Waiting for him there, in the hotel drawing-room, Ragna had passed
through all the varying emotions of excitement, hope, fear and nervous
dread, the last named possessing her to such an extent that when the
step of Angelescu rang in the mosaic paved corridor and sounded on the
threshold, she hardly dared raise her eyes to him. All at once it seemed
to her a terrible thing to have done,--to have presumed on the words of
a letter five years old to such an extent as to throw herself on the
generosity of a man, who by this time would have every right to consider
her a stranger. The blood burned in her cheeks, tears of shame and
misgiving rose in her eyes, and as Angelescu paused in the doorway the
beating of her heart almost choked her while a strange thrill ran
through her body. Summoning all her courage, she desperately raised her
eyes, and meeting his expression of joyful surprise, the eagerness of
his look, rose and moved impulsively towards him. It was true then, he
still loved her!
The pressure of his arms, however, brought her to a realization of all
the barriers the years had raised between them,--she must tell him, and
perhaps when he knew all, the light would fade from his eyes, the eager
flush from his cheeks! He had greeted her as the Ragna he had parted
from in Rome, how would he take the fact of her being the actual wife of
another? She was tempted to put off the evil day, to accord herself one
hour, at least, of unspoilt happiness, but she was no coward, she
recognised that the issue must be faced and at once, that she had
already put herself into an equivocal position by accepting his embrace,
since he as yet knew nothing. As she freed herself, he made an effort to
retain her, but her out-flung hand repelled him.
"No, no!" she said, "you must not. You do not know!"
"I know that the moment for which I have waited so long has come at
last! I have awaited your summons five years now. Five years! Think of
it, Ragna!"
"But you have not yet learned my reasons--"
"That is true," he assented gravely, "but to me the fact that you have
come to me is all-sufficing. I am glad that you have done it of your own
accord. Think, Ragna, just two weeks ago, I wrote to your Aunt in
Christiania to try and trace you. I--I had grown tired of waiting, I
realized that I had been a fool from the first, that I should never have
let you slip out of my life, and I did, and for so long."
"Yes, yes," she interrupted breathlessly, "you should not have left me!"
"After your answer to my letter, I was afraid of offending you--I
thought it would be better to wait until you made some sign--"
"Oh, my foolish letter!" groaned Ragna. "But I was not myself when I
wrote it. I was wild with pain and humiliation, I--"
"I know, dear, I know, and it has been my fault if I have lost sight of
you through all these years. I realized that in Rome. When I had tried
to find some trace of you there, and failed, I wrote to your Aunt. After
all that had happened there, Rome was intolerable to me,--you can
understand that--and I came here to await an answer."
"Aunt Gitta is dead," said Ragna. Oh how much there was to say, how much
that he must know, before she allowed him to go further! And the things
he said, or rather implied--his unchanging devotion, his happiness at
finding her, were so perilously sweet to hear. In his presence she felt
herself transported to another atmosphere, poles apart from the one she
had just left. It transformed her, she felt a different creature
already.
Still the past must be dealt with; she gathered herself together for the
effort of telling him, but as her lips parted, two English ladies
entered the drawing-room, followed by a waiter with a tea-tray. They
installed themselves at a small table near a window, casting curious
glances the while, at the two standing in the middle of the room,--for
both Ragna and Angelescu had been too absorbed in one another to
remember the small conventionalities of life.
"What a bore!" said Angelescu impatiently--"and the worst of it is that
there is no place in this hotel where we can be by ourselves. What shall
we do, Ragna? We must be alone somewhere--is there any place we can
drive to?"
"Yes," said Ragna eagerly, guiltily glad of the short reprieve. "Let us
drive out into the country, we shall be alone there."
She seated herself while Angelescu went for his hat and tried to collect
her ideas, to marshal the facts that must be told. It seemed so cruel
that the beauty of their meeting should be dimmed if not destroyed by
reason of the very cause that had brought that meeting about. What would
he do, what would he say, when he knew? Would it change him? A cold
fear gripped her heart, but through it, she felt the happy bound and
surge of her pulses at the recollection of the tender expression of his
eyes, the radiance of his dear bronzed manly face.
