Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vitaMi ritrovai per una selva oscuraChe la diritta via era smarrita—
a quotation which was more apt than he supposed.
Lilia glanced at Philip to see whether he noticed that she was marrying no ignoramus. Anxious to exhibit all the good qualities of her betrothed, she abruptly introduced the subject of pallone, in which, it appeared, he was a proficient player. He suddenly became shy and developed a conceited grin—the grin of the village yokel whose cricket score is mentioned before a stranger. Philip himself had loved to watch pallone, that entrancing combination of lawn-tennis and fives. But he did not expect to love it quite so much again.
“Oh, look!” exclaimed Lilia, “the poor wee fish!”
A starved cat had been worrying them all for pieces of the purple quivering beef they were trying to swallow. Signor Carella, with the brutality so common in Italians, had caught her by the paw and flung her away from him. Now she had climbed up to the bowl and was trying to hook out the fish. He got up, drove her off, and finding a large glass stopper by the bowl, entirely plugged up the aperture with it.
“But may not the fish die?” said Miss Abbott. “They have no air.”
“Fish live on water, not on air,” he replied in a knowing voice, and sat down. Apparently he was at his ease again, for he took to spitting on the floor. Philip glanced at Lilia but did not detect her wincing. She talked bravely till the end of the disgusting meal, and then got up saying, “Well, Philip, I am sure you are ready for by-bye. We shall meet at twelve o’clock lunch tomorrow, if we don’t meet before. They give us caffe later in our rooms.”
It was a little too impudent. Philip replied, “I should like to see you now, please, in my room, as I have come all the way on business.” He heard Miss Abbott gasp. Signor Carella, who was lighting a rank cigar, had not understood.
It was as he expected. When he was alone with Lilia he lost all nervousness. The remembrance of his long intellectual supremacy strengthened him, and he began volubly—
“My dear Lilia, don’t let’s have a scene. Before I arrived I thought I might have to question you. It is unnecessary. I know everything. Miss Abbott has told me a certain amount, and the rest I see for myself.”
“See for yourself?” she exclaimed, and he remembered afterwards that she had flushed crimson.
“That he is probably a ruffian and certainly a cad.”
“There are no cads in Italy,” she said quickly.
He was taken aback. It was one of his own remarks. And she further upset him by adding, “He is the son of a dentist. Why not?”
“Thank you for the information. I know everything, as I told you before. I am also aware of the social position of an Italian who pulls teeth in a minute provincial town.”
He was not aware of it, but he ventured to conclude that it was pretty, low. Nor did Lilia contradict him. But she was sharp enough to say, “Indeed, Philip, you surprise me. I understood you went in for equality and so on.”
“And I understood that Signor Carella was a member of the Italian nobility.”
“Well, we put it like that in the telegram so as not to shock dear Mrs. Herriton. But it is true. He is a younger branch. Of course families ramify—just as in yours there is your cousin Joseph.” She adroitly picked out the only undesirable member of the Herriton clan. “Gino’s father is courtesy itself, and rising rapidly in his profession. This very month he leaves Monteriano, and sets up at Poggibonsi. And for my own poor part, I think what people are is what matters, but I don’t suppose you’ll agree. And I should like you to know that Gino’s uncle is a priest—the same as a clergyman at home.”
Philip was aware of the social position of an Italian priest, and said so much about it that Lilia interrupted him with, “Well, his cousin’s a lawyer at Rome.”
“What kind of ‘lawyer’?”
“Why, a lawyer just like you are—except that he has lots to do and can never get away.”
The remark hurt more than he cared to show. He changed his method, and in a gentle, conciliating tone delivered the following speech:—
“The whole thing is like a bad dream—so bad that it cannot go on. If there was one redeeming feature about the man I might be uneasy. As it is I can trust to time. For the moment, Lilia, he has taken you in, but you will find him out soon. It is not possible that you, a lady, accustomed to ladies and gentlemen, will tolerate a man whose position is—well, not equal to the son of the servants’ dentist in Coronation Place. I am not blaming you now. But I blame the glamour of Italy—I have felt it myself, you know—and I greatly blame Miss Abbott.”
“Caroline! Why blame her? What’s all this to do with Caroline?”
“Because we expected her to—” He saw that the answer would involve him in difficulties, and, waving his hand, continued, “So I am confident, and you in your heart agree, that this engagement will not last. Think of your life at home—think of Irma! And I’ll also say think of us; for you know, Lilia, that we count you more than a relation. I should feel I was losing my own sister if you did this, and my mother would lose a daughter.”
She seemed touched at last, for she turned away her face and said, “I can’t break it off now!”
“Poor Lilia,” said he, genuinely moved. “I know it may be painful. But I have come to rescue you, and, book-worm though I may be, I am not frightened to stand up to a bully. He’s merely an insolent boy. He thinks he can keep you to your word by threats. He will be different when he sees he has a man to deal with.”
What follows should be prefaced with some simile—the simile of a powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake—for it blew Philip up in the air and flattened him on the ground and swallowed him up in the depths. Lilia turned on her gallant defender and said—
“For once in my life I’ll thank you to leave me alone. I’ll thank your mother too. For twelve years you’ve trained me and tortured me, and I’ll stand it no more. Do you think I’m a fool? Do you think I never felt? Ah! when I came to your house a poor young bride, how you all looked me over—never a kind word—and discussed me, and thought I might just do; and your mother corrected me, and your sister snubbed me, and you said funny things about me to show how clever you were! And when Charles died I was still to run in strings for the honour of your beastly family, and I was to be cooped up at Sawston and learn to keep house, and all my chances spoilt of marrying again. No, thank you! No, thank you! ‘Bully?’ ‘Insolent boy?’ Who’s that, pray, but you? But, thank goodness, I can stand up against the world now, for I’ve found Gino, and this time I marry for love!”
