They disengaged themselves, comforted. The hour of departure had come;
they strapped the last valise. Hippolyte gathered all her flowers,
already withered in the glasses: the violets of the Villa Cesarini, the
cyclamens, the anemones, and the periwinkles of the Chigi Park, the
simple roses of the Castel-Gandolfo, a branch of an almond-tree gathered
in the neighborhood of Diana's Baths, on their way home from the
Emissary. These flowers could have told all their idylls. Oh, the
frolicsome course in the park, in descending a steep incline, on the dry
leaves in which their feet sank to the ankles! She shouted and laughed,
pricked on the legs by the sharp nettles through the fine stockings: and
then, before her, George beat down the sharp stems with blows of his
cane, so that she could trample upon them without danger. Very green
and innumerable nettles adorned the Diana's Baths, the mysterious cave
in which favorable echoes were transformed into the music of slowly
dropping water. And, from the depths of the humid shadow, they saw the
country all covered with almond-trees and silver-and-pink peach trees,
infinitely delightful beneath the light-green pallor of the limpid
waters. So many flowers, so many souvenirs!
"See," she said, showing George a ticket, "it is the ticket for
Segni-Paliano! I shall keep it."
Pancrazio knocked at the door. He brought George the receipted bill.
In the emotion produced by the signor's generosity, he was all confused
in his expressions of thanks and good wishes. Finally, he drew two
visiting-cards from his pocket, and offered them to the signor and
signora to recall to them his humble name, begging to be excused for his
boldness.
Scarcely had he retired than the false _newly wed couple_ began to
laugh. The cards bore, in pompous letters, PANCRAZIO PETRELLA.
"I will keep them too as a remembrance," said Hippolyte.
Pancrazio knocked a second time at the door. He brought signora a
gift--four or five magnificent oranges. His eyes sparkled in his
rubicund visage. He warned them, "It is time to go down."
In descending the staircase the two lovers felt a certain sadness and a
sort of fear fall upon them, as if on leaving this peaceful asylum they
were about to face some unknown peril. The old hotel-keeper took leave
of them at the door, saying with regret, "I had such beautiful larks for
this evening."
George answered, with a contraction of his lips: "We will come again
soon--we will come again soon."
While they proceeded to the station the sun sank below the sea, at the
extreme horizon of the Roman _campagna_ fiery-colored amidst the thick
mists. At Cecchina it began to drizzle. When they separated, Rome, on
that Good Friday evening, humid and foggy, appeared to them like a city
in which one could only die.
*II.*
*THE PATERNAL ROOF.*
*CHAPTER I.*
About the end of April, Hippolyte left for Milan where her sister, whose
mother-in-law was dying, had called her. George Aurispa had arranged to
leave also, in search of a new and unfrequented place. Towards the
middle of May they were to meet again.
But, just at that time, George received an alarming letter from his
mother. She was unhappy, almost in despair. In consequence, he could no
longer defer his return to the paternal house.
When he became convinced that his duty urged him to hasten at once where
there was real sorrow, he was seized by feelings of anguish which
overcame by degrees his first sentiment of filial piety, and he felt
rise within him a sharp irritation which increased in acuteness as the
scenes of the coming conflict, clearer and more numerous, surged through
his conscience. And this irritation soon became so acute that it
dominated him entirely, persistently nourished by the material
annoyances of the departure, by the heart-breaking farewells.
The separation was more cruel than ever. George passed through a period
of the most intense sensibility; the exasperation of all his nerves kept
him in a constant state of uneasiness. He appeared to no longer believe
in the promised happiness, the future peace. When Hippolyte bade him
good-by, he asked:
"Shall we meet again?"
When he kissed her lips for the last time, as she passed through the
door, he noticed that she lowered a black veil over the kiss, and this
insignificant trifle caused him profound distress, assumed in his
imagination the importance of a sinister presentiment.
On arriving at Guardiagrele, at his birthplace, under the paternal roof,
he was so exhausted that, when he embraced his mother, he began to cry
like a child. But neither the embrace nor his tears comforted him. It
seemed to him that he was a stranger in his own home--that he was
visiting a family which was not his own. This singular sensation of
isolation, already experienced under other circumstances connected with
his kin, returned now more vivid and more importunate than ever. A
thousand little particulars of the family life irritated him, hurt him.
During lunch, during dinner, certain silences, during which only the
sounds of the forks were heard, made him feel horribly uncomfortable.
Certain refinements, to which he was accustomed, received every moment a
sudden and painful shock. The air of discord, hostility, and open
warfare which weighed heavily on this household almost choked him.
The very evening of his arrival, his mother had taken him aside to
recount her troubles and her ailments, to tell him about the bad
behavior and dissoluteness of her husband. In a voice trembling with
anger, looking at him with tears in her eyes, she had said to him:
"Your father is an infamous man!"
Her eyelids were somewhat swollen, reddened by the large tears; her
cheeks were hollow; her whole person bore the signs of long-endured
suffering.
"He is an infamous man! A wretch!"
As he went upstairs to his bedroom, George still had the sound of her
voice in his ears; he saw before him his mother's attitude; he continued
to hear the ignominious accusations against the man whose blood ran in
his veins. And his heart was so heavy that he believed he could carry it
no longer. But, suddenly, a furious rapture created a diversion,
carried his thoughts back to his absent mistress; and he felt that he
owed his mother no thanks for reciting to him all those woes--he felt he
would have liked much better not to know of, or in any way to occupy
himself with, anything but his love, to suffer from nothing but his
love.
He entered his room, and locked himself in. The May moon illuminated
the windows of the balconies. Thirsty for the night air, he opened the
windows, leaned on the balustrade, drank in with deep breaths the cool
air of the night. An infinite peace reigned below in the valley; and
the Majella, still all white with snow, seemed to deepen the azure by
the solemn simplicity of its outlines. Guardiagrele, like a flock of
sheep, slept around the Santa Maria Maggiore. A single window lit up,
in the house opposite, made a spot of yellowish light.
He forgot his recent wound. Before the splendor of the night he had but
one single thought--"This is a night lost to happiness!"
He began to listen. Amidst the silence, he heard the stamping of a
horse in a neighboring stable, then a feeble tinkling of small bells.
His eyes wandered to the lighted window; and in the rectangle of light
he saw shadows flit, as of persons in active motion within. He listened
intently. He believed he heard a light knock at his door. He went to
open it, although not sure.
It was his aunt Joconda. She entered.
"Have you forgotten me?" she said, kissing him.
In fact, not having seen her when he arrived, he had not thought of her.
He excused himself, took her hand, made her sit down, spoke to her in an
affectionate tone.
Aunt Joconda, his father's eldest sister, was almost sixty. She limped
as the result of a fall, and she was rather short, but an unhealthy
stoutness, flabby, pallid. Given entirely to religious practices, she
lived by herself in her room, on the top floor of the house, without
having almost any connection with the family, neglected, but little
loved, considered as being weak-minded. Her little world was full of
consecrated images, relics, emblems, symbols; she did nothing else but
follow religious exercises, doze in the monotony of her prayers, endure
the cruel tortures caused by her gormandizing. She had a greedy passion
for confectionery, and all other nourishment she had no taste for. But
often she lacked sweets; and George was her favorite, because, each time
he came to Guardiagrele, he brought her a box of bon-bons and a box of
rossolis.
"So," she said in a mumbling voice from between her almost empty gums,
"so you have come back--eh! eh! You have come back----"
She regarded him with a sort of timidity, finding nothing else to say;
but a manifest expectancy showed in her eyes. And George felt his heart
contract with anxious pity. "This miserable creature," thought he, "has
sunk to the lowest degradations of human nature; I am bound to this poor
bigoted gormand by ties of blood; I am of her race!"
A visible uneasiness had taken possession of Aunt Joconda; a look that
was almost impudent came into her eyes. She repeated:
"So--so."
"Oh! forgive me, Aunt Joconda," he said at last, with a painful effort.