"I must have loved him even then," she marvelled to herself, thinking of
their former meetings, for she knew now that she loved him and it seemed
to her that it had been so always, ever since she could remember. When
she had seen his name in the paper, how spontaneous had been her impulse
towards him, how unhesitating the instinct to fly to him for refuge!
"Only, why did I not realize it before?" she asked herself.
Angelescu returned, hat in hand and they walked down the wide staircase
and out the door, held open by an attentive flunkey.
"Where shall we go?" asked Angelescu as he beckoned to a cab on the
rank.
"To Sta. Margherita a Montici," said Ragna to the driver as she took her
seat.
She felt a reckless joy in driving thus publicly with Angelescu. In any
ordinary circumstances, common prudence would have forbidden her such an
act in defiance of public opinion, but this was her declaration of
independence, the burning of her boats, the definite throwing off of the
yoke, and she gloried in it.
Angelescu looked at her with undisguised admiration, though the thick
veil she wore rather obscured her features. She was more beautiful by
far than she had been as a girl, her figure had riper, richer lines
while keeping its lissome grace, her hair was as bright and abundant as
ever, and the years of stress and storm had given an added delicacy to
her features, a depth to her eyes, the subtle air of having lived and
suffered to her expression--a complex charm that no merely young and
pretty face can ever possess.
They sat silent as the carriage drove through the Via Maggio and down
the long, winding Via Romana, but as they left the Porta Romana behind
them and the pace slackened on the long hill, Ragna, with a determined
effort, broke the silence.
"I have not yet told you that I am married," she said.
"Married!" repeated Angelescu, "married!" He looked at her as though
stunned.
The idea that she might have married had never occurred to him. When she
had refused him, he had not, in his direct simplicity, thought of the
possibility of her giving to another that which she denied to him. He
recoiled instinctively at the thought of her possession by another, and
this time no accident, no sudden impulse, but with her full consent, as
the fact of marriage must necessarily imply. It sickened him. How could
she have given herself to another when everything about her proclaimed
her love for himself. Could she then pass so lightly from one man's arms
to another's? Now she had turned to him, but in the light of her prior
action, what value had her present appeal? And why this appeal, since
she had already found a protector, a husband? What explanation could
there be to her conduct, except that as a frail barque, she drifted
where the currents of circumstance and impulse took her? Or was she
dominated by fickleness, a fatal longing for change and excitement? But
here, his native generosity came to his aid,--the pressure of
extraordinary circumstances must have been brought to bear on her, he
must hear her out before judging.
So he turned to her, as she sat apprehensively expectant and took her
hand in his own, saying:
"Tell me all, dear, don't be afraid. I was surprised, for I had not
guessed--"
His voice was tender, affectionate; he spoke as he would to encourage
the confidence of a shrinking child, and the beauty of it all was his
perfect naturalness, the outcome of his simple generous soul.
To Ragna, realising as she needs must, from his first involuntary start,
his look of horror and surprise, what a shock her bald announcement had
been to him, his quick recovery, the tender simplicity of his response
seemed little short of miraculous; she had not dared hope for so much. A
lump rose in her throat and the hand that lay in his trembled.
"There, there, little one, tell me all!"
He spoke again, soothingly, as he would have spoken to a child; he did
not guess that the tears welling up in her eyes were tears of relief, of
joy, the reaction from the oppression of dread.
So Ragna told her tale, the terrible discovery that she was about to
become a mother--
"Why did you not write to me then?" he interrupted.
"Ah, dear," she answered, "I was too ashamed, I only wanted to hide
myself from all who knew me, from you, most of all, because you loved
me!"
"The very reason why you should have come to me," he reproved quietly;
"Ah, well, you did not, more's the pity. Think of it, Ragna, we might
have been so happy."
"God knows I should have been a better woman, at least," she said
bitterly, "not the hard cynical creature I have become!"
"You hard and cynical, my little Ragna?"
"Wait until you have heard all, and you will see whether I have not had
good reason for it," she rejoined.
