On the same afternoon, Amaldi sent Sophy a note, saying that he had some
important things that he would like to talk over with her, and asking if
she would not go with him again by gondola up the Brenta to see his
mother.
"I feel," he ended, "that we could talk so much more quietly in the old
garden there. Here in Venice there is always some interruption, and Lady
Wychcote comes to stop with you on Tuesday. Then, too, it would be such
a happiness for Baldi to see you again in this way. We could be back in
Venice by six o'clock."
Sophy thought this over. She felt that she could not refuse, and yet she
hesitated. But she knew that Barti had returned. She was sure that it
was about the divorce that Amaldi wished to talk with her. What had
Barti said? Was the divorce in Switzerland impossible, after all? And as
this doubt came to her she knew for the first time how much she really
loved Amaldi. The dreadful sinking of her heart when she faced the
thought that he might not be able to get free made her decide at once to
go with him the next day. And she would not take Bobby with her this
time. He was all agog over a lesson in rowing that Lorenzo, the first
gondoliere, was to give him to-morrow. She would keep him with her until
she and Amaldi started at twelve o'clock; then he and Rosa could spend
the afternoon with Lorenzo.
She sent word to Amaldi by the messenger who brought his note that she
would be ready to go with him next day at noon.
He did not tell her of what Barti had said, and she did not ask him
until they were alone in the garden of Villa Rosalia.
When he told her about the possible alternative of Hungary, she gave a
cry of pain.
"I can't bear it.... I can't bear it that you should make such
sacrifices!..." she stammered.
"When a man loves as I love you, there aren't any sacrifices," said
Amaldi.
"Ah, don't talk that way!" she urged. "As if I didn't know what it all
means to you...."
"I doubt if you know what _you_ mean to me ... quite," he answered.
The smothered passion and sorrow in his voice shook her to the heart.
She tried to speak, and began to cry.
"Forgive me ... forgive me!" she sobbed. "I used to be so proud of not
crying. It's the tragedy of it all.... Our love is such a tragedy!..."
Amaldi looked at her a moment, his face set. Then with a quick, almost
violent, gesture he took her in his arms. "You shall not say that our
love is a tragedy...." he muttered. But she sobbed on:
"It is ... it is!... Oh, why couldn't we have known each other ... from
the first!..."
"But you love me ... now?"
"Oh, you know it ... you know it!..."
He put his hand up suddenly and turned her face to his. It gave him a
strange thrill to feel her warm tears on his hand. He looked down into
her eyes, and there was something imperious and fateful in this look.
".... _Really_ love me?" he said.
Her "Yes" came in a whisper.
He kept his eyes on hers another second, then bent his mouth almost
deliberately to hers.
".... _Sei mia moglie_ ... _sei la mia vera moglie_...." (Thou art my
wife ... thou art my real wife....), he kept whispering brokenly after
that deep kiss. She clung to him in silence. Yes, she too felt that she
belonged to him as she had never belonged to another; yet, to her, this
was the supreme tragedy. With her heart at home on his--with all herself
at home in him--she knew at last the love in which flesh and spirit are
one essence--in which God the fire and God the fuel are one. But to know
such love only after having passed through the nether fires of other
loves--was not that the tragedy of tragedies? She would not have been
true woman had she not felt it so, and he would not have been true man
if, even in that hour, the memory of those other loves had not wrung
him. But while it was the woman's way to confess this sense of tragedy,
it was the man's way to deny it stoutly. So he told her over and over
with passionate insistence that she had never known real love--that the
great fire of his love would consume even the memory of her
mistakes--that the past was nothing to him and should be nothing to her
in the light of the present.
They sat there, locked in each other's arms for a long time. The sun was
westering. The shadows of the cypresses lengthened along the grass until
they seemed to leap softly from the river brink into the water.
* * * * *
When they went back to the villa, they found old Carletto preparing to
serve tea in the columned portico. The Signora Marchesa was just about
to descend, he told them. She called from above as he finished speaking:
"_He_, Carletto!... Go tell the Signora Chesney and the Marchesino that
tea is ready...."
"We are here," said Amaldi, going towards the staircase. "Wait ... let
me help you...."
The Marchesa was coming down very slowly, one step at a time, leaning
heavily on a big, ebony cane. The rheumatism in her knee was much
better, but she was still very stiff. She called out in her jolly,
plucky voice as he began mounting towards her:
"But just look how cleverly I manage by myself!..."
As she said this, she planted her stick on the marble floor of the first
landing. Amaldi was within a yard of her--Sophy watching from the hall
below. It all happened in a second. The stick slipped ... the Marchesa,
who had leaned her whole weight upon it for the next downward step, was
thrown head first against the opposite wall. The sound of her bare
forehead against the marble of the wall was horrible. Then Amaldi had
her in his arms.... Sophy and Carletto ran wildly. It seemed as if she
must be dead. They could not realise that such a crashing blow could
result in anything but death.
In a few moments the whole villa was in confusion. Amaldi and his man
Piero carried the Marchesa to her bedroom. Sophy directed the frightened
maids what to do. Amaldi sent Piero to Cortola, the nearest town, for a
doctor. All the time that Sophy was working with Amaldi over the
unconscious form of his mother, a stupid voice kept dinning in her
mind: "_It never rains but it pours.... It never rains but it
pours_...."
It was nearly an hour before the Marchesa regained consciousness. Her
mind became clear in an astonishingly short time, but she was suffering
frightful pain in her head. Fortunately, almost at the moment she opened
her eyes Piero came back with the doctor from Cortola. After a careful
examination, he assured them that there was no concussion of the brain,
and that if the Signora would remain quietly in bed for a few days, all
would be well. It was nearly ten, however, before they became satisfied
that her condition was not dangerous.
Sophy insisted that Amaldi should send Carletto back with her to Venice
and himself remain with his mother. He would not consent to this. The
physician was to spend the night at the villa. The Marchesa was sleeping
quietly now under a strong sedative. Her faithful old _cameriera_ of
forty years' standing was at the bedside. He was not willing for Sophy
to take the journey back without him.
At half-past ten they walked once more through the old garden. The soft
night was wonderful with stars. Carletto went ahead carrying a candle.
His knotty fingers, through which the flame shone in gold and reddish
streaks, and the silver outline of his hair, glided forward mysteriously
against the purple bloom of the night. On the river bank, they saw the
glow of a lantern where the gondolieri were getting things in readiness.
Then the brazen beak of the gondola gleamed suddenly.
When they entered it and the gondolieri began to row, it seemed to Sophy
that the quiet river, veiled in darkness like the stream of fate, was
gliding with them to some appointed end. A feeling of presage welled in
her. She shivered and drew closer to Amaldi.
The night was hushed and grave. The banks stole by soft with grass or
the brooding dimness of foliage. The fields were quiet as sleep. Against
the violet dark rose sometimes the roofs of thatched cottages and now
and then a lighted window shone out--the watchful, steadfast eye of
home.
The gates of the first lock opened--the gondola floated in. Slowly,
almost imperceptibly, they began to sink with the ebbing water. Little
by little, the trees, the houses, the tranquil fields slipped from
view. Now they were in a dark well, as in a tomb together. A strip of
starry sky shone above. They looked up at it without speaking. The dark
lock was like their present--the strip of sky with its secret writing of
stars was like the far hope that glimmered for them above the gulf of
years....
The gates unclosed again; they glided out once more upon the Brenta, and
more than ever it seemed to Sophy like the hidden stream of fate,
bearing them to an appointed end.