It was clear that after what had passed between Leonora and her husband,
the relations must assume the aspect described in diplomatic language as
"strained," to say the least of it. The two met many times in the course
of the day, and never referred to the subject of their difference; but
Leonora was well aware that she was watched. If ever she sallied out
into the garden, hoping to escape observation, her husband was at hand,
offering to accompany her. She once even went so far as to go down some
distance with him towards the rocks, she could not tell why,--perhaps
because it would have been a comfort to her to catch a glimpse of Julius
in the boat. But he was probably lurking behind the rocks, just out of
sight, and she could not see him. She knew that he still kept his watch
during half the day, not having yet invented a better plan,--for she was
in correspondence with him,--and in the meanwhile, until new
arrangements could be made, there was a bare chance that she might
escape for a moment in the morning and be able to see him. Her husband
never left her side in the afternoon.
Temistocle, the knave, had failed in his attempt to gain Marcantonio's
favour, as has been seen, but he now reaped a golden harvest from the
lovers, who paid him handsomely for carrying letters, with a reckless
feeling that if he betrayed them the deluge might come,--but that
without him they were utterly cut off from each other. He had at first
carefully opened one or two letters and skilfully closed them again, but
had desisted on finding that they were written in English, a language he
unfortunately did not understand. It was now his business to encourage
the correspondence to the best of his ability, in order that whenever it
should be convenient to spring the mine, he might have some letter
passing through his hands, which he could show to Marcantonio. He made a
bargain with an old man who had a little donkey cart, to hang about the
lane leading to the villa in the afternoon hours, when Temistocle, being
free from the cares of the pantry, found it convenient to play postman.
As the distance was considerable, and as Batiscombe always gave him a
gold piece for a letter, and Leonora another, he thought he could afford
himself ten sous a day for the hire of his primitive cab, without any
reckless extravagance.
The first letter he had carried was to Batiscombe. Leonora informed him
briefly of the scene with her husband, and begged that he would wait as
usual for a few days, or until something better could be devised. But he
waited in vain. Then he wrote and proposed that she should drive
somewhere and meet him. But she answered that her husband always drove
with her when she went out. He proposed to get into the garden at night,
to scale her window,--anything. But Marcantonio had bought a brace of
abominable English terriers that howled as though they had swallowed a
banshee. Marcantonio also kept pistols, and slept with his windows open.
Meanwhile Marcantonio would have given anything to catch Batiscombe and
call upon him for an explanation,--but he was afraid to leave his wife
for an hour, lest she should have an opportunity of going down to the
sea. He could never be quite certain whether Batiscombe were there or
not, for the latter had grown cautious and lay very quietly in his boat
just out of sight, knowing that Leonora would call if she wanted him,
according to the agreement, and he only came in the morning now and
waited till twelve o'clock, in order to be at home to receive her
letters in the afternoon. Yet Marcantonio would not employ a spy to
watch whether Batiscombe were on the water. He could not do that--it was
too utterly mean.
Leonora grew pale and thin. She was as thoroughly in love with Julius as
a woman of strong temper and impulse can be with the first man she has
ever cared for. She dreamed of him, thought of him, longed for him,
during every hour of the day and night. He was to her the realisation
of the strongest fancy of her life, the passionate, ruthless,
all-daring lover; and the consciousness of utter wrong that underlay her
feelings only lent the strength of moral desperation to her passion.
Having lost all right to other things, she had that left, and only that,
on which to rely for all the happiness the world owed her. She would go
to the end of it, and enjoy it all, now that she had found it; and
then--then she would die, she said to herself, and no one should suffer
by her fault. But she was long past the elementary stage, when love can
be put upon a block and modelled and shaped with tools, or pulled to
pieces, at will, being as yet but a fragile clay sketch and very
yielding. The clay had been done into marble, and the marble set up in
the inmost sanctuary of the temple,--and if the idol were broken the
pieces could not be joined, and the temple must be empty and bare
forever. It had come about very quickly--but what of that? Who shall say
that passion born in a moment, ready armed, is not so strong and
enduring as that which is evolved like man from a pitiful thing with a
tail--a mere flirtation, to the semblance of humanity, to the godlike
presence of true love?
