The Dagger and the Cross

Front matter

JOSEPH HATTOiV'S POWERFUL NOVEL. THE BANISHMENT OF JESSOP BLYTHE. In Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, js. 6d. A FEW PRESS OPINIONS. Saturday Review. " A fine effective story, highly coloured, brilliantly lit, with interest steadily sustained, with touches of pathos. Jessop's last dream is in its way a particularly good piece of work — and not a few flashes of humour .... The tale has been flung down upon the paper in a broad, bold style." The Scotsman. " There is almost a Shakespearean touch in the action and dialogue, by which all the characters are individualised and made to live .... Jessop's daughter Adser is the heroine, first of a charming idyll, and then of a drama, in which terror, tragedy, and heroic action show a human grandeur worthy of the « ild and romantic scenery. . . . The descriptive charm of the book is more than equalled by its dramatic force and reality."

Yorkshire Daily Post. " The combination of shrewdness and sentimentality, of a certain grim humour and austere complacency, in the commoner folk of the story, is exhibited with a quiet ease which often suggests the earlier work of George Eliot .... A wholesome and powertttl story, the art of which is as admirable as the method is pure." Literary World. "Carries the reader by storm .... The heroine delightfully un constrained and independent .... A splendid specimen of Dei byshire young womanhood .... The story is healthy and well conceived, and worked out in the stirring vigorous style that characterises Mr. Hatton's romances, whether they are set in the wilds of Russia or amidst the hills and dales of an English landscape." Westminster Gazette. "Mr. Hatton has given us a brisk and wholesome story, and, deluged as we are with fiction that is as tedious as it is morbid, we are very much obliged to him.

Adser Blythe is a figure which Charles Reade, who was proud, and justly proud, of his feminine portraits, might very well have drawn." Daily News. " Brilliantly effective pictures of that strange and subterranean world, with its vast halls, its wild caves, its hewn rocks and stalactites, re sonant with the sound of rising rivers. Upon this background Mr. Hatton places a story of sustained interest. It is picturesque and breezy, it is full of incident, and has many touches of humour." World. " It is a most admirable story . . . very fine indeed ; the novel is altogether uncommon and elevated." Morning Post. " Forcibly drawn, the picture of Zodack stands out among other excellent sketches in a picturesque and graphically descriptive work." Liverpool Mercury. " The sketches of the Peak folk are delightful in the extreme, of the kind that linger in the reader's memory, as types of kindly wisdom, beauty, and faithfulness.

Chapter I. The Music Of The Sword

" TlIOU knowest, Pisani, I am no swordsman ; and if he kill me, then Francesca becomes his prey. The thought of it puts me on the rack." " Let it rather nerve thy arm, good Signor Roubillac, and I will teach thee how to meet thine enemy," replied the master, who had brought from Toledo the art of Tubal Cain, and not alone the craft to fashion a blade, but how to use it. " 'Tis said he has slain as many rival lovers as he has achieved conquests over women. What he is pleased to call his art of sculpture he uses as opportunity for his amours. His passion of adventure hath its chief excitement in the duello." " I have heard no less ; but there is a trick of play shall win thee rest from his persecution, if thou wilt have as much patience to become a swordsman as thou hast had to achieve distinction in the arts of peace."

" I will be patient, good Pisani ; and, if it please thee, we will begin our practice at once." "What new offence hath he committed that should approve such haste ? Hadst thou been ardent in A choler as thou are in good deeds, thou shouldst have taken counsel with me long ere this." " I bow to thy rebuke, 'tis well deserved ; and I will confess to thee that more than once, Pisani, it has been in my heart to stab him when he has been off his guard — the Mother of God forgive me ! Nay, and it was whispered in mine ear, methought, that such would be a righteous deed." " Love and jealousy need no counsel from the devil, Signor Roubillac, and I would not have thee stain thy soul with dishonour. If 'twere within the compass of possibility that he should have given thee just cause to slay him where he stood unprepared, then no discredit might fall on thee; but the Signora, thy wife, is of too rare a virtue for such likelihood, and 'twere a wrong to her and thee to have her name co-mingled with so grave a scandal, even as an encounter in her defence.

I would advise some other course of quarrel than that which afflicts thee." " None knows better than you, yourself, Pisani, how beyond suspect hath ever been the woman who, first giving me the opportunity to win an everlasting fame in my Angel of the Ascension, added the privilege to be her slave and her protector." "Nay, that is to put the rights of a husband below the dignity of marriage and thine own merits, Signor Roubillac ; but all Venice, not to mention Verona, where she was born, can bear witness to the many and supreme virtues of Francesca Roubillac. And methinks 'twere the wiser thing to let herself be her own defence ; Giovanni Ziletto is not the first gallant who has envied thee." THE MUSIC OF THE SWORD. 3 " And so I had resolved, dear friend, and would still continue in that purpose, but that he hath de veloped a strange power over her, which has made his attentions not only an offence but a terror.

