The Romans approved of Montalto’s return. The reason why any
civilised society continues to exist is that the majority of decent
people look upon marriage seriously, and consider it as a permanent
bond, spiritual or legal, or both. In such conservative countries
as admit divorce, the respectable part of society looks upon it as
a last resource in extreme cases, and no sensible citizen should
regard it as anything else. When it has taken place, the society to
which the two divorced persons belong decides which of them was in
the right, and that one is received as cordially as ever; the other
is treated coldly, and is sometimes turned out.
But there is no divorce law in Italy, and a civil marriage is
as indissoluble in the eyes of the Italian state as a religious
one is under the rules of the Catholic Church. There is such a
thing as separation by law, but it gives neither party a right to
marry again; it concerns the administration of property and the
guardianship of children, but nothing else, and the parties may
agree to unite again without any further ceremony.
Maria and her husband had never gone through the form of being
legally separated, though they had taken towards each other
the relative positions of separated husband and wife. Maria’s
sufficient independent fortune enabled her to decline any subsidy
from Montalto, and she had quitted his house after he left her; she
had also kept the child. The two had voluntarily placed themselves
where the law would probably have placed them, and society had been
grateful to Montalto for having avoided the open scandal of any
legal procedure against his wife; the more so, as it had chosen to
take Maria’s side, on the principle that absent friends are always
in the wrong.
But society was very glad to consider both Montalto and his wife
in the right, now that he had come back quietly, at the very end
of a season; and no objections were raised against the perfectly
innocent fiction of his having stayed away from Rome many years
to take care of his mother. It was a satisfaction to see such an
important couple reconciled again and living peaceably together;
everybody had something to repent of in life, and most people had
something to conceal; Maria had repented and Montalto had covered
up the spot on his honour, with as much tact and dignity as were
respectively consistent with a stained escutcheon and a contrite
heart; and it was really much more proper that Maria di Montalto,
whose husband was an authentic Count of the Empire, should live
in the great palace, instead of in a little apartment in the Via
San Martino, and should drive in a big carriage behind a pair of
huge black horses, in the shadow of tremendously imposing mourning
liveries, than go about in a small phaeton drawn by a pair of hired
nags, or even in a little brougham with one horse and no footman
at all, as she had sometimes been seen to do; it was much more
proper and appropriate. Why should any one make a fuss because a
small boy called Leone Silani di Montalto had blue eyes instead of
brown or black ones? Was it admissible that not one of the Montalto
ancestors, since the First Crusade, should have had blue eyes,
to account for Leone’s? Was nature to be allowed no latitude in
such little matters? And so forth; and so on; and more to the same
effect, and to the credit of Diego, Maria, and Leone di Montalto,
happily reunited in their own home. These things were said
without a smile by such excellent elderly people as the Princess
Campodonico and the Duchess of Trasmondo, the good and beautiful
old Princess Saracinesca, the whole Boccapaduli family, and all the
secondary social luminaries which reflect the light of the great
fixed ones round which they revolve. There had been a conspicuous
gap at the banquet of the Roman Olympians for years; it was once
more filled by those who had a right to it, and everything was for
the best in the best of all possible worlds, as Candide’s tutor was
the first to observe. So far as the Montalto family was concerned,
the truth of the assertion was amply proved by the fact that
Montalto himself was teaching Leone to ride, in the Villa Borghese.
Three or four times a week you might meet him there in the early
morning hours on a wonderful Andalusian mare he had brought from
Spain, with the boy at his side, red in the face, fearless, and
perfectly happy on a pony with a leading rein.
Castiglione saw them once from a distance, coming towards him, but
he jumped his horse over the stiff fence into the meadow, crossed
quickly, and was over into the ring again on the other side and out
of the Villa by Porta Pinciana before the pair recognised him, for
Montalto was rather near-sighted and Leone was so much interested
in his lesson that even the uniform of the Piedmont Lancers no
longer had great attractions for him. After that Castiglione gave
up exercising his horses in the Villa.
The fact of riding a real animal, that could move its tail, had
destroyed in a day all Leone’s bright illusions of toy guns and tin
helmets. A boy who could ride was half a man already, and even half
a man must be above the suspicion of playing with sham weapons.
After his third ride in the Villa, Leone solemnly presented his
whole armoury to the children of the porter downstairs, and though
his room seemed very bare for a day or two, he found consolation in
sitting astride of a chair, conscientiously repeating to himself
and practising the instructions he had received from Montalto.
