One evening, however, they were walking alone together towards Acqua
Acetosa. Making a short cut to the Viale della Regina, they crossed
certain narrow lanes beyond Porta Salaria, and Regina suddenly
stopped before an _osteria_ (tavern).
A bright interior was visible through an open doorway. At the far end
of the room was a glass window coloured by the declining sun, and
against this luminous background passed and re-passed, light-footed
and black, a couple of dancers, dancing to the strains of a husky
concertina. A girl, pale and thin, but bright-eyed, was seated by the
door, her arm on the corner of a table, her fair hair mixing in with
the shining background. She was something like Gabrie, and dressed
like her in a pink blouse. For a moment Regina thought it was she.
"Why, look! there's Gabrie!"
"So it is," replied Antonio.
They drew nearer. The girl got up, thinking them customers. She was
half-a-foot taller than Gabrie. The couple went on dancing, black and
light against the orange brilliance of the window, and Regina and
Antonio passed on. They were speaking of Gabrie. From that instant
Regina felt a vague perturbation; but she had no idea of beginning a
hateful discussion. She said, almost involuntarily--
"One of these days I mean to bring that poor girl with us. I hardly
ever see her, but I do so pity her. She coughs incessantly."
"She is a poor thing; consumptive, I fancy," said Antonio. "You
shouldn't let her kiss Caterina. But why is it you don't see her?"
"Because she's ill-natured. She does nothing but observe people and
take away their characters."
By force of old habit, Antonio held Regina's hand in his as they
walked. Before them spread the _Viale_. Visions of depths of the
Campagna, vivid in its pure spring green, appeared in the distance
to right and left through the motionless plane-trees, against a
pearl-grey sky shot with colours from the sinking sun. The gardens
were overrun with roses and lilies, whose fragrance mingled with the
scent of herbs and of strawberries. Now and then a carriage went by
and vanished into the distance of the deserted _Viale_.
"Who was it told me the same thing of Gabrie?" asked Antonio.
"Marianna, perhaps?" suggested Regina, sharply.
"I believe it was."
"She's just the same herself. One's no better than the other; that's
what makes them friends."
"Oh, there's no one like Marianna," said Antonio, and looked away
into the distance.
Then, in one second, flashing and following each other like
lightning, a succession of ideas started up in Regina's mind. She
would have snatched her hand from Antonio, but fancied he might guess
her thoughts from the action, and she stiffened herself to endure
the contact. She stiffened in appearance, but her heart was beating
violently, two, three, ten, many strokes;--the hour had come!
It seemed to her that some one, some mysterious being, black in the
sunset brilliance, had passed by smiting her heart with a hammer. And
her heart awaked from the evil stupor of the long oppression. Now she
could arise, shake herself, walk; walk, breathe, cry aloud; live, and
make a supreme effort to rid herself of the shadow, of the weight of
the incubus--or else she must fall again under that weight, under
that black shadow, and must die.
From day to day Regina had expected this hour of conflict, yet from
day to day she had put it from her like a bitter cup.
Now it had come, and she felt a mysterious fear. Again she would have
wished to put it off; but a strange impulse, what seemed an instinct
of self-preservation superior to her will, clutched her and forced
her to speak.
She remembered none of the words prepared for weeks and months; only
Antonio's sentence about Marianna gave her a thread to which she
clung desperately, as to a thread which would guide her out of the
dark labyrinth.
She had turned and turned in the maze of the evil dream, but she had
come back to the precise point where she had stood on the day of the
catastrophe.
"No," she began, in a toneless voice; "you cannot guess how malignant
Gabrie is. Oh, much more than Marianna! Marianna sees, and sometimes
at least says nothing. But Gabrie----If you can bear it, I will tell
you something, Antonio."
He turned round and looked at her. She looked at him. It seemed as
if for that moment they understood each other without more words.
However, she went on.
"You will be patient?"
He looked straight before him, indifferent, too indifferent.
"Go on."
"Gabrie says you are Madame Makuline's lover."
