Chapter XXI: Wintry Weather

"Come through the gloom of clouded skies,
The slow dim rain and fog athwart;
Through east winds keen with wrong and lies,
Come and lift up my hopeless heart.
Come through the sickness and the pain,
The sore unrest that tosses still;
Through aching dark that hides the gain,
Come and arouse my fainting will."
--_A Threefold Cord._

The autumn wore on, and the cold weather set in. Merlino's Company had become pretty well accustomed, however, to wintry weather during their American tour, and no one suffered much except Carlo, who, having never left Italy before, found the English climate fearfully trying. Unselfish as he was, he was by no means so devoid of common-sense as Captain Britton thought him, and, knowing how much depended on his health, he took all possible precautions. He was not one of those short-sighted and aggravating people who seem to take pleasure in prematurely wearing themselves out, and who give their friends constant trouble just because their zeal outruns their discretion. There was in his character a strong vein of that matter-of-fact good sense which is to be found in most Italians, though not in the popular English conception of them. Sardoni was quite surprised when, one day after "Treasury," he consulted him as to the best tailor in the place where they were staying, and then went off promptly and ordered a fur-lined coat which must have cost considerably more than a month's salary, and which proved the envy of all the other men in the Company.

"You are the most inconsistent fellow I ever met," said Sardoni, when the coat came home; "you go in for a luxurious thing like that, and yet seem to be willing to go without most things that other men care for."

"It's not a bad thing in coats," said Carlo, looking at the brown fur with satisfaction; "and this is the first time I've felt warm for a month. You see I really must get rid of this cough, or I shall soon have a voice like a fog-horn."

"Well," said Sardoni, with a laugh, "I'm glad you're no ascetic, for they are bad to live with, as I know to my cost. There's nothing like it for driving a fellow the other way."

But, spite of the fur coat, Carlo's health did not improve; the constant travelling, the draughts on the stage, the necessity of turning out every night, ill or well, in rain or snow, and the constant strain of physical hard work and mental excitement, all told on him severely. Nor was it possible for a man of his temperament to go through all the suffering and grief of the past few months without paying for it. It was not only the change of physical climate which told upon him, it was the change of moral climate.

To have lived always with such tender, devoted love as had been his at home is in some ways a good preparation for after life, but it inevitably makes the plunge into the loveless outer world much harder--safer, perhaps, but more bitter. The world is the gainer, insomuch as it receives a loving, unsullied nature into its midst, but to the man himself the process is very painful; he is, as it were, transported suddenly from the tropics to the arctic regions. Even Carlo's great success, which in itself was enjoyable enough, had many drawbacks, for it stirred up jealousy, or perhaps won him admiration and small attentions with which he would thankfully have dispensed. Already he had proved the truth of Enrico's remark--"The men will trouble you with their jealousy, because of your success, and the women with their love, because of your face."

There were endless little annoyances of this sort, which in good health and spirits he could take lightly, but which began increasingly to prey upon his mind, while every day it seemed to him more difficult to put up with Merlino's rudeness, and with the petty insults and hateful innuendoes with which Gomez delighted to try his patience. Sardoni used to watch him curiously at such times; he never got quite so far as not to show that he felt provoked, and this no doubt, prompted Merlino and Gomez to persevere; for to badger an obtuse man is no sport, but to worry a sensitive man and see how long he will stand it is interesting to some people. Even Sardoni owned to a kind of pleasurable feeling in watching these encounters; more than once he surprised a look of vindictive anger on Carlo's face, and always he could see that his color rose, and that the blood must be tingling in his veins, for he was hot-tempered, though he had his temper well in control. Curiously enough the only real outburst of passion into which he was betrayed was due to Sardoni himself, not to the cross-grained Impresario or the malicious Spaniard.

It arose in this way. Christmas was over, and Merlino's troupe had wandered from big town to big town, sometimes meeting with unusual success, sometimes performing to woefully empty houses, or at best to houses which had been "filled with paper." Carlo had by this time become well accustomed to the life; he was familiar with every face in that little moving army, with its curiously assorted nationalities and its several ranks and grades, its principles, its chorus-singers, male and female, its leading instrumentalists, who had to supplement the local orchestras, its stage carpenters, its baggage men, its dressers. Most of them were individually known to him, many of them were his friends, while some had been won over by Gomez into champions of the departed Comerio.

Towards the middle of January Merlino had arranged to take one of the London opera-houses, and give a series of twenty performances, a project bold to rashness at that time of year. The Company betook themselves to various dreary lodging-houses in the neighborhood of the theatre, and Carlo, under very depressing circumstances, made his first acquaintance with London and his first appearance on a London stage.

