Chapter Eleven.A couple of months passed without apparent change. To Wilbraham they had seemed to drag like lead, yet, looking back, their swiftness appalled him. The wedding would be after Easter, and now that the new year had come, it brought a date which had been remote, measurably nearer. He had gone through a bad fierce time of repulsion, of anger with his own amazing folly, with fate, with everything and everybody, with Sylvia worst of all. Then pride had come to his aid, and he determined resolutely to make the best of the situation. The strong pride of a very self-controlled man was able to do this more thoroughly than he had even hoped. He set his teeth now and then to avoid showing irritation at Sylvia’s futile remarks, but he always had succeeded in keeping under outward signs of impatience, and devoutly trusted that the power would never fail him. He was helped along by the girl’s own contentment. She asked so little! On the other hand this very trait sometimes annoyed him, for in the moments when the desire to break his bonds grew all but overpowering, he felt that the little he gave could not for a day have satisfied another woman.What was really a sign of danger, if only he had recognised it, was, that in spite of his increasing dread of his marriage, he did not dislike his hours in the Porta Pinciana. Teresa, in her fear for the wreck of Sylvia’s happiness, told herself that she must take care he did not dislike them. She was not a vain woman. The failure of her marriage had knocked any belief in her own charms out of her, and left only an exaggerated conviction of the immense power of beauty. It never entered her head that a constant contrast between her quick, clever, and sympathetic talk and poor Sylvia’s platitudes might be perilous. She did not think of Wilbraham on her own account at all, only and entirely as affecting Sylvia, although she had liked him better since the day at Assisi. Once or twice she had looked critically at him, and said to herself that his face had gained something in losing an expression of cool superiority, which used to annoy her. He was not handsome—his chin was too square, his nose too thick, his hair too straight; but there was strength in every movement, and she was sure he might be trusted. She dwelt much on that quality, at times, when she looked anxiously at Sylvia. For she had her anxieties, sometimes trying to set them at rest for ever, by questioning the girl in a roundabout way.“There’s nothing you want, Sylvia?”“Yes,” said the girl, “I want a little wool if you are going out.”“We must begin to think of the clothes—the important clothes,” said Teresa with a laugh, but watching her all the time. “I mean you to have yours from Paris.”“There is no good in wasting money,” Sylvia returned practically. “Why do people always think they must do that when they marry? It’s silly.”“Well, one isn’t married every day of one’s life,” pleaded the marchesa. Suddenly she said, with a quick change of voice, “Dear, you do want to marry your Walter, don’t you?”“Ofcourse!” The girl stared blankly in her face. “When people are engaged, of course they marry. How funny you are, Teresa!”“Well, then,” cried the other gaily, “none of your horrid little economical scruples for me! What’s the good of having more money than I know what to do with, if one mayn’t spend it? I shall order the frocks, and they shall be lovely.”“I think you had better consult Walter.”“Then I won’t. He can dress you after you are married; I shall do it before. Tell him so, if you like.”“Oh, we don’t talk of dress.”“Whatdoyou talk of?” asked Teresa with sudden curiosity.“I—I don’t know,” vaguely. “I think—sometimes—places.”The young marchesa who believed in romance, though her own was ended, looked at her anxiously.“Is that all?”“It’s a good deal. You can’t think how much there seems to say about Rome. And besides, he reads the newspaper.”“Oh!” cried Teresa sharply.“I don’t care about newspapers, generally, of course,” Sylvia went on, with her little air of finality, “but I like him to read them, because I can knit all the time, and count the stitches. One needn’t always attend.”On the whole there was not much comfort to be got out of this conversation, except that the girl was quite unruffled by doubts. Teresa would have liked to have been as sure of Wilbraham, for her sympathies were too lively not to have often alarmed her. She tried to close her eyes, and to make the house as pleasant as she could for him, succeeding only too well.“Let us go to-morrow to Villa Madama,” she said one Friday evening. Fernanda, with her broad smile, had just brought in the coffee, a log fire burnt merrily in the open stove, from the street rose a stir of voices, cracking of whips, cries of “Tribuna! EccoTribu—u—na!” “Polenti!” “Cerini, un sol’ cerini!” and the great hum of the electric tram, rushing up and down the hill like remorseless fate. “We’ll get the two Maxwells.”Teresa rose up and stood before the fire, so that its glow fell on her white dress. Mrs Brodrick moved uneasily in her chair, for she saw that although Wilbraham was sitting on a sofa beside Sylvia, he was watching Teresa.“I don’t know if Mary can come, but I am sure she would like it.”“Then,” said Wilbraham, “she will. She always does what she likes.”“She does what she likes,” agreed Mrs Brodrick smiling, “but she doesn’t always like what she does.”“Who does?” Wilbraham said, with a queer quick ring in the question. Teresa caught it, and twisted the conversation.“Colonel Maxwell picked up a Garofalo to-day—signed and all.”“Then he will be happy for a week,” said her grandmother.“Unless Mary shakes him out of his convictions. It’s idiotic of her, but she says she can’t help it after a day’s ravings.”“Idiotic,” repeated Wilbraham.“What’s idiotic?” asked Sylvia, standing up by the lamp to recover a dropped stitch.There was a momentary pause.“To open a man’s eyes to his mistakes, so long as he’s pleased. It’s so unnecessary,” Wilbraham answered sharply.“Then what ought one to do?”“Leave them. He’ll find them out for himself, soon enough.”Sylvia so rarely took an independent line that they were surprised to see her shaking her head.“I’d rather be told,” she said, still examining her work.Teresa moved uneasily.“Are we to go to the Villa Madama, or not?” she asked almost sharply. “Say yes or no, some one.”“We all say yes,” said Mrs Brodrick, with something of effort in the words. She, too, had been listening. Teresa went quickly to Sylvia and put her hand on her shoulder, the two young heads bending together.“How beautifully you knit!” cried Teresa, taking the work in her other hand. “I can never keep the silk so even. Do you know your fairy godmother must have been an exceedingly neat person?”Once in her hearing, Wilbraham had inveighed against untidiness.“Oh, Teresa, as if anybody ever had a fairy godmother!”“Ah, you weren’t brought up on a course of fairy stories, or you’d know better—Sylvia never once told a fib in her life,” she added to Wilbraham—“so she wouldn’t listen to anything which couldn’t be guaranteed as true. I was so unscrupulous that I used to take her in whenever I could.”“Teresa, you didn’t!” cried the girl, shocked, and turning honest helpless eyes with appeal in them to Wilbraham. Her sister laughed.“Don’t be afraid, I can bear the burden of those sins. Granny, I wish you’d let me burn that horrid sketch you’ve stuck up there. It’s all wrong.”Sylvia returned to her knitting; Teresa, a slim white figure, hands clasped behind her, had wandered off to stand before an easel in a dim corner. Wilbraham felt an unaccountable longing to make her turn towards him again.“I saw your Cesare to-day,” he said.“Did you?” She came quickly out of the shadows, and dropped on a chair. “Tell me about him, please.”“There’s little to tell. He was talking to a man near the Trevi.”“How did he look? Hungry?”“Well, yes—poor,” Wilbraham admitted, “and as big a ruffian as ever.”Teresa glanced at him mischievously.“Do you always determine what your eyes mean to see beforehand?”“I don’t wear rose-coloured glasses, at any rate.” He had certainly changed a good deal, for he now liked to spar with her, and his tone was eager.“Poor Cesare!” she sighed. “Did he glare?”“Like a Trojan.”“Well, you can’t expect him to like you.”“You might say,us.”“Oh no,” she said carelessly. “I was the first sinner, I own; but I did try to apologise, and you didn’t. You wounded his—”“Vanity,” put in Wilbraham with a laugh. “So be it. I shall have to bear the consequences as best I can.”Teresa was restless this evening. She got up again.“There’s the ten-o’clock bell.”“Does that mean that I’m to go?” he asked, rising in his turn.“It means that I am going.”“And to-morrow?”“Oh, settle with Sylvia,” she said impatiently.They filled two carriages, a big and a little one. Teresa was with Colonel Maxwell in the smaller, and he thought her preoccupied when he thought about it, which was not often. It was true that she did not comment as freely as usual upon what they passed, though masses of lovely flowers were grouped round the Boat fountain, models sat about on the Trinita steps, a man in the piazza was binding together rough and ready brooms for his dust-cart out of a sort of golden ling, a line of scarlet German students lit up the gloomy Babuino, and out in the Popolo they came upon a blaze of sunshine, hot enough even to warm the heart of the old obelisk.“By Jove, when all’s said and done, it’s a fine world!” commented Colonel Maxwell suddenly.“A very tangled one,” threw back Teresa. “I wish you would tell me what to do with it?”“I?” he laughed. “That’s a largish order. You seem to be doing it tolerably well between you, just at present. A fortune and a wedding all in one winter. Wilbraham’s a very good chap,” he added, thinking she might require reassurance. “He wants knowing, as I daresay you’ve found out, but he’s worth the trouble. And a happy marriage will give him just what he needs to rub off pounds of his mother’s spoiling.” Teresa hesitated. She was in a perplexed mood, and advice seemed the one thing to help her, as it sometimes seems until we have got it.“Do you think him clever?” she asked with apparent inconsequence.“Don’t you?”“I suppose so.”“Well, if you really ask me, I should put my opinion a bit stronger. Of course he’s no ass. He did a lot at college.”“Oh, those are often the stupidest men!” Teresa said sharply.“In that case, he’s stupid.”But from the look she turned on him he suddenly realised that she was very much in earnest, and began to speak seriously, while the thought shot through his mind, “Great Scott! She’s ambitious for that poor little nonentity!” He said aloud, “You know Sir Henry Thurstone by name? He told me last year he believed Wilbraham could do anything he liked, and he doesn’t say that sort of thing freely. They’re all anxious he should go into Parliament, and I suppose he will when he’s once married.”She kept her eyes fixed on him while he spoke, and while she slowly answered—“Of course Sylvia—is not exactly clever.”“Well, wives don’t have to be clever,” said Maxwell, trying to find something that would not sound brutal.“No.”“And she’s awfully pretty. No doubt about that.” He went on hurriedly—“See that wine-cart? A great picturesque blob of colour, isn’t it, with the horse hung all over with red tassels?”But Donna Teresa was silent. She turned away her head, and did not utter more than a few curt sentences until they all got out at the gate of Villa Madama.There Maxwell collected his enthusiasms, and forgot his conversation; Wilbraham was taciturn. Not Sylvia’s ignorance, but her incapability of understanding, weighed on him. She might easily have known nothing of Margaret of Austria, even, conceivedly, as little of Charles the Fifth; it was far more depressing to perceive that when an idea of either was presented to her, she could not grasp it, because there was apparently no substance into which it could sink. In the frescoes and delicate plaster mouldings she saw no beauty, but was aware of damp on the walls and the emptiness of the vast rooms, and wondered whether the white owl nailed against the door meant anything. Wilbraham found himself wincing when he heard her little fatuous remarks. Wincing. It had come to this.Villa Madama, unfinished, a mere beautiful shell, hangs, as every one knows, on the side of a wooded hill, above the Tiber, and facing the mountains, which on that day had put on their loveliest colours, and lay a dream of soft lilac amethyst against a yet softer sky. Here and there a whiter gleam marked Tivoli or the near villages, and stretching to the north couched the Leonessa, sheeted with snow. It was from the square melancholy garden behind the house that they looked at these things. Running down the hill before them were grey olives, dotted with olive presses, and close beneath the low wall stretched a great cistern, in which the frogs were croaking. The Villa, facing the east, is soon left by the sun, and the sadness of the garden becomes accentuated. Tall withered campagna-like weeds have filled it, a great cipollino sarcophagus adds to the inexpressibly deserted impression; even the pretty fountain at the back, where the hill water runs out between moss and ferns, and through a grey elephant’s head, is choked into melancholy. And at the far end, flanking an old garden gate, two immense stone figures, battered, grey, mutilated, but still curiously expressive, stand and look down upon the desolation which belongs to them, and them only, with an air of cynical mockery. Mrs Maxwell turned her back on them.“I don’t think they’re nice,” she said in her soft determined voice. “Do you?”Teresa glanced up.“Why not?” she said. “They’ve a very good time of it there, look on, needn’t interfere, and needn’t feel.”“That’s what I complain of,” said Mrs Maxwell reflectively. “It puts them in such an unfairly superior position. Here are we, torn by a dozen petty anxieties; I am sure I am, for I don’t in the least know where in Rome to get a decent hat. Now, my dear—just think, what would a hat seem to them?”Mrs Brodrick laughed. Mrs Maxwell talked on.“Still, I’m not so sure. I don’t know that I should like never to be in the dance. And if they do get at all interested, existence must be so scrappy. There is Sylvia, pretty, and young, and in love. They’ve seen it all before, a hundred times—isn’t this the place for lovers to come?—but don’t tell me that the poor grey old things wouldn’t be curious to know how it’s going on. And it must be so seldom that they get their sequels. No,” she waved her hand to them, Roman fashion, shaking it rapidly, palm downwards—“no, I’m not going to swallow your superior airs. You’re dying of jealousy, you’dliketo know about my hat, and Sylvia’s wedding. And you’re not one bit superior. You’re just like other men, pretending to be cynical, because you can’t get what you want, and I see through you. There!” Two minutes later she had hold of Teresa’s wrist and was strolling along a weedy path. “I want to speak to you,” she said.“What about?” demanded the marchesa quickly.“I’m bored,” said Mrs Maxwell with gloom. “Bored.”Teresa dropped into ease at once.“Here?”“Here? Oh no. It’s more serious, bigger. I’ve had too much Rome, too many stones, bricks, sarcophaguses, instructive people. Then I’m not thinking so much of myself as of Jem. Do you wish to see him buy up all the rubbish in the place?”“Well, go!” said Teresa, laughing.“And be as dull as ditch-water in some forlorn place! Thank you.”“What do you want, then?”Teresa knew Mary Maxwell of old, and felt sure that she was fully possessed with what she intended to do, although she did not often, as now, admit a personal motive. She was very attractive and spoilt, and had really convinced herself that she made others her first consideration.“Look at Sylvia,” she went on.“Sylvia is a girl who shows up better in the country than in these—these very learned places.”“Never mind Sylvia,” said the young marchesa quietly. But she knew it was true.“And Sicily is charming.”“Are we to go to Sicily then?”“Peppina has told me a great deal about it,” Mrs Maxwell continued, unheeding, “and I know it will be the very place to suit you. Let us go while the almond blossom is out. Next month. There, there—it’s settled; you’ll all bless me.”Teresa ended by promising to consult her grandmother. But, in the restless fit which had come upon her, she owned that the idea was pleasant.
