AN IDYLL AND MADNESS
Dr. Antonio Amati was deeply in love with Bianca Maria Cavalcanti.
That rugged heart that had got like iron in its conflict with
science, men and things, that had had to drink up all its tears
again, and look on calmly at all kinds of wretchedness--that iron
heart which had a great deal of coldness in its simplicity, which,
as regards sentiment, was virginal, childishly pure, had opened
out slowly, almost timidly, to love. At first.... How had it been
at first? The habit of seeing the white, melancholy figure at the
balcony windows every day, noticing that gentle, slender apparition
among the shadows of the court in these melancholy surroundings. At
first it had been nothing but habit, which is often the beginning
of love; it creates, strengthens, and makes it invincible. Then
came pity, a lively source of tenderness--a source that often hides
underground, disappears, seems lost; but, later on, further on, it
burst forth gaily, flowing inexhaustibly.
While Bianca Maria's fainting-fit was going on, from the
Sacramentiste parlour to her bare room in the Rossi Palace, her
transparent face, shut eyelids with their violet shadows, lips as
pale as the tender pink of a rose, made him fear more than once
she was dead. He often saw that youthful figure again in his mind
in a death-like torpor; he saw her as if dead. Pity twined itself
round his heart on recalling the sorrowful expression that often
crossed the girl's face, as if a terrible secret, a physical and
moral torture, went through her soul and nerves; pity led him to
wish to save her from her suffering. The day the idea flashed into
the great doctor's mind to snatch the pure creature from death,
sickness, and unhappiness, whenever his life-saving instinct warned
him the struggle was beginning, when he felt the appeal to his
intuitive perception of life, to his energy and courage, when his
whole strength was summoned up to save Bianca Maria, he knew the
word was said that not only the scientist, the man, wished the girl
health and happiness, but that the lover was shaking at the idea of
losing her. The slight touch of the thin hand, now frozen as if it
had no life, then burning with fever, sent flames of passion to his
brain. The word was spoken with a lad's simple tenderness and a man's
strong resolution, swaying from the purest idyll to violent dramatic
possibilities. He was in love. Why not? For one day, one single
moment, he had tried to conquer himself, from the natural egotism of
a man who has fought and triumphed alone; but accustomed to accept
all his responsibilities in life to the utmost, he bowed to love.
Why not? He never had loved, for passing attractions towards women,
short caprices, leave no trace in the heart. Being children of the
imagination, born of a hard, impetuous life, they come back sometimes
like a dream, but as indefinite and undecided as dreams; the heart is
not concerned.
Dr. Amati, a lonely man, of strong brain and heart, had gained his
fortune and reputation at a bound, and up to thirty-eight he wished
to know no other joy but helping men, no ease but satisfied ambition.
Now he was so completely in love that everything seemed to lose its
colour and taste if Bianca Maria was not present, if he did not hear
her feeble, sensitive voice.
In love. Why not? In the humblest, meanest, most obscure lives,
that warm, bright hour comes--an hour of such vast capacity that
it includes all time and space. So, in lives outwardly successful,
when the pomp of earthly things opens out, the warm, deep hour
comes, inward and intense; all is gathered up in the heart, the soul
trembles with passionate strength. Being intensely in love, with
all the greater force and violence from any expression of feeling
having been rare in past years, a heart like Antonio Amati's gathers
up all the friendships missed or neglected: affection for relatives
and congenial people; poetic admiration for women that was kept
down, never shown, conquered sometimes at the very beginning, and
almost always quickly forgotten; all the thousand attachments, petty
and great, the human heart fritters itself away on. He was in love
knowingly, willingly, tasting all the sweetness of this late fruit
of his soul. He found in his retarded passion the thousand and one
characteristics and feelings of the love affairs and attachments he
had never had. He was done with the great renunciation; he was in
love knowingly.
Bianca Maria was in love without knowing it. She was simple and
right-minded; she had lived a solitary life, with no conflicts,
thinking and praying a great deal; her soul was refined by solitary
musing, not by the rough, sore pounding down of a struggling life.
From her mother, who had led a sad life, she got a keen, but silent,
sensitiveness; from her father she had taken a headstrong loyalty,
pride without haughtiness, and uncalculating generosity that delights
in giving without interested motives. Over it all was a deep, inbred
faith that seemed to be rooted in her, the food of her spiritual
life, just as the lamps lighted before the saints are fed on the
purest oil, and draw the prayers of the faithful from a distance by
their constant, feeble light. She loved unconsciously. Who could have
told her anything about it? Her mother had passed away seven or eight
years before from a lingering, fatal illness, suffering no pain or
sharp spasms; but her heart was pierced with agony for her almost
mad husband, who was hacking down the poor feeble stem of the House
of Cavalcanti and throwing its branches into an abyss--agony for the
poor daughter she left behind to her mad father's guidance, who was
going forward to wretchedness, perhaps dishonour.
Bianca Maria remembered; she recalled her mother's face when she
was dying, the colour of clay from agonizing thoughts, inconsolable
at having to die so soon. These ineffaceable recollections left
her grave, made her youth austere, and took away from her all the
longings, ambitions, and coquettishness of her age. What did she
know of love? Nothing. She lived in a dull way, with no enjoyments,
beside a father she respected; but alarmed by his fatal passion,
she felt threatened by something obscure, but imminent, and already
pinched by poverty, she took to heart the necessary doleful shifts
to keep up appearances. She felt an unknown danger in herself like
the seeds of death; and now, a wise, strong, good man--an ark of
safety in danger, formed to overcome obstacles, to give help; a giver
out of consolation, whose presence and voice brought security and
hope, strong to lean against; a name never associated with anything
foolish; a vanquisher of sickness, pure of any stain--this man held
out his hand to save her. Well, she took his hand; it was natural;
she could not think of doing anything else but take it and love him.
