Ragna stroked the maid's hair absent-mindedly; the Venetian had been with her more than five years now; it would be hard to part with her, for she was entirely devoted to her mistress and the children, especially Mimmo, but it was clearly impossible to keep her longer. Ragna sighed.
"I am afraid you are right, Carolina. Yes, you must go, although you know how sorry I shall be to lose you. We will talk it over to-morrow, it is late now and I am tired. Run away to bed."
Carolina took her mistress's hand and pressed her lips fervently upon it.
"God bless you, Signora, and may you sleep well!" She closed the door silently after her.
Ragna sat on in her armchair, immersed in thought, bowed down by this new burden of vicarious shame, outraged and indignant. As the clock struck twelve she heard her husband's latchkey grate in the outer door and she straightened herself up with flushed cheeks. "I will have it out with him here and now," she thought.
"Egidio!" she called, as his step sounded in the passage.
He entered the room, an expression of annoyed surprise on his face, called forth by his finding her still up.
"Have you taken to sitting up for me?" he grunted.
"I have been waiting for you, there is something I must speak to you about."
"Well, out with it then, don't keep me waiting all night!"
He leaned against a console, his overcoat unbuttoned and thrown back, his black felt hat pulled down over his eyes, one hand thrust in a pocket, the other brandishing his Tuscan cigar, the villainous fumes of which filled the air.
"What are you going to do about Carolina?" she asked without preamble.
"Carolina?" he said, "why should I do anything? What is Carolina to me? You have been sitting up all this time to ask me a fool's question like that? You should go to bed, your head is tired,ti gira ta testa!"
"Carolina," she returned steadily, "has good cause for complaint against you."
He tapped his forehead with his forefinger.
"You are mad,mia cara," he said with a short laugh, but she could see the uneasy expression of his eyes.
"Have done with this fooling," said Ragna scornfully, "will you deny that you have made Carolina your mistress? You had better not, you see I know all."
He bent forward, an ugly look on his face.
"You lie! You spy on me and imagine things."
"It is you who lie, Egidio," said Ragna coldly. She was astonished at her own coolness; passion had deserted her, she sat, calm and critical, in the seat of judgment.
With a roar he came and stood over her.
"Take that back! How dare you! How dare you!"
"I am not deaf," said Ragna, "there is no occasion to shout. Please lower your voice and try to behave like a gentleman for once. Go and sit down," she continued without a quiver, "I have not finished yet and I can't speak if you are towering over my chair. And please make up your mind either to speak first and say your say, or else wait until I have done, but don't interrupt me."
Her calmness, the low even tones of her voice imposed on him; raging at her and at himself, he yet obeyed, albeit almost unconsciously, and dropped on a chair under his own portrait.
"It is quite useless to deny or to bluster," said Ragna, "I know all, I am sorry for Carolina, and I—"
"So that slut has been to you with her tale," he interrupted, "and you believe her in preference to your husband. The lying hussy—! I'll teach her—"
"Egidio," said the cold accusing voice, "she did not lie, she is a good girl. With all due regard, the one liar in the case is—"
"You dare call me a liar!" he roared, rising from his seat. She waived him back again. "When I was a little boy in school, Cardinal Ferri used to call me up and say—"
"Yes, yes," she said wearily, "that is an old story, I have heard it many times. The good Cardinal was not infallible, or else you have changed since—" He was choking with inarticulate rage; she continued,
"However, that is not the question; what I have been trying to find out is: what are you going to do about Carolina?"
"I shall throw the fool out of my house," he said sullenly.
"You can't do that, she is going of her own accord; but you owe her reparation."
"Reparation!" he raved, "Carolina! reparation! Let her show her face before me again—Reparation! She shall have all she wants and more too!"
Carolina, who, aroused by the noise of her master's rage, was listening at the key-hole slunk away and double-locked herself into her room, where she spent the greater portion of the night on her knees before the little image of the Virgin beseeching protection.
Egidio bounded to Ragna's chair and shook his fist in her face.
"I'll have you to understand that I won't have this sort of thing. I am master in my own house."
"Say harem!" she suggested. His violence left her unmoved, superficially, at least; she only saw how ridiculous he looked, stamping his foot, shaking his fist, his face inflamed and swollen, the eyes blood-shot and starting from their sockets. She laughed.
"My dear Signor Valentini, if you could only see how extremely ludicrous you make yourself!"
With an oath he rushed at her, but she moved not a muscle and the derisive smile never left her face. It cowed him, and with a demented gesture he jammed his hat down over his eyes and flung out of the room.
With shaking fingers Ragna put the drawing and the letter back into the writing-case and returned it to the secret drawer. She felt the effect of the scenes she had just been through, her head was dull and heavy, her senses numb. She went to the dining-room and poured herself a glass of water, then taking the lamp—she had to steady it with both hands, she went upstairs and passed through the children's room on the way to her own, pausing an instant by Mimmo's cot. He lay, moist and rosy, his fair curls tossed back on the pillow; one arm was thrown up and out, the other by his side; the long dark lashes swept his cheek—he was the picture of childish innocence and health. Beppino lay breathing heavily his face puckered to a frown, his fists clenched; he was a handsome child, but lacked Mimmo's winsomeness. Ragna set down the lamp and pulled up the covers about Mimmo's chest where he had thrown them back. A lump rose in her throat.
"Oh, my little child, my poor little child—that you should have to call that man 'father'!"
Afraid to stop longer, lest in her agitation she should wake the children, she took up the lamp again and went on to her own room. Too weary to sleep, she tossed restlessly on her bed, pressing her cool fingers to her hot forehead and burning eyes. The interview with Carolina, the subsequent scene with her husband, repeated themselves over and over in her tired brain; the demoniac mask of Egidio's which had scared her vision, seemed branded on her very soul like some horrid Medusa-head. And the effect of that exhibition of impotent rage had been that of the Medusa; she had felt herself turning to stone, had almost felt the wells of common human feeling dry up in her heart. Certainly she was no longer conscious of the slightest bond of human interest between herself and this man; nay, to her he had become theBeast, no longer a man at all. And she was subject to this Beast, his slave, his chattel, his wife! The name was a mockery. Virginia was a wife indeed, Virginia, happy with her husband and children, living her busy, blessed life in the house she loved. But this—no marriage but a hateful bondage. It was an immoral contradiction to all right living and thinking. Could any man-made law or social convention justify the iniquity of this horror? Ragna wondered dully why she had not been able, like Carolina, to accept the consequences of her weakness. She saw now in the clear light of unsparing self-study, how at the time of her marriage she had wilfully blinded herself to what had been patent to the eyes of Virginia, how she had weakly let the consideration of her social security outweigh the fundamental instincts of her nature. But it was not in the spirit of calm acceptance that she thus put to the test motives and conduct; she was in no condition for dispassionate investigation or conclusion; her nature, raw and abraded by the events of the day and still more by the cumulative effect of all the preceding days, seethed in a state of bitter revolt. She longed with a fierce, mad desire to straighten her back, to throw off the burden that galled her, to break once and for all the chains that degraded her in her own eyes. No one who saw her as she was now, fierce-eyed, feverish, her long hair unbound and streaming over the pillow would have known her for the calm stately woman whose formal courtesy of manner was a by-word among her friends. Rather she seemed a Valkyrie riding down the battling clouds, challenging the thunder. It was the old Ragna of the storm-swept fjord, but a Ragna who had eaten of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, wild with a sense of injustice, resentful of fate.
