Tebaldo felt a sort of relief when Aliandra was gone. He missed her, and
he longed for her, and yet, every time that he thought of Lizzie
Slayback, he was glad that Aliandra was in Sicily. He felt more free. It
was easier to bear a separation from her than to be ever in fear of her
crossing the heiress's path. That, indeed, might have seemed a remote
danger, considering the difference that lay between the lives of the
American girl and the singer. But Miss Slayback was restless and
inquisitive; she liked of all things to meet people who were 'somebody'
in any department of art; she had heard of Aliandra Basili and of the
sensation her appearance had created during the winter, and she was
quite capable of taking a fancy to know her. Miss Lizzie generally began
her acquaintance with any one by ascertaining who the acquaintance's
acquaintances might be, as Tebaldo well knew, and if at any moment she
chose to know the artist, it was probable that his secret would be out
in a quarter of an hour.
Then, too, he saw that he must precipitate matters, for spring was
advancing into summer, and if his engagement were suddenly announced
while Aliandra was in Rome, he believed that she would very probably go
straight to Miss Slayback and tell her own story, being, as he could
see, determined to marry him at any cost. He was therefore very glad
that she was gone.
But when the hour came round at which he had been accustomed to go and
see her every day he missed her horribly, and went and shut himself up
in his room. It was not a sentimentality, for he was incapable of that
weak but delicate infusion of sentiment and water from which the
Anglo-Saxon race derives such keen delight. It was more like a sort of
physical possession, from which he could not escape, and during which he
would have found it hard to be decently civil to Miss Slayback, or
indeed to any other woman. At that time his whole mind and senses were
filled with Aliandra, as though she had been bodily present in the room,
and her handsome head and vital figure rose distinctly in his eyes, till
his pulse beat fast in his throat and his lips were dry.
Two days after Aliandra's departure, Tebaldo was in this state, pacing
up and down in his room and really struggling against the intense desire
to drive instantly to the railway station and follow Aliandra to Sicily.
Without a knock the door opened, and Francesco entered.
'What do you want?' asked Tebaldo, almost brutally, as he stopped in his
walk.
'What is the matter with you?' enquired the other in some surprise at
his brother's tone.
'What do you want, I say?' Tebaldo tapped the floor impatiently with his
foot. 'Why do you come here?'
'Really, you seem to be in an extraordinary frame of mind,' observed
Francesco. 'I had no intention of disturbing you. I often come to your
room--'
'No. You do not come often. Again--what do you want? Money? You
generally want that. Take it--there on the table!' He pointed to a
little package of the small Italian notes.
Francesco took two or three and put them carefully into his pocket-book.
Tebaldo watched him, hating him more than usual for having come at that
moment. He hated the back of his neck as Francesco bent down; it looked
so smooth and the short hair was so curly just above his collar. He
wondered whether Aliandra liked to look at the back of Francesco's neck,
and his eyes grew red.
'So Aliandra has gone,' observed Francesco, carelessly, as he returned
the purse to his pocket and turned to his brother.
'Have you come here to tell me so?' asked Tebaldo, growing rapidly
angry.
'Oh no! You must have known it before I did. I merely made a
remark--why are you so angry? She will come back. She will probably come
just when you are ready to marry Miss Slayback.'
'Will you leave my affairs to me, and go?' Tebaldo made a step forward.
'My dear Tebaldo, I wish you would not be so furious about nothing. I
come in peace, and you receive me like a wild animal. I am anxious about
your marriage. It will be the salvation of our family, and the sooner
you can conclude the matter, the better it will be for all of us.'
'I do not see what advantage you are likely to gain by my marriage.'
'Think of the position! It is a great advantage to be the brother of a
rich man.'
'In order to borrow money of him. I see.'
'Not necessarily. It will change our position very much. The danger is
that your friend Aliandra may spoil everything if she hears of Miss
Slayback.'
'Either go, or speak plainly,' said Tebaldo, beginning to walk up and
down in order to control the impulse that was driving him to strike his
brother.
Francesco sat down upon the edge of the writing-table and lighted a
cigarette.
'It is a pity that we should be always quarrelling,' he said.