The coarseness and truth of her attack alike overwhelmed him. But her supreme insolence found him words, and he too burst forth.
“Yes! and I forbid you to do it! You despise me, perhaps, and think I’m feeble. But you’re mistaken. You are ungrateful and impertinent and contemptible, but I will save you in order to save Irma and our name. There is going to be such a row in this town that you and he’ll be sorry you came to it. I shall shrink from nothing, for my blood is up. It is unwise of you to laugh. I forbid you to marry Carella, and I shall tell him so now.”
“Do,” she cried. “Tell him so now. Have it out with him. Gino! Gino! Come in! Avanti! Fra Filippo forbids the banns!”
Gino appeared so quickly that he must have been listening outside the door.
“Fra Filippo’s blood’s up. He shrinks from nothing. Oh, take care he doesn’t hurt you!” She swayed about in vulgar imitation of Philip’s walk, and then, with a proud glance at the square shoulders of her betrothed, flounced out of the room.
Did she intend them to fight? Philip had no intention of doing so; and no more, it seemed, had Gino, who stood nervously in the middle of the room with twitching lips and eyes.
“Please sit down, Signor Carella,” said Philip in Italian. “Mrs. Herriton is rather agitated, but there is no reason we should not be calm. Might I offer you a cigarette? Please sit down.”
He refused the cigarette and the chair, and remained standing in the full glare of the lamp. Philip, not averse to such assistance, got his own face into shadow.
For a long time he was silent. It might impress Gino, and it also gave him time to collect himself. He would not this time fall into the error of blustering, which he had caught so unaccountably from Lilia. He would make his power felt by restraint.
Why, when he looked up to begin, was Gino convulsed with silent laughter? It vanished immediately; but he became nervous, and was even more pompous than he intended.
“Signor Carella, I will be frank with you. I have come to prevent you marrying Mrs. Herriton, because I see you will both be unhappy together. She is English, you are Italian; she is accustomed to one thing, you to another. And—pardon me if I say it—she is rich and you are poor.”
“I am not marrying her because she is rich,” was the sulky reply.
“I never suggested that for a moment,” said Philip courteously. “You are honourable, I am sure; but are you wise? And let me remind you that we want her with us at home. Her little daughter will be motherless, our home will be broken up. If you grant my request you will earn our thanks—and you will not be without a reward for your disappointment.”
“Reward—what reward?” He bent over the back of a chair and looked earnestly at Philip. They were coming to terms pretty quickly. Poor Lilia!
Philip said slowly, “What about a thousand lire?”
His soul went forth into one exclamation, and then he was silent, with gaping lips. Philip would have given double: he had expected a bargain.
“You can have them tonight.”
He found words, and said, “It is too late.”
“But why?”
“Because—” His voice broke. Philip watched his face,—a face without refinement perhaps, but not without expression,—watched it quiver and re-form and dissolve from emotion into emotion. There was avarice at one moment, and insolence, and politeness, and stupidity, and cunning—and let us hope that sometimes there was love. But gradually one emotion dominated, the most unexpected of all; for his chest began to heave and his eyes to wink and his mouth to twitch, and suddenly he stood erect and roared forth his whole being in one tremendous laugh.
Philip sprang up, and Gino, who had flung wide his arms to let the glorious creature go, took him by the shoulders and shook him, and said, “Because we are married—married—married as soon as I knew you were, coming. There was no time to tell you. Oh. oh! You have come all the way for nothing. Oh! And oh, your generosity!” Suddenly he became grave, and said, “Please pardon me; I am rude. I am no better than a peasant, and I—” Here he saw Philip’s face, and it was too much for him. He gasped and exploded and crammed his hands into his mouth and spat them out in another explosion, and gave Philip an aimless push, which toppled him on to the bed. He uttered a horrified Oh! and then gave up, and bolted away down the passage, shrieking like a child, to tell the joke to his wife.
For a time Philip lay on the bed, pretending to himself that he was hurt grievously. He could scarcely see for temper, and in the passage he ran against Miss Abbott, who promptly burst into tears.
“I sleep at the Globo,” he told her, “and start for Sawston tomorrow morning early. He has assaulted me. I could prosecute him. But shall not.”
“I can’t stop here,” she sobbed. “I daren’t stop here. You will have to take me with you!”
Opposite the Volterra gate of Monteriano, outside the city, is a very respectable white-washed mud wall, with a coping of red crinkled tiles to keep it from dissolution. It would suggest a gentleman’s garden if there was not in its middle a large hole, which grows larger with every rain-storm. Through the hole is visible, firstly, the iron gate that is intended to close it; secondly, a square piece of ground which, though not quite, mud, is at the same time not exactly grass; and finally, another wall, stone this time, which has a wooden door in the middle and two wooden-shuttered windows each side, and apparently forms the facade of a one-storey house.
This house is bigger than it looks, for it slides for two storeys down the hill behind, and the wooden door, which is always locked, really leads into the attic. The knowing person prefers to follow the precipitous mule-track round the turn of the mud wall till he can take the edifice in the rear. Then—being now on a level with the cellars—he lifts up his head and shouts. If his voice sounds like something light—a letter, for example, or some vegetables, or a bunch of flowers—a basket is let out of the first-floor windows by a string, into which he puts his burdens and departs. But if he sounds like something heavy, such as a log of wood, or a piece of meat, or a visitor, he is interrogated, and then bidden or forbidden to ascend. The ground floor and the upper floor of that battered house are alike deserted, and the inmates keep the central portion, just as in a dying body all life retires to the heart. There is a door at the top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily cold. There are several rooms, some dark and mostly stuffy—a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs, wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit—German bad taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence of hospitality is absent, and real bedrooms; and last, but not least, the loggia, where you can live day and night if you feel inclined, drinking vermouth and smoking cigarettes, with leagues of olive-trees and vineyards and blue-green hills to watch you.
