"Where shall I sign my name?"
Veronica Serra's thin, dark fingers rolled the old silver penholder
nervously as she sat at one end of the long library table, looking up at
the short, stout man who stood beside her.
"Here, if you please, Excellency," answered Lamberto Squarci, with an
affable smile.
His fingers were dark, too, but not thin, and they were smooth and dingy
and very pointed, a fact which the young princess noticed with dislike,
as he indicated the spot on the broad sheet of rough, hand-made paper,
where he wished her to sign. A thrill of repulsion that was strong
enough to be painful ran through her, and she rolled the penholder still
more quickly and nervously, so that she almost dropped it, and a little
blot of ink fell upon the sheet before she had begun to write.
"Oh! It is of no importance!" said the Neapolitan notary, in a
reassuring tone. "A little ink more or less!"
He had some pink blotting-paper ready, and was already applying a corner
of it to the ink-spot, with the neat skill of a professional scribe.
"I will erase it when it is dry," he said. "You will not even see it.
Now, if your Excellency will sign--that will make the will valid."
Three other persons stood around Donna Veronica as she set the point of
her pen to the paper, and two of them watched the characters she traced,
with eager, unwinking eyes. The third was a very insignificant personage
just then, being but the notary's clerk; but his signature was needed as
a witness to the will, and he patiently waited for his turn. The other
two were husband and wife, Gregorio and Matilde, Count and Countess
Macomer; and the countess was the young girl's aunt, being the only
sister of Don Tommaso Serra, Prince of Acireale, Veronica's dead father.
She looked on, with an eager, pleased expression, standing upright and
bending her head in order to see the point of the pen as it moved over
the rough paper. Her hands were folded before her, but the uppermost one
twitched and moved once or twice, as though it would go out to get
possession of the precious document which left her all the heiress's
great possessions in case of Donna Veronica's death. It was a bit of
paper well worth having.
The girl rose, slight and graceful, when she had written her name, and
the finely chiselled lips had an upward curve of young scorn, as she
turned from the table, while the notary and his clerk proceeded to
witness the will. Immediately, the countess smiled, very brightly,
showing beautiful teeth between smooth red lips, and her strong arms
went round her young niece. She was a woman at least forty years of age,
but still handsome.
"I thank you with all my heart!" she cried. "It is a proof of affection
which I shall never forget! You will live a hundred years--a thousand,
if God will it! But the mere wish to leave me your fortune is a token of
love and esteem which I shall know how to value."
Donna Veronica kissed her aunt's fresh cheek coldly, and drew back as
soon as she could.
"I am glad that you are pleased," she answered in a cool and colourless
voice.
She felt that she had said enough, and, so far as she expected any
thanks, her aunt had said too much. She had made the will and had signed
it, for the sake of peace, and she asked nothing but peace in return.
Ever since she had left the convent in which she had been educated and
had come to live with her aunt, the question of this will had arisen at
least once every day, and she knew by heart every argument which had
been invented to induce her to make it. The principal one had always
been the same. She had been told that if, in the inscrutable ways of
Providence, she should chance to die young, unmarried and childless,
the whole of the great Acireale property would go to relations whom she
had never seen and of whom she scarcely knew the names. This, the
Countess Macomer had insisted, would be a terrible misfortune, and as
human life was uncertain, even when one was very young, it was the duty
of Veronica to provide against it, by leaving everything to the one
remaining member of the Serra family who, with herself, represented the
direct line, who had taken a mother's place and duties in bringing up
the orphan girl, and who had been ready to sacrifice every personal
consideration for the sake of the child's welfare.
Veronica did not see clearly that the Countess Macomer had ever really
sacrificed anything at all in the execution of her trust as guardian,
any more than the count himself, who, with Cardinal Campodonico, was a
joint trustee, had ever been put to any inconvenience, beyond that of
being the uncle by marriage of one of the richest heiresses in Italy. It
was natural that when she had signed the will at last, she should
receive her aunt's effusive thanks rather coldly, and that she should
show very little enthusiasm when her uncle kissed her forehead and
expressed his appreciation of her loving intention. The plain truth was
that if she had refused any longer to sign the will, the two would have
made her life even more unbearable than it was already.