"I forgot to bring you some candy."
The old woman changed countenance, as if she were on the point of
fainting; her eyes became dim; she stuttered: "It doesn't matter----"
"But to-morrow I will get you some," added George consolingly, yet with
a sinking heart. "I will write----"
The old woman became livelier. She said very rapidly: "You know, at the
Ursulines ... it's to be had."
A silence followed, during which Aunt Joconda had, without doubt, a
foretaste of the morrow's delicacies; because her toothless mouth gave
forth the little sound that one makes in re-swallowing the superabundant
saliva.
"My poor George! Ah! if I had not my George! You see, what has
occurred in this house is a punishment from heaven. But go, boy, go out
on the balcony and look at the vases. I--I am the only one who waters
them; I always think of George; formerly, I had Demetrius, but now I
have no one but you."
She rose, took her nephew by the hand, and led him to one of the
balconies. She showed him the flowering vases; she plucked a bergamot
leaf and held it out to him. She stooped down to feel if the earth were
dry.
"Wait!" she said.
"Where are you going, Aunt Joconda?"
"Wait!"
She went off with her limping gait, left the room, returned a minute
later with a pitcher full of water which she could scarcely carry.
"But, aunt, why do you do this work? Why give yourself this trouble?"
"The vases require to be watered. If I did not think of them, who
would?"
She sprinkled the vases. Her respiration was heavy, and the hoarse
panting of her senile chest distressed the young man.
"That will do! That will do!" he said, taking the pitcher from her
hands.
They stayed on the balcony, while the water from the vases dropped into
the street with a light splash.
"What is that lighted window?" asked George, to break the silence.
"Oh," replied the old woman. "It is Don Defendente Scioli, who is
dying."
And both watched the moving shadows in the rectangle of yellow light.
The old woman began to shiver in the cold night air.
"Come! Go to bed, Aunt Joconda."
He wanted to escort her to her room, on the floor above. While following
a lobby, they met something which was dragging itself heavily along the
floor. It was a tortoise. The old woman stopped to say: "It is as old
as you are--twenty-five; and it has become lame like myself. Your
father, with a blow of his heel----"
He remembered the plucked turtle-dove and Aunt Jane, and certain hours
spent at Albano.
They arrived at the threshold of her chamber. A disgusting odor of
sickness emanated from the interior. By the feeble light of a lamp, one
could see the walls covered with madonnas and crosses, a torn screen, an
arm-chair showing the stuffing and the springs.
"Will you come in?"
"No, thanks, Aunt Joconda; go to bed."
She entered quickly, then came back to the door with a paper packet,
which she opened before George, and emptied a little sugar on the palm
of her hand.
"You see? It is all I have left."
"To-morrow, aunt; come, go to bed. Good night!"
And he left her, his courage exhausted, his stomach upset, his heart
saddened.
He returned to his balcony.
The full moon was suspended in the middle of the sky. The Majella, inert
and glacial, resembled one of those selenious promontories which the
telescope has brought close to the earth. Guardiagrele slumbered at the
foot of the mountain. The bergamots filled the air with fragrance.
"Hippolyte! Hippolyte!"
At that hour of supreme anguish, all his soul went out towards the loved
one, demanding assistance.
Suddenly, from the lighted window, a cry arose in the silence, the cry
of a woman. Other cries followed; then there was a continued sobbing,
which rose and fell like a rhythmic chant. The agony had ended; a soul
had dissolved itself into the serene and funereal night.
*CHAPTER II.*
"You must help me," said his mother. "You must speak to him; you must
make him listen to you. You are his first-born. Yes, George, it is
essential."
She continued to enumerate her husband's faults, to lay bare before the
son the shame of the father. This father had for a concubine a
chamber-maid, formerly in the service of the family, a degraded and very
mercenary woman; it was for her and the children born in adultery that
he dissipated all his fortune, without regard for anybody--careless of
his affairs, neglecting his property, selling his crops at a sacrifice
to the first comer, in order to obtain money. And he went so far that,
sometimes, through his fault, the house lacked necessities; and he
refused to give a dowry to his younger sister, although she had been
engaged for a long time; and if any observation was made to him, he
responded by cries, insults, sometimes even by the most brutal violence.
"You live far from us, and do not know in what a hell we live. You
cannot even imagine the smallest part of our sufferings. But you are
the eldest. You must speak to him. Yes, George, you must."
His eyes cast down, George remained silent; and to repress the
exasperation of all his nerves in the presence of this unhappiness,
which disclosed itself to him in so brutal a manner, he required a
prodigious effort. What? Was this his mother? That contorted mouth,
so full of bitterness, which was contracted so sharply when she uttered
coarse words, was that his mother's mouth? Had misery and anger changed
her so much? He raised his eyes and looked at her, to see if traces of
the old-time gentleness still lingered on the maternal visage. How
gentle he had always known this mother to be formerly! What a beautiful
and tender creature she always was! And how tenderly he had loved her
in his childhood, in his adolescence. In those days Donna Silveria was
tall and svelte, pale and delicate; her hair was almost blond, her eyes
black; all her person bore the stamp of a noble race, for she descended
from that Spina family which, like the Aurispas, has its armorial
bearings sculptured beneath the portal of the Santa Maria Maggiore.
What an affectionate being she used to be! Why, therefore, this great
change? The son was distressed by all his mother's abrupt gestures, at
the bitterness of her words, at all the ravages which a rancorous hate
had made in her features; and he was distressed also to see his father
covered with so much ignominy, to find such a terrible abyss yawning
between the two beings to whom he owed his existence. And what an
existence!
"You understand, George!" insisted his mother. "You must be energetic.
When will you speak to him? Make up your mind."
He heard her, and he felt at the bottom of his entrails the shock of a
thrill of horror; and he said to himself: "Oh! mother, demand of me
everything, ask of me the most atrocious of sacrifices; but spare me
this step, do not compel me to do that. I am a coward." At the thought
that he must face his father, that he must accomplish an act of vigor,
and of his own will, an unconquerable repugnance arose from the very
roots of his being. He would prefer to have a hand cut off.
"Very well, mother," he replied gloomily. "I will speak to him. I will
wait for a favorable opportunity."
He took her in his arms and kissed her cheeks as if to tacitly demand
forgiveness for the lie; for he said to himself: "I shall not find a
favorable opportunity. I shall not say anything."
They stayed in the embrasure of the window. The mother opened the
shutters, saying:
"They are about to take away Don Defendente Scioli's body."
They leaned on the balcony, side by side. Then, looking up at the sky,
she added:
"What a day this has been!"
Guardiagrele, the city of stone, shone resplendent in the serenity of
May. A fresh breeze agitated the grasses on the gargoyles. In every
crevice, from the base to the summit, Santa Maria Maggiore was adorned
with minute, delicate plants, bloomed with innumerable violet flowers,
and as the old cathedral reared its head in the azure sky it seemed clad
in a double mantle of marble flowers and of living flowers.
"I will not see Hippolyte again," thought George. "I have dark
forebodings. I know that, in five or six days, I shall go to seek the
hermitage of our dreams; but, at the same time, I know that it will be
in vain, that I shall achieve nothing, that I shall hurl myself against
an unknown obstacle! How strange and indefinable are my feelings! It is
not _I_ who know; but some one in me knows that all is about to end."
He thought: "She does not write to me any more. Since I am here I have
received from her only two short telegrams--one from Pallanza, the other
from Bellagio. I never felt so far away from her. Perhaps at this
moment another man pleases her. Is it possible that love falls out of a
woman's heart _all at once_? Why not? Her heart is tired; at Albano,
warmed anew by buried memories, it palpitated for perhaps the last time.
I was mistaken. But certain incidents, for him who knows how to consider
them under their ideal forms, bear in themselves secret significance,
precise and independent of appearances. Well! when I examine in thought
all the little incidents constituting our life at Albano, they assume an
unquestionable significance and an evident character; they are final.
