‘Beware of first impulses,’ says the cynic, ‘for they are generally good ones.’
Two days later Maria received a letter from Castiglione saying that his return was now a matter of certainty, but that there were formalities to be fulfilled which would take some little time. Most fortunately there was a step in the regiment. The crabbed old major of the Piedmont Lancers was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel of another regiment, the senior captain was gazetted major, and Castiglione himself would come back as the junior captain, probably during the next month.
Maria’s heart beat fast, and she smiled as she thought of Giuliana’s expressed determination to ‘save her in spite of herself.’ It was morning, and she went out alone for a walk. It was good to live to-day, and to move swiftly through the bright spring air was to be twice alive. She went by the cross streets to the Via del Veneto and through the Porta Pinciana to the Villa Borghese. She skirted the racecourse below the Dairy, and stood still a moment to watch the riders go by. Not far from her she saw Angelica Campodonico and her young brother Mario riding on each side of their teacher. The slim young girl sat straight and square and was enjoying herself, but the boy grabbed the pommel of his saddle whenever the riding-master lookedaway, and seemed to stick on by his heels. He was the boy whom Leone had ‘hammered,’ as he expressed it, and Maria smiled as she thought of her own little son’s sturdy back and small, hard fists.
Presently a young lieutenant of the Piedmont Lancers cantered up on a beautiful English mare. He rode very well, as many Italian officers now do, and he was evidently aware of it. The familiar uniform fascinated Maria, and her eyes lingered on it as the young man rode past her. He saw that she was a woman of the world, and that she was still young and pretty; and in spite of the deep black she wore, it at once occurred to him that this was the best place in the wide ring for jumping his mare in and out of the meadow over the rather stiff fence. Still Maria watched him, and he might not have been so pleased with himself if he could have guessed that she was thinking of another officer who was an even better rider than he, but who would certainly not have cared to show off before a pretty lady whom he did not know. And Maria knew that before long Baldassare del Castiglione would sometimes come and exercise his horses in the same place, and that she would very probably happen to be walking that way and would see him. And he would stop and salute her, and draw up by the outer fence and shake hands with her and exchange a few words; and his eyes would be as blue as sapphires, and she would be the proudest woman in the world, almost without knowing it. So she unconsciously smiled at the young lieutenant and turned away.
She walked on, and before long she was sitting under the ilex-trees above the Piazza di Siena. There was a new bench there; or perhaps it had only been painted. There was water in the fountain, leaping up and sparkling under the deep green trees. The basin had been dry on that winter’s afternoon long ago, and the evergreen oaks had looked much darker. That had been like death; this was life itself. The past did not exist; it had never existed at all, because it had all been a horrible mistake, an untruth, and a loathsome sin; a sin confessed now, an untruth forgiven, a mistake explained and condoned. In the future all was love; and yet all was right and truthful and straightforward, as justice itself. Giuliana’s warning was but the well-meant preaching of a good friend who could never understand; the grim old monk’s words were far away. Where was the deadly risk, or the mortal sin? God was strong and good, and would make all good deeds seem easy; and she and the man she loved would rise far beyond this dying body, by that good, to be united for ever in light and peace. Baldassare would believe, as she did, and in the end they would find heaven together.
She leaned back, and her eyes looked upwards as she sat there alone, and in all her being there was not the least thought that was not innocent and pure and beautiful. She communed with herself as with an angel, and with the image of the man she loved as with a saint. She felt as she felt sometimes when she knelt at early morning before the altar rail of the little oratorynear her house, and the young priest with his martyr’s face came softly down and ministered to her.
She almost trembled when she rose at last to leave the place where she had been lifted up from the world, the place where she had once spoken such bitter and cruel words to him who was now once more the heart of her heart and the soul of her soul. She walked homewards in a deep, sweet dream of refreshment.
The footman opened the door, and as she entered the small bright hall she saw a big letter with a black border and Spanish stamps lying upon some others, and she knew Montalto’s large, stiff handwriting. Her heart sank, though she had expected the letter for two days.
She took it with no outward show of emotion, for she felt that the servant was watching and that he guessed whence it came. In a steady voice she asked if Leone had come in from his walk with old Agostino, and the footman told her they were still out. Her Excellency would remember that the Signorino was gone to the gardens of the Palazzo Trasmondo to play with his little friends.
Maria went to her sitting-room without calling her maid, and sat down to read her husband’s letter with closed doors. She felt strong and brave, and resolved to think of the absent man with all the respect Giuliana Parenzo could have exacted from her.
It was a very long letter, filling several big black-edged sheets; but the handwriting was large and stiff, and easy to read, and at first her eyes followed the words quickly and unhesitatingly.
Montalto was deeply affected by his mother’s death; that was evident in the short, strained sentences that were painfully formal save for a heart-broken word here and there. Conscientiously he told his wife the short story of the illness during the last days, the last hours, at the last minute, at the end. She read with a sort of reverence, but she wondered why he gave her every detail. Had he come to her for sympathy, after all the stern and unforgiving years that had passed?
Then she took the next sheet, and the truth broke upon her. So far, he had given her an account of what had happened, of how his mother had suddenly begun to sink and had died peacefully after receiving all the Sacraments. But he had not told what her last words had been.
‘My dear son,’ she had said just before she had closed her eyes for ever, ‘I have been very unforgiving towards your wife. Perhaps I have helped to make you so. Promise me that you will go to her and ask her pardon for me. And be reconciled with her, if God wills that it be possible.’
She had said all these words with great distinctness, for she had been calm and fully conscious, and able to speak until the last moment of her life; and then her heart had stopped beating and death had come quietly.
Maria held the sheet before her with both her hands, trying to go on, and determined to read bravely to the end, but it was a long time before she got to the next words, and she felt as if she had been unexpectedly condemned to die.
The man she had injured meant to fulfil his mother’s last request to the letter. For he asked his erring wife’s pardon for the dead woman who had not been able to forgive her till the end. He asked her to write out the message to the dead and send it to him.
That would be the easiest part. How could Maria find it hard to say that she forgave what she had deserved? But the rest was different.
He went on to say that it was not only for his mother’s sake that he wished to be reconciled: it was for his own. In spite of all, he loved Maria dearly. He had known how she had lived, how her whole life since he had finally left her had been an atonement for one fault; and that one fault he now freely forgave her. He would never speak of it again, he said, for he was sure that she had suffered more from it than he himself.
