 | The Shaker lovers, and other tales |  |
THE BRAVO HUSBAND!
A Tale of Italy.
Ludovico Salvati was the captain of a troop of bandits infesting
the Lower Alps. Of lofty statute, muscular frame, and undaunted
temperament, he seemed especially fitted for the desperate
post in which his evil stars had placed him. We say
his evil stars, for Salvati was the cadet of a noble family, of
which honorable mention is made in the archives of Florence.
He was a man of cultivated intellect and high aspirations: one
who was never destined to tread the obscure path of mindless
mediocrity. But maddened by disappointment and despair, the
miseries of Salvati would have made a maniac of a less desperate
nature; they made him a robber. His name was the byword
of terror to the travellers and merchants, and the sound of
fear by which the matrons of the Alpine hamlets soothed their
wayward nurselings into submission; “Hark! Salvati!” sufficed
alike to silence the most turbulent, and to subdue the most refractory.
Meanwhile, Salvati himself knew no happiness on earth, save
that in the consciousness that his name could thus strike terror
to the hearts of those who in early youth had taught his own to
quail. He had been injured, deeply injured; and he had vowed
vengeance—nor was he one to breathe such a vow lightly.
In his first manhood Ludovico had loved; not as worldlings
love, but with deep devotedness. By day he walked through the
marble halls of the Salvati Palace, musing on the idol of his
soul; by night he closed his eyes only to dream of her. Beatrice
bright with stars, and a voice like that of the bird which loves
the darkness; the brow of a Madonna, high, calm, and pale,
looking as though earthly passion could never overshadow it;
and a smile which shed sunshine where it rested. She was so
young and gentle that it seemed as if she were scarce fitted to
contend with the care's of life, and so light-hearted that she appeared
never to have had one dream of sorrow. Such was she
when she listened to Salvati's tale of love, as they sat together
beneath the boughs of a pomegranate tree, from which he pilfered
the rich red blossoms to twine them in her hair; while the
sound of minstrelsy came faintly from the distant palace, swelling
and dying as the wind rose and fell among the orange trees.
What recks it what he said, or how he said it, beneath the moon-lighted
sky, amid breeze and blossom; enough that she heard it
without a frown—that she answered with a smile; and that, as
Salvati pressed her to his heart, he called her his—his own! his
love—his world! 'Twas a sweet dream; and they walked
hand in hand, his arm around her, and her rich warm cheek resting
upon his shoulder—slowly, pausingly, under the delicious
night wind; and they told each other the history of their secret
affection—how it had grown and strengthened since they first
met; and if Beatrice blushed at the confession, he kissed away
her blushes, and she did not repent her confidence. Ludovico
told a less embarrassed tale, and she pressed her small hand upon
his lips to stay their utterance; but the lover heeded not the
gentle hindrance, and he showed her how long and how ardently
he had loved her—for days are centuries in a lover's calendar;
and the moon had risen high in heaven, and the orange buds
were shedding the perfumed dew from their snowy cups, ere they
remembered that the world was peopled by others besides themselves,
and prepared again to mingle with its denizens.
A fearful year followed that blissful evening. A rival's blood
crimsoned the blade of Salvati; but the stab was deeper at his
own heart's core! Could it be that Beatrice loved the smooth
lipped stranger? His own Beatrice? He could not think that
it was thus: and yet, she wept over the corse—such tears as
hearts. But Beatrice—the beautiful, the fond, the timid Beatrice?
No, no; it could not be; and Salvati held her to his
heart, and loathed himself that he had dared to doubt her.
He became a husband. Not a word, not a look of his young
bride, but was to him all as light and music. All that tenderness
which woman loves so well, he lavished upon her with a prodigality
which proved that his whole heart was in the homage; and
yet, she was not happy. The smile fted from her lip, her step
became less buoyant, and her voice more sad. Ludovico
mourned, wondered, yet never doubted; and when Beatrice
placed in his arms her infant girl, he forgot all sorrow in the contemplation
of its cherub face.
One day he had led his fair wife forth into the sunshine, and
the child slumbered upon his bosom. He talked to Beatrice of
all which that child might one day be to them, gifted as she
seemed with her her mother's beauty—that mother who was to
him fairer than aught else on earth. Suddenly a messenger approached
them,—the bearer of strange tidings,—he was a kinsman
of Salvati, and he came, with joy in his heart, to tell him
that the rival whom he had smitten he had nevertheless not slain;
that he yet lived, though his friends had borne him across the
sea, when they rescued him from death—there was no blood upon
the soul of the young husband.
Ludovico smiled scornfully in doubt, but the doubt was vain.
The stranger had been seen since his return to Florence: he
still bore the trace of Salvati's blade, but he lived.
Then, indeed, light returned to the eyes of Beatrice, though
she uttered not a word, as Ludovico gloomily led the way back
to their splendid home.
One more short month and the infant of the Count Salvati
was motherless. Beatrice had fled! The father and the child
were alike deserted. The wretched and bereaved man caught
up the weeping child—weeping it knew not wherefore—and, in
turn, abandoned the home which to him was now desolate. He
wandered, he cared not whither, for many weary days; the peasants
whom he encountered in his way shared with him, and
with his motherless infant, their simple, and often scanty, meal;
clear sky, or beneath a cotter's roof. It was thus the bandits
found him. He was a reckless man. They urged him to become
their chief; and he started at once from his lethargy of
sorrow. By their means he might yet taste revenge! The very
thought was of itself cabalistic. He told them all his wrongs,
and they talked of vengeance; that was enough; he was thence-forward
theirs—body and soul. He girt the pistols and the dagger
in his belt; he pressed the plumed hat upon his brow; and
he placed his little Beatrice in the arms of the gentlest of the
bandit's wives. It is true that he shuddered as he gave her into
such rude keeping, but he was anticipating vengeance; and he
turned away with a smile upon his lip.