Gradually she grew calmer, the flame burnt itself out, and weary to the core of her being she relaxed her aching limbs and abandoned her head among the pillows. Dulled, numb, she was dozing off, when a voice seemed to say in her ear: "Angelescu is in Florence." A slight smile parted her dry lips and she fell asleep.
Fru Boyesen lay propped up in her high, large bed; her face was congested and she breathed stertorously. With an unconscious gesture she threw back the feather-bed covering her, only to have it instantly replaced by the watchful Ingeborg. The room was close and stuffy, it was cold outside, all the windows were hermetically closed and a fire burned in the porcelain stove. The sick woman's hair had been braided neatly, but with the restless movements of her head, straggling yellowish-grey strands had come loose and strayed over her mottled forehead and on the pillow. With a feverish hand she tugged at the top button of her flannel nightgown.
"Air! I want air!" she muttered.
Ingeborg laid her cool hand on her Aunt's forehead, while she counted the respiration, and under the soothing touch the old woman grew calm for a few minutes.
She had been ill four days, an ordinary attack of bronchitis, the doctor thought at first, but it rapidly ran into pneumonia, and the age of the patient left but a bare chance of recovery. Ingeborg nursed her devotedly assisted by one of the servants and would not hear of calling in outside help.
"You are as good a nurse as I could wish," said the doctor, "but I am afraid you will wear yourself out."
"No fear of that," Ingeborg had answered, "and I want to do all I can for poor Auntie—you know how she hates to have anyone else in the room."
"Well, in five days I shall be able to tell, you can do without help till then, and afterwards if it is necessary—"
The way he spoke the last words, however, gave but little hope of such a contingency arising and Ingeborg's eyes filled with tears.
Fru Boyesen had lain most of the time in a heavy stupor, waking occasionally to fits of delirium when her strong will and habit of command made it very difficult for Ingeborg to keep her in bed. When she raved it was always about Ragna who was coming to pay a visit and in whose honour due preparation must be made, or Ragna who would not come and refused to give ear to her Aunt's pleading, or it was Ragna ill and lonely who must be helped,—but always Ragna, nothing but Ragna.
The poor old soul, debarred by her own action from the natural outlet of her affection, nay adoration, for her heart's darling, had brooded over her sorrow, feeding on her own repressed love. Deprived of outward expression, she bowed down in secret before the idol enshrined in her heart. All these years she had kept up the sham of an unforgiving spirit, had worn her mask of hardness, never once betraying herself to anyone except the watchful Ingeborg, and now that delirium had loosened her tongue, she raved on, babbling like a child of that which was nearest her heart, while Ingeborg marvelled somewhat bitterly at all the misspent effort of repression, when so much good might have been done, so much pain avoided.
Ragna thought herself thoroughly on her guard, when writing to her sister, little dreaming how much Ingeborg read between the lines, more from what was omitted than from what was said, though she herself, to whom many things had grown "through custom stale" mentioned them casually, as though quite in the ordinary course of events, things which to the unaccustomed eyes of Ingeborg seemed unbearable to the last degree, little meannesses on the part of Valentini, his way of opening her letters, his habit of spending the evenings away from home and the like.
When Aunt Gitta fell ill, Ingeborg's first impulse had been to telegraph for Ragna, sure that her presence would set all right, but the doctor said that five days would decide everything, one way or the other, and three times five days was the shortest space of time in which it would be possible for Ragna to reach her Aunt.
There had been but little delirium to-day, at most a gentle wandering, the greater part of the time the old woman lay oblivious to her surroundings, lost to the world. To Ingeborg who took this state of coma for sleep it seemed of favourable augury, but the doctor shook his head.
"She may drift away without waking up again," he said.
Ingeborg thought it terrible that anyone should die thus, with no chance to repair the wrong done or to prepare for the future life, but there was nothing she could do, except administer the medicines to the unconscious woman at the appointed hours, and between whiles sit silent, her hands folded in her lap, her anxious eyes, eager to detect any change, fixed on her aunt's face.
It was snowing outside, a fine dry snow, hard, like ice crystals, the room was in profound silence, broken only by the stinging sound of the snow, driven against the window pane, the crackling of the wood in the stove, the ticking of a small clock on the mantel, and the heavy stertorous breathing of the sick woman. At dusk a maid came in with a lighted lamp, tip-toeing noiselessly in list slippers; she set it on the table cast a glance at the bed and withdrew. Ingeborg fastened a piece of paper to the lamp shade to keep the bright light from her Aunt's face, but it seemed already to have aroused Fru Boyesen, for she turned uneasily, groaned and made as if to sit up.
Ingeborg stepped lightly to her side and pressed her quietly back against her pillows. Fru Boyesen passed her hand over her eyes twice or thrice as if dazed, but the expression of her eyes as she looked up at Ingeborg was such that the light of reason shone in them.
"Ingeborg," she said in a hoarse voice, "how long have I been ill?"
"Four days, Aunt."
"And what does Dr. Ericssen say is the matter with me?"
"He said it was bronchitis, and that—"
"Don't lie, girl," said the old lady, quick to perceive the hesitation in her niece's voice "tell me the truth, I can bear it."
"He says now that it is pneumonia."
"Pneumonia—" repeated Fru Boyesen, "pneumonia! And I am over sixty." She closed her eyes a moment and her face became stern. "Tell me, Ingeborg, how long does Ericssen give me? I have a right to know."
Her eyes claimed the truth from the girl, who answered with a sob in her voice.
"He says the fifth day is the decisive day, until then he can't tell."
"Oh, can't he? I can then. I tell you, Ingeborg, this is the end, I shall never recover."
The girl would have protested but such was her own intimate conviction and had been from the first; with her Aunt's eyes on her face she felt the futility of it. A silence fell between them, broken by a sigh from Fru Boyesen.
"Ingeborg!" she said suddenly, "there is something I must do before I go, I have something on my conscience."
"Do you wish me to send for the Herr Pastor, Aunt?"
"The Herr Pastor! This is not a matter for clergymen, this is something that regards me alone. I have been unjust to your sister, Ingeborg—I am an old woman on my death bed, and I see clearly now that I have done wrong. The living may be vindictive, but the dying must make reparation if they would be forgiven. I made a will disinheriting Ragna, I want to destroy that, to reinstate her. She has been wilful, Ingeborg, proud and inconsiderate, she has hurt me more than I can say, but she is young and I am old, it is I who should have known better. Young people will be foolish, it is for us old wise ones to repair the damage done, and I have been a wicked, resentful old woman. 'Judgment is mine, saith the Lord,' and I would have taken it into my own hands. I wished to punish her, and perhaps I have, but I have punished myself far more. Remember this, little Ingeborg, we should leave judgment and condemnation to the Lord,—we should only try to love and help."
She sank back on her pillows, exhausted. Ingeborg put a cup of brandy and water to her lips, saying,
"Hush, Auntie dear, you must not talk so much, you will tire yourself out."
But Fru Boyesen would not be satisfied, she motioned Ingeborg to come near, and whispered into her ear,
"Get the solicitor, send for Hendriksen, at once,at oncedo you hear? I must make it right for Ragna before it is too late."
Ingeborg nodded, and summoning the maid in attendance ordered her, in the old lady's hearing to go at once for Herr Hendriksen, and gave her the money for a cab to bring the solicitor back.