She guessed, as she read, what it must have cost him to say that much. He earnestly desired a reconciliation. He wished to come back to Rome to live in his own house, with his wife, before all the world. With a pathetic inability to put his feelings into words, he said that he would try to make her happy ‘by all means acceptable to her.’ Yet he did not wish to force this reconciliation upon her, for he was well aware that in leaving her he had conferred on her a measure of independence and had given her good reason to suppose that he would never come back. Unless she willingly agreed to what he now offered, he would never come back to Rome; for it had been one thing to stay with his invalid mother, leaving his wife to live where shepleased, but it would be quite another in the eyes of the world if he returned to his own house and his wife continued to stay in a hired house. Hitherto there had been no scandal which his authority could not now put down, no open break which might not still be repaired with dignity. Then, on a sudden, the writing became less stiff and clear, and the lonely man’s full heart overflowed. He loved her so dearly—he did not repeat ‘in spite of all’—why might he not hope to make her happy at last? In the past he had not known how to show her how tenderly, how devotedly, he had loved her; he had been but a dull companion for her; she had been made to marry him almost against her will. Without again speaking of her fault he was finding excuses for what he had forgiven. And the burden came back again and again, he loved her with all his heart. It was no mere empty show of reconciliation that he offered her, for the sake of his name, for what the world might say or think. He wished, he asked to be allowed, to take her back altogether, wholly, as if there had been no division.
Maria held the sheet tight between her upraised hands, but a painful tremor ran through her to the tips of her fingers, and the paper shook before her eyes.
She had reached the end now. He had poured out his soul as he had never done before then to any living being; but quite at the last line his natural formality returned, he ‘begged the favour of a speedy reply at her convenience,’ and he signed his name in full—‘Diego Silani di Montalto.’
After a long time Maria rose from her seat, and her face was almost grey. She went to her writing-table and opened a small desk with a simple little gold key she wore on her watch chain. The receptacle was already half full of Castiglione’s letters, and she laid her husband’s on top of the heap, shut down the lid, and turned the key again.
Just then Leone burst into the room, lusty and radiant. He stopped short when he saw his mother’s face.
‘You have been to see the bad priest again!’ he cried angrily.
‘No, dear, I shall not go to see him again. I have had a great—a great surprise. Papa is coming back soon.’
Maria did not hesitate, though she felt as if her heart must break with every throbbing beat. Whether Giuliana Parenzo was just or not in telling her that she had not a very delicate conscience, she had at least a strong will and a lasting determination to do what she thought right, which more than made up for the absence of that sensitiveness on which her happier friend laid so much stress.
Until Leone asked her what was the matter, her thoughts whirled in a chaos of pain and darkness, but there was little or no hesitation in her answer to his question. She wished with all her heart that she had put him off until there had been nothing in her face to betray her, and that he might never have connected her too evident distress with the news she had just received. But she had spoken because her mind was made up in that moment, and her determination found words at once; and the child at once hated the man who was coming back.
She was going to accept the proffered reconciliation outright, if it killed her, and she really believed that it might. Her dream of light and peace ended then; she had atoned, perhaps, but that was not enough. Atonement means reconciling, and such a reconcilingmeant to Maria an expiation more dreadful than she had dreamed of. She remembered only too vividly the material repulsion for Montalto that had grown upon her quickly in the first months of their life together, and she knew that it would be stronger now than it had been then. Yet she must live through it and hide it. To her it seemed inconceivable that he should wish to come back to her at all. The nobler sort of women can never understand that men they dislike can love them, and to be given in marriage to one of them is a torment and feels like an outrage.
Maria meant to bear it all as well as she could. A woman able to dream of such a lofty and spiritual love as had appeared possible to her in a short and unforgettable vision was not one to hesitate at a sacrifice, much less if justice demanded it. In old Jerusalem would she not have been stoned to death? Yet that would have been the quick end of all suffering, whereas Montalto’s return was only the beginning of something much worse.
It is often easier to forgive than to accept forgiveness. After Maria had read her husband’s letter there were times when she wished that all his love for her could be turned into hatred. He might come back then, to show the world a comedy of a reconciliation, though he might frankly detest the sight of her; he might come back and behave to her as he had after she had admitted her guilt, and never speak to her except from necessity, while treating her always with that same formal courtesy he had learned from his Spanish mother. It wouldhave been easy to bear that; it would have been far easier then to live without seeing the man of her heart. But to be taken back to be loved, to be cherished and caressed, to be the instrument of happiness in the life of the husband she had dishonoured, and whose mere presence and slightest touch made her writhe—that was going to be hard indeed. Yet she meant to bear it. In her simple faith she prayed only that it might be counted to her hereafter as a part of her purgatory.
Castiglione received her letter telling him all the truth and bidding him stay where he was, if he could, or at least not try to see her if he were obliged to come to Rome. His first impulse was to ask for leave again, if only for three days, and to go to her at once to implore her to refuse Montalto’s offer, to risk anything rather than let her accept an existence which he knew would be one of misery. He felt and believed that it would kill her.
In some ways the thought of it was even more revolting to him than to her. He had been faithful for years to the memory of the love which he believed he had destroyed in her; but now that all was changed, now that he knew how she loved him, she was his, his very own, far more than she had ever been. He felt, too, that she had really raised him above his old self; that he could really live near her, see her, talk with her, and touch her hand, and love her as he had promised, with no shame, or thought of shame, to her or to himself. Long years of clean living had already made him different from his comrades, and his unchanging willmade a law for himself which he had never transgressed. Does the world think that beyond the pale of holy orders, of whatsoever persuasion, there are no men who live as he did, faithful and true to one dear memory to the very end? Sometimes what we call the world seems to know more of its patent evil than of its own hidden good. And where the good is strong and rules a man’s secret life, it may lead him far.
But Castiglione was only human, and his jealousy of Montalto was cruel when it woke again. It had been great in old days, but it was ten times more dangerous now, for it had been long asleep in security and it awoke in anger. Maria had not been his own, but throughout that time no other man had called her his, and now Montalto claimed her, under his right to forgive an injury if he chose, and she was going to submit and surrender herself.
He wrote her a passionate letter, imploring her not to ruin both their lives by giving herself back to her husband, and beseeching her to see him at once that he might tell her all he could not write. If he could not get leave again so soon he would come without, if it cost him a long arrest. Maria was to telegraph her answer, and if no message came within two days he would start, whatever happened. As for declining the exchange he had asked, he could not do that; he would be ordered to join his old regiment in Rome during the next ten days at the latest, and it was impossible that he should not meet her sometimes.