'If you had not come here, we should not have quarrelled now,' observed
Tebaldo, thrusting his hands into his pockets, lest they should do
Francesco some harm.
'We should have quarrelled the next time we met,' continued the latter.
'We always do. I wish to propose a peace, a compromise that may settle
matters for ever.'
'What matters? There are no matters to settle. Let me alone, and I will
let you alone.'
'Of course, you really mean to marry Miss Slayback? Do you, or do you
not?'
'What an absurd question! If I do not mean to marry her, why do you
suppose I waste my time with her? Do you imagine that I am in love with
her?' He laughed harshly.
'Exactly,' answered Francesco, as though his brother's question seemed
perfectly natural to him. 'The only explanation of your conduct is that
you wish to marry the girl and get her money. It is very wise. We are
all delighted. Vittoria likes her for her own sake, and our mother will
be very happy. It will console her for Ferdinando's death, which has
been a great blow to her.'
'Well? Are you satisfied? Is that all you wish to know?' Tebaldo stopped
before him.
'No. Not by any means. You marry Miss Slayback, and you get your share.
I want mine.'
'And what do you consider your share, as you call it?' enquired Tebaldo,
with some curiosity, in spite of his ill temper.
'It does not seem likely that you mean to marry them both,' said
Francesco, swinging one leg slowly and blowing the smoke towards the
window.
'Both--whom?'
'Both the American and Aliandra. Of course, you could marry Aliandra in
church and the American by a civil marriage, and they might both be
satisfied, if you could keep them apart--'
'What an infernal scoundrel you are,' observed Tebaldo, slowly.
'You are certainly not the proper person to point out my moral
shortcomings,' retorted Francesco, coolly. 'But I did not suppose that
you meant to marry them both, and as you have very wisely decided to
take the American girl, I really think you might leave Aliandra to me.
If you marry the one, I do not see why I should not marry the other.'
'If I ever find you making love to Aliandra Basili,' said Tebaldo, with
slow emphasis, 'I will break every bone in your body.'
But he still kept his hands in his pockets. Francesco laughed, for he
did not believe that he was in present bodily danger. It was not the
first time that Tebaldo had spoken in that way.
'You are ready to quarrel again! I am sure I am perfectly reasonable. I
wish to marry Aliandra Basili. I have kept out of your way in that
direction for a long time. I should not mention the matter now, unless I
were sure that you had made up your mind.'
'And--' Tebaldo came near to him, but hesitated. 'And--excuse me--but
what reason have you for supposing that Aliandra will marry you?'
'That is my affair,' answered Francesco, but he shrank a little and
slipped from his seat on the table to his feet, when he saw his
brother's face.
'How do you mean that it is your affair?' asked Tebaldo, roughly. 'How
do you know that she will marry you? Have you asked her? Has she told
you that she loves you?'
Francesco hesitated a moment. The temptation to say that he was loved by
Aliandra, merely for the sake of giving his brother pain, was very
great. But so was the danger, and that was upon him already, for Tebaldo
mistook the meaning of his hesitation, and finally lost his temper.
His sinewy hands went right at his brother's throat, half strangling him
in an instant, and then swinging him from side to side on his feet as a
terrier shakes a rat. If Francesco had carried even a pocket knife, he
would have had it out in an instant, and would have used it. But he had
no weapon, and he was no match for Tebaldo in a fury. He struck out
fiercely enough with his fists, but the other's hands were above his
own, and he could do nothing. He could not even cry out, for he was half
choked, and Tebaldo was quite silent in his rage. There would have been
murder, had there been weapons within the reach of either.
When Tebaldo finally threw him off, Francesco fell heavily upon one knee
against the door, but caught the handle with one hand, and regained his
feet instantly.
'You shall pay me yet,' he said in a low voice, his throat purple, but
his face suddenly white.
'Yes. This is only something on account,' said Tebaldo, with a sneer.
'You shall have the rest of the payment some other time.'
But Francesco was gone before the last words had passed his brother's
lips. The door closed behind him, and Tebaldo heard his quick footsteps
outside as he went off in the direction of his own room.
