"Sit down and I'll tell you." And he sat there beside the candle,
staring at me. "There was a man always there--Count Camerino."
"The man she married?"
"The man she married. I was very much in love with her, and yet I didn't
trust her. I was sure that she lied; I believed that she could be cruel.
Nevertheless, at moments, she had a charm which made it pure pedantry to
be conscious of her faults; and while these moments lasted I would have
done anything for her. Unfortunately they didn't last long. But you
know what I mean; am I not describing the Scarabelli?"
"The Countess Scarabelli never lied!" cried Stanmer.
"That's just what I would have said to any one who should have made the
insinutation! But I suppose you are not asking me the question you put
to me just now from dispassionate curiosity."
"A man may want to know!" said the innocent fellow.
I couldn't help laughing out. "This, at any rate, is my story. Camerino
was always there; he was a sort of fixture in the house. If I had
moments of dislike for the divine Bianca, I had no moments of liking for
him. And yet he was a very agreeable fellow, very civil, very
intelligent, not in the least disposed to make a quarrel with me. The
trouble, of course, was simply that I was jealous of him. I don't know,
however, on what ground I could have quarrelled with him, for I had no
definite rights. I can't say what I expected--I can't say what, as the
matter stood, I was prepared to do. With my name and my prospects, I
might perfectly have offered her my hand. I am not sure that she would
have accepted it--I am by no means clear that she wanted that. But she
wanted, wanted keenly, to attach me to her; she wanted to have me about.
I should have been capable of giving up everything--England, my career,
my family--simply to devote myself to her, to live near her and see her
every day."
"Why didn't you do it, then?" asked Stanmer.
"Why don't you?"
"To be a proper rejoinder to my question," he said, rather neatly, "yours
should be asked twenty-five years hence."
"It remains perfectly true that at a given moment I was capable of doing
as I say. That was what she wanted--a rich, susceptible, credulous,
convenient young Englishman established near her _en permanence_. And
yet," I added, "I must do her complete justice. I honestly believe she
was fond of me." At this Stanmer got up and walked to the window; he
stood looking out a moment, and then he turned round. "You know she was
older than I," I went on. "Madame Scarabelli is older than you. One day
in the garden, her mother asked me in an angry tone why I disliked
Camerino; for I had been at no pains to conceal my feeling about him, and
something had just happened to bring it out. 'I dislike him,' I said,
'because you like him so much.' 'I assure you I don't like him,' she
answered. 'He has all the appearance of being your lover,' I retorted.
It was a brutal speech, certainly, but any other man in my place would
have made it. She took it very strangely; she turned pale, but she was
not indignant. 'How can he be my lover after what he has done?' she
asked. 'What has he done?' She hesitated a good while, then she said:
'He killed my husband.' 'Good heavens!' I cried, 'and you receive him!'
Do you know what she said? She said, '_Che voule_?'"
"Is that all?" asked Stanmer.
"No; she went on to say that Camerino had killed Count Salvi in a duel,
and she admitted that her husband's jealousy had been the occasion of it.
The Count, it appeared, was a monster of jealousy--he had led her a
dreadful life. He himself, meanwhile, had been anything but
irreproachable; he had done a mortal injury to a man of whom he pretended
to be a friend, and this affair had become notorious. The gentleman in
question had demanded satisfaction for his outraged honour; but for some
reason or other (the Countess, to do her justice, did not tell me that
her husband was a coward), he had not as yet obtained it. The duel with
Camerino had come on first; in an access of jealous fury the Count had
struck Camerino in the face; and this outrage, I know not how justly, was
deemed expiable before the other. By an extraordinary arrangement (the
Italians have certainly no sense of fair play) the other man was allowed
to be Camerino's second. The duel was fought with swords, and the Count
received a wound of which, though at first it was not expected to be
fatal, he died on the following day. The matter was hushed up as much as
possible for the sake of the Countess's good name, and so successfully
that it was presently observed that, among the public, the other
gentleman had the credit of having put his blade through M. de Salvi.