For a moment Maria hesitated, for she felt that hewas desperate, and she herself was not far from despair. But something human on which she had never counted helped her a little. If Castiglione came suddenly to Rome, it would be known, and it would surely be said that he had come to see her; if no one else knew it, Teresa Crescenzi surely would, and would tell every one. She thought of Montalto’s letter, telling her that he had known of her quiet life, and that the dignity she had shown had appealed to him. He should not come back now to be told that he had been deceived, and that Castiglione made long journeys expressly to see her. Her pride would not suffer that.
She went out on foot and entered the small telegraph office outside the railway station, for she could not have sent her message by a servant’s hand. She took the ink-crusted pen and a flimsy blank form, and thought of what she should say. The shabby young clerk at the little sliding window would have to read the telegram, and perhaps he knew her by sight. She thought a moment longer, and then wrote a few words:—
‘Impossible. If you really wish to help a person in great distress, be patient. Await letter.’
This looked very cold when it was written, but she thought it would do, and she felt sure that Castiglione would obey her request. At least, he could not leave Milan until he received the letter she was about to write to him.
It reached him on the following evening, and in the tender, beseeching words he read what was worse than a sentence of exile. But he submitted then, for it wasas if she spoke to him, and he could hear every tone of her voice in the silence of his room. Since she had taken him back to her heart she dominated him by the nobility of her love, and by her touching trust in his. He read her letter twice, and then burnt it in the empty fireplace, carefully setting a second match to the last white shreds that showed at the edges of the thin black ashes.
‘You are a saint on earth,’ he said to her in his thoughts. ‘You are good enough to make a man believe in God.’
Perhaps he rose one step higher in that moment, for he was in earnest. But it had cost him much. For three days he had kept his valise packed and ready to start at any moment, and he saw it lying in a corner as he turned from the fireplace. Once again the strong temptation came upon him to take it and go downstairs. That would be the irrevocable step, for he knew well enough that if he went so far as that he would not turn back.
His big jaw thrust itself forward rather savagely as he crossed the room, picked up the valise, and set it on a chair to unpack it. When he had put his things away he threw it into a corner, lit a cigar, and sat down by the open window to watch the people in the broad street. He hoped that he might not think for a little while.
There was a knock at the door and his orderly came in with a telegram. He almost started at the sight of the brownish yellowish little square of folded paper in the man’s hand.
‘Join us at once to ride in military races on Thursday. War Office telegraphs order exchange to your colonel to-night. Make haste, in order to rest your horses. Welcome back to the regiment.—Casalmaggiore,Colonel.’
Castiglione’s hand dropped upon his knee, holding the open telegram. The orderly stood motionless, stolidly waiting to be sent away. He would have waited in the same position till he dropped, but it seemed a long time before the officer turned his head.
‘Pack everything to-night,’ he said. ‘Telephone in my name to the station and order a box for the horses as far as Pisa, and be ready to start with them by the first train to-morrow. I am to join the Piedmont Lancers in Rome at once. You will spend the night in Pisa to rest the horses, and come on with them the next day. I will attend to your leave and pass. Take what you need for yourself for four days. You will have a day and a night in Rome.’
The orderly was a good man and could be trusted. Castiglione got into his best tunic, buckled on his sabre, took his cap and gloves, thrust the telegram into his breast pocket, and went to take leave of his colonel and his brother officers, wherever he might find them. He was in no hurry, but it was a relief to get out of doors, and he walked slowly along the broad pavement, returning the salutes of the many soldiers who passed him.
It would be quite out of the question to disobey such a summons as he had just received. Nothing short of afeigned illness could have excused a short delay, and besides, the wording of the telegram showed that he was wanted for the honour of his old regiment in the coming races. He had always been the best rider of them all, and if the Piedmont Lancers did not make a good appearance, owing to his voluntary absence, he would not be easily forgiven; indeed, he would hardly have forgiven himself.
But he would not write or telegraph to Maria that he was coming, and he was sure that she would not write to him again unless he answered her letter. Once in Rome, he meant to send her the telegram he had in his pocket, to prove that he had been ordered back, and that his coming had not been voluntary. She would see him then, for it would be different; she could not refuse, as she might if she thought he had come in spite of her letter. His exchange had been at most but a matter of days; it had become a matter of hours. So much the better, since fate condescended to help him a little.
The vision of hope he had enjoyed so short a time rose before him again. Montalto might not return after all, or he might break his neck on the way, but Castiglione doubted the probability of such a termination to his own troubles.
The workmen were very busy at the Palazzo Montalto, and the rich widow from Chicago who occupied one of the large apartments was a little nervous, for there is a clause in all leases of portions of Roman palaces to the effect that the owner may turn any tenant out at short notice if he needs the rooms for his own use; and as the good lady had not the slightest idea of the real size of the place, she had long supposed that she was living in the state apartment.
But she need not have disturbed herself and her friends about that. Montalto would as soon have let the place where his mother and his wife had lived with him as he would have put up his titles at auction. He had sent orders that the vast suite was to be got ready in a month’s time, and as no one had expected that he would ever come back to live there, the accumulation of dust was found to be portentous. Moreover, all the carpets had disappeared, no one knew how, the upholstered furniture was all moth-eaten, the window fastenings would not work, the mirrors were hopelessly tarnished, and the ceiling of the ballroom had been badly damaged by the bursting of a water-pipe in the apartment over it.
To make matters worse, the old steward of the Romanestates, whose business it was to keep the palace in order, was in his dotage, and was expected to have a stroke of apoplexy at any moment.
Then one morning a business-like young man arrived from Montalto, the great family seat on the Austrian frontier, with instructions to put matters right, and to lose no time about it. The old Roman steward flew into a frightful rage because the Montalto steward was his superior, and promptly had his stroke of apoplexy, which helped things a little without killing him. The business-like young man spent one whole day in watching the people at work and never said a word, but when the evening came, he had them all paid and he turned them out, to their amazement and mortification. Then he took a cab and drove to the Via San Martino and asked to see the Countess, just before she dressed for dinner. He was a very modest young man, and he waited in the hall for her answer; and when Agostino came back to inquire more particularly who he was and what he wanted, he said that he was the chief steward of Montalto and had a message from His Excellency the Count to Her Excellency the Countess, if she would be so kind as to receive him. In the eyes of the butler he at once became an important personage, and many apologies were offered for having let him wait in the outer hall.
Maria received him in her sitting-room. In her deep mourning she looked unnaturally pale, and her dark eyes seemed very big. She pointed to a chair and sat down herself.
