‘Yes,’ she repeated, ‘I know he will try to be kind.’
Castiglione merely nodded and said nothing, but Maria saw his looks; and she was not all a saint yet, for with the sight came the thrill of fierce elemental motherhood, rejoicing in the strength of the man who could kill. There was nothing very saintly about that, and she knew it.
‘We must not think of such things,’ she said, as she felt the deep vibrations grow faint and die away. ‘Let us take it for granted that my husband will be very just. That is all I have a right to ask of him.’
Again Castiglione bent his head in assent. Then both were silent for a long time.
‘Am I never to know anything of your life after this?’ he asked suddenly.
‘You will know what every one may know,’ she said.
‘Nothing more? Only to hear that you are ill or well? Never to be told whether he really does what he can to make it bearable for you? May I not have news of you sometimes? Through Giuliana Parenzo, for instance? Is it to be always outer darkness?’
‘Giuliana will know what you all will know, and no more,’ Maria answered. ‘If I must not tell you what I suffer, do you think I would tell her? I shall not tell myself!’ There was one bitter note in that phrase. ‘You will always know something that no one else can,’ she went on, and her voice softened. ‘And so shall I, and that must be enough for us. Is it so little?’
‘Ah, no! It is all of us two that really lives!’
She heard the deeper tone of rising passion not far away, and she interrupted him.
‘It is all I shall have for the rest of my life,’ she said, and she rose suddenly and held out her hand, meaning that it was time to part.
‘Already?’ he asked, not leaving his seat yet, and looking up beseechingly.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You must not stay. We have told each other what had to be said, and to say more would not be right. Less would not have been just to you.’
He also had risen now and stood before her, meaning to be as brave as she, cost what it might.
‘We are only human,’ she went on,‘only a man and a woman alone together, and if I let you stay longer this one last time, there may be some word, some look, between us that we shall regret. Though Diego is not here yet, I became his wife again in real truth on the day I accepted his forgiveness; and as his wife, no word to you shall pass my lips that he might not hear. We have tried to do right, you and I; if we have not failed altogether, God help us to do better! If we did wrong in those few sweet days, then God pardon us! I thank you from my soul for being brave and true when you might have dragged me down. For the past we have forgiven each other, as we hope to be forgiven. And so good-bye. I would bless you, if I dared; I can ask a blessing for you, and it will come; I am sure it will. If I die first, I shall wait for you somewhere, and you will come. If you are taken before me, wait for me! Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!’
Her voice was sweet and steady to the very end, but when he took her hand at last it was cold, and it quivered in his. He began to lift it to his lips, but it resisted him gently, and he obeyed its resistance.
‘Good-bye,’ he said, as well as he could.
But she hardly heard the syllables; and then, in a moment, he was gone.
The day had come, and Maria was waiting alone for her husband in one of the great rooms of the Palazzo Montalto. She had told Leone that she would send for him when he was wanted, and he was thoughtfully consoling himself for not being allowed to stay with her by polishing the barrel of his tin rifle with his tooth-brush and tooth powder, and he had the double satisfaction of seeing the gun shine beautifully and of making the hated instrument useless for its proper purpose. And meanwhile he wondered what his papa would be like, and whether he should always hate him.
But Maria walked restlessly up and down the drawing-room, and her head felt a little light. Now and then she stopped near one of the open windows and listened for the sound of wheels below and looked at her watch; and when she saw that it was still early, she breathed more freely at first and sat down, trying to rest and collect herself; but it was like thinking of resting ten minutes before execution, and she rose almost directly and began to walk again.
In her deep mourning she looked smaller and slighter in the great room than in the simpler surroundings she had left. She had indeed grown a little thinner of late, but she was not ill, nor even as tired as she hadexpected to be at the crucial moment. The people who feel most are not those whose nerves go to pieces in trouble, and who get absolute rest then by the doctor’s orders; they are more often those who are condemned to bear much, for the very reason that they cannot break down. In the age of torture the weak fainted or died and felt no more, but the strong were conscious and suffered to the end, and that was very long in coming. Yet no one ever pities the strong people.
Leone had told his mother that the white patch in her hair near her left temple had grown so much larger of late that three of his fingers only just covered it, and he had kindly offered to ink it for her; and she was somewhat thinner and a little paler than she had been a month earlier. But that was all there was to show that she had lived through weeks of distress. Montalto would scarcely notice the white lock at first, and her figure looked a shade more perfect for being slighter. She had never been a beauty, but she had more grace and charm than ever, and she was only seven-and-twenty. Giuliana Parenzo was much handsomer, but few men would have hesitated between her and Maria, who had that nameless something in every easy movement, in every lingering smile, in each soft tone of her warm voice, that wakes the man in men, as early spring stirs the life in the earth, deep down and out of sight. She did not understand what she had, and for years she had lived so much away from the lighter side of her own world that she had almost forgotten how the men used to gather round her and crowdupon each other instinctively to come nearer to her in the first year of her marriage, as they never did for Giuliana. She used to notice it then, and she had a laugh and a quick answer for each that showed no preference for any, and maddened them all till they were almost ready to quarrel with each other; but she had been very young then, and she had not understood, till one more reckless than the rest, the very one she trusted too much because she loved him only and too well, had laid waste for ever her fair young being, half-wrecked his own life, and broken the heart of an honest man.
And this honest man had forgiven her, for love of her; he too, and he more than any, had felt that her smile, and her breath, and her touch could drive him mad; and now that he was coming back, the minutes were passing quickly—a very few were left—still fewer—the last but one—the very last, as she heard his carriage roll in through the great arched entrance almost directly under her feet.
The doors were open beyond the drawing-room towards the ante-chamber; one door only was shut between that and the outer hall where the butler and footmen in deep mourning were waiting for their master.