‘Toes in! Grip the saddle with your knees, not with your calves!
Elbows to your sides! Your heels down, in a line with your head and
your shoulder! Hold the bridle lightly, don’t hold on by it! Head
straight, not thrown back, nor forward either! Look before you,
between the pony’s ears!’
As he repeated each well-remembered precept Leone studied his
position to be sure that he was really obeying the order. It was
ever so much more real, even on a chair, than prancing about on
his feet, astride of a stick, with a tin sabre, yelling the Royal
March; and it was incomparably more dignified.
Maria came to his room one afternoon and found him at his
self-imposed exercise. She paused on the threshold, before he knew
that she was there, and she watched him with a rather sad smile. He
was so tremendously strong and vital, and she felt so subdued and
weary! It seemed impossible that he should be her child. Yet hers
he was.
He ordered himself to sit very straight, and in the pause during
which he made sure of having been very attentive, he heard her and
turned his head. He laughed a little shyly at being caught.
‘It’s not play,’ he hastened to say. ‘It’s practice. I go over
everything papa tells me, and I do it very carefully. Then he says
I learn very fast, but he doesn’t know I practise. Of course, if
he asked me, I’d tell him. It’s not wrong not to tell him, if he
doesn’t ask me, is it, mama?’
‘No, dear,’ Maria answered, and she bent down and kissed the boy’s
forehead.
‘Because I like to surprise him by doing it better than he
expects,’ he went on. ‘Then he smiles, and I like him when he
smiles.’
‘I think you always like him, my dear,’ said his mother. ‘Don’t
you?’
‘Yes. But I wasn’t going to, though!’ The young jaw thrust itself
forward viciously. ‘I thought I was going to hate him when he came
in here with you that day. I did!’
‘You must try not to hate any one,’ said Maria; and again she
kissed his forehead.
‘Oh, that’s all very well, mama!’ retorted the boy. ‘Why do you
always kiss my forehead now?’ he asked suddenly. ‘It used to be the
back of my neck, you know, just here!’
He laughed, and put up his hand behind his head to the spot where
the short hair was always trying to curl. But Maria had turned
away to inspect his tooth-brush, as she often did after she had
discovered the use he had made of one for cleaning his toy gun. She
did not answer his question.
‘Oh, you needn’t look at it, mama,’ he said, watching her. ‘At
least, not till I have a real gun. Besides,’ he added rather
mournfully, ‘I brush my teeth now.’
‘Oh--I’m glad to hear it!’
‘Yes,’ Leone answered, with his hands in his pockets. ‘You see,
papa does--so I suppose I must, too.’
‘But I always told you to!’ Maria could not help smiling. ‘Was not
that enough, child?’
‘Oh, yes, of course. But it’s different. I want to be like papa.’
Maria had not been prepared for this speech, and the smile faded
from her face.
‘You could not do better,’ she said gravely. ‘He is an honest
gentleman, if ever there was one.’
‘I’d give anything to look like him, too. But I suppose that’s
impossible. I’d like to have a dark, grave face, like his, and at
the same time to look so smart--most of all on horseback.’
‘You cannot change your looks, dear,’ Maria managed to say, and she
pretended to continue her inspection of the room, lest he should
see her face just then.
The world was very hard to understand, she thought, and later,
when she was alone, she pondered on this new mystery. It still
seemed impossible that the least likely of all things should have
happened: that Leone should have developed a whole-hearted, boyish
admiration for Montalto was strange enough, but that Montalto
should apparently have taken a real liking to Leone, and something
more, was past her comprehension. It was almost too much, and a
deep, unacknowledged feminine instinct was ready to rise up against
it, though all her conscience and intelligence told her that she
should be grateful to her husband for the large forgiveness he
bestowed upon her in every act of kindness to the boy.
He had changed quickly since his return, and she sometimes found
it hard to believe that he had come back to her looking like the
wreck of a man, that his tears had run down like a nervous woman’s,
scalding her hands till she had felt contempt for his unmanly
weakness.
Certain people have what may be called dramatic constitutions and
faces; a few hours of anxiety or pain make havoc of their looks;
when others would merely look tired, they become haggard, their
cheeks fall in, their eyes grow hollow; in a fortnight they grow
thin till they seem shadowy. But when the pain is over, or the
anxiety is relieved, their normal appearance returns with amazing
rapidity. In three or four weeks after he had come home, Montalto
was his old self again, saving his prematurely grey hair and
beard; but even they no longer made him look old now that his still
young face had filled out again and recovered its normal colour.
