“You are mistaken,” said Taquisara, gravely. “I like Donna Veronica very much. Indeed, I always did, ever since I first saw her. I am sorry that my manner should have given you a wrong impression. I always feel that I am in the way when I am with you two.”
“You are never in the way,” answered Gianluca.
After that, Taquisara was very careful, but more than ever he did his best not to remain as a third when the Duca and Duchessa were away, and Veronica and Gianluca could be together. The fencing alone was inevitable, and he hated it, though he went through it with a good grace almost every day, since Veronica seemed so unreasonably fond of the exercise.
She and Gianluca did not refer to what had happened, and to what had been said, when she had told him the truth. She, on her part, felt that she had done right, and that it was the sort of right which need not be done again. But he, poor man, was not so wholly undeceived as she thought him to be. Since she loved no one else, he could still hope that she might love him.
Yet he felt his life slipping from him, and he made desperate efforts to get well, insisting upon every detail of his invalid existence as though each several minute of the day had a healing virtue which he must not lose. He was sure that his chance of winning the woman he loved lay in living to win her, and he grappled his soul to his frail body with every thrill of energy that his dying nerve had left, with all the tense moral grip that love and despair can give. And yet it seemed hopeless, for his strength sank daily. At last he could not even sit up at table, and remained lying in his low chair, while the others ate their meals hastily in order not to leave him long alone.
The doctor came, a clever young man, whom Veronica had procured for the good of the village. He shook his head, though he tried to speak cheerfully to Gianluca’s father and mother. But he advised them to send for the great authority whom they had consulted in Naples, and under whom he himself had studied. Veronica spoke with him in an outer room.
“I fear that he cannot live, but I am not infallible,” he said.
“How long will he live, if he is going to die?” asked Veronica, pale and quiet.
“Do not ask me — it is guess-work,” answered the young doctor. “I think he may live a fortnight. He is practically paralyzed from his waist downwards — it is almost complete. What he eats does not nourish him.”
“What has caused this?”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, smiled faintly, and made a gesture which in the south signifies the inevitable.
“It is a decayed race,” he said; “a family too old — there is no more blood in them — what shall I say?”
“I do not believe that has anything to do with it,” replied Veronica, rather proudly. “The Serra are as old as they. Did you see that gentleman who is Don Gianluca’s friend? He is descended from Tancred.”
“It is other blood,” said the doctor.
He went away, and the great physician who lived in Naples was sent for at once. A carriage went down to Eboli to meet him. He came, looked, asked questions, and shook his head, very much as his pupil had done. He stayed a night, and when it was late, Veronica and Taquisara were alone with him. He was a fat man, with enormous shoulders and very short legs, and a round face and dreamy eyes set too low for proportion of feature. Taquisara thought that he was like a turtle standing on its hind flippers, preternaturally endowed with a hemispherical black stomach, and a large watch chain; but the idea did not seem comic to him, for he was in no humour to be amused at anything.
The professor — for he was one — talked long and learnedly, using a number of Latin words with edifying terminations. In spite of this, however, he was not without common sense.
“I have known people to recover when they seemed to have no chance at all,” he said.
“But you do not expect him to live?” asked Taquisara, pressing him.
“It is a desperate case,” answered the physician.
Being very fat, and having travelled all day, he went to bed. Veronica remained alone in the drawing-room with Taquisara. The latter slowly walked up and down between two opposite doors. Veronica kept her seat, her head bent, listening to his regular footsteps.
“Donna Veronica—” he stopped.
“Yes,” she answered, not looking up, but starting slightly at the sound of his voice. “What do you wish to say?”
“You know that I have not always been fortunate in what I have said to you, and that makes me hesitate to speak now. But it seems to me that, as Gianluca is really in the care of us two—”
“Well?” Still she did not turn to him, though he paused awkwardly, and began to walk again.
“Gianluca asked me the other day whether I disliked you,” he said.
“Well? Do you?” Her tone was unnaturally cold, even to her own ears.
He stood still on the other side of the table, looking towards her.
“No,” he said, as though he were making an effort. “If he asked me the question, it must be that I have behaved rudely to you before him. Have I?”
“I have not noticed it,” answered Veronica, as coldly as before.
“It would certainly not have been intentional, if there had been anything to notice. If I speak of it now, it is because Gianluca spoke to me, and because, if we are to talk about him, the way must be clear. You say that it is? May I go on?”
Veronica did not answer at once. Then she rose slowly, turned, and stood before the low, long chimneypiece.
“Why should we talk about him at all?” she asked, at length determining what to say. “We shall not agree, and we can only repeat what we have both said before now. It can be of no use.”
“I have something more to say,” replied Taquisara.
“Yes. There may be more to be said, that may be better not said. I know what it is. You once accused me of playing with him. You said it rudely and roughly, but I have forgiven you for saying it. You would have more reason for saying it now than you had then, and I should be less angry. You have a better right to speak, and I have less right to defend myself. But I will speak for you. I am not afraid.”
