CHAPTER XV
IPPOLITO SARACINESCA WAS, perhaps, of all the household the most glad to see his favourite brother at home again so soon. He missed the companionship which had always been a large element in his life.
‘I shall go with you when you return,’ he said, sitting on the edge of Orsino’s table, and swinging his priestly legs in an undignified fashion.
‘Are you in earnest?’ asked Orsino, with a laugh.
‘Yes. Why not? You say that there is a church on the place, or a chapel. I will say mass there for the household on Sundays, and keep you company on week-days. You will be lonely when San Giacinto comes back. Besides, after what has happened, I hate to think that you are down there alone among strangers.’
‘Have you nothing to keep you in Rome?’ asked Orsino, much tempted by the offer.
‘Nothing in the world.’
‘There will be no piano at Camaldoli.’
‘I suppose there is an organ in your church, is there not?’
‘No. There is probably one in the church of Santa Vittoria. You could go and play on it.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Three-quarters of a mile, I was told.’
‘As far as from the Piazza di Venezia to the Piazza del Popolo.’
‘Less. That is a mile, they always used to say, when the loose horses ran the race in carnival.’
‘It would be just a pleasant walk, then,’ said Ippolito, already planning his future occupations at Camaldoli. ‘I could go over in the afternoon, when the church is closed, and play on the organ an hour or two whenever I pleased.’
‘I have no idea what sort of thing the Santa Vittoria organ will turn out to be,’ answered Orsino. ‘It is probably falling to pieces, and has not been tuned since the beginning of the century.’
‘I will mend it and tune it,’ said Ippolito, confidently.
‘You?’ Orsino looked at his brother’s delicate hands and laughed.
‘Of course. Every musician knows something about the instruments he plays. I know how an organ is tuned, and I understand the mechanism. The old-fashioned ones are simple things enough. When a note goes wrong you can generally mend the tracker with a bit of wire, or a stick, as the case may be — or if it is the wind chest—’
‘It is not of the slightest use to talk to me about that sort of thing,’ interrupted Orsino, ‘for I understand nothing about organs, nor about music either, for that matter.’
‘I will take some tools with me, and some kid, and a supply of fine glue,’ said Ippolito, still full of his idea. ‘How about the rooms? Is there any decent furniture?’
Orsino gave him a general idea of the state of Camaldoli, not calculated to encourage him in his intention, but the young priest was both very fond of his brother, and he was in love with the novelty of his idea.
‘I daresay that they have not too many priests in that part of the country,’ he said. ‘I may be of some use.’
‘We got one without difficulty to bury that poor man,’ answered Orsino. ‘But you may be right. You may be the means of redeeming Sicily.’ He laughed.
He was, indeed, inclined to laugh rather unexpectedly, since his interview with Vittoria. He was far too manly and strong to be saddened for any length of time by the fact of having taken the life of a man who had, undoubtedly, attempted to murder him by stealth. He had been oppressed by the certainty that the deed had raised an insurmountable barrier between Vittoria and himself. Since he had found that he had been mistaken, he was frankly glad that he had killed Ferdinando Pagliuca, for the very plain reason that if he had not done so, Ferdinando Pagliuca would have certainly killed him, or San Giacinto, or both. He had no more mawkish sentiment about the horror of shedding human blood than had embarrassed his own forefathers in wilder times. If men turned brigands and dug pitfalls, and tried to murder honest folk by treachery, they deserved to be killed; and though the first impression he had received, when he had been sure that he had killed his man, had been painful, because he was young and inexperienced in actual fighting, he now realised that but for the relationship of the dead man, it had not only been excusable, but wise, to shoot him like a wild beast. His own people thought so too.
It was natural, therefore, that his spirits should rise after his interview with Vittoria. On that day he had already been busy in carrying out San Giacinto’s directions, and on the following morning he went to work with increased energy.
