She walked on, and before long she was sitting under the ilex-trees above the Piazza di Siena. There was a new bench there; or perhaps it had only been painted. There was water in the fountain, leaping up and sparkling under the deep green trees. The basin had been dry on that winter’s afternoon long ago, and the evergreen oaks had looked much darker. That had been like death; this was life itself. The past did not exist; it had never existed at all, because it had all been a horrible mistake, an untruth, and a loathsome sin; a sin confessed now, an untruth forgiven, a mistake explained and condoned. In the future all was love; and yet all was right and truthful and straightforward, as justice itself. Giuliana’s warning was but the well-meant preaching of a good friend who could never understand; the grim old monk’s words were far away. Where was the deadly risk, or the mortal sin? God was strong and good, and would make all good deeds seem easy; and she and the man she loved would rise far beyond this dying body, by that good, to be united for ever in light and peace. Baldassare would believe, as she did, and in the end they would find heaven together.
She leaned back, and her eyes looked upwards as she sat there alone, and in all her being there was not the least thought that was not innocent and pure and beautiful. She communed with herself as with an angel, and with the image of the man she loved as with a saint. She felt as she felt sometimes when she knelt at early morning before the altar rail of the little oratory near her house, and the young priest with his martyr’s face came softly down and ministered to her.
She almost trembled when she rose at last to leave the place where she had been lifted up from the world, the place where she had once spoken such bitter and cruel words to him who was now once more the heart of her heart and the soul of her soul. She walked homewards in a deep, sweet dream of refreshment.
The footman opened the door, and as she entered the small bright hall she saw a big letter with a black border and Spanish stamps lying upon some others, and she knew Montalto’s large, stiff handwriting. Her heart sank, though she had expected the letter for two days.
She took it with no outward show of emotion, for she felt that the servant was watching and that he guessed whence it came. In a steady voice she asked if Leone had come in from his walk with old Agostino, and the footman told her they were still out. Her Excellency would remember that the Signorino was gone to the gardens of the Palazzo Trasmondo to play with his little friends.
Maria went to her sitting-room without calling her maid, and sat down to read her husband’s letter with closed doors. She felt strong and brave, and resolved to think of the absent man with all the respect Giuliana Parenzo could have exacted from her.
It was a very long letter, filling several big black-edged sheets; but the handwriting was large and stiff, and easy to read, and at first her eyes followed the words quickly and unhesitatingly.
Montalto was deeply affected by his mother’s death; that was evident in the short, strained sentences that were painfully formal save for a heart-broken word here and there. Conscientiously he told his wife the short story of the illness during the last days, the last hours, at the last minute, at the end. She read with a sort of reverence, but she wondered why he gave her every detail. Had he come to her for sympathy, after all the stern and unforgiving years that had passed?
Then she took the next sheet, and the truth broke upon her. So far, he had given her an account of what had happened, of how his mother had suddenly begun to sink and had died peacefully after receiving all the Sacraments. But he had not told what her last words had been.
‘My dear son,’ she had said just before she had closed her eyes for ever, ‘I have been very unforgiving towards your wife. Perhaps I have helped to make you so. Promise me that you will go to her and ask her pardon for me. And be reconciled with her, if God wills that it be possible.’
She had said all these words with great distinctness, for she had been calm and fully conscious, and able to speak until the last moment of her life; and then her heart had stopped beating and death had come quietly.
Maria held the sheet before her with both her hands, trying to go on, and determined to read bravely to the end, but it was a long time before she got to the next words, and she felt as if she had been unexpectedly condemned to die.
The man she had injured meant to fulfil his mother’s last request to the letter. For he asked his erring wife’s pardon for the dead woman who had not been able to forgive her till the end. He asked her to write out the message to the dead and send it to him.
That would be the easiest part. How could Maria find it hard to say that she forgave what she had deserved? But the rest was different.
He went on to say that it was not only for his mother’s sake that he wished to be reconciled: it was for his own. In spite of all, he loved Maria dearly. He had known how she had lived, how her whole life since he had finally left her had been an atonement for one fault; and that one fault he now freely forgave her. He would never speak of it again, he said, for he was sure that she had suffered more from it than he himself.
