Allegra

“ So Shelley and his wife,
Mary, the planet of an hour, since quenched,
Conceive I keep Allegra where she is
From wounded pride, or pique. Hell fire! They think
I'm hurt for thinking Claire and Shelley join
Their lips in love, and masque my jealousy
By just this pose of morals, make reprisal
Under a lying flag, and keep Allegra
To punish Claire and sate my jealousy
By this hypocrisy—It makes me laugh. ”

“ Allegra’s first desire was naturally to see the picture-galleries, and to these she went for the most part alone, leaving Isola and her husband free to wander about as they pleased, upon a friendly equality of ignorance, knowing very little more than Childe Harold and Murray could teach them. Isola’s Rome was Byron’s Rome. ”

“ Allegra and her husband took Martin Disney’s son under their protection in the absence of his father, who carried a heavy heart back to the jungle and the tent, trying to find distraction and forgetfulness in the pursuit of big game, and who did not revisit the Angler’s Nest till two years after his wife’s death, when he returned to live a tranquil life among the books in the library which he had built for himself, and to watch the growth of his son, whose every look and tone recalled the image of his dead wife. ”

“ It seemed from some of those books as if there could be no greater happiness upon this earth than to tramp across sandy deserts and stalk occasional lions; while in others the supreme good seemed to be found in the attempt to scale impossible mountains. What was it that made the rapture of these things? Isola wondered. Was it that perils and wild solitudes offered the only possible escape out of a past existence, on this side the grave? Allegra had never so much as crossed the Channel. She had been brought up in the most humdrum fashion. ”

“ I know I shall never love her less.”
“I believe that you are good and true,” said Isola. “As true and—almost—as good as he is”—with a backward glance at her husband. “If I did not believe that I should not have thought of saying what I am going to say.”
“I am honoured by your confidence in me.”
“I love Allegra too well to hazard her happiness. I know she loves you—has never cared for any one else. She was heart-whole till she saw you. She had no more thought of love, or lovers, than a child. I want you to marry her soon, Captain Hulbert—very soon, before we leave Rome. ”

“ Mrs. Baynham was at heart a matchmaker, like most motherly women whom fate has left childless. She was very fond of Allegra, who was so much more companionable than Isola, so much more responsive to kindness and affection. As she sat on deck in the westering sunlight, somewhat comatose after a copious luncheon, Mrs. Baynham’s [Pg 162] idea of helping Allegra took the form of a dinner-party which she had long been meditating, her modest return for numerous dinners which she had eaten at Glenaveril and at the Angler’s Nest. ”

“ As it is, I shall let Allegra remain in her convent, where she seems healthy and happy, for the present. But I shall feel much obliged if you will inquire, when you are in the cantons, about the usual and better modes of education there for females, and let me know the result of your inquiries. It is some consolation that both Mr. and Mrs. Shelley have written to approve entirely of my placing the child with the nuns for the present. I can refer to my whole conduct, as having spared no trouble, nor kindness, nor expense, since she was sent to me. People may say what they please. ”

“ And then life seemed so death-like in its monotony. There were days when I felt I might just as well have been dead. There could be very little difference between lying under the earth and crawling listlessly on the top of it.”
“You were too much alone, Isola,” he answered, distressed at this revelation. “You ought to have sent for Allegra. ”

“ Many a fair hope, many a broken dream, many a disappointed ambition lay at rest under those dark spires, within the sound of that summer sea.
This was one of many days which the young mother spent in the woods or in the garden with her baby for her companion, while Allegra and the colonel sailed east or west in the Vendetta. Her doctor would have liked her to go with them, but she seemed to have an absolute aversion to the sea, and he did not press the point.
“Nothing that she dislikes will do her any good,” he told Colonel Disney. “There is no use in being persistent about anything. ”

“ There is a purity and holiness in the apotheosis of those who leave us in their brightness and their beauty, which instinctively lead us to a persuasion of their beatitude.”
It was the irony of fate that, after being an innocent object of contention all her life, Allegra should, even in death, have been made the theme of an angry and bitter dispute. Her body was sent to England, and Byron begged Murray to make all the necessary arrangements for her burial. ”