He reddened. Anger deformed his face. He dropped Regina's hand and
flung it from him, opening his lips with gestures of astonishment and
wrath.
"She said that to you?" he cried.
His voice resounded in the silence of the road.
"She told me, yes."
He stood still. Regina stood still. Her heart beat. His hands,
hanging down, groped as if trying to lay hold of something. The
gesture is customary with actors at the dramatic moments of their
part. Regina feared that Antonio acted his part too well. Then she
thought, forcing herself to be just--
"If he is innocent, it's natural he should be upset."
"And you, you----" he burst out, "did not strike her? You actually
thought of bringing her with us to-day!"
"Antonio," exclaimed Regina, looking at him with feigned surprise,
"you promised to be patient!"
"But it's abominable!" he said, lifting his hands. "How do you
suppose I can be patient? If you are joking let me tell you it's a
hideous joke. If what you tell me is serious, I am astounded at your
calm."
His face paled rapidly as it had flushed, but it paled too much; it
became almost grey.
Regina did not move an eyelash, so narrowly she was watching him.
She saw that his agitation was real, but she did not know, could not
find out, its precise cause. For some moments, however, the strong
desire that Antonio should not belie his indignation induced in her
a wave of joy. She abandoned herself to it. It was not mere desire,
it was certainty of having been deceived! Yet--an inexplicable thing
happened; the hope of having been deceived did not restore her
kindness. She became cynical--cruel.
"Come!" she said, with bitter gaiety, "why should I be angry? why
should I strike Gabrie? Suppose she had told me the truth? Let's walk
on," she added, trying to take his arm again.
But he repulsed her, and remained standing.
"Let me alone! What do you mean by the truth?"
"The fact that every one believes it, without daring to tell me, as
she dared----"
"Every one believes it? But--Regina, do you believe it?"
"I also!"
"Listen to me," he said, indignant again, but with an indignation
different from the first--deeper, more scornful--"listen to me! Are
you not ashamed of yourself?"
"Walk on," she said moving, but not trying to take his arm this time;
"don't let us make a scene in the middle of the street."
And she walked on, blind, all involved again in the fearful shadow
from which she had thought herself freed. The momentary hope was
over. Why? She did not know. Can one know why the sky becomes
suddenly covered with cloud?
Antonio's attitude was that of a man who is offended. He followed her
scarcely a step behind, and repeated, mechanically--
"You ought to be ashamed----"
She was no longer able to abandon herself to her ardent desire of
believing him innocent. She could not!--could not!
"Every one believes it?" repeated Antonio, walking by her side,
but not touching her. "And you tell me in this way, in the street,
suddenly, as if it were a joke! And you, you believe it yourself! And
you speak of it like this!"
"How would you have me speak of it?"
"At least you should have spoken sooner."
"Perhaps I heard it to-day, a little while ago, for the first time."
"That's impossible! You were too calm a little while ago!"
"One can pretend," she said, with a forced smile, which furrowed her
cheek like a sign of pain.
"A little while ago?" he repeated, closing his hand and shaking it on
a level with her face. "Then why do you say every one believes it?
Have you just learned that too? Did you hear it from that--that--I
don't know what to call her--there is no word----And you--you aren't
ashamed to demean yourself to such scandal-mongering with a creature
like that, a degenerate----You----" he continued, forcing himself to
scorn, "you, the superior woman, the exceptional fastidious woman,
the great lady--the great lady!" he repeated, raising and coarsening
his voice.
Then Regina fired up. Sombre redness made her face from forehead
to chin a circle of fire; in their turn her hands were agitated in
tragic gesticulation.
"Antonio, hush!" she said, not looking at him. "What do you expect?
Life is like that--stupid and vulgar. The most horrible things are
revealed by the gossip of silly women, and whole dramas are played
on the high road in the course of an evening walk. It wouldn't do if
that happened in a novel! The author would be accused of vulgarity,
if not of nonsense. In real life, on the contrary, see what happens.
