Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel. Lever Charles James
not one it’s over safe to talk about.’
‘Where does he come from?’
‘He ‘s French, and that’s all I can tell you.’
‘It can’t be for the chasse he comes here,’ said Gerald musingly. ‘There’s no game in these mountains. It can scarcely be for seclusion, for he’s always rambling away to some village or town near. It’s now more than a week since we have seen him. I wish I could make out who or what he is!’
‘Would you indeed?’ cried a deep voice, as a large, heavy hand fell upon his shoulder; ‘and what would the knowledge benefit you, boy?’ Gerald looked up, and there stood Gabriel. He was dressed in a loose peasant’s frock, and seemed by his mien as if he had come off a long day’s march.
‘Go in, Pippo, and make me a good salad. Grill me that old hen yonder, and I’ll give you a share of a flask of Orvieto that was in the bishop’s cellar last night.’
He threw off his knapsack as he spoke, and removing his hat, wiped his heated forehead, and then turning to the youth at his side, he said: ‘So, boy, I am a sort of mystery to you, it seems – mayhap others share in that same sentiment – at least I have heard as much. But whence this curiosity on your part? You were a stranger to me, and you are so still. What can it signify to either of us what has happened before we met and knew each other? Life is not a river running in one bed, but a series of streams that follow fifty channels – some pure and limpid, some, perchance, turbid and foul enough. What you have been gives no guarantee to what you may be, remember that!’
He spoke with a tone of sternness that made his words sound like reproof, and the youth held down his head abashed.
‘Don’t suppose I am angry with you,’ continued the other, but in the self-same tone as before; ‘nor that I regard this curious desire of yours as ingratitude. You owe me nothing, or next to nothing, and you ‘re a rare instance of such in life, if within the next ten years the wish will not occur to you at least twenty times, that I had left you to die beside the dark shores of Bolseno!’
‘I can well believe it may be so,’ said Gerald with a sigh.
‘Not that this is my own philosophy,’ said the other, in a voice of powerful meaning. ‘I soon made the discovery that life was not a garden, but a hunting-ground, and that the wolves had the best of it! Ay, boy,’ cried he, with a kind of savage exultation, ‘there’s the experience of one whose boast it is to know something of his fellows!’
Gerald was silent, and for some time Gabriel also did not speak. At last, looking steadfastly at the youth, he said: ‘I have been up to Rome these last three days. My errand there was to learn something about you.’
‘About me?’ said Gerald, blushing deeply.
‘Yes. It was a whim – (I am the slave of such caprices) – seized me to learn how you came among the Jesuit brothers, and why you left them.’
‘I thought I had told you why myself,’ said the youth proudly.
‘So you had; but I am one of those who can only build on the foundation their own hands have laid, and so I went myself to learn your history.’
‘And has the journey rewarded your exertions?’ said the boy, half mockingly.
A sudden start, and a look of almost savage ferocity on Gabriel’s features, made Gerald tremble for his own rashness; and then, with a measured voice, he repeated the boy’s words:
‘The journey has rewarded my exertions.’
‘May I venture to ask what you have discovered?’ said Gerald timidly.
‘I went to satisfy my own curiosity, not yours, boy. What I have learned may suffice for the one, and not for the other. Here comes Pippo with pleasanter tidings than all this gossip,’ said he, rising, and entering the house.
‘Won’t you come in and have a bit of supper with us, Gerald?’ asked Pippo kindly.
‘No, I cannot eat,’ said the boy, as he wiped the tears from his eyes.
‘Come and taste a glass of the generous Orvieto, however.’
‘No, Pippo; I could not swallow it,’ said he, in a half-choking voice.
‘Ah!’ muttered the old man with a sigh, ‘Signor Gabriel’s talk rarely makes one relish the meal they wait for,’ and with bent-down head he re-entered the house.
The feeling Gerald had long experienced toward Gabriel was one of fear, almost verging upon terror. There was about the man’s look, his voice, his manner, something that portended danger. Do what he would, the boy never could make his sense of gratitude rise superior to his fear. He tried, over and over again, to think of him only as one who had saved his life, and to whom he owed all the present comforts he enjoyed; but above these thoughts there triumphed a terrible dread of the man, and a strange, mysterious belief that he possessed a sort of control over his destiny.
‘If it were indeed so,’ muttered he to himself, ‘and that his shadow were to be over me through life, I ‘d curse the day he carried me from the shore of the Lagoscuro!’
Night was rapidly closing in, and the dreary landscape was every moment growing sadder and drearier. As the sun sank beneath the hills the heavy exhalations began to well up from the damp earth, till a bluish haze of vapour rested over the plains and even partly up the mountain side. An odour, oppressive and sickening, accompanied this mist, which embarrassed the respiration, and made the senses dull and weary; and yet there sat Gerald, drinking in these noxious influences, careless of his fate, and half triumphing in his own indifference as to life. A drowsy stupor was rapidly gaining on him, when he felt his arm violently shaken, and, looking up, saw Gabriel at his side. In a gruff, rude voice, he chided him for his imprudence, and told him to go in.
‘Isn’t my life, at least, my own?’ said Gerald boldly.
‘That it is not,’ said the other. ‘Your priestly teachers might have told you that you hold it in trust for Him who gave it. I, and men like me, would say that each of us here has his allotted task to do in life; and that he is but a coward, or as bad as a coward, who skulks his share of it. Go in, I say, boy.’
Gerald obeyed without a word; and now a slavish sense of fear came over him, and he felt that this man swayed and controlled him as he pleased.
‘There, Gerald, drink that,’ said Gabriel, filling him out a goblet of red wine. ‘That’s the liquor inspires the pious sentiments of the Bishop of Orvieto. From that generous grape-juice spring his Christian charities and his heavenly precepts. Let us see what miracles it can work upon two such sinful mortals as you and me. Well done, boy; drain off another,’ and he refilled his glass as he spoke.
Old Pippo had retired and left them alone together. The moon was slowly rising beyond the lake, and threw a long yellow stream upon the floor, the only light in the chamber where they sat, thus giving a sort of solemnity to a moment when each felt too deeply sunk in his own thoughts for much conversation.
‘Do you remark how that streak of moonlight seems to separate us, Gerald?’ said Gabriel. ‘A superstitious mind would find food for speculation there, and trace some mysterious meaning – perhaps a warning – from it. Are you superstitious?’
‘I can scarcely say I am not,’ said the boy diffidently.
‘None of us are,’ said the other boldly. ‘If we affect to despise spirits we are just as eager slaves of our own presentiments. What we dignify by the name of reason is just as often a mere prompting of instinct. It amuses us to believe that we steer the bark of our destiny; but the truth comes upon us at last, that the tiller was lashed when the voyage began.’ After a long silence on both sides, Gabriel said: ‘I have told you, Gerald, that I made a journey to Rome on your account. I have been to the Jesuit College; conversed with the superior; saw your cell, your torn school-books, your little table carved over with your pen-knife; and, by a date scratched on a window-pane, was led to discover where you had passed the evening of the fifth of January.’
‘And did you go there also?’