Fru Boyesen smiled contentedly and closed her eyes. Ingeborg burning with suppressed excitement, could hardly keep her seat—now indeed was all to come right, like in a story! Her loyal sisterly heart rejoiced for Ragna, and could she have guessed the true state of affairs in Florence, she would have rejoiced still more. Then the pathos of the thing struck her, all her love and compassion went out to the quiet figure on the bed.
"Poor Aunt Gitta!" she said softly to herself, "how she must have suffered—and how she loves Ragna!"
How she must have loved her indeed, for that love to break down her stubborn will, sweeping away in an all-devouring flood the barriers of prejudice and pride, leaving nothing but tenderness and the desire to help.
Ingeborg could no longer contain her agitation; she rose and stood by the window, gazing out at the driving storm. Though but five in the afternoon it was quite dark and the whirling flakes of snow made wavering circles in the halo of light about the street lamps. In the garden a gaunt tree, stripped of its leaves, raised black limbs skyward, and below, an even blanket of white shaded off into the night. This late snow storm belying the earlier promise of spring seemed of evil portent to the watching girl. To her anxious eyes all the world outside seemed like a great white desert, she sought in vain for some sign of life, of human companionship, but there were no passers-by in the quiet street. Suddenly two dim black masses appeared, coming from different directions; they stopped simultaneously at the garden gate and resolved themselves into three figures whom Ingeborg recognized as the doctor, the solicitor and the maid who had been sent to fetch him. She watched them struggle up the garden path till they reached the door-step and the muffled sound of the bell rang through the house, then hastened to the bedside.
"Auntie! Auntie! he has come! Herr Hendriksen is here!"
There was no answer, the heavy breathing had begun again. Ingeborg was helplessly watching the flapping of the cheeks, the puff of the lips at each breath, when the doctor entered; he advanced to the bed and stood frowning, his lips pushed out.
"Can't we wake her, Doctor?" asked Ingeborg eagerly. "She was awake just a little while ago, and had me send for Herr Hendriksen,—she wants to set things right again for Ragna, in case—in case—Oh, Doctor, it is most important!" she joined her hands beseechingly, "after what she said I don't think she can die in peace, unless she has done it!"
The doctor shook his head. He knew the story of Ragna's marriage and subsequent estrangement from her aunt; she was a favourite of his, and he wished with all his heart to help her cause, but there was nothing to be done.
"What a pity you did not get her to sign a statement then! Who can tell if she will come out of this coma again? She may, but I doubt it—see, the pulse has failed steadily since this morning, it is barely a thread!"
"Oh, Doctor!" said Ingeborg, tears in her eyes, "can nothing be done? Nothing? Think of all that it means!"
"There is always the possibility of a return to consciousness. Have Herr Hendriksen draw up a will or a codicil or whatever the thing is, according to your aunt's expressed wishes, and if she comes to, she may be able to sign it. I can try a hypodermic of caffeine," he added to himself, "but I'm afraid it's no use. Run down to Hendriksen and let him get the will ready in any case, I shall stop here."
Ingeborg sped down the stairs and found the solicitor enjoying a cup of coffee in the sitting-room. She explained the case to him and he agreed to draw up a codicil annulling all former wills, in the tenour of the will destroyed by Fru Boyesen after Ragna's marriage and to hold it in readiness. Accordingly he set to work and Ingeborg returned to the sick chamber.
They waited some time and as there was still no sign of returning consciousness Dr. Ericssen tried the hypodermic of caffeine, but without effect, except for a slightly stronger pulse, the stertorous breathing continued unchanged. Solicitor and doctor supped together, in a gloomy silence, while Ingeborg, unwilling to leave her aunt, had a tray sent up to her; after which the doctor returned to his patient and the man of law to his post by the fire. The evening dragged on drearily; Ingeborg sat despondently by the bedside; it all seemed such cruel irony—the waiting solicitor, the fate of her sister hanging in the balance, dependent on that unconscious figure on the bed.
Towards morning there was a change, patent even to the inexperienced eyes of the girl. Fru Boyesen opened her eyes, but they appeared oblivious of her immediate surroundings, they were fixed on space, and seemed to have a glaze over them; her lips moved, and bending over her, Ingeborg caught the words:
"Solicitor—Ragna!"
"Quick!" she said to the doctor; he ran to the landing and called Hendriksen, who gathered up his papers, pen, ink, and seals, and bounded up the stairs.
"Oh!" thought Ingeborg, "if only there is time—if only she is able to sign!"
She poured some brandy into a spoon, but as she turned to administer it, the sick woman's head fell back on the pillow, and her jaw dropped—Herr Hendriksen approaching, pen and paper in hand, stopped, hesitating. Ingeborg dropped the spoon, brandy and all, and the doctor rushed forward; one glance was enough; he waved the solicitor back, his services were no longer required.
Poor Aunt Gitta! she had put off, too long, her work of reparation, and now it was too late.
Too late! These are indeed the "saddest words of tongue or pen," a lower circle in the Inferno of Fate than the poet's "it might have been!" Alas! for those to whom the long sought opportunity, the ardently desired happiness comes at last, and finds the sands run down in the glass, the vital energy spent. The chance is there, but an ironical voice gives the sentence "Too late!" And alas, above all, for those, who in the sunset of life see in retrospect, the false turning, the long weary miles of the road they have followed, and which they would retrace, ere darkness fall, and the night come,—but the stern voice says: "Ye have wasted the precious years, ye have put life and strength into that which is vain, and ye would unravel the strand of the Fates and plait it up afresh when the shears of Atropos are already extended? Too late! Remorse is not reparation."
"Who shall restore the years that the locust hath eaten?"
The words sounded like a knell in the ears of Ingeborg, as she drew the sheet over her aunt's face. Ragna would have laughed a bitter laugh, but Ingeborg wept.
"Mammina," asked Mimmo, stirring his soup with thoughtful care, "can people do just what they like, when they are big?"
Ragna was feeding Beppino out of a bowl of bread and milk. It was the usual luncheon hour, but Valentini had not yet come in, and the children chattered away, gaily.
"No," said Ragna, "no one can do exactly what he likes."
"But they can,—they does," insisted Mimmo.
"Do, you should say, dear."
"'Do,' then," corrected Mimmo, "they do. Babbo says 'accidenti' and bangs the door, but you punish us if we do,—why does no one punish him?"
"Punish Babbo!" exclaimed Beppino agape.
"Grown up people do many things that children aren't allowed to do,—but they don't always do what is right, and God punishes them," said Ragna.
"Who ith God," asked Beppino.
"I know," Mimmo hastened to show his superior knowledge,—"He is a big person sitting on a cloud in the sky, with a beard and a dove with shiny lines out of it,—I have never seen him really truly, butBabbohas a picture of him."
"Yeth," assented Beppino without interest.
But Mimmo was not so assured as he wished to appear.
"Mammina," he said, "does God come off his cloud to punish people?"
"God is everywhere," said his mother.
The child puckered his brows.
"How can he be everywhere if he sits on a cloud in the sky? Is he here now, in this room?"
"Yes, dear."
"Then why can't I see Him?"
"He is here like the air,—you can't see the air."
"Is He in my soup?" he inquired eagerly, "does I eat Him in my spoon?"
