‘Did I hurt you, mama?’ he asked almost anxiously.
‘No, dear!’ She smiled. ‘You are not strong enough to hurt me yet, darling.’
He drew back half a step and surveyed his mother critically, with his head a little on one side.
‘I wouldn’t, of course,’ he said condescendingly. ‘But if I twisted your arm and hammered it with my fist I could hurt you. I did it to Mario Campodonico, and he’s nine, and he howled.’
‘Naughty boy!’ Maria could not help laughing. ‘Why did you hurt poor Mario?’
‘Poor Mario!’ cried Leone scornfully. ‘He’s twice my size, and he’s learning to ride. Why shouldn’t I hammer him if I can? He tried to take away a roast chestnut I was eating. It was in the Villa Borghese only yesterday. He won’t do it again, though! He howled.’
Thereupon Leone faced about, marched to the window, and climbed upon his favourite chair to look for soldiers in the street. He got up with three quick movements, as if he were going through a gymnastic exercise. He set one knee and both hands on the seat, then put the second knee up and both hands on the top of the chair, then he straightened his back and was in position. Maria watched him, and her eyes settled on the back of his solid little neck that showed above the broad sailor’s collar, and on the short and thick brown hair that was so curly just at that place.
But presently she turned away and mechanically took a book from the low table beside her. Don Ippolito had said that Montalto might offer her a reconciliation she did not deserve, and might come back to take her and Leone to live in the palace again. The thought chilled her and frightened her, for she could guess at his expression when he should first see what she had seen every hour of the day for years. Yet any father might be proud of such a child — any father! Could such a ‘reconciliation’ be lasting?
That afternoon she took Leone with her and drove out by Porta Furba to the ruins which the people call Roma Vecchia. They drove across the great meadow, and when they could drive no farther they got out and walked, and climbed up till they could sit on one of the big fragments of masonry and look towards the west. Leone had been rather silent, for with the exception of an occasional couple of mounted carabineers on patrol they had hardly met any soldiers at all. And now they sat side by side in the sunshine, for there was a cool breeze blowing from the sea and the air was not warm yet.
Leone took no interest in any pastimes earlier than the age of armour and tournaments; and Maria was glad that he did not ask her questions about the ruins, for she could not have answered him. She knew nothing about the Quintilii and very little about Commodus. She only knew that the great pile was commonly called the ‘Old Rome,’ and that she loved it for its grand loneliness. But Leone looked about him, and thought it was a good place for a castle. Next to soldiers he loved castles and forts.
‘If this belonged to me, I’d build a fortress here,’ he observed gravely, after a long silence. ‘I’d build a great castle like Bracciano.’ He had been taken there on a children’s picnic during the winter. ‘But I’d have lots of guns and a regiment of artillery here if it were mine,’ he added.
‘What for?’ asked Maria, amused.
‘To defend Rome, of course,’ answered Leone.
‘But no one is coming to take Rome, child,’ objected his mother.
‘Oh, yes, they may!’ He seemed quite confident. ‘If there are no other enemies, there are always the French and the priests!’
At this astounding view of Italy’s situation Maria could not help laughing.
‘We are good friends with the French now,’ she said. ‘And who has been telling you that the priests are the enemies of Italy?’
‘Gianluca Trasmondo says so,’ answered Leone. ‘He knows, for his uncle is a cardinal. Besides, no priests are soldiers, are they? So they wouldn’t defend Italy. So they’re Italy’s enemies.’
‘You are wrong, darling,’ answered Maria. ‘The priests have all had to do their military service first.’
‘What? And wear uniforms, and go to drill, and smoke Toscano cigars?’
‘I’m not sure about the smoking,’ laughed Maria; ‘but they have to serve their time in the army, just like other men.’
‘Of course you know,’ said the small boy, who had perfect confidence in his mother’s facts. ‘I didn’t. I’ll tell Gianluca to-morrow. All the same, this would be a good place for a castle. I wonder whose the fields are.’
‘I don’t know, dear. You may run down to the carriage and ask Telemaco if you like, and then come back and tell me. He knows all about the Campagna.’
Telemaco was Maria’s coachman, who had followed her when she had left the Montalto palace — a grey-haired, placid, corpulent man of great weight and overpowering respectability.
Leone jumped up and ran away at a steady trot, with his elbows well in, his fists close to his chest, and his head back, as he had seen soldiers run in drilling. Maria was left alone for a few minutes, for the carriage was on the other side of the ruins and two hundred yards away. She leaned on one elbow and looked westward at the distant broken aqueduct, far away under the sun. She was thinking of what she should say to the old monk in the Capuchin church later in the afternoon, and the moments passed quickly. Before she had determined upon the opening sentence, the boy came trotting back to her up the little hill. He stopped just before her, his legs apart and his face beaming with pleasure.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think? Shall I build a castle here or not?’
‘I think not,’ answered his mother, smiling.
‘But I think I shall when I am big. It all belongs to me!’
Maria opened her eyes in surprise.
‘To you, child? What do you mean?’
