Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  ‘Military men have so many temptations, my dear,’ she said to Angela, thinking more of the deceased Captain than of being tactful,— ‘I mean,’ she said, correcting herself, ‘in France.’

  Angela was not afraid of temptation for Giovanni; rightly or wrongly, she trusted that her love would be his shield against the wicked world and her name his prayer in need, and she smiled at Madame Bernard’s speech. The big old parrot on his perch cocked his head.

  ‘Especially the cavalry and artillery,’ the good lady went on to explain.

  ‘À drrroite — conversion!’ roared the parrot in a terrific voice of command.

  Angela jumped in her chair, for it was the first time she had heard the creature speak in that tone; but Madame Bernard laughed, as if it pleased her.

  ‘It is absolutely my poor husband’s tone,’ she said calmly. ‘Coco,’ she said, turning to the bellicose bird, ‘the Prussians are there!’

  ‘Feu!’ yelled the parrot suddenly, dancing with rage on his bar. ‘Feu! ‘cré nom d’un nom d’un p’tit bon Dieu!’

  ‘Every intonation!’ laughed the little Frenchwoman gaily. ‘You understand why I love my Coco!’

  But Angela thought there was something grimly horrible in the coming back of the dead soldier’s voice from battles fought long ago.

  Giovanni came to see her two days after she had moved, but this time Madame Bernard did not leave them together very long. She had a lively sense of her responsibility, now that the young girl was altogether in her charge, and she felt that the proprieties must be strictly observed. It must never be thought that Giovanni was free to see Angela alone whenever he pleased, merely because her people had turned her out.

  He looked distressed, and the young girl at once suspected some new trouble; and she was not mistaken, for her advice had begun to bear fruit already, and the inevitable was closing in upon them both.

  He told the story in a few words. It had been decided in the War Office for some time that a small exploring and surveying expedition should be sent up the country from the Italian colony at Massowah with the idea of planning some permanent means of inland communication with the British possessions. Giovanni’s father had seen a chance for him to distinguish himself and to obtain more rapid promotion, and by using all the considerable influence he possessed in high quarters he had got him appointed to be the engineering officer of the party. The young man had already been two years in Africa, before being appointed to the Staff, and had done exceptionally good service, which was an excellent reason for using him again; and chance further favoured the plan, because the officer who had first been selected for the place, and who was an older man, was much needed in the War Office, to his own exceeding disgust. The expedition might be attended with considerable danger and would certainly be full of adventure, for there had recently been trouble with the tribes in that very region; but to send a strong force was out of the question, for political reasons, though the work to be done was so urgently necessary that it could not be put off much longer.

  Old General Severi sincerely hoped Angela might yet marry his son, and was convinced that the best thing possible would be to secure for the latter the first opportunity for quick promotion, instead of allowing him to leave the army in order to find more lucrative employment. The expedition would be gone five or six months, perhaps, and there were many reasons why it would be better to keep the young people apart for a time. Any one would understand that, he was sure. While Angela was living obscurely with a former governess, a brilliant young officer of some distinction, like Giovanni, could not see her regularly without seriously compromising her. It was the way of the world and could not be helped, yet if Giovanni stayed in Rome it would be too much to expect that he should stay away from the little apartment in Trastevere. So the matter was settled, and when he came to see Angela that afternoon he had just had an interview with his chief, who had informed him of his appointment, and at the same time of his promotion to be captain. The expedition was to leave Italy in a few days, and he would have barely time to provide himself with what was strictly necessary for the climate. He explained all this to Angela and Madame Bernard.

  ‘If you had only let me resign the other day,’ he said ruefully, when he had finished his account, ‘nobody could have found fault then! But now, I must face the laugh of every man I know!’

  Angela looked up quickly, in evident surprise.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘I see nothing to laugh at in such an expedition.’

  ‘I am not going to accept the appointment,’ Giovanni answered with decision. ‘I asked for twenty-four hours to consider it, though the General seemed very much surprised.’

  ‘But you cannot refuse!’ Angela cried. ‘They will say you are afraid!’

  ‘They may say whatever occurs to them, for I will not go, and I shall resign at once, as I said I would. My mind is made up.’

  ‘You cannot refuse this,’ Angela repeated confidently. ‘If you are obliged to admit that there is some danger in it, though you wish there were none, because you safely could refuse to go, it must be very dangerous indeed. Tell me the truth, as far as you know it.’

  ‘It would depend on circumstances — —’ Giovanni hesitated.

  ‘You have told me that if the Government dared, it would send a large force to protect the expedition. The larger that force would be, the greater the danger if there is no protection at all. Is that true, or not?’

  ‘It is true, in one way, but — —’

  ‘There is no condition!’ Angela interrupted him energetically. ‘It is enough that it is going to be dangerous in one way, as you say!’

  ‘No one can say that I ever avoided danger before,’ he objected.

  ‘They will say many things if you refuse to go. They will shrug their shoulders and say that you have lost your nerve, perhaps! That is a favourite expression, and you know how people say it. Or if you make money soon after you resign, they will say that you preferred a fortune to risking your life for your country. Or else they will say that a woman has made a coward of you, and that I am she!’

