When Leonora was alone, she resolved to have a good fit of thinking.
Accordingly, the next morning after Marcantonio's departure she sat by
herself in a cool room, surrounded with books and dainty writing
materials,--thinking. The little white cat that her husband had
procured, because she liked animals, climbed to the back of her chair
and made passes at her head with its small, soft paws, seeming to
delight in touching her. She put up her hand and pulled the little
creature down to her lap.
"Pussy," said she, talking English to it, "were you ever in love?" She
kissed it softly and held it up to her fair cheek. "I wonder what it is
like," she said to herself. "I wonder whether being in love is always
like this! People who love always say they would die for each other. I
am not sure whether I would die for Marcantonio. He is very good.
Yes--of course--one's husband! Any woman would die for her husband. And
yet--if the knife were very sharp and cold,--or the poison very dreadful
to take,--I am not sure. Perhaps there might be some other way out of
it, and one would not have to die after all."
Poor Leonora, she made herself think she loved him, and then she
applied all kinds of tests to her love which it would not bear, being
but a very thin and pitiful little ghost of a love.
"I really believe," she said at last, kissing the cat and half closing
her eyes, "that there is not anything much in anything after all. Things
are not much more real than the shadows in the cave that Plato talks
about. Oh dear me! And then to have people think that one is clever!
They have such an absurd idea about it,--Marcantonio, I mean. Of course
it is the nicest thing in the world to be loved more than one
deserves,--but, on the other hand, it is just as terrible a bore to have
other people forever thinking you really worth more than you are. And
then, to have him think that my little bit of knowledge is dangerous! As
if so very little could help or hurt any one! I must know a great deal
more before it can do me any good. I think I will read something hard
to-day,--how pleasant it is to be alone!"
The last reflection came quite naturally, and she did not even pause and
think about it, the sudden interest she anticipated in reading having
chased away the dutifully affectionate ideas she made it her business to
build up concerning her husband. With characteristic quickness of
determination she rose, got herself a volume of Hegel's "Æsthetics," and
buried her whole mind in the question of subjective and objective art.
To a woman--or a man either--who has not what is called an interest in
life, all manner of things temporarily take the place which should be
occupied by the leading, absorbing thought. The things that are but
relaxations, amusements, or even unimportant bits of usefulness to the
thoroughly busy woman, to a woman like Leonora become in turn objects of
intense study and care, only to be cast aside and forgotten when the
next day brings in a new era of speculation, weariness, or excitement.
It is good to read many kinds of books, it is good to do many pleasant
and agreeable things, but it is emphatically not good to think many
kinds of thoughts. If a woman must change her opinions, it is well that
the change should be gradual and the result of careful study and
examination, instead of taking place according to the weather, the cut
of a gown, or the conversation of a stray caller. Men change their minds
as completely as women, but not so often, and above all not so quickly.
To be unchangeable is the quality of the idiot; to change too easily
belongs to children and lunatics; and the happy faculty of a sensible
judgment permitting a change for the better and forbidding a change for
the worse is the high privilege of the comparatively small class of
humanity who are neither fools nor madmen.
With Leonora to live was to change, and to change often. Brimming over
and exulting in strength of physical life, neither her mind nor her
nerves could keep pace with her vitality, and the result was the
inevitable one. After great excitement there was morbid reaction, and in
the state of rest there was a restless, insatiable craving for motion.
A strong man, ruthlessly ruling her by sheer superiority of massive
power, would have brought out all that was best in her, and would have
driven her to her very best weapons for defence. But her husband was
quite another sort of person. His love for her was by far the best thing
about him; save for that, he was not an interesting man. He was young
and very tactless, though full of good impulses and gentle courtesy to
her and to every one. But he wearied her with useless details, and made
her doubt whether his affectionate manner meant love or mere good
breeding. He had an entire incapacity for making any one believe that he
was capable of great things. His sister knew how real was his goodness
of heart and how generous he could be, and she knew also how much he
loved his wife. But she had no power to put into him the passionate,
burning romance which was precisely what Leonora most longed for; and
Diana did not believe that such a woman as Leonora would long be
satisfied with such a husband as Marcantonio.