She knew that there was no reason why her life should be made hard to
bear. She was not only rich, and a princess in her own right. She was
young and, if not pretty, at least fairly well endowed with those gifts
which attract and please, and bring their possessor the daily little
satisfactions that make something very like happiness, before passion
throws its load into the scales of life on the right side or the wrong.
She knew that, at her age, she might have been married already, and she
wondered that her aunt should not have proposed to marry her before now.
Yet in this she was not displeased, for her best friend, Bianca
Campodonico, had been married two years already to Corleone, of evil
fame, and was desperately unhappy. Veronica dreaded a like fate, and was
in no haste to find a husband. The countess told her always that she
should be free to choose one for herself within reasonable limits of
age, name, and fortune. Such an heiress, with such a fortune, said
Matilde Macomer, could marry whom she pleased. But so far as Veronica
had been allowed to see the world, the choice seemed anything but large.
The count and countess had always been very careful in the selection of
their intimate associates--they could hardly be said to have any
intimate friends. Since Veronica had come to them from the convent in
Rome, where she had been educated according to her dead father's
desire, they had been doubly cautious and trebly particular as to the
persons they chose to receive. Their responsibility, they said openly,
was very great. The child's happiness, was wholly in their hands. They
would be held accountable if she should form an unfortunate attachment
for some ineligible young man who might chance to dine at their table.
The responsibility, they repeated with emphasis, was truly enormous. It
was also an unfortunate fact that in their Neapolitan society there were
many young men, princes and dukes by the score, who had nothing but
their names and titles to recommend them, and who would have found it
very hard to keep body and title together, so to say, if gambling had
suddenly been abolished, or had gone out of fashion unexpectedly.
Then, too, the Macomer couple had always led a retired life and had kept
aloof from the very gay portion of society. They lived well, according
to their station, and so far as any one could see; but it had always
been said that Gregorio Macomer was miserly. At the same time it suited
his wife, for reasons of her own, not to be conspicuous in the world,
and she encouraged him to lead a quiet existence, spending half the year
in the country, and receiving very few people when in Naples during the
winter and spring. Gregorio had one brother, Bosio, considerably younger
than himself and very different in character, who was not married and
who lived at the Palazzo Macomer, on excellent terms both with Gregorio
and the countess, as well as with Veronica herself. The young girl was
inclined to like him, though she felt dimly that she could never
understand him as she believed that she understood her aunt and uncle.
He was, indeed, almost the only man, excepting her uncle, whom she could
be said to know tolerably well. He was not present on that afternoon
when she signed the will, but his absence did not surprise her, for he
had always abstained from any remarks about her property or his
brother's and sister-in-law's guardianship, in such a marked way as to
make her understand that he really wished to know nothing about the
management or disposal of her fortune.
She liked him for several reasons,--for his non-interference in
discussions about her affairs, for a certain quiet consideration, just a
shade more friendly than deference, which he showed for her slightest
wishes, and chiefly, perhaps, for his conversation and perfectly even
temper.
Her uncle Macomer was not always good-tempered and he was never
considerate. He was a stiff man, of impenetrable face, much older than
his wife, cold when he was pleased, and harsh as rough ice when he was
annoyed; a tall, bony man, with flattened lips, from which the grey
moustaches and the beard were brushed smoothly away in all directions.
He had very small eyes--a witty enemy of his said they were so small
that one could not find them in his face, and those who knew him laughed
at the jest, for they always seemed hard to find when one wished to meet
them. His shoulders were unusually high and narrow, but he did not
stoop. On the contrary, he habitually threw back his head, with a
certain coldly aggressive stiffness, so that he easily looked above the
person with whom he was talking. Though he had never been given to any
sort of bodily exercise, his hands were naturally horny, and they were
almost always cold. For the rest, he was careful of his appearance and
scrupulous in matters of dress, like many of his fellow-countrymen. In
his household he insisted upon a neatness as fastidious as his own, and
nothing could have induced him to employ a Neapolitan servant. His
family colours were green and black, and the green of his servants'
liveries was of the very darkest that could be had.
