Caterina bowed and smiled. Lucia held out two fingers to her cousin, who kept them in his. He was a rather stunted little creature, slightly bent in his tight overcoat; his temples were hollow, his cheekbones high, and his moustache thin and scanty; yet he had the air of a gentleman. His appearance was sickly and his smile uncertain. He spoke slowly, hissing out his syllables as if his breath were short. He informed the ladies that cold was bad for him; that he could not get warm, even in his fur coat; that he had only looked in, just by a mere accident, to avoid the cold outside. He was fortunate in having met them. He entreated them, for charity’s sweet sake, not to send him away. He added:
Caterina bowed and smiled. Lucia held out two fingers to her cousin, who kept them in his. He was a rather stunted little creature, slightly bent in his tight overcoat; his temples were hollow, his cheekbones high, and his moustache thin and scanty; yet he had the air of a gentleman. His appearance was sickly and his smile uncertain. He spoke slowly, hissing out his syllables as if his breath were short. He informed the ladies that cold was bad for him; that he could not get warm, even in his fur coat; that he had only looked in, just by a mere accident, to avoid the cold outside. He was fortunate in having met them. He entreated them, for charity’s sweet sake, not to send him away. He added:
“I met your Professor of History, Lucia. He was walking up and down, smoking. Why don’t he come in?”
“I don’t know. Probably because he doesn’t care to see the fencing.”
“Or because he hasn’t the money to pay for a ticket,” persisted Sanna, with the triumphant malevolence of morbid natures.
Lucia struck him with the lightning of her glance, but made no answer. Caterina was too embarrassed to say anything. She looked at the stage; the fencers were two professionals; they had coarse voices, and arms that mowed the air like the poles of the semaphore telegraph. The audience paidsmall heed. Giovanna Casacalenda talked to her Commendatore, who was standing behind her, while she cast oblique glances at Roberto Gentile, the young officer in the brand-new uniform, who occupied a fauteuil underneath her box.
“Do you not fence, Signor Sanna?” asked Caterina by way of conversation.
“Fence!” said Lucia, vivaciously, giving her cousin tit-for-tat. “Fence, indeed, when he hasn’t breath to say more than four words at a time!”
The Signora Lieti reddened and trembled, out of sheer pity for Sanna’s pallor.
The silence in the box was more embarrassing than ever; then as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Lucia separated a gardenia from the bunch in her waistband, and gave it to Alberto. A little colour suffused his thin cheeks, he coughed weakly.
“Are you not well, Alberto...?” laying her hand upon his arm.
“Not quite, it’s the cold,” said he, with the whine of a sickly child.
“Have a glass of punch, to warm you?”
“It’s bad for my chest.”
Caterina, pretending not to hear, gave her whole attention to the spectacle. Count Alberti had passed two foils: to Galeota, junior, the young fencing-master, and to Lieti. The interest of the audience was once more awakened. The younger Galeota was a beautiful, graceful youth, with fair, curly hair, shining blue eyes, a short wavy beard, and the complexion of a fair woman; a well-proportioned figure, habited in ultramarine, with a white scarf. Opposite him, stood Andrea Lieti, like a calm Colossus.
“Dio mio!” cried Lucia, “Galeota is like a picture of Our Lord! How sweet and gentle he looks! If only Andrea does not hurt him.” But Andrea did not hurt him. It was a furious attack, in which the foils bent and squeaked; at lastGaleota’s foil broke off at the hilt. Alberti stayed both hands. The fencers raised their masks to breathe.
“How like Galeota is to Corradino of Alcardi!” exclaimed Lucia. “But your husband is a glorious Charles of Anjou.”
The assault began again; hotter and fiercer than ever. From time to time the deep sonorous voice of Andrea cried,Toccato!and above the din, the clear resonant tones of Galeota rang out,Toccato!The ladies became enthusiastic; they seized their opera-glasses and leant over the parapet of their boxes, while a thrill of delight moved the whole assembly. In Lucia’s excitement she closed her teeth over her handkerchief, and dug her nails into the red velvet upholstery. Caterina had again withdrawn into her shady corner.
“Bravo! bravo!” cried the audience with one voice, when the assault was over. Lucia leant out of the box and applauded; for the matter of that, many other ladies applauded. After all, it was a tournament. Lucia’s eyes dilated, her lips trembled; a nervous shiver shook her from time to time.
“Are you amusing yourself, Lucia?” said Caterina again.
“Immensely...!” closing her eyes in the flush of her enjoyment.
“Senti, Alberto; if it is not too cold, go down and send us up something from thebuffet.”
“I don’t want anything,” protested Caterina.
“Yes, yes, you do; you shall drink a glass of Marsala, with a biscuit.”
“I will have anything to please you,” assented Caterina, to avoid discussion.
“Send an ice for me, Alberto.”
“In this cold weather? I shiver to think of it.”
“I am burning; feel my hand.” And she put the poor creature’s finger in the opening of her glove. “Now, go and send me an ice at once. Take care of draughts.... That poor Alberto is not long for this life,” she added, addressing Caterina, when he was gone.
“Why not?”
“He is threatened with consumption. His mother and two sisters died of it. Don’t you see how thin he is?”
“Then don’t be cruel to him.”
“I? Why, I’m devotedly attached to him. I sympathise with suffering of every kind. All the people about me are sickly creatures.”
“Andrea would say that such an atmosphere cannot but be injurious to your health.”
“Oh! how strong your Andrea is! That is what I call strength. You saw to-day that he was the strongest of them all. But he never comes to see me.”
“Sai, he never has a moment to spare. And he is afraid of talking too loudly—of making your head ache.”
“He is not fond of musk, I fancy?” And she smiled a strange smile.
“Perfumes send the blood to his head. I will tell him to call on you.”
“Senti, Caterina, strength like his is almost overwhelming. Does it not almost frighten you? Are you never afraid of him?”
Caterina looked astonished, as she replied: “Afraid...! I do not understand you.... Why should I be afraid?”