She heard it opened, a once familiar voice asked in a formal tone where she was, and a servant answered. Then came the well-remembered step. In the painful tension of her hearing she heard it far away, even on the soft carpet, more clearly than she had ever heard it on tiled floor or marble pavement.
She steadied herself for a moment against the corner of a heavy table; and then the drawing-room door, which had been open, was shut, and Montalto was in the room, grey and hollow-eyed, coming towards her with thin hands outstretched in greeting. By a miracle of strength she went forward and met them with her own; met his eyes, and let him kiss her. She sank into a chair then, and he was close beside her, trying to speak in his old formal way, though he could hardly control his voice.
He seemed dreadfully changed, and when she saw him clearly a sharp pang of pity wrung her heart. His hair and pointed beard were quite grey, his colourless cheeks were painfully thin, and his hollow eyes burned with a feverish fire; he stopped speaking suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, as if he were paralysed, and his lips were parched, but his burning gaze did not waver from her face. She was a little frightened.
‘You are ill!’ she cried. ‘Let me get you something!’
She half rose, but his thin hand caught her and held her back.
‘No,’ he said hoarsely, ‘I am not ill. It is only that—that I have not—seen you—for so long!’
The words came in gasps; the last ones broke out in a frantic sob. She was moved, and willing to be touched, and though she had felt the old physical repulsion for him again the instant he came near her, she took one of his hands now and held it on her knees and stroked it kindly.
‘Diego!’
She did not know what to say, so she pronounced his name as softly and as affectionately as she could. But she had not spoken yet, and at the sound of her sweet voice the man broke down completely.
‘Oh, Maria, Maria!’ he moaned, drawing her hand to his chest and rocking himself a little. ‘It was all a dreadful dream—and I have got you back again—Maria——’
The over-strained, over-wrenched nerves gave way and he broke into a flood of tears; the drops ran down the furrows of his thin cheeks and his grey beard and wet her hand as he pressed passionate kisses upon it, rocking himself over it and sobbing convulsively.
Maria had lived through a good deal of suffering and some moments that now seemed too horrible to have been real, but she had never had any emotion forced upon her from without that had been harder to bear calmly than what she felt now.
If anything could strengthen the physical repulsion that made her shrink from her husband’s touch it was the sight of his unmanly tears and the sound of his hysterical sobbing. If anything could make it more difficult to hide her loathing it was the knowledge that she had wronged him and that she owed him gratitude for his free forgiveness. She would much rather have had him turn upon her like a maniac and strike her than be obliged to watch the painful heaving of his thin, bent shoulders, and feel the hot tears that ran down upon her hands.
It was so unutterably disgusting that she felt a terriblystrong impulse to throw him off, to scream out that she would not take his forgiveness at any price, that he must let her go back and lead her own life with her child, as she had lived for so many years. He would suffer a little more, but what was a little more or less to a man who seemed half mad?
Then the wave of pity rushed back, and that was even worse. It was the pity a delicate woman feels for some wretched living thing half killed in an accident, so crushed and torn that the mere thought of touching it makes her shrink back and shiver to her very feet because the suffering creature is not her own. If it were hers but ever so little, if it were her dog, she would feel nothing but the instant womanly need of saving it if she could, of helping it to die easily if she could not.
Maria’s hand shrank from the scalding tears and writhed under the man’s frantic kisses. She shut her eyes and threw back her head; her face was drawn and white, and she prayed as she had never prayed in her life, for strength to bear all that was before her.
It had seemed just possible, because she had imposed it upon herself as her honourable duty, and because the husband she remembered had been before all things proud, and as full of a certain exaggerated dignity and self-respect as Spaniards sometimes are, though he was only half-Spanish. She had felt him coming back to her from far away, like a dark instrument of fate, to which she must give herself up body and mind, if she hoped to expiate her sin to the end. It had seemed hard, even dreadfully hard; but this was worse. Insteadof the erect and formal figure and the grave dark face that had a certain strength in it which she could at least respect—instead of that, it was a broken-down man who came to her, prematurely old, a neurasthenic invalid no better than a hysterical woman, palsied with unmanly emotion, lacking all strength, self-respect and dignity, and without even a rag of vanity that might have passed for pride.
She was not stronger in her hands than other women, but she was sure that it would be easy to throw him from her; he would fall in a heap on the carpet, and would lie there helpless and sobbing. As she felt the instant contempt for his weakness, she prayed the more for courage to humble her own strength to it; and her eyes were still shut tight and her face was white and drawn. This was but the beginning of what must last for years, ten, twenty, as long as he lived, or until she died of it.
The future stretched out before her in length without end; she forgot everything else, and did not know that the tears ceased to flow and presently dried, nor that Montalto drew back from her into his own chair as the storm subsided within him. His voice woke her from the dream of pain to come.
‘I trust you will forgive my first emotion, my dear,’ he said with all his characteristic formality. ‘I see that I have made a painful impression on you. I shall not allow it to occur again.’
It was such a quick relief to see him more like himself, that she had almost a sensation of pleasure,and she smiled faintly while she tried to say something.
‘No—please—I’m so sorry——’
She could find no connected sentence. He rose and began to walk up and down before her, making half a dozen steps each way, a shadowy figure in black, passing and repassing before her.
‘I believe that I have made everything clear in my letters,’ he said, and then he glanced at her from time to time without pausing in his walk while he talked. ‘I shall not repeat anything I have written, but there are one or two other matters of which I must speak to you before we begin life again together, Maria. They need not be mentioned more than once either. It is better to be done with everything which may be in the least painful to you as soon as possible.’
In spite of the formal manner, there were kind inflections in his tone. It seemed marvellous that he should have recovered himself so soon, and it was only possible because such exhibitions of weakness were not really natural to him. Maria had felt relieved as soon as he had begun to talk quietly, and when he left his seat, her physical repugnance to him began to subside within its old limits. But at the same time she felt a vague fear that he was going to speak of Leone.
