At the end of the week a telegram came from Madame, asking Antonio to
go to Albano.
"She can't live without him," thought Regina, assailed by a spasm of
real jealousy. "I feel scruples at having merely gone into her house
in her absence, but she has no scruples, none! I won't allow him to
go!"
She was unreasonable, and she knew it; but the delirium, the quiet
madness of doubt, had become habitual with her.
As usual, however, she was unsuccessful in carrying out her proud
intention. When Antonio suggested she should accompany him to Albano,
she said "Yes."
She said "Yes" up to the last moment, but on Sunday morning changed
her mind.
"Don't you go either," she said. "If Madame wants you, why can't she
come to Rome? Are you her slave?"
"Regina!" he said, reprovingly.
"I am not Regina, not a queen--not even a princess! I'm sick to death
of this life we are leading! All through the week we see each other
only for a minute at a time, and now you are going away even on
Sunday!"
"Just for once. Why won't you come too?"
"I won't, because I don't want to. _I_ am nobody's toady, and it's
time you gave up the office yourself! Is there any more necessity for
it? If it's true our affairs are so prosperous," she went on, with
open sarcasm, "then why----"
"There's no good discussing it with you," he interrupted, firing up.
"You're always unreasonable!"
He set out at noon. In the afternoon Regina went for one of her rare
visits to her mother-in-law. She stayed for dinner, and once more
made part of the picture she had so detested, but now she had very
different feelings from those of old. Thinking it over, she asked
herself why that picture had appeared to her so vulgar. Merely as
types of character the personages were interesting, or at least
seemed so now.
Arduina and Massimo discussed celebrated authors--she with real
animus, he with contempt for her. Gaspare told the conjugal
misfortunes of one of his colleagues. Signor Mario picked his teeth,
and Signora Anna lamented the terrible conduct of her servant. It
was amusing--for once in a way. The dinner was good; they drank and
laughed. Claretta admired herself in the glass, flirted with Massimo
and even with Gaspare.
In fact, nothing in the environment had changed; yet Regina was no
longer disgusted. Claretta was less elegant than herself, and Signora
Anna took quite maternal satisfaction in pointing this out. She asked
her niece why she didn't do her hair like Regina's.
"This suits me better," drawled the young lady, putting her hand to
her head and settling the lace butterfly which decked her locks;
"besides, it's the fashion."
"Excuse me," said Massimo, "the women of the aristocracy do their
hair like Regina."
"Madame Makuline, perhaps?" said Claretta, ironically.
Regina glanced at her. Did she mean anything, the pretty cousin? Did
she know anything?
When the others sat down to cards Regina went into the bedroom
which once had seemed to her a haunt of incubi. It was open to the
balcony, and the moon illuminated the curtains, projecting a silver
dazzle across the interior. The great bed was a white square in the
centre of the room, corners of chairs and tables caught the light,
a scent of pinks perfumed the silence and the peace of that great
matrimonial chamber, nest of humdrum _bourgeois_ felicity. Regina
thought if Antonio had brought her to Rome on a night like this, and
had introduced her into that room shining thus, wrapped in the dreams
of mid-May, nothing would have happened that had happened.
She leaned from the balcony; pinks were at her feet; over a sweet
heaven of velvety blue passed the moon distant and melancholy,
distant and pure, like a sail lost in the immensity of the ocean of
dream.
Naturally Regina's thoughts flew to the terrace on the shore of
the Albano lake, where rose-leaves fell like butterflies on the
iridescent mother-o'-pearl of the moonlit water.
What was Antonio doing? Was it possible that the monstrous dream
which crushed her could have any reality? Under the infinite purity
of the heavens could such wickedness be wrought on earth?
But when she had returned home, the incubus settled down on her
again, victor once more in that strife which too often proved her the
weaker.
She expected Antonio by the last train. He did not come, neither did
he send an explanatory telegram. Regina waited till midnight, then
went to bed, but passed an agitated night, perhaps because for the
first time she was alone.
Very early she had Caterina brought to her. The baby, in her little
night-dress, sat on the pillow and seemed uneasy at her father's
absence.
"Papa?" she asked.
"Papa isn't here. He'll come very soon, very soon, very soon! Go to
sleep. Lie down. Give me little foot--my little foot. That other one
is Papa's? Very well, you can give it to him when he comes," said
Regina, drawing the baby down. Caterina was in the habit of giving
one foot to Mamma and the other to Papa. Regina took both the little
feet, but Caterina wished to keep Papa's free. Then she touched the
lace on Regina's night-dress with her rosy finger.
"_Ti è to?_" she asked.
"_Questo è tuo?_--Is this yours?" translated Regina. "Yes, it's mine.
