REANDA went home that evening in a very disturbed state of mind. He had
been better so long as he had not given vent to what he felt; for, as
with many southern men of excitable temper and weak nerves, his thoughts
about himself, as distinguished from his pursuits, did not take positive
shape in his mind until he had expressed them in words. Amongst the
Latin races the phrase, 'he cannot think without speaking,' has more
truth as applied to some individuals than the Anglo-Saxon can easily
understand.
For many months the artist had been most unhappy. His silence concerning
his grief had been almost exemplary, and had been broken only now and
then by a hasty exclamation of annoyance when Gloria's behaviour had
irritated him beyond measure. He was the gentlest of men; and even when
he had lost his temper with her, he had never spoken roughly.
"You are hard to please, my dear," he had sometimes said.
But that had been almost the strongest expression of his displeasure. It
was not, indeed, that he had exercised very great self-control in the
matter, for he had little power of that sort over himself. If he was
habitually mild and gentle in his manner with Gloria, it was rather
because, like many Italians, he dreaded emotion as something like an
illness, and could avoid it to some extent merely by not speaking freely
of what he felt. Silence was generally easy to him; and he had not
broken out more than two or three times in all his life, as he had done
on that afternoon alone with Francesca.
The inevitable consequence followed immediately,--a consequence as much
physical as mental, for when he went away from the Palazzetto, his clear
dark eyes were bloodshot and yellow, and his hands had trembled so that
he had hardly been able to find the armholes of his great-coat in
putting it on. He walked with an uncertain and agitated step, glancing
to right and left of him as he went, half-fiercely, half-timidly, as
though he expected a new adversary to spring upon him from every corner.
The straight line of the houses waned and shivered in the dusk, as he
looked at them, and he saw flashes of light in the air. His head was hot
and aching, and his hat hurt him. Altogether he was in a dangerous
state, not unlike that which, with northern men, sometimes follows hard
drinking.
He hated to go home that evening. So far as he was conscious, he had
neither misrepresented nor in any way exaggerated the miseries of his
domestic existence; and he felt that it was before him now, precisely as
he had described it. There would be the same questions, to which he
would give the same answers, at which Gloria would put on the same
expression of injured hopelessness, unless she broke out and lost her
temper, which happened often enough. The prospect was intolerable.
Reanda thrust his hands deep into the pocket of his overcoat, and glared
about him as he turned the corner of the Via degli Astalli, and saw the
Corso in the distance. But he did not slacken his pace as he went along
under the gloomy walls of the Austrian Embassy--the Palace of
Venice--the most grim and fortress-like of all Roman palaces.
He felt as a poor man may feel when, hot and feverish from working by a
furnace, he knows that he must face the winter storm of freezing sleet
and piercing wind in his thin and ragged jacket to go home--a plunge, as
it were, from molten iron into ice, with no protection from the cold.
Every step of the homeward way was hateful to him. Yet he knew his own
weakness well enough not to hesitate. Had he stopped, he might have been
capable of turning in some other direction, and of spending the whole
evening with some of his fellow-artists, going home late in the night,
when Gloria would be asleep. The thought crossed his mind. If he did
that, he was sure to be carried away into speaking of his troubles to
men with whom he had no intimacy. He was too proud for that. He wished
he could go back to Francesca, and pour out his woes again. He had not
said half enough. He should like to have it out, to the very end, and
then lie down and close his eyes, and hear Francesca's voice soothing
him and speaking of their golden friendship. But that was impossible, so
he went home to face his misery as best he could.
There was exaggeration in all he thought, but there was none in the
effect of his thoughts upon himself. He had married a woman unsuited to
him in every way, as he was unsuited to her. The whole trouble lay
there. Possibly he was not a man to marry at all, and should have led
his solitary life to the end, illuminated from the outside, as it were,
by Francesca Campodonico's faithful friendship and sweet influence. All
causes of disagreement, considered as forces in married life, are
relative in their value to the comparative solidity of the characters on
which they act--a truism which ought to be the foundation of social
charity, but is not. Reanda could not be blamed for his brittle
sensitivenesses, nor Gloria for a certain coarse-grained streak of
cruelty, which she had inherited from her father, and which had
combined strangely with the rare gifts and great faults of her dead
mother--the love of emotion for its own sake, and the tendency to do
everything which might produce it in herself and those about her.