It was in this house that the brief and inevitable tragedy of Lilia’s married life took place. She made Gino buy it for her, because it was there she had first seen him sitting on the mud wall that faced the Volterra gate. She remembered how the evening sun had struck his hair, and how he had smiled down at her, and being both sentimental and unrefined, was determined to have the man and the place together. Things in Italy are cheap for an Italian, and, though he would have preferred a house in the piazza, or better still a house at Siena, or, bliss above bliss, a house at Leghorn, he did as she asked, thinking that perhaps she showed her good taste in preferring so retired an abode.
The house was far too big for them, and there was a general concourse of his relatives to fill it up. His father wished to make it a patriarchal concern, where all the family should have their rooms and meet together for meals, and was perfectly willing to give up the new practice at Poggibonsi and preside. Gino was quite willing too, for he was an affectionate youth who liked a large home-circle, and he told it as a pleasant bit of news to Lilia, who did not attempt to conceal her horror.
At once he was horrified too; saw that the idea was monstrous; abused himself to her for having suggested it; rushed off to tell his father that it was impossible. His father complained that prosperity was already corrupting him and making him unsympathetic and hard; his mother cried; his sisters accused him of blocking their social advance. He was apologetic, and even cringing, until they turned on Lilia. Then he turned on them, saying that they could not understand, much less associate with, the English lady who was his wife; that there should be one master in that house—himself.
Lilia praised and petted him on his return, calling him brave and a hero and other endearing epithets. But he was rather blue when his clan left Monteriano in much dignity—a dignity which was not at all impaired by the acceptance of a cheque. They took the cheque not to Poggibonsi, after all, but to Empoli—a lively, dusty town some twenty miles off. There they settled down in comfort, and the sisters said they had been driven to it by Gino.
The cheque was, of course, Lilia’s, who was extremely generous, and was quite willing to know anybody so long as she had not to live with them, relations-in-law being on her nerves. She liked nothing better than finding out some obscure and distant connection—there were several of them—and acting the lady bountiful, leaving behind her bewilderment, and too often discontent. Gino wondered how it was that all his people, who had formerly seemed so pleasant, had suddenly become plaintive and disagreeable. He put it down to his lady wife’s magnificence, in comparison with which all seemed common. Her money flew apace, in spite of the cheap living. She was even richer than he expected; and he remembered with shame how he had once regretted his inability to accept the thousand lire that Philip Herriton offered him in exchange for her. It would have been a shortsighted bargain.
Lilia enjoyed settling into the house, with nothing to do except give orders to smiling workpeople, and a devoted husband as interpreter. She wrote a jaunty account of her happiness to Mrs. Herriton, and Harriet answered the letter, saying (1) that all future communications should be addressed to the solicitors; (2) would Lilia return an inlaid box which Harriet had lent her—but not given—to keep handkerchiefs and collars in?
“Look what I am giving up to live with you!” she said to Gino, never omitting to lay stress on her condescension. He took her to mean the inlaid box, and said that she need not give it up at all.
“Silly fellow, no! I mean the life. Those Herritons are very well connected. They lead Sawston society. But what do I care, so long as I have my silly fellow!” She always treated him as a boy, which he was, and as a fool, which he was not, thinking herself so immeasurably superior to him that she neglected opportunity after opportunity of establishing her rule. He was good-looking and indolent; therefore he must be stupid. He was poor; therefore he would never dare to criticize his benefactress. He was passionately in love with her; therefore she could do exactly as she liked.
“It mayn’t be heaven below,” she thought, “but it’s better than Charles.”
And all the time the boy was watching her, and growing up.
She was reminded of Charles by a disagreeable letter from the solicitors, bidding her disgorge a large sum of money for Irma, in accordance with her late husband’s will. It was just like Charles’s suspicious nature to have provided against a second marriage. Gino was equally indignant, and between them they composed a stinging reply, which had no effect. He then said that Irma had better come out and live with them. “The air is good, so is the food; she will be happy here, and we shall not have to part with the money.” But Lilia had not the courage even to suggest this to the Herritons, and an unexpected terror seized her at the thought of Irma or any English child being educated at Monteriano.
Gino became terribly depressed over the solicitors’ letter, more depressed than she thought necessary. There was no more to do in the house, and he spent whole days in the loggia leaning over the parapet or sitting astride it disconsolately.
“Oh, you idle boy!” she cried, pinching his muscles. “Go and play pallone.”
“I am a married man,” he answered, without raising his head. “I do not play games any more.”
“Go and see your friends then.”
“I have no friends now.”
“Silly, silly, silly! You can’t stop indoors all day!”
“I want to see no one but you.” He spat on to an olive-tree.
“Now, Gino, don’t be silly. Go and see your friends, and bring them to see me. We both of us like society.”
He looked puzzled, but allowed himself to be persuaded, went out, found that he was not as friendless as he supposed, and returned after several hours in altered spirits. Lilia congratulated herself on her good management.
“I’m ready, too, for people now,” she said. “I mean to wake you all up, just as I woke up Sawston. Let’s have plenty of men—and make them bring their womenkind. I mean to have real English tea-parties.”
“There is my aunt and her husband; but I thought you did not want to receive my relatives.”
“I never said such a—”
“But you would be right,” he said earnestly. “They are not for you. Many of them are in trade, and even we are little more; you should have gentlefolk and nobility for your friends.”