The grand lady goes to a garret in Via San Lorenzo to discover the
cause of her unhappiness; the superior woman comes out into the
street to----"
"Regina, have done! have done!" cried Antonio. "You reason too much
and too coldly for you to believe what you are saying. No, it is not
true! You do not believe it! Tell me you don't believe it!"
And he tried to take her arm, but this time it was she who repulsed
him.
"Let me alone! That is what you men are! If I had been another woman,
another sort of wife, I should have lain in wait for you at home,
like a tigress in her lair. I should have made a scene, one of those
scenes called _strong_, which are so pleasing at the theatre or in
a novel. Whereas, I have spoken to you quite quietly. I repeat a
thing which every one is saying, and I ask nothing better than that
we should laugh at it together. But you--you begin with noisy words,
'_aren't you ashamed_,' and '_scandal-mongering_,' and '_the great
lady_.' Yes, certainly, I am a lady; more of a lady than those other
women. It is just that I don't value conventionalities; that is the
calamity."
"Then would you prefer me to be silent? Is that it? Don't torment me
like this, Regina! In my opinion it would have been better to have
this scene at home. Well, your jealousy is the last straw----"
Regina laughed. Her laugh was genuine but strident, hoarse, as if
proceeding out of rusty iron.
"My dear, you are raving! Jealousy! Come, not that!"
"Why did you say you believed it?"
"Did I say so? Surely not."
"I tell you, you did say it."
"I said I believed people believed it."
"I don't think so," he protested. "Well, 'people' are always
malicious."
"That, at any rate, is true. People are malicious. You see, our
position has changed; we are living comfortably in spite of our
slender income, so at once people hatch a scandal. The very excuse
you make that you have become a speculator just now, when you might
have been one all along----"
"That is absurd!" interrupted Antonio. "I was a bachelor before, and
had more money than I knew what to do with. Besides, you are supposed
to have money of your own. No one knows that I began speculating by a
mere chance----"
"What has all this to do with it? The world has no need to know our
affairs. Chance!" she repeated, her face darkening as she remembered
the "_chance_" in which she had so childishly believed, while
instinct had warned her of fiction, fiction clever but thin, like the
invention in a novelette.
"What do you mean?" she went on, reassailed by a stifling wave of
rage and suspicion. "The world is malicious just because every
day, every hour, these strange chances are happening. You know the
background of life better than I do. Shame upon shame! How often have
you not yourself pointed out to me smart young men who are living on
their mistresses?"
Antonio made no answer, and she continued--
"So I said to myself, 'The appearance itself that we are not living
merely on our fixed income, the excuse that you play, and have
capital at your disposal in result of a game where, as at every
game, one sometimes wins but sometimes loses, or the excuse that you
are _that woman's_ agent--confidential servant--all that has given
rise to suspicion.' What do you expect?" she repeated for the third
time. "The world is malicious. We--you--are seen for ever going to
that house. Everything is seen, commented on, suspected. Your own
relations--do you think your own relations have no doubts, make no
allusions? Why, a few days ago Claretta----"
Having reached this point Regina became alarmed and silent. She felt
herself saying things untrue, giving form to the phantasms of her
suspicions. She had no wish to deceive. She wanted the truth. Was she
to seek it with lies? No; the truth must be sought with truth. This
was her desire, but she was unequal to achieving it. As during their
nocturnal walk along the Po, that evening of Antonio's arrival, so
now she felt a veil suspended between them. They saw, but could not
touch each other--so near were they, yet so far, separated by the
black veil of lies. Why continue this conversation woven of deceits?
Words, words! Cold, vain, vulgar words! The truth was in silence, or
at least in those words which the lying lips were unable to shape.
Regina reflected--
"If _I_ dare not speak my real thought, I who have nothing shameful
to conceal, how can he speak his? It is useless to insist. He will
not confess. None the less, we may come to an understanding. I will
say to him, 'Let us go back to living modestly as we did at first.
Let us break off all relation with _that woman_, and it will shut
people's mouths.' He will understand. He will return to me purified
by my silent pardon, by my delicacy. And it will be all over. How is
it I never had this happy thought before?"
