Short Fiction · The Last Austrian Who Left Venice (3/3)

The task they had before them, of driving the Austrians from the fortresses amidst their own mountains, was an impossible one, impossible even had Garibaldi been supplied with ordinary military equipments⁠—but ridiculously impossible for him in all the nakedness in which he was sent. Nothing was done to enable him to succeed. That he should be successful was neither intended nor desired. He was, in fact, then, as he has been always, since the days in which he gave Naples to Italy⁠—simply a stumbling-block in the way of the king, of the king’s ministers, and of the king’s generals. “There is that Garibaldi again⁠—with volunteers flocking to him by thousands:⁠—what shall we do to rid ourselves of Garibaldi and his volunteers? How shall we dispose of them?” That has been the feeling of those in power in Italy⁠—and not unnaturally their feeling⁠—with regard to Garibaldi. A man so honest, so brave, so patriotic, so popular, and so impracticable, cannot but have been a trouble to them. And here he was with twenty-five thousand volunteers, all armed after a fashion, all supplied, at least, with a red shirt. What should be done with Garibaldi and his army? So they sent him away up into the mountains, where his game of play might at any rate detain him for some weeks; and in the meantime everything might get itself arranged by the benevolent and omnipotent interference of the emperor.

Things did get themselves arranged while Garibaldi was up among the mountains, kicking with unarmed toes against Austrian pricks⁠—with sad detriment to his feet. Things did get themselves arranged very much to the advantage of Venetia, but not exactly by the interference of the emperor.

The facts of the war became known more slowly in Venice than they did in Florence, in Paris, or in London. That the battle of Custozza had been fought and lost by the Italian troops was known. And then it was known that the battle of Lissa also had been fought and lost by Italian ships. But it was not known, till the autumn was near at hand, that Venetia had, in fact, been surrendered. There were rumours, but men in Venice doubted these rumours; and women, who knew that their husbands had been beaten, could not believe that success was to be the result of such calamities.

There were weeks in which came no news from Carlo Pepé to the women in the Campo San Luca, and then came simply tidings that he had been wounded.

“I shall see my son never again,” said the widow in her ecstasy of misery.

And Nina was able to talk to her mother only of Carlo. Of Hubert von Vincke she spoke not then a word. But she repeated to herself over and over again the last promise she had given him. She had sent him away from her, and now she knew nothing of his whereabouts. That he would be fighting she presumed. She had heard that most of the soldiers from Venice had gone to the fortresses. He, too, might be wounded⁠—might be dead. If alive at the end of the war, he would hardly return to her after what had passed between them. But if he did not come back no lover should ever take a kiss from her lips.

Then there was the long truce, and a letter from Carlo reached Venice. His wound had been slight, but he had been very hungry. He wrote in great anger, abusing, not the Austrians, but the Italians. There had been treachery, and the Italian general-in-chief had been the head of the traitors. The king was a traitor! The emperor was a traitor! All concerned were traitors, but yet Venetia was to be surrendered to Italy.

I think that the two ladies in the Campo San Luca never really believed that this would be so until they received that angry letter from Carlo.

“When I may get home, I cannot tell,” he said. “I hardly care to return, and I shall remain with the General as long as he may wish to have anyone remaining with him. But you may be sure that I shall never go soldiering again. Venetia, may, perhaps, prosper, and become a part of Italy; but there will be no glory for us. Italy has been allowed to do nothing for herself.” The mother and sister endeavoured to feel some sympathy for the young soldier who spoke so sadly of his own career, but they could hardly be unhappy because his fighting was over and the cause was won.

The cause was won. Gradually there came to be no doubt about that.

It was now September, and as yet it had not come to pass that shop windows were filled with wonderful portraits of Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, cheek by jowl⁠—they being the two men who at that moment were perhaps, in all Italy, the most antagonistic to each other; nor were there as yet fifty different new journals cried day and night under the arcades of the Grand Piazza, all advocating the cause of Italy, one and indivisible, as there came to be a month afterwards; but still it was known that Austria was to cede Venetia, and that Venice would henceforth be a city of Italy. This was known; and it was also known in the Campo San Luca that Carlo Pepé, though very hungry up among the mountains, was still safe.