On the evening of Good Friday, when we arrived at the station at Rome,
and when we said good-by, and the cab carried her off in the fog, did it
not seem to me that I had just lost her forever? Had I not the innate
conviction that all was at an end?" His imagination presented to him
the gesture with which Hippolyte had lowered her black veil after the
last kiss. And the sun, the azure, the flowers, the general joyousness
of nature, suggested to him only this reflection: "Without her, life for
me is impossible."
At this moment his mother leaned over the balustrade, looked towards the
porch of the cathedral, and said:
"The procession is leaving the church."
The funereal brotherhood left the porch with its insignia. Four men in
cowled robes carried the coffin on their shoulders. Two long files of
men, also in cowled robes, marched behind with lighted tapers, only
their eyes being visible through the two holes in their hoods. From
time to time the breeze made the tiny and almost invisible flames
flicker, and even extinguished some of them; and the candles consumed
themselves in tears. Each cowled man had at his side a barefooted
child, who collected the melted wax in the hollow of his two hands.
When the whole cortege had spread out in the street, musicians dressed
in red with white facings struck up a funeral march. The undertaker's
assistants regulated their steps to the time of the music; the brass
instruments glittered in the sun.
"What sadness and ridicule in the honors rendered to the dead!" thought
George. He saw himself in a coffin, imprisoned between the boards,
carried by that masquerade of people, escorted by those candles and that
horrible noise of trumpets; and the idea filled him with disgust. Then
his attention was attracted to the ragged urchins who strove to collect
the waxen tears, walking unevenly, painfully, the body bent, their eyes
fixed on the flickering flames.
"Poor Don Defendente!" murmured the mother, watching the cortege as it
disappeared in the distance.
Then, immediately, as if she were addressing herself and not her son,
she added wearily:
"Why poor? He is at peace now; it is we who are to be pitied."
George looked at her. Their eyes met; and she smiled at him, but a
smile so faint that not a line of her face was moved. It was like a
very light veil, scarcely visible, which had spread over this face ever
stamped with sorrow. But the imperceptible gleam of this smile had the
same effect on George as some sudden great illumination; and then, for
the first time, he saw distinctly on the maternal face the irremediable
work of a great grief.
Confronted with the terrible revelation which came to him from this
smile, an impetuous wave of tenderness welled up in his bosom. His
mother, his own mother, could no longer smile but in that way--only in
that way. Henceforth the stigmas of suffering would be indelible on the
dear face which he had seen bent over him so often, and with such
affection, in sickness and in affliction! His mother, his own mother,
was killing herself little by little, was wearing herself out day by
day, was drifting slowly to the inevitable tomb! And what caused his
own suffering just now, while his mother was breathing out her distress,
was not the maternal sorrow so much as the wound inflicted on his
egotism, the shock given his unstrung nerves by the unvarnished
expression of this sorrow.
"Oh! mother," he stammered, suffocated by tears.
And he took her hands and drew her into the room.
"What's the matter, George? What's the matter, my child?" asked the
mother, frightened at seeing his face all bathed in tears.
"What's the matter? Tell me."
Ah, now he had found the dear voice again, that unique, unforgettable
voice, which touched his soul to its very bottom; that voice of
consolation, of forgiveness, of good advice, of infinite goodness, which
he had heard in his darkest days--he had found it again, he had found
it! In short, he recognized the tender creature of long ago, the adored
one.
"Oh! mother, mother!"
And he pressed her in his arms, sobbing, wetting her with burning tears;
kissing her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead, in a wild transport.
"My poor mother!"
He made her sit down, knelt before her, and looked at her. He looked at
her for a long time, as if it were the first time he had seen her after
a long separation. She, her mouth contracted, with a sob but badly
concealed which choked her, asked:
"Have I pained you very much?"
She dried her son's tears and caressed his hair. Then, in a voice
interspersed with convulsive starts, she said:
"No, George. No! It is not for you to suffer. God has kept you far
away from this house. It is not for you to suffer. All my life, since
your birth, all my life, always, always, I have sought to spare you a
single pain, a moment's unhappiness. Oh! why did I not have the
strength to remain silent this time? I should have said nothing; I
should not have told you. Forgive me, George. I did not think I should
cause you so much unhappiness. Don't cry any more, I entreat you.
George, I entreat you, don't cry any more. I cannot bear to see you
cry."
She was on the point of breaking down, overcome by anguish.
"See," he said, "I am not crying now."
He leaned his head on his mother's knees, and beneath the caress of the
maternal fingers soon became calm. From time to time a sob shook his
body. Through his mind, in the form of vague sensations, passed once
more the distant afflictions of his adolescence. He heard the
twittering of the swallows, the grating of the scissors grinder's wheel,
the shrill cries on the streets--familiar sounds, heard in the
afternoons of long ago, which used to make his heart grow faint. After
the crisis, his soul found itself in a state of indefinable fluctuation.
But the image of Hippolyte reappeared; and he felt within him a new
upheaval, so tumultuous that the young man gave vent to a sigh on his
mother's knees.
"How you sigh!" she murmured, bending over him. Without raising his
eyelids, he smiled; but an immense prostration came over him--a desolate
lassitude, a desperate desire to withdraw from this truceless struggle.
The desire to live left him little by little, as the heat gradually
leaves a corpse.
Of the recent emotion nothing remained; his mother had once more become
a stranger to him. "What could he do for her? Save her? Restore peace
to her? Restore to her health and happiness? But was not the disaster
irreparable? Henceforth, was not this woman's existence forever
poisoned? His mother could no longer be a refuge for him as in the days
of his childhood, in the bygone years. She could neither understand,
console, nor cure him. Their souls, their lives, were too different.
She could only offer him the spectacle of his own torture!"
He arose, embraced her, disengaged himself, went out, ascended to his
room, and leaned on the balcony. He saw the Majella all pink in the
twilight, enormous and delicate, against a greenish sky. The deafening
cries of the swallows which were whirling around drove him in. He went
to lie down on his bed.
As he lay on his back, he thought to himself: "Good; I live, I breathe.
But what is the substance of my life? To what forces is it subjected?
What laws govern it? I do not belong to myself--I escape from myself.
The sensation I have of my being resembles that of a man who, condemned
to hold himself upright on a surface constantly in oscillation and never
in equilibrium, feels support constantly lacking, no matter where he
places his foot. I am in a perpetual anguish, and even this anguish is
not well defined. Is it the anguish of the fugitive who feels someone
at his heels? Is it the anguish of the follower who can never reach his
aim? Perhaps it is both."
The swallows twittered as they passed and repassed in flocks, like black
arrows, before the pale rectangle formed by the balcony.
"What do I lack? What is the lacuna of my moral being? What is the
cause of my impotency? I have the most ardent desire to live, to give
all my faculties a rhythmic development, to feel myself complete and
harmonious. And, on the contrary, I secretly destroy myself every day;
each day my life goes out by invisible and innumerable fissures; I am
like a half-emptied bladder, which becomes misshapen in a thousand
different ways at every agitation of the liquid it contains. All my
strength does not serve me more than to enable me to drag, with immense
fatigue, a little grain of dust to which my imagination gives the weight
of a gigantic rock. A perpetual conflict confuses all my thoughts and
renders them sterile. What is it I lack? Who is it holds in his power
that portion of my being which eludes my consciousness and yet which, I
feel sure, is indispensable for the continuance of my life? Or rather,
is not this portion of my existence already dead, so that only death
will enable me to regain it? Yes, that is it. In fact, death attracts
me."
The bells of Santa Maria Maggiore tolled for vespers. Again he saw the
funeral convoy, the coffin, the cowled men, and the ragged children who
strove to collect the waxen tears, walking unevenly, painfully, the body
bent, their eyes fixed on the flickering flames.
