It is impossible to deny that, except in hotels which are cosmopolitan, and adapted to the many wants of the rich English, life in Italy is hard business enough for the inexperienced traveller, who knows the strange country into which he has suddenly dropped rather by means of poetical legends than by the facts of actual existence. A country of vineyards and orange-groves, of everlasting verdure and sunshine, is indeed, in its way, a true enough description of one aspect of that many-sided country: but these words of course convey no intimation of the terrors of an Italian palace in the depth of winter, where everything is stone-cold, and the possibilities of artificial warmth are of the most limited description; where the idea of doors and windows closely fitting has never entered the primitive mind, and where the cardinal virtue of patience and endurance of necessary evils wraps the contented native sufferer like the cloak which he hugs round him. Yet, notwithstanding, even Lauderdale relaxed out of the settled gloom on his face when he went to the window of the great bare sitting-room, and gazed out upon the grand expanse of the Campagna, lighted up with morning sunshine. The silence of that depopulated plain, with its pathetic bits of ruin here and there—ruins, to be sure, identified and written down in books, but speaking for themselves with a more woeful and suggestive voice than can be uttered by any mere historical associations, through the very depths of their dumbness and loss of all distinction—went to the spectator’s heart. What they were or had been, what human hands had erected, or human hearts rejoiced in them, these lingering remains had ceased to tell; and it was only with that vagueness which is sadder than any story that they indicated a former forgotten existence, a past too far away to be deciphered now.
Lauderdale laid his hand on Colin’s shoulder, and drew him away. “Ay, ay,” he said, with an unusual thrill in his voice, “it’s grand to hear that yon’s Soracte, and thereaway is the Sabine country, and that’s Rome lying away among the clouds. It’s no Rome, callant; it’s a big kirk, or heathen temple, or whatever you like to call it. I’m no heeding about Rome. It’s the awfu’ presence of the dead, and the skies smiling at them—that’s a’ I see. Come away with me, and let’s see if there’s ony living creatures left. It’s an awfu’ thought to come into a man’s head{235} in connexion with that bonnie innocent sky,” the philosopher continued, with a slight shudder, as he drew his charge with him down the chilly staircase; “but it’s aye bewildering to me to see the indifference of Nature. It’s terrible like as if she was a senseless heathen hersel’, and cared nothing about nobody. No that I’m asserting that to be the case; but it’s gruesome to look at her smiles and her wiles, as if she kent no better. I’m no addicted to little bairns in a general way,” said Lauderdale, drawing a long breath, as he emerged from the great door, and suddenly found himself in the midst of a group of ragged little picturesque savages; “but it’s aye a comfort to see that there’s still living creatures left in the world.”
“It is not for the living creatures, however, that people come to Italy,” said Colin. “Stop here, and have another look at the Campagna. I am not of your opinion about Nature. Sometimes tears themselves are less pathetic than a smile.”
“Where did you learn that, callant?” said his friend. “But there’s plenty of time for the Campagna, and I have aye an awfu’ interest in human folk. What do the little animals mean, raging like a set of little furies? Laddies, if you’ve quarrelled fight it out like men, instead of scolding like a parcel of fishwives,” said the indignant stranger, addressing himself to a knot of boys who were playing morra. When he found his remonstrance disregarded, Lauderdale seized what appeared to him the two ringleaders, and held them, one in each hand, with the apparent intention of knocking their heads together, entirely undisturbed by the outcries and struggles of his victims, as well as by the voluble explanations of the rest of the party. “It’s no use talking nonsense to me,” said the inexorable judge; “they shall either hold their tongues, the little cowardly wretches, or they shall fight.”
It was, luckily, at this moment that Alice Meredith made her appearance, going out to provide for the wants of her family like a careful little housewife. Her explanation filled Lauderdale with unbounded shame and dismay. “It’s an awful drawback no to understand the language,” said the philosopher, with a rush of burning colour to his face, for Lauderdale, like various other people, could not help entertaining an idea, in spite of his better knowledge, that English (or what he was pleased to call English), spoken with due force and emphasis, was sure in the end to be perfectly intelligible. Having received this painful lesson, he shrank out of sight with the utmost discomfiture, holding Colin fast, who betrayed an inclination to accompany Alice. “This{236} will never do; we’ll have to put to our hands and learn,” said Colin’s guardian. “I never put much faith before in that Babel business. It’s awfu’ humbling to be made a fool of by a parcel of bairns.” Lauderdale did not recover this humiliating defeat during the lengthened survey which followed of the little town and its dependencies, where now and then they encountered the slight little figure of Alice walking alone, with a freedom permitted (and wondered at) to the Signorina Inglese, who thus declared her independence. They met her at the baker’s, where strings of biscuits, made in the shape of rings, hung like garlands about the door, and where the little Englishwoman was using all her powers of persuasion to seduce the master of the shop into the manufacture of pane Inglese, bread made with yeast instead of leaven; and they met her again in the dark vicinity of the trattoria, consulting with a dingy traiteur about dinner; though, fortunately for the success of the meal, the strangers were unaware that it was out of these dingy shades that their repast was to come.
