Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  She was sure of herself, she thought, and she believed she had earned the right to receive Castiglione once again, because she was bravely resolved never to see him alone after she returned to her husband’s house. That resolution had formed itself at the instant when she had told Leone that Montalto was coming back, and she had not wavered in it since, in spite of what she had felt when he had brought her the fallen parasol in the Villa. The greatest and most enduring resolutions in life are rarely made after mature consideration, still less at those times of spiritual exaltation which are too often self-suggested, and sought for the sake of a half-sensuous, half-mysterious agitation of the nerves that is far from healthy. People who are not morbid and are in great trouble generally see the right course rather suddenly and unexpectedly; if they are good they follow it, if they are bad they do not, but if they attempt a careful and subtle examination of conscience they often come to grief. It is hopeless to analyse processes in which conscience and mind are involved together until we can find a constant coefficient for humanity’s ever-varying strength and weakness.

  During more than a month Maria had acted and thought under the domination of one idea; she had need of strength, but she had not felt the want of advice or help. She knew better than the harsh old Capuchin, better even than Monsignor Saracinesca, what she must do, and as for help, no living man or woman could have given her any, unless it were Castiglione himself. She had accepted what was laid upon her, and when she went at early morning to kneel at the altar rail in the small oratory, she prayed for strength and for nothing else.

  So far it had come to her and had borne her through more than any one who knew her could have guessed; and when she sent for Castiglione, to see him once more and for the last time, she was far from thinking that she did so from any weakness. It seemed only just, for no man could have acted more honourably and courageously than he, and he had a right to know from her own lips what she meant to do.

  He came, knowing what was before him, and meaning to do what he could to spare her all pain and useless emotion. More and more often now he called her a saint in his thoughts, and his love for her was sometimes very like veneration.

  She had taken care that Leone should not be in the house that afternoon, not because she had any thought of concealing Castiglione’s visit from the child, but out of consideration for the man himself. She knew only too well what he felt when he saw the boy’s blue eyes and his short and thick brown hair.

  He came in civilian’s dress, lest his brilliant uniform should attract attention from a distance as he entered the house where she lived. His hand met hers quietly and the two lovers looked into each other’s earnest eyes. By a common impulse they sat down in the places they had generally taken when they had met in the same room before, on opposite sides of the empty fireplace.

  ‘I know why you have sent for me,’ began Baldassare, very gently. ‘May I try to tell you? It may be a little easier.’

  Maria did not attempt to speak for a few moments, and he waited.

  ‘No,’ she said at last, quite steadily. ‘You could not tell me just what I have to say to you. I asked you to come because you have been so very brave, so very generous — —’

  She choked a little, but recovered herself quickly.

  ‘It is only just that I should tell you so before we say good-bye,’ she went on. ‘I knew I could trust you — but oh, I did not know how much!’

  ‘I have only tried to do my duty,’ he answered.

  ‘You have done it like the brave man you are,’ said Maria.

  ‘Please — —’ he spoke to interrupt her.

  ‘Yes,’ she went on, not heeding him. ‘We may not meet again, we two, alone like this. One of us may die before that is possible. So I shall say all that is in my thoughts, if I can. You most know all, you must understand all, even if it hurts very much. My husband is going to take me back altogether; he has forgiven me; he asks me to be his wife again. Can I refuse?’

  She had not meant to put the question to him, and he knew that she expected no answer. Her tone showed that. But he would not let her think that in his heart he rebelled against the knife.

  ‘No,’ he said very slowly. ‘I would not have you refuse what he asks. It would be neither right nor just.’

  In spite of the almost intolerable pain she was suffering, a glow of wonder rose in her eyes; and there was no shadow of doubt to dim it. At his worst, in the old days, he had always told the truth.

  ‘God bless you for that!’ she cried suddenly, and then her voice dropped low. ‘You have travelled far on the good road since we last talked together,’ she said. ‘Further than I.’

  He shook his head gravely.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘You have led me, and I have followed.’

  ‘We have journeyed together,’ she said, ‘though we have been apart. We may be separated, as we must be now, to the end, but we cannot be divided any more. I wanted to tell you something else too, this last time, and you have made it easy to say it, and altogether right. It is this. I do not take back one word of what I said to you and wrote to you before I knew Montalto was coming home. I do not want you to think that I have changed my mind, or that the life we were going to lead seems to me now one little bit less good and true and honourable than it seemed to me that first time we talked together here.’

  ‘Do you think I doubted you for a moment?’

  ‘You might. But it is only that other things have changed. We have not, and I know we never shall, and in the end we are to meet where there is peace, and somehow it will be right then, and we shall all three understand that it is. Can you believe that too?’

  ‘I wish to. I shall try to. If anything could make a man believe in God, it is the love of such a woman as you are.’

  ‘You have my love,’ Maria answered. ‘And some day you will believe as I do, but in your own way, and we shall be together where there are no partings. Yes, I am sure that we could have lived as we meant to, and could have helped each other to rise higher and higher, far above these dying bodies of ours. But we shall reach the good end more quickly by our suffering than we ever could by our happiness.’