The young man lost no time and told her at once that the Count had sent him to see that the palace was made habitable at once, and desired that the Countess should be consulted on every point about which she was willing to give her opinion. She was to select her own rooms and direct that they should be hung and furnished to her taste, and the Count would esteem it a great favour if she would take the trouble to order everything else to be changed as she thought best, excepting only the late Dowager Countess’s rooms, which he desired should not be touched. Her Excellency doubtless knew which those rooms were, and would she be so very kind as to say when it would be convenient for her to meet her obedient servant at the palace and to give him her orders. He was instructed to spare no trouble or expense in order to please her if possible.
Maria recognised her husband’s formal expressions in what the quiet young man said so fluently. Doubtless Montalto had written every word of his orders with his own hand, and the steward had read them over till he knew them by heart. She thanked him and said she would meet him at the palace the next morning at ten o’clock.
She did not take Leone with her, for she was sure that the great neglected house would be gloomy beyond description, and she did not wish him to have a sad impression of the house in which he had been born, and in which he was now to live. Besides, she could not quite trust herself, and the small boy’s eyes were marvellously quick to detect any change in her face.
The places where things very good or very bad to remember have happened to us are ever afterwards inhabited by invisible ghosts, kind or malignant, who show themselves to us when we revisit the spots they haunt, though they never disturb any one else. Maria knew that; an evil genius had long dwelt under those ilex-trees in the Villa Borghese, and she had exorcised it, but there were spectres in her former home that would not be laid. She bit her lip as she entered the once familiar hall, and saw room after room opening out beyond it in a long perspective that ended in a closed door adorned with mirrors in its panels. That door had always been kept shut when all the others were open; it led into the room that had been her boudoir. Even at that great distance Maria could see how dim the old glasses in the panels had become.
She walked slowly through the apartment, looking to the right and left. Something had been done, but not much. There was a ladder against a wall in one room and the hangings were half torn down; a dozen rolls of new carpet lay in confusion in another, redolent of that extraordinary odour which only perfectly new carpets have; in one of the halls beyond, a quantity of more or less decrepit sofas and chairs had been collected and disembowelled, and the moth-eaten wool and musty horse-hair lay about them in mouldering heaps; the portraits were still in their places on the walls, and Montalto seemed to look sadly down from half a dozen frames at his young wife as she went by in black; there was Montalto in armour and Montalto in black velvetand ruffles, Montalto in a Spanish cloak and Montalto in a flowered silk French coat, with a powdered wig; but it was always Montalto; the likeness between them all from generation to generation had been amazing, and the old pictures made Maria nervous.
The young steward, whose name was Orlando Schmidt, walked by her left, hat in hand, glancing respectfully at her now and then to see whether she was going to say anything. But her lips were pressed together, and he fancied that the rings round her eyes grew darker as she neared the end of the long suite, and still went on towards the closed door with its tarnished mirrors. She looked very pale and tired.
‘Will your Excellency sit down and rest a while?’ he asked.
‘Not yet, thank you. Presently.’
And she went slowly on, slowly and steadily, towards the closed door, till she laid her hand on the chiselled handle and turned it and pushed against the panel. But it would not move.
‘Perhaps it is locked,’ suggested Schmidt. ‘I had not taken it for a real door. I thought the apartment ended here.’
‘No,’ Maria answered in a low tone. ‘This used to be my boudoir. Try and open it. I want to go in.’
The young man tried the handle, put his eye to the keyhole, and tried again. Then he shook his head.
‘It is not a very strong door,’ said Maria. ‘I think we could break it open. I want to go in.’
‘I can certainly break it,’ answered Schmidt.
He threw his shoulder against the crack and pushed with all his might, but though the door creaked a little it would not move.
‘Is there no other way?’ asked Maria impatiently. ‘I must get in!’
‘Oh, yes,’ Schmidt answered, ‘there is another way. I can smash the lock.’
‘I wish you would!’
He stood back and made a little gesture with his hand for her to move aside, and before she knew what he was going to do, the heel of his heavy walking boot struck the lock with the force of a small battering-ram. The door flew back on its hinges into total darkness, and there was a crash of broken glass as one of the mirrors fell from its panel to the marble Venetian pavement.
Maria uttered a little cry of hurt surprise, for what Schmidt had done seemed brutal to her; but she passed him quickly and went on into the dark, and the bits of broken mirror cracked under her tread. She was sure that the room had never been opened since she had left it, and she went straight to one of the windows without running against the furniture; the familiar fastenings had rusted and she could not move them quickly. Schmidt lit a wax-light and followed, but before he reached her side she had succeeded in opening the inner shutters, and the bright light from the slits in the blinds shone into the room through the dim panes.
Maria turned from the window and looked about her.The furniture stood as she had last seen it. A moment later Schmidt threw open the glass and the blinds and the violent sunshine flooded the dusty marble floor, the faded pink silk on the walls, the tarnished inlaid tables, the chairs, and a little sofa near the fireplace.
‘It is too much!’ cried Maria nervously. ‘There is too much light!’
Schmidt drew the blinds near together without quite shutting them. When he looked behind him again Maria was sitting on the little sofa near the fireplace, her face turned from him, and her fingers were nervously pulling at a rent in the pink silk which tore under her touch. But the young steward did not notice the action, and was already making a mental list of the repairs that would be necessary to make the boudoir habitable again. Maria looked ill, and he thought she was tired.
But the evil spirit that haunted the place was there, beside her on the little sofa, and she could hear its demon whisper in her ear. That was a part of her expiation, and she knew it. Then she spoke to Schmidt steadily, but without turning her head.
‘I wish everything taken out of this room,’ she said, and she listened to her own voice to be sure that it did not shake. ‘Everything must be new, the hangings, the ceiling, the furniture, the fireplace. You see how dilapidated it all is, don’t you?’
She asked the question as if to justify her orders.
‘There is nothing fit to keep,’ answered the steward,‘except that inlaid writing-table and the bookcase.’
‘I prefer to have them changed, too,’ said Maria quickly. ‘Everything! Let the new things be dark. There is too much light here. Not red, either. I hate red. Let everything be dark grey.’
‘A greenish grey, perhaps?’ suggested Schmidt diffidently.
‘Yes, yes! But dark, very dark, with black furniture. Paint this marble fireplace black——’
‘Black?’ exclaimed the young man, with a polite interrogation. ‘Perhaps it would be better to have a new one of black marble then?’
‘Yes—anything, provided it is changed, and everything is new and quite different! That is all I want. And my dressing-room was there.’ She pointed to a second door. ‘My bedroom was beyond it. I’m sure that door is locked, too. Could you go round by the other way and see if the key is on that side?’