Then Nina thought that the time had come in which it would become her to speak of her lover. “Mother,” she said, “I must know something of Hubert.”

“But how, Nina? how will you learn? Will you not wait till Carlo comes back?”

“No,” she said. “I cannot wait longer. I have kept my promise. Venice is no longer Austrian, and I will seek him. I have kept my word to Carlo, and now I will keep my word to Hubert.”

But how to seek him? The widow, urged by her daughter, went out and asked at barrack doors; but new regiments had come and gone, and everything was in confusion. It was supposed that any officer of artillery who had been in Venice and had left it during the war must be in one of the four fortresses.

“Mother,” she said, “I shall go to Verona.”

And to Verona she went, all alone, in search of her lover. At that time the Austrians still maintained a sort of rule in the province; and there were still current orders against private travelling, orders that passports should be investigated, orders that the communication with the four fortresses should be specially guarded; but there was an intense desire on the part of the Austrians themselves that the orders should be regarded as little as possible. They had to go, and the more quietly they went the better. Why should they care now who passed hither and thither? It must be confessed on their behalf that in their surrender of Venetia they gave as little trouble as it was possible in them to cause.

The chief obstruction to Nina’s journey she experienced in the Campo San Luca itself. But in spite of her mother, in spite of the not yet defunct Austrian mandates, she did make her way to Verona. “As I was true in giving him up,” she said to herself, “so will I be true in clinging to him.”

Even in Verona her task was not easy, but she did at last find all that she sought. Captain von Vincke had been in command of a battery at Custozza, and was now lying wounded in an Austrian hospital. Nina contrived to see an old gray-haired surgeon before she saw Hubert himself. Captain von Vincke had been terribly mauled; so the surgeon told her; his left arm had been amputated, and⁠—and⁠—and⁠—

It seemed as though wounds had been showered on him. The surgeon did not think that his patient would die; but he did think that he must be left in Verona when the Austrians were marched out of the fortress. “Can he not be taken to Venice?” said Nina Pepé.

At last she found herself by her lover’s bedside; but with her there were two hospital attendants, both of them worn-out Austrian soldiers⁠—and there was also there the gray-haired surgeon. How was she to tell her love, all that she had in her heart, before such witnesses? The surgeon was the first to speak. “Here is your friend, captain,” he said; but as he spoke in German Nina did not understand him.

“Is it really you, Nina?” said her lover. “I could hardly believe that you should be in Verona.”

“Of course it is I. Who could have so much business to be in Verona as I have? Of course I am here.”

“But⁠—but⁠—what has brought you here, Nina?”

“If you do not know I cannot tell you.”

“And Carlo?”

“Carlo is still with the general; but he is well.”

“And the Signora?”

“She also is well; well, but not easy in mind while I am here.”

“And when do you return?”

“Nay; I cannot tell you that. It may be today. It may be tomorrow. It depends not on myself at all.”

He spoke not a word of love to her then, nor she to him, unless there was love in such greeting as has been here repeated. Indeed, it was not till after that first interview that he fully understood that she had made her journey to Verona, solely in quest of him. The words between them for the first day or two were very tame, as though neither had full confidence in the other; and she had taken her place as nurse by his side, as a sister might have done by a brother, and was established in her work⁠—nay, had nearly completed her work, before there came to be any full understanding between them. More than once she had told herself that she would go back to Venice and let there be an end of it. “The great work of the war,” she said to herself, “has so filled his mind, that the idleness of his days in Venice and all that he did then, are forgotten. If so, my presence here is surely a sore burden to him, and I will go.” But she could not now leave him without a word of farewell. “Hubert,” she said, for she had called him Hubert when she first came to his bedside, as though she had been his sister, “I think I must return now to Venice. My mother will be lonely without me.”

At that moment it appeared almost miraculous to her that she should be sitting there by his bedside, that she should have loved him, that she should have had the courage to leave her home and seek him after the war, that she should have found him, and that she should now be about to leave him, almost without a word between them.

“She must be very lonely,” said the wounded man.

“And you, I think, are stronger than you were?”

“For me, I am strong enough. I have lost my arm, and I shall carry this gaping scar athwart my face to the grave, as my cross of honour won in the Italian war; but otherwise I shall soon be well.”

“It is a fair cross of honour.”