It seemed as if everything conspired together against him at that time; the weather was trying in the extreme, there were heavy snow-storms, and then for days after the great piles of blackened snow would lie on either side of the streets. The dense, yellow fogs, and the utter absence of sun, made him so miserable that life seemed hardly worth living; while to add to the physical discomforts, his throat became so seriously affected by the climate that he often hardly knew how to get through his work. Merlino was in a state of nervous irritability natural enough and almost excusable to one who was playing so risky a game; Mlle. de Caisne, who travelled under Nita's chaperonage, had fallen hopelessly in love with the new baritone, and was a constant thorn in his side; while Nita herself was so tryingly foolish and unreasonable that it was all he could do not to lose patience with her. Things were in this state when suddenly a far worse trouble arose to threaten him. One morning, sorely chafed by some dispute which had arisen, he as usual took refuge in silence, and leaving Sardoni to continue the conversation with Nita and Mlle. de Caisne, turned to the window and took up the outside of the _Times_, glancing with no special purpose down the columns in which concerts and matters connected with the musical world are advertised. He had taken up the paper casually enough, little thinking that instead of a distraction it would prove an additional care, when, suddenly, and with a shock indescribable,--a shock which for the time half paralyzed him, he read the words: "Signor Comerio begs to announce his arrival in town. All communications with regard to concerts or other engagements to be addressed to Antico and Co."

For some minutes he stood still, dimly hearing the voices in the room behind him,--dimly seeing the dreary street, with its grim, smutty houses and iron railings; then, without a word, he folded the paper, left the room, and with a craving to get away alone out of the reach of all interruptions, made his way into St. James's Park.

Comerio had followed them? Comerio was in England--in London at that very minute? What could possibly have induced him to come to London at this time of year, save the one desire and intention of meeting Anita? The news sent a sort of horrible flash of light across some of the dark hints which Gomez had lately dropped. A miserable feeling of utter hopelessness took possession of him; he had tried and struggled, he had given up all for the sake of preventing this evil, he had borne shame, and pain, and wretchedness indescribable, and here were his plans defeated. How could he hope to overcome so wily a foe as Comerio? How was it possible to save his sister when she refused to be saved? He could not even feel that he had any influence with her, it seemed to him that as time went on she only treated him with a more contemptuous indifference, or at times even with open dislike. Had he given up all for her sake only to be hated by her in return? Had he lost all that was dearest to him only to fail in this attempt?

Those brief lines in the _Times_ had fallen like a bomb-shell into his life.

He had wandered miserably round the dreary-looking park. The fog was not quite so dense as it had been on the previous day, he could see through a misty haze the chill, gray-looking water, and the ducks swimming about aimlessly, and here and there in the distance the outlines of great houses. Presently he heard the Westminster chimes, and he remembered how, long ago, Francesca had told him of the words which belonged to them--

"Lord, through this hour,
Be Thou our guide,
So by Thy power
No foot shall slide."

But he was too hopeless to pray, and the next moment Big Ben warned him that he must hurry back for a rehearsal of _Un Ballo in Maschera_. He reached the theatre, feeling harassed and ill, and made his way to the green-room, where he found Sardoni, looking more cheerful than he had done for some time past, and with a mischievous gleam about his eyes.

"You basely deserted me in the argument," he exclaimed, as Carlo entered; "but I'll have my revenge on you! You're the most careless fellow on earth, leaving diamonds straying about loose in a London lodging-house!"

Carlo, glancing down quickly, saw that Francesca's ring, which he always wore, was not on his hand.

"Where is it?" he said, hastily, feeling annoyed that he could have forgotten it even for a moment.

"Ah! that is the question," said Sardoni, taking him by the shoulders in teasing fashion, and meaning to have a little fun out of him before he yielded the ring, which was on his own finger.

Unluckily the light at that moment happened to flash on the diamond, and Carlo, in a sudden paroxysm of anger, wrenched himself away from the teasing hold, and dashing at Sardoni, with all his force, took him so completely by surprise that, before a bystander could have uttered a word of remonstrance, the tenor had measured his length on the floor, and the ring had been seized by its rightful owner.

Sardoni had gone over like a ninepin, being utterly unprepared for so furious an onslaught; he was angry and astonished.

"What the devil are you after!" he exclaimed, as he picked himself up.

"Jack, Jack,--I didn't mean it!" exclaimed Carlo, his wrath spent in that one lightning-like flash, and shame and regret overwhelming him as he partly realized what he had done, and saw the look of grave inquiry with which one of the officials belonging to the theatre regarded them as he entered the green-room.