‘You have shown remarkable tact, my dear,’ he went on,‘and you will have no difficulty in making your friends understand that our long separation has been principally due to my mother’s condition, and that since she is gone’—his voice sank a little—‘we have resumed our married life. This will be easy, no doubt. May I ask, without indiscretion, who your most intimate friends are?’
‘Giuliana Parenzo is my only intimate friend,’ Maria answered at once.
‘I am glad of that,’ said Montalto, approving. ‘She is a thoroughly nice woman in all ways, and everybody respects her. Are there any others whom you see often?’
‘I have dined a good many times with the Campodonico and the Saracinesca and the Boccapaduli—sometimes with the Trasmondo. I have never gone to balls. On the whole, I have tried to be on friendly terms with most of the people who have children of Leone’s age.’
She had boldly brought forward the question which she thought he meant to reach, and she waited for his reply. But he would not take it up.
‘Leone,’ he repeated, in a musing tone. ‘Friends for Leone. Yes, yes—that was quite right. I will see him by and by.’
‘He is waiting to be called,’ said Maria quickly, for she was anxious to get over the difficult moment as soon as possible.
‘Presently,’ answered Montalto.‘I have one or two things to say while we are alone. First, as to your friends, I wish you to understand that even if there are some whom I do not know, they shall all be welcome here. They will be the more welcome because they stood by my wife when she was in trouble.’
He put a little emphasis on the words, his figure had straightened and he held his head high. She understood the great generosity of what he said.
‘Thank you, Diego,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You are very good.’
‘There is only one person who shall not come here,’ he continued, in a tone that was suddenly hard.
Maria almost started, but controlled herself; he could only mean Castiglione.
‘Who is it?’ she asked, as steadily as she could.
‘Teresa Crescenzi,’ answered Montalto, turning rather sharply. ‘I beg you never to receive her. She spoke against my mother, and I will not have her in the house.’
Maria actually laughed, though a little nervously.
‘She is no friend of mine,’ she said. ‘I do not care to see her.’
‘You need not quarrel with her, my dear, if you meet. I shall take the responsibility on myself, and I shall be careful to let her know that it is I who forbid her my house.’
He was not a short man, and when he drew himself up he looked tall. Maria no longer felt that she could throw him to the floor if he took her hand.
‘I have not many real friends here now,’ he said, more gently. ‘One whom I especially esteem is Monsignor Saracinesca. Do you ever see him?’
‘I saw him not long ago, and I sometimes meet him at his father’s house. We are on good terms.’
‘That is very pleasant,’ Montalto answered.‘I shall often ask him here, if you do not object.’
‘I shall always be glad to see him,’ returned Maria. ‘But, please, Diego, do not consult me about such things. I am very deeply conscious of your generosity in all ways, and this house is yours, not mine.’
‘It is ours,’ said Montalto, ‘except for Teresa Crescenzi. I do not wish you to think of it in any other way. And that brings me to the last point. May I inquire whether you have found yourself in any—how shall I say?—in any financial straits in which my fortune can be of service to you?’
You may judge a man of the world’s wisdom by the sort of wife he chooses, but the test of a gentleman is the way he treats his wife. Maria was profoundly touched by her husband’s question. She rose from her seat and went close to him, overcoming her repulsion easily for the moment as she took his hand and spoke.
‘No, I have made no debts. But I have no words to thank you for your kindness. I shall try to deserve it.’
‘It is only what I owe to my wife,’ Montalto answered, and he bent over her hand with as much ceremony as if there had been twenty people in the room.
‘I have something to tell you, too,’ she said. ‘You ought to know it. Baldassare del Castiglione has come back to Rome. We have met alone, and we have agreed never to see each other again—except as we may chance to find ourselves in a friend’s house at the same time.’
Montalto could not help dropping her hand as soon as she pronounced Castiglione’s name, but his face changed little.
‘I daresay you were wise to see him once,’ he replied, a trifle coldly. ‘We need not refer to him again.’
She could not have expected more than that, but when he had answered she was a little sorry that she had spoken at all. He would willingly have trusted her without that explanation.
With an evident wish to change the subject, he began to ask questions about the apartment, inquiring how she liked it, and whether she had found Schmidt efficient in carrying out her wishes.
‘Very,’ she answered to the last question. ‘He is a wonderful man.’
‘Yes,’ Montalto assented coldly, ‘in some ways he is an extraordinary young man.’
There was something more reserved in the tone than in the words, but Maria was very far from being intimate enough with her husband yet to ask whether Schmidt had any fault or weakness that justified his master’s evident doubts about him. She wondered what the trouble might be.
‘Shall we go and see Leone now?’ Montalto suggested. ‘On the way you can show me what you have done to the house. You have not ruined me in furniture,’ he added with a smile, as he looked round the rather empty drawing-room.
‘I left as much as possible to you,’ Maria answered.
She was thinking of Leone, and she already saw before her the sturdy little blue-eyed boy with his thick and short brown hair. They went on through the houseto the door of Maria’s boudoir, at the end of the great ball-room.
‘That is where I have installed myself,’ she said, pointing to it and turning to the left, towards the masked door that led to the living rooms in the other wing.
‘Yes, I remember,’ answered Montalto. ‘And this is your dressing-room, I suppose,’ he added as they walked on. ‘And this used to be your bedroom.’
‘Yes,’ said Maria steadily. ‘That is the door of my bedroom.’
Leone’s was the next, and in a moment they were standing in a flood of afternoon light, and Maria bent down and kissed the small boy’s hair because he would not turn up his cheek to her, being very intent on examining Montalto’s face. But Maria dared not look at her husband just then.
‘Here we are at last, dear,’ she said as well as she could, still bending over him.