Corona watched him when they met, and the presentiment of evil which had seized her when he had first spoken of going to Sicily became more oppressive. She told herself that the worst had happened which could happen, but she answered herself with old tales of Sicilian revenge after long-nourished hatred. She was shocked when Ippolito announced his intention of accompanying his brother. Ippolito was almost indispensable to her. The old Prince used to tell her that her priest son answered the purpose of a daughter with none of the latter’s disadvantages, at which Ippolito himself was the first to laugh good-naturedly, being well aware that he had as good stuff in him as his rough-cast brothers. But Corona really loved him more as a daughter than a son, and because he was less strong than the others, she was not so easily persuaded that he was safe when he was away from her, and she half resented the old gentleman’s jest. She especially dreaded anything like physical exposure or physical danger for him. She was a brave and strong woman in almost every way, and would have sent her other three sons out to fight for their country or their honour without fear or hesitation. But Ippolito was different. Orsino might face the brigands if he chose. She could be momentarily anxious about him, but the belief prevailed with her that he could help himself and would come back safe and sound. One of the reasons, an unacknowledged one, why she had been so ready to let Ippolito follow his inclination for the church, was that priests are less exposed to all sorts of danger than other men. San Giacinto’s Sicilian schemes suddenly seemed to her quite mad since Ippolito wished to accompany his brother and share in any danger which might present itself.
But Ippolito was one of those gently obstinate persons whom it is hard to move and almost impossible to stop when they are moving. He had made up his mind that he would go to Camaldoli, and he met his mother’s objections with gentle but quite unanswerable arguments.
Had there ever been an instance of a priest being attacked by brigands? Corona was obliged to admit that she could remember none. Was he, Ippolito, accomplishing anything in the world, so long as he stayed quietly in Rome? Might he not do some good in the half-civilised country about Camaldoli and Santa Vittoria? He could at least try, and would. There was no answer to this either. Was not Orsino, who was melancholic by nature, sure to be wretchedly lonely down there after San Giacinto left? This was undoubtedly true.
‘But the malaria,’ Corona objected at last. ‘There is fever there, all summer, I am sure. You are not so strong as Orsino. You will catch it.’
‘I am much stronger than anybody supposes,’ answered Ippolito. ‘And if I were not, it is not always the strong people that escape the fever. Besides, there can be none before June or July, and Orsino does not expect to stay all summer.’
He had his way, of course, and made his preparations. Orsino was glad for his own sake, and he also believed that the change of existence would do his brother good. He himself was not present when these discussions took place. Ippolito told him about them.
Orsino wished to see Vittoria again before leaving Rome, but Corona refused to help him any further.
‘I cannot,’ she said. ‘You had a right to see her that once. At least, I thought so. It seemed to be a sort of moral right. But I cannot arrange meetings for you. I cannot put myself in such a position towards that family. One may do in a desperate situation what one would absolutely refuse to do every day and in ordinary circumstances.’
‘Going away, not knowing when I may come back, does not strike me as an ordinary circumstance,’ said Orsino, discontentedly.
‘You must see that for me to cheat
Vittoria’s mother and brothers by bringing her here to see you secretly, is to sacrifice all idea of dignity,’ answered Corona.
‘I had not looked at it in that light, nor called it by that name.’
‘But I had, and I do. I am perfectly frank with you, and I always have been. I like the girl very much, but I do not wish you to marry her on account of her family. It is one thing to object to a marriage on the score of birth or fortune. You know that I should not, though I hope you will marry in your own class. Happiness is, perhaps, independent of the details of taste which make up daily life, but it runs on them, as a train runs on rails — and if a bad jolting is not unhappiness, it is certainly discomfort.’
