Chapter II: A Goodly Heritage

"It is not best in an inglorious ease
To sink and dull content,
When wild revolts and hopeless miseries
The unquiet nations fill;
* * * * *
Nay, best it is indeed
To spend ourselves upon the general good;
And, oft misunderstood,
To strive to lift the knees and limbs that bleed.
This is the best, the fullest meed.
Let ignorance assail or hatred sneer
Who loves his race he shall not fear;
He suffers not for long,
Who doth his soul possess in loving, and grows strong."
LEWIS MORRIS.

The old singing-master had not exaggerated matters. Though inclined to see everything connected with his favorite pupil through rose-colored spectacles, his words were in this instance strictly true. Carlo had passed scathless through all the temptations of Neapolitan life; his history would bear the full light of day; it was impossible to imagine any one more strictly honorable, more simple and open-minded. But then, certainly, Nature had been to him almost prodigal in her gifts. To begin with, he came of a good family, and that not in the vulgar acceptation of the word. The Donati were not of noble birth, but for five or six generations they had been well educated, and had earned quite an unusual reputation in the various learned professions which they had followed. Faults of temper or of judgment they might have shown, but no Donati had ever been guilty of an act of meanness, nor had there been in anyone of them a single grain of insincerity. To belong to a family which has earned well-deserved respect, to be able to look back upon forefathers who have lived well and bravely, to know that before you existed your father, and his father before him, spoke for freedom and pleaded the cause of the people, this is indeed a birthright worth having. An inheritance of money may or may not be a desirable thing, but an inheritance of character, an ancestry of generous, true-hearted men, who did justly, and loved mercy, and walked humbly with their God, this is a thing that kings might covet.

Carlo had undoubtedly inherited a noble character, or rather had inherited certain tendencies, and as yet, by his life, had helped to develop, not to arrest, their growth.

At the close of the last century there had been born a certain Bruno Donati. People had prophesied great things of him; he had established, with almost unheard-of rapidity, a great reputation as an advocate, he had married a beautiful heiress, he was assuredly a man who would "rise"--so said the world. He did rise, but not in the way predicted. Regardless of his reputation, regardless of self altogether, he joined the patriot party who were struggling to overthrow the hated tyranny of the Neapolitan Bourbons. Leaving his home, and taking a tender farewell of his wife and his little children, he set off one June morning for Cilento, the place which had been chosen for a small rising. At first a certain measure of success encouraged the patriots; they were able to take the little fort of Palinuro, and to hoist the tricolored flag.

But those brave pioneers knew well that they were taking their lives in their hands. They had achieved a success which must draw the attention of the whole country upon them. In hot haste General Delcaretto was sent down to attack them with six thousand men, and no mercy was shown. Twenty of the patriots were shot without trial; twenty-six others, and amongst them Bruno Donati, were executed. The young advocate had, as it seemed, sacrificed his life for a hopeless cause; he was never again to return to his beautiful home, but General Delcaretto caused his head to be paraded in front of the house before the eyes of his widow and his fatherless children. Then, when the people had been ruined, a commune or two suppressed, and the insurrection completely stamped out, the General returned to Naples to be rewarded for his gallantry by receiving the title of Marquis, a decoration of a knightly order, and a pension.

Bruno Donati's widow did not die until she had educated her two sons, and had seen that the younger one, also Bruno, was likely to be just such a man as his father. She did not realize how much alike the story of the two Brunos would be.

Both sons followed their father's profession, but the younger one was so much engrossed in the revolutionary movement of the time that he did not make much way in it. Instead of so doing, he joined "Young Italy," studied deeply under the guidance of Mazzini, and at length enrolled himself in Garibaldi's gallant little army.

Carlo's earliest recollections were of a hot August day in the year 1862. He, as a little fellow, had sat beside his mother in a carriage outside the post-office at Pozzuoli, and some one had brought them the news of Garibaldi's defeat at Aspromonte, and with that the tidings that Bruno Donati was dangerously wounded. Carlo could even now see vividly his mother's deathly face as she read the news, could remember his puzzled wonder as to what it all meant, and whether it could possibly be that his father would never return.

But the second Bruno Donati was in some ways happier than his father; he was brought back from Aspromonte to his own home, where he lingered for a month--a month which proved of extraordinary value in his son's education. The child was too young to feel his father's death as a life-long grief, but he was just old enough to carry away from that death-bed a beautiful and unfading memory. Upon his childish brain was stamped the conviction that to die for "_La Patria_" was a very happy thing, that the sacrifice of self for others was the only true greatness, and that even such a failure as Aspromonte was not to be accounted failure--that right could not fail in the long run. "_Pazienza! pazienza!_" was the word constantly on the lips of the dying patriot--the word which always connected itself with his memory in the mind of his son. On Bruno Donati's dying face there had been that "look of faith in renunciation" which was stamped upon the face of his teacher, Mazzini, and the look lived on in the child's heart.

"Carlino," his father had said tenderly, on the very last day of his life--"Carlino _mio_, thou wilt be a man one day."

"How nice it will be when I am a man like you, father?" cried the boy eagerly.

The dying man smiled sadly.