The angry man grew calmer when he was alone, but now and then, as he
walked up and down, and backwards and forwards, he clenched his hands
spasmodically, wishing that he still had his brother in his grip. Yet,
when he reflected, as he began to do before long, upon what had really
happened, he realised that he had not, after all, had much reason for
taking his brother by the throat. It was the hesitation that had made
his temper break out. But then, it might have meant so much. In his
present state, the thought that perhaps Aliandra loved Francesco was
like the bite of a horse-fly in a raw wound, and he quivered under it.
He could not get away from it. He fancied he saw Francesco kissing
Aliandra's handsome mouth, and that her eyes smiled, and then her
eyelids drooped with pleasure. His anger subsided a little, but his
jealousy grew monstrously minute by minute, and his wrath smouldered
beneath it. He remembered past days and meetings, and glances Aliandra
had given his brother, such as she had never bestowed upon himself. She
did not love him, though she wished to marry him, and was determined to
do so, if it were possible. But it flashed upon him that she loved
Francesco, and had loved him from the first. That was not quite the
truth, though it was near it, and he saw a hundred things in the past to
prove that it was the truth altogether.
He was human enough to feel the wound to his vanity, and the slight cast
upon him by a comparison in which Francesco was preferred to him, as
well as the hurt at his heart which came with it. He did not know of
Francesco's daily visits, but he suspected them and exaggerated all he
guessed. Doubtless Francesco had seen her again and again alone, quite
lately, while Tebaldo had been made to endure day after day the presence
of Aliandra's aunt in the room. Again the red-lipped vision of a kiss
flashed in the shadow of the room, a living picture, and once more his
eyes grew red, and his hands clenched themselves spasmodically, closing
on nothing.
She had said that she preferred Francesco. She had almost admitted that
she loved him, and he could remember how cold her eyes had been while
she had been saying it. There had been another light in them for his
brother, and she had not held her hands behind her back when Francesco
had held out his. Or else she had, laughingly. And then she had put up
her face, instead, for him to kiss. Tebaldo ground his teeth.
His jealousy got hold of him in the vitals and gnawed cruelly.
Everything in his own room made him think of Aliandra, though there was
not one object in a score that could possibly have any association with
her, nor any right to remind him of her, as he tried to tell himself.
But his watch, lying on the toilet table, made him think of her watch, a
pretty little one he had given her. His gloves made him think of her
gloves, his books recalled hers, his very chairs, as they chanced to
stand about the room, revived the memory of how other chairs had stood
when he had parted from her. The infinite pettiness of the details that
irritated him did not shock his reason as would have happened at any
other time. On the contrary, the more of them sprang up, the more they
stung him. Instead of one gadfly, there were hundreds. And all the time
there was the almost irresistible physical longing to go to her, and
throw over everything else. He went out, for he could not bear his room
any longer.
It was still hot in the streets in the early afternoon, and there was a
fierce glare all through the new part of the city where there were many
white houses in straight rows along smoothly-paved streets. Tebaldo
walked in the shade, and once or twice he took off his hat for a moment
and let the dry, hot breeze blow upon his forehead. The strong light was
somehow a relief as he grew accustomed to it, and his southern nature
regained its balance in the penetrating warmth. He walked quickly, not
heeding his direction, as he followed the line of broad shade and passed
quickly through the blazing sunshine that filled the crossing of each
side street.
He regained his normal state, and presently, being quite calm, he
stopped and quietly lighted a cigar. Like many men of ardent and
choleric temperament, he neither smoked nor drank much, but there were
times, like the present, when smoking helped him to think quietly.
Before the cigar was half finished he was at the door of the hotel at
which Miss Slayback and her aunt were staying. He was glad that he had
decided to see her on that afternoon, and he attributed the good sense,
as he would have called it, which had ultimately brought him to her
door, to the soothing influence of the tobacco.
Miss Slayback was alone in the sitting-room. The blinds were closed, but
the windows were open, and the warm breeze stirred the white curtains.