‘You are wise, mother. I never doubted that. But this is different—’
‘Very different. That is what I meant to say. There would, perhaps, be no question of that sort of moral discomfort with Vittoria; she has been well brought up in a convent of ladies, like most of the young girls you meet in the world, like me, like all the rest of us. It is different. It is her family — they are impossible, not socially, for they are as good as anybody in the way of descent. Bianca Campodonico married Vittoria’s uncle, and no one thought it a bad match until it turned out badly. But that is just it. They are all people who turn out badly. Tebaldo Pagliuca has the face of a criminal, and his brother makes one think of a satyr. Their mother is a nonentity and does not count. Vittoria is charming. I suppose she is like someone on her mother’s side, for she has not the smallest resemblance to any of the others. But all the charm in the world will not compensate you for the rest of them. And now you have had the frightful misfortune to kill their brother. Did you never hear of a vendetta? The southern people are revengeful. The Corleone will never acknowledge to the world that Ferdinando was one of them, but they will not forget it, against you and yours, and your children. I meet those young men in the street, and they bow as though nothing had happened, but I know well enough that if they could destroy every one of us, they would. Can I put myself in the position of cheating such people by bringing Vittoria here to see you secretly? It is impossible. You must see it yourself.’
‘Yes,’ answered Orsino. ‘I suppose I must admit it. It would be undignified.’
‘Yes, very. The word is not strong enough. You must help yourself. I do not propose any solution of the difficulty. You love the girl. Heaven forbid that I should stand in the way of honest love between honest man and woman. But frankly, I wish that you did not love her, and that she did not love you. And I cannot help you any more, because I will not humiliate myself to deceive people who hate me, and you, and all of us, even to our name.’
‘Do you think they do? Would they not be glad to see Vittoria married to me? After all, I am a great match for a ruined family’s only daughter, and if Tebaldo Pagliuca is anything, he is grasping, I am sure.’
‘Yes, but he is more revengeful than grasping, and more cunning than revengeful — a dangerous enemy. That is why I hate to see Ippolito go with you to the south. Some harm will come to him, I am sure. The Corleone have the whole country with them.’
‘I will answer for him,’ said Orsino, smiling. ‘Nothing shall happen to him.’
‘How can you answer for him? How can you pledge yourself that he shall be safe? It is impossible. You cannot spend your life in protecting him.’
‘I can provide people who will,’ answered the young man. ‘But you are wrong to be so timid about him. No one ever touches a priest, in the first place, and before he has been there a fortnight, all the people will like him, as everybody always does. It is impossible not to like Ippolito. Besides, Tebaldo Pagliuca has no reason for going to Sicily now that the place is sold. Why in the world should he go? Little by little we shall gain influence there, and before long we shall be much more popular than the Corleone ever were. San Giacinto has written to me already. He says that everything is perfectly quiet already, — that was twenty-four hours after I left, — that he had twenty men from the village at work on the house, making repairs, and that they worked cheerfully and seemed to like his way of doing things. Since Ferdinando is dead there is no one to lead an opposition. They are all very poor and very glad to earn money.’
‘It may be as you say,’ said Corona, only partially reassured. ‘I do not understand the condition of life there, of course, and I know that when you promise to answer for Ippolito you are in earnest, and will keep your word. But I am anxious — very anxious.’
‘I am sorry, mother,’ replied Orsino. ‘I am very sorry. But you will soon see that you have no reason to be anxious. That is all I can say. I will answer for him with my life.’
‘That is a mere phrase, Orsino,’ said Corona, gravely, ‘like a great many things one says when one is very much in earnest. If anything happened to him, your life would be still more precious to me than it is, if that were possible. You all think that because I am often anxious about him, he is my favourite. You do not understand me, any of you. I love you all equally, but I am not equally anxious about you all, and my love shows itself most for the one who seems the least strong and able to fight the world.’
‘For that matter, mother, Ippolito is as able to fight his own battles as the strongest of us. He is obstinate to a degree hardly anyone can understand. He has the quiet, sound, uncompromising obstinacy of the Christian martyrs. People who have that sort of character are not weak, and they are generally very well able to take care of themselves.’