Meanwhile the day wore on, and she read seriously, and had her midday
breakfast in solitude and tried to read again. But by and by she nodded
over her book and fell asleep in the humming heat of the summer's
afternoon. As she slept she dreamed of a strong, black-browed man who
kneeled there beside her in her own house, and who presently took her in
his arms and bore her fast down the dark stairs and passages through
the rocks to the sea, where a boat lay; and as he carried her his eyes
gleamed like burning stars, and she felt that her own grew big and
bright. And suddenly he would have leapt into the boat with her, but he
stumbled and fell, and she heard the deep roar of the waters in her ears
as they sank together.
She woke with a start. The white cat had climbed up and lay on her
shoulder, purring with all its might. That was evidently where the sound
of the sea came from. She laughed, a little startled at the dream and
amused at its cause. It had been so strange--so--so wicked. She was
shocked. How could her thoughts, of themselves unaided, have gone to
such a subject! Besides, it was not the first time. She had dreamed of
Julius Batiscombe before, and always of that strange look in his eyes,
gleaming wildly with something she could not understand.
"It is dreadful!" she exclaimed, rising and going to the window.
She had slept long, for the sun was low, and when she looked at her
watch it was six o'clock. She reflected that she had not been out all
day, and that she wanted a walk. She wrapped something thin and dark
over her white summer dress and left the house. The white kitten
followed her to the door, mewing sorrowfully, and wistfully waving its
little tail.
She walked slowly down the road musing on the odd thing she had dreamed,
and seeking in her mind for the reason and cause of it, finding fault
with herself for being able to dream such things. It is one thing to be
able to call up images of ideal men, and to tell the truth she strove
even against that; but it is quite another matter to find one particular
man so much in your thoughts that you dream of his running away with
you.
She looked up, and a little church was before her, the door being open.
She hesitated a moment; she had come out to walk, but it would be so
pleasant to kneel in the cool, quiet place, in the half lights and deep
shadows; to think, and think, and to pray sweet wordless heart-prayers,
half mystic, half religious; to pour out the confessions of her soul's
suffering, and to find, even for a brief space, that trust in something
unseen, which her troubled spirit could not give to earthly wisdom or
earthly love. She raised the curtain and entered.
It was a simple little church, with a floor of green and white tiles,
whereon stood rows of green benches and a few straw chairs. The light
was high, and the sun did not penetrate into the building. Everything
was very clean and cool. Over the altar was a great picture, neither bad
nor good, of a monk saint, dark in colour and inoffensive in
composition; there were two or three small chapels at the sides, and the
plain white arch of the roof was supported by two rows of square masonry
pillars.
When Leonora entered she saw that she was alone, and the anticipated
pleasure of religious exaltation was heightened by the sensation of
solitude. She stood one moment, and then, being sure that no one saw
her, she touched with her fingers the holy water in the basin by the
door and made the sign of the cross, bending her knee slightly towards
the altar. Had there been any one in the church she would perhaps not
have done so; but being alone she loved to experience the forms of a
religion in which she did not seriously believe, but in which she
trusted far more than she knew. She went forward, took a straw chair,
turned it round and kneeled on the tiles, burying her face in her hands.