‘I asked Telemaco whose this land was. He said, “It belongs to your most excellent house.” I said just what you said— “What do you mean?” He said, “It is as I say, Signorino, for the land here belongs to his Excellency your papa, and if you see one of the mounted watchmen in blue about here, he will have the arms of your house on his badge.” That was what Telemaco said. So you see, when I am big I shall build a castle here. Why do you look sorry, mama?’
‘I’m not sorry, darling,’ Maria answered with a faint smile. ‘I was thinking of the time when you will be grown up.’
Leone reflected a little.
‘But why should you look sorry for that, mama? You won’t go away and leave me when I’m grown up, will you, to go and live with papa in Spain?’
‘No, dear. I shall certainly not do that.’
Another pause, longer than the first, during which the small boy watched her face keenly, and she shrank a little before the fearless blue eyes.
‘Why does papa never come back to see us?’ he asked.
She had expected the question a long time, and had made up her mind how to meet it when it came; yet she was taken by surprise.
‘Your father’s mother is a great invalid,’ she said, with a little nervous hesitation. ‘He does not like to leave her.’
‘He might come here for a day sometimes,’ answered Leone, not at all satisfied. ‘He doesn’t like us. That’s the reason. I know it is. He doesn’t want us to live in the palace. That’s why we live where we do.’
‘Hush! You must not say that, my dear. The palace is very gloomy, and I chose to live in a more cheerful part of the city.’
‘I like it better, too,’ said the boy in a tone of reflection. ‘But all other people live in their own palaces, all the same.’
‘Most of our friends are many in a family, dear. But we are only you and I.’
A silence, during which the child’s brain was weighing these matters in the balance.
‘I’m glad papa never comes back,’ he said at last. ‘You are, too.’
Without waiting for an answer, and as if to give vent to his feelings, he turned away, picked up a small stone, and threw it as far as he could over the green grass below the ruins — presumably at an imaginary enemy of Italy. He watched
it as it fell, and did not seem satisfied with his performance.
‘I suppose David was bigger than I am when he killed the giant with a pebble,’ he observed rather wistfully.
They drove home.
‘Why didn’t you know that the land out there belongs to us, mama?’ asked Leone, after a long silence, when they were near the Porta San Giovanni.
‘I know very little about the property, except that it is large and some of it is in the Campagna.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because no one ever told me about it,’ Maria replied, feeling that she must find an answer. The boy looked at her gravely, but not incredulously, and asked nothing more.
CHAPTER V
THE SUN WAS sinking when Maria descended the long flight of steps from the door of the Capuchin church to the level of the street, and under the grey veil she wore her cheeks were wet with undried tears. But she held her head up proudly, and her small feet stepped firmly and lightly on the stones.
She was not in a state of grace by any means, and the tears had not been shed in repentance for her sins. She hardly ever cried, and when she did it was generally from anger and bitter disappointment. The moisture that had risen in her eyes that morning when Castiglione had offered to go away for her sake had not overflowed; but now, when she had left the confessional without the expected absolution, and had seen the hard-faced old monk in brown come out of his box and stalk stiffly away to the sacristy as if he had done something very virtuous, she had sat down in a chair in a corner of the empty church and the burning drops had streamed over her cheeks like fire till they reached the small handkerchief she held to her mouth under her veil; and she had bitten hard at the hem, and it was salt with her tears.
She had been misunderstood, she had been misjudged, she had been rebuked. She had been told that she was a very great sinner; that so long as she was willing to love a man who was not her husband, and who had been her lover, God would not forgive her; that absolution came from God and not from priests, and that it was out of any priest’s power to pronounce it while she was in her present state of mind; that she might come again when she was sure that she wished never to think of that evil man; that if she felt that she owed him reparation for having been unjust to him she should write to him to say so, asking him to destroy the letter, and bidding him never to come near her again; and that to see him again, even once, since she still loved him, would be not only a deadly risk but actually a mortal sin. After this she had been sternly told to go away, to pray for grace, and to be particularly careful to observe days of abstinence and fasting, as the devil was everywhere and never slept.
Now the monk who had heard her confession was a good man and meant well, and believed that he was speaking for the good of her soul. He knew well enough from the penitent’s language and manner of speaking about her life that she was a lady of Rome, and perhaps one of the great ones who sometimes came to him because they did not like to go to their regular confessors. But this, in his estimation, was the best of reasons why Maria should be treated with the same severity as the poorest and most ignorant woman of the people. If she had come to him with a religious doubt or a scruple concerning dogma he would have treated her very differently, for he was something of a theologian and had a monk’s love of controversy. But she came to him simply as a woman, with a perfectly evident mortal sin on her conscience, and what he considered a perfectly evident desire to compromise things by pretending that her lover could be her friend. In such matters he was a ruthless democrat, as many confessors are. She might be a great lady, she might have been royal, for all he cared; what was just to one woman’s soul and conscience was just to another woman’s, all the world over, and where the deadly sins were concerned there was not to be any distinction between the poor and the rich, the educated and the ignorant. On the contrary, educated people should get less mercy, because they ought to know better than their inferiors, and because they had been brought up in surroundings where the baser sins of humanity are supposed to be less common; and finally and generally, because we are told that the salvation of the rich is to be regarded as a much more difficult matter than that of the poor. It was certainly not the business of a Capuchin monk to reverse matters and make it easier.