  ‘That may be,’ said Castiglione, ‘but one thing is far more certain: we must part now, cost what it may.’

  ‘Cost what it may!’ She pressed her hands to her eyes and was silent a little while.

  ‘Has he spoken of Leone in his letters?’ Castiglione asked after a time, in a tone that was almost timid.

  Maria dropped her hands upon her knees at once and met his look.

  ‘Not to me,’ she answered. ‘But he gave orders about the child’s room to the steward he sent from Montalto. Everything was to be arranged for Leone just as I wished. That was all.’

  ‘Will he be kind to the boy, do you think?’ asked Castiglione, very low.

  ‘I know he will try to be,’ Maria answered generously.

  That was her greatest cause for fear in the future; it was the stumbling-block she saw in the way of Montalto’s wish to take her back; but although he might treat the boy coldly, and avoid seeing him, and insist that he should be sent away to a school as soon as he was old enough, she believed that her husband would be just, and she was sure she should leave him if he were not. There was one sacrifice which should not be exacted of her: she would not tamely submit to see her child ill-treated. At that she would rebel, and she would be dangerous for any man to face.

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated, ‘I know he will try to be kind.’

  Castiglione merely nodded and said nothing, but Maria saw his looks; and she was not all a saint yet, for with the sight came the thrill of fierce elemental motherhood, rejoicing in the strength of the man who could kill. There was nothing very saintly about that, and she knew it.

  ‘We must not think of such things,’ she said, as she felt the deep vibrations grow faint and die away. ‘Let us take it for granted that my husband will be very just. That is all I have a right to ask of him.’

  Again Cas
tiglione bent his head in assent. Then both were silent for a long time.

  ‘Am I never to know anything of your life after this?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘You will know what every one may know,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing more? Only to hear that you are ill or well? Never to be told whether he really does what he can to make it bearable for you? May I not have news of you sometimes? Through Giuliana Parenzo, for instance? Is it to be always outer darkness?’

  ‘Giuliana will know what you all will know, and no more,’ Maria answered. ‘If I must not tell you what I suffer, do you think I would tell her? I shall not tell myself!’ There was one bitter note in that phrase. ‘You will always know something that no one else can,’ she went on, and her voice softened. ‘And so shall I, and that must be enough for us. Is it so little?’

  ‘Ah, no! It is all of us two that really lives!’

  She heard the deeper tone of rising passion not far away, and she interrupted him.

  ‘It is all I shall have for the rest of my life,’ she said, and she rose suddenly and held out her hand, meaning that it was time to part.

  ‘Already?’ he asked, not leaving his seat yet, and looking up beseechingly.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You must not stay. We have told each other what had to be said, and to say more would not be right. Less would not have been just to you.’

  He also had risen now and stood before her, meaning to be as brave as she, cost what it might.

  ‘We are only human,’ she went on, ‘only a man and a woman alone together, and if I let you stay longer this one last time, there may be some word, some look, between us that we shall regret. Though Diego is not here yet, I became his wife again in real truth on the day I accepted his forgiveness; and as his wife, no word to you shall pass my lips that he might not hear. We have tried to do right, you and I; if we have not failed altogether, God help us to do better! If we did wrong in those few sweet days, then God pardon us! I thank you from my soul for being brave and true when you might have dragged me down. For the past we have forgiven each other, as we hope to be forgiven. And so good-bye. I would bless you, if I dared; I can ask a blessing for you, and it will come; I am sure it will. If I die first, I shall wait for you somewhere, and you will come. If you are taken before me, wait for me! Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!’

  Her voice was sweet and steady to the very end, but when he took her hand at last it was cold, and it quivered in his. He began to lift it to his lips, but it resisted him gently, and he obeyed its resistance.

  ‘Good-bye,’ he said, as well as he could.

  But she hardly heard the syllables; and then, in a moment, he was gone.

  CHAPTER XII

  THE DAY HAD come, and Maria was waiting alone for her husband in one of the great rooms of the Palazzo Montalto. She had told Leone that she would send for him when he was wanted, and he was thoughtfully consoling himself for not being allowed to stay with her by polishing the barrel of his tin rifle with his tooth-brush and tooth powder, and he had the double satisfaction of seeing the gun shine beautifully and of making the hated instrument useless for its proper purpose. And meanwhile he wondered what his papa would be like, and whether he should always hate him.

  But Maria walked restlessly up and down the drawing-room, and her head felt a little light. Now and then she stopped near one of the open windows and listened for the sound of wheels below and looked at her watch; and when she saw that it was still early, she breathed more freely at first and sat down, trying to rest and collect herself; but it was like thinking of resting ten minutes before execution, and she rose almost directly and began to walk again.

  In her deep mourning she looked smaller and slighter in the great room than in the simpler surroundings she had left. She had indeed grown a little thinner of late, but she was not ill, nor even as tired as she had expected to be at the crucial moment. The people who feel most are not those whose nerves go to pieces in trouble, and who get absolute rest then by the doctor’s orders; they are more often those who are condemned to bear much, for the very reason that they cannot break down. In the age of torture the weak fainted or died and felt no more, but the strong were conscious and suffered to the end, and that was very long in coming. Yet no one ever pities the strong people.

