‘No,’ he answered, not moving. ‘There are other reasons. And you are mistaken about me. I am not a coward. Do not say it again. Do you understand?’
Again she shrugged her shoulders, as though to say that it mattered little to her whether he were a coward or not. But she did not like the look in his eyes, though she did not believe that he would hurt her. She had heard of his occasional terrible outbreaks of anger, but had never seen him in one of them. He was beginning to look dangerous now, she thought. She wondered whether she had gone too far, but reflected that, after all, if she meant to exasperate him into a promise of marriage, she must risk something.
‘Do not make me say it,’ she replied, more gently than she had spoken yet.
Few feminine retorts are more irritating than that one, of which most women know the full value, but in some way it acted upon Tebaldo as a counter-irritant to his real anger.
‘No,’ said Tebaldo, and his eyelids suddenly drooped, ‘you shall say something else. As you are just going away, this is hardly the moment to fix a day for our marriage.’
She started slightly at the words, and looked at him. His eyes were less red, and the natural brown colour was coming back in his cheeks. She thought the moment of danger past.
‘I shall be back in a fortnight,’ she answered.
‘There will be time enough when you come back,’ he said in his usual tone of voice. ‘Provided that you do not change your mind in the meantime,’ he added, with a tolerably easy smile. ‘Do not forget that you love Francesco.’ He laughed, for he was really a good actor.
She laughed too, but uneasily, more to quiet herself than to make him think that she was in a good-humour again.
‘I never forget the people I love,’ she said lightly.
Then with a quick gesture and movement, as though wholly forgiving him, she kissed her fingers to him, laughed again, and was out of the room in a moment, leaving him where he was. He stood still for three or four seconds, looking at the door through which she had disappeared, longing for her — like a fool, as he said to himself. Then he went out.
It had been a singular parting, he thought, and if he had not been at her mercy by one side of his nature, he said to himself that he would never have spoken to such a woman again. There was a frankly cynical determination on her part to marry him, which might have repelled any man, and which, he admitted, precluded all idea of love on her side. In spite of it all, his hand trembled when he had touched her sleeve at her shoulder, and he had not been quite able to control his voice. In spite of it all, too, he hated his brother with all his heart, far more bitterly than ever before, for what Aliandra had said of him.
Something more would have happened on that day if he had known that Francesco was sitting in the little third-rate café opposite Aliandra’s house, waiting to see him come out. He would, however, have been momentarily reassured had he further known that the Signora Barbuzzi, for diplomatic reasons, returned to the sitting-room and was present during the whole of Francesco’s visit.
Aliandra left Rome the next morning. She did not care to tire herself by travelling very fast, so she slept in Naples, and did not reach Randazzo until the third day, a week after her father’s accident.
CHAPTER XXIV
TEBALDO FELT A sort of relief when Aliandra was gone. He missed her, and he longed for her, and yet, every time that he thought of Lizzie Slayback, he was glad that Aliandra was in Sicily. He felt more free. It was easier to bear a separation from her than to be ever in fear of her crossing the heiress’s path. That, indeed, might have seemed a remote danger, considering the difference that lay between the lives of the American girl and the singer. But Miss Slayback was restless and inquisitive; she liked of all things to meet people who were ‘somebody’ in any department of art; she had heard of Aliandra Basili and of the sensation her appearance had created during the winter, and she was quite capable of taking a fancy to know her. Miss Lizzie generally began her acquaintance with any one by ascertaining who the acquaintance’s acquaintances might be, as Tebaldo well knew, and if at any moment she chose to know the artist, it was probable that his secret would be out in a quarter of an hour.
Then, too, he saw that he must precipitate matters, for spring was advancing into summer, and if his engagement were suddenly announced while Aliandra was in Rome, he believed that she would very probably go straight to Miss Slayback and tell her own story, being, as he could see, determined to marry him at any cost. He was therefore very glad that she was gone.