The tenderness called forth in response to his own had died away under
the bitter memories evoked by the recital of her trials. With growing
hardness in her voice, she told of Valentini's offer, of her acceptance
and of their marriage--and at this point of her tale she dared not look
at Angelescu's face but kept her eyes obstinately fixed on the driver's
back, and even as she talked, was curiously conscious of the brown and
grey stripes of the man's coat and the deep crease in it where it bulged
over the iron rail round the top of the box.
She went on and told of her rapid disillusionment, hiding nothing, using
words brutal in their revealing frankness, such as she had often used to
herself; then of the birth of Mimmo, of that of Beppino, of the
increasing unhappiness of her life, as time went on, and lastly of
Carolina's story, the death of Fru Boyesen, the loss of her hopes, and
the culminating scene of the morning. She reached this point as the
carriage drove past the gate of the Torre al Gallo, where Galileo lived
and worked, and through the little town of Arcetri, perched on the
hill-top.
Both sat silent as they rattled through the long, narrow stone-paved
street, Ragna lost again in the horror of all those awful years, now
more unbearable than ever as she compared them to what might have been,
Angelescu, his brow drawn into deep furrows of thought, the blaze of
indignation in his eyes, a muscle working in his lean cheek, just as he
had sat listening to her. As they left the last houses behind them, and
came to a piece of undulating sunken road running between high stone
walls on the tops of which iris and rose ran riot against the gnarled
trunks and silvery leaves of the olives, he drew a long sigh and
shrugged his shoulders as though throwing off the weight of some
incubus.
"Poor little girl!" he said, and his voice shook with the depth of his
emotion. After a pause, he spoke again, and this time his voice was
full, deep, decided.
"You can't live with him any longer you know, you must come with me."
Then for an instant his anger blazed out like the sudden flare of
lightning on a summer evening.
"By God, if ever I see that man,--no, that beast, I shall kill him!"
A thrill of savage joy ran through Ragna,--here then, was the man, the
defender! The primitive woman in her leaped in response to his calm
taking possession of her. Here was no questioning as to right, merely
the assumption of herself and her burdens as the most perfectly obvious
and natural thing in the world. Yes, he was right, she was his; she
proudly acknowledged his right to command, to take her; she hugged the
consciousness of her recognition of his mastery. Here was a lord she
acknowledged with all her sentient being, one whom her soul delighted to
honour. Mentally she compared with him the man who had been so long her
hated and feared master, and the paltriness of Egidio made her wonder
how she had let herself feel insulted by the words and actions of one so
mean, so morally insignificant. She longed to throw out her arms to the
man beside her, in one glorious gesture of self-abandonment, offering
all that she was and could be, her whole being.
But the coachman was pointing with his whip to the beauties of the
landscape, austere Fiesole and Settignano nestled in the lap of the
hills, across the valley, and perched on the scarred pine-crowned hill
between the Casa al Vento, all swimming in rosy amethyst, to Monte alle
Croci, on which one distinguished the tiny mortuary chapels, the back of
S. Miniato, the Arcivescovado masked in scaffolding, the Capucine
monastery with its expresses, and nearer still the slopes of silvery
olive and green waving grain, where cornflowers and poppies began to
appear. So she only leaned forward and looked into Angelescu's eyes,
clasping both her hands on his. She had thrown back her veil and her
face appeared radiant, lit from within by the light of her love in its
passionate consciousness of supremacy.
A steep bit of hill, and the horse, goaded into a momentary effort drew
up panting in the little piazza before the Church which stood as on a
pinnacle, the land on both sides sweeping away to a deep valley. On the
right hand one saw range upon range of bare hill-tops with olive-covered
slopes, and down below small white houses, each surrounded by its
"podere," with here and there a "fattoria" or a villa, dotted the green
valley. On the near hill-slopes the gorse was in blossom, its yellow
flowers straggling over the rough ground like a ragged mantle of cloth
of gold, and the strong sweet perfume of it assailed the nostrils.