It was an ordinary hotel sitting-room, like hundreds of others, but Miss
Lizzie had not been satisfied with such mediocrity of surroundings, and
had taken much pains to give the room an inhabited look. She had, of
course, bought several hundred objects of no particular value, as rich
women who visit Rome for the first time invariably do, and most of them
were in sight in her sitting-room. There were photographs by the score,
pinned to the walls and standing on tables, and heaped together in a
corner. The photograph is the unresistible temptation to women. There
were three or four clever water-colour studies of men and women in
costume, such as one sees everywhere in Rome; there were half-a-dozen
bronzes copied, in the unfinished, wholesale manner, from the antique;
there was the inevitable old choir book of the psalms, with the old
musical notation that is still used for plain chaunt, written on
parchment and opened at the page which presented the best illuminated
capital letter; there were three or four pieces of old embroidered
vestments, draped over the backs of chairs, and there were several vases
containing fresh flowers and dry wild grasses from the Campagna. And
there was Miss Lizzie Slayback.
She was exceedingly pretty in a sort of nondescript dress, between a
tea-gown and something else; for though it was adorned with ribbons and
laces, after the manner of tea-gowns, it was short-skirted when she
stood up. In fact, it was 'a little creation' of her own, as her
dressmaker would have said, thereby disclaiming all responsibility for
its eccentricity. But it was distinctly becoming, and Miss Lizzie knew
it.
There is a great difference, morally, between being vain and being
æsthetically aware of one's advantages and good points. Vanity is even
more blind than love, but there is something really and healthily
artistic in judicious and successful self-adornment. Vanity paints its
eyes, and rouges its cheeks, and dyes its hair, and laces its waist till
its ribs crack. Good taste cuts its clothes according to its figure and
its age, instead of pinching its body to fit its clothes. Vanity is
full of affectation; good taste presents the best it has to view, so far
as it can, and hides what is less good, without attempting to distort
it, because what is not good cannot be made to look good, by torture, to
eyes that understand. The vain woman interprets the statement that she
is clay, in a literal sense, and tries to violently model her clay into
the Venus of her dreams. The woman of taste accepts the fact that she is
not a goddess and makes the best of her mortality as she has received
it.
Miss Slayback was very pretty, and even Tebaldo Pagliuca admitted the
fact, though he was not in the least in love with her. She smiled and
looked ten times prettier than before, as he entered the room.
'My aunt is supposed to be out,' she said, as he sat down. 'But she is
in the next room. So it is quite proper.'
She laughed a little at her own speech, for she was still amused by
European ideas of propriety, and she would have been surprised if anyone
had been shocked by her receiving Tebaldo alone, when Mrs. Slayback was
really asleep in the next room, during the heat of the afternoon.
Tebaldo smiled courteously, leaned back a little in his small, low
armchair, and fixed his eyes upon her face in silence. His expression
might have deceived an older and a wiser woman.
'I am very glad to find you alone,' he said softly, after an emphatic
pause of admiration. 'Your aunt is one of the most charming women in the
world, of course, but--'
'But she is not always necessary,' interrupted Miss Slayback. 'Do you
want to see my new embroidery? I bought it this morning--'
'No. I do not care about your embroideries. I came to see you, not
vestments.'
'It is not a vestment. It is an altar cloth--'
'It is not you, at all events,' said Tebaldo, fixing his eyes upon her
again. 'I want you and only you--to-day, to-morrow, and for ever.' His
voice was well modulated.
Miss Lizzie looked down, thoughtfully, but she did not blush. Tebaldo
leaned forward a little, gazing earnestly into her face. But she looked
down and said nothing, for she wished him to say more. It was pleasant
to hear, and though her eyes were bent upon the carpet, she could
really see his face quite distinctly.
'I think you see and understand that I love you devotedly,' he said in
soft tones.
It was not easy for him, with his ideas, to make the statement in cold
blood, so to say. But that was evidently what she expected, and he did
his best.
'You must have seen it,' he continued. 'You must have understood it. I
have tried to express it to you with the most profound respect, with
that respect which I have felt for you from the first, and shall always
feel, and wish to feel, for my wife.'
Possibly Miss Lizzie, not being a Latin, would have been willing to hear
less about respect and more about love. But he managed to make his tone
convey something of that also. She looked up, slowly raising her long
black lashes, till her dark blue eyes met his.
'You know,' she said, with an odd mixture of gentleness and wilfulness,
'if I marry you, you must always let me do exactly as I please.'