Unconsciously she loved him, because she must. From her age,
temperament, and surroundings, her whole existence, she felt that
innocent sort of love that weak natures, beaten down by tempests,
have for strong ones.
When Bianca Maria was alone in the dreary suite of rooms where the
sparse furniture had got to have a still older, more wretched look,
with these old servants always in low spirits, busied in hiding their
poverty, in giving it an air of respectable ease, she felt chilled to
the heart; she seemed to be old, poor, and neglected like the house
and furniture, doomed to languish on in want of everything. And when
her father came in, uneasy always, led by his violent passions, his
one idea, credulous over vain dreams, giving in to mystic alarms,
calling around him a terrifying world of phantoms, she lost her
tranquillity at once; her brain whirled, and she saw curious ghostly
things with fatal effects. She could not get rid of the nightmare;
she felt so weak, so unfit to defend herself from the assaults of
that cabalistic madness; she shook all over from the jar to her
nerves, from the fever going up to the brain and making it reel.
She always felt very wretched when she was alone or with her father;
helpless, without a guide, knocked about by a rushing wind, drawn
in by a whirlpool. But if Antonio Amati showed his manly face, his
genial strength; if she heard his firm, rather rough voice, that was
smooth for her; if his hand just touched hers, so that she felt a
magnetic influence, warmth, youthful vivacity, go through her nerves,
she knew she was guided, protected, started on the way of life and
happiness. The black clouds moved off with one breath; she saw the
blue sky; the fever grew milder, went off altogether, and the sombre
ghosts, the fears that blanched her lips, went off at the same time;
she quieted down as if a heavenly benediction enfolded her in its
sphere of help. She felt like a child again when he was there: Amati
was the firmest, safest, strongest.
So she loved him, innocently, unconsciously. This kind of love allows
of great humility, great tenderness; it was pure and fervent, it
refreshed her. With their different ground-work, the two sorts of
love understood each other, melted into and completed one another.
That spiritual harmony that is the soul's finest, but also rarest and
shortest, experience began the first day she from her dull balcony,
he from his stern study, that saw so much agony, beheld each other.
Wherever the two minds, feelings, personalities met, the harmony got
greater. When she raised her great thoughtful eyes to his, asking in
all simplicity for help and affection, he felt his heart bound with a
longing for sacrifice. They understood each other perfectly without
speaking.
He came from the land, from a small, out-of-the-way provincial town
that had little communication with Naples; he had made his name and
fortune by struggling with life and death, with men's indifference
and hatred, thus getting a formidable idea of his own powers, and
only believing in himself. He had plebeian blood and a powerful mind;
none of the refinement that comes from breeding and surroundings, the
triumph of ideals.
How different from her! She was the daughter of a noble house,
refined by instinct, breeding, and surroundings; used to live in
meditation and prayer, without a particle of self-reliance to stand
out against the ruin of her family, or withstand her father's ruling
passion, to save her name or herself. She lived amid privations and
discomforts; she had set out too early on the sorrowful stages of the
Via Crucis; an unhappy future was before her. How different and far
off these two were!
Still, they understood each other, as the secret, mysterious law
of love decrees. It mingles everything--feelings, tradition,
origin; puts force next to weakness, and binds two persons together
irrevocably by their very differences. She did not consider she
lowered herself by loving the obscure Southern peasant become a
great doctor; he did not consider he stooped to this decaying
family, impoverished in blood, means, and courage. The two souls
that had to love one another had set out far apart, had had to run
through infinite spiritual space to meet, know, join together. It is
Plato's grand love theory, that only fools and heartless folk dare
to laugh at; the grand theory of falling in love, once more, after
a million instances, was to be realized. Did it not seem arranged
purposely, that this unknown, common man should reach to fame and
riches by his own efforts, getting to know science and life so that
he could console the high-born girl's cold, faded, sorrowful youth,
languishing in solitude and secret poverty?
When the serving Sister in the Sacramentiste convent ran from the
chilly parlour, where Bianca Maria fell in a faint, to the hospital
for a doctor, and obstinately insisted Antonio Amati should come to
help the invalid, that was the hour of the decisive meeting. The icy,
bloodless hands were at last enfolded in the doctor's strong, healthy
ones; once more the wonderful attraction by which loving souls
overcome time, space, a thousand obstacles, this attraction--unlucky
he who has not felt its power--brought together those who were bound
to be united. How could it be these two were not to understand
each other, if only Antonio Amati could, by his knowledge, save
Bianca Maria from the disease sapping her vital forces, if only he
could give her health, riches, and happiness? How not come to an
understanding if that innocent gentleness, that mild poesy, that
source of every affection, if all that was wanting in Antonio Amati's
laborious, stern life, could only reach him through Bianca Maria's
slight, modest personality?
He was strength, with a serene, just conscience; she was goodness,
all unconscious tenderness and mercy. That strength and that goodness
called to each other to unite. They were obeying destiny's order
to join, so that love should create once more a fine miracle of
harmony. When she _had_ to will something, she lifted her eyes to her
lover's face and drank in will power. When he looked at her he felt
the stretched cords of his energy slacken and the great flower of
benignity blossom in his heart.
