Teresa's fortune made less difference in her life than she had expected.
It gave her pleasure to be able to do more than plan for others, but
she was uncertain whether her fresh powers added to their happiness.
There was Sylvia; Sylvia was provided for otherwise, and Wilbraham's
worst enemy would not have accused him of sordid motives. Perhaps he
was not uninfluenced by social advantages. Perhaps it had been more
easy for him to fall--coolly and decorously to fall--in love with a girl
who was dressed with care, and no longer tramped along wet pavements,
than with one obliged to study petty and occasionally disfiguring
economies. But there was another side to this "perhaps," a side which
Donna Teresa was trying not to see, and, at times, successfully
succeeded in suppressing. Had he ever been really in love?
But she was sure he never could be what she called really in love.
Next to Sylvia came her grandmother. Her grandmother was old. Age
wants to have the rugged bits of life's road made smooth for steps no
longer buoyant and unfaltering. Teresa thought of a hundred ways for
doing this, yet, after all, they came to very little. For as Mrs
Brodrick had foreseen from the first, we can't wrench off the habits of
a lifetime without hurt.
"My dear," she said with a laugh at herself, "I've always burnt one
candle instead of two. When you light three my room looks a great deal
nicer, but I'm uneasy. I blow one out as soon as ever I get the
chance."
"I shall put in electric light," Teresa declared. "You are a wicked
woman."
"I'm a frugal one if you please, and it's disturbing at my time of life
to find one's virtues turned into vices. I can't afford it. I haven't
time to get a new set."
Under the jest there lay earnest, as Teresa's quick sympathy instantly
discovered.
"Granny," she said wistfully, perching herself on the arm of her
grandmother's chair, "is there really nothing I can do? You're sure it
isn't a horrid mean little feeling of pride?"
"I am sure of nothing," said Mrs Brodrick, smiling, "except that I am
lazy."
Baffled in this direction, Teresa's mind rushed off to farther points,--
doubling, trebling her subscriptions, and searching for objects which
were not long in presenting themselves, all with outstretched hands.
Her money flew, yet left her unsatisfied. At every turn problems met
her, and when she pushed them impatiently on one side, they still
clamoured in her ears. She wanted to know more of the real question of
the people, and could not reach it. She talked to Nina.
"Eh-h-h-h-h! Misery enough, eccellenza!"
"That I know. But why?"
"Why? Who knows?" Nina spreads her hands. "There is no work, or if
there is work there is no money to buy it with. But whether there is no
work or no bread, there is always the tax, tax, tax."
"Is it that the country is so poor?"
"There are many who grow rich on its poverty, eccellenza," Nina replied
significantly.
"What do the people think would make things better?"
"Eh-h-h-h! Who knows? There is wild talk."
Teresa was frowning.
"Heaven knows if I were one of them I should talk wildly myself!"
She spoke to Wilbraham, and he answered her gravely and at some length,
for in a theoretical fashion the subject interested him.
"What can you do when there is a mass of bribery on the upper level, and
an undisciplined people below? Unhappily the nation is a prey to the
miserable system of bargaining, or, as it would be called, of
_combinazione_. Everything, from the prayers of the Church downwards,
is to be had for a consideration, and without it too often Justice
halts, and Religion makes no sign. Read their own pictures of their own
deputies. Until you cure that sore, it seems to me that help is
useless."
"Then you think that bribery and not taxation is the cause of their
misery?"
"No doubt the nation is over-taxed, and in consequence its energies are
largely spent upon efforts to evade taxation. In this, as may be
conceived, the rich are much more successful than the poor, who have
fewer means of escape, and are forced from wretchedness to wretchedness,
and to yet lower depths again. The richer man lays out something
judiciously, and his rating sinks accordingly. The poor man hasn't got
the money to lay out, and he is crushed."
"Ah, poor souls!" Teresa cried impulsively.
"But," asked her grandmother, "why don't they use their vote to get
reform?"
"I can't conceive," said Wilbraham. "In spite of never-ceasing murmurs
against the government of the day, they refuse to recognise that to a
large extent they hold the remedy in their own hands. An incredible
proportion don't go to the polls at all, and it is not only the large
numbers who obey the Vatican instructions to abstain, but hundreds stay
away, I can only suppose, from indifference or hopelessness. Sometimes
it seems that they are like children, who can't look beyond the hour.