A couple of months passed without apparent change. To Wilbraham they had seemed to drag like lead, yet, looking back, their swiftness appalled him. The wedding would be after Easter, and now that the new year had come, it brought a date which had been remote, measurably nearer. He had gone through a bad fierce time of repulsion, of anger with his own amazing folly, with fate, with everything and everybody, with Sylvia worst of all. Then pride had come to his aid, and he determined resolutely to make the best of the situation. The strong pride of a very self-controlled man was able to do this more thoroughly than he had even hoped. He set his teeth now and then to avoid showing irritation at Sylvia’s futile remarks, but he always had succeeded in keeping under outward signs of impatience, and devoutly trusted that the power would never fail him. He was helped along by the girl’s own contentment. She asked so little! On the other hand this very trait sometimes annoyed him, for in the moments when the desire to break his bonds grew all but overpowering, he felt that the little he gave could not for a day have satisfied another woman.
What was really a sign of danger, if only he had recognised it, was, that in spite of his increasing dread of his marriage, he did not dislike his hours in the Porta Pinciana. Teresa, in her fear for the wreck of Sylvia’s happiness, told herself that she must take care he did not dislike them. She was not a vain woman. The failure of her marriage had knocked any belief in her own charms out of her, and left only an exaggerated conviction of the immense power of beauty. It never entered her head that a constant contrast between her quick, clever, and sympathetic talk and poor Sylvia’s platitudes might be perilous. She did not think of Wilbraham on her own account at all, only and entirely as affecting Sylvia, although she had liked him better since the day at Assisi. Once or twice she had looked critically at him, and said to herself that his face had gained something in losing an expression of cool superiority, which used to annoy her. He was not handsome—his chin was too square, his nose too thick, his hair too straight; but there was strength in every movement, and she was sure he might be trusted. She dwelt much on that quality, at times, when she looked anxiously at Sylvia. For she had her anxieties, sometimes trying to set them at rest for ever, by questioning the girl in a roundabout way.
“There’s nothing you want, Sylvia?”
“Yes,” said the girl, “I want a little wool if you are going out.”
“We must begin to think of the clothes—the important clothes,” said Teresa with a laugh, but watching her all the time. “I mean you to have yours from Paris.”
“There is no good in wasting money,” Sylvia returned practically. “Why do people always think they must do that when they marry? It’s silly.”
“Well, one isn’t married every day of one’s life,” pleaded the marchesa. Suddenly she said, with a quick change of voice, “Dear, you do want to marry your Walter, don’t you?”
“Ofcourse!” The girl stared blankly in her face. “When people are engaged, of course they marry. How funny you are, Teresa!”
“Well, then,” cried the other gaily, “none of your horrid little economical scruples for me! What’s the good of having more money than I know what to do with, if one mayn’t spend it? I shall order the frocks, and they shall be lovely.”
“I think you had better consult Walter.”
“Then I won’t. He can dress you after you are married; I shall do it before. Tell him so, if you like.”
“Oh, we don’t talk of dress.”
“Whatdoyou talk of?” asked Teresa with sudden curiosity.
“I—I don’t know,” vaguely. “I think—sometimes—places.”
The young marchesa who believed in romance, though her own was ended, looked at her anxiously.
“Is that all?”
“It’s a good deal. You can’t think how much there seems to say about Rome. And besides, he reads the newspaper.”
“Oh!” cried Teresa sharply.
“I don’t care about newspapers, generally, of course,” Sylvia went on, with her little air of finality, “but I like him to read them, because I can knit all the time, and count the stitches. One needn’t always attend.”
On the whole there was not much comfort to be got out of this conversation, except that the girl was quite unruffled by doubts. Teresa would have liked to have been as sure of Wilbraham, for her sympathies were too lively not to have often alarmed her. She tried to close her eyes, and to make the house as pleasant as she could for him, succeeding only too well.
“Let us go to-morrow to Villa Madama,” she said one Friday evening. Fernanda, with her broad smile, had just brought in the coffee, a log fire burnt merrily in the open stove, from the street rose a stir of voices, cracking of whips, cries of “Tribuna! EccoTribu—u—na!” “Polenti!” “Cerini, un sol’ cerini!” and the great hum of the electric tram, rushing up and down the hill like remorseless fate. “We’ll get the two Maxwells.”
Teresa rose up and stood before the fire, so that its glow fell on her white dress. Mrs Brodrick moved uneasily in her chair, for she saw that although Wilbraham was sitting on a sofa beside Sylvia, he was watching Teresa.
“I don’t know if Mary can come, but I am sure she would like it.”
“Then,” said Wilbraham, “she will. She always does what she likes.”
“She does what she likes,” agreed Mrs Brodrick smiling, “but she doesn’t always like what she does.”
“Who does?” Wilbraham said, with a queer quick ring in the question. Teresa caught it, and twisted the conversation.
“Colonel Maxwell picked up a Garofalo to-day—signed and all.”
“Then he will be happy for a week,” said her grandmother.
“Unless Mary shakes him out of his convictions. It’s idiotic of her, but she says she can’t help it after a day’s ravings.”
“Idiotic,” repeated Wilbraham.
“What’s idiotic?” asked Sylvia, standing up by the lamp to recover a dropped stitch.
There was a momentary pause.
“To open a man’s eyes to his mistakes, so long as he’s pleased. It’s so unnecessary,” Wilbraham answered sharply.
“Then what ought one to do?”
“Leave them. He’ll find them out for himself, soon enough.”
Sylvia so rarely took an independent line that they were surprised to see her shaking her head.
“I’d rather be told,” she said, still examining her work.
Teresa moved uneasily.
“Are we to go to the Villa Madama, or not?” she asked almost sharply. “Say yes or no, some one.”
“We all say yes,” said Mrs Brodrick, with something of effort in the words. She, too, had been listening. Teresa went quickly to Sylvia and put her hand on her shoulder, the two young heads bending together.
“How beautifully you knit!” cried Teresa, taking the work in her other hand. “I can never keep the silk so even. Do you know your fairy godmother must have been an exceedingly neat person?”
Once in her hearing, Wilbraham had inveighed against untidiness.
“Oh, Teresa, as if anybody ever had a fairy godmother!”
“Ah, you weren’t brought up on a course of fairy stories, or you’d know better—Sylvia never once told a fib in her life,” she added to Wilbraham—“so she wouldn’t listen to anything which couldn’t be guaranteed as true. I was so unscrupulous that I used to take her in whenever I could.”
“Teresa, you didn’t!” cried the girl, shocked, and turning honest helpless eyes with appeal in them to Wilbraham. Her sister laughed.
“Don’t be afraid, I can bear the burden of those sins. Granny, I wish you’d let me burn that horrid sketch you’ve stuck up there. It’s all wrong.”
Sylvia returned to her knitting; Teresa, a slim white figure, hands clasped behind her, had wandered off to stand before an easel in a dim corner. Wilbraham felt an unaccountable longing to make her turn towards him again.
“I saw your Cesare to-day,” he said.
“Did you?” She came quickly out of the shadows, and dropped on a chair. “Tell me about him, please.”
“There’s little to tell. He was talking to a man near the Trevi.”
“How did he look? Hungry?”
“Well, yes—poor,” Wilbraham admitted, “and as big a ruffian as ever.”
Teresa glanced at him mischievously.
“Do you always determine what your eyes mean to see beforehand?”
“I don’t wear rose-coloured glasses, at any rate.” He had certainly changed a good deal, for he now liked to spar with her, and his tone was eager.
“Poor Cesare!” she sighed. “Did he glare?”
“Like a Trojan.”
“Well, you can’t expect him to like you.”
“You might say,us.”
“Oh no,” she said carelessly. “I was the first sinner, I own; but I did try to apologise, and you didn’t. You wounded his—”
“Vanity,” put in Wilbraham with a laugh. “So be it. I shall have to bear the consequences as best I can.”
Teresa was restless this evening. She got up again.
“There’s the ten-o’clock bell.”
“Does that mean that I’m to go?” he asked, rising in his turn.
“It means that I am going.”
“And to-morrow?”
“Oh, settle with Sylvia,” she said impatiently.
They filled two carriages, a big and a little one. Teresa was with Colonel Maxwell in the smaller, and he thought her preoccupied when he thought about it, which was not often. It was true that she did not comment as freely as usual upon what they passed, though masses of lovely flowers were grouped round the Boat fountain, models sat about on the Trinita steps, a man in the piazza was binding together rough and ready brooms for his dust-cart out of a sort of golden ling, a line of scarlet German students lit up the gloomy Babuino, and out in the Popolo they came upon a blaze of sunshine, hot enough even to warm the heart of the old obelisk.
“By Jove, when all’s said and done, it’s a fine world!” commented Colonel Maxwell suddenly.
“A very tangled one,” threw back Teresa. “I wish you would tell me what to do with it?”
“I?” he laughed. “That’s a largish order. You seem to be doing it tolerably well between you, just at present. A fortune and a wedding all in one winter. Wilbraham’s a very good chap,” he added, thinking she might require reassurance. “He wants knowing, as I daresay you’ve found out, but he’s worth the trouble. And a happy marriage will give him just what he needs to rub off pounds of his mother’s spoiling.” Teresa hesitated. She was in a perplexed mood, and advice seemed the one thing to help her, as it sometimes seems until we have got it.
“Do you think him clever?” she asked with apparent inconsequence.
“Don’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, if you really ask me, I should put my opinion a bit stronger. Of course he’s no ass. He did a lot at college.”
“Oh, those are often the stupidest men!” Teresa said sharply.
“In that case, he’s stupid.”
But from the look she turned on him he suddenly realised that she was very much in earnest, and began to speak seriously, while the thought shot through his mind, “Great Scott! She’s ambitious for that poor little nonentity!” He said aloud, “You know Sir Henry Thurstone by name? He told me last year he believed Wilbraham could do anything he liked, and he doesn’t say that sort of thing freely. They’re all anxious he should go into Parliament, and I suppose he will when he’s once married.”
She kept her eyes fixed on him while he spoke, and while she slowly answered—
“Of course Sylvia—is not exactly clever.”
“Well, wives don’t have to be clever,” said Maxwell, trying to find something that would not sound brutal.
“No.”