These children greatly preoccupied him. Later, when he wrote to his
mistress, he developed the secret allegory which his mind, interested in
such studies, had confusedly perceived:
"One of them, sickly, yellowish, leaning with one arm on a crutch and
collecting the wax in the hollow of his disengaged hand, dragged himself
along by the side of a species of giant with a hood, whose enormous fist
brutally grasped the taper. I still see them both, and I shall not
forget them. Perhaps there is something in myself which makes me
resemble that child. My real life is in the power of some one, a
mysterious and unknowable being who holds it in a grasp of iron; and I
see it being consumed, and I drag myself after it, and I tire myself
trying to collect at least a few drops, and every drop that falls burns
my poor hand."
*CHAPTER III.*
On the table, in a vase, there was a bunch of fresh roses, May roses,
which Camille, his younger sister, had gathered in the garden. Around
the table were seated the father, the mother, the brother Diego,
Albert--Camille's fiance, invited to dinner--and the elder sister
Christine, with her husband and child, a blond boy with a snowy-white
complexion, fragile as a blooming lily.
George was seated between his father and mother. Christine's husband,
Don Bartolomeo Celaia, Baron of Palleaura, was speaking of municipal
intrigues in an irritating tone. He was a man approaching fifty, dried
up, bald at the top of his head, as if tonsured, his face clean shaven.
The almost insolent acrimony of his gestures and manners contrasted
strangely with his ecclesiastic aspect.
As George listened to him, and observed him, he thought: "Can Christine
be happy with that man? Can she love him? Dear Christine, the
affectionate, melancholy creature, whom I have so often seen weep from
sudden effusions of tenderness, to be tied for life to that heartless
creature, almost an old man, soured by the silly wrangles of provincial
politics! And she has not even the consolation of finding comfort in
maternity; she must be racked with worry and anguish for her
child--sickly, anaemic, always pensive. Poor creature!"
He gave his sister a look full of sympathetic kindness. Christine smiled
at him over the roses, inclining her head slightly to the left, with a
graceful movement peculiar to her.
Seeing Diego by her side, he thought: "Who would believe they were of
the same race? Christine has largely inherited the amiability of her
mother; she has her mother's eyes, and, above all, has her ways and
gestures. But Diego!" He observed his brother with that instinctive
repulsion that every being feels in the presence of an uncongenial,
contradictory, absolutely opposite being. Diego ate voraciously,
without once raising his head from above his plate, wholly absorbed in
his work. He was not yet twenty, but he was thick-set, already heavy on
account of a commencing embonpoint, and his face was congested. His
eyes, small and grayish, beneath a low forehead, did not reveal the
slightest intellectual light; a yellow down covered his cheeks and
strong jaws, and cast a shadow on his projecting, sensual mouth; the
same down was noticeable also on his hands, the badly kept nails of
which attested a disdain for personal cleanliness.
"Can I love him?" thought George. "Even to address a single
insignificant word to him--even to respond to his simple greeting, I
have to surmount an almost physical repugnance. When he speaks to me,
his eyes never meet mine; and if by chance our eyes do meet, he averts
his immediately with a strange precipitation. He reddens before me
almost continually, and without apparent cause. How curious I am to know
his sentiments regarding me! Without a doubt, he hates me."
By a spontaneous transition, his attention was transferred to his
father, to the man whose traits Diego most truly inherited.
Stout, sanguine, powerful, the man seemed to exhale from his whole body
an inexhaustible warmth of carnal vitality. His jaws were heavy, his
mouth thick-lipped, imperious, full of a vehement respiration, his eyes
restless and malignant-looking; his nose was swollen, freckled, and
twitched spasmodically; every feature of his face bore the impress of a
violent and cruel nature. Every gesture, every attitude, had the
abruptness of an effort, as if the whole muscular system of his massive
body was in continual struggle with the encumbering fat. His flesh,
that coarse stuff full of veins, nerves, tendons, glands, and bones,
full of instincts and necessities; the flesh that sweats and stinks;
flesh which deforms and sickens, ulcerates and is covered with wrinkles,
pimples, warts, and hairs; that bestial stuff, flesh, flourished in him
with a species of impudence, and inspired in the refined visitor an
unconquerable repulsion. "No, no," said George to himself. "Ten or
fifteen years ago he was not like that. I remember distinctly that he
was not like that. This growth of latent and unsuspected brutality
appears to have occurred slowly, progressively. And I--I am that man's
son!"
He observed his father. He noticed that at the angle of his eyes, on
his temples, the man had a number of wrinkles, and beneath each eye a
swelling, or species of violet-colored pouch. He noted the short neck,
swollen, congested, apoplectic. He perceived that the mustache and hair
bore traces of dye. The beginning of old age in the voluptuary, the
implacable work of vice and time, the vain and clumsy artifice to hide
the senile grayness, the menace of a sudden death--all these sad,
miserable, and tragic things of human life filled the son's heart with
profound distress. An immense pity entered into his heart, even for his
father. "Blame him? But he suffers, too. All this flesh, which
inspires such a strong aversion in me, all this heavy mass of flesh, is
inhabited by a soul. What anguish he may have felt, and what weariness!
He certainly has a terrible fear of death." Suddenly, he had a mental
vision of his father in his death agony. An attack had overthrown him,
stricken him mortally; he panted, still alive, livid, mute,
unrecognizable, his eyes full of the horror of death; then, as if
stricken to earth by a second blow of the invisible sledge-hammer, he
lay motionless, a mass of inert flesh. "Would my mother weep?"
"You are not eating anything," his mother said to him. "You do not
drink. You have eaten almost nothing. Perhaps you are not well?"
"No, mother," he replied. "I have no appetite this morning."
The sound of something dragging itself along near the table caused him
to turn. He perceived the decrepit tortoise, and remembered the words
of Aunt Joconda: "She became lame like me. Your father, with a blow of
his heel----"
While he was looking at the tortoise, his mother said to him, with the
glimmer of a smile:
"She is as old as you are. I was carrying you when it was given to me."
With the same imperceptible smile, she added: "She was quite small. The
shell was almost transparent; she resembled a toy. She has lived in our
house ever since, growing bigger every year."
She took an apple paring and offered it to the tortoise. She looked for
a moment at the poor animal, which moved its yellowish, old,
serpent-like head with a kind of dazed trembling. Then dreamily she
began to peel an orange for George.
"She remembers," thought George, seeing his mother so absorbed. He
guessed the inexpressible sadness which, without any doubt, entered her
soul at the recollection of the happy days, now that the ruin was
complete, now that, after so many treasons, after so many infamies, all
was irreparably lost. "She was loved _by him_ formerly; she was young;
perhaps she had not yet suffered! How her heart must sigh! What
regret, what hopelessness must well up from her entrails!" The son
suffered from the maternal suffering--reproduced in himself his mother's
anguish. And he dwelt so long, savoring the supreme delicacy of his
emotion, that his eyes became veiled in tears. He repressed the tears
by an effort, and felt them fall, very softly, within himself. "Oh!
mother, if you only knew."
On turning round, he saw that Christine was smiling at him over the
roses.
Camille's fiance was just saying:
"That is what one might call being ignorant of the first word of the
Code. When one claims to----"
The baron approved the young doctor's arguments, and repeated after each
sentence:
"Assuredly, assuredly."
They were demolishing the mayor.
Young Albert was seated beside Camille, his fiancee. He was dressed
foppishly and his complexion was pink and white, like a wax figure; he
wore a little pointed beard, his hair was parted in a straight line, a
few curls were coquettishly arranged around his forehead, and a pair of
gold-mounted glasses were on his nose. "That is Camille's ideal,"
thought George. "For several years they have loved one another with an
all-powerful love. They believe in their future happiness. They have
long sighed for that happiness. Without doubt, Albert has promenaded
with this poor girl on his arm through all the commonplaces of the
idyll. Camille is not robust; she suffers imaginary ailments; she does
nothing from morning to night but weary her confidant, the piano, with
nocturnes. They will get married. What will be their lot? A young man
vain and empty, a sentimental young girl, in the petty provincial
world--" An instant longer he followed in imagination the development
of these two mediocre existences, and he felt moved by pity for his
sister. He looked at her.