“I don’t know,” said the other, shrugging her shoulders crossly. “I must eat this ice, for here comes Alberto again.”
During this conversation the performance continued—alternately interesting and tiresome. Connoisseurs opined that the tournament was a great success, and the Neapolitan school had been worthily represented. The Filomarina averred, with the audacity of a Titianesque beauty, that Galeota was an Antinous. The Marchesa Leale, a great friend of Baron Mattei’s, was enraptured. She was seated quietly by her husband’s side; she wore a badge—a brooch representing two crossed foils—that the Baron had presented to her. On the latter’s scarf was embroidered a red rose, the Marchesa’s emblem.
In the excitement incidental to the clashing of swords and the triumph of physical strength, Giovanna Casacalenda, with flushed cheeks and moist lips, began to neglect her Commendatore, and to cast enthusiastic and incendiary glances at Roberto Gentile. Many ladies regretted having exchanged their fans for muffs in the increasingly heated atmosphere. By degrees a vapour ascended towards the roof, and excited fancy conjured up visions of duels, gleaming foils, shining swords, secret thrusts, and applauding beauty. A warlike ardour reigned in boxes and parterre.
“Has the ice refreshed you, Lucia?” inquired her cousin.
“No, I burn more than ever; there was fire in it.”
“Perhaps you would feel better outside.”
“It will be over in a few minutes,” observed Caterina. “There is to be a set-to between my husband and Mattei.”
The set-to proved to be the most interesting part of the performance. Lieti and Mattei, the two most powerful champions, stood facing each other. The audience held its breath. During five minutes the two fencers stood facing each other; they toyed with their foils, indulging in a flourish of salutes,feintes, thrusts, parries, and plastic attitudes—a perfect symphony, whose theme was the chivalric salutation. Applause without end; then again silence, for the assault-at-arms was about to begin. Not a word or sound was uttered by either fencer. They were equally agile, ready, scientific, and full of fire—parrying with unflagging audacity, and liberating their foils as in the turn of a ring. They were well matched. Lieti touched Mattei five times; Mattei touched Lieti four times. They divided the honours. In applauding the two champions the public broke through the cordon. A handkerchief fell at Andrea’s feet. He hesitated a moment; then, without raising his eyes, stuck it in the scarf round his waist. The ladies’ gloves were torn to shreds in the storm of applause.
When he joined them in the box, Andrea found the ladies standing up, waiting for him.
“Good evening, Signorina Altimare; good evening, Caterina.Shall we go?” He spoke curtly and crossly while he helped his wife, who looked confused, to put on her furs. Then he burst out:
“Caterina, why did you behave so ridiculously? It is so unlike you to be eccentric—to make a laughing-stock of yourself?”
She kept her hands in her muff and her eyes cast down, and made no reply.
“You, a sensible little woman? Are we living in the Middle Ages?Perdio, to expose oneself to ridicule!”
Caterina turned pale and bit her lip; she would not cry, and had no voice left to answer with. Lucia leant against the door-post, listening.
“You are talking about the handkerchief, Signor Andrea?” she put in, slowly.
“Just so.... The handkerchief. A pretty conjugal amenity!”
“It was I who threw the handkerchief, Signor Andrea, in my enthusiasm. You were wonderful to-day—the first champion of the tournament.”
Andrea had not a word to say. He calmed down at once, with a vague smile. Caterina breathed freely once more.
Alberto Sanna returned and offered his arm to Caterina; Andrea assisted Lucia in putting on her cloak. She, with face uplifted towards his, her eyes, through their long lashes, fixed on his, and a slight quiver in her nostrils, leant on him imperceptibly, just sufficiently to graze his shoulder, as she drew on her coat-sleeves.
“Is it you, Galimberti? Pray come in.”
“Am I not disturbing you?” and, as usual, he stumbled over the rug, and then sat down, hat in hand, one glove off and the other on, but unbuttoned.
“You never disturb me.” Her tone was the cold, monotonous one of ill-humour.
“You were thinking?” ventured the dwarf, after a short silence.
“Yes, I was thinking ... but I don’t remember about what.”
“Have you been out to-day? It is a lovely morning.”
“And I’m so cold. I am always cold when the weather is warm, andvice versâ.”
“Strange creature!”
“Eh?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“And about yourself, Galimberti. Have you been to the College to-day to give your lesson?”
“Yes, I went there, although I felt so sad, and so disinclined to teach.”
“Very sad—and why?” But the tone was indifferent.
He stroked his forehead with his ungloved hand. She sat with her back to the window, but the light shone straight on his face, which looked yellow and faded. Occasionally there appeared to be a squint in his eyes.
“Yesterday ...” he began, “yesterday, you did not deign to write to me.”
“Yesterday.... What did I do yesterday...? Oh! I remember. Alberto Sanna came to see me.”
“He ... comes ... often ... to see you ... does he not?”
“He is my cousin,” she replied, coldly.
Another halt in the conversation. He went on, mechanically fingering the gloves he had not put on. Lucia unwound a cord of the silken fringe of the low chair in which, with face upturned, she was lying.
“Shall I give you your history lesson to-day?”
“No. History is useless, like everything else.”
“Are you too sad?”
“I’m not even sad—I’m indifferent. I do not care to think.”
“So that—forgive me for mentioning it—I must not hope for a letter from you to-morrow?”
“I don’t know ... I don’t think I shall be able to write.”
“But those letters were my only consolation,” lamented the dwarf.
“A fleeting consolation.”
“I am unhappy, so unhappy.”
“We’re all unhappy”—sententiously, and without looking at him.
“I fear that they no longer like me at the College,” he went on, as if talking to himself. “I always find myself confronted by such icy faces. That Cherubina Friscia hates me. She is a canting hypocrite, who weighs every word I speak. She makes a note in her handbook when I’m only a little late. I don’t know how it is, but sometimes I forget the hour. My memory is getting so weak.”
“So much the better for you. I can never forget.”