Ragna could not help smiling. Mimmo's questions often puzzled her as to how to answer them in a way suited to the child's understanding. This time, she hedged.
"Eat your soup, darling; you are too little to understand yet. When you are older, Mammina will tell you."
Mimmo addressed himself to his task, but he turned the question over in his childish mind, and when Valentini made his tardy appearance, greeted him with:
"Babbo, Mammina says that I am eating up God in my soup, and that He will punish you,—but if I eat Him up, he won't be able to, will He?"
"God will punish your mother for telling such wicked lies," growled Egidio, hitching his chair to the table.
He had not deigned to greet his wife on entering, and his sullen expression, the yellow, bilious colour of his skin, the mottled puffiness about his eyes were the evidences of his rage the night before, as the retreating tide leaves uncovered the unsightly mud-flats. He had a bad taste in his mouth, both physically and morally; an uneasy feeling possessed him that his wife by her unbroken calm had got the better of him in their acrimonious discussion. She had called him "ludicrous," that was what galled him most. He was more than her match in opprobrium, in biting sarcasm, but before ridicule and a cool, unperturbed demeanour, he felt himself helpless. He cast about in his mind for a way to humble her, to pierce the joint of her new armour of indifference, and fate had brought a weapon to his hand, though he did not yet know it. Indeed, he had finished his meal and was lighting a cigar when he bethought him of a letter addressed to Ragna, which the postman had brought that morning. It was his habit to take the letters from the postman himself, or have them brought to his studio, where he opened them, his own and those addressed to his wife, alike. It was one of his numerous ways of keeping himself informed of all that went on. He prided himself on knowing everything that occurred, and was pleased, on occasions, to give his wife a proof of his ability, by recounting minutely all her doings, both indoors and out. He wished her to acknowledge his power over her, and he wished her, above all, to believe that nothing could be hidden from him. This system of constant espionage was one of Ragna's greatest trials, and despite her efforts to free herself from it, to keep the peace, she had been obliged to submit, tacitly, at least. She had never cared to inquire into her husband's sources of information, she would not give him so much satisfaction, she despised the ingenuity and acumen he displayed to such a despicable end. It really was a symptom of the man's craving for power; it gratified his pride to feel that he had a hold over others, that they should be at the mercy of his good pleasure and discretion. He believed that the one way to get on in the world was by using other people, and these either had to be bought, or captured. "Knowledge," he said to himself, "is power," and certainly, in the wire-pulling for which he afterwards became famous, he used the power his "knowledge" brought him, with an unsparing hand.
Had he enjoyed a different education there is no telling to what heights he might have attained, but the early Jesuit influence, coupled with the weak indulgence of his mother, had endowed him, on the one hand, with a cynical unscrupulousness, and on the other with an unsatiable self-indulgence which sapped his better qualities at the fountain-head and warped his entire character to such an extent that his natural cleverness failed to redeem him from the narrowing distortion of his life.
Remembering the letter for his wife, he drew it from his pocket and jerked it across the table to her, without looking up, or appearing otherwise to be aware of her presence.
She seized the envelope eagerly, frowning at the torn flap, but smiled in spite of herself, as she saw that it was written in Norwegian—the nut had been too hard to crack this time! She was obliged to defer her reading until she had lifted the children down and sent them off to Carolina. They slunk away like little animals, even as they had sat silent since Valentini's entrance; they lived in mortal terror of his fits of ill-humour, and had learned to avoid irritating him, by making themselves as inconspicuous as possible.
Ragna took up her letter and began to read. It was from Ingeborg written two days after Fru Boyesen's death, telling of the old woman's intention of reinstating Ragna as her heiress and of the frustration of her design.
"You must not think hardly of poor Auntie," wrote Ingeborg, "she has been so unhappy. I have seen the struggle going on for some time, and I was sure her better nature would win in the end. Oh, Ragna, if I had only known, I might have done something, but although I could see she was relenting I never guessed she was so near to giving in, and I was afraid of doing more harm than good, if I tried to push things—If you had seen the expression of her poor eyes, when she said, 'I must make it right for Ragna,' and the agonised look in them, that last instant just before—. Oh, if only she could have lived ten minutes, five minutes longer! Isn't it awful to think of her remorse, feeling herself dying without having accomplished what was in her heart? Dr. Ericssen and Herr Hendriksen, both went to see the Directors of the Orphanage, to which she had left her money,—she did that you know, when she tore up her will in favour of you,—and told them they had no moral right to accept the bequest, as the last wishes of the deceased were otherwise, but they did not see it at all that way. Why are charities so grasping, I wonder? I don't see how they can reconcile their consciences to accept a bequest that morally belongs to someone else! It makes my blood boil, Ragna dear, as according to Auntie's wishes it all ought to be yours—"
Ragna put the letter down with a sigh. She hardly realized as yet all that this disappointment meant to her, the hopes of relative independence dashed, nothing to look forward to beyond her own unaided effort. The news of her Aunt's death grieved her, but her senses, dulled by the nervous strain of the evening before, refused to appreciate to its full extent the enormity of the catastrophe. She sat as though stunned. Little Mimmo stole in unnoticed and installed himself on the floor with a picture-book. Valentini, smoking ostentatiously, cast furtive glances at his wife, and at last, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, shifted his chair and asked:
"Well, what does Ingeborg say?"
Although he could not read the letter, the handwriting was familiar. Ragna, taken off her guard, answered:
"Aunt Gitta is dead and has left all her money to an orphanage; she wanted to change her will to one in my favour, at the last moment, but died before she could sign the new one."
An oath broke from Valentini's lips.
"And so you are a beggar!"
"Yes," assented Ragna wearily,—what was the use of disputing the fact? Valentini felt his Castle in Spain crash about his ears. He had never ceased to hope that Fru Boyesen would become reconciled to the marriage of her niece, and he had never thought that in any circumstances, she would leave her niece penniless, even if she disposed of the bulk of her fortune in another way. He felt as though the ground had suddenly slipped from beneath his feet, and instinctively turned on the involuntary source of his disappointment.
"I suppose that that is one of your charming national customs?Santo Dio, why was I ever so left to myself as to marry a Norwegian?"
Ragna let the sarcasm fall unheeded, so with a rising intonation he tried again.
"You prate about honesty, yet you inveigled me into a marriage, by giving me to understand that you were your Aunt's heiress—yet you knew all the time what might be expected! Oh, yes, I have had a refreshing experience of Norwegian honesty and straightforwardness!"
She smiled disdainfully.
"Permit me, it was not I who held out any hopes of future riches, your memory misleads you. But had you been frank, Egidio, had you told me then your real reason for wishing to marry me, be very sure that I should have declined the honour."
"Yes," he sneered, "now lie about it. When it suits your convenience, you lie worse than anyone I ever heard. And your airs and graces! One would think you sprang from 'la cuisse de Jupiter.' You were not quite so high and mighty when I married you! To exchange the gutter for a comfortable home—"
Mimmo, alarmed by Valentini's rough voice had fled to his mother's knee, and Ragna, stung into reply by the child's presence, said:
"Be careful, Egidio,—the child—"
The child! Ah, here was the way to hurt her! Valentini's laugh rang hatefully in her ears; he beckoned to the boy, but Mimmo refused to leave his refuge.
"Ask your mother, Mimmo caro, what a bastard is?"
Ragna sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing; she carried the child to the door, set him down outside, bidding him run to Carolina, and returned to face her husband, who sat leaning back in his chair, his legs crossed, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, a sneering expression on his face.