Sardoni was silent till they were once more alone. He could not keep his anger in face of Carlo's shame and dismay.

"I didn't know there was anything particular about the ring. Gigi brought it down from your washhand-stand; I only meant to chaff you a little."

"It was the ring which belonged to my betrothed," said Carlo. "Not that that is any excuse, indeed, I think it makes it rather worse."

He was evidently so unhappy about it that Sardoni quite lost all feeling of offence.

"Well, you know, old fellow, I always wanted to poke up the devil in you and see what you'd do."

Carlo turned away with a sigh.

"I can't think why I did it! I was beside myself. If I had done it to Gomez, now, it might have been easier to understand; but to you, Jack, you whom I'm really fond of! I can never forgive myself."

He was very quiet now, and sad and ashamed; in all his life he had never been guilty of such an unreasoning fit of anger.

"Never mind, Val," said the Englishman, almost as much surprised by the vehement regret as by the attack itself. "I declare I like you the better for it, I do indeed. Why, to hear you talk one might suppose you had meant to murder me!"

"I meant nothing, that's the horrible part of it to me," said Carlo. "I wanted the ring and to be free from your teasing. There wasn't a moment to think--it was all over in a flash. How am I to tell that I mayn't murder some fellow one of these days by a like impulse?"

"My dear boy!" Sardoni laughed till he was almost convulsed, "you who wouldn't hurt a fly!"

"Well, you laugh," said Carlo; "and it's good of you to take it lightly; but I can't see that there's a pin to choose between me and the man who murders in sudden anger. Anyhow, I know I can never be hard on such a murderer again."

"That's like the story of the fellow who saw a man going to the gallows, and exclaimed, 'There but for the grace of God goes----' I forget the old buffer's name. However, Val, I don't think you need be afraid, for you have plenty of that sort of thing and little enough of the devil's help."

"That's what I can't understand about it," said Carlo, in the most outspoken way. He hardly ever spoke of religion, but when he did speak it was with the direct simplicity and naturalness hardly to be ever met with in England save in children. "That's what puzzles me. How can I say the Veni Creator one hour and know it is true, and the next turn upon my friend like that? My blood was made hot just by that trifle."

At that moment the call-boy appeared to summon them, but in the many and wearisome delays, and repetitions, and scraps of rest, Carlo apparently had time to think out his problem; for as he and Sardoni walked home together he said, just as if no rehearsal had intervened,--

"I see how it was, Jack. I was horribly anxious, and had lost faith; then quickly into that vacant space steps the devil, and presto! I am made to knock down my best friend."

Evidently the whole affair was so graphically before his own mind that Sardoni suppressed his inclination to laugh.

"You are an old-fashioned fellow, Val," he said; "not at all up to the modern lights, as I told you once before. A fellow that does believe in the devil and doesn't believe in divorce! My dear boy, you're an anachronism! But what made you so horribly anxious? Anything gone wrong?"

"No, of course it's all right; but at first it took my breath away, and I thought all was lost. Comerio is in London."

Sardoni gave a low whistle of surprise and dismay.

"Are you sure it is true! Who told you?"

"No one, I saw it in the _Times_ this morning."

"What! while I was finishing the argument? You had plenty of self-control, then, for you betrayed nothing at all."

"_Il Diavolo_ had not then arrived on the scene; he joined me in St. James's Park," said Carlo, with the utmost gravity.

"I hope he is not with us in Pall Mall," said Sardoni, mischievously. "It makes me feel quite uncanny to hear you talk. Let us hope he has left you."

"Why, certainly," said Carlo, with perfect good humor, and unconsciously borrowing one of Gigi's Americanisms. "I couldn't do with him at all on the stage. How could I have rehearsed Renato to any purpose if I had been worrying over Comerio's arrival all the time?"

"Oh!" said Sardoni, reflectively; "so you think that his province is to make people worry."

"To seize on every one's vulnerable point," said Carlo. "I see now that to worry oneself and be over anxious about others is a sin."

"One that most people consider a virtue and love to parade," said Sardoni, with some recollection of his old home-life in his mind.

"Myself I never thought of it before, but it must be so," said Carlo. "One needs a thing like this every now and then to make one think. I hope you'll forgive me, Jack, for having been in such a fury with you?"

Sardoni laughed away his apologies, declaring again that he liked him the better for it; but it was not the passion which made him feel this, it was the contrast between the sudden outburst and Carlo's usual life; it was the thought, "this fellow is no weakly, amiable character, he is strong enough to keep under this hot southern nature. After all there's hope for me yet, if he, with such fire in his veins, has managed to turn out what he is." He was far from troubling himself to go into the matter in such detail, but this was the real reason that he was so strongly drawn to his friend after their quarrel.