He was once more a grave, dark, erect and rather handsome man,
apparently endowed with a strong will of his own, and undoubtedly
imbued with an almost exaggerated sense of his dignity. He was
again the husband Maria had married nine years ago, and he had
blotted out of his memory all that had happened from then till now.
He was almost the same again; and so was Maria herself. If he had
remained as much changed as he had seemed to be at first, she
might possibly have deluded herself with the idea that he was not
really the same man, after all, so that he was now her real husband
and she had dreamed all the rest. But even such an imaginary
alleviation as that was denied her. He was only too really the same
in all ways; she quivered at his gentlest touch and writhed under
his loving caress, and presently she wondered why he never felt
that she loathed him, even if he could not see it in her face.
A villainous idea suggested itself. Perhaps he both felt and saw
her repugnance; perhaps his kindness was all a cruel comedy,
his affection for Leone a diabolical deception; perhaps he was
revenging himself in his own way, and delighting inwardly in the
unspeakable suffering he inflicted.
But the thought was too unbalanced to sustain itself. According to
his lights, Maria was sure that he was a good man. Don Ippolito
Saracinesca knew human nature well, and could not have been
deceived for years in one whom he called his friend. Diego di
Montalto was not a monster of cruelty; his love was real, his
forgiveness was real, his liking for the boy he might so naturally
have detested was real too--it was all awfully real. God in heaven
would not have expected her to submit herself body and mind to be
tormented by a wicked man for the rest of her life, in vengeance
for one fault. No, her husband was a good man, who had been
generous beyond words; he had come home to take her back before the
whole world, defying it to speak evil against his honoured wife, he
had come home to be her husband and her child’s father. And when
he touched her she trembled and felt sick; but this was her just
expiation, and she must bear it as well as she could, and hide her
horror of him till she died of it. Even that would not come soon.
She had not a dramatic organisation like his, and she could be made
to bear a great deal before the end. She would have been a good
patient for the tormentors in older times, for she would not have
fainted soon, or died, and felt nothing more. She was very quiet,
a little subdued, and there was sometimes a startled, haunted look
in her eyes, but that was all; she ate enough, she went about her
occupations, she wrote letters to Giuliana and others, she looked
after Leone, she even slept as much as was necessary, and people
thought she was at last contented, if not happy, with the rather
dull and formal husband who had come back to her. They saw, too, or
believed, that she and Castiglione were completely estranged and
hardly spoke when they happened to meet anywhere; but even such
meetings were of very rare occurrence, because she and her husband
were in such deep mourning.
The summer came, and they went northwards in a comfortable motor
car. They stopped on their way to make short visits to more or
less distant relations who were already at their country places;
they spent a fortnight by the seaside, near Genoa, a day or two
in Milan, a hot week in Venice near the end of July; and so they
came by easy stages to Montalto, with its solemn towers, its deep
woods and its waterfalls, its fertile valley, its rich farms and
its thriving village; and there they stayed through the rest of the
summer and into the early autumn.
Leone rode with Montalto every day, and by and by he was taught to
hold a real gun in the right way, and then to shoot; and at last
Montalto took him out one day and he fired his first shot at a
pheasant and missed, but he killed a bird the second time, and was
the happiest boy in the world for the rest of that day. Through all
those months Montalto himself gained strength daily and recovered
more and more of the comparative youthfulness which remains to a
man not forty; and Maria changed little, if at all, though Leone
thought the white patch near her left temple was growing larger.
Also, in those quiet days, the boy and the man became more and more
closely attached to each other. Montalto took more real interest
in teaching Leone to ride and shoot than he had ever shown in
anything; and Leone was more entirely persuaded that Montalto was
his ideal, though he still declared that he himself would be a
soldier and nothing else.
During this time Maria frequently saw Orlando Schmidt, the steward.
She had not seen him in Rome after her husband had arrived, and
when she noticed the latter’s reserved tone in speaking of him, she
had not mentioned him again and had soon forgotten his existence.
There was no special reason why she should think of him at all,
though she had found him very efficient and ready to serve her.
But now he appeared again, and as a personage of considerable
importance, who came to her husband’s study almost every day on
matters connected with the estate. She met him the first time when
she was alone in the great avenue that led from the park gate to
the castle. He lived in a small house just outside the village at
the foot of the hill, and he usually walked up by the avenue.
He bowed ceremoniously to the Countess from a considerable
distance, and carried his hat in his hand as he came nearer.