To some extent she could trust the child’s manners, for she had brought him up herself, but her heart beat fast during the little silence before Montalto spoke, and she wondered what his tone would be much more than what he was going to say, for she felt sure that the words would not be unkind.
Montalto held out his hand, and Leone took it slowly. He had never been kissed by a man, and did not imagine that his newly-introduced papa could be expected to kiss him. This was fortunate, for Montalto had not the least intention of doing so.
‘Can you ride yet?’ he asked, with a smile.
‘No,’ Leone answered, but his face changed instantly. ‘Not yet.’
‘I will teach you, my boy, and as soon as you can trot and gallop nicely you shall have a good horse of your own.’
Leone flushed with pleasure, a healthy red that was good to see.
‘Oh, how splendid!’ he cried, and his blue eyes lit up with happiness. ‘Really, really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘When shall I begin?’
‘To-morrow morning.’
‘Hurrah!’ yelled the small boy. ‘At last!’
Maria could have cried out too, or laughed, or burst into tears from sheer relief. Montalto had unconsciously received one of those happy inspirations which turn the mingling currents of meeting lives; and Leone was already astride of a stick, prancing round the room on an imaginary horse, shouting out the tune of the Italian royal march and sabring the air to right and left with the first thing he happened to pick up. It chanced to be the tooth-brush with which he had been polishing his tin gun.
Montalto looked pleased, and Leone pranced towards him on the stick and pretended to rein in a fiery steed before his papa, saluting with the tooth-brush sabre in correct cavalry fashion.
‘Viva Papa!’ he bawled. ‘Viva Papa!’
Montalto, who rarely smiled, could not help laughing now. Maria could hardly believe her senses, for shehad dreaded most of all moments the one in which the two were to meet. But now her husband suddenly looked younger. He was thin, indeed, to the verge of emaciation, his hands were shrunken and transparent, his beard was quite grey, his eyes were hollow; but there was no feverish fire in them, his face was not colourless, and there was life in his movements. Maria wondered whether it were humanly possible that he should not only be kind to her child but should actually like him, and perhaps love him some day.
At all events what had happened had made it easier for her than she had dared to expect, and though nothing could efface the painful impression of her meeting with him, what had now taken place certainly made a great difference.
During dinner he talked quietly about Rome and politics and old friends, and if she saw his eyes fixed upon her now and then with an expression that made her nervous, there was still the broad table between them, and he looked away almost directly.
Afterwards he smoked Spanish cigarettes, taking them to pieces and rolling them again in thin French paper, and he went on talking; but as the hour advanced he said less and less, and his cigarette went out very often, till at last he rose, saying that it was late, and he kissed her hand ceremoniously and left her.
‘Good-night,’ she said, just before he disappeared through the door.
He bent his head a little but did not answer.
An hour later she had dismissed her maid and sat ina small easy-chair in her boudoir under a shaded light; she was trying to read, in the hope of growing sleepy. She wore a thin silk dressing-gown, wide open at the throat and showing a little simple white lace; her dark hair was taken up in a loose knot rather low down at the back of her neck, as she had always done it at bedtime ever since she had been a young girl. Her bare feet were half hidden in a pair of rather shabby little grey velvet slippers without heel or heel-piece, for the spring night was warm. She was trying to read.
She thought some one knocked softly at the door; she started in her chair and dropped the book, while her hand went up to her throat to gather the silk folds and hide the lace underneath. She could not speak.
Another knock, quite distinct this time, and followed by a question in her husband’s voice.
‘May I come in?’
An instant’s pause, and she closed her eyes to say two words.
‘Come in.’
THE COUNTESS OF MONTALTO
The Romans approved of Montalto’s return. The reason why any civilised society continues to exist is that the majority of decent people look upon marriage seriously, and consider it as a permanent bond, spiritual or legal, or both. In such conservative countries as admit divorce, the respectable part of society looks upon it as a last resource in extreme cases, and no sensible citizen should regard it as anything else. When it has taken place, the society to which the two divorced persons belong decides which of them was in the right, and that one is received as cordially as ever; the other is treated coldly, and is sometimes turned out.
But there is no divorce law in Italy, and a civil marriage is as indissoluble in the eyes of the Italian state as a religious one is under the rules of the Catholic Church. There is such a thing as separation by law, but it gives neither party a right to marry again; it concerns the administration of property and the guardianship of children, but nothing else, and the parties may agree to unite again without any further ceremony.
Maria and her husband had never gone through the form of being legally separated, though they had taken towards each other the relative positions of separated husband and wife. Maria’s sufficient independent fortuneenabled her to decline any subsidy from Montalto, and she had quitted his house after he left her; she had also kept the child. The two had voluntarily placed themselves where the law would probably have placed them, and society had been grateful to Montalto for having avoided the open scandal of any legal procedure against his wife; the more so, as it had chosen to take Maria’s side, on the principle that absent friends are always in the wrong.