“Poor fellow,” thought Lilia. “It is sad for him to discover that his people are vulgar.” She began to tell him that she loved him just for his silly self, and he flushed and began tugging at his moustache.
“But besides your relatives I must have other people here. Your friends have wives and sisters, haven’t they?”
“Oh, yes; but of course I scarcely know them.”
“Not know your friends’ people?”
“Why, no. If they are poor and have to work for their living I may see them—but not otherwise. Except—” He stopped. The chief exception was a young lady, to whom he had once been introduced for matrimonial purposes. But the dowry had proved inadequate, and the acquaintance terminated.
“How funny! But I mean to change all that. Bring your friends to see me, and I will make them bring their people.”
He looked at her rather hopelessly.
“Well, who are the principal people here? Who leads society?”
The governor of the prison, he supposed, and the officers who assisted him.
“Well, are they married?”
“Yes.”
“There we are. Do you know them?”
“Yes—in a way.”
“I see,” she exclaimed angrily. “They look down on you, do they, poor boy? Wait!” He assented. “Wait! I’ll soon stop that. Now, who else is there?”
“The marchese, sometimes, and the canons of the Collegiate Church.”
“Married?”
“The canons—” he began with twinkling eyes.
“Oh, I forgot your horrid celibacy. In England they would be the centre of everything. But why shouldn’t I know them? Would it make it easier if I called all round? Isn’t that your foreign way?”
He did not think it would make it easier.
“But I must know some one! Who were the men you were talking to this afternoon?”
Low-class men. He could scarcely recollect their names.
“But, Gino dear, if they’re low class, why did you talk to them? Don’t you care about your position?”
All Gino cared about at present was idleness and pocket-money, and his way of expressing it was to exclaim, “Ouf-pouf! How hot it is in here. No air; I sweat all over. I expire. I must cool myself, or I shall never get to sleep.” In his funny abrupt way he ran out on to the loggia, where he lay full length on the parapet, and began to smoke and spit under the silence of the stars.
Lilia gathered somehow from this conversation that Continental society was not the go-as-you-please thing she had expected. Indeed she could not see where Continental society was. Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism—that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners. In the democracy of the caffe or the street the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But is accomplished at the expense of the sisterhood of women. Why should you not make friends with your neighbour at the theatre or in the train, when you know and he knows that feminine criticism and feminine insight and feminine prejudice will never come between you? Though you become as David and Jonathan, you need never enter his home, nor he yours. All your lives you will meet under the open air, the only roof-tree of the South, under which he will spit and swear, and you will drop your h’s, and nobody will think the worse of either.
Meanwhile the women—they have, of course, their house and their church, with its admirable and frequent services, to which they are escorted by the maid. Otherwise they do not go out much, for it is not genteel to walk, and you are too poor to keep a carriage. Occasionally you will take them to the caffe or theatre, and immediately all your wonted acquaintance there desert you, except those few who are expecting and expected to marry into your family. It is all very sad. But one consolation emerges—life is very pleasant in Italy if you are a man.
Hitherto Gino had not interfered with Lilia. She was so much older than he was, and so much richer, that he regarded her as a superior being who answered to other laws. He was not wholly surprised, for strange rumours were always blowing over the Alps of lands where men and women had the same amusements and interests, and he had often met that privileged maniac, the lady tourist, on her solitary walks. Lilia took solitary walks too, and only that week a tramp had grabbed at her watch—an episode which is supposed to be indigenous in Italy, though really less frequent there than in Bond Street. Now that he knew her better, he was inevitably losing his awe: no one could live with her and keep it, especially when she had been so silly as to lose a gold watch and chain. As he lay thoughtful along the parapet, he realized for the first time the responsibilities of monied life. He must save her from dangers, physical and social, for after all she was a woman. “And I,” he reflected, “though I am young, am at all events a man, and know what is right.”
He found her still in the living-room, combing her hair, for she had something of the slattern in her nature, and there was no need to keep up appearances.
“You must not go out alone,” he said gently. “It is not safe. If you want to walk, Perfetta shall accompany you.” Perfetta was a widowed cousin, too humble for social aspirations, who was living with them as factotum.
“Very well,” smiled Lilia, “very well”—as if she were addressing a solicitous kitten. But for all that she never took a solitary walk again, with one exception, till the day of her death.
Days passed, and no one called except poor relatives. She began to feel dull. Didn’t he know the Sindaco or the bank manager? Even the landlady of the Stella d’Italia would be better than no one. She, when she went into the town, was pleasantly received; but people naturally found a difficulty in getting on with a lady who could not learn their language. And the tea-party, under Gino’s adroit management, receded ever and ever before her.
He had a good deal of anxiety over her welfare, for she did not settle down in the house at all. But he was comforted by a welcome and unexpected visitor. As he was going one afternoon for the letters—they were delivered at the door, but it took longer to get them at the office—some one humorously threw a cloak over his head, and when he disengaged himself he saw his very dear friend Spiridione Tesi of the custom-house at Chiasso, whom he had not met for two years. What joy! what salutations! so that all the passersby smiled with approval on the amiable scene. Spiridione’s brother was now station-master at Bologna, and thus he himself could spend his holiday travelling over Italy at the public expense. Hearing of Gino’s marriage, he had come to see him on his way to Siena, where lived his own uncle, lately monied too.
“They all do it,” he exclaimed, “myself excepted.” He was not quite twenty-three. “But tell me more. She is English. That is good, very good. An English wife is very good indeed. And she is rich?”
“Immensely rich.”
“Blonde or dark?”
“Blonde.”
“Is it possible!”
“It pleases me very much,” said Gino simply. “If you remember, I always desired a blonde.” Three or four men had collected, and were listening.