“And besides, the Tricolors of this year are lazy and insolent. They contradict me, refuse to write on the subjects I give them, and interrupt me with the most impertinent questions. Every now and then I lose the thread of my discourse, and then they giggle so that I can never find it again.... I’m done for, Signorina Lucia, I’m done for. I no longer enjoy teaching. I think ... I think there is intrigue at work against me at the College, a frightful, terrible, mysterious conspiracy that will end in my destruction.” He rolled his fierce, scared eyes, injected with blood and bile, as if he were taking stock of the enemies against whom he had to defend himself.
“The remedy, my dear Galimberti, is a simple one,” said Lucia with childlike candour.
“Speak, oh speak, you’re my good angel.... I will obey you in everything.”
“Shake the dust from off your sandals, and leave. Give them due warning.”
Galimberti was so much surprised that he hesitated.
“Is not liberty dear to you?” she continued. “Are younot nauseated by the stifling atmosphere you live in? There is a means of reasserting your independence.”
“True,” he murmured. He did not dare to confess to her that leaving the aristocratic College would mean ruin and starvation to him. Thence he derived the chief part of his income—throughthemhe obtained a few private lessons at the houses of his old pupils, by means of which he augmented the mite on which he lived, he in Naples, and his mother and sister in his native province. Without this, there would only remain to him an evening class for labouring people, by which he gained sixty francs a month: not enough to keep three people from dying of hunger. He was already too much ashamed of appearing to her, ugly, old, and unfortunate, without owning to being poverty-stricken besides.
“True,” he repeated despairingly.
“Why don’t you write to the Directress? If there be a conspiracy, she ought to be informed of it.”
“There is a conspiracy.... I feel it in the air about me.... I will write ... yes ... in a day or two.”
Then there was silence. Lucia stroked the folds of her Turkish wrapper. She took up her favourite album and in it wrote these lines of Boïto:
L’ebete vitaVita che c’innamoraLunga che pare un secoloBreve che pare un ora.
L’ebete vitaVita che c’innamoraLunga che pare un secoloBreve che pare un ora.
L’ebete vitaVita che c’innamoraLunga che pare un secoloBreve che pare un ora.
She replaced the album on the table, and the gold pencil-case in her pocket.
“Will you believe in one thing, Signora Lucia?”
“Scarcely....”
“Oh! believe in this sacred truth; the only happy part of my life is the time I pass here.”
“Oh! indeed,” she said, without looking at him.
“I swear it. Before I arrive here, I am overwhelmed withanxiety, I seem to have so many important things to tell you. When I get to the door, I forget them all. I am afraid my brain is getting weak. Then time flies; you speak to me; I hear your voice; I am here with you, in the room in which you live. I am afraid I stay too long; why don’t you send me away? When I leave you, the first puff of wind on the threshold of the street-door takes all my ideas away with it, and empties my brain, without leaving me the power to hold on to my own thoughts.”
“Here is Signor Sanna, Signorina,” announced the maid Giulietta.
“I am going,” said the perturbed Professor, rising to take his leave.
“As you please.” She shrugged her shoulders.
But he did not go, not knowing how to do so, while Alberto Sanna entered. The latter, buttoned up to his chin in his overcoat, with a red silk handkerchief to protect his throat, held a bunch of violets in his hand. Lucia, rising from her seat, placed both her hands in his, and dragged him to the window, that she might see how he looked.
“How are you, Alberto; do you feel well to-day?”
“Always the same,” he said; “an unspeakable weakness in my limbs.”
“Did you sleep, last night?”
“Pretty well.”
“Without any fever?”
“I think so; at least I hadn’t those cold shivers or that horrid suffocation.”
“Let me feel your pulse. It is weak, but regular,sai.”
“I ate a light breakfast.”
“Then you ought to feel well.”
“Che!my stomach can’t digest anything.”
“Like mine, Alberto. What lovely violets!”
“I bought them for you. I think you are fond of them?”
“I hope you didn’t buy them of a flower-girl?”
“If I had, then I should not have offered them to you.”
This dialogue took place in the window, while Galimberti sat alone and forgotten in his armchair. He sat there without raising his eyes, holding an album of photographs in his awkwardly gloved hands. He took a long time turning pages which held the portraits of persons in whom he could not have felt any interest. At last Lucia returned to her rocking-chair, and Alberto dragged a stool close up to her.
“Alberto, you know the Professor?”
“I think I have the honour....”
“We have met before ...” the two then said in unison; the Professor in an undertone, the cousin curtly.
They sat staring at each other, bored by each other’s presence, conscious of being in love with the same woman; Galimberti not less conscious of the necessity of taking his leave. Only he did not know how to get up, or what the occasion demanded that he should say and do. Lucia appeared quite unconscious of what was passing in their minds. She sniffed at her violets, and sometimes vouchsafed a word or two, especially to her cousin. However, conversation did not flow easily. The Professor, when Lucia addressed him, replied in monosyllables, starting with the air of a person who answers by courtesy, without understanding what is said to him. Sanna never addressed Galimberti, so that by degrees the trio once more collapsed into a duet.
“I looked in at your father’s rooms before coming to you. He was going out. He wanted to persuade me to go with him.”
“He is always going out.... And why didn’t you go with him?”
“It rained this morning; and I feel a shrinking in my very bones from the damp. It’s so cosy here, I preferred staying with you.”
“Have you no fireplaces at home?”
“Sai; those Neapolitan fireplaces that are not meant for fire, a cardboard sort of affair. Besides, my servant never manages to make me comfortable. I shiver in my own room, although it is so thickly carpeted.”
“Do you light fires at home, Galimberti?”
“No, Signorina; indeed, I have no fireplace.”
“How can you study in the cold?”
“I don’t feel the cold when I study.”
“You, Alberto, when you have anything to do, bring it here. I will embroider, and you can work.”
“I never have any writing to do, Lucia. You know your father manages all my business. And writing is bad for my chest.”
“You could read.”
“Reading bores me; there’s nothing but rubbish in books.”
“Then we could chat.”
“That we could! You might tell me all your beautiful thoughts, which excite the unbounded admiration of every one who listens to you. Where do you get your strange thoughts from, Lucia?”