She guessed, as she read, what it must have cost him to say that much. He earnestly desired a reconciliation. He wished to come back to Rome to live in his own house, with his wife, before all the world. With a pathetic inability to put his feelings into words, he said that he would try to make her happy ‘by all means acceptable to her.’ Yet he did not wish to force this reconciliation upon her, for he was well aware that in leaving her he had conferred on her a measure of independence and had given her good reason to suppose that he would never come back. Unless she willingly agreed to what he now offered, he would never come back to Rome; for it had been one thing to stay with his invalid mother, leaving his wife to live where she pleased, but it would be quite another in the eyes of the world if he returned to his own house and his wife continued to stay in a hired house. Hitherto there had been no scandal which his authority could not now put down, no open break which might not still be repaired with dignity. Then, on a sudden, the writing became less stiff and clear, and the lonely man’s full heart overflowed. He loved her so dearly — he did not repeat ‘in spite of all’ — why might he not hope to make her happy at last? In the past he had not known how to show her how tenderly, how devotedly, he had loved her; he had been but a dull companion for her; she had been made to marry him almost against her will. Without again speaking of her fault he was finding excuses for what he had forgiven. And the burden came back again and again, he loved her with all his heart. It was no mere empty show of reconciliation that he offered her, for the sake of his name, for what the world might say or think. He wished, he asked to be allowed, to take her back altogether, wholly, as if there had been no division.
Maria held the sheet tight between her upraised hands, but a painful tremor ran through her to the tips of her fingers, and the paper shook before her eyes.
She had reached the end now. He had poured out his soul as he had never done before then to any living being; but quite at the last line his natural formality returned, he ‘begged the favour of a speedy reply at her convenience,’ and he signed his name in full— ‘Diego Silani di Montalto.’
After a long time Maria rose from her seat, and her face was almost grey. She went to her writing-table and opened a small desk with a simple little gold key she wore on her watch chain. The receptacle was already half full of Castiglione’s letters, and she laid her husband’s on top of the heap, shut down the lid, and turned the key again.
Just then Leone burst into the room, lusty and radiant. He stopped short when he saw his mother’s face.
‘You have been to see the bad priest again!’ he cried angrily.
‘No, dear, I shall not go to see him again. I have had a great — a great surprise. Papa is coming back soon.’
CHAPTER IX
MARIA DID NOT hesitate, though she felt as if her heart must break with every throbbing beat. Whether Giuliana Parenzo was just or not in telling her that she had not a very delicate conscience, sh
e had at least a strong will and a lasting determination to do what she thought right, which more than made up for the absence of that sensitiveness on which her happier friend laid so much stress.
Until Leone asked her what was the matter, her thoughts whirled in a chaos of pain and darkness, but there was little or no hesitation in her answer to his question. She wished with all her heart that she had put him off until there had been nothing in her face to betray her, and that he might never have connected her too evident distress with the news she had just received. But she had spoken because her mind was made up in that moment, and her determination found words at once; and the child at once hated the man who was coming back.
She was going to accept the proffered reconciliation outright, if it killed her, and she really believed that it might. Her dream of light and peace ended then; she had atoned, perhaps, but that was not enough. Atonement means reconciling, and such a reconciling meant to Maria an expiation more dreadful than she had dreamed of. She remembered only too vividly the material repulsion for Montalto that had grown upon her quickly in the first months of their life together, and she knew that it would be stronger now than it had been then. Yet she must live through it and hide it. To her it seemed inconceivable that he should wish to come back to her at all. The nobler sort of women can never understand that men they dislike can love them, and to be given in marriage to one of them is a torment and feels like an outrage.
Maria meant to bear it all as well as she could. A woman able to dream of such a lofty and spiritual love as had appeared possible to her in a short and unforgettable vision was not one to hesitate at a sacrifice, much less if justice demanded it. In old Jerusalem would she not have been stoned to death? Yet that would have been the quick end of all suffering, whereas Montalto’s return was only the beginning of something much worse.
It is often easier to forgive than to accept forgiveness. After Maria had read her husband’s letter there were times when she wished that all his love for her could be turned into hatred. He might come back then, to show the world a comedy of a reconciliation, though he might frankly detest the sight of her; he might come back and behave to her as he had after she had admitted her guilt, and never speak to her except from necessity, while treating her always with that same formal courtesy he had learned from his Spanish mother. It would have been easy to bear that; it would have been far easier then to live without seeing the man of her heart. But to be taken back to be loved, to be cherished and caressed, to be the instrument of happiness in the life of the husband she had dishonoured, and whose mere presence and slightest touch made her writhe — that was going to be hard indeed. Yet she meant to bear it. In her simple faith she prayed only that it might be counted to her hereafter as a part of her purgatory.
Castiglione received her letter telling him all the truth and bidding him stay where he was, if he could, or at least not try to see her if he were obliged to come to Rome. His first impulse was to ask for leave again, if only for three days, and to go to her at once to implore her to refuse Montalto’s offer, to risk anything rather than let her accept an existence which he knew would be one of misery. He felt and believed that it would kill her.