Across the piazza, opposite the grey old church was the priest's garden,
an old-fashioned straggling garden sweet with wall-flowers, pinks and
stocks, planted as borders to the onions, carrots, cabbages and
lettuces; misshapen fig-trees ran riot and the _nespoli_ showed the
golden glow of ripened fruit among the heavy foliage. Lizards ran to and
fro over the wall, from the crevices of which sprouted tufts of grass,
snap-dragon, saxifrage and a kind of small fern.
The third side of the piazza, was bounded by a low wall, connecting the
_orto_ with the church and presbytery, and a flight of stone steps led
to the terraced plantations below, where grain grew between the olives,
and wild gladiolus, cornflower and poppy starred the undulating green
surface.
Ragna, one of whose favourite haunts it was, led the way to the
lichen-covered steps. At the foot of them an uneven grassy slope
stretched downward, winding in and out among the terraces, and down this
they wandered. The grass was still green for the summer heat and drought
were yet far off, and many flowers grew in the light shade of the trees.
Ragna, full of the exuberance of the moment, laughed joyously and long
like a child; she threw back her head, eyes half closed, the parted lips
showing her white even teeth, and her laughter pulsated in her throat,
rose in clear ripples. It reminded Angelescu of the song of a bird, of
the clear water bubbling up in a spring. She had thrown off the weary
years of pain as one casts off a dark cloak; all the youth, the girlish
_insouciance_ so long repressed rose triumphant to the surface, she
irradiated the wonderful joy of life, of love. The sunlight, flecked
with narrow, quivering shadow illuminated her white dress, the gold of
her hair, the rosy flush of her cheek. She was like a bird escaped from
its cage, mad with the newness of its freedom, intoxicated with the wine
of life.
Her mood was infectious, it caught Angelescu, and he pursued her among
the olive trees, following her light bounds, her lithe turnings and
twistings. It was a page of Pagan fable,--there in the soft sunlight,
under the grey gnarled olives, on the elastic carpet of flower-starred
turf, the perfumed breeze fluttering Ragna's skirts as she laughingly
eluded her pursuer. They were Apollo and Daphne and the world was young
again. But this Daphne was no restive nymph, and when Angelescu caught
her at length, panting and rosy, to his breast, she raised her mouth to
his and closed her eyes. The colour fled from her face, she became grave
with the mysterious gravity of all true passion as in that sacramental
kiss she felt the utter surrender of her soul to his.
After this they sat down on the grass, among the twisted olive roots,
Ragna with her back against a distorted trunk, Angelescu stretched at
full length beside her, his elbow on a root, his head supported by his
hand. Dreamily happy, silent, like two people to whom the gates of
Paradise have suddenly been set ajar, they gazed out over the valley
below, where the shining reaches of the Arno reflected the sky. The
pink-tiled roofs of the city trailed out like the embroidered hem of a
robe from beyond Monte alle Croci, one could see up the valley as far as
Ponte a Sieve and the green peaks of Vallombrosa. The sky was that deep,
soft blue shading to amethyst on the horizon, that seems peculiar to
Italy, and against it the slender olive leaves, shivering in the gentle
breeze, stood out in delicate gold-illumined tracery.
Angelescu heaved a deep sigh of contentment, and Ragna echoed it; her
wild exuberance of spirits had fallen and it was now the marvel of it,
the beautiful tender mystery of this love, the only real love she had
ever known, that dominated her. It seemed to her that all she had been
through, the pain, the humiliation, the brutal servitude had been but a
preparation for this, but the stony path leading to this summit of
perfect happiness, whence she looked out and secure in her bliss, saw
the whole of the world beneath her feet. "Stay, fleeting moment!" she
half-whispered--and smiled, why should not the fleeting moment be
eternal, was it not to be her life hence forward? Had not her path at
last led her out of the shadow into the sunshine? Oh, perfect day that
had broken her bondage! But even as she looked, the soft plum-coloured
shadows lengthened in the valley, the sunlight mellowed with the waning
day.
It was Angelescu who first broke the silence, there was still so much to
be said, so much to be arranged. He leaned forward and took her hand
which was idly playing with a bee-orchid she had plucked.
"Ragna dear, we must come back to earth again and consider what we are
to do."