Whether 'tis the evil eye, or whether 'tis by magic, I know not, but to name him even in her hearing seems to invoke a strange power that brings her to my side, trembling and in fear." " I once met the evil eye, as 'tis called, in Florence," said the swordsman. " He was a master whose blade was said to whisper and shriek in the combat, with a devilish impulse ; but I closed his evil eye, Signor Roubillac. And in Venice here, in the little garden of the palace of the Duke, and in his gracious presence, I met yet another, gifted, 'twas avowed, with weird and unholy influences, possessed of a sword that had been hammered into shape at Damascus, and sharpened in an enchanter's cave, and I know not what; but, believe me — and thou shouldst know — there is no magic road to excellence, no partnership of the devil, nor any charm known to man that will make a painter without genius and labour, any more than a swordsman can be made without tutorship and a blade fit for his skill.

My master was the famous swordsman of Seville. Why, thou art half a Spaniard thyself; and so true is Nature, it may be that the impulse of the dagger thou speakest of is an heritage of thy mother's country — for 'twas oftener the knife than the sword they used when I studied in Seville, and an outraged lover did not always deem it necessary to give his enemy an equal chance of life and death when he summoned him to judgment. But we of Venice have a nicer law of morals ; or we assume it so, and that is enough for men of honour." They were singularly opposite in character and appearance, these two friends ; the swordsman alert, clean-cut of limb, his parti-coloured hose and loose open shirt a picturesque note against the more sombre gown of the painter. The power of the afternoon sun was modified by outer shutters ; but the lapping of the water without sent a dancing reflection upon the frescoed ceiling, and now and then caught the radiance of Pisani's little armoury that decorated the walls of his popular school.

Once in a way the usual silence of this particular quarter of the city was broken in upon by the blare of a warlike trumpet above the music of some festal chorus, for the Venetians were fitting out one of their latest expeditions against the Turk, and the sunny air was busy with pronunciamentos thereof. But Pisani and Roubillac found in the happiness of Francesca matter of far greater moment than all the schemes of Doge and Council, and all the messages of trumpets and of banners. Pisani had been her father's friend, and Roubillac was her husband. While the swordsman was recalling reminiscences of conquests over alleged supernatural powers, that he might thereby strengthen Roubillac's confidence in his advice and forecasts, he was fondling a shining taper blade with a hilt that seemed part of his strong yet pliant wrist.

He bent it as a bow, and flicked it forth again. It was almost like a whip to whistle and sing as he played with it. " Yes, my friend, it sings to me many a glorious THE MUSIC OF THE SWORD. 5 song," said Pisani, with a smile that lighted up his sharp features, " and it has memories. Many a time it has spoken to me, as it did when it parried the first thrust of the evil eye ; and it has a grim and startling laugh. Nay, Signor Roubillac, every man to his trade. Do not your radiant colours sing to you on your palette ? Are there not notes of varying cadence as you range them for your can vas ? Methinks your brush made music that was divine when it began the creation of that angel which the people almost worship above the altar of San Stefano, taking her for our beloved Mary herself in some holy masquerade of angelic shape."

He whipped the air with his blade, and tool no heed of Roubillac's remark that to speak so of his work was to speak profanely. The painter crossed himself, at which Pisani turned an inquiring face to him. " I did but protest against thy irreverence of the Holy Mother," said Roubillac. " No irreverence, my friend. Father Costelli was wont to say the Mother of God doth often walk on earth, doing acts of grace in humble guise ; but I cry you mercy, if I have — " " Nay, good Pisani, no offence. I was thinking more of the unworthiness of my own handiwork than what for the moment seemed to be an irreverence on thy part ; and I feel the blame of it, when the name of Father Costelli rises to thy lips for a defence of thy religious philosophy." " Ah, Signor Roubillac, we miss our dear friend and confessor, the pious Costelli, whose knowledge of the world and man's natural infirmities made him.

