On the morning of the 20th of May, as Andrea Sperelli was walking along
the Corso in the radiant sunshine, he heard his name called from the
doorway of the Club.
On the pavement in front of it was a group of gentlemen amusing
themselves by watching the ladies pass and talking scandal. They were
Giulio Musellaro, Ludovico Barbarisi, the Duke of Grimiti, Galeazzo
Secinaro, Gino Bomminaco, and two or three others.
'Have you heard what happened last night?' Barbarisi asked him.
'No, what?'
'Don Manuel Ferrès, the Minister for Guatemala----'
'Well?'
'Was caught red-handed cheating at cards.'
Sperelli retained his self-command, although some of the men were
looking at him with a certain malicious curiosity.
'How was that?'
'Galeazzo was there and was playing at the same table.'
Secinaro proceeded to give him the details.
Andrea did not affect indifference, he listened with a grave and
attentive air. At the end of the story, he said, 'I am extremely sorry
to hear it.'
After remaining a minute or two longer with the group, he bowed and
passed on.
'Which way are you going?' asked Secinaro.
'I am going home.'
'I will go with you part of the way.'
They went off together in the direction of the Via de' Condotti. The
Corso was one glittering stream of sunshine from the Piazzo di Venezia
to the Piazzo del Popolo. Ladies in light spring dress passed along by
the brilliant shop-windows--the Princess of Ferentino with Barbarella
Viti under one big lace parasol; Bianca Dolcebuono; Leonetto Lanza's
young wife.
'Do you know this man--this Ferrès?' asked Galeazzo of Andrea, who had
not spoken as yet.
'Yes, I met him last year at Schifanoja, at my cousin Ateleta's. The
wife is a great friend of Francesca's. That is why the affair annoys me
so much. We must see that it is hushed up as much as possible. You will
be doing me the greatest favour if you will help me about it.'
Galeazzo promised his assistance with the most cordial alacrity.
'I think,' said he, 'that the worst of the scandal might be avoided if
the Minister sends in his resignation to his Government without a
moment's delay. That is what the President of the Club advised, but
Ferrès refused last night. He blustered and did the insulted. And yet
the proofs were there, as clear as daylight. He will have to be
persuaded.'
They continued on the subject as they walked along. Sperelli was
grateful to Secinaro for his assistance, and the intimate tone of the
conversation predisposed Secinaro to friendly confidences.
At the corner of the Via de' Condotti, they caught sight of Lady
Heathfield strolling along the left side of the street past the Japanese
shop-windows, with her undulating, rhythmic, captivating walk.
'Ah--Donna Elena,' said Galeazzo.
Both the men watched her, and both felt the glamour of that rhythmic
gait.
When they came up to her, they both bowed but passed on. They no longer
saw her, but she saw them; and for Andrea it was a form of torture to
have to walk beside a rival under the gaze of the woman he desired, and
feel that those piercing eyes were perhaps taking a delight in weighing
the merits of both men. He compared himself with Secinaro.
Galeazzo was of the bovine type, a Lucius Verus with golden hair and
blue eyes; while amid the magnificent abundance of his golden beard
shone a full red mouth, handsome, but without the slightest expression.
He was tall, square-shouldered and strong, with an air of elegance that
was not exactly refined, but easy and unaffected.
'Well?' Sperelli asked, goaded on by a sort of madness. 'Are matters
going on favourably?'
He knew he might adopt this tone with a man of this sort.
Galeazzo turned and looked at him half surprised, half suspicious. He
certainly did not expect such a question from him, and still less the
airy and perfectly calm tone in which the question was uttered.
'Ah, the time that siege of mine has lasted!' groaned the bearded
prince. 'Ages simply--I have tried every kind of manoeuvre but always
without success. I always came too late, some other fellow had always
been before me in storming the citadel. But I never lost heart. I was
convinced that sooner or later my turn would come. _Attendre pour
atteindre._ And sure enough----'
'Well?'
'Lady Heathfield is kinder to me than the Duchess of Scerni. I shall
have, I hope, the very enviable honour of being set down after you on
the list.'
He burst into a rather coarse laugh, showing his splendid teeth.
'I fancy that my doughty deeds in India, which Giulio Musellaro spread
abroad, have added to my beard several heroic strands of irresistible
virtue.'
'Ah, just in these days that beard of yours should fairly quiver with
memories.'
'What memories?'
'Memories of a Bacchic nature.'
'I don't understand.'
'What, have you forgotten the famous May Bazaar of 1884?'
'Well, upon my word, now that you remind me of it, the third anniversary
does fall on one of these next days. But you were not there--who told
you?
'You want to know more than is good for you, my dear boy.'
'Do tell me!'
'Bend your mind rather to making the most skilful use of this
anniversary and give me news as soon as you have any.'
'When shall I see you again?'
'Whenever you like.'
'Then dine with me to-night at the Club--about eight o'clock. That will
give us an opportunity of seeing after the other affair too.'
'All right. Good-bye, Goldbeard. Run!'
They parted in the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the steps, and as
Elena came across the square in the direction of the Via due Macelli to
go up to the Quattro Fontane, Secinaro joined her and walked on with
her.
The strain of dissimulation once over, Andrea's heart sank within him
like a leaden weight. He did not know how he was to drag himself up the
steps. He was quite assured that, after this, Secinaro would tell him
everything, and somehow this seemed to him a point to his advantage. By
a sort of intoxication, a species of madness, resulting from the
severity of his sufferings, he rushed blindly into new and ever more
cruel and senseless torments; aggravating and complicating his miserable
state in a thousand ways; passing from perversion to perversion, from
aberration to aberration, without being able to hold back or to stop for
one moment in his giddy descent. He seemed to be devoured by an
inextinguishable fever, the heat of which made all the germs of human
lust lying dormant in the hidden depths of his being flourish and grow
big. His every thought, his every emotion showed the same stain.