But it was destined that all Amati's experiences in life were to
be conflicts, that every reward men of talent and energy get in
this life should only be gained by him after a fierce struggle.
With love it was the same. A serious obstacle arose between him and
Bianca Maria Cavalcanti. It was her father, the Marquis. The first
time Amati saw the proud, deluded, violent man, he felt a painful
suspicion rise in his mind. He divined dull hostility in Formosa.
Perhaps birth, past and present conditions, divided them, the
opposite ideas they had of life and its responsibilities. Perhaps the
one that came from the earth, bringing forth good like her, scorned
this falling away in health, fortune, and respectability. Perhaps
he who lived by the arrogant rules of a life given up to luxury,
pleasure, and generosity, despised the obstinate, unpolished worker,
sparing in pleasures, unfavourable to them, too hard on himself and
on others. Perhaps the one guessed the other's scorn, and felt
miles apart, with such different ideas that they could never meet.
Perhaps the reason of the mutual antipathy, of Amati's coldness and
Formosa's hostility, was more inward, deeper, more mysterious. It may
be neither dared confess it to himself. In short, it was suspicion,
distrust, an unconscious hostility. Indeed, Amati saw in Carlo
Cavalcanti the unknown danger that might wreck Bianca Maria's reason
and life. It was vaguely, but obstinately, without well knowing why
or wherefore; but he felt the danger was there. And Carlo Cavalcanti
felt Antonio Amati was his judge--his enemy, I would almost say.
Twice, when the doctor was present at Bianca Maria's fainting-fit and
at the attack of fever, that made her delirious a day and a night,
he said harsh things to the Marquis di Formosa about his daughter's
health. The old man listened, quivering with rage, fretting inwardly.
He submitted to this deliverer from a dark hour, but he looked
haughtily at him, and shrugged his shoulders when he threatened that
the girl would die. By what blindness did he always refuse to take
Bianca Maria away from that cold, mean house, where all her youthful
strength was languishing? At any rate, he obstinately refused,
quivering with emotion every time the doctor touched on the subject.
It seemed to be from affection, pride, and nervousness, as if he knew
what the right remedy was, and could not, would not, make use of it.
Full of doubt, the doctor got always nearer to something shady, but
he checked himself, fearing to wound certain susceptibilities. The
Marquis was poor: how could he change houses? It was natural for him
to redden with fright and melancholy when he was told his daughter
was fading away to a fatal ending, to frown with offended pride when
offers of service were made. Still, his pride had had to give way
that Saturday morning he asked Amati for a loan, saying he would give
it back during the day. His pride had had to go altogether several
other times, always on Saturday, with an urgent note in a large,
shaky hand asking for money--more money out of Amati's purse, always
promising to give it back the same day, always failing to do so.
He blushed a little as he wrote, his old head bent to weep over his
lost dignity as an old man and a gentleman; but his passion was so
strong he would have made money out of anything. When the doctor
sent him the money in an envelope, and then another sheet of paper,
so that the servant should not notice what it was, the Marquis
felt mortified, and opened the envelope roughly with a sharp tear,
and the blood went to his head. Amati never wrote a reply, but he
never refused. In the evening, when father and daughter were in the
drawing-room, she working at her fine lace, he going up and down
the room to quiet his excited nerves, the doctor would come in. The
Marquis could hardly restrain his annoyance, but went forward to meet
his visitor with sham heartiness, his face pale. They greeted one
another in an embarrassed way, while Bianca Maria's face sparkled.
In spite of service rendered, no cordiality grew up between them.
They were cold, and took stock of each other, feeling they were
enemies. When the doctor, from his native audacity, and that which
love gave him, went to sit opposite Bianca Maria and asked her about
her health, when they gazed in each other's eyes, the Marquis was
troubled, an angry quiver came into his voice. He was the obstacle.
It was in vain every time his ruling passion obliged him to ask Amati
for money that Amati gave it without hesitation, more delicately each
time. It was lowering all the same. This queer intimacy could not
rid them of suspicion, want of confidence, antipathy. Perhaps these
loans, asked with a lying excuse, lying promises, only dug that gulf
of sorrow, shame, and humiliation that is between him who asks and
him who gives. Formosa's great dream now was to get money--a lot of
money, so as to lead a grand life, after throwing the doctor's sous
in his face and turning him out. He ended by hating him for these
benefits it was so hard to ask for, that his wretched passion drove
him to take.
Antonio Amati understood; he knew Formosa stood in the way.
Naturally, he knew what was the greedy mouth that swallowed up all
the old man's money, and some that was not his; he knew the fever
that destroyed his gentlemanly feeling, that the wretchedness was
the result of sin; he knew an irresistible force obliged him to ask
for these loans. His only wish was that Bianca Maria should not
suffer, that she should get out of these sad, poverty-stricken, mad
surroundings, ever since the time she had, in a low state of health,
bodily and mentally, induced by fever, told him she loved him and
begged him to take her away. He renewed the offer of his country
house, where his mother was, more than once. She shook her head,
smiled sadly, and said nothing. One evening when she was suffering
very much, choking with heat in that flat, airless in summer, icy
in winter, he made the offer to Formosa, bringing it out naturally,
trying to be cordial. Formosa thought it over a moment. His daughter
looked anxiously at him, awaiting his answer.
'It is impossible,' said the Marquis di Formosa concisely.
'Why so?' the doctor asked boldly.