But society was very glad to consider both Montalto and his wife in the right, now that he had come back quietly, at the very end of a season; and no objections were raised against the perfectly innocent fiction of his having stayed away from Rome many years to take care of his mother. It was a satisfaction to see such an important couple reconciled again and living peaceably together; everybody had something to repent of in life, and most people had something to conceal; Maria had repented and Montalto had covered up the spot on his honour, with as much tact and dignity as were respectively consistent with a stained escutcheon and a contrite heart; and it was really much more proper that Maria di Montalto, whose husband was an authentic Count of the Empire, should live in the great palace, instead of in a little apartment in the Via San Martino, and should drive in a big carriage behind a pair of huge black horses, in the shadow of tremendously imposing mourning liveries, than go about in a small phaeton drawn by a pair of hired nags, or even in a little brougham with one horse and no footman at all, as she had sometimesbeen seen to do; it was much more proper and appropriate. Why should any one make a fuss because a small boy called Leone Silani di Montalto had blue eyes instead of brown or black ones? Was it admissible that not one of the Montalto ancestors, since the First Crusade, should have had blue eyes, to account for Leone’s? Was nature to be allowed no latitude in such little matters? And so forth; and so on; and more to the same effect, and to the credit of Diego, Maria, and Leone di Montalto, happily reunited in their own home. These things were said without a smile by such excellent elderly people as the Princess Campodonico and the Duchess of Trasmondo, the good and beautiful old Princess Saracinesca, the whole Boccapaduli family, and all the secondary social luminaries which reflect the light of the great fixed ones round which they revolve. There had been a conspicuous gap at the banquet of the Roman Olympians for years; it was once more filled by those who had a right to it, and everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, as Candide’s tutor was the first to observe. So far as the Montalto family was concerned, the truth of the assertion was amply proved by the fact that Montalto himself was teaching Leone to ride, in the Villa Borghese. Three or four times a week you might meet him there in the early morning hours on a wonderful Andalusian mare he had brought from Spain, with the boy at his side, red in the face, fearless, and perfectly happy on a pony with a leading rein.
Castiglione saw them once from a distance, comingtowards him, but he jumped his horse over the stiff fence into the meadow, crossed quickly, and was over into the ring again on the other side and out of the Villa by Porta Pinciana before the pair recognised him, for Montalto was rather near-sighted and Leone was so much interested in his lesson that even the uniform of the Piedmont Lancers no longer had great attractions for him. After that Castiglione gave up exercising his horses in the Villa.
The fact of riding a real animal, that could move its tail, had destroyed in a day all Leone’s bright illusions of toy guns and tin helmets. A boy who could ride was half a man already, and even half a man must be above the suspicion of playing with sham weapons. After his third ride in the Villa, Leone solemnly presented his whole armoury to the children of the porter downstairs, and though his room seemed very bare for a day or two, he found consolation in sitting astride of a chair, conscientiously repeating to himself and practising the instructions he had received from Montalto.
‘Toes in! Grip the saddle with your knees, not with your calves! Elbows to your sides! Your heels down, in a line with your head and your shoulder! Hold the bridle lightly, don’t hold on by it! Head straight, not thrown back, nor forward either! Look before you, between the pony’s ears!’
As he repeated each well-remembered precept Leone studied his position to be sure that he was really obeying the order. It was ever so much more real, even on a chair, than prancing about on his feet, astride of a stick,with a tin sabre, yelling the Royal March; and it was incomparably more dignified.
Maria came to his room one afternoon and found him at his self-imposed exercise. She paused on the threshold, before he knew that she was there, and she watched him with a rather sad smile. He was so tremendously strong and vital, and she felt so subdued and weary! It seemed impossible that he should be her child. Yet hers he was.
He ordered himself to sit very straight, and in the pause during which he made sure of having been very attentive, he heard her and turned his head. He laughed a little shyly at being caught.
‘It’s not play,’ he hastened to say. ‘It’s practice. I go over everything papa tells me, and I do it very carefully. Then he says I learn very fast, but he doesn’t know I practise. Of course, if he asked me, I’d tell him. It’s not wrong not to tell him, if he doesn’t ask me, is it, mama?’
‘No, dear,’ Maria answered, and she bent down and kissed the boy’s forehead.
‘Because I like to surprise him by doing it better than he expects,’ he went on. ‘Then he smiles, and I like him when he smiles.’
‘I think you always like him, my dear,’ said his mother. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes. But I wasn’t going to, though!’ The young jaw thrust itself forward viciously.‘I thought I was going to hate him when he came in here with you that day. I did!’
‘You must try not to hate any one,’ said Maria; and again she kissed his forehead.
‘Oh, that’s all very well, mama!’ retorted the boy. ‘Why do you always kiss my forehead now?’ he asked suddenly. ‘It used to be the back of my neck, you know, just here!’
He laughed, and put up his hand behind his head to the spot where the short hair was always trying to curl. But Maria had turned away to inspect his tooth-brush, as she often did after she had discovered the use he had made of one for cleaning his toy gun. She did not answer his question.
‘Oh, you needn’t look at it, mama,’ he said, watching her. ‘At least, not till I have a real gun. Besides,’ he added rather mournfully, ‘I brush my teeth now.’
‘Oh—I’m glad to hear it!’
‘Yes,’ Leone answered, with his hands in his pockets. ‘You see, papa does—so I suppose I must, too.’
‘But I always told you to!’ Maria could not help smiling. ‘Was not that enough, child?’
‘Oh, yes, of course. But it’s different. I want to be like papa.’
Maria had not been prepared for this speech, and the smile faded from her face.
‘You could not do better,’ she said gravely. ‘He is an honest gentleman, if ever there was one.’
‘I’d give anything to look like him, too. But I suppose that’s impossible. I’d like to have a dark, grave face, like his, and at the same time to look so smart—most of all on horseback.’
‘You cannot change your looks, dear,’ Maria managed to say, and she pretended to continue her inspection of the room, lest he should see her face just then.
The world was very hard to understand, she thought, and later, when she was alone, she pondered on this new mystery. It still seemed impossible that the least likely of all things should have happened: that Leone should have developed a whole-hearted, boyish admiration for Montalto was strange enough, but that Montalto should apparently have taken a real liking to Leone, and something more, was past her comprehension. It was almost too much, and a deep, unacknowledged feminine instinct was ready to rise up against it, though all her conscience and intelligence told her that she should be grateful to her husband for the large forgiveness he bestowed upon her in every act of kindness to the boy.
He had changed quickly since his return, and she sometimes found it hard to believe that he had come back to her looking like the wreck of a man, that his tears had run down like a nervous woman’s, scalding her hands till she had felt contempt for his unmanly weakness.