They have a proverb, `An egg to-day is better than a hen to-morrow.'
Contrast this with our `bird in the hand,' which sounds like it and yet
has a very different meaning."
"And still they have such fine qualities!" said Mrs Brodrick.
"Gratitude, for one," added Teresa.
"It is a joy to help them."
"And that leads to pauperising," Wilbraham insisted. "Even the best of
you do a lot of harm. There's that young priest out in the San Lorenzo
quarter. His work in one sense is magnificent. I admire his
self-devotion tremendously, but I also think he has got hold of the
wrong end of the stick, and is regenerating a few at the cost of
encouraging a seething hot-bed of beggars."
"It's easy to criticise," Teresa said. "That I own. As easy as to see
other people's faults. We've plenty of our own; only at this moment we
were discussing why Italy is not prosperous in spite of an excellent
king and queen."
"And your cure would be to let them starve!" cried Teresa unjustly. "Do
you ever think of the women and children?"
"Yes; I think of them a good deal," he returned, looking quietly at her.
"Yet can suggest nothing?"
"Except as a spectator. Is that of any practical use?"
She turned impatiently away, but the next moment was back and holding
out her hand.
"I'm afraid I was very rude," she said, her grey eyes looking frankly
into his. "I'm all in a puzzle myself, and expect other people to pull
me out of it--in the way _I_ think best, of course," she added with a
laugh.
As his hand closed round hers, Wilbraham was conscious of a strange
unsteadiness in his grasp. He turned pale, hardly knowing what to
answer.
"I should like to--to help you," was what he lamely said.
"Who can?" said Teresa, shaking her head. It's my snare that I will
never believe things mayn't be altered--improved--or that I shouldn't
have a finger in the mending. Sylvia will tell you that, and here she
comes to stop us from quarrelling any further.
"Quarrelling?" cried Sylvia anxiously.
"Well," returned her sister, "at any rate, you arrived in the middle of
an apology, and it was mine."
"Never mind, then," said the girl, nodding her head. "I know Walter
won't be angry. Not really angry, you know."
"Don't be too sure," mocked Teresa, going away. At the door she flung a
shaft at Wilbraham. "Don't you think before worse comes to worse we
might apply to Cesare?"
She closed the door and stood thinking. The word was only a half jest,
for she had more than once breathed a wish to enlist a socialist on her
side; to hear at least what his party had to suggest for the mending of
matters which seemed beyond the reach of others. If she could see--if
she could soften Cesare!--and being a woman and young, she never doubted
that softening would follow the seeing--if, perhaps, she might
indirectly help him, so lifting away the unpleasant remembrance of
having once made him suffer unjustly! Half reluctantly she called Nina.
"Where shall I find Cesare--Cesare Bandinelli, you know?"
"Where?" echoed Nina. "_Chi lo sa_! Wherever there is mischief."
"Is he at the same place?"
"No, eccellenza."
"I want to see him."
"Such as he are better left undisturbed."
The little Viterbo woman knew perfectly where he had gone, but she would
have fenced for an hour and not let it out. And there was a touch of
disquiet in her manner.
"Then I must ask Peppina?"
"Peppina may know. Yes, eccellenza, that is true," returned Nina. She
reflected that Peppina would probably also keep her knowledge to
herself. "It is certain she may know."
Teresa made no further attempt. She went down the stairs and out into
the sun. Her heart grew gay as she felt the warm blessed glow and saw
the clear bright colours of the South. She was going to the Maxwells'
hotel, but made a round on purpose to breathe the light air, and to have
a look at a vegetable shop which she wanted to paint, where lettuces,
tomatoes, green peas, carrots, rings of endive, orange flesh of gourds,
glowed out of a cavernous darkness. Then she dawdled round and up the
Spanish steps, greeted by smiles from the models and importunities from
creatures just out of babyhood--all faded olive greens and blues, rags,
and enchanting smiles, with a violet or two twisted shamelessly up for
sale--until she had passed her own street again, and reached the
Maxwells' hotel.
"Is Peppina in?" she asked, after paying a decent tribute of attention
to Mary Maxwell's latest grievances.
"Not she! She always has something to buy or to ask about. It seems to
me that is all I pay her for. Why do you ask?"