“And she’s awfully pretty. No doubt about that.” He went on hurriedly—“See that wine-cart? A great picturesque blob of colour, isn’t it, with the horse hung all over with red tassels?”
But Donna Teresa was silent. She turned away her head, and did not utter more than a few curt sentences until they all got out at the gate of Villa Madama.
There Maxwell collected his enthusiasms, and forgot his conversation; Wilbraham was taciturn. Not Sylvia’s ignorance, but her incapability of understanding, weighed on him. She might easily have known nothing of Margaret of Austria, even, conceivedly, as little of Charles the Fifth; it was far more depressing to perceive that when an idea of either was presented to her, she could not grasp it, because there was apparently no substance into which it could sink. In the frescoes and delicate plaster mouldings she saw no beauty, but was aware of damp on the walls and the emptiness of the vast rooms, and wondered whether the white owl nailed against the door meant anything. Wilbraham found himself wincing when he heard her little fatuous remarks. Wincing. It had come to this.
Villa Madama, unfinished, a mere beautiful shell, hangs, as every one knows, on the side of a wooded hill, above the Tiber, and facing the mountains, which on that day had put on their loveliest colours, and lay a dream of soft lilac amethyst against a yet softer sky. Here and there a whiter gleam marked Tivoli or the near villages, and stretching to the north couched the Leonessa, sheeted with snow. It was from the square melancholy garden behind the house that they looked at these things. Running down the hill before them were grey olives, dotted with olive presses, and close beneath the low wall stretched a great cistern, in which the frogs were croaking. The Villa, facing the east, is soon left by the sun, and the sadness of the garden becomes accentuated. Tall withered campagna-like weeds have filled it, a great cipollino sarcophagus adds to the inexpressibly deserted impression; even the pretty fountain at the back, where the hill water runs out between moss and ferns, and through a grey elephant’s head, is choked into melancholy. And at the far end, flanking an old garden gate, two immense stone figures, battered, grey, mutilated, but still curiously expressive, stand and look down upon the desolation which belongs to them, and them only, with an air of cynical mockery. Mrs Maxwell turned her back on them.
“I don’t think they’re nice,” she said in her soft determined voice. “Do you?”
Teresa glanced up.
“Why not?” she said. “They’ve a very good time of it there, look on, needn’t interfere, and needn’t feel.”
“That’s what I complain of,” said Mrs Maxwell reflectively. “It puts them in such an unfairly superior position. Here are we, torn by a dozen petty anxieties; I am sure I am, for I don’t in the least know where in Rome to get a decent hat. Now, my dear—just think, what would a hat seem to them?”
Mrs Brodrick laughed. Mrs Maxwell talked on.
“Still, I’m not so sure. I don’t know that I should like never to be in the dance. And if they do get at all interested, existence must be so scrappy. There is Sylvia, pretty, and young, and in love. They’ve seen it all before, a hundred times—isn’t this the place for lovers to come?—but don’t tell me that the poor grey old things wouldn’t be curious to know how it’s going on. And it must be so seldom that they get their sequels. No,” she waved her hand to them, Roman fashion, shaking it rapidly, palm downwards—“no, I’m not going to swallow your superior airs. You’re dying of jealousy, you’dliketo know about my hat, and Sylvia’s wedding. And you’re not one bit superior. You’re just like other men, pretending to be cynical, because you can’t get what you want, and I see through you. There!” Two minutes later she had hold of Teresa’s wrist and was strolling along a weedy path. “I want to speak to you,” she said.
“What about?” demanded the marchesa quickly.
“I’m bored,” said Mrs Maxwell with gloom. “Bored.”
Teresa dropped into ease at once.
“Here?”
“Here? Oh no. It’s more serious, bigger. I’ve had too much Rome, too many stones, bricks, sarcophaguses, instructive people. Then I’m not thinking so much of myself as of Jem. Do you wish to see him buy up all the rubbish in the place?”
“Well, go!” said Teresa, laughing.
“And be as dull as ditch-water in some forlorn place! Thank you.”
“What do you want, then?”
Teresa knew Mary Maxwell of old, and felt sure that she was fully possessed with what she intended to do, although she did not often, as now, admit a personal motive. She was very attractive and spoilt, and had really convinced herself that she made others her first consideration.
“Look at Sylvia,” she went on.
“Sylvia is a girl who shows up better in the country than in these—these very learned places.”
“Never mind Sylvia,” said the young marchesa quietly. But she knew it was true.
“And Sicily is charming.”
“Are we to go to Sicily then?”
“Peppina has told me a great deal about it,” Mrs Maxwell continued, unheeding, “and I know it will be the very place to suit you. Let us go while the almond blossom is out. Next month. There, there—it’s settled; you’ll all bless me.”
Teresa ended by promising to consult her grandmother. But, in the restless fit which had come upon her, she owned that the idea was pleasant.
Chapter Twelve.“Wasn’t I right? Come, confess that I was right?”The question came of course from triumphant Mrs Maxwell, the centre of a group standing on the steps of the Greek theatre at Taormina. They looked on one side, over the rose-red ruins, at Etna, sweeping magnificently upwards into snow, at his purple slopes, his classic shore, then, facing round, they headed a sea divinely full of light, and saw across it aerial mountain ridges faintly cut against the sky.“Oh, you were right,” said Wilbraham presently. “You deserve a splendid chorus in your honour, and this is the place in which to raise it.”“There’s a German down there already declaiming Shakespeare to his wife,” announced Teresa, running to look over the edge on tiptoe.“So long as you give me the credit, I’ll let you off the chorus,” said Mrs Maxwell, magnanimously; “and I’ll own more, I’ll own that if it hadn’t been for Peppina I should never have stood out. She knows how to get round me,” she added with a sigh.“Nina, on the contrary, hasn’t come willingly at all.”“She upset the oil just before starting yesterday,” said Sylvia hurriedly, “and that’ssounlucky! Wasn’t it unfortunate?”“Very,” Wilbraham said drily.“Look,” interposed Teresa—“look at that sheet of pink against the blue. That’s almond blossom. Oh, I must have some!”When she went into her room at the Castello-a-mare before dinner, there lay bunches of the beautiful blossoms. She gave a cry of delight, and fell to sticking them about in all imaginable places. Nina, who came after her, explained that Wilbraham had brought them himself.“Arms full,” she said, spreading out her own with a gay laugh.And Teresa was touched, thinking that it must have cost him something to turn himself into a maypole for her pleasure. He was improving. She decked Sylvia with several of the pink flowers before going in to dinner, for only a pleasant Hungarian doctor and his wife would be there besides themselves, and twisted some into her own dress. The sisters went in together. Wilbraham was standing alone at the end of the room.“Thank you for the almond blossom,” Teresa called out cheerfully. “There you see the result.”And she made a little movement of her hand towards Sylvia, who stood like a charming woodland picture of Spring, all white and pink. But Wilbraham glanced coldly.“I sent them to you,” he said with a touch of reproach in his tone which made Teresa open her eyes.“Brought them, I hear,” she said teasingly. “It was heroic of you. How many ‘Buon giorno’s’ and ‘Porto io’s’ had you to face? I didn’t believe I could so quickly have got tired of the words. As we came along I heard mothers urging tiny shy babies of two or three—‘Vai, vai, di buon giorno, un soldo signora!’ They are so pretty, too! And the creatures, pertinacious as they are, bear no malice when one is cross; just laugh and make way for another troop.”“Walter says that one ought not to give to beggars,” Sylvia announced.“Ah! I shall, though, when a baby says ‘Bon zorno!’”“For pity’s sake don’t make me out a prig, Sylvia!”He spoke almost roughly, and Teresa fired.“You should be flattered at her remembering your commands!”“Was I rude? I beg your pardon,” said Wilbraham quickly.But had Mrs Brodrick been in the room, she would have observed that he begged his pardon from Teresa.If the first day carried with it a touch of uneasiness, those that followed swept by for some of them in a dream of enchantment.The Castello-a-mare, where they were, stands a little out of the town, perched on the very top of the road which zigzags up from the station. And the view! There, ever-changing in colour, its blue and opal and tenderest green melting through each other or growing into dazzling brightness, lies the most classical of seas; far away behind a fine sweep of coast is Syracuse, a nearer promontory marks the first settlement of Greeks in Calypso’s lovely island; to your right, sweeps up the great volcano, with heart of fire and crest of snow, and all the foreground is broken and steep, with growth of almonds, and fennel, and tree-spurge. Sometimes the outlook is radiant beyond words; it is often so at sunrise, when Etna has flung off clouds, and his eternal snows flush rosy pink above the soft blue mists of the plain. Then everything is so light, so fresh, so sparkling, that it will make even a tired heart believe the old world and all its life is young again. But there are other times when storms rush madly forwards, and the sea grows grey, and the slopes of Etna are sullen purple, and wind and rain battle each other passionately on the heights of Taormina. You look with fear, and lo, the fierce southern rage is over, the clouds are gone, and, faint and lovely at first, presently out laughs the ethereal blue again.A sketching fever possessed Donna Teresa. The others, clambering up and down the dirty, narrow, stony lanes, would come upon her sitting alone and profoundly content before some arcaded window set in a wall, an orange-tree peeping from behind the dainty centre shaft, unbroken blue above. Or she might be found under Duca Stefano’s tower, peaceful now after, so says tradition, its strange and wicked cruelties, where, for a few soldi, you may rest undisturbed in a wilderness garden, and look through palms at a luminous sea, or at queer corners of houses with deep eaves and wooden balconies, where bright rags flutter, vines clamber, and women lean for gossip. High behind is a sweep of arid hill, rough with prickly pear, and catching the shadow of every passing cloud and the glory of the sun as it sinks behind Etna.And it was for these minutes that Wilbraham—as yet unconsciously—lived.Then one day he came upon her in the Greek theatre.Little of the Greek is left, except here and there a white pillar, or a slab built into the wall, for where marble had shone the Romans have set their brickwork. But who can quarrel with brick which takes such glory of colour and offers such crannies for tufted weeds, hanging in delicate masses of yellow, white, and green? Teresa had laid down her brushes, and with her chin resting on her hands was looking through a nobly-rounded arch at that view which is surely all but satisfying. White clouds wrapped Etna, but between them pierced an occasional whiteness which was not cloud, and, below, the purple slopes swept in great curves, taking strange greens and violets as they advanced. Only one building broke their line, the Dominican monastery, and that, with the mysterious gloom of fading day upon it, and the ground falling precipitously in front, did no more than add a suggestive human interest to the grandeur it shared.The spot always moved Teresa, but she liked to keep her emotions to herself; and as Wilbraham came towards her, she sprang to her feet, and began to gather two or three of the dwarf irises which starred the grass.“Are you going?” he said in a disappointed tone. “Have you finished painting so soon?”“I refuse to caricature, and so I haven’t begun,” she replied with a gay laugh. “What have you done with Sylvia?”“Gone to tea.”“Oh, tea!”—she looked at her watch.“And what brought you here? Were you afraid I should be briganded between the Messina gate and the hotel?”“Not in the least. I should as soon expect you to have an encounter with the shade of Dionysios.”She began to stroll round the face of the grass slope which sweeps up to where the poorer people stood to see the plays.“Nina would not agree with you,” she said suddenly; “she throws out mysterious hints of bad characters in Sicily.”“I daresay. If one went into the interior and out of the beaten track, for instance; but here, where strangers are their best harvest, they wouldn’t be disposed to snipe them. Self-interest would go hand-in-hand with law and order, you see.”“And that’s the best you’ll say?”“Oh, well,” he allowed carelessly, “I own they’re wretchedly poor and I shouldn’t like to live myself on a hunch of bread and a root of fennel. Won’t you sit down?”She turned to answer, hesitated, finally dropped on the grass. A lighter, tenderer view lay before them here. For now the sea filled the openings between the brickwork—the many-coloured sea along which Ulysses rowed—and there was the line of coast above which Polyphemus herded his flocks, and flung Cyclopean rocks at his tormentors.“I can’t,” she said unexpectedly.“Can’t what?”“Realise their misery with all this beauty around. It’s heartless, hateful, but one pushes out the other.”“Let it go,” he said, watching her changing face.“It must,” she smiled. “All the same I shall hush up my conscience in ways which will shock you. Look!” She drew from her pocket a handful of soldi. “I mean the children to have a real good time, in spite of you and Sylvia.”She tossed pennies into the air and caught them, without noticing that a sudden silence had fallen.Wilbraham had gone on day after day refusing to look before him, refusing to go beyond the events of the day. He was often irritated or provoked by Sylvia; but often, alas, he was happy, without asking himself why. Now, all of a sudden it flashed upon him that it was Teresa’s nearness, and with the knowledge rushed a wild, scarcely controllable, impulse to strain her in his arms. The self-control of all his years luckily came to his help, and the young marchesa, looking out at the lovely world before her, and thinking of nothing less than her companion, except as he touched Sylvia’s life, was quite unconscious of the struggle in the man’s heart.“We ought to go—I suppose,” she said reluctantly, without moving.Wilbraham was silent. Unseen by her, he was fingering a fold of her dress which lay on the grass close to him. Teresa laughed lightly the next minute.“It is a pity, isn’t it, that one never can enjoy an exquisite moment without thinking what has to be done in the next? At least I can’t.”“Why should one think?” he said. His voice sounded so queerly in his own ears that he half hoped, half feared, she must detect something, “No; as I say, it’s a pity, it’s stupid. I suppose it’s the penalty one has to pay for the drive of life.”“Tell me—” he began and suddenly stopped. She looked round, surprised.“Tell you what?”“No, I won’t say it.”She thought he might be going to ask something about Sylvia, and wondered how she could help him.“As we are here,” she said, “we may as well see the sunset.”For already there was a throb of pink in the clear western sky, pink, of which the almond blossom seemed the reflection. Teresa’s face was turned from him to watch it grow, and for a long time neither spoke. It was a dangerous silence, had she but known it. At last she drew a deep breath.“There must be a golden sea on the other side of Etna,” she said, “and I wish I was there. Don’t you?”“No. I’m content.”She laughed, and sprang up.“No? Well this ought to content one, certainly. But to punish you for not fretting after the unattainable, I am going back.”He followed silently, and they said very little as they went down the uneven street, past the Palazzo Corvaij, where slender columns support Gothic arches, and bands of black lava contrast with yellow stone, past the vast dark holes in which the people live and die and have shops and make merry, and so out of the little hillside town by the Messina gate. But just as they reached a great sumach-tree in a bend of the road, Teresa, who had been thinking, put an imprudent question—“Do you really never want the unattainable?”Wilbraham’s hands were clenched, his face turned away.“Oh, my God!” he cried, under his breath, “do I not!”