Physically, she resembled him somewhat. She was tall and slim, with
beautiful chestnut-colored hair. Her eyes were bright but changing,
green, blue, or ashen in turn. A light application of _poudre de ris_
rendered her still paler. She wore two roses on her bosom.
"Perhaps she, too, resembles me otherwise than in he features. Perhaps,
unknown to her, her soul bears some of the fatal germs which have
developed in my consciousness with such might. Her heart must be full
of mediocre anxieties and melancholies. She is ill, without knowing
what her trouble is."
At this moment his mother rose. They all followed her excepting the
father and Don Bartolomeo Celaia, who remained at the table to chat;
which rendered them both more odious to George. He had put one arm
around his mother's waist and the other around Christine's waist,
affectionately, and so they passed into the adjoining room, he almost
dragging them. He felt his heart swollen by extraordinary tenderness
and compassion. At the notes of the _nocturne_ which Camille commenced
to play, he said to Christine:
"Will you come down into the garden?"
The mother remained near the engaged couple. Christine and George went
down, accompanied by the silent child.
At first they walked side by side, without speaking. George had taken
his sister's arm, as he was accustomed to do with Hippolyte. Christine
stopped, murmuring:
"Poor, neglected garden! Do you remember our games when we were
little?"
And she looked at her son Luke.
"Go, my Luchino; run and play a little."
But the child did not move from his mother's side; on the contrary, he
seized her hand. She sighed, looking at George.
"You see! It is always the same! He never runs, he never plays, he
never laughs. He never leaves me, never wishes to be away from me.
He's afraid of everything!"
Absorbed in thoughts of his absent mistress, George did not hear what
Christine was saying.
The garden, half in the sun, half in the shade, was girt by a wall on
the top of which glittered fragments of broken glass fixed in the
cement. Along one side ran a vine. Along the other side, at equal
distances, reared tall cypresses, slim and straight as candles, with a
meagre tuft of sombre foliage, almost black, shaped like a lance-head,
at the summit of their trunks. In the part exposed to the south, on a
sunny strip of ground, flourished several rows of orange and lemon
trees, just then in bloom. The rest of the ground was strewn with
rose-bushes, lilacs, and aromatic herbs. Here and there could be seen
several small myrtle-bushes planted at regular intervals, and which had
served to line the now ruined borders. In one corner there was a
handsome cherry-tree; in the centre there was a round basin, filled with
gloomy-looking water in which were growing lentils.
"Tell me," said Christine, "do you remember the day you fell into the
basin, and how poor Uncle Demetrius dragged you out? How you frightened
us that day! It was a miracle that you were taken out alive."
At the name of Demetrius, George started. It was a well-beloved name,
the name which always made his heart palpitate when he heard it
mentioned. He listened to his sister; he watched the water, over which
long-legged insects made rapid flights. An anxious desire came to him
to speak of the dead, to speak of him freely, to revive all his
memories; but he checked himself, feeling that selfish pride which
prompts one to conceal a secret, in order that the soul may feed upon it
in solitude. He experienced a sensation almost akin to jealousy at the
thought that his sister should have been touched and moved at the memory
of the dead man. That memory was his own property exclusively. He
guarded it, in the intimacy of his soul, with a grieved and profound
cult, forever. Demetrius had been his veritable father; he was his only
and unique parent.
And he reappeared to his mind, a mild, meditative man, with a face full
of a virile melancholy, and a single white curl in the centre of his
forehead, among the black hair, giving him an odd appearance.
"Do you remember," said Christine, "the evening that you hid yourself
and passed the whole night out of doors without showing yourself until
morning? How frightened we were that time, too! How we looked for you!
How we cried!"
George smiled. He remembered having hid himself, not out of fun, but
from a cruel curiosity, to make his people believe he was lost, and to
make them weep for him. During the evening--a humid, calm evening--he
had heard the voices calling him, he had listened eagerly for the
slightest sounds which came from the house in an uproar, he had held his
breath with a joy mixed with terror on seeing the persons who were
seeking him pass near his hiding-place. After the entire garden had
been ransacked without result, he still lay crouching in his
hiding-place. And then, at the sight of the household in confusion,
which could be seen by the quick going and coming of shadows before the
lighted windows, he was seized by an extraordinary emotion, acute to the
point of tears; he felt sorry for his parents and for himself, just as
though he were really lost; but, in spite of all, he obstinately
persisted in concealing himself. And then the morning came; and the
slow diffusion of the light in the silent immensity had swept from his
brain as if a mist of folly, had given him the consciousness of the
reality, had awakened in him remorse. He had thought of his father and
the punishment with terror and despair; and the basin had fascinated
him. He felt himself attracted by that pale and gentle piece of water
which reflected the sky--the water in which a few months before he had
almost perished.
"It was during Demetrius's absence," he remembered again.
"Do you smell that perfume, George?" said Christine. "I will gather a
bouquet."
The air, impregnated with a warm humidity, and charged with heavy
perfumes, disposed one to indolence. The bunches of lilac, the
orange-blossom, the roses, thyme, marjoram, sweet basil, myrtle--all
their essences combined to form one single essence, delicate yet
powerful.
All at once, Christine asked:
"Why are you so thoughtful?"
The perfume had just aroused in George a great tumult, a furious
resurrection of all his passion, a desire for Hippolyte which had routed
every other sentiment, a thousand recollections of sensual delights
which coursed through his veins.
Smiling and hesitating, Christine added:
"You are thinking--_of her_?"
"Ah! it is true, you know," said George, reddening suddenly under his
sister's indulgent gaze.
He remembered he had spoken to her of Hippolyte the previous autumn, in
September, at the time he stayed at her house at Torricelle di Sarsa, on
the seacoast.
Still smiling, still hesitating, Christine again asked:
"Do you--still love her as much as you did?"
"Still."
Without further speech, they directed their steps towards the orange and
lemon trees, both disturbed, but in a different manner. George felt his
regrets augmented by having confided in his sister; Christine felt a
confused revival of her smothered aspirations, as she thought of the
unknown woman whom her brother adored. Their eyes met and they smiled,
and the smile seemed to diminish their pain.
She made a few rapid steps towards the orange-trees, exclaiming:
"Goodness! what a quantity of flowers!"
She began to pluck the flowers, her arms raised, shaking the boughs to
break off the small branches. The corollas fell on her head, shoulders,
and bosom. All around, the ground was strewn with the fallen petals, as
if with a fragrant snow. She was charming in this attitude, with her
oval face and long, white neck. The effort animated her visage. All at
once her arms dropped, she grew pale, and tottered as if overcome by
vertigo.
"What's the matter, Christine? Are you ill?" cried George, frightened,
as he supported her with his arm.
But a violent nausea choked her, and she was unable to answer. She
motioned that she wished to be taken away from the trees, and, supported
by her brother, she made a few uncertain steps forward, while Luke
watched her with terrified eyes. Then she stopped, gave a sigh,
regained her color little by little, and in a voice that was still weak
said:
"Do not be alarmed, George. It is nothing. I am enceinte. The strong
odor made me feel ill. It is gone now. I am all right now."
"Shall we go back to the house?"
"No. Let us stay in the garden. Let us sit down."
They sat under the vine, on an old stone bench. Noticing the child's
grave and absorbed look, George called him to rouse him from his stupor.
"Luchino!"
The child leaned his heavy head on his mother's knees. He was frail as a
lily-stem; he seemed to have difficulty in carrying his head upright on
his shoulders. His skin was so delicate that every vein was visible,
delineated as if threads of blue silk. His hair was so blond that it
was almost white. His eyes, gentle and humid, like those of a lamb,
showed their pale azure from between long, fair eyelashes.
His mother caressed him, pressing her lips together to restrain a sob.
But two tears welled up, and rolled down her cheeks.
"Oh, Christine!"
Her brother's affectionate tone only increased her emotion. Other tears
welled up, and rolled down her cheeks.
