange, perhaps, had it been otherwise. I could see that his daughter's outburst sounded in his ears almost like a blasphemy. He stood wonder-struck and silent.
“If you,” he said at last, with a face as white as a ghost's, and raising a shaking hand towards her—“if you, my daughter, the living remembrance of my wife—if she herself were back here from her repose in heaven—if all that ever were or could be dear to me stood on the one side, and my country's freedom on the other, I would lose you all—I would sacrifice you with my own hand for that great cause as willingly as I would sacrifice myself.”
“Of course you would,” she answered, with an amazement almost equal to his own. “What was the use of proclaiming a truth so self-evident as that? You are a man and a patriot, and you love your country”—her voice rang and her bosom heaved—“and you have given all the best years of your life in suffering for her; and that is why I love and honor you. But that is what a man could never understand. You love your cause, and we women love you for loving it; and love it because you love it, and we would die for it just as soon as you would. Oh, you heroic, noble, beautiful—goose!” She rushed at him, and kissed him with a passionate impetuosity. “And you think it's all Italy. It isn't Italy; it's you! You're my father, and you're a hero, and a—and a—martyr, and the noblest man that ever lived; and I love you, and I'm proud of you, and—Italy! You're my Italy, dear!”
I know that I have not even recorded the words she spoke, well as I fancied I remembered them. But there is no recording the manner, all fire and passion and melting tenderness; and such a sudden sense of fun and affection in the very middle of it all that I was within an ace of crying at it. The count did cry, without disguise, and so did she, and I did what I could to look as if I were not in the least moved. But when her outburst was over, and we had all settled down again, there was no further hint of disobedience. Violet sat down submissively on a little footstool at the count's side, holding his hand and resting her head against his knee while he detailed his plans, so far as they were ripe, or speculated beyond them, looking into the possibilities of the future.