  ‘Coward!’ yelled the parrot in a tone of withering contempt, and the creature actually spat in disgust.

  Giovanni started violently, for he had not noticed the bird in the room. Then he tried to laugh at his own surprise.

  ‘I do not wonder that you are surprised, Monsieur,’ said Madame Bernard with a pleasant smile. ‘Oh, Coco has exactly my poor husband’s voice!’

  ‘I can brave a parrot’s opinion,’ Giovanni said, attempting to speak gaily.

  ‘Will you brave mine?’ Angela asked.

  ‘You certainly do not think I am afraid to go,’ he answered, ‘for you know why I mean to refuse. My first duty is to you. As I am placed, it would be cowardly to be afraid to face public opinion in doing that duty, and to keep you waiting six months or a year longer than necessary, when I have promised to provide means for us to marry within a year. That would deserve to be called cowardice!’

  ‘Sale Prussien! ‘cré nom d’une pipe!’ yelled Coco in a tone of disgust.

  ‘Really!’ exclaimed Giovanni, with some annoyance. ‘Does the thing take me for an hereditary enemy, Madame?’

  Madame Bernard rose with a little laugh and went to the parrot’s perch, holding out her hand.

  ‘Come, Coco!’ she said, coaxing him. ‘It is peace now, and we can go home to Paris again.’

  ‘Paris’ meant her bedroom in bird language; it also meant being bribed to be quiet with good things, and Coco strutted from his perch to her finger.

  ‘Marche!’ he commanded in a sharp tone, and as she moved he began to whistle the Marseillaise with great spirit.

  She marched off, laughing and keeping step to the tune till she disappeared into her room, shutting the door behind her. As it closed Giovanni caught Angela’s left hand and drew it to him. She laid her right on his, quietly and affectionately.

  ‘Am I never to see you alone?’ he asked, almost in a whisper.r />
  ‘When you come to say good-bye before starting,’ Angela answered. ‘I will ask her to leave us quite alone then. But now it will only be for a minute or two.’

  Thereupon, with the most natural movement in the world, she lifted her hands, brought his face close to hers and kissed him, drew back a little, looked gravely into his astonished eyes for some seconds, and then kissed him again.

  ‘I love you much more than you love me,’ she said with great seriousness. ‘I am sure of it.’

  It was all very different from what he had expected. He had vaguely fancied that for a long time every kiss would have to be won from her by a little struggle, and that every admission of her love would be the reward of his own eloquence; instead, she took the lead herself with a simplicity that touched him more than anything else could have done.

  ‘You see!’ she cried, with the intonation of a laugh not far away. ‘I took you by surprise, because I am right about it! What have you to say?’

  He said nothing, but his lips hurt hers a little in the silence. She shivered slightly, for she had not yet dreamed that a kiss could hurt and yet be too short. The sound of Madame Bernard’s voice came from the next room, still talking to the parrot. Angela laid her hand on Giovanni’s gold-laced sleeve and nestled beside him, with her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

  ‘I have always wanted to do this,’ she said in a drowsy little voice, as if she wished she could go to sleep where she was. ‘It is my place. When you are away in Africa, at night, under the stars, you will dream that I am just here, resting in my very own place.’

  She felt his warm breath in her hair as he answered.

  ‘I will not go; I will not leave you.’

  ‘But you must,’ she said, quickly straightening herself and looking into his face. ‘I should not love you as I do, if I could bear to think of your staying here, to let men laugh at you, as you say they would!’

  ‘It is not like resigning on the day after war is declared!’ he retorted, trying to speak lightly.

  ‘It is!’ she cried, with a sort of eager anxiety in her voice. ‘There is only a difference in the degree — and perhaps it is worse! If there were war, you would be one man in a hundred thousand, but now you will be one in ten or twenty, or as many as are to go. Think what it would be if you were the only man in Italy, the one, single, only officer who could certainly accomplish something very dangerous to help your country — and if you refused to do it!’

  ‘There are hundreds of better men than I for the work,’ objected Giovanni.

  ‘I doubt it. Are there hundreds of engineer officers on the General Staff?’

  ‘No, but there are plenty — —’

  ‘A score, perhaps, and you have been chosen, no matter why, and there is danger, and there is a great thing to be done, perhaps a great good, which in the end will save the lives, or help the lives, of many Italians! And you want to refuse to do it — for what? For a woman, for a girl you love! Do you think she will love you the more, or less, for keeping out of danger, if she is a true Italian as she thinks you are? Why is it that our Italy, which no one thought much of a few years ago, is coming to the front in so many ways now? It was not by staying at home for women’s sake that our sailors have got nearer the North Pole than all the others who have tried! It is not by avoiding danger that our officers are learning to astonish everybody with their riding — —’

  ‘That is different,’ objected Giovanni. ‘It is one thing to do daring things — —’

  ‘Yes,’ interrupted Angela, not letting him speak, ‘it is the one and only thing, when it is good daring and can bring good, and helps the world to see that Italy is not dead yet, in spite of all that has been said and written against us and our unity. No, no, I say! Go, do your duty, do and dare, wherever and howsoever your country needs you, and I will wait for you, and be glad to wait for that one reason, which is the best of all. If you love me half as dearly as I love you, go back at once and tell your chief that you are ready, and are proud to be used wherever you can be of any use! And if there is danger to be faced, think that you are to face it for my sake as well as for Italy’s, and not in spite of me, for I would ten thousand times rather that you should die in doing your duty — ever so obscurely — than stay here to be called a coward in order that we may be rich when we marry!’