And yet, it was the very deception itself that bound him so strongly to
the woman he deceived. His mind had adapted itself so thoroughly to the
monstrous comedy that he was no longer capable of conceiving any other
way of satisfying his passion. This incarnation of one woman in another
was no longer a result of exasperated desire, but a deliberate habit of
vice, and now finally an imperious necessity. From thenceforth, the
unconscious instrument of his vicious imagination had become as
necessary to him as the vice itself. By a process of sensual depravity,
he had almost come to think that the real possession of Elena would not
afford him such exquisite and violent delight as the imaginary. He was
hardly able to separate the two women in his thoughts. And just as he
felt that his pleasure would be diminished by the actual possession of
the one, so his nerves received a shock if by some lassitude of the
imagination he found himself in the presence of the other without the
interposing image of her rival.
Thus he felt crushed to the earth at the thought that Don Manuel's ruin
meant for him the loss of Maria.
When she came to him that evening, he saw at once that the poor thing
was ignorant as yet of her misfortune. But the next day, she arrived,
panting, convulsed, pale as death. She threw herself into his arms, and
hid her face on his breast.
'You know?' she gasped between her sobs.
The news had spread. Disgrace and ruin were inevitable, irremediable.
There followed days of hideous torture, during which Maria, left alone
after the precipitate flight of the gamester, abandoned by the few
friends she possessed, persecuted by the innumerable creditors of her
husband, bewildered by the legal formalities of the seizure of their
effects, by bailiffs, money-lenders and rogues of all sorts, gave
evidences of a courage that was nothing less than heroic, but failed to
avert the utter ruin that overwhelmed the family.
From her lover she would receive no assistance of any kind; she told him
nothing of the martyrdom she was enduring even when he reproached her
for the brevity of her visits. She never complained; for him she always
managed to call up a less mournful smile; still obeyed the dictates of
her lover's capricious passion, and lavished upon her ruthless destroyer
all the treasures of her fond heart.
Her presentiments had not deceived her. Everything was falling in ruins
around her. Punishment had overtaken her without a moment's warning.
But she never regretted having yielded to her lover; never repented
having given herself so utterly to him, never bewailed her lost purity.
Her one sorrow--stronger than remorse, or fear, or any other trouble of
mind--was the thought that she must go away, must be separated from this
man who was the life of her life.
'My darling, I shall die. I am going away to die far from
you--alone--all alone--and you will not be there to close my eyes----'
She smiled as she spoke with certainty and resignation. But Andrea
endeavoured to kindle an illusive hope in her breast, to sow in her
heart the seeds of a dream that could only lead to future suffering.
'I will not let you die! You will be mine again and for a long time to
come. We have many happy days of love before us yet!'
He spoke of the immediate future.--He would go and establish himself in
Florence; from there he could go over as often as he liked to Sienna
under the pretext of study--could pass whole months there copying some
Old Master or making researches in ancient chronicles. Their love should
have its hidden nest in some deserted street, or beyond the city, in the
country, in some villa decorated with rural ornaments and surrounded by
a meadow. She would be able to spare an hour now and then for their
love. Sometimes she would come and spend a whole week in Florence, a
week of unbroken happiness. They would air their idyll on the hillside
of Fiesole in a September as mild as April, and the cypresses of
Montughi would not be less kind to them than the cypresses of
Schifanoja.
'Would it were true! Would it were true!' sighed Maria.
'You don't believe me?'
'Oh yes, I believe you; but my heart tells me that all these sweet
things will remain a dream.'
She made Andrea take her in his arms and hold her there for a long time;
and she leaned upon his breast, silently crouching into his embrace as
if to hide herself, with the shiver of a sick person or of one who seeks
protection from some threatening danger. She asked of Andrea only the
delicate caresses that in the language of affection she called 'kisses
of the soul' and that melted her to tears sweeter than any more carnal
delights. She could not understand how in these moments of supreme
spirituality, in these last sad hours of passion and farewell her lover
was not content to kiss her hands.
'No--no, dear love,' she besought him, half repelled by Andrea's crude
display of passion, 'I feel that you are nearer to me, closer to my
heart, more entirely one with me, when you are sitting at my side, and
take my hand in yours and look into my eyes and say the things to me
that you alone know how to say. Those other caresses seem to put us far
away from each other, to set some shadow between you and me----I don't
know how to express my thought properly----And afterwards it leaves me
so sad, so sad--I don't know what it is----I feel then so tired--but a
tiredness that has something evil about it----!'
She entreated him, humbly, submissively, fearing to make him angry. Then
she fell to recalling memories of things recent and passed, down to the
smallest details, the most trivial words, the most insignificant facts,
which all had a vast amount of significance for her. But it was towards
the first days of her stay at Schifanoja that her heart returned most
fondly.
'You remember? You remember?'
And suddenly the tears filled her downcast eyes.
One evening Andrea, thinking of her husband, asked her--'Since I knew
you, have you always been _wholly_ mine?'
'Always.'
'I am not speaking of the soul----'
'Hush!----yes, always wholly yours.'
And he, who had never before believed one of his mistresses on this
point, believed Maria without a shadow of doubt as to the truth of her
assertion.
He believed her even while he deceived and profaned her without remorse;
he knew himself to be boundlessly loved by a lofty and noble spirit,
that he was face to face with a grand and all-absorbing passion, and
recognised fully both the grandeur of that passion and his own vileness.
And yet under the lash of his base imaginings he would go so far as to
hurt the mouth of the fond and patient creature, to prevent himself from
crying aloud upon her lips the name that rose invincibly to his; and
that loving and pathetic mouth would murmur, all unconscious, smiling
though it bled--
'Even thus you do not hurt me.'