“We all desire one,” said Spiridione. “But you, Gino, deserve your good fortune, for you are a good son, a brave man, and a true friend, and from the very first moment I saw you I wished you well.”
“No compliments, I beg,” said Gino, standing with his hands crossed on his chest and a smile of pleasure on his face.
Spiridione addressed the other men, none of whom he had ever seen before. “Is it not true? Does not he deserve this wealthy blonde?”
“He does deserve her,” said all the men.
It is a marvellous land, where you love it or hate it.
There were no letters, and of course they sat down at the Caffe Garibaldi, by the Collegiate Church—quite a good caffe that for so small a city. There were marble-topped tables, and pillars terra-cotta below and gold above, and on the ceiling was a fresco of the battle of Solferino. One could not have desired a prettier room. They had vermouth and little cakes with sugar on the top, which they chose gravely at the counter, pinching them first to be sure they were fresh. And though vermouth is barely alcoholic, Spiridione drenched his with soda-water to be sure that it should not get into his head.
They were in high spirits, and elaborate compliments alternated curiously with gentle horseplay. But soon they put up their legs on a pair of chairs and began to smoke.
“Tell me,” said Spiridione—“I forgot to ask—is she young?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Ah, well, we cannot have everything.”
“But you would be surprised. Had she told me twenty-eight, I should not have disbelieved her.”
“Is she SIMPATICA?” (Nothing will translate that word.)
Gino dabbed at the sugar and said after a silence, “Sufficiently so.”
“It is a most important thing.”
“She is rich, she is generous, she is affable, she addresses her inferiors without haughtiness.”
There was another silence. “It is not sufficient,” said the other. “One does not define it thus.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Last month a German was smuggling cigars. The custom-house was dark. Yet I refused because I did not like him. The gifts of such men do not bring happiness. NON ERA SIMPATICO. He paid for every one, and the fine for deception besides.”
“Do you gain much beyond your pay?” asked Gino, diverted for an instant.
“I do not accept small sums now. It is not worth the risk. But the German was another matter. But listen, my Gino, for I am older than you and more full of experience. The person who understands us at first sight, who never irritates us, who never bores, to whom we can pour forth every thought and wish, not only in speech but in silence—that is what I mean by SIMPATICO.”
“There are such men, I know,” said Gino. “And I have heard it said of children. But where will you find such a woman?”
“That is true. Here you are wiser than I. SONO POCO SIMPATICHE LE DONNE. And the time we waste over them is much.” He sighed dolefully, as if he found the nobility of his sex a burden.
“One I have seen who may be so. She spoke very little, but she was a young lady—different to most. She, too, was English, the companion of my wife here. But Fra Filippo, the brother-in-law, took her back with him. I saw them start. He was very angry.”
Then he spoke of his exciting and secret marriage, and they made fun of the unfortunate Philip, who had travelled over Europe to stop it.
“I regret though,” said Gino, when they had finished laughing, “that I toppled him on to the bed. A great tall man! And when I am really amused I am often impolite.”
“You will never see him again,” said Spiridione, who carried plenty of philosophy about him. “And by now the scene will have passed from his mind.”
“It sometimes happens that such things are recollected longest. I shall never see him again, of course; but it is no benefit to me that he should wish me ill. And even if he has forgotten, I am still sorry that I toppled him on to the bed.”
So their talk continued, at one moment full of childishness and tender wisdom, the next moment scandalously gross. The shadows of the terra-cotta pillars lengthened, and tourists, flying through the Palazzo Pubblico opposite, could observe how the Italians wasted time.
The sight of tourists reminded Gino of something he might say. “I want to consult you since you are so kind as to take an interest in my affairs. My wife wishes to take solitary walks.”
Spiridione was shocked.
“But I have forbidden her.”
“Naturally.”
“She does not yet understand. She asked me to accompany her sometimes—to walk without object! You know, she would like me to be with her all day.”
“I see. I see.” He knitted his brows and tried to think how he could help his friend. “She needs employment. Is she a Catholic?”
“No.”
“That is a pity. She must be persuaded. It will be a great solace to her when she is alone.”
“I am a Catholic, but of course I never go to church.”
“Of course not. Still, you might take her at first. That is what my brother has done with his wife at Bologna and he has joined the Free Thinkers. He took her once or twice himself, and now she has acquired the habit and continues to go without him.”
“Most excellent advice, and I thank you for it. But she wishes to give tea-parties—men and women together whom she has never seen.”
“Oh, the English! they are always thinking of tea. They carry it by the kilogramme in their trunks, and they are so clumsy that they always pack it at the top. But it is absurd!”
“What am I to do about it?”
“Do nothing. Or ask me!”
“Come!” cried Gino, springing up. “She will be quite pleased.”
The dashing young fellow coloured crimson. “Of course I was only joking.”
“I know. But she wants me to take my friends. Come now! Waiter!”
“If I do come,” cried the other, “and take tea with you, this bill must be my affair.”
“Certainly not; you are in my country!”
A long argument ensued, in which the waiter took part, suggesting various solutions. At last Gino triumphed. The bill came to eightpence-halfpenny, and a halfpenny for the waiter brought it up to ninepence. Then there was a shower of gratitude on one side and of deprecation on the other, and when courtesies were at their height they suddenly linked arms and swung down the street, tickling each other with lemonade straws as they went.
Lilia was delighted to see them, and became more animated than Gino had known her for a long time. The tea tasted of chopped hay, and they asked to be allowed to drink it out of a wine-glass, and refused milk; but, as she repeatedly observed, this was something like. Spiridione’s manners were very agreeable. He kissed her hand on introduction, and as his profession had taught him a little English, conversation did not flag.
“Do you like music?” she asked.
