When she had answered him with her question, he stood still in silence for a moment. She was too perfect in his eyes for him to cast the blame upon her, yet he knew that it had not been all his fault. And in the lower man was the mad triumph of having kissed her and of having told her, once for all, the whole meaning of his being. She looked down, and he could not see her eyes. There was no chair near. To see her face he dropped upon his knee and lightly touched her hands that lay idly in her lap. She started, fearing another outbreak.
“Please — please!” he said softly, using the very word she had used to him.
“Yes — but—” She hesitated and then raised her eyes.
The mask of his face was all softened, and his lips trembled a little. His hands quivered, too, as they touched hers.
“Please!” he repeated. “I promise. Indeed, I promise. Forgive me.”
She smiled, all at once, dreamily. All his emotion, and her desire for it, were gone.
“I asked you to be my friend,” she said. “I meant it, you know. How could you? It was not kind.”
“No — but forgive me,” he insisted in a pleading tone.
“I suppose I must,” she said at last. “But I shall never feel sure of you again. How can I?”
“I promise. You will believe me, not to-day, perhaps, nor to-morrow, but soon. I will be just what I have always been. I will never do anything to offend you again.”
“You promise me that? Solemnly?” She still smiled.
“Yes. It is a promise. I will keep it. I will be your friend always. Give me something to do for you. It will make it easier.”
“What can I ask you to do? I shall never dare to speak to you about my life again.”
“I think you will, when you see that I am just as I used to be. And you forgive me, quite?”
“Yes. I must. We must forget to-day. It must be as though it had never happened. Will you forget it?”
“I will try.” But of that he knew the utter impossibility.
“If you try, you can succeed. Now get up. Be reasonable.”
He took her hand in both of his. She made a movement to withdraw it, and then submitted. He barely touched it with his lips and rose to his feet instantly.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
She had never had such a mastery of charm over him as at that moment. But his mood was changed, and there was no breaking out of the other man in him, though he felt again the quick sharp throb in the temples, and the rising blood at his throat. The higher self was dominant once more, and the features was as still as a statue’s.
He took leave of her very quickly and went out into the damp street and faced the gusty southeast wind.
When he was gone, she rose and went to the window with a listless step, and gazed idly through the glass at the long row of windows in the palace opposite, and then went back and sank down, as though very weary, upon a sofa far from the light. There was a dazed, wondering look in her face and she sat very still for a long time, till it began to grow dark. In the dusk she rose and went to the piano and sang softly to herself. Her voice never swelled to a full note, and the chords which her fingers sought were low and gentle and dreamy.
While she was singing, the door opened noiselessly, and Reanda came in and stood beside her. She broke off and looked up, a little startled. The same wondering, half-dazed look was in her face. Her husband bent down and kissed her, and she kissed him silently.
CHAPTER XXVI.
DONNA FRANCESCA HAD put off her mourning, and went into the world again during that winter. The world said that she might marry if she so pleased, and was somewhat inclined to wonder that she did not. She could have made a brilliant match if she had chosen. But instead, though she appeared everywhere where society was congregated together, she showed a tendency to religion which surprised her friends.
A tendency to religion existed in the Braccio family, together with various other tendencies not at all in harmony with it, nor otherwise edifying. Those other tendencies seemed to be absent in Francesca, and little by little her acquaintances began to speak of her as a devout person. The Prince of Gerano even hinted that she might some day be an abbess in the Carmelite Convent at Subiaco, as many a lady of the great house had been before her. But Francesca was not prepared to withdraw from the world altogether, though at the present time she was very unhappy.
She suspected herself of a great sin, besides reproaching herself bitterly with many of her deeds which deserved no blame at all. Yet she was by no means morbid, nor naturally inclined to perpetual self-examination. On the contrary, she had always been willing to accept life as a simple affair which could not offer any difficulties provided that one were what she meant by “good” — that is, honest in word and deed, and scrupulous in doing thoroughly and with right intention those things which her religion required of her, but in which only she herself could judge of her own sincerity.
Of late, however, she had felt that there was something very wrong in all her recent life. The certainty of it dawned by degrees, and then burst upon her suddenly one day when she was with Reanda.
She had long ago noticed the change in his manner, the harassed look, and the sad ring in his voice, and for a time his suffering was her sorrow, and there was a painful pleasure in being able to feel for him with all her heart. He had gone through a phase which had lasted many months, and the change was great between his former and his present self. He had suffered, but indifference was creeping upon him. It was clear enough. Nothing interested him but his art, and perhaps her own conversation, though even that seemed doubtful to her.
They were alone together on a winter’s afternoon in the great hall. The work was almost done, and they had been talking of the more mechanical decorations, and of the style of the furniture.
“It is a big place,” said Francesca, “but I mean to fill it. I like large rooms, and when it is finished, I will take up my quarters here, and call it my boudoir.”
She smiled at the idea. The hall was at least fifty feet long by thirty wide.