“No. That is the last thing any one could say of you!”
“Or of you, perhaps,” she said, more kindly, and it was the first word of appreciation she had ever given him. “We are neither of us cowards. That is why I am willing to tell you what I think of myself. It is almost what you think of me — that I have done a thousand things which might make Don Gianluca, and his father and mother, too, believe that if he recovers I mean to marry him. But you think me a heartless woman. I am not. There are things which you neither know, nor could understand if you knew them. I will ask you only one question. Is there any imaginable reason why I should wish to hurt him?”
“None that I can guess,” answered Taquisara, looking into her eyes.
“Then you must understand what I have done. Out of too much friendship I have made a great mistake. What you can never understand, I suppose, is, that I can feel for him what you do — just that, and no more — or more of that, perhaps, and nothing else. A woman can be a man’s friend, as well as a man can. I never played with him — as you call it — though you have enough right to say it. I told him from the first that I could never marry him. I told him so again on the day when we had first fenced, and you went to walk after the rain.”
“That is why he has been worse, since then. It began that very evening.”
“Yes. I know it. Do you think I do not reproach myself for having gone so far that I had to speak? Indeed, indeed, I do, more than you know. But what am I to do? He cannot go away, ill as he is. I cannot leave you all here. And then, I would not leave him, if I could. He is more to me than I can ever tell you — I would give my right hand for his life. Would you have me marry him, knowing that I can never love him? Is that what you would have me do?”
Taquisara was silent for a moment, looking earnestly at her, and he bit his lip a little.
“Yes,” he said. “That is what you should do. It is all y
ou can do, to try and save his life.”
The moment he had spoken he turned from her and began to walk up and down again.
“Do you know what you are asking?” Veronica followed him with her eyes.
“It is a sacrifice,” he said, pursuing his walk and not glancing at her. “It is to give your life for his. I know it. But you can hardly give him more than he has given you — or you have taken from him. Yes — I know what the doctors say, that it is a disease which is known and understood. No doubt it is. But diseases of that sort may remain latent for a lifetime, unless something determines them. Until they have gone too far, they may be overcome. If he had not lived for weeks in a state of nervous tension that would almost make a strong man ill, he would not be in such a condition now. If he had never known you, he might have been as well as he ever was — he might have been well for twenty or thirty years, before it attacked him. It is not all your fault, but a part of it is. Take your friendship, and your mistakes, together — your wish that he may live, and your responsibility if he dies — two motives are better than one, when the one is not strong enough. You have two, and good ones. Marry him, Donna Veronica — marry him and save his life, if you can, and your own remorse if he dies. Let me go to him now — he is not asleep — let me tell him that you have changed your mind, or made up your mind — that you love him, after all—”
“Please do not go on,” said Veronica, drawing back a little, till she leaned against the mantelpiece.
He had placed himself in front of her before he had finished speaking. He was excited, vehement, and not eloquent — like a man driven to bay by a crowd to argue a question in which he had no conviction, but which concerns his life. He stopped speaking when she interrupted him, and he seemed to be waiting for her to say more. She had drawn herself up a little proudly, with her head high.
“You hurt me,” she said, breaking the silence, and hardly knowing why she said the words.
“Do you think it costs me nothing?” he asked, in a low voice.
His eyes burned strangely in the lamp-light. But he turned away quickly, to resume his walk. She could not help asking him a question.
“Why should it cost you anything? You are speaking for your friend — but
I—”
She did not finish the sentence, for it seemed to her selfish to throw her right to happiness into the scale against Gianluca’s life. But she could not understand him.
“It is hard to do, for all that,” he answered indistinctly. “I have said too much,” he continued, stopping before her. “I meant to do the best I could. Perhaps I should have said nothing. This is no time to stop at trifles. The man is dying, and I have a right to say that I believe you might save his life — and a right to beg you to try. You have the right to refuse, to question, to doubt — all rights that are a woman’s in such a case. As for me — there is no question of me in all this. Since I must be here for him, since I have displeased you from the first, since you do not like me, look upon me as a necessary evil, do not consider my existence, think of me as a man who loves your best friend and is giving all he has — to save him.”
“All you have,” repeated Veronica, thoughtfully, but without a question.
“Yes!” he exclaimed.
The single word was spoken with a sort of passion, as though it meant much to him. She liked him better now than when he walked up and down, giving her incoherent advice. Whatever he might mean, it was something which had power to move him.
“You are mistaken,” she said. “I like you very much.”
“You — Princess!” His surprise was genuine. “You have not made me think so,” he added in a tone of wonder.
“Nor have you made me think that you liked me,” she answered.
“Gianluca thought I did not,” said Taquisara, slowly, as though speaking to himself.
Veronica smiled.
“When I first knew you, when we talked together at the villa on that morning before Christmas, I liked you better than him,” she said.
He started sharply.
“Please—” He checked himself almost before the one word had escaped his lips.
“Please — what?” she asked, naturally enough.
“Nothing.”