He blushed a little when she bent her head at last and said
good-morning in passing; and as she did not stop to say more, he
went on. He turned after he had gone on a few steps and looked
after her, being quite sure that she would not do the same. Why
should the Countess of Montalto condescend to look round at such a
humble person as Orlando Schmidt? So he walked slowly and turned
again and again to watch the graceful figure that was slowly
gliding into the distance under the shade of the ancient elms. When
he could no longer see her distinctly he glanced at his watch and
went on his way quickly.
Two days later Maria met him almost in the same place, and at
almost the same hour in the morning; which was natural enough, for
she had dropped into the dull punctuality in doing unimportant
things at regular times which is the foundation of a woman’s life
in a country house where there are no visitors; and as it was
Schmidt’s business to be exact about his duties, there was really
no reason why she should not pass him in the same place and nearly
at the same moment, on every fine day.
This time Schmidt stood still at a short distance, as if he wished
to say something, and when Maria stopped, he inquired if he could
be of service to her in any way. She was a little surprised at the
question.
He meant to ask, he said, whether she had any wishes with regard
to the grounds or the garden. The Count, he explained, took no
interest in those matters, but would be much pleased if her
Excellency would give them some attention. He, Schmidt, had done
his best to keep up the place since he had been in charge of it,
but he was only too conscious that he knew nothing of landscape
gardening and very little about flowers. Maria said quietly that
she understood neither, though she knew what she liked.
Thereupon Schmidt observed that a quantity of handsome stone-work
of the fifteenth century was lying piled up in the kitchen court,
and he thought it must have been put there about a hundred and
twenty or thirty years ago, when a Countess of Montalto had thought
it would be an improvement to destroy the beautiful mediæval
close garden in the course of constructing a miniature Versailles
which had never been finished. He, Schmidt, would take pleasure
in showing the stone-work to her Excellency if she would take
the trouble to look at it. He had also found an old plan of the
former garden amongst the papers of his own great-grandfather, who
had been steward of Montalto from 1760 to 1800. At a small cost
the really beautiful mediæval well and cloistered walk could be
reconstructed, and he ventured to suggest that they would be more
in keeping with the whole place than a wretched little imitation of
Lenôtre’s vast work.
Maria thought so, too, and after saying that she would ask her
husband about it, she nodded kindly to the thoughtful young man and
continued her walk.
In the evening, when Montalto had told her the political news he
had read before dinner, and had opened a third Havana cigarette to
roll it over again in French paper, Maria told him what Schmidt had
said. Montalto was naturally as punctual in all his little ways as
his wife was rapidly becoming by acquired habit. The post came late
in the afternoon, and he always spent half an hour in reading the
newspapers before he dressed for dinner. Just as invariably, too,
he told his wife what he had read, and he almost always reached
the end of his budget of intelligence just as he began to make his
third cigarette. Maria did not always listen to what he was telling
her, but the third cigarette was a landmark in the long dull
evening, and when it was reached she knew that Montalto expected
her to make a little conversation in return for his carefully
repeated news. On this particular occasion she was glad to have
something to say, and at once asked him about the old garden.
To her surprise Montalto did not give her any answer at once, and
she waited for his reply, watching the motion of his well-made
fingers, of which the first two were stained a deep yellowish brown
from smoking cigarettes. They rolled the cigarette slowly, but very
neatly.
‘Yes,’ Montalto said after a long time, when he had got a light and
was leaning back in his chair. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, in a tone of
profound meditation. ‘Yes, by all means, if it amuses you, my dear.’
‘Then you think Schmidt is right about the old things?’ said Maria
with a renewed interrogation in her tone.
Another pause, and several small puffs of smoke.
‘Maria,’ Montalto began, as if he had reached a conclusion, ‘you
are not what people call a highly accomplished woman, but you have
a great deal of sense.’
The Countess wondered what was coming, and answered by a
preliminary and deprecating smile. Montalto often told her that in
his opinion she was the most beautiful creature in the world; after
such nonsense it was a relief to be called a sensible woman. She
might not be even that, but at all events the statement was not
likely to lead to one of those outbreaks of his passion for her
which she dreaded.
‘Maria,’ he said, as if he were beginning over again, ‘I have
great confidence in your judgment.’
‘But I know nothing about gardening or mediæval wells,’ she
protested.
‘Possibly not, though you know vastly more about both than I do.
I was brought up under the influence of the Spanish taste of the
eighteenth century, and I like it. Ippolito Saracinesca says it is
atrocious, and of course he knows. But I like it, nevertheless.’
