Anna Mantegazza knocked and entered just as Lavinia had finished with
her hair and was slipping into the familiar white dress. There had been,
within the last few hours, a perceptible change in the former's attitude
toward her. Lavinia realized that Anna Mantegazza regarded her with a
new interest, a greater and more personal friendliness.
“My dear Lavinia!” she exclaimed, critically overlooking the other's
preparations. “You look very appealing--like a snowdrop; exactly.
I should say the toilet for Sunday at the convent; but no longer
appropriate outside. Really, I must speak to the marchesa--parents are
so slow to see the differences in their own family. Gheta has been a
little overemphasized.
“I wonder,” she continued with glowing vivacity, “if you would allow
me--I assure you it would give me the greatest pleasure in the world....
Your figure is a thousand times better than mine; but, thank heaven, I'm
still slender.... A little evening dress from Vienna! It should really
do you very well. Will you accept it from me? I'd like to give you
something, Lavinia; and it has never been out of its box.”
She turned and was out of the room before Lavinia could reply. There was
no reason why she shouldn't take a present from Anna--Pier Mantegazza
and her father had been lifelong friends, and his wife was an intimate
of the Sanvianos. It would not, probably, be black. It wasn't. Anna
returned, followed by her maid, who bore carefully over her arm a
shimmering mass of glowing pink.
“Now!” Anna Mantegazza cried. “Your hair is very pretty, very
original--but hardly for a dress by Verlat. Sara!”
The maid moved quietly forward and directed an appraising gaze at
Lavinia. She was a flat-hipped Englishwoman, with a cleft chin and
enigmatic greenish eyes. “I see exactly, madame,” she assured Anna; and
with her deft dry hands she took down Lavinia's laboriously arranged
hair.
She drew it back from the brow apparently as simply as before, twisted
it into a low knot slightly eccentric in shape, and recut a bang.
Lavinia's eyes seemed bluer, her delicate flush more elusive; the shape
of her face appeared changed, it was more pointed and had a new willful
charm.
“The stockings,” Anna commanded.
Dressed, Lavinia Sanviano stood curiously before the long mirror; she
saw a fresh Lavinia that was yet the old; and she was absorbing her
first great lesson in the magic of clothes. Verlat, a celebrated
dressmaker, was typical of the Viennese spirit--the gown Lavinia wore
resembled, in all its implications, an orchid. There was a whisper here
of satin, a pale note of green, a promise of chiffon. Her crisp round
shoulders were bare; her finely molded arms were clouded, as it were,
with a pink mist; the skirt was full, incredibly airy; yet every
movement was draped by a suave flowing and swaying.
Lavinia recognized that she had been immensely enriched in effect; it
was not a question of mere beauty--beauty here gave way to a more subtle
and potent consideration. It was a potency which she instinctively
shrank from probing. For a moment she experienced, curiously enough, a
gust of passionate resentment, followed by a quickly passing melancholy,
a faint regret.
Anna Mantegazza and the maid radiated with satisfaction at the result of
their efforts. The former murmured a phrase that bore Gheta's name, but
Lavinia caught nothing else. The maid said:
“Without a doubt, madame.”
Lavinia lingered in her room, strangely reluctant to go down and see her
sister. She was embarrassed by her unusual appearance and dreaded the
prominence of the inevitable exclamations. At last she was obliged
to proceed. The rest stood by the entrance of the dining room. Anna
Mantegazza was laughing at a puzzled expression on the good-natured
countenance of Cesare Orsi; Gheta was slowly waving a fan of gilded
feathers; Abrego y Mochales was standing rigid and somberly handsome;
and, as usual, Pier Mantegazza was late.
Gheta Sanviano turned and saw Lavinia approaching, and the elder's
face, always pale, grew suddenly chalky; it was drawn, and the wrinkles,
carefully treated with paste, became visible about her eyes. Her hands
shook a little as she took a step forward.
“What does this mean, Lavinia?” she demanded. “Why did I know nothing
about that dress?”