Thus the two rambled about, recovering their spirits a little as the first glow of the Italian sunshine stole over them, and finding summer in the bright piazza, though winter and gloom lingered in the narrow streets. Last of all they entered the cathedral, which was a place the two friends approached with different feelings—Colin’s mind being full of the curiosity of a man who was himself to be a priest, and who felt to a certain degree that the future devotions and even government of his country was in his hands. He was consequently quick to observe, and even, notwithstanding the prejudices of education, not disinclined to learn, if anything worth learning was to be seen in the quiet country church, where at present nothing beyond the ordinary services were going on. Lauderdale, in whose mind a lively and animated army of prejudices was in full operation, though met and crossed at every turn by an equally lively belief in the truth of his fellow-creatures—which was a sad drawback to his philosophy—went into the Frascati Cathedral with a curious mixture of open criticism and concealed respect, not unusual in a Scotchman. He was even ashamed of himself for his own alacrity in taking off his hat, as if one place could be holier than another; yet, nevertheless, stowed his gaunt gigantic figure away behind the pillars, and did what he could to walk softly, lest he should disturb the devotions of one or two kneeling women, who, however, paused with perfect composure to look at the strangers without apparently being conscious of any interruption. As for{237} Colin, he was inspecting the arrangements of the cathedral at his leisure, when a sudden exclamation from Lauderdale attracted his attention. He thought his friend had got into some new bewilderment, and hastened to join him, looking round first, with the helplessness of a speechless stranger in a foreign country, to see if there was anyone near who could explain for them in case of necessity. When, however, Colin had rejoined his companion, he found him standing rapt and silent before a tombstone covered with lettering, which was placed against the wall of the church. Lauderdale made a curious unsteady sign, pointing to it, as Colin approached. It was a pompous Latin inscription, recording imaginary grandeurs which had never existed, and bearing the names of three British kings who never reigned. Neither of the spectators who thus stood moved and speechless before it had been brought up with any Jacobite tendencies—indeed, Jacobite ideas had died out of all reality before either of them was born,—but Lauderdale, Whig and sceptic as he was, uttered hoarsely out of his throat the two words, “Prince Chairlie!” and then stood silent, gazing at the stone with its pompous Latin lies and its sorrowful human story, as if it had been not an extinct family, but something of his own blood and kindred which had lain underneath. Thus the two strangers went out, subdued and silenced, from their first sight-seeing. It was not in man, nor in Scotchman, to see the names and not remember all the wonderful vain devotion, all the blind heroic efforts that had been made for these extinct Stuarts; and, with a certain instinctive loyalty, reverential yet protesting, Colin and his friend turned away from Charles Edward’s grave.
“Well,” said Lauderdale, after a long pause, “they were little to brag of, either for wisdom or honesty, and no credit to us that I can see; but it comes over a man with an awfu’ strange sensation to fall suddenly without any warning on the grave of a race that was once in such active connexion with his own. ‘Jacobus III., Carolus III., Henricus IX.’—is that how it goes? It’s terrible real, that inscription, though it’s a’ a fiction. They might be a feckless race; but, for a’ that, it was awfu’ hard, when you think of it, upon Prince Chairlie. He was neither a fool nor a liar, so far as I ever heard—which is more than you can say for other members of the family; and he had to give way, and give up his birthright for thae miserable little wretches from Hanover. I dinna so much wonder, when I think of it, at the ’45. It was a pleasant alternative for a country, callant, to choose between a bit Dutch idiot that knew nothing, and the son{238} of her auld kings. I’m no speaking of William of Orange—he’s awfu’ overrated, and a cold-blooded devil, but aye a kind of a man notwithstanding—but thae Hanover fellows— And so yon’s Prince Chairlie’s grave!”
Just then Meredith, who had come out to bask in the sunshine, came up to them, and took, as he had learned to do, by way of supporting himself, Lauderdale’s vigorous arm.
“I forgot to tell you,” he said, “that the Pretender’s grave was there. I never enter these churches of Antichrist if I can help it. Life is too short to be wasted even in looking on at the wiles of the destroyer. Oh that we could do something to deliver these dying souls!”
“I saw little of the wiles of the destroyer for my part,” said Lauderdale, abruptly; “and, as for the Pretender, there’s many pretenders, and it’s awfu’ hard to tell which is the true. I know no harm of Prince Chairlie, the little I do know of him. If it had been mysel’, I’m no free in my mind to say that I would have let go my father’s inheritance without striking a blow.”
“These are the ideas of the carnal mind,” said Meredith. “Oh, my friend, if you would but be more serious! Does not your arrival in this country suggest to you another arrival which cannot be long delayed—which indeed, for some of us at least, may happen any day,” the sick man continued, putting out his long thin hand to clasp that of Colin, who was on his other side. Lauderdale, who saw this gesture, started aside with a degree of violence which prevented the meeting of the two invalid hands.
“I know little about this country,” he said, almost with sullenness; “but I know still less about the other. It’s easy for you, callants, to speak. I’m real willing to make experiment of it, if that were possible,” he continued, softening; “but there’s no an ignorant soul hereabouts that is more ignorant than me.”
“Let us read together—let us consider it together,” said Meredith; “it is all set down very plain, you know. He that runneth may read. In all the world there is nothing so important. My friend, you took pains to understand about Italy—”
“And a bonnie business I made of it,” said Lauderdale; “deluded by the very bairns; set right by one that’s little more than a bairn, that little sister of yours; and now letting myself be drawn into discussions! I’m twenty ye............