Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “You say nothing,” observed Gianluca. “Do you see any possible objection to our doing that? Society ought to be satisfied.”

  “I should think so,” answered Taquisara. “I should think that anything would be better than Avellino and all the relations. As for going back to Naples and having a municipal wedding there, and no religious ceremony, I would not do it if I were you. The two marriages are always supposed to take place on consecutive days, or at least very near together, since both are necessary nowadays.”

  “I know,” said Gianluca.

  Taquisara made up his mind that he must take the initiative and speak with Don Teodoro. He had been willing and ready to give up all right to hope for the woman he loved, in order that his friend might marry her, but the idea that there should be an irregularity about the marriage, or no real marriage at all, as he believed was the case, was more than he could, or would, bear. To speak with Veronica was out of the question. He knew enough of women to understand that if she ever knew how, by an accident, she had held his hand instead of Gianluca’s at the moment when she was giving her very soul to save the dying man, she might never forgive him. She might even turn and hate him. She would never believe that he himself had not known what he was doing. If it were possible, he would not incur such risk. Anything in reason and honour would be better than to be hated by her. He had seen her change of manner, of late, and he knew very well that she was beginning to like him much more than formerly.

  In the morning, after Don Teodoro had said mass, Taquisara went to him and found him over his books. This time the priest recognized him at once and rose to greet him gravely, as though he had expected his visit.

  “Have you made up your mind what to do?” asked the Sicilian, as he sat down.

  It was as though they had been in the habit of discussing the situation together, and were about to renew a conversation which had been broken off.

  “I know what I shall have to do, if matters go any further,” answered the priest, in a dull voice, unlike his own.

  “What would that be?”

  “It is in my power to cause the marriage to be declared null and void.”

  “By appealing to your bishop, I suppose. In that event Donna Veronica would have to be told.”

  “There is another way.”

  “Then why do you not take it and act at once? Why do you hesitate?”

  Taquisara watched him keenly.

  “Because it would mean the sacrifice of my whole existence. I am human.

  I hesitate, as long as there is any other hope.”

  “I do not understand. As for sacrificing your existence — that must be an exaggeration.”

  “Not at all. If it were only my own, I should not have hesitated, perhaps. I do not know. But what I should do would involve a great and direct injury to many others — to hundreds of other people.”

  Taquisara looked at him harder than ever, understanding him less and less.

  “You seem to have a secret,” he said at last, thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” answered the priest, resting his elbow on the old table and shading his eyes with his hand, though there was no strong light to dazzle him. “Yes — yes,” he repeated. “I have a secret, a great secret. I cannot tell it to you — not even to you, though you are one of the most discreet men I ever met. You must forgive me, but I cannot.”

  “I do not wish to know it,” replied Taquisara. “Especially not, if it concerns many people.”

  A short silence followed, during which neither moved, nor looked at the other.

  “Don Teodoro,” asked the Sicilian, at last, in a low voice, “please tell me your view of the case, as a priest. Am I, at the present moment, in consequence of what happened a fortnight ago, actually married to Donna Veronica, or not?”

  The priest hesitated, looked down, took off his spectacles, and put them on again, before he answered the question.

  “I think,” he said, “that most people, if any had been present, would be of opinion that it was enough of a marriage to require a formal annullation before any other could take place. I should certainly not dare to consider the princess and Don Gianluca as married, when it was you who held her right hand, and received the benediction with her in the prescribed attitude.”

  “Yes,” answered Taquisara; “but in your own individual opinion, as a priest, am I married to her, or not?”

  “As a priest, I can have no individual opinion. I can tell you, of course, that the marriage can be annulled. In the first place, you neither of you had the intention of being married to each other. In all the sacraments, the intention of those to whom they are administered is the prime consideration. It would only be necessary for you and the princess to swear that you had no intention of being married, and that it was, to the best of your knowledge, entirely an accident, and all difficulties could be removed.”

  “Ah, yes! But then Donna Veronica would know, and Gianluca would have to know it, too. I came here to tell you that they are seriously thinking of sending for the syndic, to publish the banns of marriage at the municipality and marry them legally, after which the Duca and Duchessa will go to Avellino, and leave them here together. Whether it costs your existence or mine, Don Teodoro, this thing shall not be done.”

  “No,” said Don Teodoro. “It shall not. You are in a terrible position yourself. I feel for you.”

  “I?” Taquisara bent his brows. “I, in a terrible position?”

  “Do not be angry,” answered the priest, gently. “I know your secret well enough, though she does not guess it yet. Do not think me indiscreet because I mention the fact. It would be far better if you could go away for the present. But I know how you are situated, and you are helping to prevent mischief. We must help each other. If it is to cost the existence of one of us, it shall be mine. You are young, and I am old. And that is not the only reason. My secret is not like yours. I cannot let it go down into the grave with me. I have kept it long enough, and I should have kept it longer, if this had not happened. I shall probably go to Naples to-morrow. You must prevent them from publishing the banns until I come back, or until you hear from me. I may never come back. It is possible.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Taquisara, for he saw a strange look in the old man’s clear eyes.