“Wasn’t I right? Come, confess that I was right?”
The question came of course from triumphant Mrs Maxwell, the centre of a group standing on the steps of the Greek theatre at Taormina. They looked on one side, over the rose-red ruins, at Etna, sweeping magnificently upwards into snow, at his purple slopes, his classic shore, then, facing round, they headed a sea divinely full of light, and saw across it aerial mountain ridges faintly cut against the sky.
“Oh, you were right,” said Wilbraham presently. “You deserve a splendid chorus in your honour, and this is the place in which to raise it.”
“There’s a German down there already declaiming Shakespeare to his wife,” announced Teresa, running to look over the edge on tiptoe.
“So long as you give me the credit, I’ll let you off the chorus,” said Mrs Maxwell, magnanimously; “and I’ll own more, I’ll own that if it hadn’t been for Peppina I should never have stood out. She knows how to get round me,” she added with a sigh.
“Nina, on the contrary, hasn’t come willingly at all.”
“She upset the oil just before starting yesterday,” said Sylvia hurriedly, “and that’ssounlucky! Wasn’t it unfortunate?”
“Very,” Wilbraham said drily.
“Look,” interposed Teresa—“look at that sheet of pink against the blue. That’s almond blossom. Oh, I must have some!”
When she went into her room at the Castello-a-mare before dinner, there lay bunches of the beautiful blossoms. She gave a cry of delight, and fell to sticking them about in all imaginable places. Nina, who came after her, explained that Wilbraham had brought them himself.
“Arms full,” she said, spreading out her own with a gay laugh.
And Teresa was touched, thinking that it must have cost him something to turn himself into a maypole for her pleasure. He was improving. She decked Sylvia with several of the pink flowers before going in to dinner, for only a pleasant Hungarian doctor and his wife would be there besides themselves, and twisted some into her own dress. The sisters went in together. Wilbraham was standing alone at the end of the room.
“Thank you for the almond blossom,” Teresa called out cheerfully. “There you see the result.”
And she made a little movement of her hand towards Sylvia, who stood like a charming woodland picture of Spring, all white and pink. But Wilbraham glanced coldly.
“I sent them to you,” he said with a touch of reproach in his tone which made Teresa open her eyes.
“Brought them, I hear,” she said teasingly. “It was heroic of you. How many ‘Buon giorno’s’ and ‘Porto io’s’ had you to face? I didn’t believe I could so quickly have got tired of the words. As we came along I heard mothers urging tiny shy babies of two or three—‘Vai, vai, di buon giorno, un soldo signora!’ They are so pretty, too! And the creatures, pertinacious as they are, bear no malice when one is cross; just laugh and make way for another troop.”
“Walter says that one ought not to give to beggars,” Sylvia announced.
“Ah! I shall, though, when a baby says ‘Bon zorno!’”
“For pity’s sake don’t make me out a prig, Sylvia!”
He spoke almost roughly, and Teresa fired.
“You should be flattered at her remembering your commands!”
“Was I rude? I beg your pardon,” said Wilbraham quickly.
But had Mrs Brodrick been in the room, she would have observed that he begged his pardon from Teresa.
If the first day carried with it a touch of uneasiness, those that followed swept by for some of them in a dream of enchantment.
The Castello-a-mare, where they were, stands a little out of the town, perched on the very top of the road which zigzags up from the station. And the view! There, ever-changing in colour, its blue and opal and tenderest green melting through each other or growing into dazzling brightness, lies the most classical of seas; far away behind a fine sweep of coast is Syracuse, a nearer promontory marks the first settlement of Greeks in Calypso’s lovely island; to your right, sweeps up the great volcano, with heart of fire and crest of snow, and all the foreground is broken and steep, with growth of almonds, and fennel, and tree-spurge. Sometimes the outlook is radiant beyond words; it is often so at sunrise, when Etna has flung off clouds, and his eternal snows flush rosy pink above the soft blue mists of the plain. Then everything is so light, so fresh, so sparkling, that it will make even a tired heart believe the old world and all its life is young again. But there are other times when storms rush madly forwards, and the sea grows grey, and the slopes of Etna are sullen purple, and wind and rain battle each other passionately on the heights of Taormina. You look with fear, and lo, the fierce southern rage is over, the clouds are gone, and, faint and lovely at first, presently out laughs the ethereal blue again.
A sketching fever possessed Donna Teresa. The others, clambering up and down the dirty, narrow, stony lanes, would come upon her sitting alone and profoundly content before some arcaded window set in a wall, an orange-tree peeping from behind the dainty centre shaft, unbroken blue above. Or she might be found under Duca Stefano’s tower, peaceful now after, so says tradition, its strange and wicked cruelties, where, for a few soldi, you may rest undisturbed in a wilderness garden, and look through palms at a luminous sea, or at queer corners of houses with deep eaves and wooden balconies, where bright rags flutter, vines clamber, and women lean for gossip. High behind is a sweep of arid hill, rough with prickly pear, and catching the shadow of every passing cloud and the glory of the sun as it sinks behind Etna.
And it was for these minutes that Wilbraham—as yet unconsciously—lived.
Then one day he came upon her in the Greek theatre.
Little of the Greek is left, except here and there a white pillar, or a slab built into the wall, for where marble had shone the Romans have set their brickwork. But who can quarrel with brick which takes such glory of colour and offers such crannies for tufted weeds, hanging in delicate masses of yellow, white, and green? Teresa had laid down her brushes, and with her chin resting on her hands was looking through a nobly-rounded arch at that view which is surely all but satisfying. White clouds wrapped Etna, but between them pierced an occasional whiteness which was not cloud, and, below, the purple slopes swept in great curves, taking strange greens and violets as they advanced. Only one building broke their line, the Dominican monastery, and that, with the mysterious gloom of fading day upon it, and the ground falling precipitously in front, did no more than add a suggestive human interest to the grandeur it shared.
The spot always moved Teresa, but she liked to keep her emotions to herself; and as Wilbraham came towards her, she sprang to her feet, and began to gather two or three of the dwarf irises which starred the grass.
“Are you going?” he said in a disappointed tone. “Have you finished painting so soon?”
“I refuse to caricature, and so I haven’t begun,” she replied with a gay laugh. “What have you done with Sylvia?”
“Gone to tea.”
“Oh, tea!”—she looked at her watch.
“And what brought you here? Were you afraid I should be briganded between the Messina gate and the hotel?”
“Not in the least. I should as soon expect you to have an encounter with the shade of Dionysios.”
She began to stroll round the face of the grass slope which sweeps up to where the poorer people stood to see the plays.
“Nina would not agree with you,” she said suddenly; “she throws out mysterious hints of bad characters in Sicily.”
“I daresay. If one went into the interior and out of the beaten track, for instance; but here, where strangers are their best harvest, they wouldn’t be disposed to snipe them. Self-interest would go hand-in-hand with law and order, you see.”
“And that’s the best you’ll say?”
“Oh, well,” he allowed carelessly, “I own they’re wretchedly poor and I shouldn’t like to live myself on a hunch of bread and a root of fennel. Won’t you sit down?”
She turned to answer, hesitated, finally dropped on the grass. A lighter, tenderer view lay before them here. For now the sea filled the openings between the brickwork—the many-coloured sea along which Ulysses rowed—and there was the line of coast above which Polyphemus herded his flocks, and flung Cyclopean rocks at his tormentors.
“I can’t,” she said unexpectedly.
“Can’t what?”
“Realise their misery with all this beauty around. It’s heartless, hateful, but one pushes out the other.”
“Let it go,” he said, watching her changing face.
“It must,” she smiled. “All the same I shall hush up my conscience in ways which will shock you. Look!” She drew from her pocket a handful of soldi. “I mean the children to have a real good time, in spite of you and Sylvia.”
She tossed pennies into the air and caught them, without noticing that a sudden silence had fallen.
Wilbraham had gone on day after day refusing to look before him, refusing to go beyond the events of the day. He was often irritated or provoked by Sylvia; but often, alas, he was happy, without asking himself why. Now, all of a sudden it flashed upon him that it was Teresa’s nearness, and with the knowledge rushed a wild, scarcely controllable, impulse to strain her in his arms. The self-control of all his years luckily came to his help, and the young marchesa, looking out at the lovely world before her, and thinking of nothing less than her companion, except as he touched Sylvia’s life, was quite unconscious of the struggle in the man’s heart.
“We ought to go—I suppose,” she said reluctantly, without moving.
Wilbraham was silent. Unseen by her, he was fingering a fold of her dress which lay on the grass close to him. Teresa laughed lightly the next minute.
“It is a pity, isn’t it, that one never can enjoy an exquisite moment without thinking what has to be done in the next? At least I can’t.”
“Why should one think?” he said. His voice sounded so queerly in his own ears that he half hoped, half feared, she must detect something, “No; as I say, it’s a pity, it’s stupid. I suppose it’s the penalty one has to pay for the drive of life.”
“Tell me—” he began and suddenly stopped. She looked round, surprised.
“Tell you what?”
“No, I won’t say it.”
She thought he might be going to ask something about Sylvia, and wondered how she could help him.
“As we are here,” she said, “we may as well see the sunset.”
For already there was a throb of pink in the clear western sky, pink, of which the almond blossom seemed the reflection. Teresa’s face was turned from him to watch it grow, and for a long time neither spoke. It was a dangerous silence, had she but known it. At last she drew a deep breath.
“There must be a golden sea on the other side of Etna,” she said, “and I wish I was there. Don’t you?”
“No. I’m content.”
She laughed, and sprang up.
“No? Well this ought to content one, certainly. But to punish you for not fretting after the unattainable, I am going back.”
He followed silently, and they said very little as they went down the uneven street, past the Palazzo Corvaij, where slender columns support Gothic arches, and bands of black lava contrast with yellow stone, past the vast dark holes in which the people live and die and have shops and make merry, and so out of the little hillside town by the Messina gate. But just as they reached a great sumach-tree in a bend of the road, Teresa, who had been thinking, put an imprudent question—
“Do you really never want the unattainable?”
Wilbraham’s hands were clenched, his face turned away.
“Oh, my God!” he cried, under his breath, “do I not!”