Or who shall tell us that love is less a real thing, because it is evil
instead of being good? Devils are quite as real as angels, as I have no
doubt many of us will find in due time. Do not underrate the strength of
a thing because it is bad, nor doubt its reality because you do not like
its looks.
Leonora was in love with all her might, and it makes no difference in
the effect upon the individual whether love is lawful or not, so long as
it is thwarted and opposed at every turn. Her character, from being
vague and indistinct, reaching out after many things, and never wholly
grasping any, had suddenly become definite and full of a mature
purpose--the purpose to love Julius recklessly, without consideration or
question. The one real thing which remained possible for her had come,
dominating and crushing down the army of her most favourite unrealities.
The man she loved stood out from the chaotic darkness of the past and
from the dreary shadows of the present as a glorious figure of light,
magnificent in all that could be noblest; and she gave to him her soul,
her life, and her strength, without hesitation and without fear. She had
no remorse, no pity for her husband, no present consciousness of sin,
for she was too near the wrong, and too new to it, not to enjoy it.
The traditional hardened sinner, the very monstrosity and arch-deformity
of complicated vice, held up by preachers as a bugbear and a moral
scarecrow to the young, the creature without heart, conscience, or
capacity of good, does not enjoy his wickedness in the least. It has
lost its novelty for him and its sharp, peppery savour. The people who
really enjoy it are young; they are those who have tasted little of
life, and have yet all the sensibility and refinement of palate that
can distinguish between one sauce and another--between green, red, and
black pepper. They have dreamed of the pepper, have never been allowed
to have it, and have been fed on a kind of moral pap that disagreed with
them from childhood. Suddenly the spice is within their reach, and they
make to themselves a glorious feast of hot things, vaguely hoping that
they will recover from the indigestion before they are found out. And
sometimes they do, though the recovery is very painful--and sometimes
they do not.
Leonora had subsisted on what she could get in the way of enjoyment, but
her capacity far exceeded the supply that presented itself. She was not
one of those people who can live for days in happiness from one sight of
something beautiful, from a glimpse at a great picture, or from the
memory of one strain of music. She liked all that was artistic, and
especially that which was admirable for novelty, fineness of execution,
or boldness of conception. She was not impressed with the beauty of
small and unpretending things,--the art that amused her was necessarily
of the most brilliant kind. The people she liked were the stirring,
active, original people who either make history or make public fools of
themselves, or both. The philosophies she had dabbled in were such as
could produce in her a sensation of odd possibility rather than such as
could satisfy a logical intellect, and they resolved themselves into a
vast sea of aspirations, emotions, and potential passions, in which she
loved to disport herself, diving and splashing and floating,
like a magnificent sea-nymph in fullest enjoyment of her wild
vitality,--sitting, an hour afterwards, on some lonely rock, and
wringing her white hands to heaven in despair, because, being but half
divine, she was less goddess-like than the great goddesses of Olympus.
She could not help it if she grew pale and thin,--she was so wretched
without him; and, without his letters and the sense that he was not so
very far from her after all, she would have gone mad. She would sit for
hours in her room staring at nothing; or she would go through elaborate
processes of toilet before the glass, looking at herself and wondering
if he would find her changed,--perhaps that very day some chance would
offer, and she might see him. Everything was possible. That was the
colour he liked best, and that bit of jewelry,--put it on, in case he
should come. And again, she would change it all, because she would not
wear for her husband the things she wore for her sweet lover; and then
she would change once more, perhaps, and put back the colours and the
ornaments he loved, so that she might the better think of him while she
was with Marcantonio; she had a thousand idle thoughts and fancies which
she strove hard to train into the semblance of a little happiness, the
hollowest image of a little joy.
The days came and went miserably for nearly a fortnight. In all that
time Marcantonio watched her closely, never relaxing in his vigilance.
She might have escaped, perhaps, but she would have been missed in half
an hour, and she had not the courage to do anything so desperate,--the
time must come, she thought, when things should change. But meanwhile
she grew haggard and worn.
Marcantonio had abandoned the idea of sending for a friend to deal with
Batiscombe. What he had to say could, he thought, best be said directly,
and there could then be no difficulty in establishing a pretext for
fighting. But first of all he must keep his wife out of danger. Feeling
that he held her entirely at his mercy, he was willing to take some time
for deliberation. She could not see Julius, and it would be the best
possible test to ascertain how she bore the trial. Marcantonio had grown
hard and calculating in his jealousy, but he ground his teeth as he
watched her and saw that she was falling ill,--and it was not so much
for sympathy with her, as for anger that she should so love another. At
last he determined upon a new course.
