"Perhaps you do understand me. Perhaps you do," he said at last. "I have known you a long time. It must be four years, at least—ever since I first came here to work. It has been a long piece of life."
"Indeed it has," Gloria answered, and a moment later she sighed.
The wind blew the sheet of music against her. She folded it impatiently, threw it aside and resumed her position, resting one elbow on the narrow desk. The silence lasted several seconds, and the white curtains flapped softly against the heavy ones.
"I wonder whether you understand my life at all," she said presently.
"I am not sure that I do. It is a strange life, in some ways—like yourself."
"Am I strange?"
"Very."
"What makes you think so?"
Again he was silent for a time. His face was very still. It would have been impossible to guess from it that he felt any emotion at the moment.
"Do you like compliments?" he asked abruptly.
"That depends upon whether I consider them compliments or not," she answered, with a little laugh.
"You are a very perfect woman in very imperfect surroundings," said Griggs.
"That is not a compliment to the surroundings, at all events. I do not know whether to laugh or not. Shall I?"
"If you will. I like to hear you laugh."
"You should hear me cry!" And she laughed again at herself.
"God forbid!" he said gravely.
"I do sometimes," she answered, and her face grew suddenly sad, as he watched her.
He felt a quick pain for her in his heart.
"I am sorry you have told me so," he said. "I do not like to think of it. Why should you cry? What have you to cry for?"
"What should you think?" she asked lightly, though no smile came with the words.
"I cannot guess. Tell me. Is it because you still wish to be a singer? Is that it?"
"No. That is not it."
"Then I cannot guess." He looked for the answer in her face. "Will you tell me?" he asked after a pause.
"Of what use could it be?" Her eyes met his for a moment, the lids fell, and she turned away. "Will you shut the window?" she said suddenly. "The wind blows the things about. Besides, it is getting late."
He rose and went to the window. She watched him as he shut it, turning his back to her, so that his figure stood out distinct and black against the light. She realized what a man he was. With those arms and those shoulders he could do anything, as he had once caught her in the air and saved her life, and then, again, as he had broken the cords that night at Mendoza's house. There was nothing physical which such a man could not do. He was something on which to rely in her limited life, an absolute contrast to her husband, whose vagueness irritated her, while his deadness of sensibility, where she had wrung his sensitiveness too far, humiliated her in her own eyes. She had kept her secret long, she thought, though she had kept it for the simple reason that she had no one in whom to confide.
Griggs came back from the window and sat down near her again in the low chair, looking up into her face.
"Mr. Griggs," she said, turning from his eyes and looking into the piano, "you asked me a question just now. I should like to answer it, if I were quite sure of you."
"Are you not sure of me?" he asked. "I think you might be, by this time. We were just saying that we had known each other so long."
"Yes. But—all sorts of things have happened in that time, you know. I am not the same as I was when I first knew you."
"No. You are married. That is one great difference."
"Too great," said she. "Honestly, do you think me improved since my marriage?"
"Improved? No. Why should you improve? You are just what you were meant to be, as you always were."
"I know. You called me a perfect woman a little while ago, and you said my surroundings were imperfect. You must have meant that they did not suit me, or that I did not suit them. Which was it?"
"They ought to suit you," said Griggs. "If they do not, it is not your fault."
"But I might have done something to make them suit me. I sometimes think that I have not treated them properly."
"Why should you blame yourself? You did not make them, and they cannot unmake you. You have a right to be yourself. Everybody has. It is the first right. Your surroundings owe you more than you owe to them, because you are what you are, and they are not what they ought to be. Let them bear the blame. As for not treating them properly, no one could accuse you of that."
"I do not know—some one might. People are so strange, sometimes."
She stopped, and he answered nothing. Looking down into the open piano, she idly watched the hammers move as she pressed the keys softly with one hand.
"Some people are just like this," she said, smiling, and repeating the action. "If you touch them in a certain way, they answer. If you press them gently, they do not understand. Do you see? The hammer comes just up to the string, and then falls back again without making any noise. I suppose those are my surroundings. Sometimes they answer me, and sometimes they do not. I like things I can be sure of."
"And by things you mean people," suggested Griggs.
"Of course."
"And by your surroundings you mean—what?"
"You know," she answered in a low voice, turning her face still further away from him.
"Reanda?"
She hesitated for a moment, knowing that her answer must have weight on the man.
"I suppose so," she said at last. "I ought not to say so—ought I? Tell me the truth."
"The truth is, you are unhappy," he answered slowly. "There is no reason why you should not tell me so. Perhaps I might help you, if you would let me."
He almost regretted that he had said so much, little as it was. But she had wished him to say it, and more, also. Still turning from him, she rested her chin in her hand. His face was still, but there was the beginning of an expression in it which she had never seen. Now that the window was shut it was very quiet in the room, and the air was strangely heavy and soft and dim. Now and then the panes rattled a little. Griggs looked at the graceful figure as Gloria sat thinking what she should say. He followed the lines till his eyes rested on what he could see of her averted face. Then he felt something like a sharp, quick blow at his temples, and the blood rose hot to his throat. At the same instant came the bitter little pang he had known long, telling him that she had never loved him and never could.
"Are you really my friend?" she asked softly.
"Yes." The word almost choked him, for there was not room for it and for the rest.
She turned quietly and surveyed the marble mask with curious inquiry.
"Why do you say it like that," she asked; "as though you would rather not? Do you grudge it?"
"No." He spoke barely above his breath.
"How you say it!" she exclaimed, with a little laugh that could not laugh itself out, for there was a strange tension in the air, and on her and on him. "You might say it better," she added, the pupils of her eyes dilating a little so that the room looked suddenly larger and less distinct.
She knew the sensation of coming emotion, and she loved it. She had never thought before that she could get it by talking with Paul Griggs. He did not answer her.
"Perhaps you meant it," she said presently. "I hardly know. Did you?"