Chapter Thirteen.Mrs Brodrick was sitting under an awning on the broad terrace when Mrs Maxwell stepped out of the window. She was never very comfortable at having Mary Maxwell alone. It seemed to her that her shrewd eyes saw too many things. But she put down her book and welcomed her.“They haven’t bestowed much of a shade upon you,” said Mrs Maxwell, glancing up.“I don’t take much. Age shrinks.” She moved her chair, smiling.“Don’t talk about age. It’s an unpleasant subject,” Mrs Maxwell complained, dropping into a chair. “And as for you, you are younger than any of us. It’s only people of the same standing who would call you old. Don’t you know? Elderly people always talk about their contemporaries as ‘old Mr Smith,’ ‘old Mr Jones.’ It’s their way of pretending to be still young.”“Well, I won’t pretend,” said Mrs Brodrick. “But I know the temptation so well, that I very often go away and read my Rabbi Ben Ezra. I was noticing to-day that my shadow looked old, and that’s a great step.”“Oh, granny, nonsense!”“And, after all, it is always interesting to reach new experiences. For instance, I have just found out that one is less seldom disappointed, but sooner discouraged.”She was keeping the talk upon herself only because she was afraid of its drifting elsewhere; but Mrs Maxwell had a purpose.“Where is Sylvia?” she asked suddenly.“Isn’t she picking irises in the garden behind me?”“I see. Where’s Teresa?”“Sketching.”“And Mr Wilbraham?”“Really, I don’t know,” said Mrs Brodrick, with a touch of displeasure. “Probably with your husband.”“Oh, my husband! My husband is worshipping a silly forged Greek coin,” said Mrs Maxwell irrepressibly.“Each one seems to be having a solitary time of it.”“I wish you and Teresa were improving it by meditating on your imprudences. No, really I must speak. I get frightened for poor Sylvia. Don’t you see? Those twoareso unsuited!”“Really?” Mrs Brodrick drew herself up.“Oh, you know it!” cried Mrs Maxwell, in a transport of self-sacrifice. “I hate speaking so brutally, but one must do horrid things for those one cares for; and I am sure, unless you interfere, there will be some awful dénouement. He isn’t thinking about Sylvia.”“Mary!”“He isn’t. He is awaking to a much bigger emotion; and you know, as well as I do, that Sylvia, with all her prettiness, isn’t the girl to inspire a great passion. If it’s not Sylvia, who is it?”Mrs Brodrick remained silent. Mary Maxwell came and knelt by her side, laying her head on her lap.“Granny, don’t be angry! You know you’re frightened, and you know I care about you all. But you’re dreadfully high-minded. Isn’t there anything you can do?”Mrs Brodrick suddenly collapsed.“Nothing,” she said miserably. “How can any one move? It rests between him and Sylvia, and Sylvia, poor child, is absolutely—piteously content. She doesn’t see.”“And never will!” thought Mrs Maxwell; “Heaven help us, for there must be some way out of this tangle, if one could only find it!” She said aloud, hesitatingly, “Could Teresa speak to her?”“Could she?” Mrs Brodrick turned a pallid face, and Mrs Maxwell shook her head.“True—impossible. Teresa must be kept out of it. Is thereanyhint that Sylvia would accept? Granny, you might try.”“As if I hadn’t tried—twenty times!”“And she won’t take it?”“It isn’t that shewon’t. She doesn’t realise that there can be anything I want to say.”Mary Maxwell already felt better for having extracted a confidence which proved her to be in the right.“It’s awful,” she said cheerfully. “All(Two pages missing here: pp 240,241.)purple and white irises, stopped lazily to watch the lizards darting in and out of the sun-baked wall, and then gone in to write a letter. She had few correspondents, but there was an old nurse who thought all the world of her, and was made happy by a sheet of unformed, straggling writing, and bare bones of fact, always supported by a dictionary, and unimpeded by stops.“It is very pleasant here,” Sylvia wrote; “there are so many flowers. We make expeditions”—shdecided against by help of the dictionary—“and the weather is beautiful Granny and Teresa are quite well I am very happy—” She had reached so far when Wilbraham came in. She flung down her pen and jumped up joyfully.“Oh, Walter, where have you been? I was wondering so!”“Down by the shore.”There was a set, hunted look on his face, as if he had not slept, which was true. He had extracted the key of a side door from the chambermaid, and had wandered for hours through the mystical southern night.“Oh, you promised to take me to the shore when you went.”“Did I?”“Never mind. I will go next time,” said Sylvia happily. Whatever he did or did not do contented her. “I have been very busy.”“Yes?”“Yes; picking flowers. They are all ready now for Teresa to put in when she comes. Have you seen her?”“No.”“She does wander so far by herself; I wonder she isn’t afraid. Shall we go and look for her? I have nearly finished, Walter. I have written all this to Dobbin. Look!” She held up the sprawly sheet for his admiration. “Haven’t I been good?”“You are always good,” he said remorsefully. And he glanced at her, thinking for the hundredth time how pretty she was, and wondering why everything she said should be so flatly ineffective. But he had something to tell her, and he dashed at it hurriedly—“I’m afraid, I’m very much afraid, that I shall have to go back to England.”“To England!” She looked at him incredulously.“Yes. I’m wanted there.”“But not yet. You’ve had no letters to-day.”He cursed his want of premeditation. He had forgotten that every now and then Sylvia developed an odd practical shrewdness.“Not to-day.”“Not to-day, and only two from your mother since we’ve been here.”“I must go all the same,” he said, taking refuge in obstinacy. “I’ve been pleasuring too long.”Evidently and unusually she was puzzled.“But,” she said slowly, at last, “but—I don’t understand. You can’t go all in a minute. We have to see Syracuse and Palermo, and—a great many things. Indeed, Walter, you can’t! It wouldn’t be right. Why should you? I remember you told me you would not go home until you took me.”“Things change.”“What has changed?”He looked at her, and thought bitterly how little she knew that she was pleading against herself—against his better self. The other half of him wanted to stay, swore it was folly to give up an hour of the only happiness which life still held, and all for a scruple. He was going to stick to Sylvia. That much stood firm amid the general earthquake.“I’d better go,” he said doggedly.“Oh, no,” returned Sylvia decidedly; “you mustn’t.” After a momentary pause she added, “It would be so odd!”“Would it?” He flung hasty thought at what the others would say on the matter, and his leaving immediately looked so suspicious in his own eyes, that he felt as if it must proclaim his secret to the world. He forced a laugh, however.“What’s odd in having business to see after?”“Oh, but they all know you haven’t.”Silence.“I wish I knew what makes you want to go home,” said Sylvia wonderingly. “I can’t think! Won’t you tell me?”Wilbraham moved uneasily. He could not lie to her, and the truth was impossible. He chose a middle course.“If you really dislike it so much, I’ll stay. It shall make no difference,” he promised his conscience.“I was sure you would not go,” was all she said, and he was vaguely surprised, expecting delight and surprise in a gush, but thankful they were not lavished upon him.Through that day and the next, and the next, he kept iron hands on himself, close to Sylvia’s side. Teresa was too well pleased to see him there so much as to wonder why once or twice he avoided her—almost rudely. She went on her way light-heartedly, and began to sing when she was alone. She painted here, there, everywhere, the women carrying their empty pitchers to the fountain lengthways on their heads, or coming back upright, supple, with the heavy weight poised securely; the old people hurrying with their chairs to a little homely church, sunk in a narrow street; the Catania Gate, with its long flight of outer steps, and its odd crooked arches; walls blistered by sun, and overhung by grey-green prickly pear and red shoots of pomegranate; Gothic arches, rose windows; sunrise and sunset; glory of noonday; flash of falling rain, and sullen overshadowing of thunder-cloud. The little city, hanging on its hillside, had for her a charm which never wearied.The only one who seemed restless and dissatisfied was Nina. Teresa began to be sorry that she had brought her, though she had imagined it would make travelling easier for her grandmother. But the little Viterbo woman frankly hated the place, and Italians of her class are too much like children to attempt to disguise their feelings. Then she had spilt oil on the day of their departure, and only the Madonna knew what disasters that might not bring! There was a bottle of wine close by, and why should not that have been knocked over instead, when such an upset would have ensured good luck? For want of other listeners, she talked of this to Peppina, and watched the girl’s face as she spoke. Peppina shrugged her shoulders.“Eh, who knows?” she answered carelessly. “For that you have to take your chance with the rest.”Peppina had learnt from Cesare to mock at omens which came to others, but she could not help being still terrified when she encountered them herself.“That is news!” retorted Nina scornfully. “If it was not for the chance it would be easy.”“You or another. There are enough of you! One, two, three, four, five,” the girl counted on her fingers. “Five chances. Try the cards if you want to know which.”“Who it comes from, rather,” said the other with significance.Peppina darted a look from under her long eyelashes, and her voice slightly shook.“Will they tell you that? I do not believe it.”“Will they?Altro! One as much as the other,” said Nina, enjoying her uneasiness. “And I say an apoplexy upon whoever it is! An apoplexy!”“Be quiet!” cried Peppina angrily, a spasm crossing her face, and her hand almost unconsciously signing against the evil eye; “be quiet with your jay’s voice, when my signora is trying to sleep above. Who talks of apoplexies?”Nina was too well pleased with the effect she had produced to be affronted.“Is she ill then?”“Her head aches. It wants to be amused.”Peppina was uncomfortably aware that she had said too much once more. She yawned intentionally, flinging her arms over her head. “Diamine, I could sleep myself,” she added drowsily, but looking at Nina through half-closed lids.“Well, sleep—sleep if you will. There is nothing to be done—not so much as a ricotta making in this nest of owls,” said Nina, waving Taormina away from her with disdain. “You will wake in time to see Cesare.”“Cesare!” Peppina started up as if struck with a whip. “What do you say?”“Did you not know he was here? Then I am wiser than you, for once. He should have been to see you before—a pretty girl like you! But there—those men!” Nina shook her head sympathetically. “There is the Cianchetti, of course.”“Hold your tongue! If he is here, he will come, beyond a doubt!” cried the girl, eyeing her furiously, and panting to acknowledge that she had passed an hour with her lover the evening before. “The Cianchetti! A creature like that!”“A creature, as you say, but then she is pretty. And that he should be here and not tell you!”Nina held up her hands, perfectly aware of what was struggling in Peppina’s breast, and amused at her easy victory.“I tell you he will come!” exclaimed the girl breathlessly.“We shall see.”Nina nodded many times, and there was a short pause, in which Peppina’s fear grew stronger than her vanity.“How do you know he is here?”“Eh-h-h-h-h! One has eyes,” answered Nina carelessly. “Why does he come?”“Who knows?” said the girl, wary again.“What it is to have money for travelling!” exclaimed Nina, who was sure that Peppina had somehow got the money from Mrs Maxwell. “It is wine he must have upset, not oil like me.”“Do you still think of it?” said Peppina, anxious to turn the conversation.“I shall sort the cards to-night, and try to find out who the ill-luck comes from. Whoever it is, an apoplexy on him!” cried Nina vengefully.
Mrs Brodrick was sitting under an awning on the broad terrace when Mrs Maxwell stepped out of the window. She was never very comfortable at having Mary Maxwell alone. It seemed to her that her shrewd eyes saw too many things. But she put down her book and welcomed her.
“They haven’t bestowed much of a shade upon you,” said Mrs Maxwell, glancing up.
“I don’t take much. Age shrinks.” She moved her chair, smiling.
“Don’t talk about age. It’s an unpleasant subject,” Mrs Maxwell complained, dropping into a chair. “And as for you, you are younger than any of us. It’s only people of the same standing who would call you old. Don’t you know? Elderly people always talk about their contemporaries as ‘old Mr Smith,’ ‘old Mr Jones.’ It’s their way of pretending to be still young.”
“Well, I won’t pretend,” said Mrs Brodrick. “But I know the temptation so well, that I very often go away and read my Rabbi Ben Ezra. I was noticing to-day that my shadow looked old, and that’s a great step.”
“Oh, granny, nonsense!”
“And, after all, it is always interesting to reach new experiences. For instance, I have just found out that one is less seldom disappointed, but sooner discouraged.”
She was keeping the talk upon herself only because she was afraid of its drifting elsewhere; but Mrs Maxwell had a purpose.
“Where is Sylvia?” she asked suddenly.
“Isn’t she picking irises in the garden behind me?”
“I see. Where’s Teresa?”
“Sketching.”
“And Mr Wilbraham?”