“Yes; they cannot rob us of our wounds when our service is over. And so you will go, Signorina?”

“Yes; I will go. Why should I remain here? I will go, and Carlo will return, and I will tend upon him. Carlo also was wounded.”

“But you have told me that he is well again.”

“Nevertheless, he will value the comfort of a woman’s care after his sufferings. May I say farewell to you now, my friend?” And she put her hand down upon the bed so that he might reach it. She had been with him for days, and there had been no word of love. It had seemed as though he had understood nothing of what she had done in coming to him; that he had failed altogether in feeling that she had come as a wife goes to a husband. She had made a mistake in this journey, and must now rectify her error with as much of dignity as might be left to her.

He took her hand in his, and held it for a moment before he answered her. “Nina,” he said, “why did you come hither?”

“Why did I come?”

“Why are you here in Verona, while your mother is alone in Venice?”

“I had business here; a matter of some moment. It is finished now, and I shall return.”

“Was it other business than to sit at my bedside?”

She paused a moment before she answered him.

“Yes,” she said; “it was other business than that.”

“And you have succeeded?”

“No; I have failed.”

He still held her hand; and she, though she was thus fencing with him, answering him with equivoques, felt that at last there was coming from him some word which would at least leave her no longer in doubt.

“And I too, have I failed?” he said. “When I left Venice I told myself heartily that I had failed.”

“You told yourself, then,” said she, “that Venetia never would be ceded. You know that I would not triumph over you, now that your cause has been lost. We Italians have not much cause for triumphing.”

“You will admit always that the fortresses have not been taken from us,” said the sore-hearted soldier.

“Certainly we shall admit that.”

“And my own fortress⁠—the stronghold that I thought I had made altogether mine⁠—is that, too, lost forever to the poor German?”

“You speak in riddles, Captain von Vincke,” she said.

She had now taken back her hand; but she was sitting quietly by his bedside, and made no sign of leaving him.

“Nina,” he said, “Nina⁠—my own Nina. In losing a single share of Venice⁠—one soldier’s share of the province⁠—shall I have gained all the world for myself? Nina, tell me truly, what brought you to Verona?”

She knelt slowly down by his bedside, and again taking his one hand in hers, pressed it first to her lips and then to her bosom. “It was an unmaidenly purpose,” she said. “I came to find the man I loved.”

“But you said you had failed?”

“And I now say that I have succeeded. Do you not know that success in great matters always trembles in the balance before it turns the beam, thinking, fearing, all but knowing that failure has weighed down the scale?”

“But now⁠—?”

“Now I am sure that⁠—Venice has been won.”

It was three months after this, and half of December had passed away, and all Venetia had in truth been ceded, and Victor Emmanuel had made his entry in to Venice and exit out of it, with as little of real triumph as ever attended a king’s progress through a new province, and the Austrian army had moved itself off very quietly, and the city had become as thoroughly Italian as Florence itself, and was in a way to be equally discontented, when a party of four, two ladies and two gentlemen, sat down to breakfast in the Hotel Bauer.

The ladies were the Signora Pepé and her daughter, and the men were Carlo Pepé and his brother-in-law, Hubert von Vincke. It was but a poor fête, this family breakfast at an obscure inn, but it was intended as a gala feast to mark the last day of Nina’s Italian life.

Tomorrow, very early in the morning, she was to leave Venice for Trieste⁠—so early that it would be necessary that she should be on board this very night.

“My child,” said the Signora, “do not say so; you will never cease to be Italian. Surely, Hubert, she may still call herself Venetian?”

“Mother,” she said, “I love a losing cause. I will be Austrian now. I told him that he could not have both. If he kept his Venice, he could not have me; but as he has lost his province, he shall have his wife entirely.”

“I told him that it was fated that he should lose Venetia,” said Carlo, “but he would never believe me.”

“Because I knew how true were our soldiers,” said Hubert, “and could not understand how false were our statesmen.”

“See how he regrets it,” said Nina; “what he has lost, and what he has won, will, together, break his heart for him.”

“Nina,” he said, “I learned this morning in the city, that I shall be the last Austrian soldier to leave Venice, and I hold that of all who have entered it, and all who have left it, I am the most successful and the most triumphant.”