Tebaldo had known her long enough to be past the stage in which she
could surprise him. The conception of American life which he had formed
from her conversation was somewhat fantastic.
'You would not be so frank if you meant to misuse your liberty,' he
answered wisely.
'Do not be so sure!' laughed Miss Lizzie, gaily.
But Tebaldo wanted a more binding reply to his proposal.
'Please do not laugh,' he said. 'Your answer--your consent will
transport me to paradise.'
'I hope not,' answered the girl, still laughing a little. 'I prefer you
on earth, if I am to marry you.'
'You are adorable!' exclaimed Tebaldo, understanding that he must accept
her jesting humour.
'Yes? Am I?' She smiled.
'But you see that I adore you, worship you--love you! Everyone does--'
'I do not want everyone--'
'But me? That is the question. Do you--'
'Oh yes! I want you,' she answered, interrupting him. 'Please let me
think a moment. I am making up my mind.'
Thereupon Miss Lizzie got up from her seat. Tebaldo rose also, wondering
what she might be going to do to help her mind in making itself up. He
rather expected that she meant to go into the next room to consult her
aunt before giving her final answer. But she had no intention of doing
that. She went to the window, and looked through the slats of the closed
blinds, into the hot glare outside. Tebaldo remained standing close to
the chair in which he had been sitting. As has been said, she could no
longer surprise him, but he watched the ways and manners of the American
young girl with interest, even while he grew nervous as he thought of
the magnitude of the stake he hoped to win.
Miss Lizzie stayed some time at the window, without moving. When she
suddenly turned back into the room, and came straight up to Tebaldo, her
face was a little paler than usual; but he could not see it, for the
light was behind her. Her manner had quite changed now, and she spoke
very gravely.
'I have not known you very long, and you are asking me to put my whole
life in your hands,' she said. 'I like you very much. I care for you so
much that I am going to trust you, though I know you so little. I am
going to say yes.'
She laid her hands in his trustfully, and looked up into his face. His
lids half veiled his eyes, for the triumph in his look was not the
triumph of love, and he knew it. No sane man is without some good
impulse, be he ever so bad.
'I thank you with all my heart,' he said, wisely choosing simple words
now; and he pressed her hands gently. 'I shall try to make you happy,'
he added.
It all seemed very strange to her. Possibly something warned her even
then that he was very false, more false than she could have understood.
She had expected, shyly and with a little not quite unpleasant
trepidation, that he would suddenly catch her in his arms and kiss her a
score of times, quickly, as no one had ever kissed her. Yet there he
stood, quite calm, just pressing the tips of her fingers, as though he
were afraid of hurting her, and saying that he meant to make her happy.
She was disappointed, though she would not have admitted that she was.
She little guessed that the bad man had just then chanced to feel one of
the few good impulses that ever disturbed him. At that moment it would
have seemed considerably worse to him to act as she really expected that
he would than it would have seemed to cut Francesco's throat in his
sleep. Explain those things who can. There is good in human nature, even
at its worst; and it comes to the surface unexpectedly. Francesco, whose
character was on the whole far less evil and malevolent, would have had
no such scruple. To him a woman was a woman, and nothing more. But
Tebaldo either loved or did not love, and the woman he did not love was
not a woman at all in his eyes. And since in this case she chanced to be
an innocent girl, his manliness--for he was manly and physically
brave--revolted at the idea of offending her innocence.
An old-fashioned theologian might say that a man who has no good in him
is not properly fit to be damned. Such a man would have no free-will,
and could not, therefore, logically be punished for anything he did.
That was not Tebaldo Pagliuca's case, at all events.
Miss Lizzie stood still a moment, looking up to his face, after he had
spoken; then she drew away her hands, and sat down again, feeling rather
shy, for the first time since she had been a child. It seemed strange
that it should all be over, and that she was to be married. Tebaldo
began a little speech.
'You have made me very happy,' he said; and he formed a number of fairly
well-turned phrases, in which to express his satisfaction, which was
genuine, and his affection, which was not.
She did not hear him, for her own thoughts seemed louder than his
smoothly-spoken words. She was happy, and yet she was uncomfortable, in
an undefined way, and did not know what was the matter. He did not seem
to expect any response just then, and she let him talk on. Then she was
aware that he was repeating a question.
