Calantha listened, however, with more interest to the accounts Buchanan now gave; and as he said he was but just returned from Dublin, even Gondimar thought the news which he brought worthy of some attention. “Send that damned Italian away,” said Buchanan in a loud whisper—“I have a million of things to tell you. If you keep him here, I shall go:—my remaining will be of no use.” Unaccustomed to curb herself in the least wish, Calantha now whispered to Gondimar, that she wished him to leave her, as she had something very particular to say to her cousin; but he only smiled contemptuously upon him, and sternly asking her, since when this amazing intimacy had arisen—placed himself near the pianoforte, striking its chords with accompaniments till the annoyance was past bearing.
Buchanan consoled himself by talking of his dogs and horses; and having given Calantha a list of the names of each, began enumerating to her the invitations he had received for the ensuing week. Fortunately, at this moment, a servant entered with a note for Gondimar. “Does the bearer wait?” he exclaimed with much agitation upon reading it; and immediately left the room.
Upon returning home, Count Gondimar perceived with surprise, in the place of the person he had expected, one of the attendants of the late Countess of Glenarvon,—a man whose countenance and person he well remembered from its peculiarly harsh and unpleasant expression.—“Is my young Lord alive?” said the man in a stern manner. Count Gondimar replied in the negative. “Then, Sir, I must trouble you with those affairs which most nearly concern him.” “Your name, I think is Macpherson?” said Count Gondimar. “You lived with the Countess of Glenarvon.” The man bowed, and giving a letter into the hands of the Count, “I am come from Italy at this time,” he replied, “in search of my late master—La Crusca and myself.” “Is La Crusca with you?” said Gondimar starting. “The letter will inform you of every particular,” replied the man with some gravity. “I shall wait for the child, or your farther orders.” Saying this, he left the Count’s apartment; and returned into the anti-chamber, where a beautiful little boy was waiting for him.
On that very evening, after a long conversation with Macpherson, Count Gondimar again sought Calantha at her father’s house, where, upon enquiring for her, he was immediately admitted. After some little hesitation, he told her that he had brought her the present of which he had made mention in his letter; that if she had the unkindness to refuse it, some other perhaps would take charge of it:—it was a gift which, however unworthy he was to offer it, he thought would be dearer in her estimation than the finest jewels, and the most costly apparel:—it was a fair young boy, he said, fitted to be a Lady’s page, and trained in every cunning art his tender years could learn. “He will be a play mate;” he said smiling, “for your son, and when,” added he in a lower voice, “the little Mowbrey can speak, he will learn to lisp in that language which alone expresses all that the heart would utter—all that in a barbarous dialect it dares not—must not say.”
As he yet spoke, he took the hat from off Zerbellini’s head, and gently pushing him towards Calantha, asked him to sue for her protection. The child immediately approached, hiding himself with singular fear from the caresses of the Count. “Zerbellini,” said Gondimar in Italian, “will you love that lady?” “In my heart;” replied the boy, shrinking back to Calantha, as if to a late found but only friend. Sophia was called, and joined in the general interest and admiration the child excited. Frances shewed him to Lord Trelawney, who laughed excessively at beholding him. Lady Margaret, who was present, looking upon him stedfastly, shrunk as if she had seen a serpent in her way, and then recovering herself, held her hand out towards him. Zerbellini fixed his eyes on Calantha, as if watching in her countenance for the only commands which he was to obey; and when she drew him towards her aunt, he knelt to her, and kissed her hand with the customary grace and courtesy of an Italian.
From that day Calantha thought of nothing but Zerbellini. He was a new object of interest:—to dress him, to amuse him, to shew him about, was her great delight. Wherever she went he must accompany her: in whatever she did or said, Zerbellini must bear a part. The Duke of Myrtlegrove advised her to make him her page; and for this purpose he ordered him the dress of an Eastern slave. Buchanan gave him a chain with a large turquoise heart; and as he placed it around the boy, he glanced his eye on Calantha. Presents, however, even more magnificent were in return immediately dispatched by her to the Duke, and to Buchanan.
Count Gondimar read the letters Calantha had written with the gifts; for she had left them, as was her custom, open upon the table. All she wrote, or received, were thus left; not from ostentation, but indifference and carelessness. “Are you mad,” said the Italian “or worse than mad?” “I affect it not,” replied Lady Avondale. “I conclude, therefore that it is real.” Indeed there was a strange compound in Calantha’s mind. She felt but little accountable for her actions, and she often had observed that if ever she had the misfortune to reflect and consequently to resolve against any particular mode of conduct, the result was that she ever fell into the error she had determined to avoid. She might indeed have said that the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak; for whatever she resolved, upon the slightest temptation to the contrary, she failed to execute.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“I am astonished my dear Gondimar,” said Viviani one day, addressing him, “at the description which you gave me of Lady Avondale. I have seen her since we conversed together about her, more than once; and there is not, I think, much trace left of that excessive timidity of manner—that monastic rigidity in her opinions and conduct, of which you made mention in one of your letters from Castle Delaval.” “I was wrong, utterly wrong,” said Gondimar, “and you may now rank this model of purity, this paragon of wives, this pupil of nature, whom I have so often praised to you, on a level with the rest of her fellow mortals.” “Not on a level—not on a level,” replied Viviani with gravity; “but falling as I fear, far beneath it.”
The Count then repeated in a solemn tone the description of Rome which Lucian has placed in the mouth of Nigrinus applying the enumeration of vices, temptations and corruptions, attributed to the fairest capital of the world, to London; and then asked of Gondimar, if it were possible for one like Calantha to sojourn long amidst such scenes, without in some measure acquiring the manners, if not falling into the errors to which the eyes and ears were every hour accustomed? He spoke of her with regret, as he thus pronounced her on the verge of ruin:—“a prey,” he said indignantly, “for the spoiler—the weak and willing victim of vanity.” “The courts of her father are overrun with petitioners and mendicants,” said Gondimar: “her apartments are filled with flatterers who feed upon her credulity: she is in love with ruin: it stalks about in every possible shape, and in every shape, she hails it:—woe is it; victim of prosperity, luxury and self indulgence.”