“I knew nothing myself until a little bit ago,” Lavinia explained
apologetically, filled with a formless pity for Gheta. “Isn't it pretty?
Anna Mantegazza gave it to me.”
She could see, over Gheta's shoulder, Cesare Orsi staring at her in
idiotic surprise.
“Don't you like it, Gheta?” Anna asked.
Gheta Sanviano didn't answer, but closed her eyes for a moment in an
effort to control the anger that shone in them. The silence deepened to
constraint, and then she laughed lightly.
“Quite a woman of fashion!” she observed of Lavinia. “Fancy! It's a pity
that she must go back to the convent so soon.”
Her eyes while she was speaking were directed toward Anna Mantegazza
and the resentment changed to hatred. The other shrugged her shoulders
indifferently and moved toward the dining room, catching Lavinia's arm
in her own.
Mantegazza entered at the soup and was seated on Gheta's right; Cesare
Orsi was on Anna's left; and Lavinia sat between the two men, with
Mochales opposite. Whatever change had taken place in her looks made
absolutely no impression upon the latter; it was clear that he saw no
one besides Gheta Sanviano.
In the candlelight his face more than ever resembled bronze; his hair
was dead-black; above the white linen his head was like a superb effigy
of an earlier and different race from the others. It was almost savage
in its still austerity. Cesare Orsi, too, said little, which was
extraordinary for him. If Lavinia had made small mark on Mochales, at
least she had overpowered the other to a ludicrous degree. It seemed
that he had never before half observed her; he even muttered to himself
and smiled uncertainly when she chanced to gaze at him.
But what the others lacked conversationally Anna Mantegazza more than
supplied; she was at her best, and that was very sparkling, touched with
malice and understanding, and absolute independence. She insisted on
including Lavinia in every issue. At first Lavinia was only confused by
the attention pressed on her; she retreated, growing more inarticulate
at every sally. Then she became easier; spurred partly by Gheta's
direct unpleasantness and partly by the consciousness of her becoming
appearance, she retorted with spirit; engaged Pier Mantegazza in a duet
of verbal confetti. She gazed challengingly at Abrego y Mochales, but
got no other answer than a grave perfunctory inclination.
She thought of an alternative to the black gowns and unrelieved
melancholy--she might become the gayest member of the gay Roman world,
be known throughout Italy for her reckless exploits, her affairs and
Vienna gowns, all the while hiding her passion for the Flower of Spain.
It would be a vain search for forgetfulness, with an early death in an
atmosphere of roses and champagne. Gheta was gazing at her so crossly
that she took a sip of Mantegazza's brandy; it burned her throat
cruelly, but she concealed the choking with a smile of high bravado.
After dinner they progressed to a drawing-room that filled an entire end
of the villa; it lay three steps below the hall, the imposing walls and
floor covered with tapestries and richly dark rugs. Lavinia more than
ever resembled an orchid, here in a gloom of towering trees curiously
suggested by the draperies and space. She went forward with Anna
Mantegazza to an amber blur of lamplight, the others following
irregularly.
Cesare Orsi sat at Lavinia's side, quickly finishing one long black
cigar and lighting another; Pier Mantegazza and Mochales smoked
cigarettes. Anna was smoking, but Gheta had refused. Lavinia's feeling
for her sister had changed from pity to total indifference. The elder
had been an overbearing and thoughtless superior; and now, when Lavinia
felt in some subtle inexplicable manner that Gheta was losing rank, her
store of sympathy was small. Lavinia hoped that she would marry Orsi
immediately and leave the field free for herself. She wondered whether
her father would buy her a dress by Verlat.
“Honestly,” Orsi murmured, “more beautiful than your--”
She stopped him with an impatient gesture, wondering what Mochales was
saying to Gheta. A possibility suddenly filled her with dread--it was
evident that the Spaniard was growing hourly more absorbed in Gheta, and
the latter might----Lavinia could not support the possibility of Abrego
y Mochales married to her sister. But, she reassured herself, there was
little danger of that--Gheta would never make a sacrifice for emotion;
she would be sure of the comfortable material thing, and now more than
ever.
