The woman who had held him so long knew how to tempt him, sacrificing everything in the desperate straits to which she was reduced. Though he had loved her well, and sinfully, but truly, for so many years, his love had sometimes seemed an unbearable thraldom, to escape from which he would have given his heart piecemeal, though he should lose all the happiness life held for him, for the sake of a momentary freedom. Possibly, too, she knew that he never longed for that freedom so much as when she had just been most violent and despotic. She was prepared for the feeble dissent with which he answered her suggestion of separation. He would be the more easily persuaded to yield and marry Veronica.
“As for your being old,” he said, “it is absurd. It is I who have grown old of late. But our being friends—” he paused thoughtfully.
“A man is never too old to marry,” answered Matilde. “It is only women who grow too old to be loved. You will begin your life all over again with Veronica. You and she will go away together — you can live in Rome, when you are tired of Paris. It will be better. You and I will see each other seldom at first. By and by it will be so easy for us to be good friends after we have been separated some time.”
“Friends?” Bosio spoke the one word again, with a sad and dreamy intonation.
“I asked Veronica this morning,” continued Matilde, not heeding him, and beginning to speak more rapidly. “You have no idea how very fond she is of you. When I spoke of the marriage, she seemed to think it the most natural thing in the world. She found arguments for it herself.”
“She?”
“Yes. She said — what I have said to you — that there was no man whom she knew so well and liked so much as you, that of course she had never thought of marrying you, nor, indeed, of being married at all, but that, at the same time, she should think that you would make a very good husband. She wished to think of it — that is as much as to say that she will not even make any serious objections. You have no idea how young girls feel about marriage, Bosio. How should you? You cannot comprehend the horror a girl like Veronica feels of a stranger, of a man like Gianluca, even, whom she has met half a dozen times and talked with. It seems so dreadful to think of spending a lifetime with a man about whom she knows nothing, or next to nothing. And yet it is the custom, and most of them accept it and are happy. But the idea of marrying some one with whom she is really intimate, whom she really likes, who really understands her, places marriage in a new light for a young girl. Without knowing it, Veronica is half in love with you. It is no wonder that she likes the thought of being your wife — apart from the fact that you are a very desirable husband.”
“I cannot believe that,” said Bosio.
“That you are desirable as a husband? My dear Bosio, do not pretend to be so absurdly modest! Any woman would be glad to marry you. But for me, you could have made the best match in Naples years ago—”
“Not even years ago. Much less now. But that was not what I meant. I cannot believe that Veronica is really inclined to marry me. It seems to me that she might be my daughter—”
“If you had been married at fifteen,” suggested Matilde, laughing softly. “Because you feel tired and harassed to-day, you feel a hundred years old. It is no compliment to me to say so, for I am even a little older than you, I think. And you — you are young, you are handsome, you are talented, you have the manners that women love—”
“It is not many minutes since you were saying that we were both growing old—”
“No, no! I said that we could not always be young. That is very different. And that we have lived our lives — our lives so long as they can be lived together — that is what I meant. You are young! How many men marry at fifty! And you are not forty yet. You have ten years of youth before you. That is not the question. So far as that is concerned, say that you are old to-night, at dinner, and you shall see how Veronica will laugh at you! But that you and I should part, Bosio — and yet, it is far better, if you have the courage.”
“Have you?” he asked sadly.
“Yes — I have, for your sake, since I see how you look at this. And you are right. I know you are, though I am only a woman, and cannot have a man’s ideas about honour. For my own part — well, I am a woman, and I have loved you long. But you are the one to be thought of. You shall be free, as though I had never lived. You shall be able to say to yourself that in marrying Veronica you are not doing anything in the least dishonourable. I shall not exist for you. I shall not feel that I have the right to think of you and for you as I always have. I shall never ask you to do anything for me, lest you should feel that I were asserting some claim to you, as though you were still mine. It will be hard at first. But I can do it, and I will do it, in order that your conscience may be free. You shall marry her, as though you had never known me, and hereafter I will always be the same. Only—” She fixed her eyes upon him with a look which, whether genuine or assumed, was fierce and tender —
“Only — if you are not true to her, Bosio — if you leave her and go after some other woman — then I will turn upon you!”
Bosio met her glance with a look of something like astonishment, wondering how in a few sentences she had got herself into a position to threaten him with vengeance if he were unfaithful to Veronica.
“We will not speak of that,” she exclaimed before he said anything in answer or protest. “We have harder things to do than to imagine evil in the future. Since we are decided — since it is to be the end — let it be now, quickly! You shall not have it on your mind that you belong to me in any way, from now. No — you are right — you must feel free. You must feel free, besides really being free. You must feel, when you speak to Veronica to-night or to-morrow, as she expects you to speak, that all our life together is utterly past and swept away, and that I only exist henceforth as a relative — as — as your wife’s aunt, Bosio!”
She laughed, half-bitterly, half-nervously, at the idea, and turning away her face she held out her hand to him.
He took it, and held it, pressing it between both his own.