Ragna advanced to the table and leaning both hands on it leant forward, her eyes burning with a fierce light.
"I have borne much from you, Egidio Valentini, since you married me. I have been a dutiful wife to you, and a faithful one, I am the mother of your child; you have no just cause for complaint against me. I married you in the first place, induced by your insistence, by your pleadings, by the seemingly disinterested offers you made me of protection and comradeship. You made me many promises none of which have you kept. Instead of that you have abused me morally and physically, you have taken pleasure in tormenting me and humiliating me; you have been openly unfaithful to me, you have even outraged me in my own home by ill-using my maid. All this I have stood, but to-day you have gone too far, you have struck at me through my child whom you bound yourself to cherish as your own. Coward!"
Egidio started from his chair threateningly, but she was not to be stopped.
"Yes, coward!" she repeated. "And I tell you, Egidio Valentini, I can bear no more, this is the end. I will take my child and go, I will shake the dust of your house off my feet, I will leave you to the curse of your own evil nature."
He turned upon her with a roar.
"Go, then, do! There is the door, I won't keep you, beggar, liar, ingrate! You spit on the hand that raised you from the dirt—well, you shall see! Go, yes go, I beg of you, you could do me no greater pleasure! Go, my sweet dove, my repentant Magdalen,—but you go alone, the child remains with me."
"I shall take the child, do you think I would let you keep him?" said Ragna, "He is mine, you have said it often enough, he goes with me."
"You forget,cara mia, or you are more ignorant than I thought. I acknowledged the child as my own, he is on the State register, 'Egidio, son of Egidio Valentini.' No, no, in the eyes of the State he is not all yours—the State does not know what we know. He is five years old, is he not, the bastard? From five years up, the State gives a child to the father. Mimmo is mine, by the law. A pleasant life he shall have,—my first born, my darling! Do not fear, he shall be brought up to appreciate his mother at her true worth!"
"Oh!" gasped Ragna, "you would not be so wicked."
"You have just given such a flattering opinion of me!"
"Oh, but there are limits to everything!"
"So you will soon find; I know how to keep my own. Be wise, Ragna, realize that you are absolutely powerless. If you want a scandal, beware! It will hurt you, not me; I know the good opinion people have of me, I could put it to public vote. Who are you? You have neither money nor powerful friends nor position, you are dependent on me for the clothes on your back and the bread you eat. You are far too rash. Your conduct is ungrateful and insulting; if I were not the most forbearing man alive I should have thrown you into the street long ago. Think it over, even you must realize the position you put yourself in."
He had the pleasure of seeing her wince, as the iron of his words entered into her soul. Her calm deserted her; his words had a paralysing hypnotic effect, she saw herself stripped and naked in a cold world inimical to her desolate state. Trembling with rage, she felt herself beaten, crushed by the power that circumstances and the law put into her husband's hands, and that he used like a bludgeon. Despairingly she searched her mind for any fact that she could turn to her advantage and found none. She felt herself sinking helplessly in the quicksand.
"I hate you!" she cried with all the intensity of her being. "I hate you! May God deal with you as you have dealt with me!"
"God is not a silly woman,"—he used the insulting wordfemmina. A smile curled his lips, for her expression of hatred was the cry of the weak creature driven to the wall. She had defied him, she had called him "ludicrous"? Well, he had sworn to punish her, and punish her he would. Fate had placed her at his mercy.
He sauntered jauntily to the door, his thumbs in his armholes; she, leaning on the table, speechless with hatred, followed him with burning eyes.
As the door closed behind him, she sank to a chair, and falling forward, buried her face in her arms, in an attitude of utter despair. One thought possessed her mind; she must get away, she must escape somehow, anyhow; this life was intolerable. Then from the depths of her inner consciousness rose the image of Angelescu—she would see him, she would ask him to help her. He would not refuse,—had he not said he would always be at her service?
Should she write, or should she go in person? She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the long dining-room, her hands clasped, twisting and untwisting her fingers. To and fro, to and fro, like a caged lioness she went, living over in her mind day by day the Calvary of the five years of her marriage. The sense of the oppression of it grew like the rising tide, engulfing prudence, common sense, even the thought of her children, leaving only the wild uncontrollable longing for freedom. Free! She flung her head back and stretched out her arms. Almost she felt the salt kiss of the home-fjord on her face, she offered herself to the buffeting of the strong sea-wind, her lungs inhaled with rapture the balsam of the firs, the wild singing of the gale filled her ears. A mist rose before her eyes, she soared on imaginary wings to undreamt of heights.
Her rapture came to an end as raptures must, and she was again Ragna Valentini, pacing the long dining-room with its high vaulted ceiling, its solid early Renaissance furniture, the untidy remains of luncheon still littering the table, but she no longer felt the oppression of it all. It was as though a veil had been drawn aside disclosing a new landscape, or rather as though having toiled through hardship unspeakable to the uttermost depths of the Valley of Despondency, she saw before her the wondrous vision of sunlit peaks and the Promised Land beyond—no longer a mirage but a blessed actuality. All that she had to do was to enter. A light long extinguished came back to her eyes, she carried her head with a conscious air of resolution.
The manservant entering, started as though at an apparition, so different was she from the reserved, patient mistress he had served. And a scene with thePadronehad had this effect! With admirable self-control the man held his peace, though questions all but burst from his lips—your Italian servant is on a very familiar footing with the family he serves—but his eyes were less discreet, in fact they never left his mistress during the time he spent clearing the table and setting the room to rights, and it may be said that he in no way hastened the process. When he finally withdrew, it was to expatiate in the kitchen on the marvellous change come over thePadrona.
"I said to myself, the Signora will require a glass of Marsala, for he was worse than usual to-day.Mondo ladro!to have to live with a man like that! If it were not for the Signora who is an angel of goodness, I, for one,—"
"That's so," assented the cook.
"ButAssunta mia, there she was, she who has looked like wilted grass ever since I came, as fresh as a daisy, with a colour like a sunset in her cheeks.Accitempoli!I all but dropped my tray! To think that with a bella Signora like her, thePadroneshould—" He winked knowingly.
"All men are pigs," opined the cook.
"Some things are above the comprehension of females," returned Nando, loftily, his masculine vanity ruffled,—"But all the same—"
He leisurely consumed the Marsala which he had found it unnecessary to offer Ragna, tilting back on the legs of his chair, alternately holding his glass up to the light to enjoy the clear amber colour, and appreciatively smacking his lips as he sipped. Assunta, the cook, her portly form arrayed in a blue apron, stood by the sink rinsing the dishes under the tap and standing them in the overhead rack to drip. A square of sunshine lay on the red brick floor, and Civetta, the cat, lay basking in it, luxuriously curling and uncurling her velvet paws, stretching her neck to lick an unruly patch of fur and blinking at her surroundings with lazy topaz eyes. Copper kettles and pans decorated the whitewashed walls; the red brick stove and the dresser were well scrubbed and tidy.
Nando, having finished his wine, brought his chair back to the perpendicular and rose, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Mark my words, Assunta, something is going to happen in this house! When a woman looks like the Signora does to-day, it means trouble for somebody,—for—"
His dissertation was cut short by the bell, and in his haste to answer the summons he left the kitchen door open. Assunta heard Ragna send him to call alegno.