At first, as she knelt there, she trembled with a strange emotion that
she loved,--a sort of wave of contrition, of faith, of penitence, and of
uncertainty, half painful and yet wholly delicious, that seemed to her
the sweetest and most salutary sensation in the world. It was just
painful enough to make the pleasure of it keener and rarer. She could
not have described it, but she loved it and sought it, when she was in
the humour. Gradually her troubles, real and fancied, would answer to
her command, and array themselves in rank and file for her inspection;
the domestic difficulties, small and snappish little knots of
mosquito-like annoyance, biting tiny bites to right and left, and with
little stings stinging their way to notice in the foreground; then the
troubles of the heart, the temptations of a wild, unspoken and ideal
love, streaming by her in the sweep of tempest and storm, stretching out
sweet faces and fierce hands to take her with them, and to bear her
away from hope of salvation or thought of heaven to the strange unknown
space beyond; then again the shapeless and awful host of her fancied
philosophies, now towering in fearful strength and menace to the sky,
and rending and tearing each other to empty nothing and howling
hollowness, now falling down to earth in miserable shapes and slinking
insignificantly away; but last and worst of all, there was a deep dark
shadow, the trouble of her heart, the certainty that she had made the
great mistake and done the irretrievable sin against truth, that she had
married a man she could never love, but whom--God forbid the
thought!--whom she might hate for the very lack he had of anything that
could deserve hating. And then all the pleasure of her exultation was
gone; and the dull, uncertain pain, that would not take shape because it
had no remedy, filled all her soul and mind and body; she had never felt
it as she felt it to-day, but she knew that each time she came to the
church to let her heart talk to her in the silence, this same pain had
come, sooner or later, and that each time it was stronger and more real.
She bent low under its weight, and the tears gathered and fell upon her
hands and on the rough straw chair.
* * * * *
Julius Batiscombe had passed the day after the dinner in his boat,
sailing far out to sea in the early morning, among the crested waves and
the dancing sunbeams, smelling the salt smell gladly, and enjoying the
sharp, cool spray that flew up over the bows. And at noon, when the west
wind sprang up, he went about and ran homewards over the rolling water.
All that day he was thinking of Leonora, but he was persuading himself
that he could and would make her his friend, and that the sudden
attraction he had felt for her was nothing but a little natural sympathy
of minds, striving to assert itself.
He found these thoughts so agreeable and edifying that he determined to
repeat the experience on the following day, and test their reality by
their durability. But somehow the hours seemed longer, and before the
wind turned, as it does every day in summer on the southern coast, he
put the helm down, furled sail, and bade his men pull home. He was
discontented, and, having no one but himself to consult, he thought he
would try something else. Once in his room at the hotel he tried to
sleep, but he could not; he tried to read, but everything disgusted him;
he tried to write, and wrote nonsense. At six o'clock he went out for a
walk. It was not unnatural, perhaps, that he should take the road toward
Leonora's villa, between the high walls of the narrow lanes, for it was
still hot, and the dust lay thick in the road. Besides, he knew that
Leonora was away, and that consequently there would not be the
temptation to call upon her. For in spite of his visions of friendship
he felt an instinctive conviction that he ought not to see her.
Consequently, as he strolled along the road, smoking a cigarette and
studying the extremely varied types of the Sorrento beggar, he was
conscious of a comforting assurance that he was not in mischief.
At the end of half an hour he was passing the gate of the Carantoni
villa. He stopped a moment to look at the little vision of flowers and
orange-trees that gleamed so pleasantly through the iron rails, in
contrast to the dead monotony of stone walls in the lane. A servant was
coming toward the gate, and seeing Batiscombe standing there, opened it
wide and took off his hat. Batiscombe carelessly asked if the Signora
Marchesa were at home, expecting to be told that she was gone to Rome.
"No, Signore," returned the man; "the Signora Marchesa is this minute
gone out, it may be a quarter of an hour. Your excellency"--everybody is
an excellency in the south--"will probably find her in the little church
along the road, where she often goes." The man bowed, and Batiscombe
turned on his heel, not wishing to talk with him. But he turned toward
the church.
He walked very slowly, as though in hopes that Leonora would meet him as
she came home; and when he came to the door he stopped, as she had done,
hesitated, and went in. He trod softly, as Marcantonio had more than
once observed, and he did not disturb the silence of the place. He stood
still, holding his breath, and knowing that he ought not to stay, but
unable for his very life to move. His overhanging brow bent as he
watched her, and a curious look crossed his bronzed face, as though he
were pained, but felt both sympathy and pity for the kneeling woman. The
dead silence, the cold light from above, the half-prostrate figure of
Leonora clad in white with the dark lace thing just falling from her
splendid hair,--it all seemed like a strange scene in a play, and Julius
looked for the sake of looking, while his heart felt something deeper
than the artistic impression.
