Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Maria’s hand shrank from the scalding tears and writhed under the man’s frantic kisses. She shut her eyes and threw back her head; her face was drawn and white, and she prayed as she had never prayed in her life, for strength to bear all that was before her.

  It had seemed just possible, because she had imposed it upon herself as her honourable duty, and because the husband she remembered had been before all things proud, and as full of a certain exaggerated dignity and self-respect as Spaniards sometimes are, though he was only half-Spanish. She had felt him coming back to her from far away, like a dark instrument of fate, to which she must give herself up body and mind, if she hoped to expiate her sin to the end. It had seemed hard, even dreadfully hard; but this was worse. Instead of the erect and formal figure and the grave dark face that had a certain strength in it which she could at least respect — instead of that, it was a broken-down man who came to her, prematurely old, a neurasthenic invalid no better than a hysterical woman, palsied with unmanly emotion, lacking all strength, self-respect and dignity, and without even a rag of vanity that might have passed for pride.

  She was not stronger in her hands than other women, but she was sure that it would be easy to throw him from her; he would fall in a heap on the carpet, and would lie there helpless and sobbing. As she felt the instant contempt for his weakness, she prayed the more for courage to humble her own strength to it; and her eyes were still shut tight and her face was white and drawn. This was but the beginning of what must last for years, ten, twenty, as long as he lived, or until she died of it.

  The future stretched out before her in length without end; she forgot everything else, and did not know that the tears ceased to flow and presently dried, nor that Montalto drew back from her into his own chair as the storm subsided within him. His voice woke her from the dream of pain to come.

  ‘I trust you will forgive my first emotion, my dear,’ he said with all his characteristic formality. ‘I see that I have made a painful impression on you. I shall not allow it to occur again.’

  It was such a quick relief to see him more like himself, that she had almost a sensation of pleasure, and she smiled faintly while she tried to say something.

  ‘No — please — I’m so sorry — —’

  She could find no connected sentence. He rose and began to walk up and down before her, making half a dozen steps each way, a shadowy figure in black, passing and repassing before her.

  ‘I believe that I have made everything clear in my letters,’ he said, and then he glanced at her from time to time without pausing in his walk while he talked. ‘I shall not repeat anything I have written, but there are one or two other matters of which I must speak to you before we begin life again together, Maria. They need not be mentioned more than once either. It is better to be done with everything which may be in the least painful to you as soon as possible.’

  In spite of the formal manner, there were kind inflections in his tone. It seemed marvellous that he should have recovered himself so soon, and it was only possible because such exhibitions of weakness were not really natural to him. Maria had felt relieved as soon as he had begun to talk quietly, and when he left his seat, her physical repugnance to him began to subside within its old limits. But at the same time she felt a vague fear that he was going to speak of Leone.

  ‘You have shown remarkable tact, my dear,’ he went on, ‘and you will have no difficulty in making your friends understand that our long separation has been principally due to my mother’s condition, and that since she is gone’ — his voice sank a little— ‘we have resumed our married life. This will be easy, no doubt. May I ask, without indiscretion, who your most intimate friends are?’

  ‘Giuliana Parenzo is my only intimate friend,’ Maria answered at once.

  ‘I am glad of that,’ said Montalto, approving. ‘She is a thoroughly nice woman in all ways, and everybody respects her. Are there any others whom you see often?’

  ‘I have dined a good many times with the Campodonico and the Saracinesca and the Boccapaduli — sometimes with the Trasmondo. I have never gone to balls. On the whole, I have tried to be on friendly terms with most of the people who have children of Leone’s age.’

  She had boldly brought forward the question which she thought he meant to reach, and she waited for his reply. But he would not take it up.

  ‘Leone,’ he repeated, in a musing tone. ‘Friends for Leone. Yes, yes — that was quite right. I will see him by and by.’

  ‘He is waiting to be called,’ said Maria quickly, for she was anxious to get over the difficult moment as soon as possible.