“From the land of dreams,” she said, with a smile.
“The land of dreams! A land of your own invention, surely! You ought to write these things, Lucia. You have the making of an authoress.”
“What would be the good of it; I have no vanity, have I, Professor? I never had any.”
“Never! An excessive modesty, united to rare talent....”
“Basta, I was not begging for compliments. I was thinking of how much I suffered from my usual sleeplessness, last night....”
“I hope you took no chloral?”
“I refrained from it to please you. I bore with insomnia for your sake.”
“Thank you, my angel.”
Galimberti sat listening to them, while they exchanged lover-like glances, gazing at the red frame which held Caterina’s portrait.
“I ought to go ... I must go ...” he kept thinking. He felt as if he were nailed to his chair; as if he had no strength to rise from it. He was miserable, for he had justdiscovered that there was mud on one of his boots. It appeared to him that Lucia was always looking at that boot. It was his martyrdom, yet he dared not withdraw from it.
“And so the thought came to me amid so many others, that you, Alberto, need a woman about you.”
“What sort of a woman—a housekeeper? They are selfish and odious, I can’t abide them.”
“Why, no, I mean a wife.”
“Do you think so...? How strange! I should never have thought of it.”
“But the woman whom you need is not like any other. You need an exceptional woman.”
“True, how true! I want an exceptional wife,” said Alberto, willing to be persuaded.
“An exceptional woman. Don’t you agree with me, Professor?”
He started in the greatest perturbation. What could she be wanting of him, now?
Without awaiting his reply, she continued:
“You are, dear Alberto, in a somewhat precarious state of health; or rather, your age is itself a pitfall, surrounded as you are with all the temptations of youth. What with balls, theatres, supper-parties....”
“I never go anywhere,” he mumbled; “I am too afraid of making myself ill.”
“You do well to be prudent. After all, they are but empty pleasures. But at home, in your cold, lonely house, you do indeed need a sweet affectionate companion, who would never weary of tending you, who would never be bored, never grudge you the most tender care. Think of it! what a flood of light, and love, and sweet friendship, within your own walls! Think of the whole life of such a woman, consecrated to you!”
“And where is such an angel to be met with, Lucia?” he said, in an enthusiasm caught from her words, in despair that no such paragon was within reach.
“Alas! Alberto, we are all straining after an impossible ideal. You, too, are among the multitude of dreamers.”
“I wish I could but meet my ideal,” he persisted, with the obstinacy of his weak, capricious nature.
“Seek,” said Lucia, raising her eyes to the ceiling.
“Lucia, do me a favour.”
“Tell me what it is...? I beg your pardon, Galimberti, would you pass me that peacock fan?”
“Do you feel the heat, Signorina Lucia?”
“It oppresses me; I think I am feverish. Do you know that peacock feathers are unlucky?”
“I never heard it before.”
“Yes, they areiettatrici, just as branches of heather are lucky. Could you get me some?”
“To-morrow....”
“I was about to say, Lucia,” persisted Alberto, holding on to his idea, “that there is a favour you could do me. Why not write me the beautiful thing you have just said down on paper? I listen to you with delight; you talk admirably. If you would but write these things on a scrap of paper, I would put it in this fold of my pocket book, and every time I opened it I should remember that I have to find my ideal—that’s a wife.”
“You are a dear, silly fellow,” said Lucia, in her good-natured manner. “I will give you something better than this fleeting idea; all these things, and more besides, that are quite unknown to you, I will write you in a letter.”
“When, when?”
“To-day, to-night, or to-morrow morning.”
“No, this evening,”
“Well, this evening; but don’t answer me.”
“I shall answer you.”
“No, Alberto, your chest is too weak; it’s bad for you to stoop. Positively I won’t allow it.”
And so the Professor was quite excluded from the intimacy of the little duet; he was evidently in the way.
“What am I doing here, whatamI doing here, what am I here for?” he kept repeating to himself. By this time he had succeeded in awkwardly concealing his muddy boot; but he was tormented by a cruel suspicion that his cravat was on one side. He dared not raise his finger to it; and his mind was torn by two conflicting griefs: the letter Lucia was going to write to her cousin, and the possible crookedness of his cravat. The others continued to gaze at each other in silence. On Alberto’s contemptuous face there appeared to be a note of interrogation. He was inquiring tacitly of his cousin: “Is this bore going to stay for ever?” And her eyes made answer: “Patience, he will go some time; he bores me too.”
The strangest part of it all was that Galimberti had a vague consciousness of what was passing in their minds, and wanted to go, but had not the strength to rise. His spine felt as if it were bound to the back of the chair, and there was an unbearable weight in his head.
“Signorina, here is Signor Andrea Lieti,” said Giulietta.
“This is a miracle.”
“If you reproach me,” said Andrea, laughing, “I won’t even sit down. Good-morning, Alberto; good-morning, Galimberti!”
The room seemed to be filled with the strong man’s presence, by his hearty laugh, and his magnificent strength. Beside him, Galimberti, crooked, undersized and yellow; Sanna, meagre, worn, pale, consumptive-looking; Lucia, fragile, thin, and languishing, made up a picture of pitiable humanity. Galimberti shrank in his chair, bowing his head. Alberto Sanna contemplated Andrea from his feet upwards, with profound admiration, making himself as small as possible, like a weak being who craves the protection of a strong one. Lucia, on the contrary, threw herself back in her rocking-chair, attitudinising like a serpent in the folds of rich Turkish stuff, just showing the point of a golden embroidered slipper. The glance that filtered through her lids seemed to emit a spark at the corner of her eyes. All three were visibly impressed bythis fine physical type; so admirable in the perfection of its development. The room appeared to have narrowed, and even its furniture to have dwindled to humbler proportions, since he entered it; all the minute bric-à-brac and curios with which Lucia had surrounded herself had become invisible, as if they had been absorbed. Andrea sat down against the piano, and it seemed to disappear behind him. He shook his curly head, and a healthy current leavened the morbid atmosphere of the room; his laugh was almost too hearty for it, it disturbed the melancholy silence, which until his arrival had only been broken by undertones.