Leonora was bending low upon the seat of the straw chair, the bitter
tears trickling down through her white fingers, and her whole life
within her convulsed in the consciousness of sorrow. It had so long been
vague--this sad knowledge of an evil ever present, and yet ever eluding
her attempts to see it and understand it. But now it had come upon her
suddenly. After two months of wedded life she knew that she had made a
mistake beyond all repairing. She had tried hard to love Marcantonio,
she had tried hard to believe that she loved him, but the deception
could not last in her, and yet it seemed death to lose it. Sometimes she
could think almost indifferently of her marriage, talking to herself,
and asking questions of which she knew the answer, but to which she
hoped to find another. Did she love him? she would ask at such moments;
and she would answer that she thought so, well knowing that whatever
real love might be, it was not what she felt for him. But to-day it
seemed as though the veil were torn and she saw the dreadful truth. He
had left her for a day or two, and she had said it was so pleasant to
be alone. That was not love--ah, no! And that dreadful dream, too, that
haunted her still; it kept returning, with its sinful face, the face of
Julius Batiscombe. The whole unfaithfulness of herself to herself rushed
upon her overwhelmingly, relentlessly, till she could not bear it, but
bowed herself and sobbed aloud before the altar.
There was a slight noise behind her, and with an effort she controlled
herself, rose till she kneeled upright and merely bent her head upon her
hands, drawing the back of the chair towards her in the act. She had
been disturbed, and the sense of annoyance overmastered the expression
of her trouble for a moment. Gradually the consciousness of a presence
took possession of her, and she knew that some one was watching her; she
grew uneasy, tried to repeat a prayer mechanically for the sake of
thinking of something definite, failed, touched her hair half
surreptitiously with one hand, and finally rose from her knees. As she
turned to leave the church she met Julius Batiscombe's eyes, and she
started perceptibly. It was so precisely the expression she had seen in
her dream, little more than an hour since, that she was fairly
frightened, and would have turned and fled had there been any other way
out. But when she looked again she saw something that reassured her.
There was that which attracted, as well as that which frightened her.
She had the length of the church to walk, and she made up her mind that
she would not show that she was surprised, and would behave as though
nothing had happened. For she was a strong woman in such ways, and could
rely upon herself if not taken too much off her guard. Meanwhile
Batiscombe looked on the ground; for he was often conscious of the too
great boldness of his sight, and knew that it must be disagreeable to
her. So he moved a step or two, hat in hand, waiting for Leonora to pass
him, and prepared to follow if she showed any sign of wishing it. He
feared, however, that he had offended her by his inopportune appearance,
and he was prepared for a repulse. Nevertheless, after the first start
was over, she came boldly towards him, smiling rather sadly and looking
wonderfully beautiful; for the tears only made her eyes softer and
deeper, leaving a gentle shadow in them, just as the sea is bluer and
pleasanter in its blueness beneath the shade of an overhanging cliff.
She smiled, and passing out half looked at him again as he lifted the
green curtain for her. He smiled again, gravely, and followed her. When
they were on the steps, he bowed low again.
"How do you do, Mr. Batiscombe?" she said, quite naturally, holding out
her hand to him. But in the open air, his hand touching hers, she could
not help blushing a little when she thought of that dream an hour ago.
"You did not go to Rome, after all?" he said, as they began to walk
along the lane.
"No," she answered, "it was too hot. Do you often go to the little
church, Mr. Batiscombe? It is so nice and quiet there, is it not?"
She was determined to put a bold face on the matter. Besides, he perhaps
had not heard those sobs,--he had only seen her kneeling, perhaps, and
had not understood that she was crying. But Julius had seen all and
heard all, and was pondering deep in his heart the causes which could
make her unhappy, seeing she was young and, in his opinion,
beautiful,--married, as society said, to the man she loved, and not
lacking the goods of this world, while praying ardently for those of the
next.
"I have sometimes looked in," answered Batiscombe. "It was a chance that
took me there to-day."
"Yes?"