"Please be reasonable," said Griggs, indistinctly, and his hands gripped each other on his knee.
"How oddly you talk!" she exclaimed. "What have I said that was unreasonable?"
She felt that the emotion she had expected was slipping from her, and her nerves unconsciously resented the disappointment. She was out of temper in an instant.
"You cannot understand," he answered. "There is no reason why you should. Forgive me. I am nervous to-day."
"You? Nervous?" She laughed again, with alittle scorn. "You are not capable of being nervous."
She was dimly conscious that she was provoking him to something, she knew not what, and that he was resisting her. He did not answer her last words. She went back to the starting-point again, dropping her voice to a sadder key.
"Honestly, will you be my friend?" she asked, with a gentle smile.
"Heart and soul—and hand, too, if you want it," he said, for he had recovered his speech. "Tell me what the trouble is. If I can, I will take you out of it."
It was rather an odd speech, and she was struck by the turn of the phrase, which expressed more strength than doubt of power to do anything he undertook.
"I believe you could," she said, looking at him. "You are so strong. You could do anything."
"Things are never so hard as they look, if one is willing to risk everything," he answered. "And when one has nothing to lose," he added, as an after-thought.
She sighed, and turned away again, half satisfied.
"There is nothing to risk," she said. "It is not a case of danger. And you cannot take my trouble and tear it up like a pack of cards with those hands of yours. I wish you could. I am unhappy—yes, I have told you so. But what can you do tohelp me? You cannot make my surroundings what they are not, you know."
"No—I cannot change your husband," said Griggs.
She started a little, but still looked away.
"No. You cannot make him love me," she said, softly and sadly.
The big hands lost their hold on one another, and the deep eyes opened a little wider. But she was not watching him.
"Do you mean to say—" He stopped.
She slowly bent her head twice, but said nothing.
"Reanda does not love you?" he said, in wondering interrogation. "Why—I thought—" He hesitated.
"He cares no more for me than—that!" The hand that stretched towards him across the open piano tapped the polished wood once, and sharply.
"Are you in serious earnest?" asked Griggs, bending forward, as though to catch her first look when she should turn.
"Does any one jest about such things?" He could just see that her lips curled a little as she spoke.
"And you—you love him still?" he asked, with pressing voice.
"Yes—I love him. The more fool I."
The words did not grate on him, as they wouldhave jarred on her husband's ear. The myth he had imagined made perfections of the woman's faults.
"It is a pity," he said, resting his forehead in his hand. "It is a deadly pity."
Then she turned at last and saw his attitude.
"You see," she said. "There is nothing to be done. Is there? You know my story now. I have married a man I worship, and he does not care for me. Take it and twist it as you may, it comes to that and nothing else. You can pity me, but you cannot help me. I must bear it as well as I can, and as long as I must. It will end some day—or I will make it end."
"For God's sake do not talk like that!"
"How should I talk? What should I say? Is it of any use to speak to him? Do you think I have not begged him, implored him, besought him, almost on my knees, to give up that work and do other things?"
Griggs looked straight into her eyes a moment and then almost understood what she meant.
"You mean that he—that when he is painting there—" He hesitated.
"Of course. All day long. All the bitter live-long day! They sit there together on pretence of talking about it. You know—you can guess at least—it is the old, old story, and I have to suffer for it. She could not marry him—because she isa princess and he an artist—good enough for me—God knows, I love him! Too good for her, ten thousand times too good! But yet not good enough for her to marry! He needed a wife, and she brought us together, and I suppose he told her that I should do very well for the purpose. I was a good subject. I fell in love with him—that was what they wanted. A wife for her favourite! O God! When I think of it—"
She stopped suddenly and buried her face in both her hands, as she leaned upon the piano.
"It is not to be believed!" The strong man's voice vibrated with the rising storm of anger.
She looked up again with flashing eyes and pale cheeks.
"No!" she cried. "It is not to be believed! But you see it now. You see what it all is, and how my life is wrecked and ruined before it is half begun. It would be bad enough if I had married him for his fame, for his face, for his money, for anything he has or could have. But I married him because I loved him with all my soul, and worshipped him and everything he did."
"I know. We all saw it."
"Of course—was it anything to hide? And I thought he loved me, too. Do you know?" She grew more calm. "At first I used to go and sit in the hall when he was at work. Then he grew silent, and I felt that he did not want me. Ithought it was because he was such a great artist, and could not talk and work, and wanted to be alone. So I stayed away. Then, once, I went there, and she was there, sitting in that great chair—it shows off the innocence of her white face, you know! The innocence of it!" Gloria laughed bitterly. "They were talking when I came, and they stopped as soon as the door opened. I am sure they were talking about me. Then they seemed dreadfully uncomfortable, and she went away. After that I went several times. Once or twice she came in while I was there. Then she did not come any more. He must have told her, of course. He kept looking at the door, though, as if he expected her at any moment. But she never came again in those days. I could not bear it—his trying to talk to me, and evidently wishing all the time that she would come. I gave up going altogether at last. What could I do? It was unbearable. It was more than flesh and blood could stand."
"I do not wonder that you hate her," said Griggs. "I have often thought you did."
Gloria smiled sadly.
"Yes," she answered. "I hate her with all my heart. She has robbed me of the only thing I ever had worth having—if I ever had it. I sometimes wonder—or rather, no. I do not wonder, for I know the truth well enough. I have beenover and over it again and again in the night. He never loved me. He never could love any one but her. He knew her long ago, and has loved her all his life. Why should he put me in her place? He admired me. I was a beautiful plaything—no, not beautiful—" She paused.
"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said Paul Griggs, with deep conviction.
He saw the blush of pleasure in her face, saw the fluttering of the lids. But he neither knew that she had meant him to say it, nor did he judge of the vast gulf her mind must have instantaneously bridged, from the outpouring of her fancied injuries and of her hatred for Francesca Campodonico, to the unconcealable satisfaction his words gave her.