“I come here as an ambassador, Signora Lucia. Shall I present my credentials to the reigning powers?”
“Here are your credentials,” she said, pointing to the portrait of Caterina.
“Yes, there’s Nini. My government told me to go and prosper, and be received with the honours due to the representative of a reigning power.”
“Did Caterina say all that?”
“Not all. It’s in honour of your imagination, Signora Lucia, that I embellish my wife’s few words with flowers of rhetoric.”
“So you reproach me with my imagination,” said the girl, in an aggrieved tone, casting a circular glance at her friends, as if in appeal against such injustice.
“By no means; mayn’t one venture a joke? In short, Caterina said to me, 'At three you are to go....’”
“Is it already three?” broke in Galimberti, inopportunely.
“Past three, as your watch will tell you, my dear Professor.”
“Mine has stopped,” he replied mendaciously, not caring to exhibit a huge silver family relic. “I must take my departure.”
“To your lesson, Galimberti?” inquired Lucia, indifferently.
“Indeed, I find the time for it has slipped by. I had no idea that it was so late. After all it’s no great loss to my pupils. Will you have your lesson to-morrow, Signorina?”
“To-morrow! I don’t think I can; I feel too fatigued. Not to-morrow.”
“Wednesday, then?”
“I will let you know,” she replied, bored.
When, with a brick-coloured flush on his yellow cheeks, Galimberti had left them, all three were conscious of a sense of discomfort.
“Poor devil!” exclaimed Andrea, at last.
“Yes, but he is a bore,” added Alberto.
“What’s to be done? These ladies, in their exquisite good-nature, forget that he is only a teacher; and he gets bewildered and forgets it too. He must suffer a good deal when he comes to his senses.”
“Oh! he is an unhappy creature; but when I am sick or sad, the poor thing becomes an incubus: I don’t know how to shake him off.”
“Is he learned in history?” inquired Alberto, with the childish curiosity of ignorance.
“So, so; don’t let us talk about him any more. This morning he has spoilt my day for me. What were you saying when he left, Signor Lieti?”
“What was I saying? I don’t remember....”
“You were saying that your wife had sent you here at three,” suggested Alberto, as if he were repeating a lesson.
“Ecco!Ah, to be sure.... And after breakfast I went to a shooting-gallery, then I had a talk with the Member for Caserta about the local Exhibition in September, and then I came on here, with weighty communications, Signora Lucia.”
“I’m off,” said Alberto.
“What, because of me? As for what I have to say, you may hear every word of it.”
“The reason is that now that the sun has come out, I want to take a turn in theVillabefore it sets,” said Alberto, pensively. “It will do me good, I want to get an appetite for dinner.”
“Go, dear Alberto, go and take your walk. I wish I could come too! The sun must be glorious outside; salute it for me.”
“Remember your promise.”
“I remember, and will keep it.”
When he was gone, they looked at each other in silence. Andrea Lieti had an awkward feeling that it would have been right and proper for him to leave with her cousin. Lucia, on the contrary, settled herself more comfortably in her rocking-chair; she had hidden her slippered foot under the Turkish gown, whose heavy folds completely enveloped her person.
“Will you give me that Bible, on the table, Signor Lieti?”
“Has the hour struck for prayer, Signorina?” he asked in a jesting tone.
“No,” replied Lucia; “for I am always praying. But when something unusual, something very unusual happens to me, then I open the Bible haphazard, and I read the first verse that meets my eye. There is always counsel, guidance, presentiment or a fatality in the words.”
She did as she said. She read a verse several times over, under her breath, as if to herself and in amazement.... Then she read aloud: “I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me.”
He listened, surprised. This singular mysticism inspired him with a sort of anger. He held his tongue, with the good breeding of a man who would not willingly hurt a young lady’s feelings, but the episode struck him as a very ridiculous one.
“Did you hear, Signor Lieti?” she added, as if in defiance.
“I heard. It was very fine.... Love is always an interesting topic, whether in the Old or the New Testament, or elsewhere....”
“Signor Lieti!”
“I beg your pardon, I am talking nonsense. I am a rough fellow, Signorina Altimare. We who are in rude health are apt to regard these matters from a different standpoint. You must make allowances.”
“You are indeed the incarnation of health,” she said,sighing. “I shall never, never forget that waltz you made me dance. I shall never do it again.”
“Ma che!winter will come round again; there will be other balls, and we will dance like fun.”
“I have no strength for dancing.”
“If you are ill, it is your own fault. Why do you always keep your windows closed? The weather is mild and the heat of your room is suffocating; I’ll open them.”
“No,” she exclaimed, placing her hand upon his arm: at its light pressure he desisted: she smiled.
“Do you never dream, Signor Lieti?”
“Never. I sleep soundly, for eight hours, with closed fists, like a child.”
“But with open eyes?”
“Never.”
“Just like Caterina, then?”
“Oh! exactly like her.”
“You are two happy people.” Her accent was bitter.
He felt the pain in it. He looked at her, and was troubled. Perhaps, he had after all been hard upon the poor girl. What had she done to him? She was sickly and full of fancies. The more reason for pitying her. She was an ill-cared-for, unloved creature who was losing her way in life.
“Why don’t you marry?” he said, suddenly.
“Why?” ... in astonishment.
“Why? ... yes. Girls ought to marry, it cures them of their vagaries.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Lucia, and she hid her face in her hands.
“Now I suppose I have said something stupid again? I will give you Caterina’s message and be gone, before you turn me out.”
“No, Signor Lieti. Who knows but what yourbourgeoiscommon sense is right.”
