The world would go very well, but for the unforeseen. The fate of
everyone in this story might have been very different if Gesualda, old
Basili's maid of all work, had not stopped to eat an orange
surreptitiously while she was sweeping down the stone stairs early in
the morning, before the notary was dressed. She was an ugly girl, and
had not many pleasures in life; Basili was old and stingy and
fault-finding, and she had to do all the work of the house,--the
scrubbing, the cooking, the serving, the washing, and the mending.
She did it very well; in the first place because she was strong,
secondly because she was willing and sufficiently skilful, and lastly
because she was very unusually ugly, and therefore had no distractions
in the shape of love-making. She was also scrupulously honest and
extremely careful not to waste things in the kitchen. But fruit was her
weakness, and, being a Sicilian, she might have been capable of
committing a crime for the sake of an orange, or a bunch of grapes, or a
dozen little figs, if they had not been so plentiful that one could
always have what one could eat for the mere asking. Her only
shortcoming, therefore, was that she could not confine herself to eating
her oranges in the kitchen. She always had one in her pocket. A cynical
old lady once said that the only way to deal with temptation was to
yield to it at once, and save oneself all further annoyance. Gesualda
yielded to the temptation to eat the orange she had in her pocket, when
she had resisted it just long enough to make the yielding a positive
delight. She felt the orange through her skirt, she imagined how it
looked, she thought how delicious it would be, and her lips were dry for
it, and her soul longed for it. There was always a quiet corner at
hand, for the notary lived alone. In an instant the orange was in her
hands, her coarse fingers took the peel off in four pieces with
astonishing skill, the said peel disappeared temporarily into the pocket
again, and a moment later she was happy.
Her whole part in this history consisted in the eating of a single
orange on the dark stone stairs, yet it was an important one, for out of
all the thousands of oranges she had eaten during her life, that
particular one was destined to be the first link in a long and tragic
chain of circumstances.
Whether the orange was not quite ripe, so that the peel did not come
away as easily as usual, or whether she was made a little nervous by the
fact that her master might be expected to appear at any moment, a fact
which enhanced the delight of the misdeed, neither she herself nor
anyone else will ever know. As usual, she ran her sharp, strong
thumb-nail twice round the fruit, crosswise, dug her fingers into the
crossing cuts thus made, and stripped the peel off in a twinkling,
thrusting the four dry pieces into her pocket. And as usual, in another
moment, she was perfectly, blissfully happy, for it was a blood-orange,
and particularly sweet and juicy, having no pips, for it had grown on a
very old tree, and those are the best, as everyone knows in the orange
country of the south.
But fate tore off a tiny fragment of the peel, a mere corner of one
strip, thick, and the shiny side upwards, all slippery with its aromatic
oil, and placed it cunningly just on the edge of one of the worn old
stone steps, above her in the dark turning. Then fate went away, and
waited quietly to see what should happen, and Gesualda also went away,
down to her kitchen, to begin and prepare the vegetables which she had
bought at daybreak of the vendor, a little way down the street. The bit
of peel lay quite quietly in the dark, doing as fate had bidden it, and
waiting likewise.
Now, fate had reckoned exactly how many paces Basili the notary would
take from his room to the head of the stairs, in order to know with
which foot he would take the first step downwards, and hence to
calculate whether the bit of peel should be a little to the right or a
little to the left. And it lay a little to the left: for the left foot,
as fate is aware, is the unlucky foot, except for left-handed people.
Basili was a right-handed man; and as he came downstairs in his great,
flapping leathern slippers, he put the smoothest spot of the old sole
exactly upon the shiny bit of peel. All of which shows the astonishing
accuracy which fate can bring to bear at important moments. This was the
beginning of the end of this history.