But when the hour came round at which he had been accustomed to go and see her every day he missed her horribly, and went and shut himself up in his room. It was not a sentimentality, for he was incapable of that weak but delicate infusion of sentiment and water from which the Anglo-Saxon race derives such keen delight. It was more like a sort of physical possession, from which he could not escape, and during which he would have found it hard to be decently civil to Miss Slayback, or indeed to any other woman. At that time his whole mind and senses were filled with Aliandra, as though she had been bodily present in the room, and her handsome head and vital figure rose distinctly in his eyes, till his pulse beat fast in his throat and his lips were dry.
Two days after Aliandra’s departure, Tebaldo was in this state, pacing up and down in his room and really struggling against the intense desire to drive instantly to the railway station and follow Aliandra to Sicily. Without a knock the door opened, and Francesco entered.
‘What do you want?’ asked Tebaldo, almost brutally, as he stopped in his walk.
‘What is the matter with you?’ enquired the other in some surprise at his brother’s tone.
‘What do you want, I say?’ Tebaldo tapped the floor impatiently with his foot. ‘Why do you come here?’
‘Really, you seem to be in an extraordinary frame of mind,’ observed Francesco. ‘I had no intention of disturbing you. I often come to your room—’
‘No. You do not come often. Again — what do you want? Money? You generally want that. Take it — there on the table!’ He pointed to a little package of the small Italian notes.
Francesco took two or three and put them carefully into his pocket-book. Tebaldo watched him, hating him more than usual for having come at that moment. He hated the back of his neck as Francesco bent down; it looked so smooth and the short hair was so curly just above his collar. He wondered whether Aliandra liked to look at the back of Francesco’s neck, and his eyes grew red.
‘So Aliandra has gone,’ observed Francesco, carelessly, as he returned the purse to his pocket and turned to his brother.
‘Have you come here to tell me so?’ asked Tebaldo, growing rapidly angry.
‘Oh no! You must have known it before I did. I merely made a remark — why are you so angry? She will come back. She will probably come just when you are ready to marry Miss Slayback.’
‘Will you leave my affairs to me, and go?’ Tebaldo made a step forward.
‘My dear Tebaldo, I wish you would not be so furious about nothing. I come in peace, and you receive me like a wild animal. I am anxious about your marriage. It will be the salvation of our family, and the sooner you can conclude the matter, the better it will be for all of us.’
‘I do not see what advantage you are likely to gain by my marriage.’
‘Think of the position! It is a great advantage to be the brother of a rich man.’
‘In order to borrow money of him. I see.’
‘Not necessarily. It will change our position very much. The danger is that your friend Aliandra may spoil everything if she hears of Miss Slayback.’
‘Either go, or speak plainly,’ said Tebaldo, beginning to walk up and down in order to control the impulse that was driving him to strike his brother.
Francesco sat down upon the edge of the writing-table and lighted a cigarette.
‘It is a pity that we should be always quarrelling,’ he said.
‘If you had not come here, we should not have quarrelled n
ow,’ observed Tebaldo, thrusting his hands into his pockets, lest they should do Francesco some harm.
‘We should have quarrelled the next time we met,’ continued the latter. ‘We always do. I wish to propose a peace, a compromise that may settle matters for ever.’
‘What matters? There are no matters to settle. Let me alone, and I will let you alone.’
‘Of course, you really mean to marry Miss Slayback? Do you, or do you not?’
‘What an absurd question! If I do not mean to marry her, why do you suppose I waste my time with her? Do you imagine that I am in love with her?’ He laughed harshly.
‘Exactly,’ answered Francesco, as though his brother’s question seemed perfectly natural to him. ‘The only explanation of your conduct is that you wish to marry the girl and get her money. It is very wise. We are all delighted. Vittoria likes her for her own sake, and our mother will be very happy. It will console her for Ferdinando’s death, which has been a great blow to her.’
‘Well? Are you satisfied? Is that all you wish to know?’ Tebaldo stopped before him.
