Taquisara, almost for the first time in his life, did not know how to
act, but in accepting Veronica's invitation he felt that he could really
be of use to Gianluca, and he saw how unbendingly determined the young
princess was that he should stay. He had very good reasons for not
staying, but they were of such a nature that he could not explain them
to her. He had the power, he thought, to leave Muro at a moment's
notice, and in yielding to Veronica's insistence, he was only
submitting, as a gentleman should, in small matters, rather than engage
in a contest of will with a woman. Yet he knew the matter was neither
small nor indifferent, when he gave way to her, and afterwards.
Gianluca appeared at the dinner hour and reached the dining-room with
his friend's help. He was placed on Veronica's left, in consideration of
being an invalid, though Taquisara should have been there, according to
Italian laws of precedence. Veronica had insisted that Don Teodoro
should come, at all events on this first evening. She did not choose
that the learned old priest should be merely the companion of her
loneliness; and besides, she knew that his presence would probably
prevent the Duca and Duchessa from returning to the question of her
solitary mode of life. She was also willing to let them see that the
humble curate was a man of the world.
It was a day of surprises for the old couple, and their manners were
hard put to it to conceal their astonishment at the way in which
Veronica dined. They were, indeed, accustomed to a singular simplicity
in the country, and to country dishes, as almost all the more
old-fashioned Italians are, but in the whole course of their highly and
rigidly aristocratic lives they had never been waited on by two women in
plain black frocks and white aprons. The Duca, indeed, found some
consolation in the delicious mountain trout, the tender lamb, the
perfect salad, and the fine old malvoisie, for he liked good things and
appreciated them; but the Duchessa's nature was more austerely
indifferent to the taste of what she ate, while her love of established
law insisted with equal austerity that any food, good or bad, should be
brought before her in a certain way, by a certain number of men, arrayed
in coats of a certain cut, and shaven till their faces shone like
marble. In a measure, it was a slight upon her dignity, she thought,
that Veronica should let her be served by waitresses. On the other hand,
she reflected upon the conversation which had taken place at tea, and
was forced to admit that she had then discovered the only theory on
which she could accept Veronica's anomalous position, and
conscientiously remain in the house. Either she must look upon the
castle of Muro and its inhabitants as a sort of semi-religious community
of women, or else, in her duty to the world, and the station to which
she had always belonged, she must raise her voice in protests, loud and
many. For many reasons, she did not wish to insist too much, and she did
her best to seem indifferent, keeping her arguments before her mind
while she ate. The chief of them was, indeed, that she clung desperately
to the hope of a marriage; but in her heart there was something else,
and she knew that she was afraid of Veronica. It seemed ridiculous, but
it was true. And her husband was even more afraid of the dominating
young princess than she. They never acknowledged the fact to each other,
when they exchanged moralities, and discussed Veronica, but each was
afraid, and suspected the other of similar cowardice.
The Duchessa did her best to seem indifferent; but now and then, when
one of the women changed her plate, or poured something into her glass,
she could not help slowly looking round, with an air of bewilderment, as
though expecting to see a man in livery at her elbow.
As for Gianluca, Veronica had described in her letters the way in which
she lived; and Taquisara's face more often betrayed amusement than
surprise at what he saw in the world. On the present occasion, having
accepted the situation into which his affection for his friend had led
him, he had accepted it altogether, and behaved as though he were at a
dinner party in Naples, cheerfully making conversation, telling amazing
stories of brigandage in Sicily, asking Veronica questions about the
surrounding country, and giving such scraps of news about mutual friends
as his letters had recently brought him.
Veronica had never seen the man under such circumstances, and she was
surprised by his readiness and by his ability to help her in a rather
difficult situation. He said nothing which she could compare with what
Gianluca wrote. He never spoke of himself, and she did not afterwards
remember that he had made any very brilliant observation; and yet, when
dinner was over, she wished to hear him talk more, just as she had once
longed to hear him say again the things he had said to her for
Gianluca's sake in Bianca's garden. She had never met any one who seemed
to have such a decided personality, without the slightest apparent
desire to assert it. Instinctively, as women know such things, she felt
that he was a very manly man, very simple and brave, and vain, if at
all, with the sort of vanity which well becomes a soldierly
character--the little touch of willing recklessness that easily stirs
woman's admiration. What women hate most, next to cowardice, is,
perhaps, the caution of the very experienced brave man--and they hate it
all the more because they cannot despise it with any show of reason.