Certain people have what may be called dramatic constitutions and faces; a few hours of anxiety or pain make havoc of their looks; when others would merely look tired, they become haggard, their cheeks fall in, their eyes grow hollow; in a fortnight they grow thin till they seem shadowy. But when the pain is over, or the anxiety is relieved, their normal appearance returns with amazing rapidity. In three or four weeks after he had come home, Montalto was his old self again,saving his prematurely grey hair and beard; but even they no longer made him look old now that his still young face had filled out again and recovered its normal colour. He was once more a grave, dark, erect and rather handsome man, apparently endowed with a strong will of his own, and undoubtedly imbued with an almost exaggerated sense of his dignity. He was again the husband Maria had married nine years ago, and he had blotted out of his memory all that had happened from then till now.
He was almost the same again; and so was Maria herself. If he had remained as much changed as he had seemed to be at first, she might possibly have deluded herself with the idea that he was not really the same man, after all, so that he was now her real husband and she had dreamed all the rest. But even such an imaginary alleviation as that was denied her. He was only too really the same in all ways; she quivered at his gentlest touch and writhed under his loving caress, and presently she wondered why he never felt that she loathed him, even if he could not see it in her face.
A villainous idea suggested itself. Perhaps he both felt and saw her repugnance; perhaps his kindness was all a cruel comedy, his affection for Leone a diabolical deception; perhaps he was revenging himself in his own way, and delighting inwardly in the unspeakable suffering he inflicted.
But the thought was too unbalanced to sustain itself. According to his lights, Maria was sure that he was a good man. Don Ippolito Saracinesca knew human naturewell, and could not have been deceived for years in one whom he called his friend. Diego di Montalto was not a monster of cruelty; his love was real, his forgiveness was real, his liking for the boy he might so naturally have detested was real too—it was all awfully real. God in heaven would not have expected her to submit herself body and mind to be tormented by a wicked man for the rest of her life, in vengeance for one fault. No, her husband was a good man, who had been generous beyond words; he had come home to take her back before the whole world, defying it to speak evil against his honoured wife, he had come home to be her husband and her child’s father. And when he touched her she trembled and felt sick; but this was her just expiation, and she must bear it as well as she could, and hide her horror of him till she died of it. Even that would not come soon. She had not a dramatic organisation like his, and she could be made to bear a great deal before the end. She would have been a good patient for the tormentors in older times, for she would not have fainted soon, or died, and felt nothing more. She was very quiet, a little subdued, and there was sometimes a startled, haunted look in her eyes, but that was all; she ate enough, she went about her occupations, she wrote letters to Giuliana and others, she looked after Leone, she even slept as much as was necessary, and people thought she was at last contented, if not happy, with the rather dull and formal husband who had come back to her. They saw, too, or believed, that she and Castiglione were completely estranged and hardly spoke when they happened to meetanywhere; but even such meetings were of very rare occurrence, because she and her husband were in such deep mourning.
The summer came, and they went northwards in a comfortable motor car. They stopped on their way to make short visits to more or less distant relations who were already at their country places; they spent a fortnight by the seaside, near Genoa, a day or two in Milan, a hot week in Venice near the end of July; and so they came by easy stages to Montalto, with its solemn towers, its deep woods and its waterfalls, its fertile valley, its rich farms and its thriving village; and there they stayed through the rest of the summer and into the early autumn.
Leone rode with Montalto every day, and by and by he was taught to hold a real gun in the right way, and then to shoot; and at last Montalto took him out one day and he fired his first shot at a pheasant and missed, but he killed a bird the second time, and was the happiest boy in the world for the rest of that day. Through all those months Montalto himself gained strength daily and recovered more and more of the comparative youthfulness which remains to a man not forty; and Maria changed little, if at all, though Leone thought the white patch near her left temple was growing larger.
Also, in those quiet days, the boy and the man became more and more closely attached to each other. Montalto took more real interest in teaching Leone to ride and shoot than he had ever shown in anything; and Leone was more entirely persuaded that Montalto was his ideal, though hestill declared that he himself would be a soldier and nothing else.
During this time Maria frequently saw Orlando Schmidt, the steward. She had not seen him in Rome after her husband had arrived, and when she noticed the latter’s reserved tone in speaking of him, she had not mentioned him again and had soon forgotten his existence. There was no special reason why she should think of him at all, though she had found him very efficient and ready to serve her.
But now he appeared again, and as a personage of considerable importance, who came to her husband’s study almost every day on matters connected with the estate. She met him the first time when she was alone in the great avenue that led from the park gate to the castle. He lived in a small house just outside the village at the foot of the hill, and he usually walked up by the avenue.
He bowed ceremoniously to the Countess from a considerable distance, and carried his hat in his hand as he came nearer. He blushed a little when she bent her head at last and said good-morning in passing; and as she did not stop to say more, he went on. He turned after he had gone on a few steps and looked after her, being quite sure that she would not do the same. Why should the Countess of Montalto condescend to look round at such a humble person as Orlando Schmidt? So he walked slowly and turned again and again to watch the graceful figure that was slowly gliding into the distance under the shade of the ancient elms. When he could nolonger see her distinctly he glanced at his watch and went on his way quickly.
Two days later Maria met him almost in the same place, and at almost the same hour in the morning; which was natural enough, for she had dropped into the dull punctuality in doing unimportant things at regular times which is the foundation of a woman’s life in a country house where there are no visitors; and as it was Schmidt’s business to be exact about his duties, there was really no reason why she should not pass him in the same place and nearly at the same moment, on every fine day.
This time Schmidt stood still at a short distance, as if he wished to say something, and when Maria stopped, he inquired if he could be of service to her in any way. She was a little surprised at the question.
He meant to ask, he said, whether she had any wishes with regard to the grounds or the garden. The Count, he explained, took no interest in those matters, but would be much pleased if her Excellency would give them some attention. He, Schmidt, had done his best to keep up the place since he had been in charge of it, but he was only too conscious that he knew nothing of landscape gardening and very little about flowers. Maria said quietly that she understood neither, though she knew what she liked.