She turned her white face to Schmidt. He guessed that she had been moved by some strong association and wished to be alone to recover herself, and in a moment he was gone; for he was a tactful person.
When she was alone she did not bury her face in the corner of the tattered little sofa, nor did any tears rise in her tired eyes; she only sat there quite still, and her head fell forward as if she had fainted; but her fingers slowly tore little shreds from the faded pink silk of the sofa.
Schmidt stayed away a long time. She heard his footsteps at last on a tiled floor in the distance, and raised her hand quickly to cover her eyes, while her lipsmoved for a moment. When the steward unlocked the second door and came in, she was standing quietly by the window waiting for him.
The worst was over for that day, and though she was still very pale, she was no longer deadly white, and the haunted look that had come back suddenly to her eyes was gone. She went through the house systematically after that, conscientiously fulfilling her husband’s requests; she gave clear directions about her own rooms and the one she meant to give Leone, and made many suggestions about the rest. She showed Schmidt the little apartment once occupied by her mother-in-law, and advised the steward to have it carefully cleaned and set in order, since nothing was to be changed in it. At present, she said, it looked neglected, and the Count would certainly not like to find it so. Schmidt nodded gravely, as if he quite understood. She was so quiet and calm now, that he thought he had been mistaken in thinking her disturbed by some poignant memory. She had probably felt ill.
When she left the palace at last, she told him to let her know when the refurnishing was so far advanced as to make a visit from her necessary, and she thanked him so kindly for his attention that he blushed a little.
For Orlando Schmidt was a modest and well-educated young man, of a respectable Austrian family by his father’s side, but an Italian as to his nationality. He had been to good schools, he had studied scientific farming at an agricultural institute in Upper Austria, and he had followed a commercial course in Milan; hehad also learned something about practical building, and was naturally possessed of tolerably good taste.
‘I hope you will stay here and take charge of the Roman estate,’ said the Countess. ‘I fancy the lands are in as bad a condition as the apartment upstairs.’
She smiled graciously, and Schmidt blushed again.
‘Your Excellency is very kind,’ he said modestly, as he stood beside her low phaeton with his hat in his hand. ‘I am lodged here in the palace, if you need me.’
She drove away, and before the carriage turned the corner of the palace on the way to the more central part of the city, she had quite forgotten Orlando Schmidt, though he had made such a favourable impression upon her.
But the young man stood before the great arched entrance and watched her till she was out of sight, with an expression she could not have understood; and afterwards he whistled softly as he turned back to ascend the stairs again in order to make careful notes of all she had said about each room. He began in the boudoir, and he sat down on the little sofa near the fireplace, with his large note-book on his knee, and wrote busily while her words were still fresh in his memory. Once or twice he looked towards the door, which he could see as he sat, and the broken pieces of mirror caught his eye. He remembered that his Italian mother had once told him when he was a boy that it was very unlucky to break a mirror. But he smiled at the recollection, for he was not a superstitious young man, and had received a half-scientific education.
It was nearly twelve o’clock when Maria left the palace. She had not realised that it was so late, and she had told the coachman to take her to a dressmaker’s far down the Corso, near the Piazza del Popolo. She was to have tried on a couple of frocks which were necessary to complete her mourning; but the gun-fire from the Janiculus and the clashing of all the church bells told her that it was noon already, and too late, for Leone always had his dinner with her at half-past twelve. She touched Telemaco’s broad black back with the edge of her parasol to call his attention, and she told him to go home instead of stopping at the dressmaker’s.
He asked whether he should pass through the Villa by Porta Pinciana, that being as near a way as any other, and easy for the horses, and she nodded her assent. She had not been in the Villa since the day when she had walked there alone, and had gone home and found Montalto’s letter.
It was a warm spring morning, but the horses trotted briskly up the main avenue that leads in from the gate, glad to be in the pleasant shade. Maria lowered her parasol to the bottom of the phaeton without shutting it, for she knew she should need it again in a few minutes. There was no other carriage in the avenue just then, but several riders were walking their horses slowly towards the gate after exercising them on the course. The first she met were two civilians, and one of them was Oderisio Boccapaduli. He recognised her from a distance, and before he was near enough to bow heglanced quickly behind him, as if he expected to see some one. She did not know the other man. Oderisio took off his hat, and she smiled and nodded. Then came a captain of artillery on a strong Hungarian horse that was evidently in a bad temper and hard to manage. Maria turned her head to watch them after she had passed, but her carriage was going at a smart pace and she soon looked before her again. Not far ahead were two officers of the Piedmont Lancers, walking their horses and talking together.
One was the same young lieutenant who had jumped his English mare in and out of the ring for her benefit on that morning when she had been on foot. She might have met him there any day. The other was Baldassare del Castiglione, and she had not known that he was in Rome.
She was so startled that she made a movement to raise her open parasol and hide her face; but she instantly understood the absurdity of doing such a thing and dropped it again, and looked steadily towards the advancing horsemen, though for a few seconds she could not see them. They were hidden in a fiery mist that rose between her and them. It dissolved suddenly, and Castiglione was gravely saluting her; his face was calm, but his eyes were blazing blue. The young lieutenant raised his hand to his cap almost at the same instant. With infinite difficulty Maria slowly bent her head in answer, but she did not turn her eyes as the two men passed her, and in another moment she had left them behind.
Then she felt that her heart was beating again, for she was sure that it had quite stopped. But at the same instant her hand unconsciously relaxed, and her open parasol, which was already half over the step of the phaeton, flew out, rolled a little way, and lay in the middle of the road, with the handle upwards.
She sat up quickly and called to Telemaco to stop. But the old man was a little deaf, and she had to call twice before he checked the quickly-trotting pair and brought them to a stand.
‘My parasol!’ she cried, as the coachman looked over his shoulder. ‘Give me the reins and get it,’ she added.
She heard the hoofs of a horse cantering up behind her, and she looked round. Castiglione must have turned in the saddle to look after her, and must have seen the parasol fall. It lay with the handle upward, and parasol handles chanced to be long that year. It was easy for a good rider to bend low and pick the thing up almost without slackening his pace, and in another moment he was beside the carriage giving it back to Maria.
‘Thank you,’ she said faintly. ‘I did not know you were in Rome.’
A quick word rose to his lips, but he checked it. Then he bent down to her from the saddle, on pretence of brushing an imaginary fly from his horse’s shoulder.