  ‘Presently,’ answered Montalto. ‘I have one or two things to say while we are alone. First, as to your friends, I wish you to understand that even if there are some whom I do not know, they shall all be welcome here. They will be the more welcome because they stood by my wife when she was in trouble.’

  He put a little emphasis on the words, his figure had straightened and he held his head high. She understood the great generosity of what he said.

  ‘Thank you, Diego,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You are very good.’

  ‘There is only one person who shall not come here,’ he continued, in a tone that was suddenly hard.

  Maria almost started, but controlled herself; he could only mean Castiglione.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked, as steadily as she could.

  ‘Teresa Crescenzi,’ answered Montalto, turning rather sharply. ‘I beg you never to receive her. She spoke against my mother, and I will not have her in the house.’

  Maria actually laughed, though a little nervously.

  ‘She is no friend of mine,’ she said. ‘I do not care to see her.’

  ‘You need not quarrel with her, my dear, if you meet. I shall take the responsibility on myself, and I shall be careful to let her know that it is I who forbid her my house.’

  He was not a short man, and when he drew himself up he looked tall. Maria no longer felt that she could throw him to the floor if he took her hand.

  ‘I have not many real friends here now,’ he said, more gently. ‘One whom I especially esteem is Monsignor Saracinesca. Do you ever see him?’

  ‘I saw him not long ago, and I sometimes meet him at his father’s house. We are on good terms.’

  ‘That is very pleasant,’ Montalto answered. ‘I shall often ask him here, if you do not object.’

  ‘I shall always be glad to see him,’ returned Maria. ‘But, please, Diego, do not consult me about such things. I am very deeply conscious of your generosity in all ways, and this house is yours, not mine.’

  ‘It is ours,’ said Montalto, ‘except for Teresa Crescenzi. I do not wish you to think of it in any other way. And that brings me to the last point. May I inquire whether you have found yourself in any — how shall I say? — in any financial straits in which my fortune can be of service to you?’

  You may judge a man of the world’s wisdom by the sort of wife he chooses, but the test of a gentleman is the way he treats his wife. Maria was profoundly touched by her husband’s question. She rose from her seat and went close to him, overcoming her repulsion easily for the moment as she took his hand and spoke.

  ‘No, I have made no debts. But I have no words to thank you for your kindness. I shall try to deserve it.’

  ‘It is only what I owe to my wife,’ Montalto answered, and he bent over her hand with as much ceremony as if there had been twenty people in the room.

  ‘I have something to tell you, too,’ she said. ‘You ought to know it. Baldassare del Castiglione has come back to Rome. We have met alone, and we have agreed never to see each other again — except as we may chance to find ourselves in a friend’s house at the same time.’

  Montalto could not help dropping her hand as soon as she pronounced Castiglione’s name, but his face changed little.

  ‘I daresay you were wise to see him once,’ he replied, a trifle coldly. ‘We need not refer to him again.’

  She could no
t have expected more than that, but when he had answered she was a little sorry that she had spoken at all. He would willingly have trusted her without that explanation.

  With an evident wish to change the subject, he began to ask questions about the apartment, inquiring how she liked it, and whether she had found Schmidt efficient in carrying out her wishes.

  ‘Very,’ she answered to the last question. ‘He is a wonderful man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Montalto assented coldly, ‘in some ways he is an extraordinary young man.’

  There was something more reserved in the tone than in the words, but Maria was very far from being intimate enough with her husband yet to ask whether Schmidt had any fault or weakness that justified his master’s evident doubts about him. She wondered what the trouble might be.

  ‘Shall we go and see Leone now?’ Montalto suggested. ‘On the way you can show me what you have done to the house. You have not ruined me in furniture,’ he added with a smile, as he looked round the rather empty drawing-room.

  ‘I left as much as possible to you,’ Maria answered.