Anna Mantegazza moved to a piano, which, in the obscurity, she began to
play. The notes rose deliberate and melodious. Gheta Sanviano told Orsi:
“That's Iris. Do you remember, we heard it at the Pergola in the
winter?”
“Do go over to her,” Lavinia whispered.
He rose heavily and went to Gheta's side, and Lavinia waited expectantly
for Mochales to change too. The Spaniard shifted, but it was toward the
piano, where he stood with the rosy reflection of his cigarette on a
moody countenance. It was Pier Mantegazza who sat beside her, with a
quizzical expression on his long gray visage. He said something to her
in Latin, which she only partly understood, but which alluded to the
changing of water into wine.
“I am a subject of jest,” he continued in Italian, “because I prefer
water.”
She smiled with polite vacuity, wondering what he meant.
“You always satisfied me, Lavinia, with your dark smooth plait and white
simplicity; you were cool and refreshing. Now they have made you only
disturbing. I suppose it was inevitable, and with you the change will be
temporary.”
“I'll never let my hair down again,” she retorted. “I've settled that
with Gheta. Mother didn't care, really.”
She was annoyed by the implied criticism, his entire lack of response to
her new being. He had grown blind staring at his stupid old coins.
A step sounded behind her; she turned hopefully, but it was only Cesare
Orsi.
“The others have gone outside,” he told her, and she noticed that the
piano had stopped.
Mantegazza rose and bowed in mock serious formality, at which Lavinia
shrugged an impatient shoulder and walked with Orsi across the room and
out upon the terrace.
Florence had sunk into a dark chasm of night, except for the curving
double row of lights that marked the Lungarno and the indifferent
illumination of a few principal squares. The stars seemed big and near
in deep blue space. Orsi was standing very close to her, and she moved
away; but he followed.
“Lavinia,” he muttered, and suddenly his arm was about her waist.
She leaned back, pushing with both hands against his chest; but he
swept her irresistibly up to him and kissed her clumsily. A cold
rage possessed her. She stopped struggling; yet there was no need to
continue--he released her immediately and opened a stammering apology.
“I am a madman,” he admitted abjectly--“a little animal that ought to
be shot. I don't know what came over me; my head was in a carnival. You
must forgive or I shall be a maniac, I----”
She turned and walked swiftly into the house and mounted to her
room. All the pleasure she had had in the evening, the Viennese gown,
evaporated, left her possessed by an utter loathing of self. Now, in the
mirror, she seemed hateful, the clouded chiffon and airy clinging satin
unspeakable. Looking back out of the dim glass was a stranger who had
betrayed and cheapened her. Her pure serenity revolted against the
currents of life sweeping down upon her, threatening to inundate her.
She unhooked the Verlat gown with trembling fingers and--once more in
simple white--dropped into a deep chair, where she cried with short
painful inspirations, her face pressed against her arm. Her emotion
subsided, changed to a formless dread, and again to a black sense
of helplessness. Suddenly she rose and mechanically shook loose
her hair--footsteps were approaching. Her sister entered, pale and
vindictive.
“You are to be congratulated,” she proceeded thinly; “you made a success
with everybody--that is, with all but Mochales. It was for him, wasn't
it? You were very clever, but you failed ridiculously.”
Lavinia made no reply.
“I hope Mochales excuses you because of your greenness.”
“Youth isn't any longer your crime,” Lavinia retorted at last.
“That dress--it would suit Anna Mantegazza; but you looked only
indecent.”
“Perhaps you're right, Gheta,” Lavinia said unexpectedly. “I'm going to
bed now, please.”
Her balance, restored by sleep, was once more normal when she returned
to the Lungarno. It was again late afternoon, the daily procession was
returning from the Cascine, and Gheta was at the window, looking coldly
down. The Marchesa Sanviano was knitting at prodigious speed a shapeless
gray garment. They all turned when a servant entered:
Signer Orsi wished to see the marchese.