His face quickened as he walked again, and she watched him curiously.
“As friends of one friend, we must be friends,” she said, after a pause. “We have spoken frankly to-night, both of us. It is much better. With his life between us we can say things, perhaps, which neither of us would have said before. You are doing all you can. You ask me to do more than I can — I think. As for his life — let us not talk of what may happen. I think of it enough, as it is.”
She turned as she spoke the last words, for she did not trust her face.
But he heard the true note of sorrow in her tone.
“Is it possible that you do not love him a little?” he asked, in a low voice.
“It is true,” she answered mechanically, as though hearing him in a dream. “I could never love him.”
Then, all at once she straightened herself and left the chimneypiece.
“We must not talk of these things any more,” she said. “Good night. We understand each other, do we not?”
She held out her hand to him, which she very rarely did. He took it quietly.
“I understand you — yes,” he said.
She looked at him a moment longer, smiled faintly, and then left the room. After she was gone, he sat down in the chair she had occupied, crossed one knee over the other, folded his hands, and stared at the carpet. He sat there for a long time, motionless, as though absorbed in the study of a difficult problem. But his expression did not change, and he did not speak aloud to himself as some men do when they are alone and in great trouble, as he was then. He was not a man of theatrical instincts, nor, indeed, of any great imagination. Least of all was he given to anything like self-examination, or arguing with his conscience. He was exceedingly simple in nature. He either loved or hated, either respected or was indifferent or despised altogether, with no half-measures nor compromises.
Just then he was merely revolving the situation in his mind, and trying to see some way of escaping from it, without abandoning his friend. But no way occurred to him which did not look cowardly, and when he rose from his seat, he had made up his mind to face his troubles as well as he could, since he could not avoid them.
He went to Gianluca’s room before he went to bed. A small light burned behind a shade in a corner, and at first he could barely see the white face on the white pillow. The sick man lay sound asleep, breathing almost inaudibly, one light hand lying upon the coverlet, the other hidden. Gradually, as Taquisara looked, his eyes became accustomed to the light, and he gazed earnestly at his sleeping friend. He saw the dark rings come out beneath the drooping lids, and the paleness of the parted lips, and the terrible emaciation of the thin hand.
But there was life still, and hope. Hope that the man might still live and stand among men, hope that he might yet marry Veronica Serra — and be happy. In the half-darkness, Taquisara set his teeth, biting hard, as though he would have bitten through iron, lest a sharp breath should escape him and disturb the sleeper’s rest.
That frail thing, that ghost, that airy remnant of a man, lay there, alive in name, between Taquisara and the mere right to think of his own happiness; and next to the reality of the shadow of his dream, he loved best on earth this shadow of reality that would not die. For he loved Veronica with all his heart, and after her, Gianluca della Spina. Above both stood honour.
He knew that he was loyal and true as he stood there, and that there was not in the inmost inward heart of him a mean, double-faced wish that his friend might die there, peacefully, and leave to the winning of the strong what the weak had wooed in vain. He had spoken the truth when he had said that for his friend’s life he was giving all he had, when he did his best to persuade Veronica that she must marry the dying man, in the bare hope of saving him while t
here was yet time. He had done his best, though it was no wonder that there was no conviction, but only vehemence, in his tone. It had been different on that day, now long ago, when he had first spoken for Gianluca in the garden. He had not loved her then. She had been no more to him than any other woman. But even on that day, when he had left her, he had half guessed that he might love her if opportunity gave possibility the right of way. He had guessed it, and even to guess it was to fear it, for Gianluca’s sake. He was not quixotic. Had he been first, death or life, he would not have given another room at her side, had that or that man been twenty times his friend or his brother. Even if it had been a little otherwise, if Gianluca had not confided in him from the beginning, and had stood out as any other suitor for her hand, Taquisara, as he loved her now, would hardly have drawn back because his friend had been before him. But Gianluca had come to him, told him all; asked his advice, taken his help — all that, when Veronica had still been nothing to Taquisara — less than nothing, in a way, because she was such a great heiress, and he would have hesitated before asking for her hand, being but a poor Sicilian gentleman of good repute, few acres, and old blood.
He was loyal to the core of his sound soul. Whatever became of him, Gianluca was to be first in his actions, wherever Veronica might stand in his heart, and he had the strength to do all that he meant to do. He would do it. He knew that he should do it, and he was glad, for his honour, that he could do it.
He had avoided all meetings, as much as possible, from the first, going rarely to Bianca’s house, and then not talking with Veronica when he could help it. For each time that he saw her, he felt that soft mystery of attraction in which great passion begins; that something which touches and draws gently on, and presses and draws again more gently, yet with stronger power, growing great on nothings by day and night, till it drives the senses slowly mad, and overtops the soul, and pricks, then goads, then drives — then, at the last, tears men up like straws in its enormous arms, rising on sudden wings to outstrip wind and whirlwind in the wild race that ends in death or blinding joy, or reckless ruin of honour, worse than any death.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 853