Basili fell, of course, and, as it seemed to him, he fell backwards,
forwards, sideways, and upside down, all in a moment; and when he came
to the bottom of the stairs, he had a broken leg. It was not a bad
break, though any broken leg is bad, and the government surgeon was at
home, because it was early in the morning, and came and set it very
well, and Basili lay in a sunny room, with pots of carnations in the
window, drinking syrup of tamarind with water, to cool his blood, and
very much disturbed in his mind. Gesualda sat on the steps all the
morning, moaning and beating her breast, for she had found the little
piece of orange-peel, groping in the dark, and she knew that it had all
been her fault. For penitence, she made a vow, at first, not to eat an
orange till the master was recovered. Later in the day, she went to
confession, in order to ease her soul of its burden, and she told her
confessor that she could not possibly keep the vow, and that she had
already twice undergone horrible temptation since the accident, at the
mere sight of an orange. Thereupon the confessor, who was a wise little
old man, commuted her self-imposed penance to abstinence from cheese,
which she scrupulously practised for a whole month afterwards, until the
notary was on his feet for the first time. But by that time a great many
things had happened.
Basili lay in his sunny room, finding it difficult to understand exactly
what had happened to him. He had never been ill in his life, excepting
once when he had taken a little fever, as a mere boy. He was a tough
man, not so old as he looked, and he had never thought it possible that
he could be laid on his back and made perfectly helpless for a whole
month. He had ground his teeth while they had been setting his leg, but
in spite of the pain he had been thinking chiefly of the check to his
business which must be the inevitable result of such a long
confinement. He had a shabby little clerk who copied for him, and was
not altogether stupid, but he trusted no one with the affairs of his
clients, and he was a very important person in Randazzo. Moreover, a
young notary from Catania had recently established himself in opposition
to him, and he feared the competition.
He was very lonely, too, for the clerk, after presenting his
condolences, had seized the opportunity of taking a holiday, and there
was nobody but Gesualda in the house. In the afternoon she got her
mother to take her place while she went to confession. Basili was very
lonely indeed, for the doctor would not let him receive his clients who
came on business, fearing fever for his patient. The day seemed very
long. He called for paper and pen, and in spite of the surgeon's
prohibition, he had himself propped up in bed, and wrote a letter to his
daughter. He told her of his accident, and begged her to come to him, if
she could do so without injuring the course of study she had undertaken.
Time was precious to Aliandra, for her master generally left Rome at the
end of June, and she had only learned about half of Aida, the opera she
had undertaken to study, and which was a necessary one for her future
career. But she made up her mind at once to go to her father, for a
fortnight, after which time, in the ordinary course of things, he would
probably be able to spare her. She was very fond of him, for her mother
had died when she had been very young, and Basili had loved the child
with the grim tenderness peculiar to certain stern characters; and
afterwards, when once persuaded that she had both voice and talent for
the stage, he had generously helped her in every way he could.
He had missed her terribly, for she had not been in Sicily since the
previous autumn, and it was natural that he should send for her to keep
him company during his recovery. She, on her part, looked forward with
pleasure to a taste of the old simple existence in which she had been so
happy as a child. She left her maid in Rome, and her aunt stopped in
Messina, intending to come up to Randazzo a few days later and pay her
brother a visit.
Before leaving Rome Aliandra told both Tebaldo and Francesco where she
was going, and that she intended to return in a fortnight in order to
study with her teacher until he should leave Rome. She maintained her
attitude of coldness towards Tebaldo to the last. He complained of it.
For once, the Signora Barbuzzi had left the room unbidden, judging, no
doubt, that before going away for some time Aliandra might wish to see
Tebaldo alone, and possibly have some further explanation with him.
'Look here,' he said roughly, 'you have treated me in this way long
enough, and I have borne it quietly. Be reasonable--'
'That is exactly what I am,' answered Aliandra. 'It is you who are
unreasonable.'
'Because I love you, you say that I am unreasonable!' he retorted, his
patience giving way suddenly. 'Because you burn me--bah! find words! I
cannot. Give me your hand!'
'Only in one way. I have told you--'
'Give me your hand.' He came quite close to her.
She held her hands behind her and looked at him defiantly, her head
high, her eyes cold.
'If you want my hand--you must keep it,' she said.
She was very handsome just then, and his heart beat faster. There was a
tremor in his voice when he spoke again, and his fingers shook as he
laid them lightly on her shoulder, barely touching her. There is a most
tender vibration in any genuine passion under control, just before it
breaks out. Aliandra saw it, but she distrusted him, and believed that
he might be acting.
'I cannot bear this much longer,' he said. 'It is killing me.'
'There is no reason why it should,' she answered coldly. 'You know what
you have to do. I will marry you whenever you please.'
