‘But I have not met the Countess at all,’ answered Castiglione with some annoyance, when she paused at last to take breath.
‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ she cried, shaking her finger at him. ‘It’s very wrong to tell fibs to an old friend who only wishes to help you!’
‘You may think what you please,’ he answered bluntly. ‘I have not met the Countess this afternoon. I have been to see a sculptor who has his studio in this street.’
‘Oh, yes!’ cried Teresa incredulously. ‘And Maria told me she had been to confession.’
‘If she said so, it is true. If we had met we should have stopped to speak. We might have walked a little way together. But we have not met.’
Teresa Crescenzi did not believe him. She had managed to get rid of her veil while walking, and without being noticed by him. Women can do such things easily when a man is very much preoccupied about other matters.
‘As you like,’ she answered, and her tone was anything but complimentary to his truthfulness.
But he did not take up the question after having once told her the truth, and when he opened the door of the cab they found in the Piazza Barberini there was a distinct coolness in their leave-taking. He gave the cabman her address and went away on foot down the crowded Tritone towards the city. When he had walked a quarter of an hour he looked at his watch, stopped a policeman, and asked for the nearest public telephone office.
He called for Maria Montalto’s number and was answered by Agostino, the butler. He inquired whether the Countess would speak with him herself, and presently he heard her voice.
‘I am Castiglione,’ he said. ‘Is it true that Teresa Crescenzi met you in the Via di San Basilio when you were walking home from confession half an hour ago?’
‘Yes — but how — —’
He interrupted her at once.
‘I am in a public office, shut up in the box, but be careful what you say unless you are alone. I met Teresa a moment after she had spoken to you, and she pretended to know that we had been together in one of those quiet streets.’
‘How abominable!’
‘I had been to see Farini, the sculptor, close by San Nicolo. It was natural that Teresa should suppose we had met, but I was angry, and so was she because I denied what she said. I’m afraid she will repeat the story.’
‘Why should I care?’ Maria’s voice was rather sharp.
‘I care, on your account, so I have warned you.’
‘Thank you. You will come to-morrow?’
‘To-morrow, at half-past two, if you will receive me. Good-bye.’
‘You shall have the answer then. Good-bye.’
Maria went back to Leone, who was having his supper. The child was unusually silent, and ate with the steady, solemn appetite of strong boys. When he had finished he got up and gravely examined his armoury before going to bed, to see that his weapons were all clean and neatly hung in their places. There were two toy guns, with a tin revolver, a sword-bayonet, and a sabre. He went through this inspection every evening, and Maria sat by the table watching him while Agostino took away the things.
When the servant was gone the boy came and stood beside his mother’s knee and looked up into her face earnestly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, after a long time.
‘For what, dear?’
‘You’ve been crying because I asked questions about papa. I’m sorry.’
She leant forward and took him in her arms quietly, and made him sit astride of her knees and look into her eyes while she held him by the wrists.
‘Little man,’ she said gently, ‘if you ever say anything that hurts me I promise to tell you just what it is, because I know you will never mean to hurt me, even when you are grown up. It was nothing you said that made me cry this afternoon, so there’s nothing for you to be sorry for—’ she smiled and shook her head— ‘nothing, darling, nothing, nothing!’
Leone smiled too.
‘I’m glad,’ he said, and then his face grew grave and thoughtful again.
Maria wondered what was going on in his small head during the next few seconds. When he spoke at last she started.
‘Then it was the priest?’ he said with conviction. ‘I hate him.’
‘What do you mean, child?’
‘After we came home you put on the grey veil and went out alone. That is always confession, isn’t it? When you came home you put up the veil and kissed me. Your cheeks were just a little wet still. So it was the priest, wasn’t it, who made you cry?’
Maria would not deny the truth.
‘It was something the confessor said to me,’ she answered.
‘I told you so!’ returned the small boy. ‘I hate him!’
He was well aware that if he stayed another moment where he was his mother would tell him that it was very wrong to hate anybody, so he struggled out of her hold, slipped from her knees to the floor, knelt down and began to say his small evening prayer with such amazing alacrity that Maria’s breath was taken away and she could not get in a word of rebuke; in spite of herself she smiled over his bent head and felt very irreverently inclined to laugh at his manœuvre. But before he had finished her face was very grave, and when he got up from his knees she spoke to him before she kissed his forehead.
‘Listen to me, my boy,’ she said. ‘You know that I always tell you the truth, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ answered Leone. ‘So do I. It’s cowardly to tell lies. Mario Campodonico is a coward, and he lies like anything.’
‘Never mind Mario. I don’t want you to say that you hate priests.’
‘It’s the truth,’ retorted the terrible child. ‘Shall I say I love them?’
‘No. Listen to me. There are good people and bad people all over the world. So there are good and bad priests, but I think there are many more good ones than bad ones. You would not hate a good priest, would you?’
‘N — no,’ answered Leone, rather doubtfully.