“All the women I know have wretched little sitting-rooms in which they can hardly turn round,” she said. “I will have all the space I like, and all the air and all the light. Besides, I shall always have the dear Cupid and Psyche, to remind me of you.”
She spoke the last words with the simplicity of absolute innocence.
“And me?” he asked, as innocently and simply as she. “What will you do with me?”
“Whatever you like,” she said, taking it quite for granted, as he did, that he was to work for her all his life. “You can have a studio in the house, just as it used to be, if you please. And you can paint the great canvas for the ceiling of the dining-room. Or shall I restore the old chapel? Which should you rather do — oil-painting, or fresco?”
“You would not want the altar piece which I should paint,” he said, with sudden sadness.
“Santa Francesca?” she asked. “It would have to be Santa Francesca. The chapel is dedicated to her. You could make a beautiful picture of her — a portrait, perhaps—” she stopped.
“Of yourself? Yes, I could do that,” he answered quickly.
“No,” she said, and hesitated. “Of your wife,” she added rather abruptly.
He started and looked at her, and she was sorry that she had spoken. Gloria’s beautiful face had risen in her mind, and it had seemed generous to suggest the idea. Finding a difficulty in telling him, she had thought it her duty to be frank.
He laughed harshly before he answered her.
“No,” he said. “Certainly not a portrait of my wife. Not even to please you. And that is saying much.”
He spoke very bitterly. In the few words, he poured out the pent-up suffering of many months. Francesca turned pale.
“I know, and it is my fault,” she said in a low voice.
“Your fault? No! But it is not mine.”
His hands trembled violently as he took up his palette and brushes and began to mix some
colours, not knowing what he was doing.
“It is my fault,” said Francesca, still very white, and staring at the brick floor. “I have seen it. I could not speak of it. You are unhappy — miserable. Your life is ruined, and I have done it. I!”
She bit her lip almost before the last word was uttered; for it was stronger and louder than she had expected it to be, and the syllable rang with a despairing echo in the empty hall.
Reanda shook his head, and bent over his colours with shaking hands, but said nothing.
“I was so happy when you were married,” said Francesca, forcing herself to speak calmly. “She seemed such a good wife for you — so young, so beautiful. And she loves you—”
“No.” He shook his head energetically. “She does not love me. Do not say that, for it is not true. One does not love in that way — to-day a kiss, to-morrow a sting — to-day honey, to-morrow snake-poison. Do not say that it is love, for it is not true. The heart tells the truth, all alone in the breast. A thousand words cannot make it tell one lie. But for me — it is finished. Let us speak no more of love. Let us talk of our good friendship. It is better.”
“Eh, let us speak of it, of this friendship! It has cost tears of blood!”
Francesca, in the sincerity of what she felt, relapsed into the Roman dialect. Almost all Romans do, under any emotion.
“Everything passes,” answered Reanda, laying his palette aside, and beginning to walk up and down, his hands in his pockets. “This also will pass,” he added, as he turned. “We are men. We shall forget.”
“But not I. For I did it. Your sadness cuts my heart, because I did it. I — I alone. But for me, you would be free.”
“Would to Heaven!” exclaimed the artist, almost under his breath. “But I will not have you say that it is your fault!” he cried, stopping before her. “I was the fool that believed. A man of my age — oh, a serious man — to marry a child! I should have known. At first, I do not say. I was the first. She thought she had paradise in her arms. A husband! They all want it, the husband. But I, who had lived and seen, I should have known. Fool, fool! Ignorant fool!”
The words came out vehemently in the strong dialect, and the nervous, heart-wrung man struck his breast with his clenched fist, and his eyes looked upward.
“Reanda, Reanda! What are you saying? When I tell you that I made you marry her! It was here, — I was in this very chair, — and I told you about her. And I asked her here with intention, that you might see how beautiful she was. And then, neither one nor two, she fell in love with you! It would have been a miracle if you had not married her. And her father, he was satisfied. May that day be accursed when I brought them here to torment you!”
She spoke excitedly, and her lip quivered. He began to walk again with rapid, uncertain strides.
“For that — yes!” he said. “Let the day bear the blame. But I was the madman. Who leaves the old way and follows the new knows what he leaves, but not what he may find. I might have been contented. I was so happy! God knows how happy I was!”
“And I!” exclaimed Francesca, involuntarily; but he did not hear her.
She felt a curious sense of elation, though she was so truly sorry for him, and it disturbed her strangely. She looked at him and smiled, and then wondered why the smile came. There is a ruthless cruelty in the half-unconscious impulses of the purest innocence, of which vice itself might be ashamed in its heart. It is simple humanity’s assertion of its prior right to be happy. She smiled spontaneously because she knew that Reanda no longer loved Gloria, and she felt that he could not love her again; and for a while she was too simply natural to quarrel with herself for it, or to realize what it meant.