  Leone had told his mother that the white patch in her hair near her left temple had grown so much larger of late that three of his fingers only just covered it, and he had kindly offered to ink it for her; and she was somewhat thinner and a little paler than she had been a month earlier. But that was all there was to show that she had lived through weeks of distress. Montalto would scarcely notice the white lock at first, and her figure looked a shade more perfect for being slighter. She had never been a beauty, but she had more grace and charm than ever, and she was only seven-and-twenty. Giuliana Parenzo was much handsomer, but few men would have hesitated between her and Maria, who had that nameless something in every easy movement, in every lingering smile, in each soft tone of her warm voice, that wakes the man in men, as early spring stirs the life in the earth, deep down and out of sight. She did not understand what she had, and for years she had lived so much away from the lighter side of her own world that she had almost forgotten how the men used to gather round her and crowd upon each other instinctively to come nearer to her in the first year of her marriage, as they never did for Giuliana. She used to notice it then, and she had a laugh and a quick answer for each that showed no preference for any, and maddened them all till they were almost ready to quarrel with each other; but she had been very young then, and she had not understood, till one more reckless than the rest, the very one she trusted too much because she loved him only and too well, had laid waste for ever her fair young being, half-wrecked his own life, and broken the heart of an honest man.

  And this honest man had forgiven her, for love of her; he too, and he more than any, had felt that her smile, and her breath, and her touch could drive him mad; and now that he was coming back, the minutes were passing quickly — a very few were left — still fewer — the last but one — the very last, as she heard his carriage roll in through the great arched entrance almost directly under her feet.

  The doors were open beyond the drawing-room towards the ante-chamber; one door only was shut between that and the outer hall where the butler and footmen in deep mourning were waiting for their master.

  She heard it opened, a once familiar voice asked in a formal tone where she was, and a servant answered. Then came the well-remembered step. In the painful tension of her hearing she heard it far away, even on the soft carpet, more clearly than she had ever heard it on tiled floor or marble pavement.

  She steadied herself for a moment against the corner of a heavy table; and then the drawing-room door, which had been open, was shut, and Montalto was in the room, grey and hollow-eyed, coming towards her with thin hands outstretched in greeting. By a miracle of strength she went forward and met them with her own; met his eyes, and let him kiss her. She sank into a chair then, and he was close beside her, trying to speak in his old formal way, though he could hardly control his voice.

  He seemed dreadfully changed, and when she saw him clearly a sharp pang of pity wrung her heart. His hair and pointed beard were quite grey, his colourless cheeks were painfully thin, and his hollow eyes burned with a feverish fire; he stopped speaking suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, as if he were paralysed, and his lips were parched, but his burning gaze did not waver from her face. She was a little frightened.

  ‘You are ill!’ she cried. ‘Let me get you something!’

  She half rose, but his thin hand caught her and held her back.

  ‘No,’ he said hoarsely, ‘I am not ill. It is only that — that I have not — seen you — for so long!’

  The words came in gasps; the last ones broke out in a frantic sob. She was moved, and willing to be touched, and though she had felt the old physical repulsion for him again the instant he came near her, she took one of his hand
s now and held it on her knees and stroked it kindly.

  ‘Diego!’

  She did not know what to say, so she pronounced his name as softly and as affectionately as she could. But she had not spoken yet, and at the sound of her sweet voice the man broke down completely.

  ‘Oh, Maria, Maria!’ he moaned, drawing her hand to his chest and rocking himself a little. ‘It was all a dreadful dream — and I have got you back again — Maria — —’

  The over-strained, over-wrenched nerves gave way and he broke into a flood of tears; the drops ran down the furrows of his thin cheeks and his grey beard and wet her hand as he pressed passionate kisses upon it, rocking himself over it and sobbing convulsively.

  Maria had lived through a good deal of suffering and some moments that now seemed too horrible to have been real, but she had never had any emotion forced upon her from without that had been harder to bear calmly than what she felt now.

  If anything could strengthen the physical repulsion that made her shrink from her husband’s touch it was the sight of his unmanly tears and the sound of his hysterical sobbing. If anything could make it more difficult to hide her loathing it was the knowledge that she had wronged him and that she owed him gratitude for his free forgiveness. She would much rather have had him turn upon her like a maniac and strike her than be obliged to watch the painful heaving of his thin, bent shoulders, and feel the hot tears that ran down upon her hands.

  It was so unutterably disgusting that she felt a terribly strong impulse to throw him off, to scream out that she would not take his forgiveness at any price, that he must let her go back and lead her own life with her child, as she had lived for so many years. He would suffer a little more, but what was a little more or less to a man who seemed half mad?

  Then the wave of pity rushed back, and that was even worse. It was the pity a delicate woman feels for some wretched living thing half killed in an accident, so crushed and torn that the mere thought of touching it makes her shrink back and shiver to her very feet because the suffering creature is not her own. If it were hers but ever so little, if it were her dog, she would feel nothing but the instant womanly need of saving it if she could, of helping it to die easily if she could not.