  She was thinking of Leone, and she already saw before her the sturdy little blue-eyed boy with his thick and short brown hair. They went on through the house to the door of Maria’s boudoir, at the end of the great ball-room.

  ‘That is where I have installed myself,’ she said, pointing to it and turning to the left, towards the masked door that led to the living rooms in the other wing.

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ answered Montalto. ‘And this is your dressing-room, I suppose,’ he added as they walked on. ‘And this used to be your bedroom.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maria steadily. ‘That is the door of my bedroom.’

  Leone’s was the next, and in a moment they were standing in a flood of afternoon light, and Maria bent down and kissed the small boy’s hair because he would not turn up his cheek to her, being very intent on examining Montalto’s face. But Maria dared not look at her husband just then.

  ‘Here we are at last, dear,’ she said as well as she could, still bending over him.

  To some extent she could trust the child’s manners, for she had brought him up herself, but her heart beat fast during the little silence before Montalto spoke, and she wondered what his tone would be much more than what he was going to say, for she felt sure that the words would not be unkind.

  Montalto held out his hand, and Leone took it slowly. He had never been kissed by a man, and did not imagine that his newly-introduced papa could be expected to kiss him. This was fortunate, for Montalto had not the least intention of doing so.

  ‘Can you ride yet?’ he asked, with a smile.

  ‘No,’ Leone answered, but his face changed instantly. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I will teach you, my boy, and as soon as you can trot and gallop nicely you shall have a good horse of your own.’

  Leone flushed with pleasure, a healthy red that was good to see.

  ‘Oh, how splendid!’ he cried, and his blue eyes lit up with happiness. ‘Really, really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘When shall I begin?’

  ‘To-morrow morning.’

  ‘Hurrah!’ yelled the small boy. ‘At last!’

  Maria could have cried out too, or laughed, or burst into tears from sheer relief. Montalto had unconsciously received one of those happy inspirations which turn the mingling currents of meeting lives; and Leone was already astride of a stick, prancing round the room on an imaginary horse, shouting out the tune of the Italian royal march and sabring the air to right and left with the first thing he happened to pick up. It chanced to be the tooth-brush with which he had been polishing his tin gun.

  Montalto looked pleased, and Leone pranced towards him on the stick and pretended to rein in a fiery steed before his papa, saluting with the tooth-brush sabre in correct cavalry fashion.

  ‘Viva Papa!’ he bawled. ‘Viva Papa!’

  Montalto, who rarely smiled, could not help laughing now. Maria could hardly believe her senses, for she had dreaded most of all moments the one in which the two were to meet. But now her husband suddenly looked younger. He was thin, indeed, to the verge of emaciation, his hands were shrunken and transparent, his beard was quite grey, his eyes were hollow; but there was no feverish fire in them, his face was not colourless, and there was life in his movements. Maria wondered whether it were humanly possible that he should not only be kind to her child but should actually like him, and perhaps love him some day.

  At all events what had happened had made it easier for her than she had dared to expect, and though nothing could efface the painful impression of her meeting with him, what had now taken place certainly made a great difference.

  During dinner he talked quietly about Rome and politics and old friends, and if she saw his eyes fixed upon her now and then with an expression that made her nervous, there was still the broad table between them, and he looked away almost directly.

  Afterwards he smoked Spanish cigarettes, taking them to pieces and rolling them again in thin French paper, and he went on talking; but as the hour advanced he said less and less, and his cigarette went out very often, till at last he rose, saying that it was late, and he kissed her hand ceremoniously and left her.

  ‘Good-night,’ she said, just before he disappeared through the door.

  He bent his head a little but did not answer.

  An hour later she had dismissed her maid and sat in a small easy-chair in her boudoir under a shaded light; she was trying to read, in the hope of growing sleepy. She wore a thin silk dressing-gown, wide open at the throat and showing a little simple white lace; her dark hair was taken up in a loose knot rather low down at the back of her neck, as she had always done it at bedtime ever since she had been a young girl. Her bare feet were half hidden in a pair of rather shabby little grey velvet slippers without heel or heel-piece, for the spring night was warm. She was trying to read.