And little Caterina, whose is she? Mine, isn't she? all mine! And a
little bit Papa's; but very, very little, because Papa is naughty,
and doesn't come home, and leaves poor little Mamma all alone!"
She relieved her mind thus, talking in baby language to the rosy
little creature; and while she made Caterina give her wee, wee,
wee, dear, dear little kisses, and felt there could be no greater
pleasure, she still thought of the monstrous visions which had
agitated her all night. Doubtless Antonio had slept at the villa on
the shore of the lake, in a room of which the window was a wondrous
picture of the landscape and the sky. And in the silence of the
night, while outside the woods, the waters, the heaven, were a poem
of beauty and purity, an odious idyl was taking place within.
"My little, little Caterina, my pet, put your arms round me! Let us
sleep together," said Regina, laying the baby's hand on her face, and
closing her eyes, as if to exclude the evil sights. "There! shut the
little peepers! that's the way!"
The child obeyed for a moment, but suddenly became cross, struggled,
and with her little open hand gave her mother a slap on the face.
"Oh, how naughty!" said Regina. "I'll tell Papa, you know! You are
not to hit your Mamma! Ask my forgiveness at once; love me at once,
like this! Say, 'Dear, dear Mamma, forgive Baby! Baby will never do
it again.'"
But Caterina struck her a second time, and Regina became really angry.
"You are very, very naughty," she exclaimed, taking the little hand
and administering pandies. "Go away; I don't want Baby any more. Baby
isn't my little, little one any more. I don't love her. She also has
grown wicked!"
Caterina began to cry--real tears, and this consciousness of grief,
so rare in a child, struck the young mother profoundly.
"No, no! My baby at least shall not suffer! It is too soon!" she
thought, and again gathered the little one in her arms, smoothed her
hair, and kissed her little trembling head.
"Come here, then! Hush! hush! hush! She won't be naughty any more.
Hush! Mamma does love her! That's my own pet! There, there! Listen!
Here comes Papa!"
At this suggestion Caterina calmed herself by magic. Then to Regina
a thing she had already suspected was clearly revealed, and she
marvelled that she had ever doubted it. Caterina loved her father
more than she loved her mother! With that wondrous instinct of a
babe, Caterina felt that he was the kinder, the weaker, the more
affectionate of the two; that he loved her more blindly, more
passionately, than her mother loved her. Consequently, she preferred
him.
Regina was not jealous, nor did she question if this proved her too
much or too little a mother. But that morning, in the whirl of sad
and ugly things which veiled her soul, she felt an unexpected light,
she felt that supreme sentiment of pity, which in the dissolving
of all her dreams sustained her like a powerful wing, spread, not
over herself, not over Antonio, but over their child. They two were
already dead to life, corrupted by their own errors; but Caterina was
the future, the living seed which had had its birth among withered
leaves. The soil around it must be cleared. And for the first time
she thought that, not for herself in a last vanity of sacrifice, not
for him whose soul was eternally stained, but for the child, she
_must_ draw Antonio out of the mire.
He came back by the 7.20 train, and had scarcely time to dress,
swallow his coffee, and run to the office.
At the midday meal he told of the wonders of Albano, of the villa, of
the night on the lake.
"Such flowers! such roses! Marvellous! I lost the last train because
I had meant to take it at Castel Gandolfo, and Madame and Marianna
insisted on leaving the carriage and walking part of the way. You
can't imagine the splendour--the moonlight. I was thinking of you the
whole time! I didn't wire, because it was too late."
"Is any one blaming you?" asked Regina, absently.
"You were angry, Regina?"
"I? Why?"
Antonio must have seen that some distress was clouding her spirit,
for he began to talk volubly, trying to distract her. He complained
of the Princess.
"What a nuisance she is! She made me take this journey all for
the sake of that old fur. 'Beg pardon?'" he went on, mimicking
her. "'It's not for its money value, but because it's a precious
remembrance----' Perhaps Georges Sand gave it to her! She talked of
nothing else. Even Marianna couldn't stand it, and proposed to skin
the furrier if he didn't send it back at once."
"Did you sleep at the villa?" asked Regina, who was not listening.
"Well, she couldn't well send me anywhere else!"
"Oh, of course not!" said Regina, with evident sarcasm. And, without
raising her eyes from her plate, she went on, "Is Madame a Russian?"
"Why, yes--didn't you know it?" answered Antonio, quickly.
He said no more, but his voice had shaken with a scarce perceptible
vibration, which Regina did not fail to observe.
Without a look, without a sign, at that moment they understood each
other, and each knew it. Regina thought Antonio's face darkened, but
she did not dare to look at him. She went on eating, and only after
a minute raised her head and laughed. Why at that moment she laughed
she never knew.
"I was awake all night," she said; "I felt just like a widow."
"Well, wouldn't you like to be a widow? I know quite well you don't
love me any longer," he answered, half fun, whole earnest.