Gianluca was silently happy, perfectly satisfied to hear Veronica's
voice, to watch the face he loved, and to feel that between her and him
there was something which no one knew. When they spoke, there was a
little constraint on both sides; but when they were silent, the bond was
instantly renewed. In silence and in imagination, they were writing to
each other the impressions of which they would not speak. Gianluca was
telling her how grateful he was to her for insisting that Taquisara
should stay, after all, and was pointing out to her that his friend was
bravely bearing the burden of a conversation which kept his father and
mother from prosing about the necessity of a companion for Veronica.
Veronica was replying that Taquisara was more agreeable than she had
expected, but that if he had been as silent as the Sphinx, or as noisy
as Alexander the Coppersmith, she would have pressed him to stay because
he was her friend's friend. There was a good deal about Taquisara in
their imaginary correspondence.
But both felt a little more constraint, when they talked, than they had
ever felt before, for both knew that on the morrow, or on the next day,
at the latest, they were sure to be alone together,--quite alone,--for
the first time; and they wondered whether the curious duality of their
acquaintance and intimacy by word and by letter could be maintained
hereafter, or whether it would suddenly resolve itself into a unity in
the shape of a friendship in which they should speak to each other as
they wrote.
They knew that something of the sort must happen. The Duca and his wife
would certainly not stand sentry from morning till night over the young
people, when they themselves so ardently desired the marriage; and
Taquisara was not the man to be in the way when he was not wanted. It
would be in Veronica's power to put off the meeting, if she chose to do
so; but she knew, and Gianluca guessed, that she would not. Whatever
society might say about it, she had assumed the position and the
independence of a married woman, and had gone further than married women
of her age would generally have the courage to go. To hesitate now, and
to draw back from the possibility of being left alone with any one of
her guests, would be absurd. She would not seek the interview, nor she
would not do anything to avoid it. But she did not wish to be forced
into the necessity of talking alone with Taquisara, if it could be
helped. She was sure, though she had forgiven him, and liked him better
than before, that she should certainly quarrel with him, though she did
not know why there should be any further disagreement between them.
Possibly she recognized in him a will less despotic than her own, but
quite as unbending when he chose to exercise it. The certainty of strong
opposition, which is fear in cowards, becomes combativeness in brave
people, and the fighting instinct takes the place of the inclination to
run away. But Veronica had no further reason for quarrelling with
Taquisara; and because she liked him, she determined to avoid him as
much as possible, lest at the very first point of difference in
conversation there should be war between them about some insignificant
matter perfectly indifferent to both.
Her guests went to bed early. While Gianluca was before her, Veronica
had not retained the impression she had received from Taquisara, that
her friend was a doomed man. Her own vitality lent the sure certainty of
life, in her imagination, to those about her. He was faint and tired
from the journey, of course, but he was by no means the utterly helpless
invalid she had expected to see, and she had not believed, so long as
she could watch him, that he was in mortal danger. But when she was in
her own room, his face came back to her, a pale shade out of dark
shadow, and she saw the hollows about his deep blue eyes, his thin,
bluish temples, his transparent features, and his emaciated throat, that
seemed to have fallen away under his white ears. She was so suddenly
and violently disturbed by the recollection that she spoke to Elettra of
him. The woman had seen him go by when the party had arrived.
"Do you think that Don Gianluca looks very ill?" Veronica asked.
"Excellency--" the maid hesitated. "I wish that all may live--but he
seems a dead man."
Veronica said nothing, but it was long before she got to sleep that
night, and the vision of his face came again and again to her, pale,
haggard, haunting, distressing her exceedingly. She rose even earlier
than usual.
She did not mean that the presence of her guests should interfere with
what had now become a connected work, to interrupt which would be an
injury to the whole and an injustice to the people who had learned to
expect it of her, looking for more, as she gave them more, and turning
to her in every difficulty. But for the arrival of the party on the
previous afternoon she would have gone down to an outlying farm in the
valley, where the farmhouse needed repairs and there was a question of
cutting down a number of olive trees so old that they hardly bore any
fruit. She had ordered her mare at half-past seven in the morning, and
she rode down the long, winding road, saw, judged, and gave orders,
galloped most of the way up, and exchanged her riding-habit for her
morning frock before the clock struck ten.
One after another, her guests appeared, and everything happened as she
had foreseen. The old couple said that they were accustomed to take a
little walk before the midday meal, for the sake of their appetite;
Taquisara disappeared when he had helped Gianluca to a big chair in a
balcony, in the shade, outside the drawing-room, and Gianluca was left
alone with her, as she had expected. She established herself opposite to
him, for the balcony was so narrow that two chairs could not be placed
upon it side by side.