"Remember always to comfort and shield thy mother; and Nita--take good care of Nita."

"Why, father, Nita is older than I am, a whole year older!" exclaimed the child.

"But Nita is a woman, and my Carlo must be her brave protector; promise me that, my son."

"I promise, father," said the little fellow, squeezing the cold hand that clasped his. "And father, dear father, I may have your sword, may I not? You'll not leave it to Uncle Guido, who has one already? For if I have it, father, then I could fight the brigands if they took Nita; could I not?"

The dying man smiled, touched by the innocent literalness of the reply. He caught Carlo to his breast, holding him in a long, close embrace.

"Why, father, I do believe you'll soon be well!" cried the boy, gleefully, feeling the power of those strong arms round him. He did not know that a sudden strength is often death's forerunner.

And in a sense he little meant his words came true, for by the next morning the second Bruno Donati had entered into the martyr's rest, and it was "well" with him.

After this Carlo's life had been uneventful; the recollection of his father did not sadden him, on the contrary, it raised and stimulated him. For an Italian boy he had an unusually free and healthy life; his mother could never make up her mind to leave the country-house where they had been passing their _villeggiatura_ during that summer of 1862, and in which her husband had died. They lived all the year round at the Villa Bruno, and a kindly old priest at Pozzuoli taught the boy until he was old enough to go in every day to the _Ginnasio_ at Naples.

Here he entered into his lifelong friendship with Enrico Ritter, and learnt much through his intercourse with the German family, whose house became his headquarters when he was in Naples. The Ritters, deeming the country life dull for the boy, were constantly inviting him to stay with them, and giving him brief snatches of gayety. Nominally Lutherans, the worthy Germans were practically materialists, and it was largely owing to his visits at the Ritters that Carlo first became dissatisfied with the religion in which his mother had educated him. Equally was he dissatisfied with the conventional acceptance of Christianity and the real scepticism which prevailed in the Ritter household. For a year or two he puzzled his brain over the vexed question; finally he took the decisive step and resolved to go no more to church. This caused much pain to his mother and to his old friend, Father Cristoforo; and though plunging deeply into that sort of worship at the shrine of beautiful Nature which is the reaction from formalism, he felt a want in his life.

Shortly before this a house close to the Villa Bruno, which for some years had been untenanted, had been taken by an Englishman named Captain Britton. He had just lost his wife; and the home at San Remo, where his children had been born, and to which he had returned year by year when off duty, had grown intolerable to him. He retired from the service, and, taking a fancy to the neighborhood of Naples, settled down at Casa Bella, and made up his mind to live and die there. He had only two children--Francesca, a beautiful girl about a year younger than Carlo--so named after an Italian friend of the family--and Sibyl, a fairy-like little child of two years old. Miss Claremont, Francesca's governess, or, as everyone called her, "Clare," had the management of the house, and it was largely owing to her that a very close intimacy soon sprang up between the two neighboring families.

Carlo and Francesca were at first not of an age for falling in love. They became fast friends, and Carlo in his rather lonely life was enchanted to find that the English girl was allowed almost unlimited freedom. She was wholly unlike his convent-bred sister, who, since her mother was an invalid, was allowed to come home now and then for a day or two. Nita was beautiful, and sang like an angel, and was a devout little Catholic, and did her best to teach him the error of his ways. But, to save her life, Nita could not have been a companion in his games. Now Francesca, though no hoyden, was in the matter of games as good as a boy. She was not above climbing trees or running races, she excelled at rounders, she even initiated him into the mysteries of cricket, enlisting the services of Clare and the gardeners.

Then nothing would do but he must teach her to row, and many were the happy hours they spent on the sea together, sometimes with Clare in the stern, sometimes with little Sibyl and her nurse, sometimes with old Florestano, the fisherman, who would tell them quaint legends of saints, or mermaids, or ghosts, in all of which he believed equally. Sometimes they would go oyster-catching in Lake Fusaro, or, with Clare as a delightful third, would scramble about in the Acropolis at Cumas, seeking to make fresh discoveries. Or they would play hide-and-seek in the Grotto della Pace, or act thrilling brigand stories, or dig and search in field or vineyard, and perhaps stumble across the remains of an old Roman villa or the ruins of a temple, hidden away by the straggling green growth.

Those were happy days for all of them. Carlo before long formed for Miss Claremont that sort of reverential, half-worshipping friendship and admiration which is not uncommon between boys of his age and middle-aged women. And Clare was a friend worth having. She influenced people chiefly by loving them; you never felt with her that she was trying to doctor you, or to improve your moral or spiritual health. She discussed many things with Carlo, listened to his crude, half-fledged ideas with the utmost patience, and would no more have smiled at them or treated them contemptuously than a woman would smile with contempt as she watches the staggering steps of a baby beginning to walk alone.

Clare sympathized much with the difficulties of his position; she saw that his deeply religious Italian nature would never rest content in its present isolation.

"Do you never feel the need of worshipping?" she asked him one day.

"Yes," he replied, "but one need not be within the walls of a church to do that; a boat at sea, or an olive-grove, are more to my taste."

Just at that time he was the least bit proud of having shaken himself free from the bondage of Romanism, a fact which was quite patent to Clare, and proved to her how perilous was his state.