“Passionately,” he replied. “I have not studied scientific music, but the music of the heart, yes.”
So she played on the humming piano very badly, and he sang, not so badly. Gino got out a guitar and sang too, sitting out on the loggia. It was a most agreeable visit.
Gino said he would just walk his friend back to his lodgings. As they went he said, without the least trace of malice or satire in his voice, “I think you are quite right. I shall not bring people to the house any more. I do not see why an English wife should be treated differently. This is Italy.”
“You are very wise,” exclaimed the other; “very wise indeed. The more precious a possession the more carefully it should be guarded.”
They had reached the lodging, but went on as far as the Caffe Garibaldi, where they spent a long and most delightful evening.
The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say “yesterday I was happy, today I am not.” At no one moment did Lilia realize that her marriage was a failure; yet during the summer and autumn she became as unhappy as it was possible for her nature to be. She had no unkind treatment, and few unkind words, from her husband. He simply left her alone. In the morning he went out to do “business,” which, as far as she could discover, meant sitting in the Farmacia. He usually returned to lunch, after which he retired to another room and slept. In the evening he grew vigorous again, and took the air on the ramparts, often having his dinner out, and seldom returning till midnight or later. There were, of course, the times when he was away altogether—at Empoli, Siena, Florence, Bologna—for he delighted in travel, and seemed to pick up friends all over the country. Lilia often heard what a favorite he was.
She began to see that she must assert herself, but she could not see how. Her self-confidence, which had overthrown Philip, had gradually oozed away. If she left the strange house there was the strange little town. If she were to disobey her husband and walk in the country, that would be stranger still—vast slopes of olives and vineyards, with chalk-white farms, and in the distance other slopes, with more olives and more farms, and more little towns outlined against the cloudless sky. “I don’t call this country,” she would say. “Why, it’s not as wild as Sawston Park!” And, indeed, there was scarcely a touch of wildness in it—some of those slopes had been under cultivation for two thousand years. But it was terrible and mysterious all the same, and its continued presence made Lilia so uncomfortable that she forgot her nature and began to reflect.
She reflected chiefly about her marriage. The ceremony had been hasty and expensive, and the rites, whatever they were, were not those of the Church of England. Lilia had no religion in her; but for hours at a time she would be seized with a vulgar fear that she was not “married properly,” and that her social position in the next world might be as obscure as it was in this. It might be safer to do the thing thoroughly, and one day she took the advice of Spiridione and joined the Roman Catholic Church, or as she called it, “Santa Deodata’s.” Gino approved; he, too, thought it safer, and it was fun confessing, though the priest was a stupid old man, and the whole thing was a good slap in the face for the people at home.
The people at home took the slap very soberly; indeed, there were few left for her to give it to. The Herritons were out of the question; they would not even let her write to Irma, though Irma was occasionally allowed to write to her. Mrs. Theobald was rapidly subsiding into dotage, and, as far as she could be definite about anything, had definitely sided with the Herritons. And Miss Abbott did likewise. Night after night did Lilia curse this false friend, who had agreed with her that the marriage would “do,” and that the Herritons would come round to it, and then, at the first hint of opposition, had fled back to England shrieking and distraught. Miss Abbott headed the long list of those who should never be written to, and who should never be forgiven. Almost the only person who was not on that list was Mr. Kingcroft, who had unexpectedly sent an affectionate and inquiring letter. He was quite sure never to cross the Channel, and Lilia drew freely on her fancy in the reply.
At first she had seen a few English people, for Monteriano was not the end of the earth. One or two inquisitive ladies, who had heard at home of her quarrel with the Herritons, came to call. She was very sprightly, and they thought her quite unconventional, and Gino a charming boy, so all that was to the good. But by May the season, such as it was, had finished, and there would be no one till next spring. As Mrs. Herriton had often observed, Lilia had no resources. She did not like music, or reading, or work. Her one qualification for life was rather blowsy high spirits, which turned querulous or boisterous according to circumstances. She was not obedient, but she was cowardly, and in the most gentle way, which Mrs. Herriton might have envied, Gino made her do what he wanted. At first it had been rather fun to let him get the upper hand. But it was galling to discover that he could not do otherwise. He had a good strong will when he chose to use it, and would not have had the least scruple in using bolts and locks to put it into effect. There was plenty of brutality deep down in him, and one day Lilia nearly touched it.
It was the old question of going out alone.
“I always do it in England.”
“This is Italy.”
“Yes, but I’m older than you, and I’ll settle.”
“I am your husband,” he said, smiling. They had finished their mid-day meal, and he wanted to go and sleep. Nothing would rouse him up, until at last Lilia, getting more and more angry, said, “And I’ve got the money.”
He looked horrified.
Now was the moment to assert herself. She made the statement again. He got up from his chair.
“And you’d better mend your manners,” she continued, “for you’d find it awkward if I stopped drawing cheques.”
She was no reader of character, but she quickly became alarmed. As she said to Perfetta afterwards, “None of his clothes seemed to fit—too big in one place, too small in another.” His figure rather than his face altered, the shoulders falling forward till his coat wrinkled across the back and pulled away from his wrists. He seemed all arms. He edged round the table to where she was sitting, and she sprang away and held the chair between them, too frightened to speak or to move. He looked at her with round, expressionless eyes, and slowly stretched out his left hand.
Perfetta was heard coming up from the kitchen. It seemed to wake him up, and he turned away and went to his room without a word.
“What has happened?” cried Lilia, nearly fainting. “He is ill—ill.”
Perfetta looked suspicious when she heard the account. “What did you say to him?” She crossed herself.
“Hardly anything,” said Lilia and crossed herself also. Thus did the two women pay homage to their outraged male.