THE DAGGER AND f HE CROSS. ever kindly and forgiving. I had the honour of a letter from him, come yesterday was a month." " Say'st thou so ? And yet he hath never writ to me." "Twas brought by the hand of a ship's master trading to the Levant, and had come overland a great way to the English coast, he said ; but there was little of note in it, though he did make in quiries after thee and the Signora, and bade me, if ever I had opportunity, to let him know how it fared with Signor Roubillac." " I thank his reverence ; but was that all ? " " He did seem to imply that an agent was on his way to Venice, or likely to be anon, with com missions for craftsmen and artists to carry their genius and their tools to England ; but if that were so, we should have news in due time." " And said he naught of his English home ?

" " That 'twas lovely if it had but our Venetian skies, gay if it had but our Venetian mirth and music, holy if it had but our devotees ; a mountain village they call Eyam, set on the side of a hill, with rugged cliffs near by, and vast stretches of moorlands ; a primitive people ; his home, the Old Hall, so-called, and his host and hostess of liberal minds and a lavish table ; and so he bore his exile." " Thou hast known Father Costelli long? " " All my life that was not spent in Spain ; and 'twas from him that I received such scholarship as thou hast honoured me with commending, as some thing unlikely in a mere swordsman, an artificer of blades, a teacher of the art of attack and defence. THE MUSIC OF THE SWORD. 7 But we waste time ; 'tis ever so with thee, Signor Roubillac ; once another's interests and affairs break in upon thine own, 'tis like thee to depart and forget why thou earnest abroad.

Nay, off with thy gown and vest, and it shall go ill with me but I will arm thee against the reprobate, Ziletto." And so it came to pass that Pisani, the swordsman of Venice, began to teach Roubillac, the painter, to meet Ziletto, the sculptor, who had made his sword a passport to fame that he could never hope to achieve with clay or marble, even had he so desired ; but he only affected to be dilettante in the plastic art, of which he rather assumed the position of the patron than the sculptor. For he was nobly born, and, though he had squandered muchos his fortune, a man of wealth, who might vie with some of the richest in the Republic. As for his art, followed with some show of liking and success — for there often came modellers and sculptors of repute to his studio in Florence, where he entertained with lavish state — there were reckless and irresponsible companions of his revels that vowed he had a contempt for the graphic arts one and all, and for any other but the arts of gallantry and love ; though that which they called gallantry was a libel on manhood, and their love was a no less selfish and degrading passion.

Chapter II. Roubillac And Francesca

BEFORE Francesca came into his life, Bernardo Roubillac was a dreamer, without ambition. His mind was filled with its own beautiful images. Woman had hitherto appealed to him only as a type of the heavenly beauty that he strove to realise on canvas. His career, if not illustrious, was assured. He loved his art for Art's sake, and his patron always told him that fame would follow. But history proves to us that no great work was ever produced, no great deed accomplished, without the impulse of a great love, whether it be of woman or country, or parents or children ; some strong human motive, that gives the right direction to ambition and waits upon the aspirations of genius. It was Francesca that inspired the art of Roubillac ; but with passion comes unrest, and with happiness the trail of the serpent, that sooner or later vitiates all that is beautiful in this incomplete world.

There is, however, an undying consolation in the knowledge that beauty can never be wholly effaced. The influence of beauty is never lost. A thing of beauty is lovely even in decay, and before it is dead and gone and seen no more, it has projected the lesson of its creation into the ages for a moral ; and happy are they who apply it. Witness Venice herself. Her decay began at the zenith of her power ; her glory suffered eclipse when she was most beautiful ; but to - day her fame gives new life to her dead palaces, and the poet has immortalised her in numbers that may live when the waters of the Adriatic have returned to their natural landmarks, and Venice is no more than an enchanting reminiscence. It is no less strange how the story of heroic deeds, the instance of a noble human action, will sanctify some barren spot and give an ideal charm to pro saic things.

Thinking of which takes one far away from Venice, to that mountain village in England, which, compared with the City of the Adriatic, is as a mole-hill to Mount Olympus ; and yet in the loves of Roubillac and Francesca it looms up into the heaven of romance, and gives a comparable dignity, in which Venice does not carry off all the honours. And so strange are the decrees of Fate, that the interview between Roubillac and Pisani starts a link of undying interest between Venice and the hamlet of Eyam. It brings the Euganean hills in sight of Froggatt's Edge, mingles the destinies of Mary Talbot and Reuben Clegg with those of the Italian lovers, and makes the music of Ziletto's mandoline as familiar in the valley of Middleton as it was on the moonlit lagoons of Venice. Bernardo Roubillac was a protege of the family of the Valiero.