"Oh, _zielo_!" said Regina, light and cruel, imitating the cry of
heartless jest which she had heard from a spectator at a popular
theatre, "what a tragedy of a honeymoon gone wrong!" Then changing
her voice, but still satirical, "On the contrary, my dear, it's you
who want to be a widower."
"I don't see it."
"It's true."
"How do you make it out?"
"Why, what would happen if you were a widower? You'd marry again at
once. You're one of the men who can't enjoy life alone--who are no
good living alone. I'm sorry for those men."
"You are sorry for me?"
"I pity you heartily."
"Why? Because I am your husband?"
"Yes, because you're my husband. Take away!" said Regina to the maid,
pushing her plate aside contemptuously. When they were again alone,
she added, "Next time don't be so stupid as to marry a _poor_ woman."
He looked at her, and she thought his eyes were illuminated by a
flash of anger, cold, metallic, such as she had never seen in him.
"_I_ shouldn't know what to do with riches," he answered quietly.
The servant reappeared at the door, and Regina was silent, struck
with a sense of chill. It appeared to her that Antonio's words had
an intention of dogged defence, a sharp and crushing reproach like a
blow. She felt herself mortally wounded.
The strife was beginning then? For to-day they said no more. On the
contrary, after their meal they went together to their room and took
their siesta in company, and before going out Antonio kissed his wife
with his accustomed slightly languid but affectionate tenderness.
But from henceforth Regina fancied he would be on guard ready to
defend himself at all points.
After this they bickered continually. She found annoyance in
nothings, criticising all his little defects, and accusing him
veiledly in a manner that he ought to understand if he were guilty.
Antonio defended himself, but without too much heat, too much
offence. She could not avoid the thought that he feared to drive
her to extremities, and great sadness overwhelmed her. Why were
they each so cowardly? Why did she not dare to confront him openly,
though all within her, all her thoughts, recollections, instincts,
rose up against him and accused him? Well, at last she confessed
it to herself. She was afraid; afraid of the truth. Above all, she
was afraid of herself. She believed that nothing kept her generous,
enabled her to contemplate pardon, but the hope she was deceived. If
it were certainly true, would she pardon? Sometimes she feared she
would not.
Most of all her own weaknesses saddened her--the contradictions
and phantasms of her sick spirit. Day by day her soul was revealed
to her. She had thought herself superior, delicate, understanding;
instead, she found she was cowardly and weak. She was like a tree
never brought under cultivation, which might have borne good fruit,
but, with its tangle of barren branches, only succeeded in throwing a
pestiferous shadow. Was it her own fault?
However, in measure as she learned to know herself, she tried to
improve. Instinct, too, would not suffer her to persevere in a small
strife, in vulgar and inconclusive affronts. The bickering ceased and
a truce followed, the result of anguished incertitude and vain hope.
She compared herself to a sick person, who ought to submit to a
dangerous operation, and has decided to do so, in hope of regaining
health, but who for the present prefers to suffer, and postpones the
fateful moment.
Meanwhile the outward existence of this pair followed its equable
course, apparently tranquil, all compounded of sweet and monotonous
habits. May died, having again become pure, blue, chilly. The sky,
after a few days' rain, had taken an almost autumnal tint, beautiful
and suggestive.
Like a vein of milk in a poisoned flood, nostalgia for her distant
home mingled with Regina's sorrow. Memory absorbed her, penetrated
to her blood with the scent of the new leaves which perfumed the
shining evenings in Via Balbo. During some walk to Ponte Nomentano
or in Trastevere, it sufficed for the splendour of silvery green
on the Aniene, or the yellow vision of the Tiber, in the depths of
the green, velvety, monotonous Campagna--like the harmonies of a
primitive music--to give her attacks of almost tragic homesickness.
But now-a-days she knew the nature of this malady--it was the vain
longing for a land of dreams lost to her for ever.
She liked these little expeditions, which once she had despised,
calling them the silly pleasures of little _bourgeois_ resigned to
their gilded mediocrity.
Sometimes Antonio proposed a walk beyond the Trastevere Station for
the long, luminous afternoon; and she would meet him at the Exchange.
More often they went to Ponte Nomentano, taking the baby with them,
carried on the servant's arm. Antonio would amuse himself pretending
to pursue Caterina; the maid would run and the baby contort herself
with joy, screaming like the swifts, pink with the fearful delight
of being hunted and not caught. Then Regina would linger behind,
looking at the vermilion sky, the rosy lawns, the tranquil distance,
all that grand country of aspect monotonous and solemn; like the life
of a poet who has sung immortal songs without ever having had an
adventure or committed a crime.
And, watching Antonio running after his child, quivering himself with
innocent joy, she once again believed herself deluded in her mistrust
of him.