"You see, George! I have never claimed anything; I have always accepted
everything; I have always been resigned to everything; I have never
complained--never rebelled. You know that. George. But now this--now
this! Oh! Not even to be able to find a little consolation in my son!"
She spoke tearfully, and in a desolate tone.
"Oh! George, you see; you see how it is. He does not speak, or laugh,
or play; he is never merry, and he never does what other children do.
And it seems to me that he loves me so much, that he adores me! He
never leaves my side, never. I begin to believe that he only lives from
my breath. Oh! George, if I were to tell you of certain days, long,
long days, which seem endless. I work near the window; I raise my eyes,
and I meet his eyes gazing, gazing at me. It is a slow torture, a
punishment that I cannot describe. It is as if I felt my blood flowing
drop by drop from my heart."
She stopped, choked by anguish. Drying her tears, she went on:
"If at least the one I am bearing is born, I will not say beautiful, but
with health! If, for this once, God will come to my aid!"
She became silent, attentive, as if to draw an omen from the trembling
of the new life which she carried in her womb. George took her hand.
And for several minutes the brother and sister sat mute and motionless
on the bench, overwhelmed by existence.
Before them stretched out the solitary and abandoned garden. The
cypress-trees, straight and motionless, reared their tall trunks
religiously towards the sky, like votive candles. The rare zephyrs
which passed over the neighboring rose-trees had scarcely enough
strength to cause the fall of the leaves of the few faded roses. From
time to time, after intervals of silence, came sounds of a piano from
the distant house.
*CHAPTER IV.*
"When? When? The action they wish to force on me becomes inevitable
then? I shall be obliged, then, to face that brute?" George saw the
hour approach with ungovernable dread. An insurmountable repugnance
arose from the roots of his being at the very thought that he was going
to find himself alone, in a closed room, in a _tete-a-tete_, with that
man.
As the days passed, he felt increase his anxiety and humiliation, caused
by culpable inertia. He felt that his mother, that his sister, that all
the victims, expected from him, the first-born, some energetic action,
some kind of protest--protection. Why, in fact, had he been summoned?
Why had he come? From now on, it no longer seemed possible for him to
leave without having done his duty. Without doubt, at the last minute,
he could have escaped without saying good-by, and then written a letter
justifying his conduct by any plausible pretext. When his distress was
at its height, he ventured to think of this ignominious resource; he
stopped to consider a way, to arrange the most trifling details, to
picture the results. But, in the scenes conjured up, the unhappy and
ravaged face of his mother awoke in him an intolerable remorse. The
reflections which he made on his egotism and his weakness revolted him
against himself: and he sought with puerile fury to find some particle
of energy which he could excite and efficaciously employ against the
greater part of his being, and which would permit him to triumph over it
as over a cowardly brute. But this false energy did not last, did not
serve in the least to press him to a manly resolution. Then he undertook
to calmly examine his situation, and he deluded himself by the very
vigor of his reasoning. He thought: "What good could I do? What evils
could my intervention remedy? Will this unhappy effort which my mother
and the rest demand from me yield any real advantage? And what
advantage?" As he had not found in himself the energy necessary for the
execution of the act, as he had not succeeded in provoking in himself a
satisfactory revolt, he had recourse to the opposite method--he
attempted to demonstrate to his own satisfaction the uselessness of the
effort. "What would be the result of the interview? It would certainly
have none. According to my father's humor or according to the trend of
his conversation, he would be either violent or persuasive. In the
first case, his violence and insults would take me by surprise. In the
second case, my father would find a mass of arguments to prove to me
either his innocence or the necessity of his faults, and I should be
taken equally by surprise. The facts are irreparable. When vice is
rooted in the intimate substance of a man, it becomes indestructible.
Now, my father is at the age when vice can no longer be rooted out, when
habits can no longer be changed. For years he has been associated with
that woman and those children. Have I the slightest chance to convince
him that he ought to break off all those ties? Yesterday, I saw the
woman. It sufficed to see her, to guess that she will never let go her
hold on the man whose flesh she holds in her clutches. She will
dominate him until his death. The thing is now irremediable. And then,
there are those children and those children's rights. Besides, after
all that has occurred, would a reconciliation be possible between my
father and mother? Never. All my attempts would then be fruitless.
And then? There still remains the question of material damage, of money
squandered, of dilapidation. But does it fall on me to put all this in
order, since I live far away from the house? It would require constant
vigilance to do that, and only Diego could do it. I will speak to Diego;
I will arrange with him. In short, the most urgent matter just now is
Camille's dowry. Albert frequently brings the subject up, and is even
the most annoying of all my solicitors. Perhaps I shall be able to make
some arrangement without difficulty."
He intended to favor his sister by contributing towards her dowry; for,
the heir of all his uncle Demetrius's fortune, he was rich, and already
in possession of his property. The intention to perform this generous
act raised him once more in his own conscience. He believed himself
freed from all other duties, from any other disagreeable step, by the
sacrifice which he consented to make of his money.
When he turned his steps towards his mother's room he felt less uneasy,
lighter, more comfortable. Moreover, he had learned that since morning
his father had returned to the country place where he usually went in
order to have more freedom in his actions. And it relieved him greatly
to think that in the evening, at table, a certain place would be vacant.
"Ah! George, you have come just in time," cried his mother, directly
she saw him enter.
The angry voice gave him such a rude and unexpected shock that he
stopped, and he looked at his mother with stupor, so transfigured by the
transport of anger as to be almost unrecognizable. He also looked at
Diego, not understanding; he looked at Camille, who stood still, mute
and hostile.
"What is the matter?" stammered George, fixing his eyes once more on his
brother, attracted by the bad expression which he saw for the first time
on the young man's face.
"The strong box in which the silverware is kept is no longer in its
place," said Diego, without raising his eyes, contracting his eyebrows
and mumbling. "They charge me with having made away with it."
A flood of bitter words fell from the unhappy woman's mouth.
"Yes, you--in league with your father. You are your father's
accomplice. Oh! what infamy. And now this frightful thing! Now this
frightful thing! The child who has nursed at my breast to turn against
me! But you are the only one who resembles him. God has been more
merciful with the others. O God, blessed be thy name, blessed forever,
for having spared me that supreme misfortune! You are the only one who
resembles him, the only one----"
She turned towards George, who stood paralyzed, motionless, voiceless.
Her chin trembled spasmodically; and she was so convulsed that one would
have believed that she was going to sink down on the floor at any
moment.
"Do you see now the life that we lead? Tell me, do you see it now?
Every day, some new infamy. Every day, the same struggle to prevent the
pillage of this unfortunate house. Are you convinced now that, if your
father could, he would turn us into the streets, snatch the bread from
our mouths? And it will come to that; we shall end by seeing that. You
will see, you will see."
She continued, panting, with a choking sob in her throat at every pause,
giving vent at times to hoarse shrieks, which expressed an almost savage
hate, a hate inconceivable in a creature apparently so delicate. And
once more accusations fell from her lips. The man had no longer the
slightest consideration, the slightest shame. He would stop at nothing
and for nobody to make money. He had become insane; he seemed a prey to
uncontrollable madness. He had ruined his real estate, cut down his
woods, sold his herds at hazard, blindly, to the first comer, to the one
who offered most. Now he began to despoil the house in which his
children were born. For a long time he had had designs upon the silver,
family silver, old and hereditary, piously guarded as a relic of the
house of Aurispa, preserved intact until now. Hiding it had proved
useless. Diego was in league with his father; and the two confederates,
eluding the keenest vigilance, had taken it, to do with it God only
knows what.
"Have you no shame?" she went on, turning towards Diego, who restrained
with difficulty an explosion of his violence. "Are you not ashamed to
take part with your father against me--against me, who have never
refused you anything, who have always done as you wished? And yet you
know, you know perfectly well, where the silver has gone And you are not
ashamed? You've nothing to say? Won t you answer? Look, there's your
brother. Tell me where the box has gone. I must know, do you hear?"