But she had no sooner formulated the "happy thought" than it seemed
to her just one of her usual romantic ideas--a phantasy on a pleasant
walk at sundown, along the paths of a spring landscape. Life was a
different matter! Reality, naked and ugly, but at least sincere,
was a different matter!--like an ugly woman who makes no effort to
deceive any one. Away, away with every veil! away with each stained
garment! They must listen to each other; they must rend every
disguise, even if it were generous and of the ideal.
While she was hurriedly weighing these thoughts in her mind, Antonio
interrupted--
"And you knew all this and said nothing? Why did you say nothing? I
can't make it out. Certain things have become clear--your ill-humour,
your hints and insinuations, your obstinacy in not coming to Albano.
But I cannot comprehend your silence. Ah! how hideous all this is!
Hideous! Hideous! Certainly the world is malicious; its malice would
be monstrous if it weren't ridiculous! We needn't pay attention
to it! You are right; in a city like Rome, where anything seems
possible, and nobody believes what is said----"
"No, we must pay attention to it," said Regina; "just because in a
city like Rome anything seems possible. It mayn't matter so much to
me, but suppose the calumny should reach the ears of my mother, down
there in that corner of a province, where the smallest things seem
gigantic! My mother has had great sorrows, but none of them could
equal this."
"And do you suppose _my_ mother wouldn't care just as much?"
interrupted Antonio, piqued.
"No doubt she would. But it's for you to consider your mother, I
mine! However, it shows you that even at Rome one must heed the
clatter of tongues. If it were only you and I in face of that clawing
animal, the world, I'd laugh at it. But, my dear, we aren't alone!
Caterina will grow up. And if she were to know----"
At this he gave a cry almost wild.
"If she were to know! But has it been _my_ fault?"
Again Regina felt as if a stone had struck her full in the face. Yes;
if there was fault, it came home to herself! _She_ was the mother
of the evil which was stifling them. Antonio's cry was one not of
defence, but of accusation.
She rebelled against it.
"I admit," she said, "the fault is not entirely yours. But neither is
it all mine."
"Who's saying the fault is yours?"
"I have said it to myself a thousand times. Antonio, there is no
reproach that I have not made to myself. How often have I not
groaned, 'If I had not been guilty of that lightness of which I
was guilty, Antonio would not have forced himself to change our
position. He would not have become that woman's servant, not----'"
"You said it to yourself a thousand times?" he interrupted. "Do you
mean you have been thinking of this for a long while? Why did you not
first speak to me? Why? Why? That's what I require to know!"
"Oh, don't get angry again!" prayed Regina. "Why didn't I tell you?
Because I didn't believe it."
"Do you mean you do believe it now? And that you waited to tell me
till exactly now, to-day, at this moment?"
"I waited for an opportunity----"
"Nonsense! There was no lack of opportunities--worse ones even than
this!"
"I repeat I don't study conventionality. Another woman would have
made a scene, conjured you sentimentally to swear the truth on the
head of our child. I don't do such things. Once only I was betrayed
into a piece of dramatic nonsense. Once was enough!"
"What has this to do with it?" he said, angrily. "You could have
spoken just as you are speaking now. Well, speak on. Say again what
you said a minute ago. You said that you reproached yourself a
thousand times as having been the cause of this--calumny. What did
you mean?"
"You aren't listening. I reproached myself for having involuntarily
given birth to this calumny, by constraining you to become that
woman's slave. It was natural people should be suspicious. They are
suspicious also of men much richer and much less attractive than
you. Madame got rid of the others, Cavaliere R---- and Signor S----,
to make a place for you. Naturally, those men spoke ill of you.
Probably they started it. However," she continued, returning to her
first point, "remember, Antonio, that I repented of my caprice.
Remember well. I gave up all my pretensions and follies and came home
to you because I had at last understood that your love was all I
required for happiness."
"You said so, I know. But I didn't believe you. You said it because
you pitied me. I didn't want your pity, Regina!" he went on, drawing
a deep breath, as if struggling with a sob. "Now it is I who am
playing the sentimental part, saying that you had humiliated me
overmuch because I--had not tried to content you. Shall I follow your
lead and say I am not like other men? Better or worse--who knows?