“Do you mean this, Matilde?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes, I mean it,” she answered, speaking away from him with averted face.
He could not see, but she was biting her lip till it almost bled. In her own strange way she loved him with all her evil nature, and if she were breaking with him now, it was to save herself from something worse than death. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. He hesitated: there was the mean prompting of the spirit, to take her at her word and to set himself free, since she offered him freedom, caring not whether she might repent to-morrow; and there was the instinct of fidelity which in so much dishonour had remained with him through so many years.
“Besides,” she said hoarsely, “I do not love you any more. I would not keep you longer, if I could. Oh — we shall be friends! But the other — no! Good bye, Bosio — good bye.”
Something moved him, as she had not meant that anything should.
“I do not believe you,” he said. “You love me still — I will not leave you!”
“No, no! I do not — but if you still care at all, save me. Say good bye, but do the rest also. You are free now. You are an honourable man again. Bosio, look at my hair. You used to love it. Would you have it cut off and cropped by the convict’s shears? My hands that you are holding — dear — would you love them galled by the irons, riveted upon them for years? Save me, Bosio! You are free now — save me, for the dear sake of all that has been!”
Still she turned her face away, and as Bosio saw the waving richness of her brown hair and heard her words, he felt a desperate thrust of pain in his heart. It was all so fearfully true and possible.
“But do not say that you do not love me,” he pleaded, in low tones, bending to her ear.
There was a moment’s silence, and he thought he saw a convulsive movement of her throat — he guessed it rather than saw it.
“It is true!” she cried, with an effort, drawing her hands from him and
turning her pale face fiercely. “If I loved you still, do you think I would give you to Veronica Serra, or to any living woman? Was that the way I loved you? Was that how you loved me?”
“Ah no! But now—”
She would not let him speak.
“Do you think that if I loved you, as I have loved you — as I did once — I should be so ready to give you up? Do you know me so little? Do you think that I have no pride?” asked Matilde Macomer, holding him at arm’s length from her with her strong hands and throwing back her head, while the lids half veiled her eyes, and her face grew paler still.
The words that were so strange, spoken by such a woman, fell from her lips with force and earnest conviction, whether she truly believed that they had meaning for her, or not. Then her voice changed and softened again.
“But your friend — yes, always, as you must be mine — that and nothing more. We have said good bye to all the rest — now go, for I would rather be alone for a little while. Go, Bosio — please go!”
“As you will,” he answered.
Then he kissed her hand and looked into her face for a moment, as though expecting that she should speak again. But she only shook her head, and her hand gave his no pressure. He kissed it again. There were tears in his eyes when he left the room.
CHAPTER VII.
LOVE IS NOT the privilege of the virtuous, nor the exclusive right of the weak man and woman. The earth brings forth the good thing and the bad thing with equal strength to grow great and multiply side by side, and it is not the privilege of the good thing to live forever because it is good, nor is it the condemnation of the bad to die before its time, perishing in its own evil.
A moment after Bosio had left the room, Matilde rose to her feet, very pale and unsteady, and locked the door. Then, as though she were groping her way in darkness, she got back to the sofa, and falling upon it, buried her face in the cushions, and bit them, lest she should cry out. She felt that it would have been easier, after all, to have killed Veronica Serra, than it had been to part with the one thing she had loved in her life.
She had not loved him better than herself, perhaps, since it was to save herself that she had driven him away. But it had not been to save herself from so small and insignificant a thing as death, though she was vital and loved life for its own sake. She had not realized, either, until it had been almost done, how necessary it was. Yesterday she had been more cynical. Her own wickedness was teaching her the necessity of some good, and she saw now clearly that Bosio was one degree less base than herself. She believed that he would now be willing to marry Veronica, but she understood that until now he would not have done it — unless she had freed him from the galling remnant of his own conscience, and had formally given him his liberty. To give him that, in order that he might save her, she had torn out her heart by the roots.
The bitterest of all was this, that he had scarcely struggled against her will, when she had left him to himself. He had said a few words, indeed, but he could hardly have said less, if he had meant nothing. She knew well enough that at almost any point she could have brought him back, playing upon the fidelity of habit. At her voice, at her glance, for one word of her pleading, he would have come back to her feet, willing to remain. But there was no vital strength of passion in him to keep him to her against her mere spoken will. Once or twice, in spite of herself, her voice had softened; she had felt that her face betrayed her, and had turned it away; she had known that her hands were icy cold in his, and had hoped that he would not notice it and understand, and feel, perhaps, that his accursed habit of fidelity would not let him take the freedom she thrust upon him. He had not seen, he had not felt, he had noticed nothing; and he was gone, glad to be free from her at last, willing to marry another woman, ready to forget what had held him by a thread which he respected, but not by a bond which he could not break. She had long guessed how it was; she knew it now — she had known the truth last night, when she had smoothed his soft hair with her hand and had spoken softly to him, but had not got from him the promise that meant salvation to her and her husband. Then she had known what she must do. Once more she had tried to impose her strength upon his weakness, and had failed. Then, almost without an outward sign, she had made up her mind. And now — he was gone. That was all she knew, or remembered, for an hour, as she lay there on the sofa, biting the cushions. It would have been far easier to kill Veronica, than to let him go. It was not her conscience that suffered, but her heart, and it could suffer still.
