The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival

by M. E. Braddon

"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."