In some ways the thought of it was even more revolting to him than to her. He had been faithful for years to the memory of the love which he believed he had destroyed in her; but now that all was changed, now that he knew how she loved him, she was his, his very own, far more than she had ever been. He felt, too, that she had really raised him above his old self; that he could really live near her, see her, talk with her, and touch her hand, and love her as he had promised, with no shame, or thought of shame, to her or to himself. Long years of clean living had already made him different from his comrades, and his unchanging will made a law for himself which he had never transgressed. Does the world think that beyond the pale of holy orders, of whatsoever persuasion, there are no men who live as he did, faithful and true to one dear memory to the very end? Sometimes what we call the world seems to know more of its patent evil than of its own hidden good. And where the good is strong and rules a man’s secret life, it may lead him far.
But Castiglione was only human, and his jealousy of Montalto was cruel when it woke again. It had been great in old days, but it was ten times more dangerous now, for it had been long asleep in security and it awoke in anger. Maria had not been his own, but throughout that time no other man had called her his, and now Montalto claimed her, under his right to forgive an injury if he chose, and she was going to submit and surrender herself.
He wrote her a passionate letter, imploring her not to ruin both their lives by giving herself back to her husband, and beseeching her to see him at once that he might tell her all he could not write. If he could not get leave again so soon he would come without, if it cost him a long arrest. Maria was to telegraph her answer, and if no message came within two days he would start, whatever happened. As for declining the exchange he had asked, he could not do that; he would be ordered to join his old regiment in Rome during the next ten days at the latest, and it was impossible that he should not meet her sometimes.
For a moment Maria hesitated, for she felt that he was desperate, and she herself was not far from despair. But something human on which she had never counted helped her a little. If Castiglione came suddenly to Rome, it would be known, and it would surely be said that he had come to see her; if no one else knew it, Teresa Crescenzi surely would, and would tell every one. She thought of Montalto’s letter, telling her that he had known of her quiet life, and that the dignity she had shown had appealed to him. He should not come back now to be told that he had been deceived, and that Castiglione made long journeys expressly to see her. Her pride would not suffer that.
She went out on foot and entered the small telegraph office outside the railway station, for she could not have sent her message by a servant’s hand. She took the ink-crusted pen and a flimsy blank form, and thought of what she should say. The shabby young clerk at the little sliding window would have to read the telegram, and perhaps he knew her by sight. She thought a moment longer, and then wrote a few words: —
‘Impossible. If you really wish to help a person in great distress, be patient. Await letter.’
This looked very cold when it was written, but she thought it would do, and she felt sure that Castiglione would obey her request. At least, he could not leave Milan until he received the letter she was about to write to him.
It reached him on the following evening, and in the tender, beseeching words he read what was worse than a sentence of exile. But he submitted then, for it was as if she spoke to him, and he could hear every tone of her voice in the silence of his room. Since she had taken him back to her heart she dominated him by the nobility of her love, and by her touching trust in his. He read her letter twice, and then burnt it in the empty fireplace, carefully setting a second match to the last white shreds that showed at the edges of the thin black ashes.
‘You are a saint on earth,’ he said to her in his thoughts. ‘You are good enough to make a man believe in God.’
Perhaps he rose one step higher in that moment, for he was in earnest. But it had cost him much. For three days he had kept his valise packed and ready to start at any moment, and he saw it lying in a corner as he turned from the fireplace. Once again the strong temptation came upon him to take it and go downstairs. That would be the irrevocable step, for he knew well enough that if he went so far as that he would not turn back.
His big jaw thrust itself forward rather savagely as he crossed the room, picked up the valise, and set it on a chair to unpack it. When he had put his things away he threw it into a corner, lit a cigar, and sat down by the open window to watch the people in the broad street. He hoped that he might not think for a little while.
There was a knock at the door and his orderly came in with a telegram. He almost started at the sight of the brownish yellowish little square of folded paper in the man’s hand.
‘Join us a
t once to ride in military races on Thursday. War Office telegraphs order exchange to your colonel to-night. Make haste, in order to rest your horses. Welcome back to the regiment. — Casalmaggiore, Colonel.’
Castiglione’s hand dropped upon his knee, holding the open telegram. The orderly stood motionless, stolidly waiting to be sent away. He would have waited in the same position till he dropped, but it seemed a long time before the officer turned his head.
‘Pack everything to-night,’ he said. ‘Telephone in my name to the station and order a box for the horses as far as Pisa, and be ready to start with them by the first train to-morrow. I am to join the Piedmont Lancers in Rome at once. You will spend the night in Pisa to rest the horses, and come on with them the next day. I will attend to your leave and pass. Take what you need for yourself for four days. You will have a day and a night in Rome.’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1142