'Just because I choose,' the old man retorted obstinately.
'And you, my lady; what do you say?'
The doctor looked earnestly at her, to give her the strength to
rebel. The poor girl's eyelids fluttered once or twice. She looked at
her father, then said:
'As my father says, it is impossible.'
He would have liked to remind her then of the sweet words she said
to him one day, to take her out of that pit, to carry her far off to
the sunny, green country; but he noticed a sudden coldness in her
cast down eyes and stern mouth; he felt her soul was escaping from
him. He understood he had come into conflict with filial obedience
of that deep, unshakable, almost hierarchical kind one meets with in
the upper classes, where paternal authority is blindly respected and
family reigns absolute. Rage rose in the doctor's heart. He fretted
against the obstacle, seeing the power of love crumble in a moment
before a simpler but older feeling or instinct, an affection which,
besides the ties of blood, had tradition and life in common for it
also. He did not say a word, nor cast a reproving glance, as he saw
it was a superior power rising against him that for twenty years had
held the girl's heart. Love seemed suddenly to have lost its power,
as at a word from her father she had been able to give up the idyll
she had dreamt over so long in her empty room.
After a little the doctor went away, cold, frozen, like the father
and daughter, who looked like ghosts in that great deserted house. He
went off with his first love disappointment, which is the bitterest,
quivering with rage and grief. When he was alone in his handsome,
solitary house, he vainly tried to amuse himself by reading a
scientific review. He was wounded in his love and in his self-love.
Like a love-lorn youth, to cheat that bitterness and give a vent
to his excitement, he sat down to write a long, incoherent letter
full of love and rage. But when he finished it he calmed down. It
seemed unjust to accuse Bianca Maria of indifference and cruelty.
On reading it over, he thought it ridiculous. He was a man, not a
boy; he had white hairs; he ought not to give himself over to boyish
outbursts.
'I will tear up the letter,' he said. But he afterwards felt
discouraged. The first, purest flower of his poetic love was cut off;
the idyll had vanished; the whole future could only be a tragedy.
Yes, the combat between Antonio Amati and Carlo Cavalcanti was secret
but obstinate, subtle but very acute. The old man had great power
over his daughter; one might say he bent her will to his with an
imperious, fascinating glance. He did not wish anyone else should
get power over her; he feared to lose his influence. From paternal
self-love, that exaggerated jealousy that hates from the beginning
those who love their children, or some other mysterious reason,
he set himself between his daughter and Antonio Amati when he saw
the latter's sway might increase. When they were alone they never
mentioned him--on her part out of obedience, for she always waited
for her father to speak first, and he never named the doctor. The
maiden was sensitive about this reserve, and got more and more
self-contained, already seeing the first sad symptoms of the struggle.
Amati had written her just one letter; she treasured it and read it
over and over, because it breathed of honesty, peace, strength, which
were altogether wanting in her wretched, disturbed life, with its
saddening past, hurrying on to a dark future. She bent her head, even
now feeling that love could not save her, for she seemed tied by a
sad fatality, by a charm cast over her life. When Antonio Amati came
back in the evening, determined not to yield to this extraordinary
tyranny of the father's, she looked up timidly at them; the false
cordiality and vivacity with which the men greeted each other
encouraged her. A pink colour came to her pale cheeks; but if her
father frowned or the doctor's voice got hard she became pale and
alarmed again. Her father had carefully hidden that he got pecuniary
help from the doctor; he was ashamed to confess this loss of dignity
his ruling passion had dragged him into. The good, pale maiden took
courage when she saw the healthy, hearty hand held out to her to pull
her out of her unhealthy surroundings; but when her father abruptly,
roughly put away that hand, she trembled; she did not ask why. Her
mother had pined away too resignedly for her to dare to rebel. Only
she just lived from day to day without going into the disagreements
between her father and Amati, letting herself go to the sweetness
of the new feeling, trying to escape from her bitter presentiments.
But he, a man of science and much given to observation, finding
her father's conduct incomprehensible, tried to curb himself so as
to tear the secret out of Formosa's heart. He knew the gambling
fever devoured him. Sometimes, when he was with Bianca Maria in the
drawing-room, two or three of the Cabalist group would come in to ask
for the Marquis. He got rather embarrassed. Once he shut himself up
in his study with them; voices reached them from there, deadened and
indistinct. Twice he went out with them, the doctor's presence making
him impatient and nervous.
'Who are those people?' the doctor asked.
'They are friends,' she said, turning away her head.
'Are they yours?'
'No; my father's.'
She let him see she did not wish to speak about them, so he held his
tongue. Another time, one Friday evening, Don Pasqualino De Feo came
in, with his sickly look and torn, dirty clothes. At once the doctor
remembered he had seen him. Yes, at the hospital, where he arrived
black and blue, knocked about as if he had got a severe licking; and
he remembered his fantastic talk. While the medium was whispering
with the Marquis in a window recess, the doctor asked Bianca quietly:
'Is he a friend, too?' But he noticed she got so pale, her eyes so
frightened, crushed by fear of something he knew nothing about,
that he said no more. He remembered that, on recovering from her
long faint, she had tried to send the medium out of the house. 'You
dislike him, don't you?'
'No, no,' said she. 'I am foolish.'
She was afraid Amati would interrupt her father's conversation; but
finding their talk prevented, they got up to go away. The medium went
past with his eyes down, but Amati called out to him:
'You have got over that licking, De Feo?'