They loved Art, and they loved Venice. The head of the house, now an old man, had a villa at Verona, and a palace at Venice, near the Rialto. All that taste and wealth could do to make these abodes beautiful was lavished upon them. Not alone a mere patron of the arts, this old man, Bertuccio Valiero, was an enthusiast in promoting the rivalry of the Venetian with other Italian Republics. With a splendid munificence, he had established in his palace an Academy of Fine Arts, where such youth as desired might study free of charge, and with the aid of the best masters procurable. Roubillac, having made sufficient mark to set up a studio of his own, chose to be near the palace, so that he might the more readily assist in promoting the welfare of the aspirants who availed themselves of the Academy and its privileges.

Now Francesca da Ponte was the daughter of a painter at Verona. She was orphaned when she was sixteen. The beauty of her person and the graces of her mind had commended her to the ladies of the Valiero family. She had also evinced a talent for the art of her father. In a design for tapestry she had won the high praise of Morosini, and it was a kindly thought that suggested to the Signora Valiero that Francesca might have the privilege of the gallery at Venice. And so it came to pass that one day, looking from his window across the Canal, Roubillac saw a gondola with two passengers, one a young girl and the other an elderly woman, evidently an attendant in her service — no unusual sight ; but Fate was busy with Roubillac's future at that particular moment, and his eye followed the boat as it glided past the chief entrance to the palace and paused by the private way beneath his window.

He opened his casement and looked out. The gondolier, with an air of respectful admiration, gave the younger of the passengers his hand. She stepped upon the palace quay and smiled her thanks, herself assisting her attendant to alight. The whole scene was little more than a momentary incident ; but in that flash of time the image of the girl went straight to Roubillac's heart ; not, let it be said, to his artistic heart ; the touch was keener. For him the very thought of the girl suddenly gave to the world a new light. It set the waters of the Canal dancing with fresh colours ; it added a deeper hue to the blue sky, that made the Canal an azure sea, the sentinel palaces, with the dome of the Church of the Salutation white against the sky, a fairy city, such as he had dreamed might be seen on the plains of Heaven.

" It is a revelation," he said to himself, " an in spiration of living beauty" ; and his pale, intellectual face repeated the thought in a new expression. It was the love at first sight that comes with a rush to some hearts, and burns the fiercer when the subject is past its youth and the sensibilities are somewhat dry, as a spark will ignite with a breath and fire the most withered tinder. Not that Roubillac was old, though he was twenty years her senior ; she some seventeen summers. He was not older than thirty six, though thought and an ascetic life had given him the appearance of a more advanced age. Presently she passed into the gallery. It was a rare thing for a woman to be seen there. On a few occasions the wives and daughters of artists had accompanied their friends who made studies in the gallery outside the precincts of the Academy proper.

Roubillac had noticed that the girl, whose coming had moved him so deeply, carried a satchel, and her attendant a small canvas. He laid aside his work, and drawing his cloak about him, passed into the gallery with something of an acted pre occupation of manner. She was there, sitting be fore a head of Apollo, and making a chalk study. There were other artists at work, one other lady amongst them, but the girl of the gondola seemed to hold herself apart from the rest. The sudden interest that he felt in her was too intense for speech. He might have spoken to her, had he so desired, and no offence ; even have offered her pro fessional counsel ; but he only ventured upon furtive glances at the newcomer, fearful lest any act or word of his should frighten the vision of beauty away. And so, day after day, he came to the gallery.

He could never settle down to his work without seeing her, and not without a sting of pain — there came also into his silent worship of her the joy of a new power in his art. It must be, he thought that she had brought to him the divine spark. His soul had broadened out with a nobler feeling towards humanity. He was a new man ; but how long would all this last ? How long before he dared speak with her ? and what would become of him the day she should have finished her study of the head that, in its masculine beauty, was almost a match with her own ? He watched and waited for her. She arrived punctu ally, as the great clock of St. Mark's struck the hour, and went away as regularly, her woman coming for her, the same gondolier in attendance at the private stairs of the palace. Roubillac found himself envying that gondolier, and he would stand, with his Dantesque-like face in his hands, watching the last sparkles that followed the great blade of the boat man long after the swan-like vessel had disappeared.

One day she did not come. It was a day of darkness and misery. The next saw her not. It seemed as if the world was at an end for Roubillac. He went forth in search of the maiden and her attendant. He found their abode. He entered with the bold ness of despair. She was ill. He brought her a physician, but she had no need of adventitious aid. She was well cared for. In the window of her chamber there were fresh flowers, and in the distance could be seen the blue waters of the Adriatic. He called every day. She recovered ; and when she had left her chamber and descended into the little salon of the house, he was permitted to see her. Thereupon began a new life for Roubillac. It was noticed by his few friends that the recluse went more abroad than usual ; that he wore his gown with a new air ; that it was richer than of yore, his vest some what more embroidered, and he carried a staff of rare wood mounted with gold.