"I have heard him say that, too," she answered a moment later. "But he did not mean it. He never meant anything he said to me—not one word of it all. You do not know what that means," she went on, working herself back into a sort of despairing anger again. "You do not know. To have built one's whole life on one thing, as I did! To have believed only one thing, as I did! To find that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched piece of acting—oh, you do not know! That woman's face haunts me in the dark—she is always there, with him, wherever I look, as they are together now at her house. Do you understand? Do youknow what I feel? You pity me—but do you know? Oh, I have longed for some one—I have wished I had a dog to listen to me—sometimes—it is so hard to be alone—so very hard—"
She broke off suddenly and hid her face again.
"You are not alone. You have me—if you will have me."
Before he had finished speaking the few words, the first sob broke, violent, real, uncontrollable. Then came the next, and then the storm of tears. Griggs rose instinctively and came to her side. He leaned heavily on the piano, bending down a little, helpless, as some men are at such moments. She did not notice him, and her sobs filled the still room. As he stood over her he could see the bright tears falling upon the black and white ivory keys. He laid his trembling hand upon her shoulder. He could hardly draw his breath for the sight of her suffering.
"Don't—don't," he said, almost pathetic in his lack of eloquence when he thought he most needed it.
One of her hot hands, all wet with tears, went suddenly to her shoulder, and grasped his that lay there, with a convulsive pressure, seeming to draw him down as she bowed herself almost to the keyboard in her agony of weeping. Then, without thought, his other hand, cold as ice, was under her throat, bringing her head gently back upon hisarm, till the white face was turned up to his. Sob by sob, more distantly, the tempest subsided, but still the great tears swelled the heavy lids and ran down across her face upon his wrist. Then the wet, dark eyes opened and looked up to his, above her head.
"Be my friend!" she said softly, and her fingers pressed his very gently.
He looked down into her eyes for one moment, and then the passion in him got the mastery of his honourable soul.
"How can I?" he cried in a broken, choking voice. "I love you!"
In an instant he was standing up, lifting her high from the floor, and the lips that had perhaps never kissed for love before, were pressed upon hers. What chance had she, a woman, in those resistless arms of his? In her face was the still, fateful look of the dead nun, rising from the far grave of a buried tragedy.
In his uncontrollable passion he crushed her to him, holding her up like a child. She struggled and freed her hands and pressed them both upon his two eyes.
"Please—please!" she cried.
There was a pitiful ring in the tone, like the bleating of a frightened lamb. He hurt her too, for he was overstrong when he was thoughtless.
She cried out to him to let her go. But as shehung there, it was not all fear that she felt. There came with it an uncertain, half-delirious thrill of delight. To feel herself but a feather to his huge strength, swung, tossed, kissed, crushed, as he would. There was fear already, there was all her innocent maidenlike resistance, beating against him with might and anger, there was the feminine sense of injury by outrageous violence; but with it all there was also the natural woman's delight in the main strength of the natural man, that could kill her in an instant if he chose, but that could lift her to itself as a little child and surround her and protect her against the whole world.
"Please—please!" she cried again, covering his fierce eyes and white face with her hands and trying to push him away. The tone was pathetic in its appeal, and it touched him. His arms relaxed, tightened again with a sort of spasm, and then she found herself beside him on her feet. A long silence followed.
Gloria sank into a chair, glanced at him and saw that his face was turned away, looked down again and then watched him. His chest heaved once or twice, as though he had run a short sharp race. One hand grasped the back of a chair as he stood up. All at once, without looking at her, he went to the window and stood there, looking out, but seeing nothing. The soft damp wind made the panes of glass rattle. Still neither broke the silence. Thenhe came to her and stood before her, looking down, and she looked down, too, and would not see him. She was more afraid of him now than when he had lifted her from her feet, and her heart beat fast. She wondered what he would say, for she supposed that he meant to ask her forgiveness, and she was right.
"Gloria—forgive me!"—Vol. II., p. 50."Gloria—forgive me!"—Vol. II., p. 50.
"Gloria—forgive me," he said.
She looked up, a little fear of him still in her face.
"How can I?" she asked, but in her voice there was forgiveness already.
Her womanly instinct, though she was so young, told her that the fault was hers, and that considering the provocation it was not a great one—what were a few kisses, even such kisses as his, in a lifetime? And she had tempted him beyond all bounds and repented of it. Before the storm she had raised in him, her fancied woes sank away and seemed infinitely small. She knew that she had worked herself up to emotion and tears, though not half sure of what she was saying, that she had exaggerated all she knew and suggested all she did not know, that she had almost been acting a part to satisfy something in her which she could not understand. And by her acting she had roused the savage truth in her very face and it had swept down everything before it. She had not guessed such possibilities. Before the tempest of his love all she had ever felt or dreamed of feeling seemedcolourless and cold. She dreaded to rouse it again, and yet she could never forget the instant thrill that had quivered through her when he had lifted her from her feet.
When she had answered him with her question, he stood still in silence for a moment. She was too perfect in his eyes for him to cast the blame upon her, yet he knew that it had not been all his fault. And in the lower man was the mad triumph of having kissed her and of having told her, once for all, the whole meaning of his being. She looked down, and he could not see her eyes. There was no chair near. To see her face he dropped upon his knee and lightly touched her hands that lay idly in her lap. She started, fearing another outbreak.
"Please—please!" he said softly, using the very word she had used to him.
"Yes—but—" She hesitated and then raised her eyes.
The mask of his face was all softened, and his lips trembled a little. His hands quivered, too, as they touched hers.
"Please!" he repeated. "I promise. Indeed, I promise. Forgive me."
She smiled, all at once, dreamily. All his emotion, and her desire for it, were gone.
"I asked you to be my friend," she said. "I meant it, you know. How could you? It was not kind."
"No—but forgive me," he insisted in a pleading tone.
"I suppose I must," she said at last. "But I shall never feel sure of you again. How can I?"