He understood the hidden meaning of her phrase, and felt hurt by it. That skinny creature, with her ethereal airs and graces, knew how to sting, after all! She suddenly appearedto him under a new aspect. A slight fear of the woman, whose weakness was her only strength, overcame him. He began to feel ill at ease in the perfumed atmosphere; the room was so small that he could not stretch out his arms without coming to fisticuffs with the wall, the air so perfumed that it compressed his lungs; ill at ease with that long, lithe figure draped in a piece of Eastern stuff; a woman who had a mouth like a red rose, and eyes that shone as if they sometimes saw marvellous visions, and at others looked as if they were dying in an ecstasy of unknown longing. He felt a weight in his head like the beginning of a headache. He would like to have let in air by putting his fists through the window-panes, to have knocked down the walls by a push from his shoulders, to have taken up the piano and thrown it into the street; anything to shake off the torpor that was creeping over him. If he could only grasp that lithe figure in his arms, to hurt her, to hear her bones creak, to strangle her! The blood rushed to his head and it was getting heavier every minute. She was looking at him, examining him, while she waved the peacock-feather fan to and fro. Perhaps she divined it all, for without saying a word she rose and went to open the window, standing there a few minutes to watch the passers-by. When she returned, there was a faint flush on her face.
“Well,” she said, as if she were awaiting the end of a discourse.
“Well; your perfumes have given me a headache. It’s a wonder I did not faint; a thing that never yet happened to me, and that I should not like to happen. May I go? May I give you Caterina’s message?”
“I am listening to you. But are you better now?”
“I am quite well. I am not Alberto Sanna.”
“No, you are not Alberto Sanna,” she repeated, softly. “He is ill, I pity him. How do you feel now?”
“Why, very well indeed. It was a passing ailment, walking will set me up again. Caterina....”
“Do you love your wife as much as I love her?”
“Eh! what a question!”
“Don’t take any notice of it; it escaped me. I don’t believe in married love.”
“The worse for you!”
“You are irritated, Signor Lieti?” she said, smiling.
“No! I assure you I am not. Mine was a purely physical discomfort, I am not troubled by any moral qualms. I don’t believe in their existence. My wife....”
“Are you a materialist?”
“Signora Lucia, you will make me lose my temper,” he exclaimed, half in anger, half in jest. “You won’t let me speak.”
“I am listening to you.”
“Caterina wishes you to dine with us next Sunday. Her little cousin Giuditta is coming from school for the day. You two could drive her back in the evening.”
“I don’t know ...” she said, hesitatingly; “I don’t know whether I can....”
“I entreat you to, in Caterina’s name. She sent me here on purpose. Come, we have a capital cook. You won’t get a bad dinner.”
She shrugged her shoulders, and sat pondering as if she were gazing into futurity.
“You look like a sibyl, Signora Lucia.Via, make up your mind. A dinner is no very serious matter. I will order acrême méringueto please you, because it is light and snowy.”
“I will write to Caterina.”
“No, don’t write. Why write so much? She desired me to take no denial.”
“Well, I will come.”
And she placed her hand in his. He bent down chivalrously and imprinted a light kiss on it. She left her hand there and raised her eyes to his. By a singular optical illusion, she appeared to have grown taller than himself.
When he returned home, after a two hours’ walk about Naples, Andrea Lieti told his wife that Lucia Altimare was a false, rhetorical, antipathetic creature; that her house wassuffocating enough to give one apoplexy; that she had a court of consumptives and rachitics—Galimberti, Sanna, and the Lord knows whom besides; that he would never put his foot into it again. He had done it to please her, but it had been a great sacrifice; he detested thatposeuse, who received men’s visits as if she were a widow; he couldn’t imagine what men and women found to fall in love with, in that packet of bones in the shape of a cross. Of all this and more besides, he unburdened himself. He only stopped when he saw the pain on his wife’s face, who answered not a word and with difficulty restrained her tears. This strong antipathy between two persons she loved was her martyrdom.
“At least,” she stammered, “at least, she said she would dine with us on Sunday?”
“Just fancy, for your sake I had to entreat her as if I were praying to a saint. She wouldn’t, the stupid thing. At last, she accepted. But I give you due warning that on Sunday I shall not dine at home. I shall dine out and not return till midnight. Keep her to yourself, yourposeuse.”
This time Caterina did burst into tears.
During the whole of the dinner in the Lietis’ apartment in Via Constantinopoli, a certain all-pervading embarrassment was perceptible, despite the care with which it was disguised. Caterina had not dared, for several days, to breathe Lucia’s name. But on Saturday, when she saw that Andrea had quite regained his good temper, she begged him not to go out on the morrow. He at first shrugged his shoulders, as if he did not care one way or the other, and then said, simply:
“I will stay at home: it would be too rude to go out.”
Yet Andrea’s manner was cold when he came in from his walk that day, and Lucia was very nervous, but beautiful, thought Caterina, in her clinging, cashmere gown, with a large bunch of violets under her chin. The talk was frigid.Caterina, who had been driving Giuditta all over the town, was troubled. She feared that Lucia would notice Andrea’s coldness, and was sorry she had invited her. She talked more than usual, addressing herself to Lucia, to Andrea, and to Giuditta, to keep the ball going, making strenuous efforts to put her beloved ones in good humour. For a moment she hoped that dinner would create a diversion, and breathed a sigh of relief when the servant announced, “The Signora is served.”
But even the bright warmth of the room was of no avail. Andrea, at whose side Lucia was seated, attended absently to her wants. He ate and drank a good deal, devouring his food in a silence unusual to him. Lucia hardly ate at all, but drank whole glasses of water just coloured with wine, a liquid of pale amethyst colour. When Andrea addressed her, she listened to him with intent eyes, which never lowered their gaze; his fell before it, and again he applied himself to his dinner. Caterina, who saw that their aversion was increasing, was terrified. She tried to draw Giuditta into the general conversation, but the child was possessed by the taciturn hunger of a school-girl, to whom good food is a delightful anomaly. Towards the end of dinner, there were slight signs of a thaw. Andrea began to chatter as fast as he could and with surprising volubility; talking to the two ladies, to the child, even to himself. Lucia deigned to smile assent two or three times. There was a passage of civilities when thecrême méringuemade its appearance. Lucia compared it to a flake of immaculate snow; Andrea pronounced the comparison to be as just as it was poetic. Caterina turned from pale to pink in the dawn of so good an understanding. She felt, however, that this was a bad evening for Lucia, one of those evenings that used to end so disastrously at school, in convulsions or a deluge of tears. She saw that her dark eyes were dilated, that her whole face quivered from time to time, and that the violets she wore rose and fell with the beating of her heart. Once or twice she asked her, as in their school-days, “What ails thee?”