I don't set up to be _superior_, as you do" (his voice shook with
angry grief). "I'll call myself inferior, yes--a little _bourgeois_!
How often have you not thrown that in my teeth! But for that very
reason----What was I saying?"
Regina, overwhelmed herself by a strange mingling of grief and
contempt, replied ironically--
"You were saying that we are two beings unlike the rest of the world,
a hero and heroine of romance, in fact. Perhaps some day Gabrie will
pick us up, as one picks mushrooms!"
"At this moment, with your scornful superiority, you are a poisonous
mushroom!"
Regina had been staring straight before her, with eyes lost in the
luminous distance. Now she turned to look at him, ready to make a
bitter reply. But she saw his face so grey and miserable she did not
venture to speak. What, moreover, could she say? Why continue vainly
to beat about the bush, talking of the edifice of their error,
without daring to penetrate within it?
Antonio went on--
"Yes, you had humiliated me overmuch! I must say it to you once
straight out. After reading your letter I would have committed
any crime only to free myself from the insulting weight of your
reproaches. It was driving me mad. It was a degrading accusation
which you had brought against me! And I wanted to get you back--as
much out of pride as passion! To get you back, not by force, not
by love, but by money. That was my obsession. Money--money at all
costs! So I went and gambled. And I took the post which I did not
particularly admire. I offered myself to Madame. That was my crime,
because now I recognise that Cavaliere R---- was only doing precisely
what I did myself a little later."
Regina listened and was silent, but she shook her head. He was lying,
still lying. He was accusing himself of venial errors to make her
believe him innocent of his real sin. Lies--always lies; and yet----
"I thought you had perhaps repented and would come home; but by
this time I knew you! Your letter, your manner, had revealed your
character. You would come home to live with me, perhaps resigned,
perhaps not, but certainly unhappy. And I was ready to give my blood
to prevent that! I wanted you happy. I loved you, Regina, just for
your pretensions, which proved you the delicate, fastidious creature,
above me by birth and by breeding. Who, you say, can know the dark
secrets of his own heart? In a few days I had become another man. I
dared to improve my position. I succeeded. And now you blame me for
what I have done for you--only for you!"
Regina made no answer. He also kept silence, perhaps thinking her
convinced. They went on a little way. A light-haired man, dressed
like a Protestant minister, had come up with them, and walked by
their side. Carts, laden with bottles, passed, and carriages going to
Acqua Acetosa.
Regina thought--
"He doesn't want my pity. He was driven mad by humiliation! I see.
Perhaps he thought I should come home only to torment him, and
that presently I should desert him again. And I am still trying to
persuade myself he is innocent, while he doesn't even know how to
keep up the lie! Yet he has been lying for two years, every day,
every hour, every minute. How, how has he been able to do it? Well,
and wasn't I brooding over my project of flight secretly for days
and for months? Was not that also treason? And are we not both lying
now? Why all these vain words, these _sous-entendus_, if we are not
each in turn trying to deceive the other? What is he thinking at this
moment? What do I know of his soul, or he of mine? We have always
mistaken each other, and we mistake more than ever at this moment.
No, we do not know each other. We are more of strangers to one
another than to that man passing along at our side. We have shared
our bed and our board, we have a child, part of ourselves, and yet
we are strangers! We are enemies--we offend each other; each in our
turn, we hide that we may wound deeper!"
"Shall we go back by Ponte Molle, or by the way we went the last
day?" asked Antonio.
"There might be a carriage down there, perhaps?" said Regina.
"To go back!" she thought, in profound desolation. "To take up our
life of deception and shame! No, I will not! I will not! It must not
go on!"
And at last she felt the courage to bring in the end that very day.
Her resolution calmed her. She seemed to lift her head, to open her
eyes, to see again round her the beauties of Nature, the purifier.