"I promise. You will believe me, not to-day, perhaps, nor to-morrow, but soon. I will be just what I have always been. I will never do anything to offend you again."
"You promise me that? Solemnly?" She still smiled.
"Yes. It is a promise. I will keep it. I will be your friend always. Give me something to do for you. It will make it easier."
"What can I ask you to do? I shall never dare to speak to you about my life again."
"I think you will, when you see that I am just as I used to be. And you forgive me, quite?"
"Yes. I must. We must forget to-day. It must be as though it had never happened. Will you forget it?"
"I will try." But of that he knew the utter impossibility.
"If you try, you can succeed. Now get up. Be reasonable."
He took her hand in both of his. She made a movement to withdraw it, and then submitted. He barely touched it with his lips and rose to his feet instantly.
"Thank you," she said simply.
She had never had such a mastery of charm over him as at that moment. But his mood was changed, and there was no breaking out of the other man in him, though he felt again the quick sharp throb in the temples, and the rising blood at his throat. The higher self was dominant once more, and the features was as still as a statue's.
He took leave of her very quickly and went out into the damp street and faced the gusty southeast wind.
When he was gone, she rose and went to the window with a listless step, and gazed idly through the glass at the long row of windows in the palace opposite, and then went back and sank down, as though very weary, upon a sofa far from the light. There was a dazed, wondering look in her face and she sat very still for a long time, till it began to grow dark. In the dusk she rose and went to the piano and sang softly to herself. Her voice never swelled to a full note, and the chords which her fingers sought were low and gentle and dreamy.
While she was singing, the door opened noiselessly, and Reanda came in and stood beside her. She broke off and looked up, a little startled. The same wondering, half-dazed look was in her face. Her husband bent down and kissed her, and she kissed him silently.
Donna Francescahad put off her mourning, and went into the world again during that winter. The world said that she might marry if she so pleased, and was somewhat inclined to wonder that she did not. She could have made a brilliant match if she had chosen. But instead, though she appeared everywhere where society was congregated together, she showed a tendency to religion which surprised her friends.
A tendency to religion existed in the Braccio family, together with various other tendencies not at all in harmony with it, nor otherwise edifying. Those other tendencies seemed to be absent in Francesca, and little by little her acquaintances began to speak of her as a devout person. The Prince of Gerano even hinted that she might some day be an abbess in the Carmelite Convent at Subiaco, as many a lady of the great house had been before her. But Francesca was not prepared to withdraw from the world altogether, though at the present time she was very unhappy.
She suspected herself of a great sin, besides reproaching herself bitterly with many of her deedswhich deserved no blame at all. Yet she was by no means morbid, nor naturally inclined to perpetual self-examination. On the contrary, she had always been willing to accept life as a simple affair which could not offer any difficulties provided that one were what she meant by "good"—that is, honest in word and deed, and scrupulous in doing thoroughly and with right intention those things which her religion required of her, but in which only she herself could judge of her own sincerity.
Of late, however, she had felt that there was something very wrong in all her recent life. The certainty of it dawned by degrees, and then burst upon her suddenly one day when she was with Reanda.
She had long ago noticed the change in his manner, the harassed look, and the sad ring in his voice, and for a time his suffering was her sorrow, and there was a painful pleasure in being able to feel for him with all her heart. He had gone through a phase which had lasted many months, and the change was great between his former and his present self. He had suffered, but indifference was creeping upon him. It was clear enough. Nothing interested him but his art, and perhaps her own conversation, though even that seemed doubtful to her.
They were alone together on a winter's afternoonin the great hall. The work was almost done, and they had been talking of the more mechanical decorations, and of the style of the furniture.
"It is a big place," said Francesca, "but I mean to fill it. I like large rooms, and when it is finished, I will take up my quarters here, and call it my boudoir."
She smiled at the idea. The hall was at least fifty feet long by thirty wide.
"All the women I know have wretched little sitting-rooms in which they can hardly turn round," she said. "I will have all the space I like, and all the air and all the light. Besides, I shall always have the dear Cupid and Psyche, to remind me of you."
She spoke the last words with the simplicity of absolute innocence.
"And me?" he asked, as innocently and simply as she. "What will you do with me?"
"Whatever you like," she said, taking it quite for granted, as he did, that he was to work for her all his life. "You can have a studio in the house, just as it used to be, if you please. And you can paint the great canvas for the ceiling of the dining-room. Or shall I restore the old chapel? Which should you rather do—oil-painting, or fresco?"
"You would not want the altar piece which I should paint," he said, with sudden sadness.
"Santa Francesca?" she asked. "It would have to be Santa Francesca. The chapel is dedicated to her. You could make a beautiful picture of her—a portrait, perhaps—" she stopped.
"Of yourself? Yes, I could do that," he answered quickly.
"No," she said, and hesitated. "Of your wife," she added rather abruptly.
He started and looked at her, and she was sorry that she had spoken. Gloria's beautiful face had risen in her mind, and it had seemed generous to suggest the idea. Finding a difficulty in telling him, she had thought it her duty to be frank.
He laughed harshly before he answered her.
"No," he said. "Certainly not a portrait of my wife. Not even to please you. And that is saying much."
He spoke very bitterly. In the few words, he poured out the pent-up suffering of many months. Francesca turned pale.
"I know, and it is my fault," she said in a low voice.
"Your fault? No! But it is not mine."
His hands trembled violently as he took up his palette and brushes and began to mix some colours, not knowing what he was doing.
"It is my fault," said Francesca, still very white, and staring at the brick floor. "I have seen it. I could not speak of it. You are unhappy—miserable.Your life is ruined, and I have done it. I!"
She bit her lip almost before the last word was uttered; for it was stronger and louder than she had expected it to be, and the syllable rang with a despairing echo in the empty hall.
Reanda shook his head, and bent over his colours with shaking hands, but said nothing.