Thereupon Schmidt observed that a quantity of handsome stone-work of the fifteenth century was lying piled up in the kitchen court, and he thought it must have been put there about a hundred and twenty or thirty years ago, when a Countess of Montalto had thought itwould be an improvement to destroy the beautiful mediæval close garden in the course of constructing a miniature Versailles which had never been finished. He, Schmidt, would take pleasure in showing the stone-work to her Excellency if she would take the trouble to look at it. He had also found an old plan of the former garden amongst the papers of his own great-grandfather, who had been steward of Montalto from 1760 to 1800. At a small cost the really beautiful mediæval well and cloistered walk could be reconstructed, and he ventured to suggest that they would be more in keeping with the whole place than a wretched little imitation of Lenôtre’s vast work.
Maria thought so, too, and after saying that she would ask her husband about it, she nodded kindly to the thoughtful young man and continued her walk.
In the evening, when Montalto had told her the political news he had read before dinner, and had opened a third Havana cigarette to roll it over again in French paper, Maria told him what Schmidt had said. Montalto was naturally as punctual in all his little ways as his wife was rapidly becoming by acquired habit. The post came late in the afternoon, and he always spent half an hour in reading the newspapers before he dressed for dinner. Just as invariably, too, he told his wife what he had read, and he almost always reached the end of his budget of intelligence just as he began to make his third cigarette. Maria did not always listen to what he was telling her, but the third cigarette was a landmark in the long dull evening, and when it was reached sheknew that Montalto expected her to make a little conversation in return for his carefully repeated news. On this particular occasion she was glad to have something to say, and at once asked him about the old garden.
To her surprise Montalto did not give her any answer at once, and she waited for his reply, watching the motion of his well-made fingers, of which the first two were stained a deep yellowish brown from smoking cigarettes. They rolled the cigarette slowly, but very neatly.
‘Yes,’ Montalto said after a long time, when he had got a light and was leaning back in his chair. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, in a tone of profound meditation. ‘Yes, by all means, if it amuses you, my dear.’
‘Then you think Schmidt is right about the old things?’ said Maria with a renewed interrogation in her tone.
Another pause, and several small puffs of smoke.
‘Maria,’ Montalto began, as if he had reached a conclusion, ‘you are not what people call a highly accomplished woman, but you have a great deal of sense.’
The Countess wondered what was coming, and answered by a preliminary and deprecating smile. Montalto often told her that in his opinion she was the most beautiful creature in the world; after such nonsense it was a relief to be called a sensible woman. She might not be even that, but at all events the statement was not likely to lead to one of those outbreaks of his passion for her which she dreaded.
‘Maria,’ he said, as if he were beginning over again,‘I have great confidence in your judgment.’
‘But I know nothing about gardening or mediæval wells,’ she protested.
‘Possibly not, though you know vastly more about both than I do. I was brought up under the influence of the Spanish taste of the eighteenth century, and I like it. Ippolito Saracinesca says it is atrocious, and of course he knows. But I like it, nevertheless.’
‘At least, you have the courage of your opinion,’ said Maria, still completely in the dark, but feeling that she must say something.
‘That does not matter, for it is not the question,’ returned her husband. ‘We neither of us know anything about architecture, I am sure. But I shall be glad if you will go into this question with Schmidt, and then give me an opinion.’
‘It will be worthless.’
‘Not your opinion of the garden, my dear, but your opinion of Schmidt.’
‘Oh!’ Maria was very much surprised. ‘But why? I told you in Rome that I thought him an excellent person and very intelligent!’
‘Did it ever occur to you that he might be too intelligent?’
‘No. But perhaps I don’t understand just what you mean. Do you think he is educated above his station? Too good for his place?’
‘Not at all. But sometimes, in money dealings and positions of trust, a man may be too clever. That is what I mean.’
‘You mean that you don’t quite trust him,’ saidMaria, ‘and you wish me to form a judgment of him.’
‘I want your opinion,’ answered Montalto, who was at odds with his over-sensitive conscience. ‘I should be very unjust to Schmidt if I were to say that he may not be quite honest. It would be very wrong to assume such a thing of any one, would it not?’
‘If you had no grounds for suspicion, yes. But even an instinctive distrust of a man of business is enough reason for not giving him the entire control of a large estate.’
‘Do you really think so, my dear? You see, the men of his family have been our stewards for some little time.’
‘He told me they had served you two hundred years.’
‘Yes, yes—for some time, as you say, and I have always understood that they were honest people.’
He was so excessively scrupulous that Maria guessed he must have some serious ground for his slight suspicion of the man he was trusting. The question began to interest her, if only as a study of her husband’s character.
‘Really, Diego,’ she said, ‘if you wish me to form any reasonable judgment you must tell me something more than this. What has the man done to make you doubt him?’
Montalto looked at his wife thoughtfully before he answered.
‘I will tell you, but you must not repeat the story to any one, please.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘He once got into some scrape, four or five years ago, and he took a small sum of money to help himself out of trouble.’
‘Oh!’ For the second time Maria was surprised. ‘But that is called——’
‘He confessed it to me,’ Montalto hastened to say before Maria could finish her sentence. ‘He threw himself upon my mercy by a voluntary confession, promising to make up the sum as soon as he could. I thought the matter over for two days and then I forgave him.’
‘That was like you,’ Maria said gently.
Had he not forgiven her a far greater debt?
‘It was only just,’ Montalto answered. ‘I meant never to think of the matter again unless he repeated the offence.’
‘Has he done anything of the kind since then?’
‘No.’
‘But you think he might.’
‘N—no. But he could if he wished to, and I don’t think I should ever know it!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My dear, he paid back the money very soon; so soon that I was surprised. Then I sent him to Spain on an errand, and while he was away I got a confidential accountant here and we examined his books very carefully.’
