CHAPTER IV
Throwing the Line
In the next instant Bianca heard the door of the room in which she wassitting opened very gently; it was Gigia who opened it, so gently as toenable her mistress to keep her eyes on a book she held in her hand,apparently unconscious that she was not alone. The Marchese Lambertoadvanced two paces within the room, and then stopped gazing at theexquisite picture before his eyes. Bianca knew that all her preparatorycares were doing the work they were intended to do. But no sound had yetbeen made to compel her to recognize her visitor's presence; and sheremained as motionless as a recumbent statue.
"I fear, Signora--," said the Marchese, after a few instants given toprofiting by the rare opportunity a singular chance had given him,--"Ifear, Signora--"
"Santa Maria, who is there!" cried Bianca in a voice of alarm, startingto her feet as she spoke with a bound, that none but so skilled anartist and so perfect a figure could have executed with the faultlesselegance with which she accomplished it.
"A thousand pardons, Signora; your servant--"
"The Marchese Lamberto! It is unpardonable in the woman--to have sofailed in her duty-towards your Excellency! It is I who have to beg yourindulgence, Signor Marchese. Can it be one o'clock already? In truth Ihad no idea it was so late; and I have still to dress! How can Iapologize to your Excellency sufficiently for appearing before you inthis dishabille?"
"Nay, Signora, it is in truth I who have to apologize; it is not yet oneo'clock, it is not much past twelve! And I feel that I am guilty of anunwarrantable intrusion. But I hoped for the opportunity of having a fewwords of conversation before the hour named for our little business withour good Signor Ercole. Permit me to assure you, Signora, that if yourservant had given me the least hint that you were not yet--ready to seeany visitor--"
"If only your Excellency will excuse--the fact is, I have so rarely anyvisitors that the poor woman does not understand her duty in suchmatters. Really I am so covered with confusion,"--she continued, puttingup her delicate little hand with a feeble sort of little attempt to drawher dress a little more together across her throat. "I cannot forgiveher! She has exposed me to seem wanting in respect towards yourExcellency; I will dismiss her from my service!"
"Let me intercede for her, poor woman!" said the Marchese, advancinginto the room; "indeed it was mainly my fault, I ought to have asked ifyou were visible."
"One word from la sua Signoria is enough. If you can forgive me, I mustforgive her! But you will own, Signor Marchese, that it is--what shall Isay--?" She hesitated and cast her eyes down with a bewitching smile anda little movement of her head to one side, "that it reallyis--embarrassing! Such a thing never happened to me before!"
"But now it has happened, Signora," said the Marchese, emboldened by thesmile, and by a shy sidelong glance, which she shot from under hereye-lashes with a laugh in her eyes, as she spoke; "now it has happenedthat I have been permitted to see you in a toilet all the moreexquisitely charming in that it wants the formality of the costume inwhich the world is wont to see you,--may I not say what I came for thepurpose of saying?"
"Will you be very discreet, Signor?" she said, putting a slender rosyfinger up to her smiling lips; "and never, never let it be known to anyhuman being, that I ever received you save in the fullest of full dress,as would become me in receiving the honour of a visit from yourExcellency!"
"Not a syllable, not a whisper!" replied the Marchese, taking her tone,and putting his own finger on his lips. "And then, I may say, Signora,that in Ravenna a visit at any hour from old Lamberto di Castelmarewould do your fair name no harm!" he added, taking the arm-chair by theside of the sofa to which she pointed, as she resumed her former placeand attitude on the couch.
"I dare say it might not, if I am to judge of his position in thesociety from your own, Signor Marchese. But I did not know, that therewas any old Signor Lamberto di Castelmare. I supposed you were the headof the family, your uncle, perhaps?" said Bianca, very innocently.
"I have no uncle, Signora! I am the oldest Castelmare extant," said theMarchese.
"And you call yourself old Lamberto, Marchese! Why I would wager mypearl necklace,--and that is the most valuable possession Ihave--against a daisy chain, that you are not ten years older than I am.I shall be called old Bianca Lalli next, at that rate!"
"And how many years, since you are ready to wager on it,--have gone tothe bringing the face and form I see before me to their matchlessperfection?" said the Marchese.
"Who was ever before so prettily asked how old she was?" said Bianca,suffering her large blue eyes to rest fully on the Marchese's face foran instant, and then dropping them with an air of consciousembarrassment. "Well, a frank question deserves--or at least shallhave--a frank answer! I shall never see my twenty-fourth birthdayagain?"