"I was so happy when you were married," said Francesca, forcing herself to speak calmly. "She seemed such a good wife for you—so young, so beautiful. And she loves you—"
"No." He shook his head energetically. "She does not love me. Do not say that, for it is not true. One does not love in that way—to-day a kiss, to-morrow a sting—to-day honey, to-morrow snake-poison. Do not say that it is love, for it is not true. The heart tells the truth, all alone in the breast. A thousand words cannot make it tell one lie. But for me—it is finished. Let us speak no more of love. Let us talk of our good friendship. It is better."
"Eh, let us speak of it, of this friendship! It has cost tears of blood!"
Francesca, in the sincerity of what she felt, relapsed into the Roman dialect. Almost all Romans do, under any emotion.
"Everything passes," answered Reanda, laying his palette aside, and beginning to walk up anddown, his hands in his pockets. "This also will pass," he added, as he turned. "We are men. We shall forget."
"But not I. For I did it. Your sadness cuts my heart, because I did it. I—I alone. But for me, you would be free."
"Would to Heaven!" exclaimed the artist, almost under his breath. "But I will not have you say that it is your fault!" he cried, stopping before her. "I was the fool that believed. A man of my age—oh, a serious man—to marry a child! I should have known. At first, I do not say. I was the first. She thought she had paradise in her arms. A husband! They all want it, the husband. But I, who had lived and seen, I should have known. Fool, fool! Ignorant fool!"
The words came out vehemently in the strong dialect, and the nervous, heart-wrung man struck his breast with his clenched fist, and his eyes looked upward.
"Reanda, Reanda! What are you saying? When I tell you that I made you marry her! It was here,—I was in this very chair,—and I told you about her. And I asked her here with intention, that you might see how beautiful she was. And then, neither one nor two, she fell in love with you! It would have been a miracle if you had not married her. And her father, he was satisfied.May that day be accursed when I brought them here to torment you!"
She spoke excitedly, and her lip quivered. He began to walk again with rapid, uncertain strides.
"For that—yes!" he said. "Let the day bear the blame. But I was the madman. Who leaves the old way and follows the new knows what he leaves, but not what he may find. I might have been contented. I was so happy! God knows how happy I was!"
"And I!" exclaimed Francesca, involuntarily; but he did not hear her.
She felt a curious sense of elation, though she was so truly sorry for him, and it disturbed her strangely. She looked at him and smiled, and then wondered why the smile came. There is a ruthless cruelty in the half-unconscious impulses of the purest innocence, of which vice itself might be ashamed in its heart. It is simple humanity's assertion of its prior right to be happy. She smiled spontaneously because she knew that Reanda no longer loved Gloria, and she felt that he could not love her again; and for a while she was too simply natural to quarrel with herself for it, or to realize what it meant.
He was nervous, melancholy, and unstrung, and he began to talk about himself and his married life for the first time, pouring out his sufferings and thoughtless of what Francesca might think andfeel. He, too, was natural. Unlike his wife, he detested emotion. To be angry was almost an illness to his over-finely organized temperament. In a way, Griggs had been right in saying that Reanda seemed to paint as an agent in the power of an unseen, directing influence. Beauty made him feel itself, and feel for it in his turn with his brush. The conception was before him, guiding his hand, before a stroke of the work was done. There was the lightning-like co-respondence and mutual reaction between thought and execution, which has been explained by some to be the simultaneous action of two minds in man, the subjective and the objective. In doing certain things he had the patience and the delicacy of one for whom time has no meaning. He could not have told whether his hand followed his eye, or his eye followed his hand. His whole being was of excessively sensitive construction, and emotion of any kind, even pleasure, jarred upon its hair-fine sensibilities. And yet, behind all this, there was the tenacity of the great artist and the phenomenal power of endurance, in certain directions, which is essential to prize-winning in the fight for fame. There was the quality of nerve which can endure great tension in one way, but can bear nothing in other ways.
He went on, giving vent to all he felt, talking to himself rather than to Francesca. He could notreproach his wife with any one action of importance. She was fond of Paul Griggs. But it was only Griggs! He smiled. In his eyes, the cold-faced man was no more than a stone. In their excursions into society she had met men whom he considered far more dangerous, men young, handsome, rich, having great names. They admired her and said so to her in the best language they had, which was no doubt often very eloquent. Had she ever looked twice at one of them? No. He could not reproach her with that. The Duchess of Astrardente was not more cold to her admirers than Gloria was. It was not that. There were little things, little nothings, but in thousands. He tried to please her with something, and she laughed in his face, or found fault. She had small hardnesses and little vulgarities of manner that drove him mad.
"I had thought her like you," he said suddenly, turning to Francesca. "She is not. She is coarse-grained. She has the soul of a peasant, with the face of a Madonna. What would you have? It is too much. Love is an illusion. I will have no more of it. Besides, love is dead. It would be easier to wake a corpse. I shall live. I may forget. Meanwhile there is our friendship. That is of gold."
Francesca listened in silence, thoughtful and with downcast eyes, as the short, disjointed sentencesbroke vehemently from his lips, each one accusing her in her own heart of having wrought the misery of two lives, one of which was very dear to her. Too dear, as she knew at last. The scarlet shame would have burned her face, if she had owned to herself that she loved this man, whom she had married to another, believing that she was making his happiness. She would not own it. Had she admitted it then, she would have been capable of leaving him within the hour, and of shutting herself up forever in the Convent at Subiaco to expiate the sin of the thought. It was monstrous in her eyes, and she would still refuse to see it.
But she owned that there was the suspicion, and that Angelo Reanda was far dearer to her than anything else on earth. Her innocence was so strong and spotless that it had a right to its one and only satisfaction. But what she felt for Reanda was either love, or it was blasphemy against the holy thing in whose place he stood in her temple. It must not be love, and therefore, as anything else, it was too much. And the strange joy she felt because Gloria was nothing to him, still filled her heart, though it began to torment her with the knowledge of evil which she had never understood.