She started almost resentfully, so far adrift had she been on the happy
sea of her realized day-dream that she had lost sight of all other
considerations. It seemed to her that thus must she float on and on,
from day to day, lapped in the sweetness of her new found love and
exalted above all mundane concerns. She turned to him impulsively,
"Oh, why can't we live in dreamland just a little longer?"
He smiled.
"All our life is to be one long dream, darling, from which there will be
no awakening,--but we have yet to make it ours."
"Are we not together? Is that not enough?"
"Yes, darling, and you are coming away with me to a new life,--but we
must prepare that new life."
She sat up, throwing off her childish unreasonableness, even as she put
back the disordered locks of her hair and straightened her hat.
"Tell me what I am to do,--I am all yours, dear, you shall decide for
me."
"Have you a friend with whom you can spend the night? I do not like the
idea of your going back for even so few hours to--to your husband," he
pronounced the word with an effort.
"No," said Ragna quickly, "not my husband. I no longer recognize his
right to call himself by that title. You are my husband dear, you and
you only!"
He thanked her with a smile.
"And the friend, have you such an one? We can't get away until
to-morrow, and we must not give Valentini any occasion to guess our
plans or interfere with them, before I get you safely away. A man like
him would be capable of anything, out of spite, and we must not play
into his hands. He must know nothing until you are well out of reach.
But I do hate the thought, _ma chérie_, of your going back to his
roof--is there no one you could go to? You could say you had quarreled
with him,--anything--"
Ragna thought of Virginia Ferrati, but was afraid of facing her sharp
eyes and keen questions.
"Yes, I have a friend, a good friend, but I should have to take her into
my confidence, and somehow I don't like the idea. I think that until we
get away the less anyone knows of our plans, the better. Besides, dear,
what harm is there if I do go home? I can arrange things so as not to
see my husband,--I can say I have a headache and lock myself into my
room."
"I don't like the thought of you under his vile roof. You are mine, now,
Ragna, do you hear? Mine!"
She turned her face flushed with pleasure, and her dewy glistening eyes
to him.
"Ah, dear, what does it matter for a few hours more, since we know that
we belong to each other? I have borne with it all for over five
years,--" his gesture forbade reminiscence,--"now it is over and I am
free, I am yours--What can a few hours more or less, matter? And then
there are the children--I must see them once again, poor little souls!"
Her voice broke slightly as she said the last words; Mimmo's trusting
little face rose before her eyes, but she thrust the vision away,--even
he, for the moment was but a part of the hated past which she wished to
blot out.
Angelescu's face took on an undefinable expression, part constraint,
part displeasure, part pity. In spite of himself, a vague jealousy of
these children, the living proofs of Ragna's past, the concrete,
undeniable evidence of her relations with other men. He had even felt a
sort of elation, when she had told him, in relating the scene of the
morning, of Egidio's threat to keep Mimmo, should she leave her home,
thus taking advantage of the rights the law conferred on him. Now that
he had found Ragna again, he wanted her all to himself; the past could
not be helped and he was ready to accept it in the abstract, and to put
it away from them both. But a sense of shame came over him, he seemed to
be matching himself against the slender strength of a child. Still
somebody must suffer, and after all it was Valentini's fault and not his
as he was ready to accept the child as part of the burden he assumed,
and do his conscientious best by it. Ragna's manner when she had talked
to him of Beppino had showed him how evidently she considered the child
a part of his father as distinct from herself, and he had been glad of
it, for while he could bring himself to accept Mimmo, the other, the
child of the hated oppressor of the woman he loved would be a burden
beyond his endurance. Beppino had thus been eliminated from the question
from the very beginning, and as it seemed, he was to be spared the
presence of Mimmo also; Ragna and he were to be free to begin their life
on a new basis, unencumbered by the evidences of past bondage. He let
his thoughts dwell on these considerations, but was not able to still
entirely the pricking of his conscience. It was, perhaps, more to ease
this than for any other reason that he gave his consent to Ragna's
returning to her home for this one last night.
"Certainly you must see the children again," he assented gravely.