It was a magnificent summer's day, one of those days in which the whole
glory of the south fills heaven and earth and air, and the stupendous
tide of universal life pours into every sense, to very overflowing, as
the ocean fills its world-wide bed. And the world was ripe and ripening,
the corn and wheat, and olive and vine, and fruit and flower and tree,
from the rich valley below, up the rough hills, as far as sun and soil
and rain could draw the dress of beauty over the mountains' grand bare
strength. Down there, in the vast garden, the hot air quivered with
sheer living; above, the solemn peaks faced God in the still sun. The
breath of the high breeze, between earth and heaven, blew upon
Veronica's cheek.
They looked at each other and sat silent, and looked again and smiled,
both happy in those ever-written, never-spoken thoughts which were
theirs together, both fearing speech as a common thing which must jar
and shake them rudely back to their other selves, which were formal, and
constrained, and not at all intimate.
Gianluca lay quite still in his deep chair, his white hands motionless
upon the edge of the grey shawl which was thrown over his knees.
Suddenly, Veronica, sitting close and opposite to him, bent far forward
and gently laid her hand upon one of his. She smiled.
"I am glad that you are here," she said simply, looking into his face.
His own brightened, and the blue eyes grew dark and tender, while her
hand lingered a second.
"How good you are to me!" he exclaimed, in a low voice. "How endlessly
good!"
She was still smiling as she withdrew her hand and leaned back in her
chair once more. A little pause followed, during which both were quite
happy, in different ways--he, perhaps, in all ways at once, and she,
because she felt she had broken through something like a sheet of ice by
a mere gesture and half a dozen words, when it had seemed so hard to do.
"No," she said thoughtfully, at last. "It is not a question of goodness.
I am natural--that is all. I do not believe that many people are. And we
had got into an absurd position, you and I!" She laughed, looking at
him. "We could write, but we could not speak. We each knew what the
other was thinking of, and yet, somehow, neither of us could say what we
thought. Was it not as I say?"
"Yes." Gianluca laughed, too, very faintly because he was weak, though
he was so happy.
"It could not last," Veronica continued, "and I am glad it is over. For
it is over, is it not? We can talk quite frankly now. Last night, for
instance. I am sure I know what you were thinking about."
"About Taquisara? At dinner?"
"Of course. He is so much more agreeable than I expected, and I am so
glad that I made him stay. And then, last night, too--did you see how
your mother looked at the serving-woman, expecting to see the butler? It
was so natural. It was just what I should have done in her place, and I
could hardly keep from laughing."
"My dear old mother is not used to such surprises," answered Gianluca.
"Of course I saw it, and knew that you did."
"Yes--but do you not think that I am quite right?" asked Veronica, her
tone changing suddenly as she seemed to appeal to him for support--she,
who needed so little from anybody.
"Of course you are," he answered promptly.
He felt unaccountably flattered and pleased by the mere fact of her
asking him the question. He felt instinctively that she had never asked
any one's opinion about her conduct, and that she really desired his
approval. She, on her part, was perhaps glad to speak freely at last
about the position she had assumed. If he had called her rash just then,
she would not have answered him as she had answered Don Teodoro when he
had used the same word.
"You see," she said, "I am not like other women. I was brought up in a
convent, like most of them, but the rest of my life has been quite
different. Well--you know, if any one does. I used to write you all
about what I meant to do while I was still living with Bianca, and you
know that I have begun to carry out most of my ideas. Yesterday
afternoon, while you were resting, your father and mother and I had tea
together, and she found out for the first time that I had no companion.
You should have seen her face! And then, when I tried to explain, she
got the impression at once that I meant to live here in a sort of
amateur convent, surrounded by women. I think she rather liked the idea.
It seemed to settle her disturbed prejudices a little. Of course--it
must seem stranger to people who all live in the same way as she does.
Oh! how glad I am that we can talk about it, you and I!"
Again she laughed happily. To Gianluca, as his eyes met hers, it seemed
as though a great wave of the huge, exuberant life that filled the
full-blossoming world that day had rolled up out of the broad valley to
his feet and were lifting him and penetrating him and sweeping its hot
tide through the ebb of his failing blood.
"Yes," he answered her. "To be able to talk at last--at last, after so
much waiting, that was only half talking."
He sighed gently, and his hand stroked the grey shawl on his knees,
smoothing it first in one way and then backwards in the other. She
watched him, and thought that she had never seen a hand so thin.
"We shall never go back to the old way, shall we?" he asked, before she
spoke again.
"I hope not!" she answered. "It was so absurd, sometimes. Do you
remember at Bianca's house--"
"The night before you left? When I forgot my stick?"