She shook her head, as her little straw fan blew life into the dying charcoal embers; it was most unusual for Ragna to go out at this time of day,—something was surely in the wind! In any case, her sympathies were with the Signora, even though, with an eye to her own interests she allowed theSor Padroneto pump her as to the Signora's movements. The Signora never did anything wrong, so what harm could it do, she argued? Meanwhile an extraliraor two in a poor woman's pocket was not to be despised. Also instant dismissal would be the penalty of a refusal, and who could stand out against thePadronewhen he glared at one with those awful eyes? Oh, certainly the Signora's lot was not one to be envied, even though she were a lady and had fine clothes and jewels! Such were the humble reflections of Assunta as she fanned the fire, and it gave her considerable satisfaction to think that her confessor Don Bazzanti was right in saying that rich and poor alike have their troubles.
"Signor Iddio is just, after all," thought Assunta piously, and crossed herself. It may give the moralist pleasure to observe that the circumstances that ground the soul of Ragna to the earth, made as a sequence, for the contentment of her cook.
Angelescu had spent the morning in the Uffizi, devoting his visit to the three or four paintings he really liked. Of these, the Madonna of the Goldfinch absorbed most of his time; the artless attitude of the children, the virginal grace of the Mother and the tender background with its suggestion of Florence in the distance, gave him the suggestion of the veiled delicacy of early spring, the faint perfume of early violets wafted from the slopes of Fiesole, the embroidery of almond-blossom against the sky. Other pictures claimed his attention, but he returned again and again to the "Cardellino," drawn by the exquisite purity of conception and execution that the divine Raphael must have acquired by some mysterious communion with angels. The face of the Madonna reminded him of someone he had known, but so vaguely that he made no attempt to capture the vague suggestion. The sweet Madonna-face continued to haunt him, and now as he lounged in his room, after luncheon, it floated before him wreathed in the pale blue fumes of his cigarette.
The years had passed over him lightly, though any close observer would have noted the slightly increased sternness discernible in the set of the mouth, the squaring of the lean jaw. The eyes were as kind as ever, the brow as calm, the hair had streaks of grey at the temples, but was no thinner than of old.
On leaving the service, he had made a two years trip round the world, and had then, after a year, spent in the capitals of Europe, joined an exploring expedition to the heart of Africa. From thence he had returned to India, and while there, a sudden desire had seized him to revisit Italy, the land of his youthful dreams. Often during these years of voluntary exile had the face and form of Ragna risen before his eyes; she had left an indelible impression on him. He had been sincere when he said and wrote, "Now and always." His was a tenacious nature, both in hate and in love, and the circumstances attending his love for Ragna had been such as to brand that passion upon his soul, as a mark made upon soft clay is fixed forever by the firing in the kiln. His love for her and his indignation at the unworthiness of her betrayer had caused him to break all the threads of his life, had made of him a wanderer upon the face of the earth. True to his word, he had never seen Prince Mirko again, after that last interview in Rome, and if he sometimes thought wistfully of the earlier days of boyish comradeship, the brutal revelation of the real character of the man had effectually killed all but a somewhat sentimental cast of memory. He had been thoroughly and simply in earnest in the letter which he had written to Ragna on leaving Rome, and her answer had hurt him. He understood her however, too well, not to read between the lines of her answer, and to see in the apparently cold and self-sufficient note, the effort of a nature grievously wounded, striving to hide that wound, even from the hand of the physician.
"She will understand in time, and will turn to me," he thought, and had been content to wait. As time went on and no word came from her, he placed her, as it were, in the inner sanctuary of heart and mind, apart from the daily interests of his life. She was not dethroned, he still awaited her summons,—it had become a habit of mind with him to believe that it would come—but he was unconsciously growing to consider the eventuality of that summons more in the light of a possibility than of a probability. This, until his visit to Rome.
It seemed to him on his arrival there, that the old memories lay in wait for him in the streets, the old pain awoke in his heart, the old indignation burned in his veins. He knew himself for a lonely man, up-rooted from his own country, and the regret for what might have been, had Ragna but accepted his proposal, aroused in him a burning resentment against fate.
Under the spur of this resurrection of feeling, he seemed to awake from a long sleep, and he wondered at the lethargy in which he had been content to lie. He saw, in the light of revivified emotion that what was lacking in his life was Ragna and what she symbolized to him: affection and home-ties, and that he now felt the want of her as a painful deprivation and no longer as a vague lack, he wondered that he had been able to go on so long leaving the course of events to chance; it seemed unworthy of his very masculine energy. Why had he waited helplessly on an improbable (he recognised the fact now), appeal? Why had he not followed the girl, or at least kept in touch with her, renewed his offer, forcibly turned her to himself? At the time he had felt that any such action would be indelicate, unworthy of him; but now, his deeper understanding showed him that he had erred on the side of too great delicacy, that the prizes of life are for those who seize them. He thought bitterly of the five wasted years.
What had Ragna done? Where had she gone? Back to Norway, perhaps?
With a faint hope of tracing her, he went to the pension in the Piazza Montecitorio, where she had stopped. Yes, the landlady remembered the Norwegian ladies, but that was over five years ago. No, they had never returned. Sorry to disappoint the Signore.
He thought of Fru Boyesen in whose care he had formerly addressed New Year's cards to Ragna, and wrote her a note asking her if she could give him any information as to her niece's whereabouts.
"She will probably not deign to answer, she will think her niece's affairs none of my business, but at least I shall have done what I could," he said to himself.
What with the insistence of old memories and the disappointment of his forlorn hope of finding some trace of Ragna, Rome had become intolerable to him, so he wended a leisurely way to Florence where he hoped to receive an answer from Fru Boyesen, and we now see him lazily stretched on a sofa in his room his mind full of Ragna, and the Madonna-face which reminded him of her, although he did not know it, the resemblance being more of expression than of feature, floating in the smoke wreaths about his head.
The window was open, and his eye went to where, far over the roofs, S. Miniato enshrined in Cypress rose white and aloof, against the background of sky. Spring was merging into early summer, and the sun beat already white and glaring on the deserted Lung' Arno below. The mountains of Vallombrosa rose cool and green at the head of the valley; it was so clear he could even distinguish the white dots of houses composing the little hamlet perched on the ledge. Down in the river anarenaiuolopoled his boat in a leisurely fashion, a long pink shirt,—the only garment he boasted—flapping limply about his thin, brown legs.
Angelescu, lying back on the couch, his hands clasped above his head, felt agreeably tired from his morning's doings, half-drowsy, yet not inclined to sleep. He felt still less inclined to read, however, his unfinished novel lay unheeded on the floor by his side and he was debating inwardly how best to pass the time till four o'clock when he could go to thesferisterioand watch a match game ofpallone, when a page knocked at his door and brought him a note on a salver.
"From a lady, Signor Conte, she is waiting for the answer."
A lady? What lady could be writing to him? Some chance acquaintance of his travels perhaps, who had recognised him from a distance. He tore open the envelope and read with eyes that seemed suddenly petrified in their sockets:
"I saw in the paper that you are stopping here. Imustsee you, that is if you still think of me in the same way as when you wrote to me in Rome. If not, let me go away as I have come, don't try to see me. I shall await your answer."Ragna."
"I saw in the paper that you are stopping here. Imustsee you, that is if you still think of me in the same way as when you wrote to me in Rome. If not, let me go away as I have come, don't try to see me. I shall await your answer.