Ragna glanced at him, her eyes narrowed under thoughtful brows. The
constraint of his manner was clearly apparent to her, as was, of course,
the cause of it. Would it be the same with this man, as it had been with
Egidio? For she recognized the fact that one of the principal reasons of
the unhappiness of their marriage, had been the unwelcome presence of
Mimmo. Angelescu met her look openly and squarely, he even smiled into
her anxious eyes. Ah, she knew, she could not help but see that this man
was as far removed from Egidio as the North Pole from the South! However
he might suffer, however hard the weight of accepted responsibility
might bear on him she would never see the slightest evidence of it, in
so far as it should lie in his power to hide it. And his strength lay
not only in resolve, but in his power of calmly accepting existing
conditions with no looking backward or moody repining; all his energies
would be directed towards the future. This much his steadfast eyes told
Ragna, and she marvelled anew, as she recognized in this higher more
disciplined form the same simplicity of mental attitude towards life as
she had envied in Carolina. Still she could not help wondering if the
very resolve on his part to accept the past and put it behind them both
would not gradually raise a barrier of silence between them, and she saw
their ship of happiness wrecked on the reef of the forbidden subject.
Angelescu rose to his feet and held out his hands to Ragna.
"Come, dear, we must be going. We will talk over the rest on the way
back. You must not stop out so late as to arouse suspicions."
She took his outstretched hands and sprang up lightly; he drew her to
him and kissed her long and tenderly, then, slowly and in silence, they
walked hand in hand up the slope.
On the stone steps Ragna paused and turned for a last look down across
the olive plantation to the valley; Angelescu's eyes followed hers, it
was as though they were unconsciously bidding farewell to the place.
Ragna voiced the vague feeling that possessed them both.
"We have been happy here,--we can never be happier than we have been
to-day," she said in a low vibrant voice.
Angelescu raised her hand to his lips.
"No happier, perhaps,--I think too, that it would be impossible, but
just as happy, dear!"
She stooped and plucked two small ferns growing in a crevice, one she
gave to him, the other she laid in her card-case, saying softly,
"See, they are green--that is for hope."
In the little piazza above they found the _fiaccheraio_ asleep on a
stone bench, a straw protruding from his mouth, his rusty hat pulled
over his eyes. The horse munched at the oats in his nose-bag, in great
contentment, as he slouched between the shafts. On being hailed, the man
sat up, rubbing his eyes with grimy knuckles.
"Scusino, Signori," he said, "_schiacciavo un sonnellino_. I did not
think the Signori would be ready to leave so soon. _Quando si e
giovini_--when one is young,--" he gave a broad wink. "Do the Signori
wish to return by the same way as we came?"
"No," said Ragna, "go round the other way by the Villa Fensi and the
Barriera S. Niccolo."
"Benone!" said the Jehu, as he stowed the nose-bag under the seat. He
scrambled to the box with an agility astounding in one of his bulk, and
with a crack of his whip they were off.
The road wound sharply down away from the church, past white _fattorie_
and peasant-farmers' houses. The hill above cast a soft purple shadow
over the road and down into the valley.
"Now, darling," said Angelescu, "I have been thinking about how we are
to get away. There is a train to-morrow afternoon at three,--before
midnight we can be in Switzerland, out of reach. I shall not try to see
you in the morning, it is better to be prudent, but I shall be at the
railway station at half past two. I shall wait for you in the first
class _Sala d'aspetto_. You must arrange things so that your absence
will not be noticed before we shall have crossed the frontier--after
that _je ne crains pas le diable en personne_!" he ended gaily.
Ragna smiled up into his face.
"Bien, I understand. The first class waiting room at half past two or a
quarter to three."
"You must take with you only what you can't do without for a day or
two," he added, "just a dressing case, if you can get it out unnoticed.
We will get everything else you need."
She saw that he wished her to leave behind all that she owed to
Valentini's grudging liberality. And he, reading her unspoken answer to
her thought, said,
"I am not a rich man, darling, but I have enough for us both--and I
can't bear to think of you dressed in the clothes that--"
"I shall wear nothing in future but what you give me," she answered
gravely.