He started, rubbed his forehead, and answered, without looking at the
doctor:
'I have had favour from him who sent me the misfortune.'
'From whom?' asked the doctor, with a mocking laugh.
The medium said nothing. Formosa got flushed. His eyes sparkled as he
answered, in a shaky voice:
'From the spirit.'
'What spirit?' said the doctor jokingly.
'Caracò, the spirit that helps Don Pasqualino,' the Marquis said
emphatically.
'Do you believe that, my lord?' Amati retorted, casting on him a
scrutinizing glance.
'It is as clear as light,' answered the noble, raising his eyes to
heaven ecstatically.
'And you, my lady, do you believe it?' the doctor asked Bianca,
examining her face.
She was just going to answer she did not believe, that she was afraid
to believe, when a wild look from her father froze the words on her
lips. One saw the effort she made to send back a sorrowful cry.
Vaguely she waved her hand, and said:
'I know nothing about it.'
The medium cast an oblique glance at the doctor. For the first time
an enraged look came over his face and mingled with his mysterious
humility. He twisted his neck, as if a hard bone was choking him.
He pulled the Marquis's sleeve in an underhand way to get him to
go away; but by Amati's words and grin had he found out his utter
incredulity, and, like all deluded folk, he felt his faith in the
aiding spirit increased doubly, together with a great desire to
convince Amati.
'You don't believe in the spirit, doctor?'
'No,' said the latter dryly.
'Neither in good nor bad spirits?'
'In neither.'
'Why?'
'Because there are no such things.'
'Who told you so?'
'Science and facts are enough, it seems to me,' the doctor said
plainly.
'Science is sacrilege,' shouted the Marquis, getting in a rage. 'It
has been proved spirits do exist; I can prove it to you.'
'It is no use; I would not believe you'--with a slight smile.
'There are spirits; the so-called incredulous deny their existence
in bad faith--yes, because they don't know the facts, and then say
they are false; because they see nothing, their eyes being blinded by
scepticism, they say there is nothing--insincerely altogether.'
The doctor smiled at his excitement, but, glancing at Bianca Maria,
he saw she was in torment; he guessed that behind this discussion was
the secret of the hostility. Being accustomed to sick and excited
people's outbursts, he examined the Marquis with a doctor's eye,
following the violent stages of his excitement.
'Quite insincere--quite!' the Marquis screamed out, going up and down
the room, speaking to himself. 'Hundreds of honest men, scientists,
gentlemen, ladies, have seen, touched, spoken with the spirits,
held important interviews with them; there are printed books, thick
volumes, about the very thing you deny totally. What do you think
this help from the spirits is?'
He stopped in front of Amati to ask him the question. Although the
doctor did not want to make him angrier by contradiction, the demand
was too direct not to answer it. He glanced at the Lady Bianca, and
saw in her face such secret anxiety to know the truth, and such
agitation, he brought it out straight:
'I believe it is an imposture.'
The medium cast up his eyes, swimming in tears. Bianca Maria's face
got serene, but Formosa's voice hissed with rage:
'Then, you think me a fool?'
'No; but your soul is too loyal and generous not to be easily
cheated.'
'Nonsense!' the Marquis called out, quivering--'nonsense! You can't
get out of it; Don Pasqualino is a cheat, and I am a donkey.'
'I deny the second part,' said the doctor dryly.
'But you agree to the first?'
'Yes, I do,' said the doctor boldly.
'How do you prove it?'
'There is no need to prove it; I answer because you question me.
Besides, now I remember, Don Pasqualino was beaten by two gamblers,
enraged because they did not get the right lottery numbers. He told
you it was the spirit Caracò.'
'It was all a pretence, the gamblers beating him, so as to keep the
spirit's secret.'
'But the two that assaulted him were arrested and confronted with
him at the hospital; they had to spend a month in prison.'
'Is that true, Don Pasqualino?' the Marquis asked severely.
The medium looked distressed, as if it were impossible for him to
defend himself against an unjust accusation. But the doctor was
offended at that request for confirmation.
'My lord,' he said solemnly, 'I am too serious a man and take too
little interest to care to go into the business with that fellow. If
you have any esteem for me, I beg you to spare me further discussion.'
'All right--very good,' the Marquis said at once, his proud spirit
being open to any appeal to good feeling. 'Let us have no more of it;
discussions between sceptics and believers can only be unpleasant.
Let us go away, Don Pasqualino; perhaps the doctor will do you
justice some day. Let us go; I see Bianca Maria is pained also.
You must convince the doctor, my dear,' the father added rather
maliciously.
'In what way is she to do that?' asked he, astonished.
'She will tell you,' Formosa replied, grinning; and on getting a
dismayed look from his daughter, he added: 'Tell him--tell him what
you know; I allow you, Bianca. Perhaps he will believe you. You
are harmless; you have no interest in cheating; you are not a sham
apostle. Tell him all about it; perhaps you will convince him.'
Resolutely he put on his hat and took the medium's arm, as if to
give him a proof of affectionate confidence after the way the doctor
had abused him. The old noble, Guido Cavalcanti's descendant, with
a lineage of six centuries, put his arm into that mean cheat's, who
had been shown up as a liar a few minutes before. But who noticed
that act that showed Formosa had again shipwrecked his dignity? The
two were out of the house already. Bianca Maria and the doctor stood
silently; the whole drama of their love seemed to ripen in that
silence. With unscrupulous cunning, telling his daughter to speak,
let the doctor know all, leaving them alone with that secret between
them, the Marquis took his revenge for Amati's scepticism and his
daughter's passiveness. He gaily and cruelly lighted the match of a
mine, and then went off just as it was catching fire, so that all
love's edifice should come down.