"Ragna."
The note had evidently been written in a hurry, under pressure of some extraordinary emotion, so much the handwriting told him. For the rest, she wanted him, she appealed to him, for he read the appeal in the few words of the note. What could it mean? How did she happen to be here? He stood with the note in his hand, lost to his surroundings, fairly dazed by the unexpectedness of the summons, now that it had come. The boy ventured to remind him of his presence.
"What message shall I give the lady, Signor Conte?"
"Tell her,—or stay, I will take her the answer myself. Where is she?"
"In the drawing-room, Signor Conte."
Thrusting the note into his pocket, Angelescu strode from the room and made his way to the drawing-room with beating heart.
A graceful figure rose from the sofa to meet him, both hands outstretched. He took them and drawing Ragna to him, clasped her in his arms; she submitted for an instant, but speedily released herself.
"No, no!" she cried. "You must not! You do not know!"
Waiting for him there, in the hotel drawing-room, Ragna had passed through all the varying emotions of excitement, hope, fear and nervous dread, the last named possessing her to such an extent that when the step of Angelescu rang in the mosaic paved corridor and sounded on the threshold, she hardly dared raise her eyes to him. All at once it seemed to her a terrible thing to have done,—to have presumed on the words of a letter five years old to such an extent as to throw herself on the generosity of a man, who by this time would have every right to consider her a stranger. The blood burned in her cheeks, tears of shame and misgiving rose in her eyes, and as Angelescu paused in the doorway the beating of her heart almost choked her while a strange thrill ran through her body. Summoning all her courage, she desperately raised her eyes, and meeting his expression of joyful surprise, the eagerness of his look, rose and moved impulsively towards him. It was true then, he still loved her!
The pressure of his arms, however, brought her to a realization of all the barriers the years had raised between them,—she must tell him, and perhaps when he knew all, the light would fade from his eyes, the eager flush from his cheeks! He had greeted her as the Ragna he had parted from in Rome, how would he take the fact of her being the actual wife of another? She was tempted to put off the evil day, to accord herself one hour, at least, of unspoilt happiness, but she was no coward, she recognised that the issue must be faced and at once, that she had already put herself into an equivocal position by accepting his embrace, since he as yet knew nothing. As she freed herself, he made an effort to retain her, but her out-flung hand repelled him.
"No, no!" she said, "you must not. You do not know!"
"I know that the moment for which I have waited so long has come at last! I have awaited your summons five years now. Five years! Think of it, Ragna!"
"But you have not yet learned my reasons—"
"That is true," he assented gravely, "but to me the fact that you have come to me is all-sufficing. I am glad that you have done it of your own accord. Think, Ragna, just two weeks ago, I wrote to your Aunt in Christiania to try and trace you. I—I had grown tired of waiting, I realized that I had been a fool from the first, that I should never have let you slip out of my life, and I did, and for so long."
"Yes, yes," she interrupted breathlessly, "you should not have left me!"
"After your answer to my letter, I was afraid of offending you—I thought it would be better to wait until you made some sign—"
"Oh, my foolish letter!" groaned Ragna. "But I was not myself when I wrote it. I was wild with pain and humiliation, I—"
"I know, dear, I know, and it has been my fault if I have lost sight of you through all these years. I realized that in Rome. When I had tried to find some trace of you there, and failed, I wrote to your Aunt. After all that had happened there, Rome was intolerable to me,—you can understand that—and I came here to await an answer."
"Aunt Gitta is dead," said Ragna. Oh how much there was to say, how much that he must know, before she allowed him to go further! And the things he said, or rather implied—his unchanging devotion, his happiness at finding her, were so perilously sweet to hear. In his presence she felt herself transported to another atmosphere, poles apart from the one she had just left. It transformed her, she felt a different creature already.
Still the past must be dealt with; she gathered herself together for the effort of telling him, but as her lips parted, two English ladies entered the drawing-room, followed by a waiter with a tea-tray. They installed themselves at a small table near a window, casting curious glances the while, at the two standing in the middle of the room,—for both Ragna and Angelescu had been too absorbed in one another to remember the small conventionalities of life.
"What a bore!" said Angelescu impatiently—"and the worst of it is that there is no place in this hotel where we can be by ourselves. What shall we do, Ragna? We must be alone somewhere—is there any place we can drive to?"
"Yes," said Ragna eagerly, guiltily glad of the short reprieve. "Let us drive out into the country, we shall be alone there."
She seated herself while Angelescu went for his hat and tried to collect her ideas, to marshal the facts that must be told. It seemed so cruel that the beauty of their meeting should be dimmed if not destroyed by reason of the very cause that had brought that meeting about. What would he do, what would he say, when he knew? Would it change him? A cold fear gripped her heart, but through it, she felt the happy bound and surge of her pulses at the recollection of the tender expression of his eyes, the radiance of his dear bronzed manly face.
"I must have loved him even then," she marvelled to herself, thinking of their former meetings, for she knew now that she loved him and it seemed to her that it had been so always, ever since she could remember. When she had seen his name in the paper, how spontaneous had been her impulse towards him, how unhesitating the instinct to fly to him for refuge!
"Only, why did I not realize it before?" she asked herself.
Angelescu returned, hat in hand and they walked down the wide staircase and out the door, held open by an attentive flunkey.
"Where shall we go?" asked Angelescu as he beckoned to a cab on the rank.
"To Sta. Margherita a Montici," said Ragna to the driver as she took her seat.
She felt a reckless joy in driving thus publicly with Angelescu. In any ordinary circumstances, common prudence would have forbidden her such an act in defiance of public opinion, but this was her declaration of independence, the burning of her boats, the definite throwing off of the yoke, and she gloried in it.
Angelescu looked at her with undisguised admiration, though the thick veil she wore rather obscured her features. She was more beautiful by far than she had been as a girl, her figure had riper, richer lines while keeping its lissome grace, her hair was as bright and abundant as ever, and the years of stress and storm had given an added delicacy to her features, a depth to her eyes, the subtle air of having lived and suffered to her expression—a complex charm that no merely young and pretty face can ever possess.
They sat silent as the carriage drove through the Via Maggio and down the long, winding Via Romana, but as they left the Porta Romana behind them and the pace slackened on the long hill, Ragna, with a determined effort, broke the silence.
"I have not yet told you that I am married," she said.
"Married!" repeated Angelescu, "married!" He looked at her as though stunned.
The idea that she might have married had never occurred to him. When she had refused him, he had not, in his direct simplicity, thought of the possibility of her giving to another that which she denied to him. He recoiled instinctively at the thought of her possession by another, and this time no accident, no sudden impulse, but with her full consent, as the fact of marriage must necessarily imply. It sickened him. How could she have given herself to another when everything about her proclaimed her love for himself. Could she then pass so lightly from one man's arms to another's? Now she had turned to him, but in the light of her prior action, what value had her present appeal? And why this appeal, since she had already found a protector, a husband? What explanation could there be to her conduct, except that as a frail barque, she drifted where the currents of circumstance and impulse took her? Or was she dominated by fickleness, a fatal longing for change and excitement? But here, his native generosity came to his aid,—the pressure of extraordinary circumstances must have been brought to bear on her, he must hear her out before judging.