‘At least, you have the courage of your opinion,’ said Maria, still
completely in the dark, but feeling that she must say something.
‘That does not matter, for it is not the question,’ returned her
husband. ‘We neither of us know anything about architecture, I am
sure. But I shall be glad if you will go into this question with
Schmidt, and then give me an opinion.’
‘It will be worthless.’
‘Not your opinion of the garden, my dear, but your opinion of
Schmidt.’
‘Oh!’ Maria was very much surprised. ‘But why? I told you in Rome
that I thought him an excellent person and very intelligent!’
‘Did it ever occur to you that he might be too intelligent?’
‘No. But perhaps I don’t understand just what you mean. Do you
think he is educated above his station? Too good for his place?’
‘Not at all. But sometimes, in money dealings and positions of
trust, a man may be too clever. That is what I mean.’
‘You mean that you don’t quite trust him,’ said Maria, ‘and you
wish me to form a judgment of him.’
‘I want your opinion,’ answered Montalto, who was at odds with his
over-sensitive conscience. ‘I should be very unjust to Schmidt if I
were to say that he may not be quite honest. It would be very wrong
to assume such a thing of any one, would it not?’
‘If you had no grounds for suspicion, yes. But even an instinctive
distrust of a man of business is enough reason for not giving him
the entire control of a large estate.’
‘Do you really think so, my dear? You see, the men of his family
have been our stewards for some little time.’
‘He told me they had served you two hundred years.’
‘Yes, yes--for some time, as you say, and I have always understood
that they were honest people.’
He was so excessively scrupulous that Maria guessed he must have
some serious ground for his slight suspicion of the man he was
trusting. The question began to interest her, if only as a study of
her husband’s character.
‘Really, Diego,’ she said, ‘if you wish me to form any reasonable
judgment you must tell me something more than this. What has the
man done to make you doubt him?’
Montalto looked at his wife thoughtfully before he answered.
‘I will tell you, but you must not repeat the story to any one,
please.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘He once got into some scrape, four or five years ago, and he took
a small sum of money to help himself out of trouble.’
‘Oh!’ For the second time Maria was surprised. ‘But that is
called----’
‘He confessed it to me,’ Montalto hastened to say before Maria
could finish her sentence. ‘He threw himself upon my mercy by a
voluntary confession, promising to make up the sum as soon as he
could. I thought the matter over for two days and then I forgave
him.’
‘That was like you,’ Maria said gently.
Had he not forgiven her a far greater debt?
‘It was only just,’ Montalto answered. ‘I meant never to think of
the matter again unless he repeated the offence.’
‘Has he done anything of the kind since then?’
‘No.’
‘But you think he might.’
‘N--no. But he could if he wished to, and I don’t think I should
ever know it!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My dear, he paid back the money very soon; so soon that I was
surprised. Then I sent him to Spain on an errand, and while he was
away I got a confidential accountant here and we examined his books
very carefully.’
‘Well?’
‘It was impossible to find any trace of what he had done. Unless a
man has actually taken money dishonestly, he does not confess and
pay it back. But there is something very strange about the matter
if you cannot find some proof of his own confession in his own
accounts.’
‘Was it much?’ asked Maria.
‘Only five thousand francs. But in that year the books showed no
change in the rent-roll of the estate--he might have made out
that the rents had fallen, so as to pocket the difference, you
understand. On the contrary, it was a good year, and the tenants
paid punctually; and there were the banker’s receipts for the
corresponding deposits, exact to a fraction. Five thousand is not a
large sum, but it is a very noticeable one in a matter of business.’
‘I should think so!’ assented Maria, thinking of the limited income
on which she had lived for years, and in which a deficit of five
thousand francs would have been a serious matter.
‘It is very strange that a man whose business it is to detect
frauds in accounts should not be able to find a trace of one that
has been confessed by its author, is it not?’
‘Very!’
‘That is my reason for saying that Schmidt may be too intelligent.
I hope I am not doing him an injustice in saying so. That is the
reason why I want your opinion about him. I really could not ask
him how he did it, after forgiving him, and it would have been
still more unjust to reveal his secret by asking my banker to
compare the receipts purporting to come from him with his own
books. I had forgiven him freely; I could not accuse him to another
man of having done what he had voluntarily confessed. It would
not have been honourable, for my banker would have known at once
that I distrusted my steward and suspected him of forging banker’s
receipts.’
‘Yes. I see.’