  “I shall not end my life here,” he said quietly.

  “You? End your life? You, commit suicide? Are you mad, Don Teodoro?”

  “Oh no! I may live many years yet. I hope that I may, for I have much to repent of. But I shall not live here.”

  “I hope you will,” said Taquisara. “But if you know my secret — keep it.”

  “As I have kept mine till now,” answered the old man.

  So they parted, and Taquisara went back to the castle, leaving the lonely priest among his books.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  VERONICA DID NOT wish the people of Muro to believe that she was marrying a cripple. That was the reason why she did not at once agree to Gianluca’s proposal and send for the syndic to perform the legal ceremony. She had persuaded herself that by quick degrees of improvement, he would recover the power to stand upright, at least to the extent to which he had still retained his strength when he had first arrived. Since he had lived through the crisis, she grew sanguine for him and hoped much.

  Her feeling was natural enough in the matter, though it was made up of several undefined instincts about which she troubled herself very little — pride of race, pride of personal wholeness and soundness, pride of womanhood in the manhood of a husband. Veronica named none of these in her thoughts, but they were all in her heart. Few women would not have felt the same in her place.

  She was sure that he was to get better, if not quite well, and she wished that he might be well enough to stand beside her on his feet when they should be formally married. If he continued to improve as rapidly as during the past fortnight, she believed that the day could not be far off. When he could stand, in another month, perhaps, the syndic should come. It wa
s even possible that by that time he might be able to walk a little with her in the village.

  Her people were a sort of family to her. That was a remnant of feudalism in her character, perhaps, which had suddenly developed during the months she had spent in Muro. But that, too, was natural, as it was natural that they should love her and almost worship the ground she trod. For the poorer classes of Italians are sometimes very forgetful of benefits, but are rarely ungrateful. She had done in a few months, for their real advantage, so that they felt it, enough to make up for the oppression of generations of Serra, and almost enough to atone for the extortions of Gregorio Macomer. She was the last of her name, and her husband, if he lived, was to be the father of a new stock, which would be called Serra della Spina, and whose men would hold the lands and take the rents and do good, or not, according to their hearts, each in his generation. It seemed to her that the people had a right to see Gianluca standing on his feet beside her, since her marriage was to mean so much to them.

  Don Teodoro came to her, soon after Taquisara had left him, to tell her that he must go to Naples without delay. She looked at him in astonishment at the proposal, and as she looked, she saw that his face was changed. Oddly enough, he held himself much more erect than usual; but his features were drawn down as though by much suffering, and his eyes, usually so clear and steady, wandered nervously about the room.

  “You are not well,” said Veronica. “Why must you go now?”

  “It is because I must go now that I am not well,” answered the priest, shaking his head. “I am very sorry to be obliged to leave you at this time. I only hope that, if you are thinking of fulfilling the legal formalities of your marriage, you will give me notice of the fact, so that I may come back, if I can. You know that all that concerns you concerns my life.”

  Veronica looked at him, and wondered why he was so much disturbed. But his words gave her an opportunity of speaking to him about her own decision. She did not wish him to think her capricious, much less to imagine that she looked upon the marriage as a mere piece of sentiment, which was not to change her life at all, except to bind her as a nurse to the bedside of a hopeless invalid. That idea itself was beginning to be repugnant to her, and the hope that Gianluca might recover was becoming a necessary part of her happiness, though she scarcely knew it.

  “My dear Don Teodoro,” she said, “so far as that is concerned, you may be quite sure that I will let you know in time. I have not the slightest intention of fulfilling any legal formalities until my husband is well enough to stand on his feet with me before the syndic; and I am afraid that he will not be well enough for that in less than a month, at the earliest.”

  The wandering eyes suddenly fixed themselves on her face, the strange great features relaxed, and the wide, thin lips smiled at her. His happiness was strangely founded, but it was genuine, though not altogether noble. Her words were a reprieve; and he could keep his secret longer, almost, perhaps, until he died, and when he should be dying, it would be easier to tell. But that was far from being all. He loved her, as the source of great charity and kindness from which the people were drawing life, with all his own passionate charity; and he loved her for herself, for her gentleness and her hardness, because she ruled him, and because she touched his heart. All other thoughts away, he could not bear to think of her as bound for life to be the actual wife of a helpless cripple.

  And something of her own heart he half guessed and half knew. For in her innocence she had confessed to him how she had thought of Taquisara, when she had been alone that day, and how the blood had flowed in her face, and burned her so that she was almost sure that such thoughts must be wrong. It was because she had told him these things that he had watched Taquisara ever since, and he had seen that the man loved her silently.

  But he knew also, as well as any one could know it, that Gianluca would never stand upon his feet again. And, moreover, he knew that though it would seem wrong to Veronica to love Taquisara, and would be wrong, if she had intention, as it were, yet there could be no real sin in it, for she was not Gianluca’s wife. Had she been truly married, Don Teodoro, gentle and old, would have found strength to force Taquisara to go away — had anything more than the force of honour been needed in such a case.