“Nothing,” replied the other as curtly as she used to reply at school.
“Don’t you see that there is nothing the matter with her?” questioned Andrea. “Indeed, she looks better than usual. Signora Lucia, you are another person to-night, you have a colour.”
“I wish it were so.”
“Are you courageous?”
“Why do you ask?”
“To know.”
“Well, then, yes.”
“Then swallow a glass of cognac, at once.”
“No, Andrea, I won’t let her drink it. It would do her harm.”
“What fun! don’t you feel tempted, Signora Lucia?”
“I do ... rather....” after a little hesitation.
“Brava, brava!You too, Caterina, it doesn’t hurt you. And even Giuditta....”
“No; it would intoxicate the child.”
“Ma che!Just a drop in the bottom of the glass.”
Lucia drank off hers without the slightest sign of perturbation, then she turned pale. Giuditta, after swallowing hers, blushed crimson, coughing and sneezing until her eyes filled with tears. Every one laughed, while Caterina beat her gently on the back.
“I think you are drinking too much to-night, Andrea,” she whispered in his ear.
“Right you are; I won’t drink any more.”
When they rose from table, Andrea offered his arm to Lucia, a courtesy he had omitted when they entered the room. Caterina said nothing. When she had installed them in the yellow drawing-room, one on the sofa and the other in a comfortable chair, she left them and went into an adjoining room to prepare the child for her return.
“Have you left off using musk, Signora Lucia?”
“Yes, Signor Lieti.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Allow me to congratulate you.”
“Thank you.”
“Those flowers become you better. Who gave them to you?”
“You are curious, Signor Lieti.”
He smiled at her with approving eyes. To him she appeared like one transformed, thanks, perhaps, to the soft folds of her white gown. In his good-natured after-dinner mood, the beatitude of repletion infused a certain tenderness into his voice.
“My name is Andrea,” he murmured.
“I know that,” was the curt reply.
“Call me Andrea. You call Caterina by her name. Caterina and I are one.”
“Not to me.”
“I see. But as Caterina is so very much your friend, you might admit me into the bond. Do you forbid me to become your friend?”
“Perhaps there is no such thing as friendship.”
“Yes, there is such a thing. Don’t be so pessimistic.Senta, cara Signorina, let me whisper a word in your ear....”
She bent forward until her cheek almost touched his lips. Then he said:
“There are in this house two people who care for you. Pray believe....”
Lucia fell back against her cushion and half closed her eyes.
“Surely,” thought Andrea, “it’s another woman, with that round white throat set in its frame of lace.”
“Andrea, Andrea,” cried Caterina, from the bedroom.
He started, and shrugged his shoulders, as if to shake off a weight, glanced at Lucia, who seemed to be dreaming with closed eyes, and went away. There was a short whispereddiscussion between husband and wife in the adjoining room. It was suddenly interrupted by Andrea, who was stifling his laughter, pouncing upon his wife and kissing her behind her ear. Caterina defended herself by pointing to Giuditta, who was putting on her hat before the glass.
“It all depends on her,” he said, in an undertone, as he re-entered the drawing-room.
“Signora Lucia, are you asleep?”
“No, I never sleep.”
“Caterina wants you a moment, in there.”
“What does she want?”
“I know, but have been ordered not to tell.”
“I will go to her.”
She went, followed by the serpentine folds of her white train. Andrea sat down, unconsciously rested his head where she had rested hers, and inhaled the lingering perfume of her hair. He rose and walked about the room to rid himself of the mists that seemed to be clouding his brain.
Caterina, in the other room, knew not how to break it to Lucia. The words refused to come, for the tall white-robed maiden, standing erect, without a quiver of her eyelid, intimidated her.
“I think ... I think it would bore you to have to come with me to the College.”
“What for?”
“To take Giuditta back.”
“I won’t go. You go alone. That College depresses me.”
“I would go, if it were not for leaving you alone. But I shall not be long; just the time to drive Giuditta there, and come back.”
“Go; I like being alone.”
“It’s ... that I should like to....”
“Take Andrea with you, of course.”
“No, no, on the contrary.”
“Leave him with me...? He will be bored.”
“What are you saying?”
“He will bore himself, Caterina.”
“’Tis he who doesn’t want to stay, for fear of boring you. If you don’t mind....”
“Really, was that all? I will stay alone, or with your husband, whatever you like. But don’t be away long.”
“Oh! no fear, dear.” And in her delight at having settled the important question, she raised herself on tiptoe to kiss her.
“Dress and go.”
When Caterina and Giuditta passed through the drawing-room they found Andrea and Lucia seated, as before, in silence.
“Go, Caterina. I will read a book, and your husband thePiccolo. Have you a Leopardi?”
“No. I am so sorry....”
“Well, I will amuse myself with my own thoughts. Go, dear, go.”
Andrea listened, without saying a word.
“You may go to sleep,” whispered his wife, as she bade him good-bye. They did not kiss each other in the presence of their visitors. She went away contented with having provided for everything. They followed her with their eyes. Then, without a word, Lucia offered the newspaper to Andrea, who unfolded it. While he pretended to read, he watched Lucia out of the corner of his eye. She was looking at him with so bewitching a smile, that again she appeared to him like a woman transformed—so placid and youthful in her white gown.
“Are you not bored, Signorina?”
“No; I am thinking.”
“Tell me what you are thinking of.”
“What can it matter to you? I am thinking of far-off things.”
“It is morbid to think too much. Sometimes, but not often, it happens to me, too, to think.”
“Are you thinking now, Signor Andrea?”
Her hand hung slack at her side. In jest he knitted his little finger for a moment in hers. There was a long silence.