"And you judge me then to be thirty-four!" said the Marchese, looking ather laughingly.
"Certainly I don't think any room full of strangers would judge you tobe more than that," replied Bianca, looking at him seriously.
"Ta!--ta!--ta! Add fifteen years to that; and you will be nearer themark. So you see, bella Signora, that you may safely trust yourself to atete-a-tete with me under any circumstances."
"Ta!--ta!--ta!" said Bianca, repeating his own phrase, with a merrylaugh in her eyes, and shaking her rich auburn curls at him. "It seemsimpossible, utterly incredible! But I am very glad if it is so,--veryglad. There is nothing so intolerable to me as the young lads who comebuzzing about one circumstanced as I am, and whom it is as difficult todrive away as it is to drive away flies in summer. There is no trustingto them; they would compromise a poor girl as soon as look at her, ifshe was fool enough to let them. And I have had lessons in the necessityof caution, Signor Marchese. I have been cruelly treated,--very cruellycalumniated!" And Bianca, knowing, it is to be supposed, that, if it isnot always the case that "Beauty's tear is lovelier than her smile," asthe poet says, yet that it is a phase of beauty often more potent over amale heart than the sunniest smile, raised a corner of herdaintily-embroidered handkerchief to her eyes.
The Marchese was an old man of the world,--as the cynical phrasegoes,--and of what a world?--an old Italian Marchese of the beginning ofthe nineteenth century,--a period when, if crime was less rife than informer and stronger ages, morality was never at a lower ebb. He was aman whose musical tastes had made him conversant with the Divas of thestage, and familiar with the interior aspects of Italian theatricallife;--one, too, whom circumstances had caused to become specially wellacquainted with the antecedent history of this particular Diva nowstretched on the sofa before him. Yet none the less for all this did"beauty's tear," enhanced by beauty's laced pocket-handkerchief,exercise on him its usual glamour.
Calumniated!--that lovely creature of matchless purity beforehim,--matchless purity! so white was her throat; so round and slenderher waist; so daintily snowy her muslin drapery. Calumny! Of course itwas calumny. And how he could have poignarded the calumniators, andtaken the poor, fluttering, persecuted Diva to his bosom. The desire toexecute that latter portion of retributive and poetical justice wasmaking itself felt stronger and stronger within him every minute, as hesat beside the sofa exposed to the full force of the magneticpoison-current which was intoxicating him.
"Signora--" he said, putting his hand out to take hers, which shereadily gave him. His own hand shook, and he paused in his speech,overcome for a moment by a sort of dizziness and a sudden rush of theblood to his brow and eyes,--a veritable electric shock caused by thecontact of her hand with his.
"Signora," he continued, recovering himself, "no such slander--no suchinsults will follow you here; none such shall follow you here. Lambertodi Castelmare can, at least in Ravenna, promise you that much. Nor ifthey did follow you, would such stories here be believed."
"Generous! Just!" murmured Bianca behind the laced pocket-handkerchiefin a broken voice, just loud enough to reach the neighbouring ear of theMarchese, while she suffered her slender fingers to press the hand
whichheld hers just perceptibly before withdrawing it from him;--"just," shecontinued in a louder tone, taking her handkerchief from her face, andraising her shoulders a little from the sofa, so as to turn more fullytowards him, while her eyes fired point blank into his a broadside ofuncontrollable gratitude and admiration;--"just, because generous andnoble. Oh, Signor Marchese, those who have never known what it is tosuffer from a slanderous tongue can never know the delight--the sweetconsolation of meeting with such generous appreciation."
The poor Diva was quite overcome by her own emotion; and, sinking backon the cushions of the sofa, again lifted her handkerchief to her face,while one or two half-stifled sobs showed how deeply she had beenmoved;--and how perfect was the form and hue of the beautifulhalf-covered bosom which this emotion caused to heave beneath its gauzyveil.
Just at that minute there came, to the infinite disgust of the Marchese,a discreet tap at the door.
Bianca rapidly passed her fingers over the tresses above her forehead,resettled her pose on the sofa, and gave the Marchese a meaning look ofcommon intelligence and mutual confidence, which set forth, as well as avolume could have done, and established the fact that there existedthenceforward a bond of union and a fellowship between her and him, suchas shut them in together, and shut out in the cold all the rest ofRavenna, and then said "Passi," and admitted, as she knew very well, nomore startling an interrupter than Gigia.