There was much else against him, too, in her pride of race, and it helped her just then, for it told her how impossible it was that she, a princessof the house of Braccio, should love a mere artist, the son of a steward, whose forefathers had been bondsmen to her ancestors from time immemorial. It was out of the question, and she would not believe it of herself. Yet, as she looked into his delicate, spiritual face and watched the shades of expression that crossed it, she felt that it made little difference whence he came, since she understood him and he understood her.
She became confused by her own thoughts and grasped at the idea of a true and perfect friendship, with a somewhat desperate determination to see it and nothing else in it, for the rest of her life, rather than part with Angelo Reanda.
"Friends," she said thoughtfully. "Yes—always friends, you and I. But as a friend, Reanda, what can I do? I cannot help you."
"The time for help is past, if it ever came. You are a saint—pray for me. You can do that."
"But there is more than that to be done," she said, ready to sacrifice anything or everything just then. "Do not tell me it is hopeless. I will see your wife often and I will talk to her. I am older than she, and I can make her understand many things."
"Do not try it," said Reanda, in an altered tone. "I advise you not to try it. You can do no good there, and you might find trouble."
"Find trouble?" repeated Francesca, not understandinghim. "What do you mean? Does she dislike me?"
"Have you not seen it?" he asked, with a bitter smile.
Francesca did not answer him at once, but bent her head again. Once or twice she looked up as though she were about to speak.
"It is as I tell you," said Reanda, nodding his head slowly.
Francesca made up her mind, but the scarlet blood rose in her face.
"It is better to be honest and frank," she said. "Is Gloria jealous of me?" She was so much ashamed that she could hardly look at him just then.
"Jealous! She would kill you!" he cried, and there was anger in his voice at the thought. "Do not go to her. Something might happen."
The blush in Francesca's face deepened and then subsided, and she grew very pale again.
"But if she is jealous, she loves you," she said earnestly and anxiously.
He shrugged his high thin shoulders, and the bitter smile came back to his face.
"It is a stage jealousy," he said cruelly. "How could she pass the time without something to divert her? She is always acting."
"But what is she jealous of?" asked Francesca. "How can she be jealous of me? Because youwork here? She is free to come if she likes, and to stay all day. I do not understand."
"Who can understand her? God, who made her, understands her. I am only a man. I know only one thing, that I loved her and do not love her. And she makes a scene for every day. One day it is you, and another day it is the walls she does not like. You will forgive me, Princess. I speak frankly what comes to my mouth from my heart. The whole story is this. She makes my life intolerable. I am not an idle man, the first you may meet in society, to spend my time from morning to night in studying my wife's caprices. I am an artist. When I have worked I must have peace. I do not ask for intelligent conversation like yours. But I must have peace. One of these days I shall strangle her with my hands. The Lord will forgive me and understand. I am full of nerves. Is it my fault? She twists them as the women wring out clothes at the fountain. It is not a life; it is a hell."
"Poor Reanda! Poor Reanda!" repeated Francesca, softly.
"I do not pity myself," he said scornfully. "I have deserved it, and much more. But I am human. If it goes on a little longer, you may take me to Santo Spirito, for I am going mad. At least I should be there in holy peace. After her, the madmen would all seem doctors of wisdom. Doyou know what will happen this evening? I go home. 'Where have you been?' she will ask. 'At the Palazzetto.' 'What have you been doing?' 'Painting—it is my trade.' 'Was Donna Francesca there?' 'Of course. She is mistress in her own house.' 'And what did you talk of?' 'How should I remember? We talked.' Then it will begin. It will be an inferno, as it always is. 'Leave hope behind, all ye that enter here!' I can say it, if ever man could! You are right to pity me. Before it is finished you will have reason to pity me still more. Let us hope it may finish soon. Either San Lorenzo, or Santo Spirito—with the mad or with the dead."
"Poor Reanda!"
"Yes—poor Reanda, if you like. People envy me, they say I am a great artist. If they think so, let them say it. It seems to them that I am somebody." He laughed, almost hysterically. "Somebody! Stuff for Santo Spirito! That is all she has left me in two years—not yet two years."
"Do not talk of Santo Spirito," said Francesca. "You shall not go mad. When you are unhappy, think of our friendship and of all the hours you have here every day." She hesitated and seemed to make an effort over herself. "But it is impossible that it should be all over, so hopelessly and so soon. She is nervous, perhaps. The climate does not suit her—"
Reanda laughed wildly, for he was rapidly losing all control of himself.
"Therefore I should take her away and go and live somewhere else!" he cried. "That would be the end! I should tear her to pieces with my hands—"
"Hush, hush! You are talking madly—"
"I know it. There is reason. It will end badly, one of these days, unless I end first, and that may happen also. Without you it would have happened long ago. You are the good angel in my life, the one friend God has sent me in my tormented existence, the one star in my black sky. Be my friend still, always, for ever and ever, and I shall live forever only to be your friend. As for love—the devil and his demons will know what to do with it—they will find their account in it. They have lent it, and they will take their payment in blood and tears of those who believe them."
"But there is love in the world, somewhere," said Francesca, gently.
"Yes—and in hell! But not in heaven—where you will be."
Francesca sighed unconsciously, and looked long away towards the great windows at the end of the hall. Reanda gathered up his palette and brushes with a steadier hand. His anger had not spent itself, but it made him suddenly strong, and theoutburst had relieved him, though it was certain that it would be followed by a reaction of profound despondency.
All at once he came close to Francesca. She looked up, half startled by his sudden movement.
"At least it is true—this one thing," he said. "I can count upon you."
"Yes. You can count upon me," she answered, gazing into his eyes.
He did not move. The one hand held his palette, the other hung free by his side. All at once she took it in hers, still looking up into his eyes.
"I am very fond of you," she said earnestly. "You can count upon me as long as we two live."
"God bless you," he said, more quietly than he had spoken yet, and his hand pressed hers a little.