This gentleman took a fancy not to contradict the impression, and it was
allowed to subsist. So long as he consented, it was of course in
Camerino's interest not to contradict it, as it left him much more free
to keep up his intimacy with the Countess."
Stanmer had listened to all this with extreme attention. "Why didn't
_she_ contradict it?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "I am bound to believe it was for the same
reason. I was horrified, at any rate, by the whole story. I was
extremely shocked at the Countess's want of dignity in continuing to see
the man by whose hand her husband had fallen."
"The husband had been a great brute, and it was not known," said Stanmer.
"Its not being known made no difference. And as for Salvi having been a
brute, that is but a way of saying that his wife, and the man whom his
wife subsequently married, didn't like him."
Stanmer hooked extremely meditative; his eyes were fixed on mine. "Yes,
that marriage is hard to get over. It was not becoming."
"Ah," said I, "what a long breath I drew when I heard of it! I remember
the place and the hour. It was at a hill-station in India, seven years
after I had left Florence. The post brought me some English papers, and
in one of them was a letter from Italy, with a lot of so-called
'fashionable intelligence.' There, among various scandals in high life,
and other delectable items, I read that the Countess Bianca Salvi, famous
for some years as the presiding genius of the most agreeable salon in
Florence, was about to bestow her hand upon Count Camerino, a
distinguished Bolognese. Ah, my dear boy, it was a tremendous escape! I
had been ready to marry the woman who was capable of that! But my
instinct had warned me, and I had trusted my instinct."
"'Instinct's everything,' as Falstaff says!" And Stanmer began to laugh.
"Did you tell Madame de Salvi that your instinct was against her?"
"No; I told her that she frightened me, shocked me, horrified me."
"That's about the same thing. And what did she say?"
"She asked me what I would have? I called her friendship with Camerino a
scandal, and she answered that her husband had been a brute. Besides, no
one knew it; therefore it was no scandal. Just _your_ argument! I
retorted that this was odious reasoning, and that she had no moral sense.
We had a passionate argument, and I declared I would never see her again.
In the heat of my displeasure I left Florence, and I kept my vow. I
never saw her again."
"You couldn't have been much in love with her," said Stanmer.
"I was not--three months after."
"If you had been you would have come back--three days after."
"So doubtless it seems to you. All I can say is that it was the great
effort of my life. Being a military man, I have had on various occasions
to face time enemy. But it was not then I needed my resolution; it was
when I left Florence in a post-chaise."
Stanmer turned about the room two or three times, and then he said: "I
don't understand! I don't understand why she should have told you that
Camerino had killed her husband. It could only damage her."
"She was afraid it would damage her more that I should think he was her
lover. She wished to say the thing that would most effectually persuade
me that he was not her lover--that he could never be. And then she
wished to get the credit of being very frank."
"Good heavens, how you must have analysed her!" cried my companion,
staring.
"There is nothing so analytic as disillusionment. But there it is. She
married Camerino."
"Yes, I don't lime that," said Stanmer. He was silent a while, and then
he added--"Perhaps she wouldn't have done so if you had remained."
He has a little innocent way! "Very likely she would have dispensed with
the ceremony," I answered, drily.
"Upon my word," he said, "you _have_ analysed her!"
"You ought to be grateful to me. I have done for you what you seem
unable to do for yourself."
"I don't see any Camerino in my case," he said.
"Perhaps among those gentlemen I can find one for you."
"Thank you," he cried; "I'll take care of that myself!" And he went
away--satisfied, I hope.
10th.--He's an obstinate little wretch; it irritates me to see him
sticking to it. Perhaps he is looking for his Camerino. I shall leave
him, at any rate, to his fate; it is growing insupportably hot.
11th.--I went this evening to bid farewell to the Scarabelli. There was
no one there; she was alone in her great dusky drawing-room, which was
lighted only by a couple of candles, with the immense windows open over
the garden. She was dressed in white; she was deucedly pretty. She
asked me, of course, why I had been so long without coming.
"I think you say that only for form," I answered. "I imagine you know."
"_Che_! what have I done?"
"Nothing at all. You are too wise for that."