He imposed his taste upon his household, and gave it a certain marked
respectability which betrayed no information about his fortune. To all
appearances he was not poor; but it would have been impossible to say
with certainty whether he were rich or only in moderate circumstances.
He was undoubtedly more careful than ninety-nine out of a hundred of his
fellow-citizens, in getting the value of what he spent, to the
uttermost splitting of farthings; and when he spoke of money there was a
certain cruel hardening of the hard lines in his face, which Veronica
never failed to notice with dislike. She wondered how her aunt could
have led an apparently tranquil life with such a man during more than
twenty years.
Doubtless, she thought, Bosio's presence acted as a palliative in the
somewhat grim atmosphere of the Palazzo Macomer. He was utterly
different from his brother. In the first place, he was gentle and kind
in speech and manner, though apparently rather sad than gay. He was
different in face, in figure, in voice, in carriage--having quiet brown
eyes, and brown hair only streaked with grey, with a full, silky beard;
a clear pale complexion; in frame shorter than Gregorio, with smaller
bones, slightly inclined to stoutness, but rather graceful than stiff;
small feet and well-shaped hands of pleasant texture; a clear, low voice
that never jarred upon the ear, and a kindly, half-sad laugh in which
there was a singular refinement, of the sort which shows itself more in
laughter than in speech. Laughter is, indeed, a terrible betrayer of the
character, and a surer guide in judgment than most people know. For men
learn to use their voices skilfully and to govern their tones as well as
their words; but, beyond not laughing too loud for ordinary decency of
behaviour, there are few people who care, or realize, how they laugh;
and those who do, and who, being aware that there is room for
improvement, endeavour to improve, very generally produce either a
semi-musical noise, which is false and affected, or a perfectly inane
cachinnation which has nothing human in it at all.
Bosio Macomer was a refined man, not only by education and outward
contact with the refinements he sought in others, but within himself and
by predisposition of nature. He read much, and found beauties in books
which his friends thought dull, but which appealed tenderly to his
innate love of tenderness. He had probably lost many illusions, but the
sweetest of them all was still fresh in him, for he loved nature
unaffectedly. In an unobtrusive way he was something of an artist, and
was fond of going out by himself, when in the country, to sketch and
dream all day. Veronica did not understand how with such tastes he could
bear the life in the Palazzo Macomer, for months at a time. He was free
to go and come as he pleased, and since he preferred the country, she
wondered why he did not live out of town altogether. His existence was
the more incomprehensible to her, as he rarely lost an opportunity of
finding fault with Naples as a city and with the Neapolitans as human
beings. Sometimes he did not leave the house for many days, as he
frankly admitted, preferring the little apartment in the upper story of
the house, where he lived independently, with one old servant, amongst
his books and his pictures, appearing downstairs only at dinner, and not
always then. His place was always ready for him, but no one ever
remarked his absence, nor inquired where he might be when he chose to
stay away.
He was on excellent terms with every one. The servants adored him, while
they feared his brother and disliked the countess; when he appeared he
never failed to kiss the countess's hand, and to exchange a friendly
word or two with Gregorio; but as for the latter, Bosio made no secret
of the fact that he preferred the society of the ladies of the household
to that of the count, with whom he had little in common. He certainly
admired his sister-in-law, and more than once frankly confessed to
Veronica that in his opinion Matilde Macomer was still the most
beautiful woman in the world. Yet Veronica had observed that he was
critical of looks in other women, and she thought his criticisms
generally just and in good taste. For her part, however, if he chose to
consider her middle-aged aunt lovely, Veronica would not contradict him,
for she was cautious in a certain degree, and in spite of herself she
distrusted her surroundings.
There were times when the Countess Macomer inspired her with confidence.
Those very beautiful dark eyes of hers had but one defect, namely, that
they were quite too near together; but they were still the best
features in the elder woman's face, and when Veronica looked at them
from such an angle as not to notice their relative position, she almost
believed that she could trust them. But she never liked the smooth red
lips, nor the over-pointed nose, which had something of the falcon's
keenness without its nobility. The thick and waving brown hair grew
almost too low on the white forehead, and, whether by art or nature, the
eyebrows were too broad and too dark for the face, though they were so
well placed as to greatly improve the defect of the close-set eyes.
