Chapter 22

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXII

Taquisara, almost for the first time in his life, did not know how to act, but in accepting Veronica's invitation he felt that he could really be of use to Gianluca, and he saw how unbendingly determined the young princess was that he should stay. He had very good reasons for not staying, but they were of such a nature that he could not explain them to her. He had the power, he thought, to leave Muro at a moment's notice, and in yielding to Veronica's insistence, he was only submitting, as a gentleman should, in small matters, rather than engage in a contest of will with a woman. Yet he knew the matter was neither small nor indifferent, when he gave way to her, and afterwards.

Gianluca appeared at the dinner hour and reached the dining-room with his friend's help. He was placed on Veronica's left, in consideration of being an invalid, though Taquisara should have been there, according to Italian laws of precedence. Veronica had insisted that Don Teodoro should come, at all events on this first evening. She did not choose that the learned old priest should be merely the companion of her loneliness; and besides, she knew that his presence would probably prevent the Duca and Duchessa from returning to the question of her solitary mode of life. She was also willing to let them see that the humble curate was a man of the world.

It was a day of surprises for the old couple, and their manners were hard put to it to conceal their astonishment at the way in which Veronica dined. They were, indeed, accustomed to a singular simplicity in the country, and to country dishes, as almost all the more old-fashioned Italians are, but in the whole course of their highly and rigidly aristocratic lives they had never been waited on by two women in plain black frocks and white aprons. The Duca, indeed, found some consolation in the delicious mountain trout, the tender lamb, the perfect salad, and the fine old malvoisie, for he liked good things and appreciated them; but the Duchessa's nature was more austerely indifferent to the taste of what she ate, while her love of established law insisted with equal austerity that any food, good or bad, should be brought before her in a certain way, by a certain number of men, arrayed in coats of a certain cut, and shaven till their faces shone like marble. In a measure, it was a slight upon her dignity, she thought, that Veronica should let her be served by waitresses. On the other hand, she reflected upon the conversation which had taken place at tea, and was forced to admit that she had then discovered the only theory on which she could accept Veronica's anomalous position, and conscientiously remain in the house. Either she must look upon the castle of Muro and its inhabitants as a sort of semi-religious community of women, or else, in her duty to the world, and the station to which she had always belonged, she must raise her voice in protests, loud and many. For many reasons, she did not wish to insist too much, and she did her best to seem indifferent, keeping her arguments before her mind while she ate. The chief of them was, indeed, that she clung desperately to the hope of a marriage; but in her heart there was something else, and she knew that she was afraid of Veronica. It seemed ridiculous, but it was true. And her husband was even more afraid of the dominating young princess than she. They never acknowledged the fact to each other, when they exchanged moralities, and discussed Veronica, but each was afraid, and suspected the other of similar cowardice.

The Duchessa did her best to seem indifferent; but now and then, when one of the women changed her plate, or poured something into her glass, she could not help slowly looking round, with an air of bewilderment, as though expecting to see a man in livery at her elbow.

As for Gianluca, Veronica had described in her letters the way in which she lived; and Taquisara's face more often betrayed amusement than surprise at what he saw in the world. On the present occasion, having accepted the situation into which his affection for his friend had led him, he had accepted it altogether, and behaved as though he were at a dinner party in Naples, cheerfully making conversation, telling amazing stories of brigandage in Sicily, asking Veronica questions about the surrounding country, and giving such scraps of news about mutual friends as his letters had recently brought him.

Veronica had never seen the man under such circumstances, and she was surprised by his readiness and by his ability to help her in a rather difficult situation. He said nothing which she could compare with what Gianluca wrote. He never spoke of himself, and she did not afterwards remember that he had made any very brilliant observation; and yet, when dinner was over, she wished to hear him talk more, just as she had once longed to hear him say again the things he had said to her for Gianluca's sake in Bianca's garden. She had never met any one who seemed to have such a decided personality, without the slightest apparent desire to assert it. Instinctively, as women know such things, she felt that he was a very manly man, very simple and brave, and vain, if at all, with the sort of vanity which well becomes a soldierly character--the little touch of willing recklessness that easily stirs woman's admiration. What women hate most, next to cowardice, is, perhaps, the caution of the very experienced brave man--and they hate it all the more because they cannot despise it with any show of reason.

Gianluca was silently happy, perfectly satisfied to hear Veronica's voice, to watch the face he loved, and to feel that between her and him there was something which no one knew. When they spoke, there was a little constraint on both sides; but when they were silent, the bond was instantly renewed. In silence and in imagination, they were writing to each other the impressions of which they would not speak. Gianluca was telling her how grateful he was to her for insisting that Taquisara should stay, after all, and was pointing out to her that his friend was bravely bearing the burden of a conversation which kept his father and mother from prosing about the necessity of a companion for Veronica. Veronica was replying that Taquisara was more agreeable than she had expected, but that if he had been as silent as the Sphinx, or as noisy as Alexander the Coppersmith, she would have pressed him to stay because he was her friend's friend. There was a good deal about Taquisara in their imaginary correspondence.

But both felt a little more constraint, when they talked, than they had ever felt before, for both knew that on the morrow, or on the next day, at the latest, they were sure to be alone together,--quite alone,--for the first time; and they wondered whether the curious duality of their acquaintance and intimacy by word and by letter could be maintained hereafter, or whether it would suddenly resolve itself into a unity in the shape of a friendship in which they should speak to each other as they wrote.