  She thought some one knocked softly at the door; she started in her chair and dropped the book, while her hand went up to her throat to gather the silk folds and hide the lace underneath. She could not speak.

  Another knock, quite distinct this time, and followed by a question in her husband’s voice.

  ‘May I come in?’

  An instant’s pause, and she closed her eyes to say two words.

  ‘Come in.’

  PART II. THE COUNTESS OF MONTALTO

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE ROMANS APPROVED of Montalto’s return. The reason why any civilised society continues to exist is that the majority of decent people look upon marriage seriously, and consider it as a permanent bond, spiritual or legal, or both. In such conservative countries as admit divorce, the respectable part of society looks upon it as a last resource in extreme cases, and no sensible citizen should regard it as anything else. When it has taken place, the society to which the two divorced persons belong decides which of them was in the right, and that one is received as cordially as ever; the other is treated coldly, and is sometimes turned out.

  But there is no divorce law in Italy, and a civil marriage is as indissoluble in the eyes of the Italian state as a religious one is under the rules of the Catholic Church. There is such a thing as separation by law, but it gives neither party a right to marry again; it concerns the administration of property and the guardianship of children, but nothing else, and the parties may agree to unite again without any further ceremony.

  Maria and her husband had never gone through the form of being legally separated, though they had taken towards each other the relative positions of separated husband and wife. Maria’s sufficient independent fortune enabled her to decline any subsidy from Montalto, and she had quitted his house after he left her; she had also kept the child. The two had voluntarily placed themselves where the law would probably have placed them, and society had been grateful to Montalto for having avoided the open scandal of any legal procedure against his wife; the more so, as it had chosen to take Maria’s side, on the principle
that absent friends are always in the wrong.

  But society was very glad to consider both Montalto and his wife in the right, now that he had come back quietly, at the very end of a season; and no objections were raised against the perfectly innocent fiction of his having stayed away from Rome many years to take care of his mother. It was a satisfaction to see such an important couple reconciled again and living peaceably together; everybody had something to repent of in life, and most people had something to conceal; Maria had repented and Montalto had covered up the spot on his honour, with as much tact and dignity as were respectively consistent with a stained escutcheon and a contrite heart; and it was really much more proper that Maria di Montalto, whose husband was an authentic Count of the Empire, should live in the great palace, instead of in a little apartment in the Via San Martino, and should drive in a big carriage behind a pair of huge black horses, in the shadow of tremendously imposing mourning liveries, than go about in a small phaeton drawn by a pair of hired nags, or even in a little brougham with one horse and no footman at all, as she had sometimes been seen to do; it was much more proper and appropriate. Why should any one make a fuss because a small boy called Leone Silani di Montalto had blue eyes instead of brown or black ones? Was it admissible that not one of the Montalto ancestors, since the First Crusade, should have had blue eyes, to account for Leone’s? Was nature to be allowed no latitude in such little matters? And so forth; and so on; and more to the same effect, and to the credit of Diego, Maria, and Leone di Montalto, happily reunited in their own home. These things were said without a smile by such excellent elderly people as the Princess Campodonico and the Duchess of Trasmondo, the good and beautiful old Princess Saracinesca, the whole Boccapaduli family, and all the secondary social luminaries which reflect the light of the great fixed ones round which they revolve. There had been a conspicuous gap at the banquet of the Roman Olympians for years; it was once more filled by those who had a right to it, and everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, as Candide’s tutor was the first to observe. So far as the Montalto family was concerned, the truth of the assertion was amply proved by the fact that Montalto himself was teaching Leone to ride, in the Villa Borghese. Three or four times a week you might meet him there in the early morning hours on a wonderful Andalusian mare he had brought from Spain, with the boy at his side, red in the face, fearless, and perfectly happy on a pony with a leading rein.