There was a marvellous genuine freshness of colour in the clear
complexion, and the woman carried her head well upon a really
magnificent neck. She was strong and vital and healthy, and her
personality was as distinctly dominating as her physical self. Yet she
was generally very careful not to displease her husband, even when he
was capricious, and Veronica was sometimes surprised by the apparent
weakness with which she yielded to him in matters about which she had as
good a right as he to an opinion and a decision. The girl supposed that
her aunt was not so strong as she seemed to be, when actually brought
face to face with the rough ice of Gregorio Macomer's character.
Veronica made her observations discreetly and kept them to herself, as
was not only becoming but wise. At first the change from the
semi-cloistered existence of the convent in Rome to the life at the
Palazzo Macomer had dazzled the girl and had confused her ideas. But
with the natural desire of the very young to seem experienced, she had
begun by manifesting no surprise at anything she saw; and she had soon
discovered that, although she was supposed to be living in the society
of the most idle and pleasure-loving city in the world, her surroundings
were in reality neither gay nor dazzling, but decidedly monotonous and
dull. She had dim, childish memories of magnificent things in her
father's house, though the main impression was that of his death,
following closely, as she had been told, upon her mother's. Of the
latter, she could remember nothing. In dreams she saw beautiful things,
and brilliant light and splendid pictures and enchanted gardens, and
when she awoke she felt that the dreams had been recollections of what
she had seen, and of what still belonged to her. But she sought the
reality in vain. The grand old palace in the Toledo was hers, she was
told, but it was let for a term of years to the municipality and was
filled with public offices; the marble staircases were black and dingy
with the passing of many feet that tracked in the mud in winter and the
filthy dust of Naples in summer. Dark, poor faces and ill-clad forms
moved through the halls, and horrible voices echoed perpetually in the
corridors, where those who waited discussed taxes, and wrangled, and
cursed those in power, and cheated one another, and picked a pocket now
and then, and spat upon the marble pavement whereon royal and lordly
feet had so often trod in days gone by. It had all become a great nest
of dirt and stealing and busy chicanery, where dingy, hawk-eyed men with
sodden white faces and disgusting hands lay in wait for the unwary who
had business with the city government, to rob them on pretence of
facilitating their affairs, to cringe for a little coin flung them in
scorn sometimes by one who had grown rich in greater robbery than they
could practise--sometimes, too, springing aside to escape a kick or a
blow as ill-tempered success went swinging by, high-handed and vulgarly
cruel, a few degrees less filthy and ten thousand times more repulsive.
Once, Veronica had insisted upon going through the palace. She would
never enter it again, and after that day, when she passed it, she turned
her face from it and looked away. Vaguely, she wondered whether they
were not deceiving her and whether it were really the home she dimly
remembered. There had been splendid things in it, then--she would not
ask what had become of them, but without asking, she was told that they
had been wisely disposed of, and that instead of paying people for
keeping an uninhabited palace in order, she was receiving an enormous
rent for it from the city.
Then she had wished to see the lovely villa that came back in the
pictures of her dreams, and she had been driven out into the country
according to her desire. From a distance, as the carriage approached it,
she recognized the lordly poplars, and far at the end of the avenue the
elaborately stuccoed front and cornices of the old-fashioned "barocco"
building. But the gardens were gone. Files of neatly trimmed vines,
trained upon poles stuck in deep furrows, stretched away from the avenue
on either side. The flower garden was a vegetable garden now, and the
artichokes and the cabbages and the broccoli were planted with
mathematical regularity up to the very walls. There were hens and
chickens on the steps and running in and out of the open door, and from
a near sty the grunt of many pigs reached her ears. A pale,
earthy-skinned peasant, scantily clad in dusty canvas, grinned sadly and
kissed the hem of her skirt, calling her 'Excellency' and beginning at
once to beg for reduction of rent. A field-worn woman, filthy and
dishevelled, drove back half a dozen nearly naked children whose little
legs were crusted with dry mud, and whose faces had not been washed for
a long time.