‘Yes, I know he is obstinate. That is, when he insists upon going with you.’
Corona was very far from being satisfied, and Orsino felt that in spite of what she had said she was in reality laying upon him the responsibility for his brother’s safety. He himself felt no anxiety on that score, however. In Rome, many hundreds of miles away from Camaldoli, even the things which had really happened during his brief stay in Sicily got an air of improbability and distance which made further complications of the same sort seem almost impossible. Besides, he had the promise of the Minister of the Interior that a company of infantry should shortly be quartered at Santa Vittoria, which would materially increase the safety of the whole neighbourhood.
Orsino’s principal preoccupation was to see Vittoria again, alone, before he left. In the hope of meeting her he went to a garden party, and in the evening to two houses where she had gone frequently during the winter with her mother. But she did not appear. Her mother was ill, and Vittoria stayed at home with her. Her brothers, on the contrary, were everywhere, always smiling and apparently well satisfied with the world.
It was said that Tebaldo was trying to marry an American heiress, and Orsino twice saw him talking with the young stranger, who was reported to have untold millions, and was travelling with an aunt, who seemed to have as many more of her own. He looked at the girl without much curiosity, for the type has become familiar in Europe of late years.
Miss Lizzie Slayback — for that was her name — was undeniably pretty, though emphatically not beautiful. She was refined in appearance, too, but not distinguished. One could not have said that she was ‘nobody,’ as the phrase goes, yet no one would have said, at first sight, that she was ‘somebody.’ Yet she had an individuality of her own, which was particularly apparent in her present surroundings, a sort of national individuality, which contrasted with the extremely denationalised appearance and manner of Roman society. For the Romans of the great houses have for generations intermarried with foreigners from all parts of Europe, until such strongly Latin types as the Saracinesca are rare.
Miss Slayback was neither tall nor short, and she had that sort of generally satisfactory figure which has no particular faults and which is extremely easy to dress well. Her feet were exquisite, her hands small, but not pretty. She had beautiful teeth, but all her features lacked modelling, though they were all in very good proportion. Her head was of a good shape, and her hair was of a glossy brown, and either waved naturally or was made to wave by some very skilful hand. She had dark blue eyes with st
rong dark lashes, which atoned in a measure for a certain uninteresting flatness and absence of character about the brows and temples, and especially below the eyes themselves and at the angles, where lies a principal seat of facial expression. She spoke French fluently, but with a limited and uninteresting vocabulary, so that she often made exactly the same remarks about very different subjects. Yet her point of view being quite different from that of Romans, they listened to what she said with surprise, and sometimes with interest.
Her aunt was not really her aunt, but her uncle’s wife, Mrs. Benjamin Slayback, whose maiden name had been Charlotte Lauderdale — a fact which meant a great deal in New York and nothing at all in Rome. She was an ambitious woman, well born and well educated, and her husband had been a member of Congress, and was now a senator for Nevada. He was fabulously rich, and his wife, who had married him for his money, having been brought up poor, had lately inherited a vast fortune of her own. Miss Lizzie Slayback was the only daughter of Senator Slayback’s elder brother.
Orsino was told a great many of these facts, and they did not interest him in the least, for he had never thought of marrying a foreign heiress. But he was quite sure from the first that Tebaldo had made up his mind to get the girl if he could. The Slaybacks had been in Rome about a month, but Orsino had not chanced to see them, and did not know how long Tebaldo might have known them. It was said that they did not mean to stay much longer, and Tebaldo was doing his best to make good his running in the short time that remained.
It chanced that the first time Orsino came face to face with Tebaldo was when the latter had just been talking with Miss Slayback and was flattering himself that he had made an unusually good impression upon her. He was, therefore, in a singularly good humour, for a man whose temper was rarely good and was often very bad indeed. The two men met in a crowded room. Without hesitation Tebaldo held out his hand cordially to Orsino.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 891