"I have already said that I don't know, that I haven't seen the box, and
that I did not take it," cried Diego, unable to longer contain himself,
with an explosion of brutality, and shaking his head; and the sombre
flame which lit up his face made him resemble the absentee. "Do you
understand?"
The mother, pale as death, looked at George, to whom the look seemed to
impart a similar color.
Seized with a fit of trembling impossible to hide, the elder brother
said to the younger:
"Diego, leave the room."
"I'll leave when it pleases me," replied Diego insolently, shrugging his
shoulders, without, however, looking his brother in the face.
Then a sudden exasperation seized George, one of those extreme
exasperations which, in feeble and irresolute men, have such an
excessive vehemence that they cannot manifest themselves by any external
act, but cause to pass before the thwarted will flashes of criminal
visions. The hatred between brothers, that odious hate which, since the
creation, breeds secretly at the bottom of human nature to break out at
the first discord, more ferocious than every other hate--that
inexplicable hostility which exists, latent, between the males of the
same blood, even though the customs and peace of the birthplace have
created between them affectionate bonds; and, also, that horror which
accompanies the execution or the thought of a crime, and which is
perhaps only the vague sentiment of the law inscribed by secular
heredity in the Christian conscience--all this surged confusedly in a
sort of vertiginous whirl which, for a second, superseded all other
sentiment in his soul, and gave him an aggressive impulse. The very
aspect of Diego, his thick-set and sanguine body, his fallow head on the
bull-like neck, the evident physical superiority of this robust,
muscular fellow, the offence against his authority as the elder--all
contributed to augment his fury. He would like to have had a prompt
means of dominating, subjugating, felling this brute, without resistance
and without a struggle. Instinctively he looked at his fists, those
large, powerful fists, covered with a reddish down, which at dinner,
employed in the service of a voracious appetite, had already caused him
such a strong repulsion.
"Leave the room! Leave the room immediately!" he repeated in a higher
and more commanding key; "or else ask my mother's pardon immediately."
He advanced towards Diego, his hand extended as if to grasp an arm.
"I do not permit anyone to give me orders," cried Diego, at last looking
his elder brother in the face.
And, beneath his low forehead, his little gray eyes expressed a
resentment which had been brooding for years.
"Take care, Diego!"
"You don't frighten me."
"Take care!"
"Who are you, I'd like to know? What business have you here?" shouted
Diego angrily. "You have no right to interfere. You are a stranger. I
do not want to know you. What has been your role up to now? You have
never done anything for anybody; you have always thought only of your
comfort, and your interest. The caresses, the preferences, the
adorations, have all been for you. What do you want now? Go back to
Rome and squander your heritage as you choose; but don't meddle in what
does not concern you."
So he breathed out all his rancor, all his jealousy, all his envious
hate against the fortunate brother who, in the great city yonder, lived
a life of unknown pleasures, a stranger to his family, as though a being
of another race, favored by a thousand privileges.
"Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue!"
And the mother, beside herself, and throwing herself between them,
slapped Diego's face.
"Leave the room! Not another word! Get out of here! Go to your father!
I don't want to hear you any more! I don't even want to see you again!"
Diego hesitated, shaken by the quivering of fury, perhaps only waiting
for a gesture from his brother to fling himself on him.
"Go!" repeated the mother, at the end of her energy.
And she fell fainting into Camille's arms, extended to receive her.
Then Diego went out, livid with rage, muttering between his teeth a word
which George did not understand, and they heard his heavy steps grow
fainter as he passed through the gloomy enfilade of rooms in which the
daylight was already dying.
*CHAPTER V.*
It was a rainy evening. Stretched out on his bed, George felt himself
so broken physically, and so sad, that he had given up thinking, so to
speak. His thoughts wavered, vague and incoherent; but his sadness was
modified and exasperated by the influence of the slightest
sensations--occasional words pronounced in the street by passersby, the
tick-tick of the clock on the wall, the tinkling of a distant bell, the
stamping of a horse, a whistle, the banging of a door. He felt alone,
isolated from the rest of the world, separated from his own anterior
existence by the abyss of incalculable time. His imagination
represented to him, in an indistinct vision, the gesture with which his
mistress had lowered her black veil after the last kiss; it represented
to him the child with the crutch collecting the waxen tears. He
thought: "There is nothing more left to me but to die." Without
definite cause, his anguish increased all at once, and became
unbearable. The palpitations of his heart choked him, as if in a
nightmare. He threw himself from his bed and paced up and down his
room, distracted, agitated, incapable of containing his anguish. And
his steps resounded in his brain.
"Who is there? Someone calling me?" The sound of a voice rang in his
ear. He strained his ear to listen. He heard nothing more. He opened
the door, walked in the corridor, and listened. All was silent. His
aunt's room was open, and lit up. A strange fear seized him, a sort of
panicky terror, as he thought that he might all at once see that old
woman, with the mask of a cadaver, appear on the threshold. One doubt
crossed his mind; she was perhaps dead, seated over there in her
easy-chair, motionless, her chin on her bosom--dead. This vision had
the clearness of reality, and froze him with veritable fright. He did
not stir, no longer dared make a movement, standing still with a band of
iron around his head, a band which, like some cold and elastic
substance, expanded and contracted according to the pulsation of his
arteries. His nerves tyrannized him, imposing on him the disorder, the
excess, of their sensations. The old woman commenced to cough, and that
made him start. Then he retired softly, quietly, on tiptoe, so as not
to be heard.
"What is the matter with me this evening? I cannot stay any longer
alone in this room. I must go down." Besides, he foresaw that, after
the atrocious scene, it would be equally impossible for him to bear his
mother's unhappy appearance. "I will go out. I will go to
Christine's." What prompted him to make this visit was the recollection
of the touching and sad hour spent with his sweet sister in the garden.
It was a rainy evening. In the streets, already almost deserted, the
few gas-jets threw out a dull glow. From a closed bakery came the
voices of the bakers at work, and an odor of bread; from a cabaret came
the sounds of a guitar and the refrain of a popular air. A band of
wandering dogs ran by and was lost in the sombre alleys. The hour
struck in the belfry.
By degrees, the walk in the open air calmed his exaltation. He seemed to
have freed himself from the phantasies which encumbered his conscience.
His attention was attracted to all he saw and heard. He stopped to
listen to the sounds of the guitar, to smell the odor of the bread.
Someone passed in the shadow on the other side of the street, and he
thought he recognized Diego. Meeting him caused him agitation; but he
felt that all his rancor was gone, that no violence remained at the
bottom of his sorrow. Certain of his brother's words came back to his
memory. He thought: "Who knows if he did not speak the truth? I have
never done anything for anybody; I have always lived for myself alone.
Here I am a stranger. Everyone here judges me perhaps in the same way.
My mother said: 'You see now the life we lead? You see now, don't you?'
I might see all her tears flow, and still should not have the strength
to save her." ...
He arrived at the gate of the Celaia palace. He entered, and crossed
the vestibule. As he traversed the court, he raised his eyes. Not a
light was visible at any of the high windows; there was in the air an
odor of rotten straw; the tap of a water-fountain dripped in an obscure
angle; beneath the portico, beneath an image of the Virgin covered with
a grating, a little lantern was burning, and through the grating, at the
feet of the Virgin, could be seen a bouquet of artificial roses; the
steps of the large stairway were hollowed in the centre by usage, like
those of an antique altar, and every hollow in the stone shone with
yellowish reflections. Everything expressed the melancholy of the old,
hereditary house to which Don Bartolomeo Celaia, left to solitude, and
arrived at the threshold of old age, had conducted his bride and in
which he had begotten his heir.