  “I am very glad, my dear Princess,” he said, and his voice trembled in the reaction after his own anxiety. “You do not wish me to go to Naples, now?” he said with an interrogation, after a brief pause. “You would rather that I should wait until Christmas?”

  “Of course — if you can,” answered Veronica, somewhat surprised at his change of tone. “But if you really must go, if you are so very anxious to go at once, I must not hinder you.”

  “I will see,” said Don Teodoro. “I will think of it. Perhaps it can be arranged — indeed, I think it can.”

  He was old, she thought, and he had never been decided in character, except about doing good to poor people, and studying Church history. So she did not press him with questions, but let him do as he would; and he did not go to Naples then, but he went and found Taquisara within the hour, and told him what Veronica had said about her marriage.

  The Sicilian heard him in silence, as they stood together on the lower bastion where they had met, but Don Teodoro saw the high-cut nostrils quiver, while the even lips set themselves to betray nothing.

  “If matters go no further than they have gone,” he said at last, as the priest waited, “we need do nothing.”

  So they did nothing, and Don Teodoro did not go to Naples.

  The daily life ran on in its channel. But Gianluca did not continue to improve so fast. Then it seemed as though improvement had reached its limit, and still he was helpless to stand, being completely and hopelessly paralyzed in his lower limbs. At first, neither the old couple nor Veronica realized that he was no longer getting better, though he was no worse. He himself did not believe it; but Taquisara saw and understood. Gianluca refused to be moved, insisting that he was gaining strength, and that some day the sensation would come suddenly to his feet, and he should stand upright. Otherwise, he was now almost as well as when he had come to Muro. They sent for a wheel-chair from Naples, and he wheeled himself through the endless rooms, and to luncheon, and to dinner, Veronica walking by his side. It gave his arms exercise, and he became very expert at it, laughing cheerfully as he made the wheels go round, and he went so fast that Veronica sometimes had to run a few steps to keep up with him.

  Then, one day, Taquisara carried him out to the gate, and set him in the carriage, and Veronica took him for a short drive. The poor people were, most of them, at their work, but the very old men and the boys and girls turned out, and flocked after the victoria as it moved slowly through the narrow street. Some of them called out words of simple blessing on the couple, but others hushed them and said that the princess was not really married yet. Gianluca smiled as he looked into Veronica’s face, and she smiled, too, but less happily.

  The weather changed. There had been a short touch of cold in the air at the end of August, and breezes from the north that poured down from the heights behind the castle, into the tremendous abyss below, and shot up again to the walls and the windows, even as high as the dungeon tower. Then, at the new moon, the weather had changed, the sky grew warm again, the little clouds hung high and motionless above the peaks, melting from day to day to a serene, deep calm, in which, all the earth seemed to be ripening in a great stillness while heaven held its breath, and the mountains slept. In the rich valley the grapes grew full and dark, and the last figs cracked with full sweetness in the sun, the pears grew golden, and the apples red, and all the green silver of the olive groves was dotted through and through its shade, with myriad millions of dull green points, where the oil-fruit hung by little stems beneath the leaves.

  An autumn began, such as no one in Muro remembered — an autumn of golden days and dewy moonlight nights, soft, breathless, sweet, and tender. It was a year of plenty and of much good wine, which is rare in the south, for w
hen the wine is much it is very seldom good. But this year all prospered, and the people said that the Blessed Mother of God loved the young princess and would bless her, and hers also, and give her husband back his strength, even by a miracle if need should be.

  Gianluca clung to the place where he was happy, and would not be taken away. His mother humoured him, and the old Duca, yearning for his little fair-haired daughter, went alone at last to Avellino.

  Then came long conversations at night between the Duchessa and Veronica. The Duchessa loved her son very dearly, but since he was so much better, she was tired of Muro. She wished to see her other children. It was ridiculous to expect that she and her husband should relieve each other as sentries of propriety in Veronica’s castle, the one not daring to go till the other came back. Why should Veronica not send for the syndic and have the formalities fulfilled? Once legally, as well as christianly, man and wife, the two could stay in Muro as long as they pleased.

  But Veronica would not. Gianluca was improving, and before long he would walk. She had set her heart upon it, that he should be strong again. She would not have her people think that he was a cripple. The people were peasants, the Duchessa answered, peasants like any others. Why should the Princess of Acireale care what such creatures thought? But Veronica’s eyes gleamed, and she said that they were her own people and a part of her life, and she told the Duchessa all that was in her mind, very frankly, and so innocently, yet with such unbending determination to have her way, that the Duchessa did not know what to do. Thereupon, after the manner of futile people, she repeated herself, and the struggle began again.

  It was a tragedy that had begun. Veronica had escaped with her life from Matilde Macomer to find out in the consequence of her own free deeds what tragedy really meant, and how bitter the fruit of good could be.