Sardoni was not a little curious to know more about Carlo's love affairs, but he could not make up his mind to speak to him about the matter: instead, he threw out a casual remark that afternoon, when it happened that he and Anita were practising a duet in the drawing-room which they had to sing at night.

"Mlle. de Caisne is doing her best to captivate your brother, don't you think?" he said, by way of leading up to the subject.

"Yes, the little goose," said Nita; "it makes me quite cross to watch her."

"Our Valentino doesn't exactly enjoy it either, I fancy," said Sardoni. "I understand from him that he was to have been married at one time."

"Yes, he was betrothed to Miss Britton, an English girl who lived near us. It was broken off when he went on the stage; in some ways it is rather a pity, for she was well off, and he'll not find such a pretty girl again in a hurry. But, after all, as I told him only the other day, these marriages with foreigners seldom turn out really well."

"What did he say to that?" asked Sardoni, marvelling at the indifferent way in which she spoke of the sacrifice which she must have known had been made for her sake.

"Oh, he said nothing at all! only blushed up like a girl, and looked as he always does when I say what he doesn't like."

While she was speaking the door was thrown open, and the servant announced "Signor Comerio." Sardoni, charmed to think how Comerio would hate him for being in the way, greeted him in the friendliest manner, and determined to stay and be hated to the bitter end: he could see from Anita's manner that she was not wholly unprepared for Comerio's sudden appearance.

"But I interrupt a _tête-à-tête_," said Comerio, in his soft, flattering voice. "What did I hear from Madame Merlino's lips? 'When I say what he doesn't like!' Does our _prima donna_ ever say anything distasteful to mankind?"

Nita laughed.

"We were talking of my brother," she said, taking her revenge on Sardoni for not at once going away by saying what she knew would vex him. "I was trying to persuade him the other day that it was just as well his engagement with Miss Britton was broken off, and naturally he didn't like it."

Sardoni bit his lip. He would have given much to have refrained from introducing the subject, and he thought Madame Merlino showed very bad taste in speaking of it before Comerio, while to make matters worse, Carlo happened just then to come into the room.

Now, Comerio had his back to the door, but he could see all that was passing in the mirror, and he was quick to seize the opportunity of wounding his foe.

"Miss Britton, the beautiful English girl?" he exclaimed. "Yes, yes; I saw her only the other day. She's quite the rage just now at Naples."

Sardoni glanced from the cold, clever, cruel face of Comerio to the face of his friend. The words evidently stung Carlo. He paused for a minute with his hand on the door, but quickly regaining a composure that under the circumstances was masterly, he came forward, greeted Comerio in his ceremonious Italian way, and contrived to keep the conversation pretty much in his own hands throughout the call. Sardoni, in his careless easy fashion, helped him not a little by making a running fire of jests and bad puns, while all the time he was studying that strange trio who beneath his eyes were acting so grave a drama--Nita, nervous and excited; Comerio, with his contemptible hatred and contemptible love showing occasionally through the thin veneer of ordinary politeness; and the Knight-Errant himself, with his manly, alert-looking face, and his enviable way of saying the right thing at the right minute.

Certainly, Comerio gained little that afternoon; but his pursuit had unsettled Anita, and though Carlo could not make out that she saw him except every now and then in the green-room when many others were present, yet he knew that there had never been a time when his hopes had so nearly been defeated.

It was some relief to get away from London, for in the provinces he felt that the sword of Damocles was not so immediately above them. In the mean time, however, his cough grew worse, and he began to look very delicate--at least, so thought Gomez and Sardoni, the only two people who really watched him.

It was one night at Birmingham that Gomez managed to give his enemy the sharpest stab he had yet delivered. For some days Carlo had been in wretched voice, and on this particular evening he was conscious that his performance had been worse than usual. He came into the green-room feeling worn-out and dispirited. Gomez, Sardoni, Nita, and two or three others were grouped about the fire. Nita, in her elder-sisterly fashion, began to upbraid him.

"You sang execrably, Carlo!" she said, thrusting her little daintily-shod foot nearer the blaze, and looking far from pleasant as she lifted her bright, cold eyes to his. "You put me out altogether in that last scene. It's intolerable!"

"I am sorry I put you out," he said, with the pained look which he seldom managed now to repress when Nita attacked him.

"Don't discourage him; that's not fair on a beginner!" said Gomez. "See, Donati, there's a _critique_ on your 'Rigoletto' in the evening paper."