‘Then leave the bad ones to take care of themselves, and don’t think about them. Do you suppose I hate you when you are naughty and break things in a rage and try to beat the servants? It’s the naughtiness I hate. It’s not you.’
‘It feels just the same,’ observed the small boy, with great logic.
‘But it’s not,’ answered his mother, trying to keep from laughing. ‘And when you are bigger you will understand that one should not hate bad men, but the badness in them.’
‘Well, that’s better than nothing! Then I hate the badness in your priest, who made you cry, and I’d like to hammer it out of him!’
Maria was at the end of her arguments.
‘He meant well,’ she said weakly. ‘I’m sure he meant well.’
‘When he made you cry?’ retorted Leone indignantly. ‘You might just as well say I mean well when — —’
But at this point Maria closed the discussion abruptly by picking him up with a laugh and a kiss and carrying him off to bed. It was as much as she could do now, for he was very sturdy and heavy for his age.
CHAPTER VI
WHEN CASTIGLIONE CAME on the following afternoon Maria was looking wonderfully well, and so like herself, as she had been within the first year of her marriage, that he could not help looking at her very hard. There was only the small patch of white in her dark hair near the left temple, which Castiglione could not remember; and there was the black frock. She always wore black or grey now, but when she was very young she had liked pretty colours.
Castiglione himself was in uniform, for he thought it possible that he might see Leone, and he would not have broken his promise to the boy for anything. He was not the man to put on his uniform with the idea of looking better in it than in a civilian’s clothes, still less had he any thought of recalling old memories to Maria by such theatrical means. Men who are hard hitters are rarely theatrical in small things, though some famous generals, like Napoleon, have been great dramatic artists.
In Italy the uniforms of the cavalry regiments do not differ as much
as in some other countries, and but for the colour of the facings and a few smaller details Castiglione’s dress was enough like the uniform of the Piedmont Lancers to produce a much deeper impression on Maria than he could have easily understood. The man himself had changed little. He was a little broader perhaps, his strong features were a little more marked, his military moustache was heavier, but that was all. At thirty, or nearly that, he was much the same active, energetic, good-looking young officer he had been at two and twenty.
They instinctively took the places they had sat in during his first visit. The hour was the same, the light in the room was the same, too; but other things were not the same. Castiglione felt it as soon as he saw Maria’s face, and she knew it when she heard the sound of his voice. The ice-wall that had stood between them so long had melted away; the chasm that separated Maria even from that barrier was bridged. It would not be easy now to touch hands and part again for years.
The stern old monk’s words echoed faintly in Maria’s heart: to meet thus was a deadly risk, perhaps a mortal sin. But the voice was far away, and Maria was very happy and hopeful, and the old Capuchin had been a common and ignorant man who could not understand the pride and self-respect of a Roman lady, nor the generous honour of such a man as Baldassare del Castiglione.
‘I was right to telephone last night, was I not?’ he asked when they were seated.
‘Yes, quite right. But Teresa has always seemed to be a good friend. She may have been annoyed because she had made such a stupid mistake, but I really don’t think she will gossip about us.’
‘I hope not, though I don’t trust her.’
After this there was a little silence, for he would not make conversation; and while he waited for Maria to speak, his eyes were satisfied, and his heart beat quietly and happily because he was near her. He did not feel the heavy, passionate pulse that used to throb in his neck when he came near her, nor the dryness in his throat, with the strange, cool quivering of his own lips. He was simply and quietly happy, and he trusted himself and her.
‘You have come for your answer,’ she said, after a long time. ‘It’s of no use to pretend that we have anything else to talk of. We will be honest with each other. There is no one to hear what we say, and we have nothing to say now of which we need be ashamed before God.’
Castiglione silently bent his head in assent and waited.
‘The forgiveness you asked of me yesterday, I should have asked of you, too,’ Maria went on, but her eyes looked down. ‘I ask it now, before I say anything more.’
‘I don’t understand,’ answered the man. ‘How can I have anything to forgive?’
‘Balduccio, do you remember the hard words I said to you under the ilex-trees when we parted?’
‘A condemned man does not forget the words of his sentence.’ His voice was dull.
‘I called you a coward and a brute, Balduccio, and I called you the basest of mankind.’
‘It was your right.’
‘No. It was not. I take back those words. I ask your pardon for them.’
‘What?’ His voice rang in the room, hoarse and strong.
‘I take back every word. I was the coward. I made myself believe what I said, and I know you would believe it too. I have been a very wicked woman all these years, Balduccio. I have been wickedly unjust to you. You must try to forgive me.’
Her voice had sunk very low, for it had been hard to say; but his almost broke in his throat.
‘Try? Ah, Maria — —’
He moved quickly to come near her, and she was aware of it. Still looking down, she stretched out her hand against him.
‘Sit still!’ she said. ‘Say that you forgive me, if you can.’
‘With all my soul,’ he answered, drawing back into his chair, obedient to her gesture.
‘Thank you,’ she said, so low that he could hardly hear her.