‘Precisely. But the most honourable man in the world may confide
matters to his wife which it would be base in him to lay before any
one else.’
‘Except a confessor,’ Maria said; but she was not thinking of
Schmidt.
‘My confessor was not a man of any business capacity,’ answered
Montalto without a smile. ‘Nor is my friend Ippolito Saracinesca
either; and I would certainly not consult any one else except my
wife.’
‘Thank you.’
He had taken a long time to tell his story about the poor steward,
hampered as he was at every step by a conscientious fear of
injuring the man. What Maria saw was that he had been unboundedly
generous to Schmidt, as he had been to her in a matter much
nearer to life and death; and by a sort of unconscious analogical
reasoning she felt, rather than concluded, that the steward must
be as grateful as she was, and as resolved to be faithful at any
cost. Moreover, he had made a favourable impression on her from the
first; and though she was a little shocked at what she now learned
about him, her ultimate verdict as to his present honesty was a
foregone judgment.
After this long talk with Montalto she saw Schmidt often. He
showed her the old plans, the position of the former garden, and
the fragments of the well and the cloistered walk, and after much
consultation with her husband and several evenings spent in the
study of Viollet-le-Duc, they determined that the old construction
should be restored as far as possible, a conclusion which has no
bearing upon this story beyond the fact that it was the means of
bringing Maria and the steward together almost daily, and that the
execution of the work and his careful economy in the whole affair
raised him in the Countess’s estimation; or rather, they confirmed
that preconceived good opinion of him which she had formed in the
beginning, and on which such grave matters afterwards turned.
Before they left Montalto her husband inquired as to the result of
her observation of the man.
‘I cannot help believing that he is now perfectly honest and
devoted to your interests,’ she said. ‘That is the impression he
makes on me, and I do not think it will change.’
‘Then I shall take him to Rome,’ Montalto answered without
hesitation. ‘Our property there is in a disgraceful state and is
not yielding much more than the half of what it should. Schmidt is
the only man I have under my hand who can set matters right, and he
shall go to work at once.’
‘I agree with you,’ Maria said quietly. ‘I thought so last spring
when I first saw him.’
The life at Montalto went on a little longer after that, and the
work on the garden made it a little less monotonous. Not that Maria
disliked that side of it. Since she was to live her married life
again, it was a little easier to live it in that deep retirement,
where she could so often be left to herself for half the day while
Montalto and Leone were out shooting, or riding, or visiting some
distant part of the estate. To be alone as much as possible was
her chief aim in the arrangement of her day. There had been a time
when she had been happy to have Leone always by her side; but now
he talked to her so incessantly of her husband and of what they had
done and were going to do together, that she often wished he would
be silent or go away.
The time had come when the boy began to turn to the man for what he
wanted, even more readily than to his mother; and there is nothing
quite like a mother’s loneliness of heart when she sees that she
can no longer compete with the manly influence in amusing and
interesting her only boy. How can pretty stories and sugar-plums
stand against horse, and dog, and gun, and a day’s sport? And what
is motherly love to a healthy boy, compared with the qualities of
a father who can give him such things and share in his enjoyment
of them? Also, the smaller the boy the greater his delight in any
grown-up sport, and Leone had begun to ride and shoot at an age
when most Roman boys are scarcely out of the nursery. It is true
that he looked two or three years older than his age, and had
fought with boys bigger than himself, like Mario Campodonico, and
had ‘hammered’ them, as he called it.
This was the situation between Montalto, his wife and the boy, when
they all came back to Rome towards the end of October; and Orlando
Schmidt went before them to see that everything was ready and to
take the place of the old steward, who had at last died, leaving
the estate in a confusion worthy of his well-meaning stupidity.
Schmidt was to set matters right, and find a proper man to manage
the Roman lands under his general direction, while he himself
administered the Montalto estate as heretofore. He had, in fact,
been promoted to be the agent for all the property owned by the
Count in Italy.
In October, too, six months after the Dowager Countess’s death,
Maria and her husband put on half mourning, according to the strict
rule that prevails in Rome in those matters; and though they would
not go to balls and big dinners yet, they were permitted to see
something of their friends--and even of their acquaintances.
That was really the end of the quiet life they had led together
for five months. Maria was to go back, take her place in society
as a Roman lady, and be a great personage once more in that
old-fashioned, ceremonious life which has survived in scarcely any
other city in the world, and is fast disappearing in Rome itself.
So far had Maria dragged herself on the thorny path of her
expiation without much help from without, and with little hope
within.