There was a pause, then Ragna said, harking back to the moment on the
steps below the church,
"This afternoon has been like a foretaste of Heaven. It has been the
most perfect happiness I have ever known."
Angelescu slipped his arm behind her, and drew her close to him; her
head sank to his shoulder.
"Ah, darling," he answered, "and to think that we have waited so long
for it--that so much has happened that was unnecessary."
"No," she returned slowly, the words falling from her lips as the
thoughts took definite shape in her mind, "it is best as it is.
I am sincere at this moment, when I say to you that I regret
nothing--nothing. If I had not learned what it is to suffer, I should
not know how to love you as I do. I see now that it has all been a
preparation--for this. If I had gone to you then, I,--we--I think we
might not have been so happy. I was too ignorant, I was too hurt and
suspicious to appreciate--And I had no real understanding of love. First
I had thought it was romance, sentiment,--then I thought I knew it to be
passion,--afterwards I thought it must be affection, friendship, esteem.
Now I know."
"What is it then?" he asked.
"I don't know that I can explain in words, it is all I have said and
more too, it is the feeling I have for you; it is all myself, the
essence of my soul, the best that is in me."
There was a short silence, and she continued,
"I said before that I had grown hard and cynical, but I know now that it
is not true. Pain has purified me, and I feel, I know--" she drew
herself up proudly and turned her face to his, "that I am infinitely
more worthy of your love than I was five years ago,--than I was even
before Prince Mirko--I was nothing but a silly, vain girl, then, now I
am a woman; I know what life is and what I give you I give consciously,
in the full knowledge of what it is, of what it means to you, to me, to
our life. Yes, I am a better woman."
"Dear!" said Angelescu and his eyes adored her.
He knew that she spoke the truth, that the harsh discipline had
unconsciously prepared her for this glorious bursting into bloom, as the
cold rains and snows of winter prepare the earth for the flowering of
spring, still in his heart of hearts, manlike, he could not help wishing
that she might have been his without having been subjected to the
bitterness of life. He wished that he might have claimed her, young,
innocent, unsuspicious of the evil in the world; he thought that without
any experience of the darker side of existence, his love and the
happiness she would have found in it, would have sufficed to bring her
nature to its perfection of flowering. Unconsciously he resented any
influence but his own in the development of the woman he loved. This was
his instinct, his reason told him that Ragna was right, and he was
thankful, nay, consummately happy, that she should come to him at last,
by whatever road, and above all that she should thus surrender herself
to him, fully, unreservedly and consciously.
They looked into each other's eyes and their souls met and mingled, even
as they had when their lips met under the olives. An ecstasy of joy
possessed them but it was no longer the exuberant joy of two hours
earlier, rather a joy so deep in its passionate intensity as to confine
on the borders of pain. It held them body and soul, in a state of
exquisite torture, penetrating every fibre of their united being,
throbbing in every particle, drawing them into communion with the
pulsating ether about them, absorbing them into the vibrant Universe,
their joint soul into the All-Soul. They felt their entire unity, one
with the other and with the whole of the Creation. For an instant Life
in its entirety was epitomized in their life, Eternity itself
concentrated in the immeasurable pause, the innermost secret of
existence lay bare before their reverent eyes.
They were driving now through a little valley, a cleft in the hills; the
road was bordered by high walls over which hung tangles of banksia rose
and jasmine. The still evening air held the fragrance till it seemed
almost unbearable to the senses through its very sweetness, and the new
consciousness of happiness in their hearts was like the perfume in the
air. It was one of those moments when it seems that the soul can bear no
more, that the very perfection of bliss bears in it the seed of its own
decay, poor human nature being unable to sustain the pitch of
perfection. Something must snap, something must give way, the wayfarer
cannot breathe long the rarefied air of the heights, his stumbling feet
bear him of their own accord to the valley.