'Well, what have you to tell me?' said the doctor at last, keen to
know the truth.
'What is it?' she said faintly, coming out of her sad musing.
'Have you not something to tell me? Did your father not
advise--almost order you to do so?'
She started. Amati spoke sharply; she had never heard him speak so.
She was offended, and became reserved.
'I know nothing,' she said very low. 'I have nothing to tell you.'
He bit his lip angrily. What evil influence had induced him to come
between father and daughter in these queer, mad surroundings, all
sickness, wretchedness, and vice? What was he doing, with his rough
honesty, his vulgar integrity, in that half insane, poverty-struck
life? What bonds, what perplexities, was he not making for his own
heart, that up to then had kept pure and unmoved? The decisive hour
had come. He must break it off sharply if he wanted to escape the
fetters that smothered all his old instincts. He was going to make an
end of these romantic complications--that subtle, annoying tragedy;
his life was a plain one. He got up determinedly, saying:
'Good-bye!'
She rose too. She understood that her father first, then she, had
exhausted the lion's patience. Feebly she asked:
'You will come to-morrow?'
'No, I will not.'
'Some other day, then?'
'No.'
'Some other day when you are not busy?'
'No.'
The three 'No's' were said very decidedly. Bianca Maria gave a
shiver. He was going away; he would never come back. He was right.
He was a strong, serious man, devoted to his work--a work of love
and saving others. He was getting involved in a falling away from
reason and dignity in the society of people he was helping and being
friendly to, and as a return he had been slighted and insulted; and
now a charlatan, a cheat, was preferred to him. He was right to go
away, never to come back. But she felt lost, a prey to insanity, if
she let him go. Looking beseechingly at him, she implored him:
'Don't go away--stay.'
'What is there for me to do here? Ought I to wait for your father to
turn me out to-morrow? Because I stood that scene a little ago, must
I stand another?'
'I did not do anything to you,' said she, wringing her hands to keep
down her sorrow.
'Good-bye!' he said, and nothing else.
'Don't go away--don't go away!'
Two big tears she could not keep back rolled down her cheeks. He had
refused to give in to her voice, beseeching pallor, and excitement,
but he gave in to her tears. He was a hard man in his success, but a
child's, a woman's tears made him forget everything. When she saw him
come back and sit down, his good nature making him yield, she did not
restrain her choking tears. She sank into her chair again, her face
hid in her handkerchief, sobbing.
'Don't cry,' he muttered, feeling that it did her good, but that he
could not bear it.
A good deal of time was needed before she could calm herself. She
had kept in her feelings too much for the outburst to be otherwise
than long and noisy. The June evening was very warm; the scirocco's
breath depressed sickly nerves. The only sound was a skilfully played
wailing mandoline in the distance up Pontecorvo Hill.
'Listen,' the doctor began, not harshly, but coldly, when he saw
she had got quieter. 'I hope you will listen to me quietly. I am an
intruder in your family. Don't interrupt me; I know what you would
say. I cured you twice; but that is my work; you have no need to feel
obliged to me. Don't protest; I know the limits of human feeling. I
am an intruder, then. There is nothing in common between you and me;
we are different kinds. It does not matter. I, who am not dreamy,
seeing you are fading away, that you need the wide, healthy country
and solitude, tried to get you away from here. If my dream has not
come true, whose fault is it--yours or mine?'
'It is mine,' she said humbly.
'One day,' the doctor went on rather slowly, as if he was thinking
over what had happened--'one day you yourself told me to take you
away. Do you remember?...'
'I remember....'
'... I thought ... it is no use saying what I thought. I must have
been mistaken; but any man in my place would have been. Well, when
our dream might have come true, Bianca, tell me, who was it let it
fade away?'
'I myself. It was I.'
'You see, then, that I, a man of realities and action, dreamt too
much. To your father and you I am a sort of intruder, meddling in
your affairs without having any right to, and ineffectually. On the
other hand, Bianca, believe me, my whole life has been disturbed
through wishing to see you healthy and happy, and from the useless
struggle my efforts lead to, for you oppose me yourself. Would I not
do well, then, to go away and never come back?'
'You are right,' she said, with a despairing gesture.
'... Still,' Amati went on, striving to hide his agitation, 'I
believe--rather, I know--leaving you would cause me great pain. It
may be, you too would suffer?' questioning her face.
'I should die of it,' she brought out, sincerely moved.
'Don't say that. But if I am to stay near you, Bianca, to try,
against your will and your own weakness, to save your health and
fortune, I must be your friend--your greatest, only friend; do you
understand? I must have your whole confidence and faith; after God,
you must believe in me. I can see that here, in this house, there
is a sad secret which your father and you vainly try to hide; but
the Marquis di Formosa's feverishness lets it out darkly every
minute. Besides this fever, that is at the same time a disease, an
overmastering passion and vice, there is something that escapes me,
something crueller that tortures you, and you, out of filial piety,
respect to your father--fear, perhaps--hide it from me. Bianca, if I
am not to know everything, I must go away for ever, and let your life
and mine be ruined irretrievably.'
'I love you so,' she said, abandoning her soul to him.
'Darling!' he whispered, patting her brown hair as her head leant for
a moment on his strong, faithful heart.
'Promise me one thing ...' she asked in a babyish way.
'Say what it is....'