‘I thought you would rather not know it from me,’ he said quietly, but so low that the deaf coachman could not hear. ‘Good morning, Contessa,’ he addedmore loudly, as he straightened himself in the saddle and saluted again.
He was gone, trotting back to join his companion; but she would not look after him when she had told Telemaco to drive on. And all the way home a great wave of joy was surging up round her, to her very feet, and she was trying to climb higher lest it should rise and overwhelm her; and she was clinging to something dark, and cold, and hard as a black marble pillar, that was Montalto, and duty, and death, all in one.
That afternoon a note came for her, brought to the door by a trooper and left with the remark that there was no answer.
It contained the telegram Castiglione had received in Milan, and a sheet of note-paper on which a few words were written in pencil.
‘This explains itself,’ he wrote. ‘It is the inevitable. I shall not try to see you.’ She knew that she ought to be proud of his good faith, but it was not easy.
More than a month had passed and it was near the end of May; yet Maria had not again exchanged a word with Castiglione. She had seen him twice in the street, from a distance, but she was not sure that he had seen her the second time. If he saw her, he certainly wished her to think that he did not. She never went to the Villa Borghese, nor drove towards Tor di Quinto nor along the beautiful Monte Parioli avenue, lest she should meet him in one of those places where officers ride at all hours of the day. On his side, he avoided the streets through which she was likely to pass. It was easy enough to do that, and as she was in mourning he was sure not to find her where people met in the houses of mutual acquaintances.
For he had no intention of shutting himself up, being much too sensible not to foresee that if he did so people would say he spent his time with her. He showed himself in many places, on the contrary, frequented Teresa Crescenzi’s drawing-room at tea-time, dined assiduously with his cousins the Boccapaduli, at whose house the old-fashioned Romans congregated, and also with the Campodonico, and he was often at the Parenzos’ pretty house in the Via Ludovisi, which was a favourite gathering-place of the political party then in power,and of that portion of the diplomatic corps which was accredited to the Quirinal and not to the Vatican. The Duca di Casalmaggiore had become a friend of Parenzo’s, and Castiglione took a good deal of pains to be seen as often as possible in society by his colonel, who was of an inquisitive turn of mind. In order to make his existence still more patent in the eyes of his comrades, he lodged with one of them, a man of his own age who was also not very well off, and who could hardly help knowing where Baldassare went, what he did, and whether he received many notes addressed in feminine handwriting or not. The consequence of all this, and of his assiduity in matters of duty, was that Teresa Crescenzi’s latest story got little credit, and his brother officers said that he was ambitious and was going in for the career in earnest. The colonel, who was a widower with a son in the navy and a daughter married in Naples, and whom Teresa had once vainly tried to capture for herself, disliked her and so effectually ridiculed her invention that the rest of Castiglione’s comrades fell into the way of laughing at her, too; and they said that after having failed to marry the colonel she had tried to catch Baldassare, and now meant to revenge herself because he would not have her. His chum, too, told them that he certainly had no secret love affair, and that when he was not on duty or at the officers’ club, or where every one could see him, he was in his lodgings reading German books on military tactics. Clearly he was going in for the career.
He did not act or look like a man in love either; notin the least. He had not been talkative before he left the regiment, but since he had returned he took more pains than formerly to join in the conversation. Another point in his favour was that he never had any vague engagement which hindered him from joining in anything that was unexpectedly proposed. Whatever he had to do was open and definite; when it was not duty, it was a real promise to dine with some one whom he named, and he took care to have it known that he went; or else he had agreed to ride somewhere with an acquaintance, and if any one took the trouble to go to that place, there he was, sure enough, with the man he had named. In what was left of society so late in the season, if he once talked especially to any one woman he gave himself as much pains to amuse and interest another on the morrow. He was such a model of a sensible man and such a good officer that the colonel, who was rich enough to have afforded the luxury of a poor son-in-law, wished he had another daughter that he might marry her to Castiglione; and he said so openly, to the great edification of Roman society.
As for Maria Montalto she did not speak of him again to Giuliana, but the latter knew she never let him come to the house and that she had made up her mind to see him as rarely as possible. Giuliana was too simple and natural to care whether this excellent state of things was due to her own advice or to Montalto’s approaching return. It was enough that Maria was doing right and giving the gossips nothing to talk about.
Parenzo and his wife went to England at this time,with the intention of spending three weeks there. The Marchese, it was understood, was entrusted with some special political business, and as a matter of course he took his wife with him; for the first time in her life Maria was glad to part from her old friend.
There are ordeals which it is easier to face alone than under the eyes of others, even of those we love best; there are tortures which are a little easier to bear when our dearest friends are not watching our faces to see if we shall wince.
The date of Montalto’s return was approaching, and the state apartment in the palace was almost ready, thanks to Orlando Schmidt’s quiet energy and to a rather lavish expenditure of money. He was a truly wonderful young man, Maria thought, for he seemed to know everything that was useful and possessed the power of making people work without so much as complaining till they were quite exhausted. He never raised his voice, he never spoke roughly to a workman; but he seemed to inspire something like terror and abject submission in all whom he employed, and they spoke in whispers when he was near and worked till they could work no longer.
Maria went to the apartment twice again, once to select the hangings and stuffs for her own rooms out of a quantity that had been sent for her approval, and once again when the furnishing was almost finished. She was quiet and collected, for nothing was left to remind her of the old boudoir and the rest. At her second visit she was surprised to find that the small room had threedoors instead of two as formerly, and she asked the steward if the third one was real, or an imitation fastened against the solid wall for the sake of symmetry.
‘It is a real door,’ answered Schmidt. ‘It had been thinly walled up and plastered over long ago, and I found it accidentally, and took the liberty of opening it again. I hope your Excellency will approve.’
‘It looks well,’ Maria said, for it helped to change the aspect of the room; ‘but where does it take one?’
‘To the chapel,’ replied the steward. ‘I found a narrow passage leading directly to a small door on the left side of the altar. You can thus reach the chapel by a private way without going through the apartment. The corridor was quite dark, but I have had electric light put in. The key is here, you see.’
Schmidt moved it and opened the door at the same time with his other hand, and Maria saw a narrow passage, brightly lit up. The walls were white and varnished, and the floor was of plain white tiles.
‘It must have been made in the beginning of the eighteenth century,’ Schmidt said. ‘There was a Countess at that time who was a princess of Saxony and was excessively devout. She died mad.’
‘You know the family history better than I do,’ observed Maria.
‘We have served the Excellent house from father to son more than two hundred years.’