He watched and watched for years, and yet his longing was
unappeased; and meanwhile, his child grew healthfully among
the Alpine breezes, with all the loveliness and grace of her mother
floating about her like an atmosphere of light, and all the
hardihood of a young mountaineer.
Salvati's revenge had been so long delayed, that the thirst for
its indulgence became demoniacal, when he heard that his enemy
was at length within his grasp—and Beatrice, too!—she who
had won his heart only to break it!—she who was once the wife
of his bosom—the mother of his infant girl! She was even now
with the man upon whom his curse rested—to whom it had clung
for years—upon whom it was now so soon to fall. * * The
seducer and the seduced were there, within arrow's flight; and
they breathed the same air with the outlaw and his child. Salvati
writhed with agony: the fair browed lover had been watched
into a palace at the foot of the very mountain whose fastnesses
were bivouacked the band of Ludovico. The false one and her
guilty companion could sun themselves boldly beneath the blue
sky of heaven, while the bereaved husband and his innocent
babe were hidden from the gaze of men, lest the arm of justice
should overtake them. The reflection was maddening; and excited
by this bitter thought, engendering memories still more
wretched, Ludovico took his deserted daughter by the hand, just
as a glorious sunset had flashed and faded into those sober tints
which steep the world in twilight, and tried to find comfort in
he could not support even the converse of the light-hearted child;
and casting himself gloomily down, with his rifle in his hand, in
a chasm of the rock, he bade Beatrice go forth and gambol in
the soft air. For awhile the girl stood pensively beside him, her
hands folded upon her breast, and her large dark eyes riveted on
his countenance; but after a time she looked forth over the
ledge of rocks against which she leant, and watched the wild
birds as they winged their joyous way to their nightly resting
places.
Suddenly Ludovico was startled by her scream, and he hurriedly
sprang from the earth; in another instant he heard the report
of a rifle, and Beatrice sunk down beside him,—the ball
had entered her heart,—she was dead! Salvati laid her gently
down again upon the earth from which in his first terror he had
lifted her; and then fiercely gazing down into the valley from a
point whence he could not be perceived from beneath, he discerned
two human figures. The foremost was that of a tall cavalier,
and farther in the distance the bandit distinguished a party
of attendants. He saw the truth at once—the cavalier was
engaged in shooting with his rifle at the birds which were
flying homeward to their eyries in the rock, and the lady was
witnessing his prowess. The little Beatrice had attracted their
attention by her movements, and the sportsman, believing it to
be some mountain eagle watching in fancied security the destruction
of its feathered associates, and anxious to exhibit to his fair
companion a proof of his skill as a marksman, had but too fatally
taken his aim. But Ludovico, in another instant, learnt still
more than this,—it was not enough that the sweet spirit which
had so long and so lovingly ministered to his own, when all else
had forsaken him, lay quenched at his feet—it was not enough
that the pure and beautiful image in which that spirit had been
enshrined, was now a ghastly, senseless, gory heap—destiny had
not yet done with him. A light laugh came on his ear—a laugh
of mirth as a requiem for his dead infant—he could not be mistaken—he
had heard such laughter in by-gone years, ere the
blight of misery had withered him—it was the voice of Beatrice
—of his false wife! He turned, and looked at his lost child,
bent over her for an instant, as if to convince himself that there
was indeed no hope, and then seizing his rifle, he took a steady
aim, and again the sharp quick sound reverberated among the
heights—another peal of laughter rang out at its echo, but this
time it was the laugh of Ludovico. The cavalier, the murderer
of his little one, fell as that horrible mirth swelled on the evening
and he looked for a second with a glad and gloating
look upon the affrighted party who cowered around the fallen
man; then again he raised his weapon; but this time his hand
was unsteady, and his frame shook—the strong man quivered
like a leaf! Again he glanced back on the dead object of all
his hope, and of all his tenderness, and that sufficed. In the
next instant a shout of horror rang upward from the plain: mother
and child were alike lifeless. Salvati had taken no coward
aim.
A few months subsequently, Florence was thronged by curious
crowds, who came to witness the execution of Ludovico, the
bandit chief. He had surrendered himself to justice; he had
avowed the murder of his wife; the pillage of travellers, the
control of a fierce band which had long been the terror of the
country. No voice was raised in mercy; it was a forgotten
word in Florence; while all cried aloud for justice. Men do
not judge by the racked heart and the wrung spirit; but by the
peril and the spoil—what to them were the anguish and the despair
which had wrought their ruin? their pity had been unchallenged,
for Salvati had borne a haughty brow before his accusers—he
had himself supplied them both the charge and the culprit;
and the morning at length arrived—two slowly for those
who were to be merely the lookers on at the legal tragedy—when
all might see if his high courage would still uphold him—what
marvel then that they panted for the trial? But they knew not
Ludovico Salvati! he had done with the world, and the world
with him. A busy throng entered his dungeon to summon him
to the death scene; his chains were lying on the earth beside
him, for he had wrenched them asunder, though his tortured
limbs had suffered in the effort; he was no longer to be a gaze
for the Florentines—his dagger had freed him.
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