Emotion was poison to Reanda. It was his wife's favourite food.
He reached his home, and went up the well-lighted marble staircase,
wishing that he were ascending the narrow stone steps at the back of the
Palazzetto Borgia, taper in hand, to his old bachelor quarters, to light
his lamp, to smoke in peace, and to spend the evening over a sketch, or
with a book, or dreaming of work not yet done. He paused on the landing,
before he rang the bell of his apartment. The polished door irritated
him, with its brass fittings and all that it meant of married life and
irksome social obligation. He never carried a key, because the Roman
keys of those times were large and heavy; but he had been obliged to use
one formerly, when he had lived by himself. The necessity of ringing the
bell irritated him again, and he felt a nervous shock of unwillingness
as he pulled the brass knob. He set his teeth against the tinkling and
jangling that followed, and his eyelids quivered. Everything hurt him.
He did not feel sure of his hands when he wanted to use them. He was
inclined to strike the silent and respectful man-servant who opened the
door, merely because he was silent and respectful. He went straight to
his own dressing-room, and shut himself in. It would be a relief to
change his clothes. He and Gloria were to go to a reception in the
evening, and he would dress at once. In those days few Romans dressed
for dinner every day.
He dropped a stud, for his hands were shaking so that he could hardly
hold anything; and he groped for the thing on his knees. The blood went
to his head, and hurt him violently, as though he had received a blow.
Gloria's room was next to his, and she heard him moving about. She
knocked and tried the door, but it was locked; and she heard him utter
an exclamation of annoyance, as he hunted for the stud. She thought it
was meant for her, and turned angrily back from the door. On any other
day he would have called her, for he had heard her trying to get in. But
he shrugged his lean shoulders impatiently, glanced once towards her
room, found his stud, and went on dressing.
He really made an effort to get control of himself while he was alone.
But to all intents and purposes he was actually ill. His face was drawn
and sallow; his eyes were yellow and bloodshot; and there were deep,
twitching lines about his mouth. His nostrils moved spasmodically when
he drew breath, and his long thin hands fumbled helplessly at the studs
and buttons of his clothes. At last he was dressed, and went into the
drawing-room. Gloria was already there, waiting by the fireside, with an
injured and forbidding expression in her beautiful face.
Reanda came to the fireside, and stood there, spreading out his
trembling hands to the blaze. He dreaded the first word, as a man lying
ill of brain fever dreads each cracking explosion in a thunderstorm.
Strained as their relations had been for a long time, he had never
failed to kiss Gloria when he came home. This evening he barely glanced
at her, and stood watching the dancing tongues of the wood fire, not
daring to think of the sound of his wife's voice. It came at last cool
and displeased.
"Are you ill?" she asked, looking steadily at him.
"No," he answered with an effort, and his outstretched hands shook
before the fire.
"Then what is the matter with you?"
"Nothing." He did not even turn his eyes to her, as he spoke the single
word.
A silence followed, during which he suffered. Nevertheless, the first
dreaded shock of hearing her voice was over. Though he had barely
glanced at her, he had known from her face what the sound of the voice
would be.
Gloria leaned back in her chair and watched the fire, and sighed. Griggs
had been with her in the afternoon, and she had been happy, quite
innocently, as she thought. The man's dominating strength and profound
earnestness, which would have been intolerably dull to many women,
smoothed Gloria, as it were. She said that he ironed the creases out of
her life for her. It was not a softening influence, but a calming one,
bred of strength pressing heavily on caprice. She resisted it, but took
pleasure in finding that it was irresistible. Now and then it was not
merely a steady pressure. He had a sledge hammer amongst his
intellectual weapons, and once in a while it fell upon one of her
illusions. She laughed at the destruction, and had no pity for the
fragments. They were not illusions integral with her vanity, for he
thought her perfect, and he would not have struck at her faults if he
had seen them. Her faults grew, for they had root in her vital nature,
and drew nourishment from his enduring strength, which surrounded them
and protected them in the blind, whole-heartedness of his love. For the
rest, he had kept his word. She had seen him turn white and bite his
lip, sometimes, and more than once he had left her abruptly, and had not
come back again for several days. But he had never forgotten his
promise, in any word or deed since he had given it.