"Leonora," he said briefly, one day, "we will leave this place
immediately, since it does not suit you. Will you be so amiable as to
give orders to have your things packed?"
Leonora started a little, and looked at him. It was not often that she
cared to look at him now.
"Why do you wish to go?" she asked at last.
"Because, as I said, this place does not suit you. You are
ill--miserable. Ma foi! do you think I will allow you to stay in a place
where you are always pale and eat nothing?"
"I am not ill," said she, "and I have a very good appetite. I do not
wish to go away. Besides, you have taken the villa for the whole summer.
It would be such a useless waste of money to move again."
"Ah! You become economical. It is very well; but economy does not enter
into this case at all. We will go to Cadenabbia, or to any place in the
lakes, where it is far cooler."
"I do not mind the heat," said Leonora, "as you know. Why not say at
once that you are tired of Sorrento, and wish to go away to please
yourself? It would be much simpler and more honest."
"Pardon me, my dear, I am perfectly well here. I could spend the rest of
my life at Sorrento. But you are not well--whatever the cause may
be--and there is a possibility that you may be better elsewhere. Donc"--
"Oh, of course," interrupted Leonora, "if you have made up your mind I
must submit. If you think you can make me more miserable anywhere else
than you can here, I must let you try. I hardly think you can. You might
be satisfied. Nevertheless, let us go."
"I do not wish to make you miserable, you know perfectly. I wish to make
you happy and free."
"Free?" repeated Leonora. "Indeed, you have a singular fashion of making
me free, to watch me day and night, as though I intended to run away
with your silver. Free, indeed! Free from what?"
She laughed, scornfully enough, in his face. It was the first time they
had approached any subject of this kind since the memorable night after
Marcantonio's discovery. But since he had made up his mind to take her
away he was willing to undergo another scene if it were absolutely
necessary.
"To make you free from the society of Monsieur Batiscombe," answered
Marcantonio boldly. "You can never be well until you are absolutely out
of his reach, and if I must go to the end of the world I will accomplish
that."
"You need not insult me in words," said Leonora, disdainfully. "You have
done it quite enough already by your deeds."
Marcantonio was silent for a moment. The speech hurt him, for he knew
how he believed in her innocence, and how it was his jealousy that now
prompted most of his actions. His voice changed a little as he answered,
and he was more like his old self than he had been for days.
"Leonora," he said, "I would not insult you for anything. But, would you
rather I were not a little jealous, since I really love you?"
Perhaps he spoke foolishly--perhaps he hoped to soften her heart: at all
events he spoke seriously enough, and laid his hand on hers. But she
did not like his touch and drew her fingers away.
"A little jealous!" she cried. "So little that I am kept like a prisoner
and watched like a political suspect! Be jealous--yes--since you say you
love me; but behave like a sensible creature. Moreover, you might make
sure that you had some cause for jealousy before coupling the name of
the first man you chance to dislike with mine. Is not that an insult?"
"Certainly it is--and if I did that you would be quite right," said he;
"but things are a little different. You do not understand Batiscombe--I
do. You have taken a fancy for him--so did I. But you push your fancy
too far. I now understand him, and I do not think him a proper friend
for you. You make difficulties, you insist upon seeing him. I forbid
you, and prevent you. You turn pale and ill, and I am angry that you
should be so foolish. Mon Dieu! I am angry--voilà."
"One must certainly allow," said Leonora, with a sneer, "that you have a
singularly delicate way of stating your own case."
It was the best thing she could find to say, though she knew the sarcasm
was not merited. He wished once for all to put the matter clearly before
her, and he did it honestly and delicately, since he described her
passion as a "fancy," her strategy and secret meetings as "insisting
upon seeing" Mr. Batiscombe. It would be impossible to state such a
case more delicately if it had to be stated at all. A cleverer man, or
a less jealous man than Marcantonio, might have gone about it less
directly; and that is all that can be said. But he was a half-formed
character, as yet, with some good possibilities and hardly any bad ones.