“ Baby Allegra was therefore sent to her father’s palazzo on the Grand Canal under the charge of the female servant, described by Moore in his Life of Byron as ‘a Swiss nurse, a young girl not above nineteen or twenty years of age, and in every respect unfit to have the charge of such an infant, without the superintendence of some more experienced person.’ The nurse, described thus slightingly by Moore, was Elise, who, on receiving instructions to convey the child to the palazzo, understood that she would return to her mistress at Milan, after seeing Allegra settled in her new home. ”

“ It would be another bar between him and possession of Allegra. And Teresa? If these post-house tales reached her ears! A crimson mist grew before his eyes.
A more reckless and profane emphasis had come now to the carouser within. He had risen and approached the porch window, simulating as he walked an awkward limp.
“Take a greeting to England, you globe-trotters! Greeting from Venice, the sea-Sodom, to London! Hell is not paved with its good intentions. Slabs of lava, with its parsons’ damned souls for cement, make a better causeway for Satan’s corso!” ”

“ You are conscious of performing your duty to Allegra, and your refusal to allow her to visit Claire at this distance you conceive to be part of that duty. That Claire should have wished to see her is natural. That her disappointment should vex her, and her vexation make her write absurdly, is all in the natural order of things. But, poor thing, she is very unhappy and in bad health, and she ought to be treated with as much indulgence as possible. The weak and the foolish are in this respect the kings,—they can do no wrong."
Byron was less generous. ”

“ Below, on the doorstep, John Segrave came face to face with Allegra coming in from the street. She was in black, her face white and lifeless, She took one glance at him then drew him into a small morning room.
“Maisie told you,” she said. “You know?”
He nodded.
“But what does it matter? You're all right. It—it leaves some people out.”
She looked at him somberly, mournfully.
“You are all right,” he repeated.
“I don’t know,” she almost whispered it. “I don’t know. I told you—about my dreams. And when I play—when I’m at the piano—those others come and take hold of my hands.” ”

“ Allegra was not inexorable. There, in the ruins of the Imperial baths, where Shelley dreamed the wonder-dream of his Prometheus, Captain Hulbert pleaded his cause. Could love resist the pleading of so fond a lover? Could art withstand the allurements of Venice—Titian and Tintoret, the cathedral of St. ”

“ A woman with daughters is seldom over-kind to outsiders.”
“Oh, I believe Mrs. Crowther’s heart is big enough to be kind to a whole parish.”
“Well, on her account, perhaps it was best to accept the invitation.”
[Pg 116]
“Don’t be so grand about it, Martin,” said Allegra. “You forget that I am pining to see what a dinner-party in a very rich house is like. I have seen nothing in London but literary and artistic dinners, third-rate literary and third-rate artistic, I’m afraid—but they were very nice, all the same. Glenaveril is a place that takes my breath away ”

“ He looked with a sceptical eye at the Anglican priest’s cassock and girdle. If Father Rodwell had been a Papist it would have been altogether a more satisfactory state of things; but an Anglican—a man who might preach the beauty of holy poverty and a celibate life one year and marry [Pg 271] a rich widow the year after—a man bound only by his own wishes.
Had Allegra been a thought less frank—had she been a woman whom it was possible to doubt—the sailor would have given himself over to the demon of jealousy ”

“ Again Lady Bellamy shut her eyes and thought, and, when she drew up their heavy lids, Angela saw that there was something of a peaceful look about them.
“Stand so,” she said to Angela, “there where the light falls upon your face. That will do; now shall I tell you what I read there? On your forehead sit resolute power to grasp, and almost measureless capacity to imagine; in your eyes there is a sympathy not to be guessed by beings of a coarser fibre; those eyes could look at Heaven and not be dazzled. ”