It is a dangerous thing to pile up a mountain of massive reality from
which to look out upon the fading beauty of a fleeting illusion. In his
influence on Gloria's life, the strong man had overtopped the man of
genius by head and shoulders. And she loved the strange mixture of
attraction and repulsion she felt when she was with Griggs--the
something that wounded her vanity because she could not understand it,
and the protecting shield that overspread that same vanity, and gave it
freedom to be vain beyond all bounds. She would not have admitted that
she loved the man. It was her nature to play upon his pity with the
wounds her love for her husband had suffered. Yet she knew that if she
were free she should marry him, because she could not resist him, and
there was pleasure in the idea that she controlled so irresistible a
force. The contrast between him and Reanda was ever before her, and
since she had learned how weak genius could be, the comparison was
enormously in favour of the younger man.
As Reanda stood there before the fire that evening, she despised him,
and her heart rebelled against his nature. His nervousness, his
trembling hands, his almost evident fear of being questioned, were
contemptible. He was like a hunted animal, she thought. Two hours
earlier her friend had stood there, solid, leonine, gladiatorial,
dominating her with his square white face, and still, shadowy eyes,
quietly stretching to the flames two hands that could have torn her in
pieces,--a man imposing in his stern young sadness, almost solemn in his
splendid physical dignity.
She looked at Reanda, and her lip curled with scorn of herself for
having loved such a thing. It was long since she had seen the gentle
light in his face which had won her heart two years ago. She was
familiar with his genius, and it no longer surprised her into
overlooking his frailty. His fame no longer flattered her. His
gentleness was gone, and had left, not hardness nor violence, in its
place, but a sort of irritable palsy of discontent. That was what she
called it as she watched him.
"You used to kiss me when you came home," she said suddenly, leaning far
back in her chair.
Mechanically he turned his head. The habit was strong, and she had
reminded him of it. He did not wish to quarrel, and he did not reason.
He moved a step to her side and bent down to kiss her forehead. The
automatic conjugality of the daily kiss might have a good effect. That
was what he thought, if he thought at all.
But she put up her hands suddenly, and thrust him back rudely.
"No," she said. "That sort of thing is not worth much, if I have to
remind you to do it."
Her lip curled again. His high shoulders went up, and he turned away.
"You are hard to please," he said, and the words were as mechanical as
the action that had preceded them.
"It cannot be said that you have taken much pains to please me of late,"
she answered coldly.
The servant announced dinner at that moment, and Reanda made no answer,
though he glanced at her nervously. They went into the dining-room and
sat down.
The storm brewed during the silent meal. Reanda scarcely ate anything,
and drank a little weak wine and water.
"You hardly seem well enough to go out this evening," said Gloria, at
last, but there was no kindness in the tone.
"I am perfectly well," he answered impatiently. "I will go with you."
"There is not the slightest necessity," replied his wife. "I can go
alone, and you can go to bed."
"I tell you I am perfectly well!" he said with unconcealed annoyance.
"Let me alone."
"Certainly. Nothing is easier."
The voice was full of that injured dignity which most surely irritated
him, as Gloria knew. But the servant was in the room, and he said
nothing, though it was a real effort to be silent. His tongue had been
free that day, and it was hard to be bound again.
They finished dinner almost in silence, and then went back to the
drawing-room by force of habit. Gloria was still in her walking-dress,
but there was no hurry, and she resumed her favourite seat by the fire
for a time, before going to dress for the reception.