But the delicately nurtured, sorely tried woman who had come to unburden her conscience of a sin she had only fully understood within the last few days, felt as if the well-meaning monk had thrust out his bony hand from the shadow of the confessional and had deliberately slapped her cheek.
Therefore Maria Montalto was not in a state of grace, and in her mortification she called the austere and democratic Capuchin several hard names; she said to herself that he was ignorant, that he was a common person, and that it was a scandal that such a prejudiced man should be a licensed confessor. She bit her handkerchief hard, tasting the salt of her tears in the hem of it, because she knew in her heart that there was a little truth in some of the hard things she had been told.
Her pride and nervous energy came to the rescue after a while, and she left the church to walk home through quiet streets where no one was likely to meet her. The evening breeze would dry her face under her veil, and her anger would help the drying process too, for it kept her cheeks hot. That morning she had felt very ill and tired and had vaguely expected to break down, but the afternoon in the Campagna had done her good, and her temper did the rest. Castiglione would find her looking wonderfully well when he came the next day at half-past two.
The sun had set, but it was still broad daylight when she reached the top of the Via San Basilio. She turned to the right presently, and almost ran into Teresa Crescenzi, who was walking very fast and also wore a veil, but was always an unmistakable figure anywhere.
‘Maria!’ cried the lively lady at once. ‘Where in the world are you going alone on foot at this hour?’
‘I have been to confession and I’m going home,’ answered Maria without hesitation, and smiling at the other’s quickness in asking a question which might certainly have been asked of her with equal reason.
‘So have I,’ answered Teresa with alacrity. ‘What a coincidence!’
But she had not been to confession.
‘Good-bye, dear!’ she added almost at once, and with a quick and friendly nod she went on down the hill.
Teresa had not gone far when she turned into a deserted side street and saw Baldassare del Castiglione walking at a leisurely pace a little way in front of her. A much less ready gossip than she might well have thought it probable that he and Maria Montalto had just parted, after taking a harmless little walk together in a very quiet part of the town.
It was certainly Castiglione whom she saw. There was no mistaking his square shoulders and back of his strong neck, where the closely cropped brown hair had an incorrigible tendency to be curly. Teresa had often noticed that, for she admired him and wished that he were a more eligible husband; but she was not very rich, and he was distinctly poor. She often saw him in the summer, and it had not occurred to her till his return to Rome that he would refuse her if she suggested that he might marry her. That was the way she put it, for a lack of practical directness was not among her defects. She had supposed that he had really quite forgotten Maria by this time, although her pretty tale about them was founded on the undying and perfectly innocent affection of both.
Now before she overtook Castiglione, as she inevitably must if he did not mend his pace, she hesitated whether she should turn back quietly and take another street. For she had not been to confession. Then it seemed to her that it would be dangerous to avoid him, for he was walking slowly, as if he himself were only keeping out of the way in the side street for a while, and might turn back at any moment; and if he did, he would recognise her. So she decided to overtake him and ask him to walk with her till they could find a closed cab, which was what she wanted.
Having reached this decision a further consideration presented itself to her mind. He would hardly believe that she could be coming up beh
ind him without having met Maria, who had certainly been with him and whom she had just left. He would not like to feel that this had happened, and that she might even have seen them together. It would be more tactful to be frank.
She spoke as soon as she was close to him.
‘Good evening, Balduccio,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Will you help me to find a closed cab?’
He took off his hat without showing any surprise, and smiled as if not at all disturbed by the meeting. But then, thought Teresa, he always had good nerves and was a man of the world.
‘We can get one at the Piazza Barberini,’ he said, lengthening his stride to keep up with her, for he saw that she was in a hurry.
‘Can we? I feel one of my chills coming on, and I must either run to keep warm or get a closed carriage somewhere. Do you mind walking fast?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Because you were walking very slowly when I saw you.’
‘Was I?’ He seemed very vague about it.
‘Yes!’ she laughed. ‘Dear old Balduccio! You are just the same reserved, formal silly old thing you were when we went to the dancing-class at Campodonico’s, ever so long ago!’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes. But as I just happened to meet Maria, you need not pretend to be vague. You know how frank I am, so I’m sure you would rather be sure at once that I know, and that I will not tell any one!’
‘Dear friend,’ returned Castiglione blandly, ‘what in the world are you talking about?’
Again Teresa laughed gaily.
‘Always the same! But as I met Maria Montalto only a moment ago, it’s not of the slightest use to tell me that you two have not been for a little walk together! Do you think I blame you? Haven’t you behaved like a couple of saints for more years than I like to remember? No one can find any fault with you, of course, but for Heaven’s sake walk in the Corso, or in the Via Nazionale, where every one can see you, instead of in such a place as this!’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1138