Just here the road broadened out. Never had she seen the Campagna so
beautiful, so splendidly and magically coloured. It seemed a picture
by a luminist painter--a green landscape with detached pines waving
against the dazzling background of crimson and gold, an exaggeration
of light, in whose intensity the figures of the passers-by, the
half-naked vendors of the spa water, the mounted soldiers, the
beggars lying in wait at the cross roads, stood out like bronze
statues.
Regina had taken her resolution, but at the cross roads it sufficed
her to note the angry movement with which Antonio flung a coin to the
beggars to understand that her husband was still offended, and to
revive her forlorn hope of his innocence.
They took the short cut. Up and down, up and down by a little path,
dark, fragrant, part warm grass, part sand. The Protestant pastor,
who seemed uncertain of the way, followed them.
The sun was sinking, silver on the gold horizon; over the flushed
grass, the shadows of the pines grew long; the eastern sky took
opaque tones--the ashy violet of a pastel. For a moment Regina could
have believed herself in the mountains. She could see no more than
the path mounting through grass to the low summit, all green against
the luminous void. Up and up! The free breath of spring restored
the natural colour to Antonio's face. Spring is intolerant of ugly
people. The countenance of the fair young minister became like a pink
peony, scarcely opened.
But here they were at the low summit, and from it appeared the azure
vision of the real mountains.
That day the picture of the Acqua Acetosa had a character almost
biblical. Men were sleeping on the grass beside their carts, in which
the load of flasks sparkled in the sun; women, children, many dogs,
a little black donkey, were all so still as to seem painted on the
green background of the Tiber; a line of scarce distinguishable sheep
were coming down to the river to drink; boats rocked softly among
the bushes of the bank. A soft breeze diffused the perfume of the
flowering elders.
While Antonio and Regina were descending the steps cut out on the
hillside, a carriage arrived laden with five foreign ladies wearing
the usual impossible little hats made of one ear of corn, a poppy,
and a bunch of gauze. The lady who got out last began a dispute with
the driver.
"Everywhere these horrible foreigners!" said Regina, nervously, and
let Antonio go down to the fountain by himself.
She made her way to the river-bank, far up beyond the excise
official's hut. He was walking about before the tavern, and the point
to which Regina advanced remained completely solitary. Low noises
reached her, overpowered by the song of the larks and the music of a
streamlet gurgling at the bottom of a cleft near by. In the hedge
leaves rustled like the _frou-frou_ of silk, and the elder-flowers,
already over-blown but still sweet and rosy in the sun, leaned
forward as if to listen to the gurgle of the water. Beyond the cleft
a mass of greyish flowers covered the declivity; below the Tiber
rolled on, clear, calm, imperial. The reflection of the setting
sun crossed an angle of the river, making an enormous, trembling,
fiery serpent across the water, which seemed brought to a halt on
its incandescent back. Sparkles of gold caught fire, went out, and
lighted up again, swiftly, irrepressibly, where the reflection of the
sun terminated. Everything suggested the illusion of a fight between
the water and the raging fire in the river's depths. Far off, where
the sky grew pale, the water had conquered and was already spreading
the solemn sadness of its ashy calm.
Of course Regina thought of her own distant river. She sat on the
rough grass of the declivity and waited.
Never had she felt quieter and stronger than at that hour. As over
the river so over her soul, ashy calm was advancing, subduing the
vain fire of passion. An old thought started afresh into her mind.
"Every hour will come. This one has come, and others, and others
are on their way, and at last the hour of death. Why do we torment
ourselves? My life and Antonio's from henceforth will be like a faded
garment; yes, like this----!" she said, drawing round her feet the
edge of her white but soiled dress. "Well? that means that we shall
wear it more contemptuously, but also more comfortably, without
considering it so much--thus!" she cried aloud, casting her skirt's
hem away from her, over the rough, sand-covered grass.
She looked if Antonio were coming. For some moments he had been
speaking with the owners of the five little hats. Then Regina saw him
take them down, down, as far as to one of the boats moored at the
bank. The boatman ran up, spoke with Antonio, and presently the boat
laden with the five little hats was on her way to Ponte Molle.
Then Antonio looked round for his wife and came to her with his
swift, light step.