'Promise me you won't think ill of my father--promise! He is the
best of fathers; any girl would be proud to have him. Nothing could
shake my respect and love for him. I want you not to blame him
for anything--promise me! His fatal tendency is only part of his
kindness. He is so unhappy at heart!'
'I promise you, Bianca, to be as indulgent as you could be.'
'That is enough. He is an unhappy man. For years and years our house
has been going down. Since when or why I don't remember. I was very
little. I don't even know whose fault it is. I don't wish to. I only
remember that my mother was pale and sickly; her hands were always
cold....'
'Like yours, poor dear!'
'Like mine?' she answered with a pale smile.
'What did your mother die of?'
'Bloodlessness and languor. She faded away ... at the last, she was
not in her senses all the time.'
'Did she rave?'
'Yes, slightly,' she answered, blushing to her forehead.
'Don't think of that,' he said, guessing the reason of her blush.
'My father felt mother's sufferings so much! For years a dream had
taken hold of him: it was to build up the Cavalcanti fortune, to let
mother and me live in style, keep open house, and in one day pour out
in charity what now serves to keep us for a year,' she added, with a
lump in her throat.
'Keep calm, dear-don't get excited.'
'No, no, let me speak; if I don't I'll choke. A great dream, as large
as his heart, noble and generous as his soul, so much so that my
mother and I felt gratitude that will not end with life, but must
go on beyond the tomb, where one still hears, loves, and prays.
But, with his excited fancy, he longed for quick, ample methods of
realizing this fortune: methods suited to the case, for a Cavalcanti
neither works nor speculates ...'
'It was the lottery,' Amati finished up for her.
'Yes, the lottery; how do you know?'
'I do know.'
'Our misfortune is known to everyone who comes near us,' she went on,
quivering with grief. 'Such a misfortune, to crown the others! Mother
died of it, from physical and moral weakness. Our whole means are
sacrificed to it; it has taken my father's heart from me; when it has
destroyed all that is dearest, it will hand me over to wretchedness
and death.'
'Don't be afraid, don't fear; everything has a remedy,' he said
vaguely, trying to cut short that despairing outflow.
'It can't be cured,' she said earnestly. 'My dying mother, in a lucid
interval, said as she kissed me: "Don't judge your father--never
be hard on him; obey, be obedient. The passion that eats him up,
and is killing me, can only increase with years. This fever will
get higher: I have not cured it, neither will you. Leave him to
this dream--don't annoy him; if you are unhappy, ask God's help;
but respect his years. He only desires our happiness--he is killing
me for it; he will make you suffer frightfully, though he is noble
and generous. Be merciful to him. It is only so that I can die, as
I do, with a quiet conscience." Mother was right. With years he
has got unhappier, more eccentric; he is incurable now; he forgets
everything, everything--you know what I mean. Some day or other I
fear my noble old father, whose gray hairs I ought to honour--that I
want everyone to respect--may forget the laws of honour in some dark
gambling combination.'
'May God keep him from it!' said Amati, starting.
'May God hear you!' she cried out; 'but I pray so much, and the
evil gets worse. If you knew! We are in want of everything: it is
the first time I have told anyone. I am quivering with shame, but I
can't hide anything from you. He has sold everything: first works of
art, then furniture, down to a few jewels mother kept for me--and he
adored her!--even the Cavalcanti portraits--though he is proud of his
race!--even the silver lamps in the chapel--and he is religious! I
live with these two old servants, so faithful neither sin nor poverty
has taken them from us! They are not paid: they serve us of the
House of Cavalcanti without pay. Do you know, it is by their clever
contrivances that the house goes on, that we have enough to eat,
and that there is oil in the lamps! I am raising for you the veil
of sacred family decency--don't betray us!' He bent and kissed the
hand Bianca held out to him, to seal his promise. 'All that money,
and more that he gets somewhere--I know not where and have no wish
to know--goes in gambling. Friday and Saturday he is wild. Other
wretches, like that medium, come for him: his very name makes me
shiver with fright and shame; they have queer alarming consultations;
they get excited, shout, and quarrel; they use a queer jargon. These
are his friends; men of his own rank, his relations, have left him.
It may be he asked money from them, got it, and did not give it back,
perhaps; it may be the whisper, even, of wickedness makes them
avoid us. These Cabalists, men who _see_'--she shivered and looked
round--'take his money from him and incite him to play. The day is at
hand when he will have nothing left, and he won't be able to gamble.
God, God open his eyes, if we are not to perish altogether, the name
and the family!'
'Bianca, Bianca, I implore you to be calm,' he said, alarmed at her
excitement, following its phases with a doctor's mind and a man's
heart.
'I can't,' she cried. 'I have not told you all. Listen: I am a
poor, weak creature; the blood runs poor and slow in my veins, you
know--you told me so. I have lived either in this sad house or my
aunt's convent--that is to say, with my father, always full of his
fancies, or with my aunt, whose faith gives her almost prophetic
visions. Mother died here; as the gambling passion filled my father's
mind, the delusion began to filter into mine against my will.
Father speaks to me of ghosts, phantoms, spirits, at all hours,
especially in the evening and at night, and I believe in them; you
see how frightful that is. The sunlight, seeing people, chases fears
away; but evening comes, the house gets full of shadows, my blood
freezes; when father speaks of the spirit my heart stops or goes at
a gallop; I feel as if I was dying of fear. I get queer singings in
my ears. I hear light steps, smothered voices. I see in my mind's eye
white-robed figures--they look at me and weep; shadowy hands smooth
my hair. I seem to feel icy breaths on my cheek; my nights now are
one long watch, or light sleep broken by dreams.'