With that she leaned far back in her low chair and pressed her fingers upon her eyes without covering her face, and he saw the warmth come and go in her soft pale cheeks, and then come back again. Indeed, it had not been easy for her. Presently she opened her eyes, and folded her hands on her lap, and gazed happily into his face.
‘I can look at you now,’ she said simply, ‘and it is not wrong.’
‘No, indeed!’
But he did not know what he was saying, nor what he should say, for in a moment she had changed all the greater thoughts of his life. She had taken from him the burden of the old accusation which she had made him believe was just in spite of himself; but it was like lifting heavy weights from a balance very suddenly; the whole mechanism of his mind and conscience quivered and trembled when the strain was gone, and swung violently this way and that.
Presently she was speaking again, and he began to hear and understand.
‘I am not going to pretend anything,’ she was saying. ‘But I will not hide anything either. No, I will not! There is nothing to be ashamed of now, because we have made up our minds that there never shall be again. We promise each other that, don’t we, Balduccio?’
‘I promise you that, come what may,’ he answered, well knowing what he said now.
‘And I promise the same, come what may,’ she said. ‘I give you my word of honour.’
‘You have mine, Maria.’
‘That is enough, and God believes us,’ she said gravely. ‘But now the truth, and nothing else. We are not going to pretend that we are like brother and sister. We love each other dearly, and we love as man and woman, and I am sure we always shall, now and for ever, in life, and beyond death, and in the life to come. I am very sure of that.’
He bent his head and nodded slowly, but that was not enough for her.
‘Are you not sure, Balduccio?’ she asked after a moment.
He looked up suddenly with blazing eyes.
‘I love you now,’ he said. ‘I have loved you all my life. That is what I know. If there is a God, He knows it, for He made it so, and it will be so for ever. If not, it will end when we are both dead, but not before.’
‘It will never end,’ Maria answered. ‘But it must not be a weight to drag us down, it must be a strength to lift us. It shall be! Say that it shall be!’
‘I will do what I can.’
‘Balduccio,’ she went on earnestly, ‘it has lifted us already. It has made you live a better life than other men, though you do not believe in God. And though it made me a coward for a long time, it has given me strength to be brave at last, now that we have met again, strength to tell you the truth, strength to ask your forgiveness! If it has done all that already, what will it not do hereafter, if we keep our promise?’
The deep and fearless light was in her dark eyes now, and she spoke in a heavenly inspiration of purity and peace. Castiglione watched her with a sort of awe which he had never felt in his life. That was a brave, high instinct in him that answered her call; it was the instinct that would have responded if he had been chosen to lead the forlorn hope in a fight all but lost.
‘You are a saint,’ he said. ‘I am not. But I will try to follow if you will only lead the way.’
‘No, dear, I am no saint,’ she answered.
He started at the loving word she had scarcely ever used with him, and she saw his movement and understood.
‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘It is the truth, and we are not the less safe for saying that we love, now that we have promised. No, I am not a saint. You have been better than I in all these years, for I have been unjust to you, but you have borne it patiently and you have loved me still. That is what I mean when I say that our love can lift us up. Do you see? Only — we must not forget the others — —’
She paused.
‘Montalto,’ said Castiglione gravely. ‘I understand.’
‘My husband and my son,’ Maria said. ‘We owe them a terrible debt.’
Castiglione’s eyes softened.
‘It is for their sakes that we have promised,’ she went on. ‘For their sakes there must never a
gain be any earthly taint upon our love, dear.’
Once more the tender word touched him. He passed his hand over his eyes as if to hide something.
‘If you were only free!’ he sighed.
Maria made a little movement.
‘The very thought of that is wrong,’ she answered bravely. ‘You must not think of it, you must never say it.’
‘I wish your husband no ill,’ Castiglione answered, in a sterner tone than she had heard yet. ‘I did him a great injury. I would make reparation if I knew how. But I am a man, Maria, a man like any other, and I love you in a man’s way, and if Montalto died I should want you for my wife, as you should be. We have promised that between us there shall be no word or thought of which we need be ashamed, even before your husband, if he were here; but more than that I will not promise, and that is already as much as any man could keep.’
Maria shook her head gravely and waited a moment before she answered.
‘I should owe myself to his memory if he were dead,’ she said at last. ‘A lifetime of faithfulness, cost what it may, is not enough to expiate what I did.’
Castiglione judged her as men judge the women they love, and he knew that for the present it was useless to oppose her. He folded his hands and listened, and she did not see that his fingers strained upon each other; nor could she guess that his heart was not beating as quietly now as when he had sat down opposite her a little while ago.
‘That is the one condition on which we can see each other,’ she went on. ‘There must be no thought of any earthly union — ever! If you feel that you are strong enough for that, Balduccio, then come back to Rome as soon as you can. If you can exchange into your old regiment again, do so. If not, come now and then, when you can get leave. We may see each other once a week, at least once a week! The world cannot blame us for that, after all these years. It will be little enough, once a week! And sometimes, perhaps, we might meet in some gallery, in some quiet museum where only the foreigners go, and we could walk about and talk, and the world will never know it.’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1139