“ If you knew all the cherished longings of my tenderness! Your wife, the charming Angela, with her angel face and angel-soul—oh! in my turn, I can say to, you, 'Look at me, and see how sweet that name is to my lips and heart!' Yes, your charming, your good Angela will call me Magdalen—and your children, Agricola, your children!—dear little creatures!—to them also I shall be Magdalen—their good Magdalen—and the love I shall bear them will make them mine, as well as their mother's—and I shall have my part in every maternal care—and they will belong to us three; will they not, Agricola?—Oh! ”

“ Go back to Angela, the beautiful woman with inscrutable grey eyes, who waits for you, clothed in her eternal calm, like a mountain in its snows. I shall send her that tiara as a wedding-present; it will become her well. Go back, Arthur; but sometimes, when you are cloyed with unearthly virtue and perfection, remember that a woman loved you. ”

“ It's true." There was almost a sound of tears in the deep voice. "It's quite true, Allegro. I am not so attractive as I was. I feel it. I know it. Something is lost. I don't know what it is. It went from me that night—you remember!—and it hasn't returned. I thought it was my soul at first. I still sometimes wonder." She laid a hand that quivered and clung upon Olga's arm. "And the dreadful part of it is, Allegro, that Max knows. He looks at me with the most deadly knowledge in his eyes—such wicked eyes they are, all green and piercing, and so cruel—so cruel." ”

“ Rachel swept out of the room with something more than her customary melancholy. “I wish Rachel war'n't quite so contrary,” said the cooper. “She turns upon a body so sudden, it's hard to know how to take her. How's the little girl, Mary?” “She's been asleep ever since six o'clock.” “I hope you don't find her very much trouble. That all comes upon you, while we have the benefit of the money.” “I don't think of that, Timothy. She is a sweet child, and I love her almost as much as if she were my own. As for Jack, he perfectly idolizes her.” “And how does Aunt Rachel look upon her?” ”

“ When one looks about and sees the women of the world—the fashion-plates and simpering dolls of society—then turns to the pure white lives of those like Sister Angela, one can not fail to echo Douglas Darrow's words: "To visit the fatherless and the widow [Pg 167] in their affliction, and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world." This was Sister Angela.
But with all her prudence and forethought, Sister Angela had forgotten to mention to the young physician the fact of Beatrix's marriage. ”

“ For it had been given to Angela, living so much alone, and thinking so long and deeply upon these great mysteries of our being, to soar to the heights of a noble faith. To the intense purity of her mind, a living heaven presented itself, a comfortable place, very different from the vague and formularised abstractions with which we are for the most part satisfied; where Arthur and her mother were waiting to greet her, and where the great light of the Godhead would shine around them all. She grew to hate her life, the dull barrier of the flesh that stood between her and her ends. ”

“ Aunt Rachel looked up nervously, and exclaimed: "A man!"
"Yes, ma'am," said the stranger. "I'm a man, and no mistake. Are you this lad's mother?"
"No, sir!" answered Rachel, emphatically. "I am nobody's mother."
"Oh, an old maid!" said the sailor, whose mode of life had made him unceremonious.
"I am a spinster," said Rachel, with dignity.
"That's the same thing," said the visitor, sitting down opposite Aunt Rachel, who eyed him suspiciously.
"My aunt, Rachel Harding, Capt. Bowling," introduced Jack. "Aunt Rachel, Capt. Bowling is the commander of a vessel now in port." ”

“ Elgar descends the stairs. She is a lady of middle age, slight, not ungraceful, handsome; the look of pain about her forehead is partly habitual, but the consciousness of Sunday intensifies it. She moves without a sound. ”

“ Saw all the sisters kneeling round a bed,
Where Angela lay dying; every breath
Struggling beneath the heavy hand of death.
But suddenly a flush lit up her cheek,
She raised her wan right hand, and strove to speak.
In sorrowing love they listened; not a sound
Or sigh disturbed the utter silence round.
The very tapers’ flames were scarcely stirred,
In such hushed awe the sisters knelt and heard.
And through that silence Angela told her life:
Her sin, her flight; the sorrow and the strife,
And the return; and then clear, low and calm,
“Praise God for me, my sisters;” ”