As he went upstairs, George saw with the eyes of his soul the young,
pensive wife and the anaemic child; he saw them in the distance, at a
chimerical distance, at the end of an out-of-the-way room to which
nobody could penetrate. For a moment he had the idea to turn back, and
he stopped, perplexed, in the middle of the high and silent white
staircase. He was in a state of indefinable uneasiness. Once more he
had lost the sense of the present reality; he felt himself once more
under the influence of a vague terror, like a short time before in the
corridor, when he had perceived the door open and the room empty. But,
suddenly, he heard a noise, and a voice as if someone were chasing
something; and a gray dog, a gaunt and dirty-looking mongrel, doubtless
driven to enter the house by hunger, came flying down the stairway half
a dozen steps at a time, and brushed by him. A servant, noisily chasing
the fugitive, appeared on the landing.
"What is the matter?" asked George, visibly agitated by the surprise.
"Oh, nothing, sir. I am chasing a dog, an ugly, dirty beast, that gets
into the house every night, no one knows how, just like a ghost."
This trifling, insignificant fact, combined with the servant's words,
aroused in him that inexplicable uneasiness which resembled the confused
anguish of a superstitious presentiment. It was this anguish which
prompted the question:
"Is Luchino well?"
"Yes, sir; thanks to God."
"Is he asleep?"
"No, sir; he has not yet gone to bed."
Preceded by the domestic, he crossed the large rooms, which seemed
almost empty, and in which the furniture, old-fashioned in design, was
placed symmetrically. Nothing indicated the presence of inhabitants, as
if the rooms had remained closed up to then. And he said to himself
that Christine could not love this dwelling, since she had not shed over
it the grace of her soul. Everything had remained there just as it was,
in the same order in which the bride found it on entering on her
wedding-day, in the same order left by the last of the wives of the
house of Celaia.
George's unexpected visit delighted his sister, who was alone and
preparing to put the child to bed.
"Oh! George, how good you are to have come!" she exclaimed, with an
effusion of sincere joy, pressing him in her arms, and kissing his
forehead; and this tenderness had the immediate effect of dilating her
brother's depressed heart. "Look, Luchino, look; there's your uncle
George. Have you nothing to say to him? Come, give him a kiss."
A feeble smile appeared upon the child's pale mouth; and as he had
lowered his head, his long, blond eyelashes were lit up from above and
threw their trembling shadow on his blanched cheeks.
George took him in his arms, unable to prevent a sensation of profound
emotion in feeling beneath his hands the leanness of the child's chest,
in which beat so debilitated a heart. And he was almost afraid, as if
his slight pressure were sufficient to extinguish the pitiful little
life. He felt both fear and pity, as he used to do in his boyhood when
he held a little scared bird prisoner in his hand.
"Light as a feather!" he said.
The emotion which trembled in his voice did not escape Christine.
He seated the child on his knees, caressed his head, and asked him:
"Do you love me very much?"
His heart was filled with unusual tenderness. He felt a melancholy
desire to see the poor, sickly child smile, to see his cheeks tinted at
least once a fleeting rouge, to see a light effusion of blood beneath
the diaphanous skin.
"What have you here?" he asked, seeing a finger wrapped up in linen.
"He cut himself the other day," said Christine, whose attentive eyes
followed her brother's slightest gestures. "A slight cut, but it is
obstinate in healing."
"Let me see, Luchino," said George, prompted by a painful curiosity, but
smiling to call forth a smile. "I will cure it by blowing on it."
The child, surprised, permitted the bandage to be removed from his
finger. Watched anxiously by his sister, George took infinite
precautions in untying it. The end of the linen had adhered to the
slight wound, and he had not the heart to detach it; but at the edge
exposed to view he saw appear a whitish drop, resembling whey. His lips
trembled. He raised his eyes; he saw that the face of his sister,
intent on his every movement, had undergone a change and was contracted
by grief. He felt that at that moment the poor woman's soul was wholly
concentrated in that little hand.
"It is nothing," he said. And he forced a smile, as he breathed on the
cut, to give the illusion to the child, who was waiting for the miracle.
Then he rebound the finger with infinite care. He thought once more of
the strange anguish which had seized him on the deserted staircase, of
the chase after the dog, of the servant's words, of the questions which
a superstitious fear had suggested to him, of all his baseless anxiety.
Noticing how absorbed he was, Christine said to him:
"What are you thinking of?"
"Nothing."
Then, all at once, without thinking, without having any other intention
than to say something which would arouse the attention of the already
sleepy child, he said:
"Do you know, I met a dog on the staircase."
The child opened wide his eyes.
"A dog which comes every night."
"Yes," said Christine, "Gian spoke to me about it."
But she stopped at the appearance of the dilated and terrified eyes of
the child, who was on the point of bursting into sobs.
"No, no, Luchino; no, no, it's not true," she cried, lifting him from
George's knees, and pressing him to her bosom. "No, it's not true.
Your uncle said that for fun."
"It's not true, it's not true," repeated George, rising in consternation
at these tears, which no other child would weep, for they seemed to
ravage the poor creature.
"Come, come," said the mother in a coaxing tone; "Luchino's going to bed
now, isn't he?"
She passed into the adjoining room, still caressing and rocking her
weeping child.
"Come, too, George."
While she undressed the child, George watched her. She undressed him
slowly, with infinite precautions, as if she were afraid to break him;
and each of his gestures showed sadly the wretchedness of his slender
limbs, which already began to show the deformities of an incurable
rachitis. The neck was long and flexible, like a withered stem; the
breastplate, the ribs, the shoulder-blades, almost visible through the
skin, making a projection which the shadows cast in the hollowed parts
accentuated even more strongly; the enlarged knees appeared to be
knotted; the abdomen somewhat swollen, the navel projecting, rendering
still more prominent the angular leanness of the hips. When the child
raised its arms while the mother changed its chemise, George felt a
painful pity, almost an anguish, on perceiving the fragile little
arm-pits, which, in this simple act, appeared to express the difficulty
of an effort required to overcome the deathly languor in which this
feeble life was on the point of being extinguished.
"Kiss him," said Christine to George. And she held the child out to
him, before putting him beneath the bedclothes. Then she took the
child's hands, carried that having the bandaged finger from the face to
the chest, then from the left to the right shoulder, to make the sign of
the cross; and then she joined them, saying: Amen.
In all this there was a funereal solemnness. The child, in his long
white night-shirt, had already the appearance of a little corpse.
"Sleep, now; sleep, my love. We will stay near you."
The brother and sister, united once more in the same sorrow, sat down
one on each side of his bed.
They spoke no more. The odor of the medicines heaped together on a
table near the bed pervaded the room. A fly detached itself from the
wall, flew with a loud buzz towards the flame of the lamp, and alighted
on the coverlid. A piece of furniture creaked in the heavy silence.
"He is falling asleep," said George in a low voice.
Both were absorbed in the contemplation of the child's slumber, which
suggested to both the image of death. A species of oppressive stupor
dominated them, without their being able to distract their thoughts from
the picture.
An indefinite time passed.
Suddenly the child gave a frightful cry, opened wide his eyes, raised
himself on his pillow as if terrified by some horrible vision.
"Mamma! Mamma!"
"What is it, what is it, my love?"
"Mamma!"
"What is it, my love? I am here."
"Chase it away! Chase it away!"
*CHAPTER VI.*
At supper, at which Diego had abstained from showing himself, had not
Camilla repeated the accusation in a veiled form when she said, "When
the eyes do not see the heart does not suffer"? And, in his mother's
words,--oh, how quickly his mother had forgotten the tears with which
the conversation at the window had ended,--even in his mother's words,
had the accusation not cropped up several times?
George thought, not without bitterness: "Everybody here judges me in the
same way. In short, nobody forgives me either for my voluntary
renunciation of my rights as the eldest, or for the inheritance left me
by my uncle Demetrius. I ought to have stayed at home to look after the
conduct of my father and my brother, to defend the domestic happiness!
According to them, nothing would have happened if I had remained here.
Consequently, I am the guilty one, and this is the expiation." The
farther he advanced in the direction of the suburban villa to which the
enemy had retired and towards which he had been pushed by extreme
measures, by merciless cudgel blows, so to speak, the more he felt the
weight of a kind of vexatious oppression, the indignation provoked by an
unjust compulsion.