It was clear to Lilia at last that Gino had married her for money. But he had frightened her too much to leave any place for contempt. His return was terrifying, for he was frightened too, imploring her pardon, lying at her feet, embracing her, murmuring “It was not I,” striving to define things which he did not understand. He stopped in the house for three days, positively ill with physical collapse. But for all his suffering he had tamed her, and she never threatened to cut off supplies again.
Perhaps he kept her even closer than convention demanded. But he was very young, and he could not bear it to be said of him that he did not know how to treat a lady—or to manage a wife. And his own social position was uncertain. Even in England a dentist is a troublesome creature, whom careful people find difficult to class. He hovers between the professions and the trades; he may be only a little lower than the doctors, or he may be down among the chemists, or even beneath them. The son of the Italian dentist felt this too. For himself nothing mattered; he made friends with the people he liked, for he was that glorious invariable creature, a man. But his wife should visit nowhere rather than visit wrongly: seclusion was both decent and safe. The social ideals of North and South had had their brief contention, and this time the South had won.
It would have been well if he had been as strict over his own behaviour as he was over hers. But the incongruity never occurred to him for a moment. His morality was that of the average Latin, and as he was suddenly placed in the position of a gentleman, he did not see why he should not behave as such. Of course, had Lilia been different—had she asserted herself and got a grip on his character—he might possibly—though not probably—have been made a better husband as well as a better man, and at all events he could have adopted the attitude of the Englishman, whose standard is higher even when his practice is the same. But had Lilia been different she might not have married him.
The discovery of his infidelity—which she made by accident—destroyed such remnants of self-satisfaction as her life might yet possess. She broke down utterly and sobbed and cried in Perfetta’s arms. Perfetta was kind and even sympathetic, but cautioned her on no account to speak to Gino, who would be furious if he was suspected. And Lilia agreed, partly because she was afraid of him, partly because it was, after all, the best and most dignified thing to do. She had given up everything for him—her daughter, her relatives, her friends, all the little comforts and luxuries of a civilized life—and even if she had the courage to break away, there was no one who would receive her now. The Herritons had been almost malignant in their efforts against her, and all her friends had one by one fallen off. So it was better to live on humbly, trying not to feel, endeavouring by a cheerful demeanour to put things right. “Perhaps,” she thought, “if I have a child he will be different. I know he wants a son.”
Lilia had achieved pathos despite herself, for there are some situations in which vulgarity counts no longer. Not Cordelia nor Imogen more deserves our tears.
She herself cried frequently, making herself look plain and old, which distressed her husband. He was particularly kind to her when he hardly ever saw her, and she accepted his kindness without resentment, even with gratitude, so docile had she become. She did not hate him, even as she had never loved him; with her it was only when she was excited that the semblance of either passion arose. People said she was headstrong, but really her weak brain left her cold.
Suffering, however, is more independent of temperament, and the wisest of women could hardly have suffered more.
As for Gino, he was quite as boyish as ever, and carried his iniquities like a feather. A favourite speech of his was, “Ah, one ought to marry! Spiridione is wrong; I must persuade him. Not till marriage does one realize the pleasures and the possibilities of life.” So saying, he would take down his felt hat, strike it in the right place as infallibly as a German strikes his in the wrong place, and leave her.
One evening, when he had gone out thus, Lilia could stand it no longer. It was September. Sawston would be just filling up after the summer holidays. People would be running in and out of each other’s houses all along the road. There were bicycle gymkhanas, and on the 30th Mrs. Herriton would be holding the annual bazaar in her garden for the C.M.S. It seemed impossible that such a free, happy life could exist. She walked out on to the loggia. Moonlight and stars in a soft purple sky. The walls of Monteriano should be glorious on such a night as this. But the house faced away from them.
Perfetta was banging in the kitchen, and the stairs down led past the kitchen door. But the stairs up to the attic—the stairs no one ever used—opened out of the living-room, and by unlocking the door at the top one might slip out to the square terrace above the house, and thus for ten minutes walk in freedom and peace.
The key was in the pocket of Gino’s best suit—the English check—which he never wore. The stairs creaked and the key-hole screamed; but Perfetta was growing deaf. The walls were beautiful, but as they faced west they were in shadow. To see the light upon them she must walk round the town a little, till they were caught by the beams of the rising moon. She looked anxiously at the house, and started.
It was easy walking, for a little path ran all outside the ramparts. The few people she met wished her a civil good-night, taking her, in her hatless condition, for a peasant. The walls trended round towards the moon; and presently she came into its light, and saw all the rough towers turn into pillars of silver and black, and the ramparts into cliffs of pearl. She had no great sense of beauty, but she was sentimental, and she began to cry; for here, where a great cypress interrupted the monotony of the girdle of olives, she had sat with Gino one afternoon in March, her head upon his shoulder, while Caroline was looking at the view and sketching. Round the corner was the Siena gate, from which the road to England started, and she could hear the rumble of the diligence which was going down to catch the night train to Empoli. The next moment it was upon her, for the highroad came towards her a little before it began its long zigzag down the hill.
The driver slackened, and called to her to get in. He did not know who she was. He hoped she might be coming to the station.
“Non vengo!” she cried.
He wished her good-night, and turned his horses down the corner. As the diligence came round she saw that it was empty.
“Vengo...”
Her voice was tremulous, and did not carry. The horses swung off.
“Vengo! Vengo!”
He had begun to sing, and heard nothing. She ran down the road screaming to him to stop—that she was coming; while the distance grew greater and the noise of the diligence increased. The man’s back was black and square against the moon, and if he would but turn for an instant she would be saved. She tried to cut off the corner of the zigzag, stumbling over the great clods of earth, large and hard as rocks, which lay between the eternal olives. She was too late; for, just before she regained the road, the thing swept past her, thunderous, ploughing up choking clouds of moonlit dust.