  Giovanni listened, more and more surprised at her energy and quick flow of words, but glad at heart that she was urging him to do what was right and honourable.

  ‘It was for you that I meant to stay,’ he said. ‘Hard as it is to leave you, it would have been harder to refuse the appointment. I will go.’

  A little silence followed, and Madame Bernard, no longer hearing their voices, and having said everything she had to say to her parrot, judged that it was time for her to come back and play chaperon again. She was careful to make a good deal of noise with the latch before she opened the door.

  ‘Well, Monsieur,’ she asked, on the threshold, ‘has Donna Angela persuaded you that she is right? I heard her making a great speech!’

  ‘She is a firebrand,’ laughed Giovanni, ‘and a good patriot as well! She ought to be in Parliament.’

  ‘You are a feminist, I perceive,’ answered Madame Bernard. ‘But Joan of Arc would be in the Chambers if she could come back to this world. The people would elect her, she would present herself in the tribune, and she would say, “Aha, messieurs! Here I am! We shall talk, you and I.” And our little Donna Angela is a sort of Joan of Arc. People do not know it, but I do, for I have often heard her make beautiful speeches, as if she were inspired!’

  ‘It takes no inspiration to see what is right,’ Angela said, shaking her head. ‘The only difficulty is to do it!’

  ‘Even that is easy when you lead,’ Giovanni answered thoughtfully, and without the least intention of flattering her.

  He had seen a side of her character of which he had not even suspected the existence, and there was something about it so large and imposing that he was secretly a little ashamed of feeling less strong than she seemed. In two successive meetings he had come to her with his own mind made up, but in a few moments she had talked him over to her point of view without the least apparent difficulty, and had sent him away fully determined to do the very opposite of that which he had previously decided to do. It was a strange experience for a young man of great energy and distinctly exceptional intelligence, and he did not understand it.

  He stayed barely half-an-hour, for Madame Bernard showed no disposition to leave the room again, and he felt the difficulty of keeping up an indifferent conversation in her presence, as well as the impossibility of talking freely to Angela of what was uppermost in her thoughts and his own. It was true that the governess knew all about it, and there are excellent women of that sort whose presence does not always hinder lovers from discussing their future; but either Madame Bernard was not one of these by nature, or else the two felt the difference of her nationality too much. The French are perhaps the only civilised nation whom no people of other nations can thoroughly understand, and who, with very few individual exceptions, do not understand any people but themselves. They have a way of looking at life which surprises and sometimes amuses men of all other nationalities; they take some matters very seriously which seem of trivial consequence to us, but they are witty at the expense of certain simple feelings and impulses which we gravely regard as fundamentally important, if not sacred. They can be really and truly heroic, to the point of risking life and limb and happiness, about questions at which we snap our fingers, but they can be almost insolently practical, in the sense of feeling no emotion while keenly discerning their own interest, in situations where our tempers or our prejudices would rouse us to recklessness. In their own estimation they are always right, and so are we in ours, no doubt; but whereas they consider themselves the Chosen People and us the Gentiles, or compare themselves with us as the Greeks compared themselves with the Barbarians, we, on our side, do not look down upon their art and l
iterature as they undoubtedly do on ours, and a good many of us are rather too ready to accept them as something more than our equals in both. When I say ‘we,’ I do not mean only English-speaking people, but other Europeans also. I have overheard Frenchmen discussing all sorts of things in trains, on steamers, in picture-galleries, in libraries, in the streets, from Tiflis to London and from London to the Pacific, but I have never yet heard Frenchmen admit among themselves that a modern work of art, or book, or play was really first-rate, if it was not French. There is something monumental in their conviction of their own superiority, and I sincerely believe it has had much to do with their success, as a nation, in the arts of peace as well as in war. A man who is honestly convinced that he is better than his opponent is not easily put down in peaceful competition, and will risk his life in action with a gallantry and daring that command the admiration of all brave men; and it is a singular fact that German soldiers did not call Frenchmen cowards after the great war, whereas it was a very common thing to hear Frenchmen inveigh against ‘those dirty, cowardly Prussians’ who had got the better of them. Men who can take such a point of view as that must be utterly unlike other people.

  This little digression should explain why Angela and Madame Bernard never quite understood each other, in spite of the elder woman’s almost motherly love for the girl and the latter’s devoted gratitude.