"I put them in the boat partly that we might get their carriage," he
said, throwing himself on the grass at her side. "I hope I haven't
made you jealous, Regina, now you've begun at it!"
His voice was gay; too gay.
"On the contrary, I hope I have done with it," she said coldly. "If
you have no objection, we will speak further and end the matter."
"Oh, I knew we'd have to go on! Well, speak!" he said, kicking at a
branch of elder. "To begin with, tell me what were the allusions, the
insinuations made by my cousin--by my relations--by every one, in
fact--as a treat----"
Regina watched the nervous movement of Antonio's hand. Her eyes had
again become sweet, soft, child-like, but with the sweetness of
childish eyes when they are sad.
"Listen, dear," she began, and her voice also was sweet but sad;
"don't let _us_ fall into scandal-mongering. If the thing isn't true,
what does it matter? If it is true----"
"If it were true----" he interrupted, raising his head, while his
hand still shook. Regina was silent not looking up. "What would you
do? Would you leave me again?"
She shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.
"_If it is true._ Then you are still supposing it! Ah, that's what I
cannot endure, Regina! It means you don't believe me. It means the
malicious words of some stranger have more value for you than mine!"
She was tempted to reply, "And are not you a stranger to me?" but
dared not yet.
"Yes, yes! I see that's what it is!" he went on, despairingly. "Now
this suspicion has got into your head, now, now you believe me no
longer! But I hope to cure you, see! I _hope_. Begin by telling me
everything. You ought to tell me, you ought, do you hear? It concerns
your honour--everybody's honour. Tell me! tell me!"
She shook her head.
"What is the use?"
"Tell me all," he commanded. "There's a limit to my patience also!"
"Don't raise your voice, Antonio! The excise officer is there. Don't
be so _small_!"
"Have done with your own smallness! I am small; yes, I'm small, and
that's just the reason why I want to know! You see, you are driving
me mad! Tell me! I insist."
Regina turned and looked at him. Her eyes, large and melancholy,
sparkled in the reflection of the sunset. Never had Antonio seen them
more beautiful, sweeter, deeper. At that moment he was overpowered
by some sort of fascination and could not turn away from those eyes,
burning and sad like the dying sun. Regina said--
"And when I shall have told you everything you want to know, what
will you do? How will you know, how do I know, if the things I have
heard are or are not real illusions, evil surmises? or whether the
doubt has not come of my own instinct?"
"But a few minutes ago you said you didn't believe it! I don't
understand you, Regina!"
"And I, do I understand you? Can we understand each other? Think,
Antonio, think. Have we ever understood each other? How do I know you
speak the truth? How do you know I speak the truth? Look," she said,
stretching her hand towards the Tiber; "we seem near to each other,
while, on the contrary, we are distant as the banks of this river,
which for ever gaze at each other, but will never come into touch!"
"For pity's sake, finish it!" he said, bitterly, but supplicatingly
and humbly. "Be merciful, my dear, and don't torment me. Don't say
these horrible things. It's very possible I don't understand you,
but you, you _ought_ to understand me. Let us discuss, let us see
together what is to be done. I--I will do whatever you wish. Haven't
I always done so? Am I not good to you? Do you say I am not good
to you? Tell me what I am to do, but don't doubt me! It's the last
straw. If we lose our peace, our concord, what is there left for us?"
He spoke softly, humbly, almost sweetly, but with that sweetness one
employs towards a sick and fractious child. He took her hand and
laid it on his knee, and on it he laid his own. Regina felt his hand
pulsing and vibrating, but its fondness no longer had power to stir
her blood.
Yes, it was undeniable. He had always done her will. He was the weak
one, and this was at once his crime and his defence. Yes, he was
kind, too kind. He had given her in sacrifice not his spirit only,
but his body; this miserable mortal flesh he had sold for her. He
had given her all; he would still give her all. In a moment, if she
demanded it of him, he would confess his shame. How could she have
doubted it? Then she told him the whole story.
"Listen. One day I went to see Gabrie, who had been ill----"