There could be no harm in saying as much as that, she thought, when it was so true and so simply said. It was all she could ever say to him, or to herself, and there was no reason why she should not say it. He would not misunderstand her. No man could have mistaken the innocence that was the life and light of her clear eyes. She was glad she had said it, and she was glad long afterwards that she had said it on that day, quietly, when no one could hear them in the great still hall.
Reandawent home that evening in a very disturbed state of mind. He had been better so long as he had not given vent to what he felt; for, as with many southern men of excitable temper and weak nerves, his thoughts about himself, as distinguished from his pursuits, did not take positive shape in his mind until he had expressed them in words. Amongst the Latin races the phrase, 'he cannot think without speaking,' has more truth as applied to some individuals than the Anglo-Saxon can easily understand.
For many months the artist had been most unhappy. His silence concerning his grief had been almost exemplary, and had been broken only now and then by a hasty exclamation of annoyance when Gloria's behaviour had irritated him beyond measure. He was the gentlest of men; and even when he had lost his temper with her, he had never spoken roughly.
"You are hard to please, my dear," he had sometimes said.
But that had been almost the strongest expression of his displeasure. It was not, indeed, thathe had exercised very great self-control in the matter, for he had little power of that sort over himself. If he was habitually mild and gentle in his manner with Gloria, it was rather because, like many Italians, he dreaded emotion as something like an illness, and could avoid it to some extent merely by not speaking freely of what he felt. Silence was generally easy to him; and he had not broken out more than two or three times in all his life, as he had done on that afternoon alone with Francesca.
The inevitable consequence followed immediately,—a consequence as much physical as mental, for when he went away from the Palazzetto, his clear dark eyes were bloodshot and yellow, and his hands had trembled so that he had hardly been able to find the armholes of his great-coat in putting it on. He walked with an uncertain and agitated step, glancing to right and left of him as he went, half-fiercely, half-timidly, as though he expected a new adversary to spring upon him from every corner. The straight line of the houses waned and shivered in the dusk, as he looked at them, and he saw flashes of light in the air. His head was hot and aching, and his hat hurt him. Altogether he was in a dangerous state, not unlike that which, with northern men, sometimes follows hard drinking.
He hated to go home that evening. So far as hewas conscious, he had neither misrepresented nor in any way exaggerated the miseries of his domestic existence; and he felt that it was before him now, precisely as he had described it. There would be the same questions, to which he would give the same answers, at which Gloria would put on the same expression of injured hopelessness, unless she broke out and lost her temper, which happened often enough. The prospect was intolerable. Reanda thrust his hands deep into the pocket of his overcoat, and glared about him as he turned the corner of the Via degli Astalli, and saw the Corso in the distance. But he did not slacken his pace as he went along under the gloomy walls of the Austrian Embassy—the Palace of Venice—the most grim and fortress-like of all Roman palaces.
He felt as a poor man may feel when, hot and feverish from working by a furnace, he knows that he must face the winter storm of freezing sleet and piercing wind in his thin and ragged jacket to go home—a plunge, as it were, from molten iron into ice, with no protection from the cold. Every step of the homeward way was hateful to him. Yet he knew his own weakness well enough not to hesitate. Had he stopped, he might have been capable of turning in some other direction, and of spending the whole evening with some of his fellow-artists, going home late in the night, whenGloria would be asleep. The thought crossed his mind. If he did that, he was sure to be carried away into speaking of his troubles to men with whom he had no intimacy. He was too proud for that. He wished he could go back to Francesca, and pour out his woes again. He had not said half enough. He should like to have it out, to the very end, and then lie down and close his eyes, and hear Francesca's voice soothing him and speaking of their golden friendship. But that was impossible, so he went home to face his misery as best he could.
There was exaggeration in all he thought, but there was none in the effect of his thoughts upon himself. He had married a woman unsuited to him in every way, as he was unsuited to her. The whole trouble lay there. Possibly he was not a man to marry at all, and should have led his solitary life to the end, illuminated from the outside, as it were, by Francesca Campodonico's faithful friendship and sweet influence. All causes of disagreement, considered as forces in married life, are relative in their value to the comparative solidity of the characters on which they act—a truism which ought to be the foundation of social charity, but is not. Reanda could not be blamed for his brittle sensitivenesses, nor Gloria for a certain coarse-grained streak of cruelty, which she had inherited from her father, and which had combinedstrangely with the rare gifts and great faults of her dead mother—the love of emotion for its own sake, and the tendency to do everything which might produce it in herself and those about her. Emotion was poison to Reanda. It was his wife's favourite food.
He reached his home, and went up the well-lighted marble staircase, wishing that he were ascending the narrow stone steps at the back of the Palazzetto Borgia, taper in hand, to his old bachelor quarters, to light his lamp, to smoke in peace, and to spend the evening over a sketch, or with a book, or dreaming of work not yet done. He paused on the landing, before he rang the bell of his apartment. The polished door irritated him, with its brass fittings and all that it meant of married life and irksome social obligation. He never carried a key, because the Roman keys of those times were large and heavy; but he had been obliged to use one formerly, when he had lived by himself. The necessity of ringing the bell irritated him again, and he felt a nervous shock of unwillingness as he pulled the brass knob. He set his teeth against the tinkling and jangling that followed, and his eyelids quivered. Everything hurt him. He did not feel sure of his hands when he wanted to use them. He was inclined to strike the silent and respectful man-servant who opened the door, merely because he was silent and respectful. Hewent straight to his own dressing-room, and shut himself in. It would be a relief to change his clothes. He and Gloria were to go to a reception in the evening, and he would dress at once. In those days few Romans dressed for dinner every day.
He dropped a stud, for his hands were shaking so that he could hardly hold anything; and he groped for the thing on his knees. The blood went to his head, and hurt him violently, as though he had received a blow.