‘No. Not by any means. You marry Miss Slayback, and you get your share. I want mine.’
‘And what do you consider your share, as you call it?’ enquired Tebaldo, with some curiosity, in spite of his ill temper.
‘It does not seem likely that you mean to marry them both,’ said Francesco, swinging one leg slowly and blowing the smoke towards the window.
‘Both — whom?’
‘Both the American and Aliandra. Of course, you could marry Aliandra in church and the American by a civil marriage, and they might both be satisfied, if you could keep them apart—’
‘What an infernal scoundrel you are,’ observed Tebaldo, slowly.
‘You are certainly not the proper person to point out my moral shortcomings,’ retorted Francesco, coolly. ‘But I did not suppose that you meant to marry them both, and as you have very wisely decided to take the American girl, I really think you might leave Aliandra to me. If you marry the one, I do not see why I should not marry the other.’
‘If I ever find you making love to Aliandra Basili,’ said Tebaldo, with slow emphasis, ‘I will break every bone in your body.’
But he still kept his hands in his pockets. Francesco laughed, for he did not believe that he was in present bodily danger. It was not the first time that Tebaldo had spoken in that way.
‘You are ready to quarrel again! I am sure I am perfectly reasonable. I wish to marry Aliandra Basili. I have kept out of your way in that direction for a long time. I should not mention the matter now, unless I were sure that you had made up your mind.’
‘And—’ Tebaldo came near to him, but hesitated. ‘And — excuse me — but what reason have you for supposing that Aliandra will marry you?’
‘That is my affair,’ answered Francesco, but he shrank a little and slipped from his seat on the table to his feet, when he saw his brother’s face.
‘How do you mean that it is your affair?’ asked Tebaldo, roughly. ‘How do you know that she will marry you? Have you asked her? Has she told you that she loves you?’
Francesco hesitated a moment. The temptation to say that he was loved by Aliandra, merely for the sake of giving his brother pain, was very great. But so was the danger, and that was upon him already, for Tebaldo mistook the meaning of his hesitation, and finally lost his temper.
His sinewy hands went right at his brother’s throat, half strangling him in an instant, and then swinging him from side to side on his feet as a terrier shakes a rat. If Francesco had carried even a pocket knife, he would have had it out in an instant, and would have used it. But he had no weapon, and he was no match for Tebaldo in a fury. He struck out fiercely enough with his fists, but the other’s hands were above his own, and he could do nothing. He could not even cry out, for he was half choked, and Tebaldo was quite silent in his rage. There would have been murder, had there been weapons within the reach of either.
When Tebaldo finally threw him off, Francesco fell heavily upon one knee against the door, but caught the handle with one hand, and regained his feet instantly.
‘You shall pay me yet,’ he said in a low voice, his throat purple, but his face suddenly white.
‘Yes. This is only something on account,’ said Tebaldo, with a sneer. ‘You shall have the rest of the payment some other time.’
But Francesco was gone before the last words had passed his brother’s lips. The door closed behind him, and Tebaldo heard his quick footsteps outside as he went off in the direction of his own room.
The angry man grew calmer when he was alone, but now and then, as he walked up and down, and backwards and forwards, he clenched his hands spasmodically, wishing that he still had his brother in his grip. Yet, when he reflected, as he began to do before long, upon what had really happened, he realised that he had not, after all, had much reason for taking his brother by the throat. It was the hesitation that had made his temper break out. But then, it might have meant so much. In his present state, the thought that perhaps Aliandra loved Francesco was like the bite of a horse-fly in a raw wound, and he quivered under it. He could not get away from it. He fancied he saw Francesco kissing Aliandra’s handsome mouth, and that her eyes smiled, and then her eyelids drooped with pleasure. His anger subsided a little, but his jealousy grew monstrously minute by minute, and his wrath smouldered beneath it. He remembered past days and meetings, and glances Aliandra had given his brother, such as she had never bestowed upon himself. She did not love him, though she wished to marry him, and was determined to do so, if it were possible. But it flashed upon him that she loved Francesco, and had loved him from the first. That was not quite the truth, though it was near it, and he saw a hundred things in the past to prove that it was the truth altogether.