“Really, I don’t know,” said Mrs Brodrick, with a touch of displeasure. “Probably with your husband.”
“Oh, my husband! My husband is worshipping a silly forged Greek coin,” said Mrs Maxwell irrepressibly.
“Each one seems to be having a solitary time of it.”
“I wish you and Teresa were improving it by meditating on your imprudences. No, really I must speak. I get frightened for poor Sylvia. Don’t you see? Those twoareso unsuited!”
“Really?” Mrs Brodrick drew herself up.
“Oh, you know it!” cried Mrs Maxwell, in a transport of self-sacrifice. “I hate speaking so brutally, but one must do horrid things for those one cares for; and I am sure, unless you interfere, there will be some awful dénouement. He isn’t thinking about Sylvia.”
“Mary!”
“He isn’t. He is awaking to a much bigger emotion; and you know, as well as I do, that Sylvia, with all her prettiness, isn’t the girl to inspire a great passion. If it’s not Sylvia, who is it?”
Mrs Brodrick remained silent. Mary Maxwell came and knelt by her side, laying her head on her lap.
“Granny, don’t be angry! You know you’re frightened, and you know I care about you all. But you’re dreadfully high-minded. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
Mrs Brodrick suddenly collapsed.
“Nothing,” she said miserably. “How can any one move? It rests between him and Sylvia, and Sylvia, poor child, is absolutely—piteously content. She doesn’t see.”
“And never will!” thought Mrs Maxwell; “Heaven help us, for there must be some way out of this tangle, if one could only find it!” She said aloud, hesitatingly, “Could Teresa speak to her?”
“Could she?” Mrs Brodrick turned a pallid face, and Mrs Maxwell shook her head.
“True—impossible. Teresa must be kept out of it. Is thereanyhint that Sylvia would accept? Granny, you might try.”
“As if I hadn’t tried—twenty times!”
“And she won’t take it?”
“It isn’t that shewon’t. She doesn’t realise that there can be anything I want to say.”
Mary Maxwell already felt better for having extracted a confidence which proved her to be in the right.
“It’s awful,” she said cheerfully. “All
(Two pages missing here: pp 240,241.)
purple and white irises, stopped lazily to watch the lizards darting in and out of the sun-baked wall, and then gone in to write a letter. She had few correspondents, but there was an old nurse who thought all the world of her, and was made happy by a sheet of unformed, straggling writing, and bare bones of fact, always supported by a dictionary, and unimpeded by stops.
“It is very pleasant here,” Sylvia wrote; “there are so many flowers. We make expeditions”—shdecided against by help of the dictionary—“and the weather is beautiful Granny and Teresa are quite well I am very happy—” She had reached so far when Wilbraham came in. She flung down her pen and jumped up joyfully.
“Oh, Walter, where have you been? I was wondering so!”
“Down by the shore.”
There was a set, hunted look on his face, as if he had not slept, which was true. He had extracted the key of a side door from the chambermaid, and had wandered for hours through the mystical southern night.
“Oh, you promised to take me to the shore when you went.”
“Did I?”
“Never mind. I will go next time,” said Sylvia happily. Whatever he did or did not do contented her. “I have been very busy.”
“Yes?”
“Yes; picking flowers. They are all ready now for Teresa to put in when she comes. Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“She does wander so far by herself; I wonder she isn’t afraid. Shall we go and look for her? I have nearly finished, Walter. I have written all this to Dobbin. Look!” She held up the sprawly sheet for his admiration. “Haven’t I been good?”
“You are always good,” he said remorsefully. And he glanced at her, thinking for the hundredth time how pretty she was, and wondering why everything she said should be so flatly ineffective. But he had something to tell her, and he dashed at it hurriedly—
“I’m afraid, I’m very much afraid, that I shall have to go back to England.”
“To England!” She looked at him incredulously.
“Yes. I’m wanted there.”
“But not yet. You’ve had no letters to-day.”
He cursed his want of premeditation. He had forgotten that every now and then Sylvia developed an odd practical shrewdness.
“Not to-day.”
“Not to-day, and only two from your mother since we’ve been here.”
“I must go all the same,” he said, taking refuge in obstinacy. “I’ve been pleasuring too long.”
Evidently and unusually she was puzzled.
“But,” she said slowly, at last, “but—I don’t understand. You can’t go all in a minute. We have to see Syracuse and Palermo, and—a great many things. Indeed, Walter, you can’t! It wouldn’t be right. Why should you? I remember you told me you would not go home until you took me.”
“Things change.”
“What has changed?”
He looked at her, and thought bitterly how little she knew that she was pleading against herself—against his better self. The other half of him wanted to stay, swore it was folly to give up an hour of the only happiness which life still held, and all for a scruple. He was going to stick to Sylvia. That much stood firm amid the general earthquake.
“I’d better go,” he said doggedly.
“Oh, no,” returned Sylvia decidedly; “you mustn’t.” After a momentary pause she added, “It would be so odd!”
“Would it?” He flung hasty thought at what the others would say on the matter, and his leaving immediately looked so suspicious in his own eyes, that he felt as if it must proclaim his secret to the world. He forced a laugh, however.
“What’s odd in having business to see after?”
“Oh, but they all know you haven’t.”
Silence.
“I wish I knew what makes you want to go home,” said Sylvia wonderingly. “I can’t think! Won’t you tell me?”
Wilbraham moved uneasily. He could not lie to her, and the truth was impossible. He chose a middle course.
“If you really dislike it so much, I’ll stay. It shall make no difference,” he promised his conscience.
“I was sure you would not go,” was all she said, and he was vaguely surprised, expecting delight and surprise in a gush, but thankful they were not lavished upon him.
Through that day and the next, and the next, he kept iron hands on himself, close to Sylvia’s side. Teresa was too well pleased to see him there so much as to wonder why once or twice he avoided her—almost rudely. She went on her way light-heartedly, and began to sing when she was alone. She painted here, there, everywhere, the women carrying their empty pitchers to the fountain lengthways on their heads, or coming back upright, supple, with the heavy weight poised securely; the old people hurrying with their chairs to a little homely church, sunk in a narrow street; the Catania Gate, with its long flight of outer steps, and its odd crooked arches; walls blistered by sun, and overhung by grey-green prickly pear and red shoots of pomegranate; Gothic arches, rose windows; sunrise and sunset; glory of noonday; flash of falling rain, and sullen overshadowing of thunder-cloud. The little city, hanging on its hillside, had for her a charm which never wearied.
The only one who seemed restless and dissatisfied was Nina. Teresa began to be sorry that she had brought her, though she had imagined it would make travelling easier for her grandmother. But the little Viterbo woman frankly hated the place, and Italians of her class are too much like children to attempt to disguise their feelings. Then she had spilt oil on the day of their departure, and only the Madonna knew what disasters that might not bring! There was a bottle of wine close by, and why should not that have been knocked over instead, when such an upset would have ensured good luck? For want of other listeners, she talked of this to Peppina, and watched the girl’s face as she spoke. Peppina shrugged her shoulders.
“Eh, who knows?” she answered carelessly. “For that you have to take your chance with the rest.”
Peppina had learnt from Cesare to mock at omens which came to others, but she could not help being still terrified when she encountered them herself.
“That is news!” retorted Nina scornfully. “If it was not for the chance it would be easy.”
“You or another. There are enough of you! One, two, three, four, five,” the girl counted on her fingers. “Five chances. Try the cards if you want to know which.”
“Who it comes from, rather,” said the other with significance.
Peppina darted a look from under her long eyelashes, and her voice slightly shook.
“Will they tell you that? I do not believe it.”
“Will they?Altro! One as much as the other,” said Nina, enjoying her uneasiness. “And I say an apoplexy upon whoever it is! An apoplexy!”
“Be quiet!” cried Peppina angrily, a spasm crossing her face, and her hand almost unconsciously signing against the evil eye; “be quiet with your jay’s voice, when my signora is trying to sleep above. Who talks of apoplexies?”
Nina was too well pleased with the effect she had produced to be affronted.
“Is she ill then?”
“Her head aches. It wants to be amused.”
Peppina was uncomfortably aware that she had said too much once more. She yawned intentionally, flinging her arms over her head. “Diamine, I could sleep myself,” she added drowsily, but looking at Nina through half-closed lids.
“Well, sleep—sleep if you will. There is nothing to be done—not so much as a ricotta making in this nest of owls,” said Nina, waving Taormina away from her with disdain. “You will wake in time to see Cesare.”
“Cesare!” Peppina started up as if struck with a whip. “What do you say?”
“Did you not know he was here? Then I am wiser than you, for once. He should have been to see you before—a pretty girl like you! But there—those men!” Nina shook her head sympathetically. “There is the Cianchetti, of course.”
“Hold your tongue! If he is here, he will come, beyond a doubt!” cried the girl, eyeing her furiously, and panting to acknowledge that she had passed an hour with her lover the evening before. “The Cianchetti! A creature like that!”
“A creature, as you say, but then she is pretty. And that he should be here and not tell you!”
Nina held up her hands, perfectly aware of what was struggling in Peppina’s breast, and amused at her easy victory.
“I tell you he will come!” exclaimed the girl breathlessly.
“We shall see.”
Nina nodded many times, and there was a short pause, in which Peppina’s fear grew stronger than her vanity.
“How do you know he is here?”
“Eh-h-h-h-h! One has eyes,” answered Nina carelessly. “Why does he come?”
“Who knows?” said the girl, wary again.
“What it is to have money for travelling!” exclaimed Nina, who was sure that Peppina had somehow got the money from Mrs Maxwell. “It is wine he must have upset, not oil like me.”
“Do you still think of it?” said Peppina, anxious to turn the conversation.
“I shall sort the cards to-night, and try to find out who the ill-luck comes from. Whoever it is, an apoplexy on him!” cried Nina vengefully.