Gloria's room was next to his, and she heard him moving about. She knocked and tried the door, but it was locked; and she heard him utter an exclamation of annoyance, as he hunted for the stud. She thought it was meant for her, and turned angrily back from the door. On any other day he would have called her, for he had heard her trying to get in. But he shrugged his lean shoulders impatiently, glanced once towards her room, found his stud, and went on dressing.
He really made an effort to get control of himself while he was alone. But to all intents and purposes he was actually ill. His face was drawn and sallow; his eyes were yellow and bloodshot; and there were deep, twitching lines about his mouth. His nostrils moved spasmodically when he drew breath, and his long thin hands fumbled helplessly at the studs and buttons of his clothes.At last he was dressed, and went into the drawing-room. Gloria was already there, waiting by the fireside, with an injured and forbidding expression in her beautiful face.
Reanda came to the fireside, and stood there, spreading out his trembling hands to the blaze. He dreaded the first word, as a man lying ill of brain fever dreads each cracking explosion in a thunderstorm. Strained as their relations had been for a long time, he had never failed to kiss Gloria when he came home. This evening he barely glanced at her, and stood watching the dancing tongues of the wood fire, not daring to think of the sound of his wife's voice. It came at last cool and displeased.
"Are you ill?" she asked, looking steadily at him.
"No," he answered with an effort, and his outstretched hands shook before the fire.
"Then what is the matter with you?"
"Nothing." He did not even turn his eyes to her, as he spoke the single word.
A silence followed, during which he suffered. Nevertheless, the first dreaded shock of hearing her voice was over. Though he had barely glanced at her, he had known from her face what the sound of the voice would be.
Gloria leaned back in her chair and watched the fire, and sighed. Griggs had been with herin the afternoon, and she had been happy, quite innocently, as she thought. The man's dominating strength and profound earnestness, which would have been intolerably dull to many women, smoothed Gloria, as it were. She said that he ironed the creases out of her life for her. It was not a softening influence, but a calming one, bred of strength pressing heavily on caprice. She resisted it, but took pleasure in finding that it was irresistible. Now and then it was not merely a steady pressure. He had a sledge hammer amongst his intellectual weapons, and once in a while it fell upon one of her illusions. She laughed at the destruction, and had no pity for the fragments. They were not illusions integral with her vanity, for he thought her perfect, and he would not have struck at her faults if he had seen them. Her faults grew, for they had root in her vital nature, and drew nourishment from his enduring strength, which surrounded them and protected them in the blind, whole-heartedness of his love. For the rest, he had kept his word. She had seen him turn white and bite his lip, sometimes, and more than once he had left her abruptly, and had not come back again for several days. But he had never forgotten his promise, in any word or deed since he had given it.
It is a dangerous thing to pile up a mountain of massive reality from which to look out upon thefading beauty of a fleeting illusion. In his influence on Gloria's life, the strong man had overtopped the man of genius by head and shoulders. And she loved the strange mixture of attraction and repulsion she felt when she was with Griggs—the something that wounded her vanity because she could not understand it, and the protecting shield that overspread that same vanity, and gave it freedom to be vain beyond all bounds. She would not have admitted that she loved the man. It was her nature to play upon his pity with the wounds her love for her husband had suffered. Yet she knew that if she were free she should marry him, because she could not resist him, and there was pleasure in the idea that she controlled so irresistible a force. The contrast between him and Reanda was ever before her, and since she had learned how weak genius could be, the comparison was enormously in favour of the younger man.
As Reanda stood there before the fire that evening, she despised him, and her heart rebelled against his nature. His nervousness, his trembling hands, his almost evident fear of being questioned, were contemptible. He was like a hunted animal, she thought. Two hours earlier her friend had stood there, solid, leonine, gladiatorial, dominating her with his square white face, and still, shadowy eyes, quietly stretching to the flames twohands that could have torn her in pieces,—a man imposing in his stern young sadness, almost solemn in his splendid physical dignity.
She looked at Reanda, and her lip curled with scorn of herself for having loved such a thing. It was long since she had seen the gentle light in his face which had won her heart two years ago. She was familiar with his genius, and it no longer surprised her into overlooking his frailty. His fame no longer flattered her. His gentleness was gone, and had left, not hardness nor violence, in its place, but a sort of irritable palsy of discontent. That was what she called it as she watched him.
"You used to kiss me when you came home," she said suddenly, leaning far back in her chair.
Mechanically he turned his head. The habit was strong, and she had reminded him of it. He did not wish to quarrel, and he did not reason. He moved a step to her side and bent down to kiss her forehead. The automatic conjugality of the daily kiss might have a good effect. That was what he thought, if he thought at all.
But she put up her hands suddenly, and thrust him back rudely.
"No," she said. "That sort of thing is not worth much, if I have to remind you to do it."
Her lip curled again. His high shoulders went up, and he turned away.
"You are hard to please," he said, and the wordswere as mechanical as the action that had preceded them.
"It cannot be said that you have taken much pains to please me of late," she answered coldly.
The servant announced dinner at that moment, and Reanda made no answer, though he glanced at her nervously. They went into the dining-room and sat down.
The storm brewed during the silent meal. Reanda scarcely ate anything, and drank a little weak wine and water.
"You hardly seem well enough to go out this evening," said Gloria, at last, but there was no kindness in the tone.
"I am perfectly well," he answered impatiently. "I will go with you."
"There is not the slightest necessity," replied his wife. "I can go alone, and you can go to bed."
"I tell you I am perfectly well!" he said with unconcealed annoyance. "Let me alone."
"Certainly. Nothing is easier."
The voice was full of that injured dignity which most surely irritated him, as Gloria knew. But the servant was in the room, and he said nothing, though it was a real effort to be silent. His tongue had been free that day, and it was hard to be bound again.
They finished dinner almost in silence, and thenwent back to the drawing-room by force of habit. Gloria was still in her walking-dress, but there was no hurry, and she resumed her favourite seat by the fire for a time, before going to dress for the reception.