He was human enough to feel the wound to his vanity, and the slight cast upon him by a comparison in which Francesco was preferred to him, as well as the hurt at his heart which came with it. He did not know of Francesco’s daily visits, but he suspected them and exaggerated all he guessed. Doubtless Francesco had seen her again and again alone, quite lately, while Tebaldo had been made to endure day after day the presence of Aliandra’s aunt in the room. Again the red-lipped vision of a kiss flashed in the shadow of the room, a living picture, and once more his eyes grew red, and his hands clenched themselves spasmodically, closing on nothing.
She had said that she preferred Francesco. She had almost admitted that she loved him, and he could remember how cold her eyes had been while she had been saying it. There had been another light in them for his brother, and she had not held her hands behind her back when Francesco had held out his. Or else she had, laughingly. And then she had put up her face, instead, for him to kiss. Tebaldo ground his teeth.
His jealousy got hold of him in the vitals and gnawed cruelly. Everything in his own room made him think of Aliandra, though there was not one object in a score that could possibly have any association with her, nor any right to remind him of her, as he tried to tell himself. But his watch, lying on the toilet table, made him think of her watch, a pretty little one he had given her. His gloves made him think of her gloves, his books recalled hers, his very chairs, as they chanced to stand about the room, revived the memory of how other chairs had stood when he had parted from her. The infinite pettiness of the details that irritated him did not shock his reason as would have happened at any other time. On the contrary, the more of them sprang up, the more they stung him. Instead of one gadfly, there were hundreds. And all the time there was the almost irresistible physical longing to go to her, and throw over everything else. He went out, for he could not bear his room any longer.
It was still hot in the streets in the early afternoon, and there was a fierce glare all through the new part of the city where there were many white houses in straight rows along smoothly-paved streets. Tebaldo walked in the shade, and once or twice he took off his hat for a moment and let the dry, hot breeze blow upon his forehead. The
strong light was somehow a relief as he grew accustomed to it, and his southern nature regained its balance in the penetrating warmth. He walked quickly, not heeding his direction, as he followed the line of broad shade and passed quickly through the blazing sunshine that filled the crossing of each side street.
He regained his normal state, and presently, being quite calm, he stopped and quietly lighted a cigar. Like many men of ardent and choleric temperament, he neither smoked nor drank much, but there were times, like the present, when smoking helped him to think quietly.
Before the cigar was half finished he was at the door of the hotel at which Miss Slayback and her aunt were staying. He was glad that he had decided to see her on that afternoon, and he attributed the good sense, as he would have called it, which had ultimately brought him to her door, to the soothing influence of the tobacco.
Miss Slayback was alone in the sitting-room. The blinds were closed, but the windows were open, and the warm breeze stirred the white curtains. It was an ordinary hotel sitting-room, like hundreds of others, but Miss Lizzie had not been satisfied with such mediocrity of surroundings, and had taken much pains to give the room an inhabited look. She had, of course, bought several hundred objects of no particular value, as rich women who visit Rome for the first time invariably do, and most of them were in sight in her sitting-room. There were photographs by the score, pinned to the walls and standing on tables, and heaped together in a corner. The photograph is the unresistible temptation to women. There were three or four clever water-colour studies of men and women in costume, such as one sees everywhere in Rome; there were half-a-dozen bronzes copied, in the unfinished, wholesale manner, from the antique; there was the inevitable old choir book of the psalms, with the old musical notation that is still used for plain chaunt, written on parchment and opened at the page which presented the best illuminated capital letter; there were three or four pieces of old embroidered vestments, draped over the backs of chairs, and there were several vases containing fresh flowers and dry wild grasses from the Campagna. And there was Miss Lizzie Slayback.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 900