Chapter Fourteen.There had been a slight, a very slight change in Sylvia since the day when Wilbraham so abruptly announced that he was going to England. She was not quite so confident; once or twice Mrs Brodrick had fancied she was not confident at all. Teresa, blinded by art and sunshine, flung off her cares, and enjoyed herself to the full. Mrs Maxwell, growing slightly bored, began to talk of going on to Syracuse. She said it was because Mrs Brodrick looked pale.“I shall be so sorry to go myself. It’s a delightful place,” she declared, yawning.“A rare good hole for Greek coins,” said her husband, “and a lot more coming next week. I want to see them.”She glanced at him pityingly.“Ten days more?” pleaded Teresa. “Come, that will carry us over Easter and the processions. Think of a procession in the streets of Taormina!” Mrs Maxwell, who liked to see everything, reflected and agreed.“But I’m very uncomfortable here,” she added. “I should wish you all to know that Peppina is really no good to me at all. See how she’s done my hair to-day. A perfect fright, in spite of the lessons I showered upon her.”“Our servants are not quite successful. Nina looks as she looked when she had toothache, and I can’t say more! She is prejudiced against Sicily.”“They might consider us a little,” said Mrs Maxwell. “But your Nina does serve you faithfully. Now, Peppina would not care what happened to me, so long as she clutched the lire. Why don’t I part with her? Oh, she’s so pleasant, I can’t. She makes up for all Jem’s shortcomings, and they’re many. He always stumps about when I’ve a headache.”“What’s that?” asked Colonel Maxwell.“Nothing. I only said if I were weighed against a Greek coin—forged, my dear, that’s the sting of it,” she whispered to Teresa—“I shouldn’t have a chance.”But her eyes smiled kindly as she looked at her big husband, whom she teased and adored.Teresa laughed, and went back to get her drawing things. Nina carried them for her, almost the only personal service which the marchesa accepted. She looked so miserable that Teresa began to question her—“What is the matter, Nina? Have you, perhaps, toothache again?”“It is an ache here, eccellenza,” said Nina, laying her hand dramatically on her heart. “It is because there are bad people in the world.”In spite of herself Donna Teresa laughed.“At that rate I don’t know when the ache will stop. Have you met with any specially bad people at Taormina?”“Altro!” Nina cried emphatically. “It is an evil place. See here, eccellenza, do not permit the signorina’s Englishman to walk at night. The nights are not wholesome.”“Not wholesome? You mean dangerous?Ma, che! What absurdity!” She altered her tone a little. “If you are so unhappy away from Rome, I will send you back.”“What good will that do the Englishman?” asked Nina gloomily. “Send Peppina, that might be better, eccellenza.”“Peppina!” Teresa laughed again.She knew that the two disagreed, and thought that Nina was inclined to be hard on the girl. “And why?”“She is hot-headed, and the air here is not good for that illness.”“The air? It is perfect.”“Not at night, eccellenza. It has been known to carry a man off as quickly as if—”“As if?”“As if he had had a knife in his heart,” Nina said slowly, in a low whisper, and glancing round. Two men were coming up behind, and she immediately raised her voice to a more cheerful key. “Is it to be the blessed Santa Caterina to-day, eccellenza? Not that I believe she can have anything to say to such ignorant people as these, but it is more lucky to sit where a saint looks down upon you, since she might be obliged to do something for her own credit.”She talked so persistently all the rest of the way that it was evident she meant to say nothing more on the subject of unwholesome air. Teresa, who knew her prejudices, was quite undisturbed by her hints, and occupied in her drawing. She sat in a little angle of the long street, which the Arabs called El Kasr—so linking it with the Luxor of Egypt—facing the beautiful doorway of Santa Caterina’s Church. The colouring is exquisite, for the wood has been faded by sun and soft winds into a grey blue—the exact shade of Saint Peter’s dome—veined here and there by pink, while high above door and cornice stands a small graceful figure of the saint, leaning on her wheel, and shaded by delicate grasses.Teresa’s eagerness about whatever interest absorbed her was apt to leave other impressions in the lurch. She was very well content to believe that things were greatly improved between Sylvia and Wilbraham, and that there was no need for her to waste uneasiness in that direction; indeed, she had persuaded herself that her past uneasiness had been born of mere over-anxiety. All along she had ranked the girl’s prettiness unduly high in its effect, but now she was sure that her after qualms were unnecessary. As for Nina’s chatter, that she dismissed with all the Tuesdays and Fridays, hunchbacks and oil-spilling, which haunted the little Viterbo woman’s days. She was, indeed, unusually gay at heart, probably from her out-of-door life in that delicious air, which was now gently sweeping off the almond petals on the hillside.Mrs Maxwell was very much disappointed by the processions in Holy Week. After waiting for days, as she said, to see them, shehadexpected something better than a few white-hooded men straggling before the baldacchino. Yet the Duomo, empty of interest as it is—except to those who penetrate to the embroideries in the sacristy—lends itself picturesquely to effect, with its fine doorways and its red marble steps. And on Good Friday, as she, Sylvia, and Wilbraham waited in a little piazza just inside an inner gate, Teresa saw something which she will never forget.A church stands on one side, facing Etna and the many-coloured sea. Here the procession began to gather, and out of the church and down the steps was borne an inexpressibly scarred and forbidding-looking dead Christ on his bier. Through the gate it was carried towards the Duomo, while down a steep and stony lane the Madonna, high uplifted, came to join her divine Son. So far, though interesting, there was nothing very striking or impressive in the scene, but when the procession crept out again from the shadow of the Duomo, and, making its way back, wound slowly along the whole length of Taormina, it was different. The narrowness of the street, with its balconies and leaning figures, the white-draped, white-hooded men, the multitude of moving twinkling lights, the flashes here and there of colour, the priests in their vestments, the swaying baldacchino—smote home, overpowered sordid details. Teresa looked at it with wet eyes.Wilbraham was standing mutely next her; Sylvia, full of exclamations, beyond him. Suddenly Teresa became aware that one of the hooded figures had turned his head towards them. There was no more than a slit for the eyes, yet she knew without seeing that some gaze, fierce and menacing, burnt behind the hood. So sure was she, that she spoke impetuously to Wilbraham when the figure had passed—“Did you see? Who was it?”“Some fellow who means to know me again,” he said after a momentary pause.“No. It was some one who hated you,” she answered with a trembling voice. Nina’s words, “a knife in the heart,” came driving back, and moved her strangely.His head whirled. In unconscious excitement she had pressed a little closely to him, her sleeve brushed his. He was forced to guard his voice, lest it should betray joy that his possible danger should have so moved her. Sylvia spoke twice and he did not hear.“Thank you,” he said in a low voice. “Thank you.”Something of strained repression in his voice startled her. She looked at him in sudden dismay, and the revelation was so impossible, so astounding, that it for the instant left her dazed. She felt as if a cold hand had been laid upon her heart. The next moment the consciousness of Sylvia gave her back herself. Had she seen? Did she know? It was of Sylvia that she must think, it was Sylvia whom she must protect, it was to her she spoke very gently—“I’m going back now, and you will come when you like.” Amazement, not emotion, had shaken her, and, afraid lest he should think she was in any degree sharing his, she looked coolly in his face. “Don’t let Sylvia overtire herself,” she said. “That would be much more serious than for a man to stare at us behind his hood.”But, as she walked swiftly along the white road, fear and amazement at her discovery swept over her again. The odiousness of the situation appalled her. She raged against herself, beginning to realise her folly in trying to bolster up Wilbraham’s short-lived love. She had put Sylvia in the best positions, hidden the emptiness of the girl’s mind by her own quickness, been kind to Wilbraham for her sister’s sake until now, now—Mrs Brodrick was startled by Teresa, white-faced and shaken, appearing suddenly in her room.“Granny,” she began breathlessly and flinging herself by her side, “things are going very badly indeed.”And their eyes met, full of understanding.“It had to come,” said Mrs Brodrick with a sigh.“But not this. Nothing so wretched as this! I don’t think Icantell you,” she went on, flinging her head back and staring dismally at her grandmother. Mrs Brodrick met her look without a vestige of the surprise she expected.“Poor Teresa!” she said, laying her hand on hers. “Has he been making love to you instead of to Sylvia? What has he done?”There was a certain relief in not having to explain the first miserable discovery, and she told her tale in short gasps which ended in a half-laugh of contempt.“Nina was so odd in her warnings,” she explained, “that although I did not mind them at the time, when I saw that man glaring I was seized with terror. Something—of course it was a ridiculous fancy—made me think it was Cesare. And, granny,—I shall never forgive myself!—I was frightened, and I suppose he thought I cared for him. But how could he! How could he!”“It had to come,” Mrs Brodrick repeated, but a perplexed frown gathered on her forehead, for she was trying to think what would come next. “Put yourself out of your thoughts, dear,” she added after a moment’s pause. “It does not much matter what has brought the climax. What matters a great deal is the effect upon—Sylvia. She—she does not see so quickly as some girls would.”“I know, and I know that I am to blame,” said Donna Teresa very humbly. “I will do anything you think best. Must she be told?” she suggested hesitatingly. “It takes so little to make her happy!”“There are two to make happy,” answered her grandmother, smiling sadly.The young marchesa flung up her head haughtily.“He! I do not think of him!”“Then you do not really blame yourself, for it is he whom you have injured.”“Oh,” cried Teresa with an angry light in her eyes, “I shall never forgive him!”Mrs Brodrick took no notice.“It always comes back to one fact,” she said presently. “I suppose you or I will have to speak to poor Sylvia.”Teresa sprang up, and began to walk about the room.“What can we say?” she asked, stopping. “Not everything?”“No, certainly. You mustn’t come into it. We must tell her that—that we think there has been a mistake. That perhaps she should give him back his word—”“Tell her she ought,” Teresa broke in drearily. “Sylvia is so good, she will do anything she thinks she ought. Why is it the good people who always have to suffer? Little Sylvia! And I meant her to be so happy! Granny, be very, very kind to her. Must it be to-day?”“No,” said Mrs Brodrick, considering. “Let us wait a day.”“Till Monday.”“Well—till Monday. Perhaps he will speak. Perhaps something will come to her. Do you think that man was really Cesare?”“What do I care if it was?”But in spite of her indifference her grandmother, without mentioning the incident, asked Mrs Maxwell whether Peppina’s lover was in Taormina.“I wonder?” returned Mrs Maxwell meditatively. “She broke a scent bottle this morning—I believe he is.”Peppina, however, asked casually where her lover now was, swore with so much detail that her Cesare, poor fellow, was in Rome, working on theAvantistaff; that her sister had seen him the day before and had heard from him how he had been obliged to have the doctor for Angelo, the poor cripple, and the doctor had said it was good broth the creature wanted—but how could Cesare, with his wages, get good broth?—that Mrs Maxwell melted into conviction and five lire.No one thought of asking Nina, and no one except she was aware that on that same night Peppina was leaning over a wall, under a golden moon, talking to a man whose movements were very like those of Cesare. She was pressing something into his hand.“Diamine,” she was saying, “and why not, when I tell you I have more than I want?”“But how, how? That is my question. You do not ask for it?” he added suddenly, his anger rising.“And if I did, what is that to you?” she retorted, swinging away. “But I do not. They raise my wages.”“Again?” said Cesare, still suspicious. “Per Bacco, and for what?”“For what? For nothing. I tell you they fling their money, they have so much. To me, or to others, what does it matter? And so long as you want it and do not waste it on—the Cianchetti, for instance—”Her breath came shortly; but Cesare, who had grown used to these hints, for which indeed Nina only was responsible, took no notice, and as her moods changed quickly and she was impressionable the soft stillness of the night calmed her.“Cesare mio, what are you going to do? Do not be rash. There is danger with these cold-blooded English,” she went on, speaking very tenderly.“I am not afraid. There is no danger here. And if there were, I do not know that I care. Now or then, what does it matter? But I am not afraid. I have friends.”She swayed towards him whispering a word in his ear, and the next moment his hand was on her lips, and roughly.“Mother of Heaven,” he exclaimed, “be quiet! I will not have you speak of that, do you hear? I will not!”She pushed away his hand and laughed.“You and the lizards. There is no other to be the wiser.”He stood silent for some minutes, presently reverting to what she had said—“They fling their money, do they? And on Monday I went to the Bianchis’ house—you know the Bianchi?”She nodded.“Livia is ill—the little white one who always suffers, always! But now she is worse. I tell you she has nothing. She lies on the floor and moans till your heart swells. They took her to the hospital, the one at Sant’ Onofrio—”Peppina nodded again.“The Bambino Gesu, yes.”“And they shut the door in their faces. There was room, but no money. They are good women, I do not blame them. But no money. And these, these fling theirs here, there, where they will, while we die.” He went on gloomily, “We shall change all that before we have done.”“Eh,” said the girl happily, “and then you will be rich in your turn.”She closed her eyes, lapping herself in delicious thoughts of how she would have a dress which should outshine the Cianchetti’s wildest attempts, and plenty of good things to eat without working for them. Cesare was clever. But he must not be imprudent. And she did not mean to ask him what was in his mind. She could forgive him anything except love for the Cianchetti.Perhaps Cesare had not heard her last words. His worn and eager eyes looked out over the almond-trees to where dark Etna lay stretched along the land. There were things he saw in the night of which he never spoke to Peppina; often a haunting girl’s face changing from laughter into sudden terrible reproach. He did not regret his deed. He looked upon himself as a righteous executioner despising ordered law, and believing that he and others of his own way of thinking were bound to execute judgment where it was called for. But his belief did not shut out the face, and he had now a curious thought that any other eyes looking out of the darkness would be more bearable than hers, so long—so long as they were not a woman’s.
There had been a slight, a very slight change in Sylvia since the day when Wilbraham so abruptly announced that he was going to England. She was not quite so confident; once or twice Mrs Brodrick had fancied she was not confident at all. Teresa, blinded by art and sunshine, flung off her cares, and enjoyed herself to the full. Mrs Maxwell, growing slightly bored, began to talk of going on to Syracuse. She said it was because Mrs Brodrick looked pale.
“I shall be so sorry to go myself. It’s a delightful place,” she declared, yawning.
“A rare good hole for Greek coins,” said her husband, “and a lot more coming next week. I want to see them.”
She glanced at him pityingly.
“Ten days more?” pleaded Teresa. “Come, that will carry us over Easter and the processions. Think of a procession in the streets of Taormina!” Mrs Maxwell, who liked to see everything, reflected and agreed.
“But I’m very uncomfortable here,” she added. “I should wish you all to know that Peppina is really no good to me at all. See how she’s done my hair to-day. A perfect fright, in spite of the lessons I showered upon her.”
“Our servants are not quite successful. Nina looks as she looked when she had toothache, and I can’t say more! She is prejudiced against Sicily.”
“They might consider us a little,” said Mrs Maxwell. “But your Nina does serve you faithfully. Now, Peppina would not care what happened to me, so long as she clutched the lire. Why don’t I part with her? Oh, she’s so pleasant, I can’t. She makes up for all Jem’s shortcomings, and they’re many. He always stumps about when I’ve a headache.”