And within, there was no furniture. In the rooms upstairs were stores of
grain and potatoes, and red peppers and grapes hanging on strings. The
cracked mirrors, built into the gilded stucco, were coated with heavy
unctuous dust, and the fine old painted tiles on the floor were loose
and broken in places. In the ceiling certain pink and well-fed cherubs
still supported unnatural thunderclouds through which Juno forever drove
her gold-wheeled car and team of patient peacocks, smiling high and
goddess-like at the squalor beneath. Still Diana bent over Endymion
cruelly foreshortened in his sleep, beyond the possibility of a waking
return to human proportions. Mars frowned, Jove threatened, Venus rose
glowing from the sea; and below, the unctuous black dust settled and
thickened on everything except the cracked floors piled with maize and
beans and lupins, and rubbed bright between the heaps by the peasants'
naked feet.
Veronica turned her back upon the villa, as she had turned from the
great palace in the Toledo. They whispered to her that the peasant's
rent must not be reduced, for he was well able to pay, and they pointed
to the closely planted vines and vegetables and olives that stretched
far away to right and left, where she remembered in her dreams of far
childhood that there had been lawns and walks and flowers. The man, she
was told, was not the only peasant on the place. There were other houses
now, and huts that could shelter a family, and there was land, land,
always more land, as far as she could see, all as closely and neatly
and regularly planted with vegetables and grain, vines and olives; and
it was all hers, and yielded enormous rents which were wisely invested.
She was very rich indeed, but to her it all seemed horribly sordid and
grinding and mean--and the peasants looked prematurely old, labour-worn,
filthy, wretchedly poor. If she had even had any satisfaction from so
much wealth, it might have seemed different. She said so, in her heart.
She was accustomed to tell her confessor that she was proud and
uncharitable and unfeeling--not finding any real misdeeds to confess.
She was willing to believe that she was all that and much more. If she
had been living in the whirling, golden pleasure-storm of an utterly
thoughtless world, she believed herself bad enough to have shut her
memory's eyes to the haggard peasant-mother of the dirty half-clad
children--to all the hundreds of them who doubtless lived just like the
one she had seen, all upon her lands; she could have forgotten the
busy-thieving, sodden-faced crowd that thronged the chambers wherein her
fathers had been born and had feasted kings and had died--the very room
where her own father had lain dead. She could have shut it all out, she
thought, if she had held in her hands the gold that all this brought, to
scatter it at her will; for she was sure that she had not a better heart
than other girls of her age. But she had never seen it. The reality of
her own life was too weak and colourless, by contrast, to make the name
of fortune an excuse for the sordid facts of meanness. There was no
splendour about her, no wild gaiety, none of the glorious extravagance
of conscious young wealth, and there was very little amusement to divert
her thoughts. The people she would have liked to know were kept at a
distance from her. She was advised not to buy the things which attracted
her eyes, and was told that they were not so good as they looked, and
that on the whole it was better to keep money than to spend it--but
that, of course, she might do as she pleased, and that when she wanted
money her uncle Macomer would give it to her.
It all passed through his hands, and he managed everything, with the
assistance of Lamberto Squarci the notary and of other men of
business--mostly shabby-looking men in black, with spectacles and
unhealthy complexions, who came and went in the morning when old Macomer
was in his study attending to affairs. Veronica knew none but Squarci by
name, and never spoke with any of them. There seemed to be no reason why
she should.
The count had told her that when she wished it, he was ready to render
an account of the estates and would be happy to explain everything to
her at length. She understood nothing of business and was content to
accept the roughest statement as he chose to give it to her. She was
far too young to distrust the man whom she had been taught to respect as
her guardian and as a person of scrupulous honesty. She was completely
in his power, and she was accustomed to ask him for any little sums she
needed. It never really struck her that he might misuse the authority
she indifferently left in his hands.
It was her aunt who had induced her to make the will, and for whose
conduct she felt a sort of undefined resentment and contempt.