Schmidt said this as if he were telling her the most ordinary fact in the world.
‘Will your Excellency please go to the chapel by the private passage?’ he asked.
Maria let him lead the way and followed him. She was gratified by the use he had made of his discovery, for she thought that it would sometimes be a relief to go to the chapel alone and unnoticed. But she also wished to assure herself that no one else could use the corridor, and that there was a bolt or a lock on the door at the other end. It was not that she distrusted Schmidt; on the contrary, she thought very well of him, and was sure that he had consulted only her convenience in what he had done. But when she thought of what was before her, she felt very defenceless in the great old house, so different from the comfortable little modern apartment in which she had lived with Leone, where there were no hidden staircases, nor secret passages, nor legends of mad countesses in the eighteenth century, nor any ghosts of Maria’s own life.
Apparently Schmidt had told her the exact truth about the passage, which was much longer than she had expected, and turned to the right very soon, and was straight beyond that for twenty yards or more. Maria guessed that it here followed the long wall of the great ball-room, which had no entrances opposite the windows. She reached the door of the chapel, and the electric light showed her a strong new bolt with a brass knob, besides the spring latch.
‘It is quite private, you see,’ said Schmidt. ‘The door can be fastened from this side.’
‘I see. It is very satisfactory. You have thought of everything.’
He opened the door of the small dim chapel, but she would not go in. It had memories for her which she was afraid to stir. She remembered how she had once gone there alone between midnight and morning with a great horror upon her; and how she had knelt down, setting her candlestick on the pavement beside her; and the dawn had found her there still. She knew also that in another week or ten days she would have to kneel there at mass on a Sunday; and Montalto would be kneeling on one side of her, and Leone with his bright blue eyes would be on the other.
‘Thank you,’ she said to the steward. ‘I will not go into the chapel now.’
‘Nothing has been changed there,’ he answered. ‘It has merely been thoroughly cleaned.’
Maria remembered the two hideous barocco angels in impossible gilt draperies that supported a dreadful gilt canopy above the tabernacle; and the absurd decorations of the miniature dome; and the detestable assemblage of many-coloured marbles; and all the details that recalled the atrocious taste introduced under the Spanish influence in the south of Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She had seen nothing of all that when she had come there alone, long after midnight, years ago, with only her one flickeringcandle to light her through the great dark rooms and to show her where the altar was.
‘I thought the Count would not like to have electric light in the chapel,’ said Schmidt, as he fastened the door carefully. ‘The key for the lights in the passage is here on the wall, your Excellency, just on a level with the lock as you come in.’
‘It is really very well arranged,’ Maria answered, and as the passage was not wide enough for two persons to pass conveniently, she turned and led the way back.
‘I have had the walls varnished, because almost any sort of tinting might rub off on your Excellency’s dress,’ said Schmidt. ‘The passage is so extremely narrow, you see.’
‘It is very nice,’ Maria answered. ‘It was most sensible of you.’
Behind her, Orlando Schmidt blushed with pleasure at her praise, and watched her graceful moving figure, shown off against the shining white walls by the close-fitting black she wore. They reached the boudoir, and there also Schmidt closed and locked the door. But this time he took out the key and handed it to Maria.
‘As the passage is for your Excellency’s private use, you may prefer to take away the key, since the workmen have nothing more to do there.’
‘Thank you,’ Maria answered.
‘The servants need not know that the door is a real one,’ observed Schmidt.
It chanced that Maria did not much like the maidshe had at that time, but as the woman was clever she meant to keep her. It struck her that there was certainly no reason why she need know that her mistress could go from her own rooms to the chapel without being seen, if she wished to say her prayers there in private. As for the chapel itself, its outer door was formerly kept locked, and Montalto had given her a key to it when they had been married. The reason for keeping it shut was that the altar contained a reliquary in which was preserved a comparatively large relic of the Cross, already very long an heirloom in the family. No doubt Schmidt knew this, as he seemed to know everything else about his hereditary employers—or masters, as he would have called them. When one family of men has served another faithfully, those who serve possess a sort of universal knowledge of such details which no ordinary servant could acquire in half a lifetime.
Maria left the boudoir, after putting the key into the small new black Morocco bag, which had taken the place of the rather shabby grey velvet one she had used so long. When she came to live in the palace she meant to keep the key in her writing-desk.
‘The Count wishes me to be here when he comes,’ she said as they passed through the great ball-room.‘He writes that you will engage servants and see to everything. Our old butler and coachman have never left me. Do you think I may keep them still? I wish to do nothing, however, which does not agree with your instructions.’
‘My master’s orders,’ said Schmidt, ‘are to meet your Excellency’s wishes in every respect. He will not even bring his own man with him, and I have orders to engage a valet for him. If you will tell me what day will be convenient for you to move, I will see that everything is ready.’
‘The Count writes that he will arrive on Sunday afternoon,’ Maria answered. ‘I had better be here two days before that. I will come on Friday morning.’
‘On Friday?’ repeated the steward with a little surprise.
‘Yes. Are you superstitious, Signor Orlando?’
She really could not call him ‘Signor Schmidt’; it was too absurd; yet he was of Italian nationality.
‘No, your Excellency, I am not. But most people are. If the Signora Contessa would be kind enough to call me simply Schmidt,’ he added with a little hesitation, ‘it is an easy name to remember, and does not occur in Ariosto’s poem.’
She looked at him rather curiously, but she smiled at his last words.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘As you like.’
‘It was my mother,’ he explained, blushing shyly. ‘She is very fond of Ariosto, and she insisted on christening me Orlando. On Friday next everything will be ready to receive your Excellency and the young gentleman. Shall I provide for moving the Signora Contessa’s things?’
‘I shall be much obliged,’ said Maria, who was glad that she was to be spared all trouble.
She went home feeling as if she were in a painful dream, from which she must awake before long. In the afternoon, when Agostino was out with Leone and the little house was quiet, she went to the telephone and asked for the number of the Palazzo Boccapaduli. She got it, and was answered by a man-servant. She inquired when Castiglione would be at home, but was told that he was not staying in the house. It was the only address she knew, so she asked where he lived. The servant did not know, but would go and find out, if she would hold the communication.
A few moments later the voice that spoke to her was Oderisio’s, and he asked with whom he was speaking, and on being told, at once inquired if it was she who wanted Castiglione’s address. Yes, it was she; did he know it? Yes, he did; and he gave it. Had Castiglione a telephone? No, but he might be at the officers’ club; did she wish the number of that? No, she did not care for it. Thank you, and good-bye.