He was nervous, melancholy, and unstrung, and he began to talk about himself and his married life for the first time, pouring out his sufferings and thoughtless of what Francesca might think and feel. He, too, was natural. Unlike his wife, he detested emotion. To be angry was almost an illness to his over-finely organized temperament. In a way, Griggs had been right in saying that Reanda seemed to paint as an agent in the power of an unseen, directing influence. Beauty made him feel itself, and feel for it in his turn with his brush. The conception was before him, guiding his hand, before a stroke of the work was done. There was the lightning-like co-respondence and mutual reaction between thought and execution, which has been explained by some to be the simultaneous action of two minds in man, the subjective and the objective. In doing certain things he had the patience and the delicacy of one for whom time has no meaning. He could not have told whether his hand followed his eye, or his eye followed his hand. His whole being was of excessively sensitive construction, and emotion of any kind, even pleasure, jarred upon its hair-fine sensibilities. And yet, behind all this, there was the tenacity of the great artist and the phenomenal power of endurance, in certain directions, which is essential to prize-winning in the fight for fame. There was the quality of nerve which can endure great tension in one way, but can bear nothing in other ways.
He went on, giving vent to all he felt, talking to himself rather than to Francesca. He could not reproach his wife with any one action of importance. She was fond of Paul Griggs. But it was only Griggs! He smiled. In his eyes, the cold-faced man was no more than a stone. In their excursions into society she had met men whom he considered far more dangerous, men young, handsome, rich, having great names. They admired her and said so to her in the best language they had, which was no doubt often very eloquent. Had she ever looked twice at one of them? No. He could not reproach her with that. The Duchess of Astrardente was not more cold to her admirers than Gloria was. It was not that. There were little things, little nothings, but in thousands. He tried to please her with something, and she laughed in his face, or found fault. She had small hardnesses and little vulgarities of manner that drove him mad.
“I had thought her like you,” he said suddenly, turning to Francesca. “She is not. She is coarse-grained. She has the soul of a peasant, with the face of a Madonna. What would you have? It is too much. Love is an illusion. I will have no more of it. Besides, love is dead. It would be easier to wake a corpse. I shall live. I may forget. Meanwhile there is our friendship. That is of gold.”
Francesca listened in silence, thoughtful and with downcast eyes, as the short, disjointed sentences broke vehemently from his lips, each one accusing her in her own heart of having wrought the misery of two lives, one of which was very dear to her. Too dear, as she knew at last. The scarlet shame would have burned her face, if she had owned to herself that she loved this man, whom she had married to another, believing that she was making his happiness. She would not own it. Had she admitted it then, she would have been capable of leaving him within the hour, and of shutting herself up forever in the Convent at Subiaco to expiate the sin of the thought. It was monstrous in her eyes, and she would still refuse to see it.
But she owned that there was the suspicion, and that Angelo Reanda was far dearer to her than anything else on earth. Her innocence was so strong and spotless that it had a right to its one and only satisfaction. But what she felt for Reanda was either love, or it was blasphemy against the holy thing in whose place he stood in her temple. It must not be love, and therefore, as anything else, it was too much. And the strange joy she felt because Gloria was nothing to him, still filled her heart, though it began to torment her with the knowledge of evil which she had never understood.
There was much else against him, too, in her pride of race, and it helped her just then, for it told her how impossible it was that she, a princess of the house of Braccio, should love a mere artist, the son of a steward, whose forefathers had been bondsmen to her ancestors from time immemorial. It was out of the question, and she would not believe it of herself. Yet, as she looked into his delicate, spiritual face and watched the shades of expression that crossed it, she felt that it made little difference whence he came, since she understood him and he understood her.
She became confused by her own thoughts and gras
ped at the idea of a true and perfect friendship, with a somewhat desperate determination to see it and nothing else in it, for the rest of her life, rather than part with Angelo Reanda.
“Friends,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes — always friends, you and I. But as a friend, Reanda, what can I do? I cannot help you.”
“The time for help is past, if it ever came. You are a saint — pray for me. You can do that.”
“But there is more than that to be done,” she said, ready to sacrifice anything or everything just then. “Do not tell me it is hopeless. I will see your wife often and I will talk to her. I am older than she, and I can make her understand many things.”
“Do not try it,” said Reanda, in an altered tone. “I advise you not to try it. You can do no good there, and you might find trouble.”
“Find trouble?” repeated Francesca, not understanding him. “What do you mean? Does she dislike me?”
“Have you not seen it?” he asked, with a bitter smile.
Francesca did not answer him at once, but bent her head again. Once or twice she looked up as though she were about to speak.
“It is as I tell you,” said Reanda, nodding his head slowly.
Francesca made up her mind, but the scarlet blood rose in her face.
“It is better to be honest and frank,” she said. “Is Gloria jealous of me?” She was so much ashamed that she could hardly look at him just then.
“Jealous! She would kill you!” he cried, and there was anger in his voice at the thought. “Do not go to her. Something might happen.”
The blush in Francesca’s face deepened and then subsided, and she grew very pale again.
“But if she is jealous, she loves you,” she said earnestly and anxiously.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 782