'There are no such spirits, Bianca,' said he, in a gentle, firm voice.
'I am so weak, so unfit to get rid of delusions. When I have got
calmer, father, from his own fancies or the medium's infamous
suggestions, comes to torment me. He wishes me to _see_ without
caring about my feebleness, my fears, not knowing how he tortures me.
He speaks of the spirit, wants me to call it up, for I am young and
innocent. I try to go against him; vainly I struggle and ask him to
spare me, not to make me drink this bitter cup. But it is no use: he
is obstinate and blinded; he wants me to see the spirit, and ask what
numbers to play. Father has such influence over me, he makes me share
his madness to a frightful extent. I shall end by being like him, a
poor deluded thing, worn out by night watches and daily delusions.'
She hid her face in her hands, quivering. The doctor looked at her
astounded, not daring to say anything.
'And you don't know all yet,' she went on excitedly. 'One day you
wrote me a kind, comforting letter, suggesting I should go off to
your mother's. What comfort it was! I would have got out of this
house at last, where every black doorway frightens me in the evening,
and the furniture looks ghostly. I would have gone where there was
light, sun, heat, and joy. Well, that night father took an extra mad
fit: he came to my room. Wakened from sleep at so late an hour, in
the flickering lamp-light, his words put me into a panic; he wouldn't
listen to my entreaties, he didn't know he was torturing me, and for
two hours he spoke about the spirit that was to appear, that I must
evoke; he would teach me the sacred word. He held on to my hands,
breathed in my face, filling me with his enthusiasm and faith, and so
he gained his end.'
'In what way?'
'I saw the spirit, dear.'
'How? You saw it?'
'As I see you.'
'It was fever; there is no such thing, Bianca,' he said harshly, to
bring back her wandering mind to peace.
'You say so; I believe you. But when you are gone, when I have
finished my prayers and reading, when I am alone in my room with
the shadows the lamps throw, I shall see again that night's vision:
my head will swim, my brain whirl, my teeth chatter. Father is in
despair now because that night's numbers did not come right; he says
I don't know how to interpret; he wants me to call up the spirit
again. He thinks now I am a medium, and he gives me no peace. I am
not his daughter now; he only looks on me as a mediator between him
and Fortune. He watches every word I say, looks enviously at me or
haughtily, and goes about thinking of some queer discipline, some
privations or other to enable me to see the spirit again, to make my
soul pure like my body, and my sight clear. He leaves me alone at
the beginning of the week, but on Thursday night he comes and begs
me--fancy, he implores me--to call the spirit; that aged man, whose
hand I kiss respectfully, kneels before me, as at the altar, to
soften me. On Friday he gets wild; he never notices how frightened
I get; he thinks it is the coming of the spirits that excites me.
The other night, to get away from the torture I find unbearable, I
locked my door: I was so bold as to deny father access to my room.
Well, he came, knocked, softly at first, then loudly; he spoke to
me entreatingly, he ordered me to see the spirit--in a rage first,
and then abjectly. I stopped my ears not to hear him, put my head
down in the pillows; I bit the sheet to choke my sobs. Twenty times
I wanted to open the door, but terror nailed me to my bed. Father
wept. Mother, mother, I disobeyed you! You could die for father, but
I could not do that for him.'
'Poor darling!' he murmured, trying to calm her down with gentle,
compassionate words, petting her hands, as if he wanted to set her to
sleep or magnetize her.
'Yes, yes, pity me, for I am so wretched, so unhappy, I envy any
beggar on the street. Pity me, because the one person who should
love me, take care of my health and happiness, dreams instead about
getting money for me, a great lot, and makes me suffer in body, in
mind, for it; pity me, for I am an unhappy woman, doomed to a dark
ending. In all the wide world, I only have you to care for me!'
They said no more. Bianca Maria's pallid cheeks had got some colour,
her eyes shone; her whole heart had been poured out as she spoke,
now she kept silence. She had said everything. The bitter secret
that implacably tortured her whole existence, on being evoked by
love, had come out and had given a shudder of alarmed astonishment
to the strong man listening. He said nothing, trying to keep down
his own amazement, to arrange his confused ideas. He was accustomed,
certainly, to hear lugubrious stories of all kinds of misery, both
of body and mind, from his patients; he had lifted the veil from all
kinds of shame and corruption; the sorrowful and contrite came to him
as to a confessor, and hearts that hid the most horrifying secrets
of humanity opened to him. But Bianca's sorrow was so profound, the
very source of life being attacked, that it frightened him to see
such unutterable wretchedness. Also this girl, wasted by an obscure,
unnatural malady, tortured by her own father, that lovely, dear
creature, was the woman he loved, that he could not live without,
whose happiness was dearer to him than his own. Disturbed, not
knowing yet how to set to work before that complicated problem of
sickness and delusion, that made the Marquis di Formosa the family
destroyer, he found nothing to say to comfort Bianca.
She was worn out now; she felt a vague remorse at having accused her
father. But was not Amati to deliver her? Did she not feel quite
safe, strong, when he was there? Rousing herself from her exhaustion,
she raised her eyes to his timidly, humbly, saying:
'You don't think me bad and ungrateful, do you?'
'No, dear, I do not.'
'Do not judge badly of him.'
'I will cure him,' he said thoughtfully.