He was naturally good, but good as yet without much experience, and his
teaching in the troubles of life had come upon him very suddenly. It had
never struck him that it could be difficult to manage a woman, and he
did not like the idea now that it was thrust upon him. The woman he had
made his wife would, he had supposed, be like his sister, of the kind
that manage themselves, and do it well; and if he had anticipated
exercising any influence over Leonora, it was influence of a very
different sort from that which he was now driven to exert. He had made
up his mind, however, that she must obey him now, or that he should
perish in the struggle, and a certain family obstinacy of purpose,
inherited from his father and all his race, suddenly made its appearance
and changed him from an easy-going, pleasant-spoken young fellow into a
very determined man, so far as his wife was concerned.
He had said that she should go at once, and go she should, without any
delay whatsoever. Instead of answering her sarcastic remark about his
indelicacy, he went obstinately back to his proposition.
"Let us not talk any more about it," he said, to cut the difficulty
short. "You will doubtless be so amiable as to give the necessary
orders about your things?"
Leonora shrugged her shoulders very slightly, as much as it is possible
for a great lady to do, and as much as would horrify a very strict
duenna.
"If you wish it," she said, "I must."
"Then we will start in two days, if it is agreeable to you."
"It is not agreeable to me," said Leonora, wearied to death by his
civility, "but we will start when you please,--in two days if you say
it."
She was casting about in her mind for some desperate means of seeing
Julius and assuring herself that he would follow her. Of course he would
do that, but she could not go without seeing him once more in Sorrento;
there was so much to be said that she could not write,--so very much!
The conversation with Marcantonio had taken place little more than an
hour before dinner. As he left the room Leonora glanced at the clock.
There was time yet,--if she could only get some conveyance. She might
see Julius and be back before dinner. She could make some excuse for not
dressing--if her husband noticed it, which was unlikely. He had gone to
his room, contrary to his custom, for he generally did not leave her
until she went to dress. His windows were towards the sea, and she could
slip out through the garden. It had rained a little, but that was no
matter. There would be the less dust.
A garden hat she sometimes wore hung in the hall, among her husband's
hats and whips and sticks; she snatched it quickly and went out, walking
leisurely for a few yards, till she was hidden by the orange-trees. Then
she gathered up her skirt a little and ran like a deer over the moist
path, through the gate that stood ajar, and down the narrow lane between
the high damp walls towards Sorrento, never looking behind her nor
pausing to take breath, for she feared that if she stopped to breathe
she might stop to think, and not do what she most wished to.
There are always little open carriages hanging about the lanes during
the height of the season, in the hope of picking up stray fares, and
before she had gone two hundred yards she overtook one of these, moving
lazily along. The man was all grins and alacrity at the mere sight of
her and pulled up, gesticulating wildly and leaning backward over his
box to arrange the cushions with one hand while he held the reins with
the other. The whole conveyance is so small that the driver can touch
every part of the inside with his hands from his seat. She sprang in and
told the man the name of Batiscombe's hotel, promising him anything if
he would drive fast. In six or seven minutes he brought her to the door,
and she told him to wait. She would have dismissed him at once and taken
another to return, but she found herself without money. She could borrow
something from Batiscombe.
He had chanced to tell her the number of his rooms one day, when she was
asking about the hotel, and now she luckily remembered it. Stopping the
first servant she met, she bade him show her the way. One of
Batiscombe's sailors, resplendent in dark-blue serge and a scarlet silk
handkerchief, was seated on a bench outside the door. He was a quick
fellow, and Julius employed him as his body servant. Sailors, he said,
were always cleaner than servants, and much neater.
The man sprang to his feet, saw the anxious expression in Leonora's face
and the general appearance of haste about her, and guessing that he
could not do wrong, opened the door and almost pushed her in, closing it
behind her and confronting the astonished hotel servant with a perfectly
grave face.
Sailors have good memories, especially for people who own boats, and the
man remembered Leonora perfectly well, having helped to row her to
Castellamare, and having raced her crew on the occasion when Batiscombe
had attempted a precipitous flight. In his opinion the Marchesa
Carantoni would not wish to be seen waiting outside his master's door,
whatever might be the errand which brought her in such hot hurry. The
hotel servant grumbled something about the franc he had expected for
bringing the lady up, and the stalwart seaman laughed at him so that he
cursed the whole race of sea-folk, and went away in anger of the
serio-comic, hotel kind.