At first she was a little annoyed that young Boccapaduli should know she wanted Castiglione’s address. But presently, as she went back to the sitting-room, it struck her that it was just as well. Oderisio would understand that she was not seeing Baldassare often, since she did not know his address after he had been in Rome nearly a month.
She wrote him a short note, which anybody might have read, begging him to come and see her on the following Thursday after half-past two. She addressed it and stamped it, she put on her hat without callingher maid, and she went out to post it in the letter-box at the corner of the railway station.
She was sure of herself, she thought, and she believed she had earned the right to receive Castiglione once again, because she was bravely resolved never to see him alone after she returned to her husband’s house. That resolution had formed itself at the instant when she had told Leone that Montalto was coming back, and she had not wavered in it since, in spite of what she had felt when he had brought her the fallen parasol in the Villa. The greatest and most enduring resolutions in life are rarely made after mature consideration, still less at those times of spiritual exaltation which are too often self-suggested, and sought for the sake of a half-sensuous, half-mysterious agitation of the nerves that is far from healthy. People who are not morbid and are in great trouble generally see the right course rather suddenly and unexpectedly; if they are good they follow it, if they are bad they do not, but if they attempt a careful and subtle examination of conscience they often come to grief. It is hopeless to analyse processes in which conscience and mind are involved together until we can find a constant coefficient for humanity’s ever-varying strength and weakness.
During more than a month Maria had acted and thought under the domination of one idea; she had need of strength, but she had not felt the want of advice or help. She knew better than the harsh old Capuchin, better even than Monsignor Saracinesca, what she must do, and as for help, no living man orwoman could have given her any, unless it were Castiglione himself. She had accepted what was laid upon her, and when she went at early morning to kneel at the altar rail in the small oratory, she prayed for strength and for nothing else.
So far it had come to her and had borne her through more than any one who knew her could have guessed; and when she sent for Castiglione, to see him once more and for the last time, she was far from thinking that she did so from any weakness. It seemed only just, for no man could have acted more honourably and courageously than he, and he had a right to know from her own lips what she meant to do.
He came, knowing what was before him, and meaning to do what he could to spare her all pain and useless emotion. More and more often now he called her a saint in his thoughts, and his love for her was sometimes very like veneration.
She had taken care that Leone should not be in the house that afternoon, not because she had any thought of concealing Castiglione’s visit from the child, but out of consideration for the man himself. She knew only too well what he felt when he saw the boy’s blue eyes and his short and thick brown hair.
He came in civilian’s dress, lest his brilliant uniform should attract attention from a distance as he entered the house where she lived. His hand met hers quietly and the two lovers looked into each other’s earnest eyes. By a common impulse they sat down in the places they had generally taken when they had met inthe same room before, on opposite sides of the empty fireplace.
‘I know why you have sent for me,’ began Baldassare, very gently. ‘May I try to tell you? It may be a little easier.’
Maria did not attempt to speak for a few moments, and he waited.
‘No,’ she said at last, quite steadily. ‘You could not tell me just what I have to say to you. I asked you to come because you have been so very brave, so very generous——’
She choked a little, but recovered herself quickly.
‘It is only just that I should tell you so before we say good-bye,’ she went on. ‘I knew I could trust you—but oh, I did not know how much!’
‘I have only tried to do my duty,’ he answered.
‘You have done it like the brave man you are,’ said Maria.
‘Please——’ he spoke to interrupt her.
‘Yes,’ she went on, not heeding him. ‘We may not meet again, we two, alone like this. One of us may die before that is possible. So I shall say all that is in my thoughts, if I can. You most know all, you must understand all, even if it hurts very much. My husband is going to take me back altogether; he has forgiven me; he asks me to be his wife again. Can I refuse?’
She had not meant to put the question to him, and he knew that she expected no answer. Her tone showed that. But he would not let her think that in his heart he rebelled against the knife.
‘No,’ he said very slowly. ‘I would not have you refuse what he asks. It would be neither right nor just.’
In spite of the almost intolerable pain she was suffering, a glow of wonder rose in her eyes; and there was no shadow of doubt to dim it. At his worst, in the old days, he had always told the truth.
‘God bless you for that!’ she cried suddenly, and then her voice dropped low. ‘You have travelled far on the good road since we last talked together,’ she said. ‘Further than I.’
He shook his head gravely.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘You have led me, and I have followed.’
‘We have journeyed together,’ she said, ‘though we have been apart. We may be separated, as we must be now, to the end, but we cannot be divided any more. I wanted to tell you something else too, this last time, and you have made it easy to say it, and altogether right. It is this. I do not take back one word of what I said to you and wrote to you before I knew Montalto was coming home. I do not want you to think that I have changed my mind, or that the life we were going to lead seems to me now one little bit less good and true and honourable than it seemed to me that first time we talked together here.’
‘Do you think I doubted you for a moment?’
‘You might. But it is only that other things have changed. We have not, and I know we never shall, and in the end we are to meet where there is peace, and somehow it will be right then, and we shall all three understand that it is. Can you believe that too?’
‘I wish to. I shall try to. If anything could make a man believe in God, it is the love of such a woman as you are.’
‘You have my love,’ Maria answered. ‘And some day you will believe as I do, but in your own way, and we shall be together where there are no partings. Yes, I am sure that we could have lived as we meant to, and could have helped each other to rise higher and higher, far above these dying bodies of ours. But we shall reach the good end more quickly by our suffering than we ever could by our happiness.’
‘That may be,’ said Castiglione, ‘but one thing is far more certain: we must part now, cost what it may.’
‘Cost what it may!’ She pressed her hands to her eyes and was silent a little while.
‘Has he spoken of Leone in his letters?’ Castiglione asked after a time, in a tone that was almost timid.
Maria dropped her hands upon her knees at once and met his look.
‘Not to me,’ she answered. ‘But he gave orders about the child’s room to the steward he sent from Montalto. Everything was to be arranged for Leone just as I wished. That was all.’
‘Will he be kind to the boy, do you think?’ asked Castiglione, very low.
‘I know he will try to be,’ Maria answered generously.
That was her greatest cause for fear in the future; it was the stumbling-block she saw in the way of Montalto’s wish to take her back; but although he might treat the boy coldly, and avoid seeing him, and insist that he should be sent away to a school as soon as he was old enough, she believed that her husband would be just, and she was sure she should leave him if he were not. There was one sacrifice which should not be exacted of her: she would not tamely submit to see her child ill-treated. At that she would rebel, and she would be dangerous for any man to face.