This unusual formality on the part of Cesare Orsi could have but one
purpose, and Lavinia and their mother gazed significantly at the elder
sister.
“The marchese is dressing,” his wife directed.
She drew a long breath of relief and nodded over her needles. Gheta
raised her chin; her lips bore the half-contemptuous expression that
lately had become habitual; her eyes were half closed.
Lavinia sat with her hands loose in her lap. She was wondering whether
or not, should she make a vigorous protest, they would send her back
to the convent. The Verlat gown was carefully hung in her closet. Last
night she had been idiotic.
The Marchese Sanviano appeared hurriedly and alone; his tie was crooked
and his expression very much disturbed. His wife looked up, startled.
“What!” she demanded directly. “Didn't he----”
“Yes,” Sanviano replied, “he did! He wants to marry Lavinia.”
Lavinia half rose, with a horrified protest; Gheta seemed suddenly
turned to stone; the knitting fell unheeded from the marchesa's lap.
Sanviano spread out his hands helplessly.
“Well,” he demanded, “what could I do?... A man with Orsi's blameless
character and the Orsi banks!”
V
The house to which Cesare Orsi took Lavinia was built over the rim of a
small steep island in the Bay of Naples, opposite Castellamare. It
faced the city, rising in an amphitheater of bright stucco and almond
blossoms, across an expanse of glassy and incredibly blue water. It
was evening, the color of sky and bay was darkening, intensified by a
vaporous rosy column where the ascending smoke of Vesuvius held the last
upflung glow of the vanished sun. Lavinia could see from her window the
pale distant quiver of the electric lights springing up along the Villa
Nazionale.
The dwelling itself drew a long irregular façade of white marble on
its abrupt verdant screen--a series of connected pavilions, galleries,
pergolas, belvedere, flowering walls and airy chambers. There were
tesselated remains from the time of the great pleasure-saturated Roman
emperors, a later distinctly Moorish influence, quattrocento-painted
eaves, an eighteenth-century sodded court, and a smoking room with the
startling colored glass of the nineteenth.
The windows of Lavinia's room had no sashes; they were composed of a
double marble arch, supported in the center by a slender twisted marble
column, with Venetian blinds. She stood in the opening, gazing fixedly
over the water turning into night. She could hear, from the room beyond,
her husband's heavy deliberate footfalls; and the sound filled her with
a formless resentment. She wished to be justifiably annoyed by them,
or him; but there was absolutely no cause. Cesare Orsi's character
and disposition were alike beyond reproach--transparent and heroically
optimistic. Since their marriage she had been insolent, she had been
both captious and continuously indifferent, without unsettling the
determined eager good-nature with which he met her moods.
During the week he went by launch into Naples in the interests of his
banking, and did not return for luncheon; and she had long uninterrupted
hours for the enjoyment of her pleasant domain. Altogether, his demands
upon her were reasonable to the point of self-effacement. He laughed
a great deal; this annoyed her youthful gravity and she remonstrated
sharply more than once, but he only leaned back and laughed harder. Then
she would either grow coldly disdainful or leave the room, followed by
the echo of his merriment. There was something impervious, like armor,
in his excellent humor. Apparently she could not get through it to wound
him as she would have liked; and she secretly wondered.
He was prodigal in his generosity--the stores of the Via Roma were
prepared to empty themselves at her desire. Cesare Orsi's wife was
a figure of importance in Naples. She had been made welcome by the
Neapolitan society--lawn fêtes had been given in villas under the
burnished leaves of magnolias on the height of Vomero. The Cavaliere
Nelli, Orsi's cousin and a retired colonel of Bersaglieri, entertained
lavishly at dinner on the terrace of Bertolini's; she went out to old
houses looking through aged and riven pines at the sea.
She would have enjoyed all this hugely if she had not been married to
Orsi; but the continual reiteration of the fact that she was Orsi's wife
filled her with an accumulating resentment. The implication that she
had been exceedingly fortunate became more than she could bear. The
consequence was that, as soon as it could be managed, she ceased going
about.