“What’s that?” asked Colonel Maxwell.
“Nothing. I only said if I were weighed against a Greek coin—forged, my dear, that’s the sting of it,” she whispered to Teresa—“I shouldn’t have a chance.”
But her eyes smiled kindly as she looked at her big husband, whom she teased and adored.
Teresa laughed, and went back to get her drawing things. Nina carried them for her, almost the only personal service which the marchesa accepted. She looked so miserable that Teresa began to question her—
“What is the matter, Nina? Have you, perhaps, toothache again?”
“It is an ache here, eccellenza,” said Nina, laying her hand dramatically on her heart. “It is because there are bad people in the world.”
In spite of herself Donna Teresa laughed.
“At that rate I don’t know when the ache will stop. Have you met with any specially bad people at Taormina?”
“Altro!” Nina cried emphatically. “It is an evil place. See here, eccellenza, do not permit the signorina’s Englishman to walk at night. The nights are not wholesome.”
“Not wholesome? You mean dangerous?Ma, che! What absurdity!” She altered her tone a little. “If you are so unhappy away from Rome, I will send you back.”
“What good will that do the Englishman?” asked Nina gloomily. “Send Peppina, that might be better, eccellenza.”
“Peppina!” Teresa laughed again.
She knew that the two disagreed, and thought that Nina was inclined to be hard on the girl. “And why?”
“She is hot-headed, and the air here is not good for that illness.”
“The air? It is perfect.”
“Not at night, eccellenza. It has been known to carry a man off as quickly as if—”
“As if?”
“As if he had had a knife in his heart,” Nina said slowly, in a low whisper, and glancing round. Two men were coming up behind, and she immediately raised her voice to a more cheerful key. “Is it to be the blessed Santa Caterina to-day, eccellenza? Not that I believe she can have anything to say to such ignorant people as these, but it is more lucky to sit where a saint looks down upon you, since she might be obliged to do something for her own credit.”
She talked so persistently all the rest of the way that it was evident she meant to say nothing more on the subject of unwholesome air. Teresa, who knew her prejudices, was quite undisturbed by her hints, and occupied in her drawing. She sat in a little angle of the long street, which the Arabs called El Kasr—so linking it with the Luxor of Egypt—facing the beautiful doorway of Santa Caterina’s Church. The colouring is exquisite, for the wood has been faded by sun and soft winds into a grey blue—the exact shade of Saint Peter’s dome—veined here and there by pink, while high above door and cornice stands a small graceful figure of the saint, leaning on her wheel, and shaded by delicate grasses.
Teresa’s eagerness about whatever interest absorbed her was apt to leave other impressions in the lurch. She was very well content to believe that things were greatly improved between Sylvia and Wilbraham, and that there was no need for her to waste uneasiness in that direction; indeed, she had persuaded herself that her past uneasiness had been born of mere over-anxiety. All along she had ranked the girl’s prettiness unduly high in its effect, but now she was sure that her after qualms were unnecessary. As for Nina’s chatter, that she dismissed with all the Tuesdays and Fridays, hunchbacks and oil-spilling, which haunted the little Viterbo woman’s days. She was, indeed, unusually gay at heart, probably from her out-of-door life in that delicious air, which was now gently sweeping off the almond petals on the hillside.
Mrs Maxwell was very much disappointed by the processions in Holy Week. After waiting for days, as she said, to see them, shehadexpected something better than a few white-hooded men straggling before the baldacchino. Yet the Duomo, empty of interest as it is—except to those who penetrate to the embroideries in the sacristy—lends itself picturesquely to effect, with its fine doorways and its red marble steps. And on Good Friday, as she, Sylvia, and Wilbraham waited in a little piazza just inside an inner gate, Teresa saw something which she will never forget.
A church stands on one side, facing Etna and the many-coloured sea. Here the procession began to gather, and out of the church and down the steps was borne an inexpressibly scarred and forbidding-looking dead Christ on his bier. Through the gate it was carried towards the Duomo, while down a steep and stony lane the Madonna, high uplifted, came to join her divine Son. So far, though interesting, there was nothing very striking or impressive in the scene, but when the procession crept out again from the shadow of the Duomo, and, making its way back, wound slowly along the whole length of Taormina, it was different. The narrowness of the street, with its balconies and leaning figures, the white-draped, white-hooded men, the multitude of moving twinkling lights, the flashes here and there of colour, the priests in their vestments, the swaying baldacchino—smote home, overpowered sordid details. Teresa looked at it with wet eyes.
Wilbraham was standing mutely next her; Sylvia, full of exclamations, beyond him. Suddenly Teresa became aware that one of the hooded figures had turned his head towards them. There was no more than a slit for the eyes, yet she knew without seeing that some gaze, fierce and menacing, burnt behind the hood. So sure was she, that she spoke impetuously to Wilbraham when the figure had passed—
“Did you see? Who was it?”
“Some fellow who means to know me again,” he said after a momentary pause.
“No. It was some one who hated you,” she answered with a trembling voice. Nina’s words, “a knife in the heart,” came driving back, and moved her strangely.
His head whirled. In unconscious excitement she had pressed a little closely to him, her sleeve brushed his. He was forced to guard his voice, lest it should betray joy that his possible danger should have so moved her. Sylvia spoke twice and he did not hear.
“Thank you,” he said in a low voice. “Thank you.”
Something of strained repression in his voice startled her. She looked at him in sudden dismay, and the revelation was so impossible, so astounding, that it for the instant left her dazed. She felt as if a cold hand had been laid upon her heart. The next moment the consciousness of Sylvia gave her back herself. Had she seen? Did she know? It was of Sylvia that she must think, it was Sylvia whom she must protect, it was to her she spoke very gently—
“I’m going back now, and you will come when you like.” Amazement, not emotion, had shaken her, and, afraid lest he should think she was in any degree sharing his, she looked coolly in his face. “Don’t let Sylvia overtire herself,” she said. “That would be much more serious than for a man to stare at us behind his hood.”
But, as she walked swiftly along the white road, fear and amazement at her discovery swept over her again. The odiousness of the situation appalled her. She raged against herself, beginning to realise her folly in trying to bolster up Wilbraham’s short-lived love. She had put Sylvia in the best positions, hidden the emptiness of the girl’s mind by her own quickness, been kind to Wilbraham for her sister’s sake until now, now—
Mrs Brodrick was startled by Teresa, white-faced and shaken, appearing suddenly in her room.
“Granny,” she began breathlessly and flinging herself by her side, “things are going very badly indeed.”
And their eyes met, full of understanding.
“It had to come,” said Mrs Brodrick with a sigh.
“But not this. Nothing so wretched as this! I don’t think Icantell you,” she went on, flinging her head back and staring dismally at her grandmother. Mrs Brodrick met her look without a vestige of the surprise she expected.
“Poor Teresa!” she said, laying her hand on hers. “Has he been making love to you instead of to Sylvia? What has he done?”
There was a certain relief in not having to explain the first miserable discovery, and she told her tale in short gasps which ended in a half-laugh of contempt.
“Nina was so odd in her warnings,” she explained, “that although I did not mind them at the time, when I saw that man glaring I was seized with terror. Something—of course it was a ridiculous fancy—made me think it was Cesare. And, granny,—I shall never forgive myself!—I was frightened, and I suppose he thought I cared for him. But how could he! How could he!”
“It had to come,” Mrs Brodrick repeated, but a perplexed frown gathered on her forehead, for she was trying to think what would come next. “Put yourself out of your thoughts, dear,” she added after a moment’s pause. “It does not much matter what has brought the climax. What matters a great deal is the effect upon—Sylvia. She—she does not see so quickly as some girls would.”
“I know, and I know that I am to blame,” said Donna Teresa very humbly. “I will do anything you think best. Must she be told?” she suggested hesitatingly. “It takes so little to make her happy!”
“There are two to make happy,” answered her grandmother, smiling sadly.
The young marchesa flung up her head haughtily.
“He! I do not think of him!”
“Then you do not really blame yourself, for it is he whom you have injured.”
“Oh,” cried Teresa with an angry light in her eyes, “I shall never forgive him!”
Mrs Brodrick took no notice.
“It always comes back to one fact,” she said presently. “I suppose you or I will have to speak to poor Sylvia.”
Teresa sprang up, and began to walk about the room.
“What can we say?” she asked, stopping. “Not everything?”
“No, certainly. You mustn’t come into it. We must tell her that—that we think there has been a mistake. That perhaps she should give him back his word—”
“Tell her she ought,” Teresa broke in drearily. “Sylvia is so good, she will do anything she thinks she ought. Why is it the good people who always have to suffer? Little Sylvia! And I meant her to be so happy! Granny, be very, very kind to her. Must it be to-day?”
“No,” said Mrs Brodrick, considering. “Let us wait a day.”
“Till Monday.”
“Well—till Monday. Perhaps he will speak. Perhaps something will come to her. Do you think that man was really Cesare?”
“What do I care if it was?”
But in spite of her indifference her grandmother, without mentioning the incident, asked Mrs Maxwell whether Peppina’s lover was in Taormina.
“I wonder?” returned Mrs Maxwell meditatively. “She broke a scent bottle this morning—I believe he is.”
Peppina, however, asked casually where her lover now was, swore with so much detail that her Cesare, poor fellow, was in Rome, working on theAvantistaff; that her sister had seen him the day before and had heard from him how he had been obliged to have the doctor for Angelo, the poor cripple, and the doctor had said it was good broth the creature wanted—but how could Cesare, with his wages, get good broth?—that Mrs Maxwell melted into conviction and five lire.
No one thought of asking Nina, and no one except she was aware that on that same night Peppina was leaning over a wall, under a golden moon, talking to a man whose movements were very like those of Cesare. She was pressing something into his hand.
“Diamine,” she was saying, “and why not, when I tell you I have more than I want?”
“But how, how? That is my question. You do not ask for it?” he added suddenly, his anger rising.
“And if I did, what is that to you?” she retorted, swinging away. “But I do not. They raise my wages.”
“Again?” said Cesare, still suspicious. “Per Bacco, and for what?”
“For what? For nothing. I tell you they fling their money, they have so much. To me, or to others, what does it matter? And so long as you want it and do not waste it on—the Cianchetti, for instance—”
Her breath came shortly; but Cesare, who had grown used to these hints, for which indeed Nina only was responsible, took no notice, and as her moods changed quickly and she was impressionable the soft stillness of the night calmed her.
“Cesare mio, what are you going to do? Do not be rash. There is danger with these cold-blooded English,” she went on, speaking very tenderly.
“I am not afraid. There is no danger here. And if there were, I do not know that I care. Now or then, what does it matter? But I am not afraid. I have friends.”
She swayed towards him whispering a word in his ear, and the next moment his hand was on her lips, and roughly.
“Mother of Heaven,” he exclaimed, “be quiet! I will not have you speak of that, do you hear? I will not!”
She pushed away his hand and laughed.
“You and the lizards. There is no other to be the wiser.”
He stood silent for some minutes, presently reverting to what she had said—
“They fling their money, do they? And on Monday I went to the Bianchis’ house—you know the Bianchi?”
She nodded.
“Livia is ill—the little white one who always suffers, always! But now she is worse. I tell you she has nothing. She lies on the floor and moans till your heart swells. They took her to the hospital, the one at Sant’ Onofrio—”
Peppina nodded again.
“The Bambino Gesu, yes.”
“And they shut the door in their faces. There was room, but no money. They are good women, I do not blame them. But no money. And these, these fling theirs here, there, where they will, while we die.” He went on gloomily, “We shall change all that before we have done.”
“Eh,” said the girl happily, “and then you will be rich in your turn.”
She closed her eyes, lapping herself in delicious thoughts of how she would have a dress which should outshine the Cianchetti’s wildest attempts, and plenty of good things to eat without working for them. Cesare was clever. But he must not be imprudent. And she did not mean to ask him what was in his mind. She could forgive him anything except love for the Cianchetti.
Perhaps Cesare had not heard her last words. His worn and eager eyes looked out over the almond-trees to where dark Etna lay stretched along the land. There were things he saw in the night of which he never spoke to Peppina; often a haunting girl’s face changing from laughter into sudden terrible reproach. He did not regret his deed. He looked upon himself as a righteous executioner despising ordered law, and believing that he and others of his own way of thinking were bound to execute judgment where it was called for. But his belief did not shut out the face, and he had now a curious thought that any other eyes looking out of the darkness would be more bearable than hers, so long—so long as they were not a woman’s.