She did not call any more, for she felt very ill, and fainted; and when she revived she was lying in the road, with dust in her eyes, and dust in her mouth, and dust down her ears. There is something very terrible in dust at night-time.
“What shall I do?” she moaned. “He will be so angry.”
And without further effort she slowly climbed back to captivity, shaking her garments as she went.
Ill luck pursued her to the end. It was one of the nights when Gino happened to come in. He was in the kitchen, swearing and smashing plates, while Perfetta, her apron over her head, was weeping violently. At the sight of Lilia he turned upon her and poured forth a flood of miscellaneous abuse. He was far more angry but much less alarming than he had been that day when he edged after her round the table. And Lilia gained more courage from her bad conscience than she ever had from her good one, for as he spoke she was seized with indignation and feared him no longer, and saw him for a cruel, worthless, hypocritical, dissolute upstart, and spoke in return.
Perfetta screamed for she told him everything—all she knew and all she thought. He stood with open mouth, all the anger gone out of him, feeling ashamed, and an utter fool. He was fairly and rightfully cornered. When had a husband so given himself away before? She finished; and he was dumb, for she had spoken truly. Then, alas! the absurdity of his own position grew upon him, and he laughed—as he would have laughed at the same situation on the stage.
“You laugh?” stammered Lilia.
“Ah!” he cried, “who could help it? I, who thought you knew and saw nothing—I am tricked—I am conquered. I give in. Let us talk of it no more.”
He touched her on the shoulder like a good comrade, half amused and half penitent, and then, murmuring and smiling to himself, ran quietly out of the room.
Perfetta burst into congratulations. “What courage you have!” she cried; “and what good fortune! He is angry no longer! He has forgiven you!”
Neither Perfetta, nor Gino, nor Lilia herself knew the true reason of all the misery that followed. To the end he thought that kindness and a little attention would be enough to set things straight. His wife was a very ordinary woman, and why should her ideas differ from his own? No one realized that more than personalities were engaged; that the struggle was national; that generations of ancestors, good, bad, or indifferent, forbad the Latin man to be chivalrous to the northern woman, the northern woman to forgive the Latin man. All this might have been foreseen: Mrs. Herriton foresaw it from the first.
Meanwhile Lilia prided herself on her high personal standard, and Gino simply wondered why she did not come round. He hated discomfort and yearned for sympathy, but shrank from mentioning his difficulties in the town in case they were put down to his own incompetence. Spiridione was told, and replied in a philosophical but not very helpful letter. His other great friend, whom he trusted more, was still serving in Eritrea or some other desolate outpost. And, besides, what was the good of letters? Friends cannot travel through the post.
Lilia, so similar to her husband in many ways, yearned for comfort and sympathy too. The night he laughed at her she wildly took up paper and pen and wrote page after page, analysing his character, enumerating his iniquities, reporting whole conversations, tracing all the causes and the growth of her misery. She was beside herself with passion, and though she could hardly think or see, she suddenly attained to magnificence and pathos which a practised stylist might have envied. It was written like a diary, and not till its conclusion did she realize for whom it was meant.
“Irma, darling Irma, this letter is for you. I almost forgot I have a daughter. It will make you unhappy, but I want you to know everything, and you cannot learn things too soon. God bless you, my dearest, and save you. God bless your miserable mother.”
Fortunately Mrs. Herriton was in when the letter arrived. She seized it and opened it in her bedroom. Another moment, and Irma’s placid childhood would have been destroyed for ever.
Lilia received a brief note from Harriet, again forbidding direct communication between mother and daughter, and concluding with formal condolences. It nearly drove her mad.
“Gently! gently!” said her husband. They were sitting together on the loggia when the letter arrived. He often sat with her now, watching her for hours, puzzled and anxious, but not contrite.
“It’s nothing.” She went in and tore it up, and then began to write—a very short letter, whose gist was “Come and save me.”
It is not good to see your wife crying when she writes—especially if you are conscious that, on the whole, your treatment of her has been reasonable and kind. It is not good, when you accidentally look over her shoulder, to see that she is writing to a man. Nor should she shake her fist at you when she leaves the room, under the impression that you are engaged in lighting a cigar and cannot see her.
Lilia went to the post herself. But in Italy so many things can be arranged. The postman was a friend of Gino’s, and Mr. Kingcroft never got his letter.
So she gave up hope, became ill, and all through the autumn lay in bed. Gino was distracted. She knew why; he wanted a son. He could talk and think of nothing else. His one desire was to become the father of a man like himself, and it held him with a grip he only partially understood, for it was the first great desire, the first great passion of his life. Falling in love was a mere physical triviality, like warm sun or cool water, beside this divine hope of immortality: “I continue.” He gave candles to Santa Deodata, for he was always religious at a crisis, and sometimes he went to her himself and prayed the crude uncouth demands of the simple. Impetuously he summoned all his relatives back to bear him company in his time of need, and Lilia saw strange faces flitting past her in the darkened room.
“My love!” he would say, “my dearest Lilia! Be calm. I have never loved any one but you.”
She, knowing everything, would only smile gently, too broken by suffering to make sarcastic repartees.
Before the child was born he gave her a kiss, and said, “I have prayed all night for a boy.”
Some strangely tender impulse moved her, and she said faintly, “You are a boy yourself, Gino.”
He answered, “Then we shall be brothers.”
He lay outside the room with his head against the door like a dog. When they came to tell him the glad news they found him half unconscious, and his face was wet with tears.
As for Lilia, some one said to her, “It is a beautiful boy!” But she had died in giving birth to him.