The gondolier and the serving-maid of Francesca knew what had wrought this change in the painter ; and he knew by what in spiration he seemed to be travelling for the first time on the road that led to Fame. No lover could have had better excuse for an ab sorbing passion than Roubillac might have pleaded in the object of his devotion. Her beauty was Oriental rather than Venetian ; black, glossy hair, a complexion of delicate olive, suffused now and then by the blush of a sensitive temperament, as the passing of sunshine, leaving a shadow of retrospect behind. She had a soft voice, languishing eyes, and a stately figure. The artist's consciousness detected all the beauties of her form and colour ; the lover's rapture idealised them. It was an act of more than ordinary courage when Roubillac spoke to her in terms of love, for from the first she had seemed to him something more than mortal.

She was strangely moved by a sine picture or a tender story ; and when she visited his studio, accompanied by the woman with whom the Valiero ladies had placed her, she became engrossed in his work, in which he now found a new happiness. When he confessed his love for her, and pressed it with a view to immediate marriage, she replied with more of gratitude than the deeper sentiment which he hoped he had inspired ; but she allowed her hand to rest in his, and suffered his embrace. He was too bewilderingly happy to note the absence of a loving response ; and it was strange that when he looked for a reply in words, she spoke of his Ascension picture. He had never dared to ask her to sit for his leading figure, but it had been in his mind, many a time and oft, to wonder if he might make so wild a request ; yet, whenever he had sketched the subject, she had observed in the principal figure a likeness of herself.

So when he asked her to be his wife, and she suffered his embrace, she said she would sit to him for his Ascension picture. It was an odd reply to the suit of a lover; but Francesca knew that in this she fulfilled half his desire, and she was anxious to give him pleasure. He had failed to stir the secret impulse of her woman's heart in the way of love. It came, however — or so she thought — at a later day, when the altar-piece was finished, and the painter's fame was on every lip, and he sat at her feet and gave all the praise to her, not alone for the angelic grace of her face and figure, but for the inspiration he had found in his love. They had not known each other a year ere they were married, and were happy, Roubillac beyond his wildest dreams, Francesca in a mild, contented fashion. It was at the height of Roubillac's happiness that there appeared in Venice Giovanni Ziletto, who came with the reputation of a sculptor, a traveller, and a diplomat ; a man of extraordinary gifts and striking presence, younger than Roubillac, possessing graces of person and manners that tell with women and often beguile the good opinion of men.

He danced divinely, could turn a quaint conceit of love in verse, and sing it to his mandoline as if he had been brought up to naught but minstrelsy. He saw Francesca, and conceived a passion for her. Received by the Valieros and other eminent citizens, he ob tained easy access to the home and studio of Roubillac. Francesca found in his manner a new charm. Rarely had she seen so handsome a figure ; never listened to the conversation of a man who had so large a knowledge of the great world, or who related his adventures with such facility of language. Young as he was, he had visited the principal Courts of Europe, and in the most delicate way imaginable succeeded in conveying to Francesca his opinion of the supremacy of her beauty in comparison with the fairest of every clime. It was not altogether the words he uttered that meant this, but she seemed to hear it in the strange music of his voice, and she made an excuse to retire to her room, lest the emotion he had aroused within her should be observed by Roubillac; for Ziletto knew how certain natures succumbed to his influence.

Francesca had never yet felt the genuine impulse of passion, and she was afraid. As the days wore on, Francesca began to look for Ziletto's coming; and Ziletto took occasion to seek for cause of quarrel with Roubillac, not alone by his outward show of gallantry towards the painter's lovely wife, but in such debates on art, and even politics, as should aggravate Roubillac into a challenge. Hence Roubillac's interview with Pisani. All the while Francesca suffered the perplexities of doubts and fears such as she had never known. She felt that she had a secret, she hardly knew what, from her husband ; an unworthy secret that she could not define. She struggled, as a dove might under the fascination of a snake. She felt that she was captive to Ziletto's whims, felt bound to listen to him. He stirred her heart as it had never been stirred, and gave new fancies to her imagination.

He drew her eyes towards him against her will, whether they met upon the Square of St. Mark's, or even during the mass at St. Maria della Salute. She sought relief in silent prayer, and at last took counsel with her confessor, the Monk Lorenzo, a conventual brother of that Father Costelli sojourning in England, of whom we have heard. And Roubillac continued to visit Pisani the swordsman.