"I want to hear of her Cesare."
"Well, she never begrudges talk, I'll say that for her," said Mrs
Maxwell, with a lazy laugh. "I'm not so sure that she tells you very
much, when all's said and done."
"If she's loyal, I like her the better."
"Hum! She's in love. Whether loyalty comes in. However, you'd better
tell me what you'd like to know."
And she listened in silence while Donna Teresa hastily touched on her
perplexities.
"You see, Mary," she ended--"you see you must allow two points. Help is
wanted, and it ought to be wise help. What is wise help?"
"You poor thing! If you go about asking that question of all your
friends, you will soon have picked up a basketful of ill-assorted
scraps. I can't imagine any two of them agreeing."
Mrs Maxwell's shrewd common-sense represented a bucket of water dashed
on Teresa's flame. But she would not give in.
"Scraps are better than nothing," she retorted. "And Cesare is
certainly no friend."
"No-o," said Mrs Maxwell, drawling the word, and throwing a log on the
fire. Then she sat up and said with decision, "If I were you, I would
have nothing to do with Cesare."
"Why, he's my chief hope," laughed Teresa. "So please, Mary, make out
from Peppina where he is to be found, or, better still, get her to
persuade him to come to speak to me. He must have forgiven me by this
time."
"I wouldn't trust him," replied Mrs Maxwell, shaking her small head.
"Remember, he's a Sicilian."
"And what has that to do with it? What do you expect him to do to me?
Oh, Mary, really this is too absurd!"
"Very well. Only don't say you weren't warned," returned the other
huffily. "What is it that I am to ask? Oh, the man's address. As if
he had one!"
But she made no more remonstrances, and indeed exerted herself so far as
to question Peppina that evening. Peppina answered volubly, and flung
in much extraneous matter. There was no better workman, no one so
clever, so handsome, so ill-used in all Rome. It was because he did not
bribe the police that they were hard on him. Others did what they
liked, and made it square; but Cesare was too honourable for such ways,
and suffered in consequence, poor fellow! She grew guarded the instant
Teresa's desire was touched upon. If it had been the signora, now--
Cesare had once seen her, and had ever since called her Peppina's
beautiful signora. Mrs Maxwell believed this to be a lie; yet was
pleased by it.
"You had better persuade him," she said.
"Sissignora, but why? Is there money to be had?"
"I daresay. Yes, I am sure there is. The marchesa is likely to pay
well for whatever she asks him to undertake."
"Sissignora, I will do all that is possible. I will try to see him some
day when you do not want me."
And she was in earnest. She always wanted Cesare to make money, and she
thought if he could but have something to spare for the lottery, he
might draw such a fortune as had fallen to a crier of the _Tribuna_ only
a few months earlier. With this idea in her head she resolved to use
all her powers of persuasion, and believed in success, because it was
not Donna Teresa whom he hated so much as Wilbraham.
But Wilbraham, meanwhile, had heard of the scheme.
Teresa, who at this time tried to be very cordial with him, spoke that
evening of her visit to the Maxwells. A wind was blowing with unusual
strength for Rome, banging shutters and driving rainy gusts against the
glass. Sylvia was nervously afraid of a thunderstorm, and asked many
times whether Wilbraham heard thunder, so many times that Teresa brought
in Cesare as a diversion, making a jest of her intended efforts to tame
him. Wilbraham did not say much in reply--he could hold his tongue when
he liked--but he listened intently, and the next morning, while the rain
was still falling heavily, and tumbling in sheets from broad eaves on
the passers-by, he in his turn made his way to the Maxwells.
"She must not be allowed to employ that man," he ended emphatically,
after an explanation.
Colonel Maxwell pulled his moustache.
"Must not?" He laughed.
"Must not," Wilbraham insisted.
"I suppose it's hard on the poor beggar if nobody is to give him a leg
up."
"That's not Teresa's affair," said his wife severely. "I quite agree--
fully--with Mr Wilbraham. Teresa is so impulsive that she has to be
protected against herself. Of course she ought not to be hand and glove
with socialists and murderers."
"That's it," said Wilbraham, delighted. "And you think you can stop
it?"
"Think? I am sure. Five lire will stop anything with Peppina. But it
really is folly of Teresa."
"Perhaps. But a generous folly."