CHAPTER XXXIVTITA INTERVENES
Under the trees, as Gordon listened to the gondolier, the night grew deeper. The moonlight that mellowed over the pine forests spectrally outspread, the burnished river and the town before them, misted each hedge and tree with silver. A troubadour nightingale bubbled in the middle distance from some palazzo garden and from the nearer osteria came sounds of bustle. Through all breathed the intimate soft wind of the south bearing the smell of lime-blossoms and of sleeping bean-fields.
Wonder at Tita’s appearance had melted into a great wave of gladness that swept him at the sudden knowledge that she, Teresa, was there in Ravenna near him, mistress of Casa Guiccioli, whose very portal he had passed that afternoon. But the joy had died speedily; thereafter every word had seemed to burn itself into his heart.
“If he hated her, why did he wish to make her his contessa? Tell me that, Excellence! It has been so all these weeks, ever since her wedding. Sometimes I have heard him sneer at her—always about you, Excellence—how he knew she ever saw you I cannot tell! His servants go spying—spying, always when she is out of the casa.”
The man who listened turned his head with a movement of physical pain, as Tita went on, resentfully:
“And she is a Gamba, born to be a great lady! If she left him, he would bring her back, unless she went from Italy. And who is to help her do that? Her brother is in another land. Her father is sick and she will not tell him anything. There is none but me in Casa Guiccioli who does not serve the signore too well! I thought—” he finished, twisting his red cap in his great fingers, “I thought—if I told you—you would take her away from him, to your own country, maybe.”
Gordon almost smiled in his anguish. To the simple soul of this loyal servant, on whom conventional morals sat with Italian lightness, here was an uncomplex solution! Turn household highwayman and fly from the states of the Church to enjoy the plunder! And of all places—to England! Open a new domestic chapter in some provincial British country-side as “Mr. Smith,” perhaps, “a worthy retired merchant of Lima!” The bitter humor couched in the fancy made sharper his pang of utter impotence. Italy was not England, he thought grimly. In that very difference had lain ship-wreck for them both. Teresa could not leave her husband openly, as Annabel had left him! The Church of Rome knew no divorce, and inside its bond only a papal decree could give her the right to live apart from her husband under her own father’s roof.
Tita’s voice spoke again, eagerly: “You will come, Excellence? The signore is from Ravenna now, at one of his estates in Romagna—you can see her! None shall know, if you come with me. You will, Excellence?”
To see her again! Gordon had not realized how muchit meant till to-night, when the possibility found him quivering from his disappointment at the convent. A stolen hour with her! Why not? Yet—discovery. Her husband’s servants, spies upon her every moment! To steal secretly to her thus unbidden and perhaps crowd upon her a worse catastrophe than that at San Lazzarro!
He shook his head. “No. Not unless she knows I am here and bids me come.”
“I will go and tell her, Excellence!”
“Tell her I did not know she was in Ravenna, but that—that I would die to serve her. Say that!”
“You will wait here, Excellence?”
“Yes.”
Tita swung round and disappeared.
It seemed an immeasurable time that Gordon waited, striding fiercely up and down, listening to every sound. At the inn a late diligence had unloaded its contingent of chattering tourists for the night. He could hear phrases spoken in English. The words bore a myriad-voiced suggestion, yet how little their appeal meant to him at that moment! All England, save for Ada, was less to him then than a single house there in Ravenna—and a convent buried in the forest under that moon. On such another perfect day and amber night, he thought, he had found Teresa’s miniature and had fled with Jane Clermont. Now substance and shadow had replaced one another. To-day Jane had touched his life vaguely and painfully in passing from it! Teresa was the sole reality. What would she say? What word would Tita bring?
Long as it seemed, it was in fact less than an hour before the gondolier stood again before him.
Ten minutes later they were in the streets of the town, avoiding its lighted thoroughfares, walking swiftly, Tita in the lead. At length, threading a lane between walled gardens flanking great houses whose fronts frowned on wider avenues, they stood before a columned gate. This Gordon’s guide unlocked.
“I will watch here,” he said. “You will not tell her I came to you first of my own thought, Excellence?” he added anxiously.
“I will not tell her,” answered Gordon.
He entered with a loudly beating heart.