So he turned to her, as she sat apprehensively expectant and took her hand in his own, saying:
"Tell me all, dear, don't be afraid. I was surprised, for I had not guessed—"
His voice was tender, affectionate; he spoke as he would to encourage the confidence of a shrinking child, and the beauty of it all was his perfect naturalness, the outcome of his simple generous soul.
To Ragna, realising as she needs must, from his first involuntary start, his look of horror and surprise, what a shock her bald announcement had been to him, his quick recovery, the tender simplicity of his response seemed little short of miraculous; she had not dared hope for so much. A lump rose in her throat and the hand that lay in his trembled.
"There, there, little one, tell me all!"
He spoke again, soothingly, as he would have spoken to a child; he did not guess that the tears welling up in her eyes were tears of relief, of joy, the reaction from the oppression of dread.
So Ragna told her tale, the terrible discovery that she was about to become a mother—
"Why did you not write to me then?" he interrupted.
"Ah, dear," she answered, "I was too ashamed, I only wanted to hide myself from all who knew me, from you, most of all, because you loved me!"
"The very reason why you should have come to me," he reproved quietly; "Ah, well, you did not, more's the pity. Think of it, Ragna, we might have been so happy."
"God knows I should have been a better woman, at least," she said bitterly, "not the hard cynical creature I have become!"
"You hard and cynical, my little Ragna?"
"Wait until you have heard all, and you will see whether I have not had good reason for it," she rejoined.
The tenderness called forth in response to his own had died away under the bitter memories evoked by the recital of her trials. With growing hardness in her voice, she told of Valentini's offer, of her acceptance and of their marriage—and at this point of her tale she dared not look at Angelescu's face but kept her eyes obstinately fixed on the driver's back, and even as she talked, was curiously conscious of the brown and grey stripes of the man's coat and the deep crease in it where it bulged over the iron rail round the top of the box.
She went on and told of her rapid disillusionment, hiding nothing, using words brutal in their revealing frankness, such as she had often used to herself; then of the birth of Mimmo, of that of Beppino, of the increasing unhappiness of her life, as time went on, and lastly of Carolina's story, the death of Fru Boyesen, the loss of her hopes, and the culminating scene of the morning. She reached this point as the carriage drove past the gate of the Torre al Gallo, where Galileo lived and worked, and through the little town of Arcetri, perched on the hill-top.
Both sat silent as they rattled through the long, narrow stone-paved street, Ragna lost again in the horror of all those awful years, now more unbearable than ever as she compared them to what might have been, Angelescu, his brow drawn into deep furrows of thought, the blaze of indignation in his eyes, a muscle working in his lean cheek, just as he had sat listening to her. As they left the last houses behind them, and came to a piece of undulating sunken road running between high stone walls on the tops of which iris and rose ran riot against the gnarled trunks and silvery leaves of the olives, he drew a long sigh and shrugged his shoulders as though throwing off the weight of some incubus.
"Poor little girl!" he said, and his voice shook with the depth of his emotion. After a pause, he spoke again, and this time his voice was full, deep, decided.
"You can't live with him any longer you know, you must come with me."
Then for an instant his anger blazed out like the sudden flare of lightning on a summer evening.
"By God, if ever I see that man,—no, that beast, I shall kill him!"
A thrill of savage joy ran through Ragna,—here then, was the man, the defender! The primitive woman in her leaped in response to his calm taking possession of her. Here was no questioning as to right, merely the assumption of herself and her burdens as the most perfectly obvious and natural thing in the world. Yes, he was right, she was his; she proudly acknowledged his right to command, to take her; she hugged the consciousness of her recognition of his mastery. Here was a lord she acknowledged with all her sentient being, one whom her soul delighted to honour. Mentally she compared with him the man who had been so long her hated and feared master, and the paltriness of Egidio made her wonder how she had let herself feel insulted by the words and actions of one so mean, so morally insignificant. She longed to throw out her arms to the man beside her, in one glorious gesture of self-abandonment, offering all that she was and could be, her whole being.
But the coachman was pointing with his whip to the beauties of the landscape, austere Fiesole and Settignano nestled in the lap of the hills, across the valley, and perched on the scarred pine-crowned hill between the Casa al Vento, all swimming in rosy amethyst, to Monte alle Croci, on which one distinguished the tiny mortuary chapels, the back of S. Miniato, the Arcivescovado masked in scaffolding, the Capucine monastery with its expresses, and nearer still the slopes of silvery olive and green waving grain, where cornflowers and poppies began to appear. So she only leaned forward and looked into Angelescu's eyes, clasping both her hands on his. She had thrown back her veil and her face appeared radiant, lit from within by the light of her love in its passionate consciousness of supremacy.
A steep bit of hill, and the horse, goaded into a momentary effort drew up panting in the little piazza before the Church which stood as on a pinnacle, the land on both sides sweeping away to a deep valley. On the right hand one saw range upon range of bare hill-tops with olive-covered slopes, and down below small white houses, each surrounded by its "podere," with here and there a "fattoria" or a villa, dotted the green valley. On the near hill-slopes the gorse was in blossom, its yellow flowers straggling over the rough ground like a ragged mantle of cloth of gold, and the strong sweet perfume of it assailed the nostrils. Across the piazza, opposite the grey old church was the priest's garden, an old-fashioned straggling garden sweet with wall-flowers, pinks and stocks, planted as borders to the onions, carrots, cabbages and lettuces; misshapen fig-trees ran riot and thenespolishowed the golden glow of ripened fruit among the heavy foliage. Lizards ran to and fro over the wall, from the crevices of which sprouted tufts of grass, snap-dragon, saxifrage and a kind of small fern.
The third side of the piazza, was bounded by a low wall, connecting theortowith the church and presbytery, and a flight of stone steps led to the terraced plantations below, where grain grew between the olives, and wild gladiolus, cornflower and poppy starred the undulating green surface.
Ragna, one of whose favourite haunts it was, led the way to the lichen-covered steps. At the foot of them an uneven grassy slope stretched downward, winding in and out among the terraces, and down this they wandered. The grass was still green for the summer heat and drought were yet far off, and many flowers grew in the light shade of the trees.
Ragna, full of the exuberance of the moment, laughed joyously and long like a child; she threw back her head, eyes half closed, the parted lips showing her white even teeth, and her laughter pulsated in her throat, rose in clear ripples. It reminded Angelescu of the song of a bird, of the clear water bubbling up in a spring. She had thrown off the weary years of pain as one casts off a dark cloak; all the youth, the girlishinsoucianceso long repressed rose triumphant to the surface, she irradiated the wonderful joy of life, of love. The sunlight, flecked with narrow, quivering shadow illuminated her white dress, the gold of her hair, the rosy flush of her cheek. She was like a bird escaped from its cage, mad with the newness of its freedom, intoxicated with the wine of life.
Her mood was infectious, it caught Angelescu, and he pursued her among the olive trees, following her light bounds, her lithe turnings and twistings. It was a page of Pagan fable,—there in the soft sunlight, under the grey gnarled olives, on the elastic carpet of flower-starred turf, the perfumed breeze fluttering Ragna's skirts as she laughingly eluded her pursuer. They were Apollo and Daphne and the world was young again. But this Daphne was no restive nymph, and when Angelescu caught her at length, panting and rosy, to his breast, she raised her mouth to his and closed her eyes. The colour fled from her face, she became grave with the mysterious gravity of all true passion as in that sacramental kiss she felt the utter surrender of her soul to his.