“What were you thinking of just now?” asked Lucia, in her low tender tones.
“I do not wish to tell you. How white your hand is, and long and narrow! Look, what an enormous hand mine is!”
“That day at the tournament your hand did wonders.”
“Really...!” He reddened from pleasure.
Again they were silent. She drew her hand away and played with her violets. He half closed his eyes, but never took them off the pure pale face, with its delicate colouring, its superb magnetic eyes with pencilled brows, and the half-opened mouth that was as red as a pomegranate flower. He sank into a state of vague contemplation, in which a fascinating feminine figure was the only thing visible on a cloudy background.
“Say something to me, Signora Lucia?”
“Why?”
“I want to hear you speak; you have an enchanting voice.”
“Caterina said the same thing to me this evening.”
At that name he suddenly sprang to his feet, and took two or three turns about the room, like an unquiet lion. She pulled a chair in front of her, placed her feet upon it, and half closed her eyes.
“Are you going to sleep?” asked Andrea, standing still before Lucia.
“No, I am dreaming,” she replied, so gently that Andrea resumed his seat beside her.
“Tell me what you were thinking of just now?” she pleaded.
“I was thinking of something dreadful, but true.”
“About me?”
“About you, Lucia.”
“Say it.”
“No, it would displease you.”
“Not from you....”
“Permit me not to tell it you....”
“As you please.”
Lucia’s countenance became overclouded; every now and then she drew a long breath.
“What is the matter?”
“Nothing; I am very comfortable. And you, Signor Andrea?”
Was he? He did not answer. Now and again the delicious languor that was stealing over him cooled the current in his veins. He scarcely ventured to breathe. Lucia’s white gown appeared to him like a snowy precipice; a mad desire was on him to cast himself at this woman’s feet, to rest his head on her knees, and to close his eyes like a child.... Was he? when every now and then a savage longing came upon him to throw his arm around that slender waist, and press it so that he might feel it writhe and vibrate with tigerish flexibility? He strove not to think; that was all.
“What stuff is this, Signora Lucia?”
“It is wool.”
“A soft wool.”
“Cashmere.”
“It is so becoming to you. Why don’t you always wear it?”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes, I do.” He continued, unconsciously, to stroke her arm.
She leant over, quite close to him, and said:
“Have one made like it for Caterina.”
This time Andrea did not rise, but shuddered perceptibly. He passed his hand through his hair, to push it back.
“I was thinking just now,” he said, “that the man who fell in love with you would be a most unhappy fellow.”
Lucia sank back in frigid silence, her face hardened with anger.
“Now,” he said in a low tone of deprecation, “you are angry.”
“No,” in a whisper.
“Yes, you are angry; I am a brute.” As he said this, he tried to force open her clenched hand. But he was afraid of hurting her, and so he failed. He begged her not to drive her nails into the palm of her hand. The pain of doing so accentuated the angles at the corners of her lips; her head was turned away from him, resting against the cushioned back of the sofa.
“Lucia, Lucia ...” he murmured, “be good to one who is unworthy.” At last, with a sigh of triumph, he opened the hand which he held: four red marks disfigured its palm. Andrea looked at it, wishing but not daring to kiss it; he blew over it childishly.
“Bobo, gone!”
She vouchsafed a smile, but no reply. Andrea tried to pacify her, whispering nonsense to her. He mimicked the tone of a child, begging its mother’s pardon, promising “never to do so again,” if only it may not be sent to the dark room, where it is frightened. And the strong man’s voice assumed so infantile an expression, he imitated the whine, the grimaces, the feline movements of certain children to such perfection, that she could not restrain the fit of nervous laughter which overcame her, and throbbed in her white throat as she fell back in her cushions.
“Little mother, forgive?” he wound up with.
“Si, si,” and, still laughing, she gave him a little pat on the shoulder.
Again he fought down his desire to kiss her hand.
“Do you know that you are not so thin as usual to-night?”
“Do you think so?” she replied, as if weary with laughter.
“Certainly.”
“I suppose it’s the white dress.”
“Or yourself; you can work miracles, you can assume what appearance you choose.”
“What am I like to-night?” asked Lucia, languidly.
“You are like a sorceress,” replied Andrea, with an accent of profound conviction.
Her eyes questioned him, eager to know more.
“A witch ... a sorceress....” he repeated, as if in reply to an inner voice. The clock struck nine times, but neither of them paid heed to it. Stillness filled the room, which was lighted by a shaded lamp. No sound reached it. Nothing. Two people alone, looking at each other. The long pauses seemed to them full of a sweet significance; they could not resume their talk without an effort. They spoke in lowered tones and very slowly. He drew no nearer, neither did she withdraw her hand.
“What perfume do you use in your hair?”
“None.”
“Oh! but it is perfumed. I could smell it just now....”
“But I use no perfume.”
“Just now I smelt it, when I leant my head where yours had been.”
“None; smell!” she said, with unconscionable audacity, as she raised her head to his, that he might inhale the perfume of her hair.
Then he lost his head, seized Lucia by the waist, and kissed her throat madly and roughly. She freed herself like a viper, starting to her feet in a fury, scorching him with the flashing of her eyes. Not a word passed between them. Stunned and confused, he watched her moving about the room in search of her cloak, her gloves, her bonnet, and in such a tremor of rage that she could not find them for a long while. At last she slipped on her cloak, but her quivering hands could not tie the strings of her black bonnet. The white dress had disappeared; she was all in black now, lividly pale, with dark rings under her eyes.
“Where are you going now?”
“I am going away.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.”
“No, rather than let you do that, I will go myself.” He made her a low bow and disappeared within the bedroom, shutting the door between them.
When Caterina returned, panting with haste, she found Lucia calmly stretched out on the sofa.
“Have I been too long...? And Andrea?”
“I don’t know. He is in there, I think.”
“What have you been doing with yourself all alone?”
“Sai, I have been praying with the lapis-lazuli rosary.”
Caterina entered the bedroom. A black form was lying prone across the bed with open arms, like one crucified.