The carriage stopped suddenly amid the objurgations of the driver, which
were echoed with equal violence from the road where appeared suddenly
the form of a burly _barocciaio_ precipitated from his slumbers and also
from his perch, where he had been indulging in a nap, by the sudden
swerve of his horse at a touch of the _fiaccheraio's_ whip. Loud and
long was the altercation studded with violent invective in purest
_fiorentinaccio_, the reputations of the female relatives of both
contestants being the chief point of attack. A small cream-coloured
Pomeranian rushed frantically to and fro on the top of the laden
_baroccio_, adding his shrill barking to the general uproar. Thus rudely
startled from their dream, Ragna and Angelescu looked on, almost dazed.
"Imbecile!" shouted the _fiaccheraio_, "_Bestia!_ Why don't you have an
eye to your horse and keep to your side of the road, instead of drinking
yourself stupid? _Ubbriaccone!_"
The neck of a fiasco protruding from the straw of the _baroccio_ gave
point to the accusation.
"_Ubbriaccone_ yourself! _Mascalzone!_" shrieked the carter. "Have an
eye yourself to what you meet on the road! Because you drive aristocrats
and imbecile _forestieri_ about, do you think you can throw honest
working-men into the dust? I'll drag you before the tribunals! You say I
am drunk, you lie! You whipped my beast, I saw you!"
"_Socialista!_ _Anarchico!_ _Figlio d'un prete!_ _Assassino!_" screamed
the _fiaccheraio_.
"_Figlio d'una--!_" yelled the _barocciaio_.
"Here now," said Angelescu authoritatively, thinking they had gone quite
far enough and annoyed by the uproar, "stop that bawling or I'll give
you both in charge. You were on the wrong side of the road and you were
asleep," he said to the lowering _barocciaio_, "so if you fell off it
was your own fault. However, here's a lira for you, and now pull aside
and let us pass."
He tossed a silver coin to the man whose ill-humour disappeared as
though by magic, he even touched his cap and wished the "Signori" a
"_Buona passeggiata_" as he led his horse by. The little dog had stopped
barking and sat on his haunches regarding them with bright intelligent
eyes, his fluffy ears pointed forward, a tip of his pink tongue showing
under his truffle-like muzzle.
The _fiaccheraio_ shook his head apologetically.
"_He vuole_, Signore, those people have no education, they will make a
bad end. Did you hear what he said about aristocrats? But that is
nothing, you should hear what they say in their socialistic meetings!
They will end like that Brescia who murdered our good King. It is a bad
thing for people of no education to talk too much. _Madonna dé
fiaccherai!_ to think that such _farabutti_ should take the bread from
honest men's mouths!"
"You are hard on them," said Angelescu.
"Ah, Signore mio, you do not know our _beceri_, and what they are
capable of! It is a bad world and one must work hard for a _tozzo di
pane_ and a glass of _vin nero_--and these _merli_ wish to live without
working, and that is a thing which has never been since the world began.
They say to us others, 'aha, _minchioni_, we will live on your
shoulders!'"
Angelescu amused, continued to draw the old man out; the shrewd
mother-wit and quaint phrases of the old Florentine were a source of
delight to him. Ragna leaned back, indifferent, lost in the pleasant
labyrinth of her day-dreams.
The road came to a sharp turn and the driver instinctively drew rein.
Before them, beyond an indeterminate fore-ground of shadow, rose the
city, bathed in the rays of the setting sun. Towers pierced the glowing
haze, fairest of all the tower of Palazzo Vecchio, slender and tall like
some stately lily, and floating bubble-like on the gold, the wonderful
airy cupola of the Duomo. The long level mellow rays of sunset gave the
scene an unreal aspect; it seemed that as way-worn pilgrims they had
come suddenly upon the golden dream city of their desire, a city called
up magically before their eyes, a glorious vision evoked by the power
and wonder of their love. Above the dome and the towers, pearly clouds
merging into amethyst floated in the gold-pink sky. The sound of many
church-bells mellowed by the distance to a suggestion of heavenly music
floated to their ears. Both felt instinctively that this was the fit
ending to their perfect afternoon. In these last few hours they had
attained to the apex of human happiness--whatever the future might hold
in store for them, nothing could ever mar the transcendent beauty of
this day, nor could they ever hope to surpass the joy, the glory of it.