And he handed it to him with a sarcastic little bow.

"Too bad! too bad!" exclaimed some of the others; but they laughed nevertheless, for the new baritone had hitherto received nothing but praise, and they thought a change of diet would be good for him, while to them it was undoubtedly sweet.

Carlo took the paper without a word, and read the notice through, knowing quite well that Gomez would not have drawn his attention to it had the criticism been favorable. It was not his way to pretend to be indifferent to the Press; he did care for the praise or blame or suggestion, and never tried to disguise his feeling, though nothing would have induced him to win favorable notices by any efforts of his own. Criticism had, however, much to do with his future, and on his success hinged all his plans for Nita's protection; so that he fully recognized the fact so well put by Macready, that "We cannot 'read our history in a nation's eyes,' but we can in the daily papers."

"It is quite true," he said, throwing down the journal with a stifled sigh. "I acted badly last night and sang worse. They have every reason to pitch into me."

"The fact is, you're not fit to sing at all," said Gomez, affecting a tone of friendly advice. "You are ill, and need a long rest."

"No, no," said Carlo, quickly; "it's nothing but this awful climate. I shall be all right when it gets warmer. I mean to go in for an Ammoniaphone, and see if manufactured Italian air won't work wonders."

"Well," said Gomez, "Comerio prophesies that he shall go to America with us next September, and I believe his prophecy will come true."

Carlo glanced at his sister, and read in her face excitement--even, he fancied, hope. He was deeply wounded, as Sardoni, who had been idly looking on without taking any part in the talk, could see.

"Ladies and gentlemen for the last act!" announced the call-boy; and the little group round the fire dispersed.

Carlo, whose part in the opera was over, left the green-room with Anita, walking with her to the wings.

"I hope I shall be able to stay with you," he said, in a low voice, feeling that he must win from her some word which would contradict the look he feared he had seen in her face.

"Do you?" she said, coldly. "It is satisfactory to see how you like the life. I should have thought, now your voice has gone off so much, you would have been glad enough if Merlino chooses to end your engagement in the summer. For my part, I wish he would!"

The tone of bitter dislike in which she spoke was more than he could bear. He turned away, and shut himself into his dressing-room, where presently Sardoni found him, with his arms on the mantelpiece, his face hidden, and his whole frame shaken with sobs.

"Why, Val!" exclaimed his friend, "has that brute of a Spaniard vexed you so much?"

"Go, go!" he exclaimed vehemently in Italian. "You can't understand!"

"I'll be hanged if I go!" said Sardoni, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Bless your innocence! do you think no Englishman has ever shed tears? I know what it was; it was not Gomez--it was something Madame Merlino said to you just now."

Carlo raised his head, thrust both hands through his hair, and, still keeping his face hidden, said in a voice which struggled in vain to steady itself,--

"She hopes it will be as he said. She wishes me to go. It is all of no use; I can do nothing for her--nothing!"

"Now, look here!" said Sardoni; "it's not a bit of good for you to try to think rationally to-night. You are bothered by that _critique_, and by your bad reception just now, and by that brute Gomez--and by a hundred other things, likely enough. You just shelve it all till to-morrow; and come and have some oysters with me, and then go to bed like a Christian."

Carlo made an effort to recover himself, and before long was walking home arm in arm with Sardoni, his hat pulled over his eyes.

"The fact is, old fellow, you're a long bit too sensitive for knocking about with men of the calibre of Gomez and Comerio," said Sardoni. "However, you would never act as you do if you weren't sensitive, so it cuts both ways."

"For oneself it pays better to call it being thin-skinned," said Carlo, regaining his matter-of-fact tone. "Once humor your emotional side, and you are lost. I don't know how I came to break down just now. This east wind plays the very devil with one. When do you think it will change?"

"Oh, very soon now," said Sardoni, drawing on his imagination, for they were not half through March.

"You don't think it is true what Gomez said--you don't think I am really losing my voice?" said Carlo, longing for Sardoni to contradict the conviction that was becoming a daily torment to his mind.

"Not a bit of it!" said the Englishman, cheerfully; "nothing but the climate. Keep up your heart, old boy! you'll soon be used to it, and then you can snap your fingers at Comerio and the rest of them. You may be quite sure that Merlino won't part with you in a hurry. Why you are his ace of trumps!"

And all the time Sardoni knew that his friend was on the verge of a breakdown; and Carlo himself suspected as much, yet found a sort of comfort in having his fears reasoned away.

We have all of us been glad at one time or another to win through a dreary bit of life by the help of illusions, even though we partly guessed they were illusions all the time.