She was now at the window, immersed in a melancholy sense of total
isolation; the water stirring along the masonry below, a call from a
shadowy fishing boat dropping down the bay, filled her with longing for
the cheerful existence of the Lungarno. She had had a letter from Gheta
that morning, the first from her sister since she had left Florence,
brief but without any actual expression of ill will. After all was said,
she had brought Gheta a great disappointment; if she had been in the
elder's place probably she would have behaved no better.... It occurred
to her to ask Gheta to Naples. At least then she would have some one
with whom to recall the pleasant trifles of past years. She would
have liked to ask Anna Mantegazza, too; but this she knew was
impossible--Gheta had not forgiven Anna for her part on the night that
had resulted in Orsi's proposal for Lavinia.
She wondered, more obscurely, whether Abrego y Mochales was still in
Florence. He loomed at the back of her thoughts, inscrutably dark and
romantic. It piqued her that he had not made the slightest response to
her palpable admiration. But he had been tremendously stirred by Gheta,
who was never touched by such emotions.
A desire to see Mochales grew insidiously out of her speculations; a
desire to talk about him, hear his name. Lavinia deliberately shut her
eyes to the fact that this last became her principal reason for wishing
to see Gheta.
She told Cesare, with a diffidence which she was unable to overcome,
that she had written asking her sister for a visit. Seemingly he didn't
hear her. They were at breakfast, on the wine-red tiling of a pergola
by the water, and he had shaken his fist, with a rueful curse, in the
direction of Naples. Before him lay an open letter with an engraved page
heading.
“I said,” Lavinia repeated impatiently, “that Gheta will probably be
here the last of the week.”
“The sacred camels!” Orsi exclaimed; then: “Oh, Gheta--good!” But he
fell immediately into an angry reverie. “If I dared--” he muttered.
“What has stirred you up so?”
“It's difficult to explain to any one not born in Naples. Here, you see,
all is not in order, like Florence; we have had a stormy time between
brigands and secret factions and foreign rulers; and certain societies
sprang up, necessary once, but now--when one still exists--a source of
bribery and nuisance. This letter, for example, congratulates me on the
possession of a charming bride; it expresses the devotion of a hidden
organization, but points out that in order to guarantee your safety in
a city where the guards are admittedly insufficient it will be necessary
for me to forward two thousand lire at once.”
“You will, of course, ignore it.”
“I will certainly send the money at once.”
“What a cowardly attitude!” Lavinia declared contemptuously. “You allow
yourself to be blackmailed like a common criminal.”
Orsi laughed, his equilibrium quickly restored.
“I warned you that a stranger could not understand,” he reminded her.
“If the money weren't sent, in ten days or two weeks perhaps, there
would be a little accident on the Chiaja--your carriage would be run
into; you would be upset, confused, angry. There would be profuse
apologies, investigation, perhaps arrests; but nothing would come of it.
If the money was still held back something a little more serious would
occur. Nothing really dangerous, you understand; but finally the
two thousand lire would be gladly paid over and the accidents would
mysteriously cease.”
“An outrage!” Lavinia asserted, and Orsi nodded.
“If you had an enemy,” he continued, “you could have her gown ruined in
the foyer of the San Carlos; if it were a man he would be caught at his
club with an uncomfortable ace in his cuff. At least so I'm assured.
I haven't had any reason to look the society up yet.” He laughed
prodigiously. “Even murders are ascribed to it. Careful, Cesare, or a
new valet will cut your throat some fine morning and your widow walk
away with a more graceful man!”
“Your jokes are so stupid.” Lavinia shrugged her shoulders.
He laid the letter on the table's edge and a wandering air bore it
slanting to the floor, but he promptly recovered it.
“That must go in the safe,” he ended; “it is well to have a slight grasp
on those gentlemen.”
He rose; and a few minutes later Lavinia saw his trim brown launch,
with its awning and steersman in gleaming white, rushing through the bay
toward Naples.