‘Well?’
‘It was impossible to find any trace of what he had done. Unless a man has actually taken money dishonestly, he does not confess and pay it back. But there is something very strange about the matter if you cannot find some proof of his own confession in his own accounts.’
‘Was it much?’ asked Maria.
‘Only five thousand francs. But in that year the books showed no change in the rent-roll of the estate—he might have made out that the rents had fallen, so as to pocket the difference, you understand. On the contrary, it was a good year, and the tenants paid punctually; and there were the banker’s receipts for the corresponding deposits, exact to a fraction. Five thousand is not a large sum, but it is a very noticeable one in a matter of business.’
‘I should think so!’ assented Maria, thinking of the limited income on which she had lived for years, and in which a deficit of five thousand francs would have been a serious matter.
‘It is very strange that a man whose business it is to detect frauds in accounts should not be able to find a trace of one that has been confessed by its author, is it not?’
‘Very!’
‘That is my reason for saying that Schmidt may be too intelligent. I hope I am not doing him an injustice in saying so. That is the reason why I want your opinion about him. I really could not ask him how he did it, after forgiving him, and it would have been still more unjust to reveal his secret by asking my banker to compare the receipts purporting to come from him with his own books. I had forgiven him freely; I could not accuse him to another man of having done what he had voluntarily confessed. It would not have been honourable, for my banker would have known at once that I distrusted my steward and suspected him of forging banker’s receipts.’
‘Yes. I see.’
‘Precisely. But the most honourable man in the world may confide matters to his wife which it would be base in him to lay before any one else.’
‘Except a confessor,’ Maria said; but she was not thinking of Schmidt.
‘My confessor was not a man of any business capacity,’ answered Montalto without a smile. ‘Nor is my friend Ippolito Saracinesca either; and I would certainly not consult any one else except my wife.’
‘Thank you.’
He had taken a long time to tell his story about the poor steward, hampered as he was at every step by a conscientious fear of injuring the man. What Maria saw was that he had been unboundedly generous to Schmidt, as he had been to her in a matter much nearer to life and death; and by a sort of unconscious analogical reasoning she felt, rather than concluded, that the steward must be as grateful as she was, and as resolved to be faithful at any cost. Moreover, he had made a favourable impression on her from the first; and though she was a little shocked at what she now learned about him, her ultimate verdict as to his present honesty was a foregone judgment.
After this long talk with Montalto she saw Schmidt often. He showed her the old plans, the position of theformer garden, and the fragments of the well and the cloistered walk, and after much consultation with her husband and several evenings spent in the study of Viollet-le-Duc, they determined that the old construction should be restored as far as possible, a conclusion which has no bearing upon this story beyond the fact that it was the means of bringing Maria and the steward together almost daily, and that the execution of the work and his careful economy in the whole affair raised him in the Countess’s estimation; or rather, they confirmed that preconceived good opinion of him which she had formed in the beginning, and on which such grave matters afterwards turned.
Before they left Montalto her husband inquired as to the result of her observation of the man.
‘I cannot help believing that he is now perfectly honest and devoted to your interests,’ she said. ‘That is the impression he makes on me, and I do not think it will change.’
‘Then I shall take him to Rome,’ Montalto answered without hesitation. ‘Our property there is in a disgraceful state and is not yielding much more than the half of what it should. Schmidt is the only man I have under my hand who can set matters right, and he shall go to work at once.’
‘I agree with you,’ Maria said quietly. ‘I thought so last spring when I first saw him.’
The life at Montalto went on a little longer after that, and the work on the garden made it a little less monotonous. Not that Maria disliked that side of it. Sinceshe was to live her married life again, it was a little easier to live it in that deep retirement, where she could so often be left to herself for half the day while Montalto and Leone were out shooting, or riding, or visiting some distant part of the estate. To be alone as much as possible was her chief aim in the arrangement of her day. There had been a time when she had been happy to have Leone always by her side; but now he talked to her so incessantly of her husband and of what they had done and were going to do together, that she often wished he would be silent or go away.
The time had come when the boy began to turn to the man for what he wanted, even more readily than to his mother; and there is nothing quite like a mother’s loneliness of heart when she sees that she can no longer compete with the manly influence in amusing and interesting her only boy. How can pretty stories and sugar-plums stand against horse, and dog, and gun, and a day’s sport? And what is motherly love to a healthy boy, compared with the qualities of a father who can give him such things and share in his enjoyment of them? Also, the smaller the boy the greater his delight in any grown-up sport, and Leone had begun to ride and shoot at an age when most Roman boys are scarcely out of the nursery. It is true that he looked two or three years older than his age, and had fought with boys bigger than himself, like Mario Campodonico, and had ‘hammered’ them, as he called it.
This was the situation between Montalto, his wife and the boy, when they all came back to Rome towards theend of October; and Orlando Schmidt went before them to see that everything was ready and to take the place of the old steward, who had at last died, leaving the estate in a confusion worthy of his well-meaning stupidity. Schmidt was to set matters right, and find a proper man to manage the Roman lands under his general direction, while he himself administered the Montalto estate as heretofore. He had, in fact, been promoted to be the agent for all the property owned by the Count in Italy.
In October, too, six months after the Dowager Countess’s death, Maria and her husband put on half mourning, according to the strict rule that prevails in Rome in those matters; and though they would not go to balls and big dinners yet, they were permitted to see something of their friends—and even of their acquaintances.
That was really the end of the quiet life they had led together for five months. Maria was to go back, take her place in society as a Roman lady, and be a great personage once more in that old-fashioned, ceremonious life which has survived in scarcely any other city in the world, and is fast disappearing in Rome itself.
So far had Maria dragged herself on the thorny path of her expiation without much help from without, and with little hope within.