'May I announce our engagement?' he was asking, for the second time.
'Of course!' she exclaimed, suddenly realising the sense of his words.
'It is not a thing to be concealed. I will tell my aunt at once. You
must come and see her this evening--no, we are going somewhere--I forget
where! Come to-morrow, please.'
'And when--?' He purposely left the sentence incomplete, filling the
question with one of the long looks he had employed so often, with such
success.
'When what? Oh! You mean, when shall we be married? Let me see. It is
May now. I shall have to go to Paris, of course. You will come, will you
not?'
'Could we not be married first, and go to Paris afterwards?' enquired
Tebaldo.
But Miss Lizzie had no intention of being hurried to the altar without
having got the full amount of enjoyment out of buying beautiful clothes,
and Tebaldo was obliged to content himself with a promise that the
wedding should take place early in the autumn. She wished to be married
in Rome by an archbishop, if not by a cardinal. Tebaldo agreed to the
whole college of cardinals, if necessary.
When he went away, he walked more slowly. The sun was very low, and the
air was growing cooler. He sauntered down towards the Corso, well
pleased with his own prospects and thinking out the details of his
future with intense satisfaction. Tebaldo was no spendthrift fool to
waste his wife's fortune on absurd frivolities, or to gamble it away in
mad speculations. He meant to build up the Corleone once more, and make
his family far greater than it had ever been. He did not know exactly
how rich Miss Slayback was, but his guessing was, if anything, under the
truth, and he had seen enough of her to know that she desired to be a
personage, and was attracted by the idea of rank. He knew that she and
her aunt had taken pains to enquire into the validity of his titles. He
smiled when he remembered how cheaply he had held them in the old days
at Camaldoli, when he would have sold his birthright for a new rifle,
and a title or two for a supply of ammunition; and he admired in himself
the transformation from the rough country gentleman, hardly one step
above the tenant farmer of the Sicilian hills, to the fashionable young
nobleman, engaged to be married to a great heiress, and already on the
point of restoring to his family all its ancient magnificence.
He walked the length of the Corso and back before he went home. He had
hardly entered his room when there was a light knock at the door.
Vittoria entered, looking pale and frightened.
'What was the matter between you and Francesco?' she asked as soon as
she had shut the door behind her.
'The matter?' Tebaldo looked at her curiously, wondering whether she
knew anything about Aliandra Basili. 'We quarrelled, as usual,' he said
briefly.
'It must have been worse than usual,' said Vittoria, in a low voice. 'He
is gone.'
'Gone? Where? Gone out to dinner?' Tebaldo affected to laugh carelessly.
'No. I think he is gone to Sicily,' answered the young girl.
Tebaldo uttered an exclamation of surprise, and his expression changed
as he looked at his sister.
'Yes,' she continued. 'He made a terrible scene with me and our
mother--not exactly a scene, perhaps--it was all about you. He said that
he was going, that he could not live in the house any longer, that he
should never come back again. He said--' she hesitated.
'What more did he say?'
'He was half mad, I think. He said it was better to be an outlaw than
live under such a brother as you, and that he would pay you for what you
had done to him in the way you least expected.'
'What makes you think that he is gone to Sicily?' asked Tebaldo, very
quietly, while his lids drooped at the corners.
'He looked for the trains in the newspaper, and I heard him say 'Reggio'
and 'Messina.' We tried to quiet him--we did what we could. But he
packed a quantity of things in a hurry, and went off in a cab, looking
at his watch, and saying that he had barely time. Mother fell into one
of those terrible fits of crying that she has sometimes, and she is ill
again. I thought it best to tell you.'
'Certainly,' said Tebaldo, thoughtfully. 'And now that you have told
me, please go away, for I must dress.'
She was already turning, for she was used to his peremptory ways, but he
stopped her.
'I may as well tell you, Vittoria,' he said; 'I am engaged to be married
to your friend Miss Slayback. I hope that, as the marriage will be so
advantageous to our family, you will not criticise me to her too much. I
am not quite so bad as you sometimes think.'
Vittoria looked at him in silence for three or four seconds before she
spoke.
'I shall say nothing to injure you with her,' she said slowly, and at
once left the room.