"Yes "--he glanced down sidelong at her face--"that is to say--not
altogether."
She was silent, walking serenely by his side.
"No, not altogether," he continued, determining suddenly on his course.
"The fact is, I was walking by your place, and a servant who was just
coming out told me you were in church, and then I went in. I suppose I
ought not to have done it," he added with a little laugh; "I am very
sorry I disturbed you. Pray forgive me."
"Not at all,--churches are free for every one. But why do you laugh?"
"At my own stupidity," he answered. "I might have known that when you go
to church at odd times you go to be alone, and not to have wandering
callers sent there after you."
"What makes you think that?" she asked, curious to know how much he had
noticed. She argued that if he had heard her crying he would think the
question natural, whereas, if he had not, he would not suspect anything
from it.
"Because you acted as though you thought you were alone," he said
seriously.
"I did think so," she said, blushing faintly. "Do you know? I was quite
startled when I saw you there."
"I saw you were," he answered, still very gravely, "and I am very
sorry."
"Do you remember what I said to you at Castellamare, Mr. Batiscombe?"
"Yes; you said that life was not all roses, and you said it in earnest."
"Yes," said Leonora. "You see I did. I am not always in earnest."
"Is it rude to ask how one distinguishes between your excellency in
earnest and your excellency in fun?" inquired Batiscombe, glad enough to
turn the conversation to a jest, for he judged Leonora to be rather
imprudent. Indeed, he wondered how she could have said what she had,
unless it were from a wish to face out the situation.
"You ought to be able to see," she answered, laughing lightly, "but when
you cannot, perhaps I will tell you."
"Pray do," said he. "I am very stupid about such things,--but then, I am
always in earnest, even when I want to be funny. Perhaps you might think
me most diverting when I am most in earnest."
"No," said Leonora, "I should not think that. I should think you might
be very unpleasant when you are in earnest--at least, from the things
you write."
"That is a doubtful compliment," remarked Julius, smiling.
"Is it? I cannot imagine anything more delightful than having the power
to be as unpleasant as you want to be."
"Is there anything I can do for you, Marchesa? I should be most happy, I
am sure,--short of poisoning your enemies, as you suggested the other
day."
"You ought not to draw the line," she said with a laugh.
"Oh, very well. I will do the poisoning too, if you wish it."
"Of course. What is the use of having friends if you cannot rely on them
to do anything you want?"
"If I could be one of your friends," he said gravely, "I am sure I would
not 'draw any line,' as you call it."
"With what seriousness you say that!" she exclaimed, very much amused.
She was nervous from the knowledge that he had found her out in the
church, and she laughed at anything rather recklessly. But Batiscombe
had turned grave again.
"Would you rather that one should ask such a privilege in jest?" he
asked.
"No indeed," said she, a little frightened at the point to which she had
brought him.
"Then I ask it very much in earnest," he answered.
"To be my friend?" she asked, looking straight before her.
"Yes, to be your friend," said he, watching her closely.
"Really? In earnest?"
"Really--in earnest," he answered. She stopped suddenly in the road.
"I accept," she said, frankly holding out her hand.
"I am very proud," he said quietly. He took off his hat and touched her
fingers with his lips. Then they walked on without a word for some
minutes.
"What a strange thing life is!" exclaimed Leonora, at last.
"Yes, it is very strange," he answered. "Here are we two, on the
smallest provocation, swearing eternal friendship on the high road, as
though we were going to storm a citadel, or head an Arctic expedition.
But I am really very glad, and very grateful."
Somehow the reflection did not sound light or flippant; and to tell the
truth, Leonora was thinking precisely the same thing, wondering inwardly
how she could possibly have gone to such a length with a mere
acquaintance. But the land of friendship was an untried territory for
Leonora, and she seemed to find in the idea a sudden rest from a sense
of danger. A friend could never be a lover,--she knew that! This was the
meaning of the dream. But she answered quietly enough.
"If things are real at all," she said, "they are as real at one time as
at another."
"Yes," answered Batiscombe. "Malakoff or Sorrento, it is all the same."