"Yes; but before that. You seemed to think that there was to be no more
writing because I was coming here."
"Of course--that is, I supposed that it might make a difference--"
"And then you asked me. You should have seen your face! I can remember
it now. It changed all at once."
"It is no wonder. You changed the whole future with one word. You
seemed really to want my letters much more than I had imagined that you
did."
As by the quick lifting of a dividing veil, all the awkward little
incidents and memories of constraint had suddenly become parts of the
much larger and more pleasant recollection of their semi-secret
intimacy, and in blending with the broader picture the little ones
somehow ceased to have anything disagreeable in them, and instead, there
was a touch of humour and a suggestion of laughter each time that they
compared what they had said and done with what they had written and
felt. It was no wonder that the fascination grew on Gianluca with every
dancing beat of the happy man's pulse.
They talked on, and in the way she talked Veronica showed that while her
character had grown in three-quarters of a year from girlhood to
womanhood, and from womanhood to the half-imperial masculinity of a
dictatress, her heart was younger than the youngest, was as unsuspicious
of itself as a child's, ready to give itself in an innocent generosity
which could not conceive that giving might mean being taken, or be as
like it as to deceive such a willing, love-sick man as poor Gianluca.
She did not say that she loved him, she did not love him, she did not
wish him to think that she could love him. Why should he think that she
did? Surely, that he loved her, or thought so, could make no difference.
She was so very young, under her armour of despotism, that she might
almost have loved him, as she had all but loved Bosio, had there been
anything to love. But there was not. Gianluca was a shadow, an
unmaterial being, a thought--anything ethereal, but not a man.
The dream-driven ghost of her dead betrothed was ten times more human
and real than Gianluca was to her now, with his white angel's face and
misty hands that seemed to hang weightless in the air before him when he
moved them. There was more of living humanity in the fast fainting echo
of Bosio's last words to her than in Gianluca's clear, sweet tones. If
he should tell her that he loved her now, she should perhaps not even
blush; for his whole being was sifted and refined and distilled, as the
very spirit of star dust, in which there was nothing left of that sweet,
earthly living, breathing, dying, loving flesh and blood without which
love itself is but a scholar's word, and passion means but a vague,
spiritual suffering, in which there is neither hope of joy to come nor
memory of any past.
Yet Gianluca breathed, and was a human man, and loved her, and he would
have been strangely surprised had he suddenly seen into her heart and
understood that she looked upon him as though he were a being out of
another world. The moment when she had first laid her hand upon his had
been the supremest of his life yet lived, and all the moments since had
been as supremely happy. It was something which he had not dared to
hope--to hear her speaking as though there had never been that veil
between them, against which he had so often struggled, to feel her warm
touch, to see the happy light in her young eyes as she sat there looking
at him, to be sure at last, beyond the half assurance of uncertain
written words.
But he was wise, and he bridled back the words that most readily of all
others would have come to his lips. Perhaps even in the midst of his new
happiness, there was the unacknowledged fear of evil chance if he should
speak too soon and put the beautiful gold to the touch while the magic
transmutation was still so dazzlingly fresh. The present was so
immeasurably better than the past, so near a perfection of its own, that
he could wait in it a while before he opened wide his arms to take in
the very whole of happiness itself, wherewith the beautiful future stood
full laden before him.
As they talked, they went over and over much that they had written to
each other during the long months of their correspondence, and at last
Veronica came back to the question she had at first asked him.
"So you think that I am sensible in living as I do," she said. "I am
glad. I value your opinion, you know."
She had perhaps never said as much as that to any one.
"You have made it what it is," he answered.
"How do you mean?" she asked quickly.
"You cannot do wrong," he replied, with his faint, far-off laugh. "If I
had read in a book, of an imaginary person, all that you have written me
of yourself, I should have said that most of it was absolutely
impossible, or wildly rash, or foolishly unwise. You know how we are all
brought up. We are nursed in the arms of tradition, we are fed on ideas
of custom--we are taken to walk, as children, by incarnate prejudice for
a nursery maid, and taught to see things that used to be, where modern
things are. What can you expect? We have not much originality by the
time we grow up."
"Yes--you know that I was educated in a convent."
"That is better than being educated at home by a priest." Gianluca
smiled again. "Besides, you are different. That is why I say that if I
have an opinion, you have made it for me. You are doing all those things
which I could not have believed in a book, and they are turning out
well. If society could see you here, it would not find it necessary to
invent a duenna to chaperon you. But it is not everybody who could do
what you have done, and succeed. I do not wonder that my mother is
astonished, and my father, too. But at the same time, since you can do
such things, it seems to me that you would have made a great mistake in
doing anything else--as great a mistake as Julius Caesar would have made
if he had chosen to remain a fashionable lawyer instead of mixing in
politics, or Achilles, if he had taken a necklace or a bracelet and left
the sword in Ulysses' basket. You would have found your mythical duenna
a nuisance in real life."