"And yet," she urged, "I should have thought that you--a follower of Mazzini--would have had a strong faith in Association."

The words struck home, unpleasantly convincing Carlo that he had been rapturously hugging a thing which he called Freedom, and that it was but an illusion more worthy to be called Isolation.

"I don't know where to turn to!" he exclaimed, chafed by a remark which had disturbed his peace, and proved it to be false.

"Are you trying to find out the best place?" she asked quietly.

He was silent, and Clare, who had the rare tact to know when she had said enough, changed the subject.

But the very next Sunday he astonished her by asking leave to join their party and drive in to the English church at Naples with them. His total absence of false shame, and the ingenuous humility which could thus tacitly own itself in the wrong, promptly and publicly following the suggestion of a woman, were thoroughly Italian. Clare reflected that an Englishman would have allowed a week or two to pass by, in order to prove that he came of his own free will and not at the instigation of another; or would, perhaps, have toiled over on foot in the early morning, slinking in at the back of the church, in terror lest people should comment on the amendment of his ways.

After a time he formally joined the English Church. Of course he had some opposition to encounter; but though his old friend the priest shook his head sorrowfully, and though his mother shed tears, and though the Ritters chaffed him good-humoredly, his happiness was too great to be marred by such things; besides, they all loved him so well that they soon pardoned the obnoxious step which he had taken, and did their best to forget that he was not as they were.

A few months after this the first shadow fell upon Carlo's perfect felicity. It was suddenly arranged that the Britton household should migrate to England for a year. An aunt of Francesca's had just died, and some one was urgently needed to look after the motherless children. Who was so fit for such a task as Clare? and though she would fain have lived on in that happy Italian home, she could not linger there when needed in another place, and at any rate she should have her children for yet another year. That helped to break the parting. Captain Britton was glad for a time to be with his brother, and a year of English life, in which to finish Francesca's rather unconventional education, was deemed a good idea by all. So once more Casa Bella was silent and deserted, and Carlo was left to his own devices.

It was just at this time that Nita returned from her convent. A great change was at once effected in the peacefulness of the Villa Bruno, for the girl, while retaining enough of her religious education to make her persecute her heretic brother with endless arguments and remonstrances, was yet so wearied of its strict restraint that she broke out into violent reaction and tyrannized over her mother, much as she herself had till now been tyrannized over.

The Signora Donati was an invalid; she had never recovered from the cruel shock of her husband's death, nor had she at any time been noted for strength of character. Carlo had been too loyal ever to take advantage of this; her slightest wish had been to him a command, and the two had idolized each other. But somehow it happened that Nita coming home from her convent felt like an intruder; she could not find a niche for herself in the home, and, measuring the hearts of other people by her own, fancied she was not cared for. Perhaps her mother did show a little too markedly that Carlo was her favorite; but then it really was difficult not to love the son who treated her with such tenderness, such respectful devotion, somewhat better than the daughter, who sought for nothing but her own amusement, and never voluntarily performed for her the slightest service.

It was also, perhaps, true that Carlo did not greatly care for his sister, at any rate she tried his temper severely. He was impatient with her aggravating little displays of piety, her deep genuflexions, her paraded fasts. He was constantly detecting her in petty deceits, and once, after some worse specimens of publicity than usual, he had angrily upbraided her.

"You are not fit to bear the name of Donati!" he cried hotly, his boyish sense of honor deeply wounded, and his family pride hurt to find that Nita was no better than the rest of the world.

"Perhaps I shall not bear it much longer!" she retorted, angrily.

And those words haunted poor Carlo for many a year. For, not long after, all Naples rang with the news that Anita Donati had eloped with her singing-master, a certain basso who had been engaged that winter at the San Carlo.

Fortunately, the Villa Bruno was far away in the country, and the Signora too great an invalid to go into society. She could bear her agony in solitude, and was not obliged to wear a mask and go about as though nothing had happened.

But Carlo was in the thick of the fray, he had to listen to Uncle Guido's indignant denunciations, he had to bear the brunt of the endless questions of the outsiders, had to endure the bitter consciousness that his sister's name was being bandied about in the city, and that, for the first time, a Donati had incurred well-merited blame.

Since then nothing had been heard of Anita, except that about a week after her flight she had forwarded to her mother a newspaper with the announcement of her marriage. But the Signora Donati never recovered from the shock, nor could she ever forgive herself, for she rightly felt that had her relations with her daughter been happier such a thing could never have happened.

Five years had gone by since then, and Time had passed his quieting hand over both grief and disgrace. Certainly Carlo felt nothing but happiness--unalloyed happiness--as he rode home from Naples that sunny spring day. He knew nothing of that ominous little paragraph torn out of the _Piccolo_, but galloped on over the white, dusty road, past fields of Indian corn, past olive-gardens and vineyards, through the long, dark grotto of Posilipo, and on towards the picturesque little southern town of Pozzuoli. He scarcely noticed all the beauty round him; he could see nothing but the face of his dreams; and the very horse-hoofs flying over the road seemed to repeat, again and again, the word, "Francesca! Francesca! Francesa!"