Vittoria — Complete. George Meredith
'For you are getting dramatic in your pose, my Laura,' he added, familiarizing the colder tone of his irony. 'You are beginning to stand easily in attitudes of defiance to your own father.'
'That I may practise how to provoke a paternal Government, you mean,' she rejoined, and was quite a match for him in dialectics.
The count chanced to allude further to the Signorina Vittoria.
'Do you know much of that lady?' she asked.
'As much as is known,' said he.
They looked at one another; the count thinking, 'I gave to this girl an excess of brains, in my folly!'
Compelled to drop his eyes, and vexed by the tacit defeat, he pursued, 'You expect great things from her?'
'Great,' said his daughter.
'Well, well,' he murmured acquiescingly, while sounding within himself for the part to play. 'Well-yes! she may do what you expect.'
'There is not the slightest doubt of her capacity,' said his daughter, in a tone of such perfect conviction that the count was immediately and irresistibly tempted to play the part of sagacious, kindly, tolerant but foreseeing father; and in this becoming character he exposed the risks her party ran in trusting anything of weight to a woman. Not that he decried women. Out of their sphere he did not trust them, and he simply objected to them when out of their sphere: the last four words being uttered staccato.
'But we trust her to do what she has undertaken to do,' said Laura.
The count brightened prodigiously from his suspicion to a certainty; and as he was still smiling at the egregious trap his clever but unskilled daughter had fallen into, he found himself listening incredulously to her plain additional sentence:—'She has easy command of three octaves.'
By which the allusion was transformed from politics to Art. Had Laura reserved this cunning turn a little further, yielding to the natural temptation to increase the shock of the antithetical battery, she would have betrayed herself: but it came at the right moment: the count gave up his arms. He told her that this Signorina Vittoria was suspected. 'Whom will they not suspect!' interjected Laura. He assured her that if a conspiracy had ripened it must fail. She was to believe that he abhorred the part of a spy or informer, but he was bound, since she was reckless, to watch over his daughter; and also bound, that he might be of service to her, to earn by service to others as much power as he could reasonably hope to obtain. Laura signified that he argued excellently well. In a fit of unjustified doubt of her sincerity, he complained, with a querulous snap:
'You have your own ideas; you have your own ideas. You think me this and that. A man must be employed.'
'And this is to account for your occupation?' she remarked.
'Employed, I say!' the count reiterated fretfully. He was unmasking to no purpose, and felt himself as on a slope, having given his adversary vantage.
'So that there is no choice for you, do you mean?'
The count set up a staggering affirmative, but knocked it over with its natural enemy as soon as his daughter had said, 'Not being for Italy, you must necessarily be against her:—I admit that to be the position!'
'No!' he cried; 'no: there is no question of “for” or “against,” as you are aware. “Italy, and not Revolution”: that is my motto.'
'Or, in other words, “The impossible,”' said Laura. 'A perfect motto!'
Again the count looked at her, with the remorseful thought: 'I certainly gave you too much brains.'
He smiled: 'If you could only believe it not impossible!'
'Do you really imagine that “Italy without Revolution” does not mean “Austria”?' she inquired.
She had discovered how much he, and therefore his party, suspected, and now she had reasons for wishing him away. Not daring to show symptoms of restlessness, she offered him the chance of recovering himself on the crutches of an explanation. He accepted the assistance, praising his wits for their sprightly divination, and went through a long-winded statement of his views for the welfare of Italy, quoting his favourite Berni frequently, and forcing the occasion for that jolly poet. Laura gave quiet attention to all, and when he was exhausted at the close, said meditatively, 'Yes. Well; you are older. It may seem to you that I shall think as you do when I have had a similar, or the same, length of experience.'
This provoking reply caused her father to jump up from his chair and spin round for his hat. She rose to speed him forth.
'It may seem to me!' he kept muttering. 'It may seem to me that when a daughter gets married—addio! she is nothing but her husband.'
'Ay! ay! if it might be so!' the signora wailed out.
The count hated tears, considering them a clog to all useful machinery. He was departing, when through the open window a noise of scuffling in the street below arrested him.
'Has it commenced?' he said, starting.
'What?' asked the signora, coolly; and made him pause.
'But-but-but!' he answered, and had the grace to spare her ears. The thought in him was: 'But that I had some faith in my wife, and don't admire the devil sufficiently, I would accuse him point-blank, for, by Bacchus! you are as clever as he.'
It is a point in the education of parents that they should learn to apprehend humbly the compliment of being outwitted by their own offspring.
Count Serabiglione leaned out of the window and saw that his horses were safe and the coachman handy. There were two separate engagements going on between angry twisting couples.
'Is there a habitable town in Italy?' the count exclaimed frenziedly. First he called to his coachman to drive away, next to wait as if nailed to the spot. He cursed the revolutionary spirit as the mother of vices. While he was gazing at the fray, the door behind him opened, as he knew by the rush of cool air which struck his temples. He fancied that his daughter was hurrying off in obedience to a signal, and turned upon her just as Laura was motioning to a female figure in the doorway to retire.
'Who is this?' said the count.
A veil was over the strange lady's head. She was excited, and breathed quickly. The count brought forward a chair to her, and put on his best court manner. Laura caressed her, whispering, ere she replied: 'The Signorina Vittoria Romana!—Biancolla!—Benarriva!' and numerous other names of inventive endearment. But the count was too sharp to be thrown off the scent. 'Aha!' he said, 'do I see her one evening before the term appointed?' and bowed profoundly. 'The Signorina Vittoria!'
She threw up her veil.
'Success is certain,' he remarked and applauded, holding one hand as a snuff-box for the fingers of the other to tap on.
'Signor Conte, you—must not praise me before you have heard me.'
'To have seen you!'
'The voice has a wider dominion, Signor Conte.'
'The fame of the signorina's beauty will soon be far wider. Was Venus a cantatrice?'
She blushed, being unable to continue this sort of Mayfly-shooting dialogue, but her first charming readiness had affected the proficient social gentleman very pleasantly, and with fascinated eyes he hummed and buzzed about her like a moth at a lamp. Suddenly his head dived: 'Nothing, nothing, signorina,' he said, brushing delicately at her dress; 'I thought it might be paint.' He smiled to reassure her, and then he dived again, murmuring: 'It must be something sticking to the dress. Pardon me.' With that he went to the bell. 'I will ring up my daughter's maid. Or Laura—where is Laura?'
The Signora Piaveni had walked to the window. This antiquated fussiness of the dilettante little nobleman was sickening to her.
'Probably you expect to discover a revolutionary symbol in the lines of the signorina's dress,' she said.
'A revolutionary symbol!—my dear! my dear!'