Veronica laughed.
"At the end of the first week I should have locked her up in the dungeon
tower, to get rid of her," she said.
"I have no doubt that you would, and your people would have thought it
the most natural thing in the world. You could do anything you pleased
in this place, I fancy. They would not think it strange if you tried and
condemned a cheating steward and had him executed in that gloomy
courtyard we passed through when we came in yesterday."
"The law might find fault with my vivacity," said Veronica. "But my
people would say that I had done right if the man had really cheated
them. It is quite true, I think. I could do almost anything here. I had
a man locked up in the municipal prison the other day for forty-eight
hours, because he was tipsy and swore at Don Teodoro in the street. Of
course, it is nominally the syndic who does that sort of thing; but he
belongs to me, like everything else here, and I do as I please, just as
my grandfather did, when he really had power of life and death in Muro,
including the privilege of torture. The first article mentioned in the
old inventory was forty palms of stout rope for giving the cord, as they
called it. They did it under the main gate,--that is why it came
first,--and they used to pull them up to the vault and then drop them
with a jerk to within two feet of the ground. The ring is still there,
just inside the gate."
"My mother's uncle--the old Marchese di Rionero--once hanged a ruffian
for mutilating one of his horses out of spite. And they say that Italy
has not progressed! There is no hanging, not even for murder, nowadays."
"Yes," answered Veronica, thoughtfully, "we have progressed, in a way.
That is our trouble--we have progressed too fast and improved too
little, I think."
"That sounds paradoxical."
"Oh no! It is common sense, as I mean it. Progress costs money,
improvement brings it. Progress means wearing clothes like other people,
having splendid cities like other nations, keeping up armies and navies
like other great powers. Improvement means helping poor people to earn
more wages and to live better--giving them a possibility of happiness,
instead of taking the little they have in order to give ourselves the
appearance of greatness. That is why I say that in Italy we have too
much progress and too little improvement."
"Yes--how well you put it!" Gianluca looked at her with quick
admiration.
"Do I? It is because you understand easily. Should you call me
patriotic? I think I am. I am an Italian before anything else, before
being a Serra, a woman, a member of society--anything! I feel as though
I should like to give my heart for my people and my life for our
country, if it would do any good. Of course, if it really came to making
any great sacrifice, I suppose my courage would shrivel up and I should
behave just like any one else."
"No--you would not," said Gianluca, gravely. "There have been women--the
great Countess, and Saint Catherine of Siena--"
"Yes!" Veronica laughed. "And there were also my good ancestors, who
tore Italy to pieces, joined hands with German Emperors, upset Popes,
seized everything they could lay hands upon, and turned the country into
a sort of perpetual gladiator's show. That is a proud and promising
inheritance for an aspiring patriot, is it not? The less you and I talk
of patriotism, the better--seeing what our people have done in history
to make patriotism necessary in our time."
"Perhaps so. Doing is better than talking, and you have begun by doing
good and trying to make people happy. You have succeeded in one case,
already."
She looked at him with a glance of inquiry.
"What case?" she asked.
"I mean myself--of course. You have made me perfectly happy to-day."
"I am glad," she answered. "I wish you to be always happy."
She spoke thoughtfully, gravely, and gently, and then turned from him a
little, and looked through the iron railing of the balcony, down at the
deep distance of the valley. She was wondering, and justly, whether
during the past hour she had not made a mistake, very cruel to him, in
breaking down all at once the barrier of excessive formality which
hitherto had stood between them when they met. Words rose to her lips,
which with the utmost gentleness should quickly undeceive him, if he had
been deceived; but when she looked at him and saw his happy, appealing
eyes and his transparent face, her courage was not ready. Perhaps he was
dying, as she had been told. She turned again and watched the misty
depths.
"Don Gianluca--" she began, with a little hesitation. But as she spoke
there was a footfall in the embrasure.
"What were you going to say?" asked Gianluca, knowing from her tone that
she had meant to speak of some grave matter.
"Nothing!" she answered with a little sharpness. "Pray take my chair,
Duchessa," she said, turning to the good lady, who had come slowly
forward till she stood with her head just out in the air. "It is time
for luncheon," she added, as she made the Duchessa sit down, nodded
quickly to Gianluca, and went in.