The well-trained servant said nothing and looked at nothing; butsilently handed to her mistress two cards.
"Of course you told these gentlemen that I was not visible, Gigia?"
"Diamine! Signora; of course I should not have let any gentleman passthis morning more than any other morning of the year if you had notspecially told me to admit the Marchese Lamberto at any hour he mightcome," said Gigia with a niaise simplicity, as she left the room.
Bianca covered her face with her pretty hands and shook a gale ofperfume from her sunny locks, as she exclaimed, sotto voce,--"Oh, thestupidity of these servants! Signor Marchese," she continued, looking upshyly, but with a gay laugh in her eyes, "what must you notimagine?--not, at all events, I hope, that I contemplated thepossibility of receiving you in this dishabille? But I will do as othercriminals do;--confess when they are found out. I did think," shecontinued, casting down her eyes, and hesitating with the mostcharmingly becoming and naive confusion; "I had some little hope--no; Idon't mean that;--I did not mean to put that into my confession;--it didoccur to me as possible," she went on, hanging her pretty head, andplaying nervously with the folds of her dress in a manner which had theaccidental effect of causing it to leave uncovered an additional inch ofsilk stocking--"it did occur to me as possible that the MarcheseLamberto might come to me sooner than the time named for the meetingwith the impresario;--for the sake of giving me any hints that hisperfect knowledge of the subject might suggest; and I fully intended tobe dressed and ready to receive him if he should show me any suchcondescending kindness--and so told my maid to make an exception in hiscase to my invariable rule! And then the minutes slipped away; and Ifell into a reverie, thinking--thinking--thinking; and then, all of asudden, before I knew that there was any one in the room--if you thinkof the devil--and I suppose it is equally true if you think of anangel;--but there, again, that was not intended to be any part of myconfession. I think I shall give up confession, at all events to you,Signor Marchese, for the future. But now I have confessed myself thistime, and told the whole, whole truth--may I hope for absolution?"
There was an adorable mixture of candour, and gaiety of heart, andchild-like simplicity in the beautiful features as she looked up intohis face when she finished speaking, together with an expression ofappealing confidence and almost tenderness in the eyes that achieved thefinal and complete subjugation of the Marchese.
Again he took her hand, and again his head swam round with the violenceof the emotion caused by the contact of palm with palm, as he said,
"Ah, Signora, if I were equally candid perhaps it would turn out that itwas for me to confess, and for you to grant absolution--if you could. Doyou think you could?" he said, raising her hand to his lips as he saidthe words.
"Ha! Signor Marchese, that would quite depend upon the nature of theconfession. When I have heard it I will do my best to be an indulgentconfessor. But, however curious I may be to hear you in theconfessional, it must not be now; or I shall really not be ready toreceive Signor Stadione. Heavens! It wants only ten minutes to one now.I must run and dress as quickly as I possibly can. To think that almostan hour should have run away since you came here; and it seems like tenminutes. May I beg your indulgence, Signor Marchese, if I ask you towait for me while I dress? I will be as quick as I possibly can."
"On no account hurry yourself, Signora. It is my fault for havingdetained you. And if I had to wait ten hours instead of one, would notthe one I have passed be cheaply purchased? Never mind Stadione; I willexplain to him that you are dressing--"
"And that you have been made to wait some time already by my abominableunpunctuality," said Bianca, holding up one fore-finger and giving him alook of mutual intelligence.
"Of course--of course. A chi lo dite!" returned the Marchese, giving heronce more his hand to help her to rise from the sofa.
As she did so she put into his hand, without any word of comment, butwith a slight smile and a little momentary raising of her eyebrows, thetwo cards that Gigia had, a little while before, handed to her. Theybore the names of the Barone Manutoli and the Marchese LudovicoCastelmare; and Bianca handed them to the Marchese with amatter-of-course air that seemed to say that, in the position which theMarchese Lamberto and she had assumed towards each other, it was naturaland proper that he should see who had called on her.
He merely nodded as he looked at them; and then, for the second time,kissing the tips of the fingers he still held, as she got up from hercouch, he bowed low as she passed him to go towards the bedroom; andshe, before quitting the room, made a sweeping curtsey, half playfully,and then kissed the tops of her fingers to him as she vanished into theinner room.
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