It would have been worse, had that been possible, if she had known what Bosio felt at that moment. Happily for her, she never knew. For in the midst of the life-and-death terror of the situation, he was conscious that he rejoiced at being unexpectedly free at last from the slavery of her power. It was perhaps the satisfaction of an aspiration, good in itself, of a long-smouldering revolt against the life of deception she had imposed upon him; but in respect of his manhood, it was mean. For good is what men are, when they are doing good. It cannot be the good itself, which, though it profit many, may be so done as to stab and wound the secret enemy of the man’s own heart. The good such a man does the whole world is but the knife in his hand wherewith to hurt the one. But Bosio hurt only himself, and little, at that, for he was almost past hurting; and Matilde never knew what he felt. And though he suffered most of all, perhaps, between the beginning and the end, there was no one moment of all his suffering which was like the agony of the strong and evil woman when she had driven him away, and was quite alone. She knew, now, what it meant to be alone.
When she rose at last, her face was changed; there was a keen, famished look in her eyes, and her movements were steady and direct. Her nature was very unlike Bosio’s, for she was able to drive her will into action, as it were, and she could be sure that it would not turn and bend, and disappoint her. But, for the present, she could do little more, and she knew it. She could only hope that all things might go well, standing ready at hand to throw her weight upon the scale-beam if fate alone would not bear down the side that bore her safety. She had said all that she could say to Veronica and to Bosio. Gregorio Macomer, her husband, whom she hated and despised, but whom she was saving, or trying to save, with herself, carried the effrontery of his sham-honest face and cold manner through it all, unmoved, so far as she could see. Only once or twice in the course of the day he had laughed suddenly and nervously, with a contraction of the face and a raising of the flat upper lip that showed his sharp yellow teeth. No one noticed it but Matilde, and it frightened her. But hitherto he had said nothing more since he had first confided to her, as to his only possible helper, the nature of his danger.
She had not reproached him with what he had done. The danger itself was too great for that, and perhaps she had suspected its approach too long to be surprised at his confession. She had paid very little attention to the words he used; for, considering his nature, it was natural that he should, even in such extremity, attempt to throw a side-light of dignity upon his misfortunes, and should call crimes by names which suggested honest dealing to the ordinary hearer, such as ‘transference of title,’ ‘reinvestment,’ ‘realization,’ and the like; all of which, in plain language, meant that he had taken what was not his, without the shadow of authorization from any one, in the quite indefensible way which the law calls ‘stealing.’
Matilde had been amazed, however, at the impunity he had hitherto enjoyed. The mere fact that the estate had never been handed over by the guardians, of whom she was one and Cardinal Campodonico the third, was probably in itself actionable, had Veronica chosen to protest; and it was an indubitable fact that Gregorio Macomer had taken large sums after the guardianship had legally expired. There had been none to hinder him and Lamberto Squarci from doing as they pleased. The cardinal was deeply engaged in other matters, and was, moreover, not at all a man of business. He believed Gregorio to be honest, and now and then, when he talked with Veronica, he applauded her wisdom in leaving the management of her affairs in such exp
erienced hands.
Matilde unlocked her door when she felt that she was once more mistress of herself and able to face the world. A woman does not lead the life she had led for years without at least knowing herself well and understanding exactly how far she can rely upon her face and voice. She knew when she rose from the sofa that she could go through the remainder of the day well enough; and though her eyes gleamed hungrily, there was a cynical smile on her lips as she turned over the red cushion, on which there were marks where she had bitten it, and softly unlocked the door. She went into her dressing-room, beyond, for a moment, to smooth her hair. That was all, for there had been no tears in her eyes.
When she returned, she was surprised to see her husband standing before the window, with his back to the broad sunshine, peacefully smoking a cigarette. The smoke curled lazily about his grey head, in the quiet air, as he allowed it to issue from his parted lips almost without the help of his breath. His face was like stone, but as he opened his mouth to let out the wreathing smoke, his lips smiled in an unnatural way. Matilde half unconsciously compared him to one of those grimacing Chinese monsters of grey porcelain, made for burning incense and perfumes, from whose stony jaws the thick smoke comes out on the right and left in slowly curling strings. His expression did not change when he saw her, and as he stood with his back to the light, his small eyes were quite invisible in his face.
“What news?” he asked calmly, as he closed the door and came forward into the room. “Is all going well?”
His breath, as he spoke, blew the clouds of smoke from his face in thin puffs.
“If you wish things to go well,” answered Matilde, “leave everything to me. Do not interfere. You have an unlucky hand.”
She sat down in the corner of the sofa, taking a book from the table, but not yet opening it. He smoked in silence for a moment.
“Yes,” he said, presently. “I have been unfortunate. But I have great confidence in you, Matilde — great confidence.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 828