He was silent. The vision of Miss Lizzie Slayback with her millions, and
with all his own future, rose before him. He seemed to see it all behind
the handsome head, on the ugly flowered paper of the wall. That stake
was too heavy, and he could not afford to risk it. Yet, as he met
Aliandra's hard eyes and cruelly set mouth, her resistance roused him as
nothing ever had before.
'You hesitate still,' she said scornfully. 'I do not think your love
will kill you.'
'Yours for me will not hurt you, at all events,' he answered rudely.
'Mine? Oh--you may think of that as you please.'
She shrugged her shoulders like a woman of the people, and turned from
him indifferently; leaving him standing near the door, growing pale by
quick degrees, till his face was a faint yellow and his eyes were red.
'I believe you love my brother,' he said hoarsely, as she moved away.
She stopped and turned her head, as she answered.
'His is by far the more lovable character,' she said in a tone of
contempt. 'I should not blame any woman for preferring him to you.'
'It will be better for him that you should not prefer him.' His face was
livid now. Aliandra laughed, and turned so that she could see him.
'Bah! I believe you are a coward after all. He need not fear you, I
fancy.'
'Do you really think me a coward?' asked Tebaldo, in a low voice, and
his eyes began to frighten her.
'You behave like one,' she answered. 'You are afraid of the mere opinion
of society. That is the reason why you hesitate. You say you love me,
but you really love only that you call your position.'
'No,' he answered, not moving. 'There are other reasons. And you are
mistaken about me. I am not a coward. Do not say it again. Do you
understand?'
Again she shrugged her shoulders, as though to say that it mattered
little to her whether he were a coward or not. But she did not like the
look in his eyes, though she did not believe that he would hurt her. She
had heard of his occasional terrible outbreaks of anger, but had never
seen him in one of them. He was beginning to look dangerous now, she
thought. She wondered whether she had gone too far, but reflected that,
after all, if she meant to exasperate him into a promise of marriage,
she must risk something.
'Do not make me say it,' she replied, more gently than she had spoken
yet.
Few feminine retorts are more irritating than that one, of which most
women know the full value, but in some way it acted upon Tebaldo as a
counter-irritant to his real anger.
'No,' said Tebaldo, and his eyelids suddenly drooped, 'you shall say
something else. As you are just going away, this is hardly the moment to
fix a day for our marriage.'
She started slightly at the words, and looked at him. His eyes were less
red, and the natural brown colour was coming back in his cheeks. She
thought the moment of danger past.
'I shall be back in a fortnight,' she answered.
'There will be time enough when you come back,' he said in his usual
tone of voice. 'Provided that you do not change your mind in the
meantime,' he added, with a tolerably easy smile. 'Do not forget that
you love Francesco.' He laughed, for he was really a good actor.
She laughed too, but uneasily, more to quiet herself than to make him
think that she was in a good-humour again.
'I never forget the people I love,' she said lightly.
Then with a quick gesture and movement, as though wholly forgiving him,
she kissed her fingers to him, laughed again, and was out of the room in
a moment, leaving him where he was. He stood still for three or four
seconds, looking at the door through which she had disappeared, longing
for her--like a fool, as he said to himself. Then he went out.
It had been a singular parting, he thought, and if he had not been at
her mercy by one side of his nature, he said to himself that he would
never have spoken to such a woman again. There was a frankly cynical
determination on her part to marry him, which might have repelled any
man, and which, he admitted, precluded all idea of love on her side. In
spite of it all, his hand trembled when he had touched her sleeve at her
shoulder, and he had not been quite able to control his voice. In spite
of it all, too, he hated his brother with all his heart, far more
bitterly than ever before, for what Aliandra had said of him.
Something more would have happened on that day if he had known that
Francesco was sitting in the little third-rate café opposite Aliandra's
house, waiting to see him come out. He would, however, have been
momentarily reassured had he further known that the Signora Barbuzzi,
for diplomatic reasons, returned to the sitting-room and was present
during the whole of Francesco's visit.
Aliandra left Rome the next morning. She did not care to tire herself by
travelling very fast, so she slept in Naples, and did not reach Randazzo
until the third day, a week after her father's accident.