Considering, she thought, how improbable it was that she herself should
die before Matilde Macomer, the latter had shown an absurd anxiety about
the disposal of the fortune. If Veronica had yielded the point, she had
done so in order to get rid of an importunity which wearied her
perpetually. She was to marry, of course, in due time. God would give
her children, and they would inherit her wealth. It was really
ridiculous of her aunt to be so anxious lest it should all go to those
distant relations in Sicily and Spain. Nevertheless, in order to have
peace, she signed the will, and her aunt thanked her effusively, and old
Macomer's flat lips touched her forehead while he spoke a few words of
gratified approval.
In the evening she told Bosio, the count's brother, of what she had
done. His gentle eyes looked at her thoughtfully for a few seconds, and
he did not smile, nor did he make any observation.
A few minutes later he was talking of a picture he had seen for sale--a
mere sketch, but by Ribera, called the Spagnoletto. She made up her mind
to buy it for him as a surprise, for it pleased her to give him
pleasure.
But when she was alone in her room that night she recalled Bosio's
expression when she had told him about the will. She was sure that he
was not pleased, and she wondered why he had not at least said something
in reply--something quite indifferent perhaps, but yet something,
instead of looking at her in total silence, just for those few seconds.
After all, she was really more intimate with him than with her aunt and
uncle, and liked him better than either of them, so that she had a right
to expect that he should have answered with something more than silence
when she told him of such a matter.
She sat a long time in a deep chair near her toilet table, thinking
about her own life, in the great dim room which half a dozen candles
barely lighted; and perhaps it was the first time that she had really
asked herself how long her present mode of existence was to continue,
how long she was to lie half-hidden, as it were, in the sombrely
respectable dimness of the Macomer establishment, how long she was to
remain unmarried. Knowing the customs of her own people in regard to
marriage, as she did, it was certainly strange that she should not have
heard of any offer made to her uncle and aunt for her hand. Surely the
mothers of marriageable sons knew of her existence, of her fortune, of
the titles she held in her own right and could confer upon her husband
and leave to her children. It was not natural that no one should wish to
marry her, that no mother should desire such an heiress for her son.
With the distrustful introspection of maiden youth, she suddenly asked
herself whether by any possibility she were different from other girls
and whether she had not some strange defect, physical or mental, of
which the existence had been most carefully concealed from her all her
life. In the quick impulse she rose and brought all the burning candles
to the toilet table, and lighted others, and stood before the mirror, in
the yellow light, gazing most critically at her own reflexion. She
looked long and earnestly and quite without vanity. She told herself,
cataloguing her looks, that her hair was neither black nor brown, but
that it was very thick and long and waved naturally; that her eyes were
very dark, with queer little angles just above the lids, under the
prominent brows; that her nose, seen in full face, looked very straight
and rather small, though she had been told by the girls in the convent
that it was aquiline and pointed; that her cheeks were thin and almost
colourless; that her chin was round and smooth and prominent, her lips
rather dark than red, and modelled in a high curve; that her ears were
very small--she threw back the heavy hair to see them better, turning
her face sideways to the glass; that her throat was over-slender, and
her neck and arms far too thin for beauty, but with a young leanness
which might improve with time, though nothing could ever make them
white. She was dark, on the whole. She was willing to admit that she was
sallow, that her eyes had a rather sad look in them, and even that one
was almost imperceptibly larger than the other, though the difference
was so small that she had never noticed it before, and it might be due
to the uncertain light of the candles in the dim room. But most
assuredly there was no physical defect to be seen. She was not beautiful
like poor Bianca Corleone; but she was far from ugly--that was certain.
And in mind--she laughed as she looked at herself in the glass. Bosio
Macomer told her that she was clever, and he certainly knew. But her own
expression pleased her when she laughed, and she laughed again with
pleasure, and watched herself in a sort of girlish and innocent
satisfaction. Then her eyes met their own reflexion, and she grew
suddenly grave again, and something in them told her that they were not
laughing with her lips, and might not often look upon things mirthful.
But she was not stupid, and she was not ugly. She had assured herself of
that. The worst that could be said was that she was a very thin girl and
that her complexion was not brilliant, though it was healthy enough, and
clear. No--there was certainly no reason why her aunt should not have
received offers of marriage for her, and many people would have thought
it strange that she should be still unmarried--with her looks, her name,
and that great fortune of which Gregorio Macomer was taking such good
care.