Leonora found herself in Batiscombe's sitting-room. For Batiscombe was
a luxurious man, excepting when he was roughing it in earnest, and he
had made up his mind of late years that a human being could not exist in
less than two rooms, if he lived in rooms at all.
Leonora had not thought at all, from the moment when she had taken her
resolution in her own drawing-room until she found herself standing
before Julius Batiscombe in the hotel. At such times, women act first
and think afterwards, lest perchance the thinking should interfere with
the doing. But now that the thing was done, she realised at once the
whole importance of the step, and at the same time she understood with
what ease it had been accomplished. She saw how, with one bound, she was
out of her prison, and with the man she loved, and though she was
frightened at the magnitude of the deed, she knew that with him she
should find strength and comfort and happiness. What mattered the past?
She had not seen Julius for a fortnight, and though in that time she
knew that her love had increased tenfold, yet the outline of him had
lost distinctness, and she found him more than ever the man she had
dreamed of, and discovered, and loved. He was one of those men whose
magnificent vitality casts a sort of magnetic influence on their
surroundings, just as Leonora herself sometimes did. When Batiscombe was
away, his faults might be detected and criticised,--his selfishness,
his combativeness, his vanities. But when he was talking to people, and
chose to be agreeable, it was hard not to fall under the spell. He was
so eminently a man of action as well as of thought, that even those who
disliked him most were obliged to confess that he had certain large
qualities,--comforting themselves by describing them as "dangerous," as
perhaps they were, to himself and others.
And now Leonora looked upon him and knew how wholly and truly she loved
him, and how ready she was to sacrifice anything and anybody to her
love, even to herself and her own reputation and honour. With heroic
people that consideration of self might first be thrown to the winds;
but Leonora was not heroic. She was very passionate and sometimes very
foolish, but with all her "higher standard" she believed in the social
regulations and distinctions of life. It was the English part of her
nature, fighting for a show of Philistinism amidst so much that was the
very reverse. It was a strong passion indeed that could make her throw
it all away, or even think such a step possible.
It was not that she had yielded weakly to a first impression of
weariness after her marriage, and had at once begun to amuse herself
with the first man who crossed her path. Weariness alone, the mere
commonplace sensation of being bored, could never have led her to such a
length. A great variety of circumstances had combined to bring about her
destruction. The wild ideas of her girlhood, investing Marcantonio with
just enough romance to make him barely come within the line of her
"standard," but nerved and encouraged by the faculty she possessed for
deceiving herself, had led her into a rash marriage, in which she had
been helped and applauded by all those sensible people who think that
when money and position are combined on both sides, marriage must
necessarily be a good thing. Then followed the bitter disappointment and
collapse of all her theories and hopes, leaving a desperate void and a
certainty of misery, which gathered strength even from the command of
language she had acquired in the study of the imaginary nothingness of
everything. And at the very moment when there seemed nothing before her
but a dreary waste of years, an individual had appeared who realised the
dream she had lost.
And it is indeed a noble quality so long as it is locked close within
the treasury of the soul, and so long as one good woman, and one only,
holds the key. But of all the unutterable baseness in this world, there
is none more despicable than that of the man who makes one woman after
another believe that he loves her to distraction, as he never loved any
one else, well knowing, the while, that if the furies spare him to an
unhonoured old age, it is out of sheer contempt for the blear-eyed
Adonis, shambling weak-kneed to his grave with a flower in his
button-hole and a ghastly leer at the last woman he meets before death
overtakes him.
Leonora was a woman who was probably incapable of a second passion, and
the wholeness of the first might lend it some dignity, some simple
loftiness of disregard for lesser things, making it seem nobler for
being a single sin, sinned bravely for true love's sake. There were such
loves in the world long before Launcelot loved Guinevere, or Héloise was
laid in the grave with Abelard. But the world has no lack of men like
Julius Batiscombe, men in no way worthy of the women who love them, nor
ever able to be worthy.
Leonora had chosen, and she would not have given him up for all the joys
of paradise, any more than she would have believed a word against his
faithfulness and loyalty to herself. He had sworn--how could he deceive
her?