They knew that something of the sort must happen. The Duca and his wife would certainly not stand sentry from morning till night over the young people, when they themselves so ardently desired the marriage; and Taquisara was not the man to be in the way when he was not wanted. It would be in Veronica's power to put off the meeting, if she chose to do so; but she knew, and Gianluca guessed, that she would not. Whatever society might say about it, she had assumed the position and the independence of a married woman, and had gone further than married women of her age would generally have the courage to go. To hesitate now, and to draw back from the possibility of being left alone with any one of her guests, would be absurd. She would not seek the interview, nor she would not do anything to avoid it. But she did not wish to be forced into the necessity of talking alone with Taquisara, if it could be helped. She was sure, though she had forgiven him, and liked him better than before, that she should certainly quarrel with him, though she did not know why there should be any further disagreement between them.

Possibly she recognized in him a will less despotic than her own, but quite as unbending when he chose to exercise it. The certainty of strong opposition, which is fear in cowards, becomes combativeness in brave people, and the fighting instinct takes the place of the inclination to run away. But Veronica had no further reason for quarrelling with Taquisara; and because she liked him, she determined to avoid him as much as possible, lest at the very first point of difference in conversation there should be war between them about some insignificant matter perfectly indifferent to both.

Her guests went to bed early. While Gianluca was before her, Veronica had not retained the impression she had received from Taquisara, that her friend was a doomed man. Her own vitality lent the sure certainty of life, in her imagination, to those about her. He was faint and tired from the journey, of course, but he was by no means the utterly helpless invalid she had expected to see, and she had not believed, so long as she could watch him, that he was in mortal danger. But when she was in her own room, his face came back to her, a pale shade out of dark shadow, and she saw the hollows about his deep blue eyes, his thin, bluish temples, his transparent features, and his emaciated throat, that seemed to have fallen away under his white ears. She was so suddenly and violently disturbed by the recollection that she spoke to Elettra of him. The woman had seen him go by when the party had arrived.

"Do you think that Don Gianluca looks very ill?" Veronica asked.

"Excellency--" the maid hesitated. "I wish that all may live--but he seems a dead man."

Veronica said nothing, but it was long before she got to sleep that night, and the vision of his face came again and again to her, pale, haggard, haunting, distressing her exceedingly. She rose even earlier than usual.

She did not mean that the presence of her guests should interfere with what had now become a connected work, to interrupt which would be an injury to the whole and an injustice to the people who had learned to expect it of her, looking for more, as she gave them more, and turning to her in every difficulty. But for the arrival of the party on the previous afternoon she would have gone down to an outlying farm in the valley, where the farmhouse needed repairs and there was a question of cutting down a number of olive trees so old that they hardly bore any fruit. She had ordered her mare at half-past seven in the morning, and she rode down the long, winding road, saw, judged, and gave orders, galloped most of the way up, and exchanged her riding-habit for her morning frock before the clock struck ten.

One after another, her guests appeared, and everything happened as she had foreseen. The old couple said that they were accustomed to take a little walk before the midday meal, for the sake of their appetite; Taquisara disappeared when he had helped Gianluca to a big chair in a balcony, in the shade, outside the drawing-room, and Gianluca was left alone with her, as she had expected. She established herself opposite to him, for the balcony was so narrow that two chairs could not be placed upon it side by side.

It was a magnificent summer's day, one of those days in which the whole glory of the south fills heaven and earth and air, and the stupendous tide of universal life pours into every sense, to very overflowing, as the ocean fills its world-wide bed. And the world was ripe and ripening, the corn and wheat, and olive and vine, and fruit and flower and tree, from the rich valley below, up the rough hills, as far as sun and soil and rain could draw the dress of beauty over the mountains' grand bare strength. Down there, in the vast garden, the hot air quivered with sheer living; above, the solemn peaks faced God in the still sun. The breath of the high breeze, between earth and heaven, blew upon Veronica's cheek.

They looked at each other and sat silent, and looked again and smiled, both happy in those ever-written, never-spoken thoughts which were theirs together, both fearing speech as a common thing which must jar and shake them rudely back to their other selves, which were formal, and constrained, and not at all intimate.

Gianluca lay quite still in his deep chair, his white hands motionless upon the edge of the grey shawl which was thrown over his knees. Suddenly, Veronica, sitting close and opposite to him, bent far forward and gently laid her hand upon one of his. She smiled.

"I am glad that you are here," she said simply, looking into his face.

His own brightened, and the blue eyes grew dark and tender, while her hand lingered a second.

"How good you are to me!" he exclaimed, in a low voice. "How endlessly good!"

She was still smiling as she withdrew her hand and leaned back in her chair once more. A little pause followed, during which both were quite happy, in different ways--he, perhaps, in all ways at once, and she, because she felt she had broken through something like a sheet of ice by a mere gesture and half a dozen words, when it had seemed so hard to do.

"No," she said thoughtfully, at last. "It is not a question of goodness. I am natural--that is all. I do not believe that many people are. And we had got into an absurd position, you and I!" She laughed, looking at him. "We could write, but we could not speak. We each knew what the other was thinking of, and yet, somehow, neither of us could say what we thought. Was it not as I say?"

"Yes." Gianluca laughed, too, very faintly because he was weak, though he was so happy.

"It could not last," Veronica continued, "and I am glad it is over. For it is over, is it not? We can talk quite frankly now. Last night, for instance. I am sure I know what you were thinking about."

"About Taquisara? At dinner?"

"Of course. He is so much more agreeable than I expected, and I am so glad that I made him stay. And then, last night, too--did you see how your mother looked at the serving-woman, expecting to see the butler? It was so natural. It was just what I should have done in her place, and I could hardly keep from laughing."

"My dear old mother is not used to such surprises," answered Gianluca. "Of course I saw it, and knew that you did."

"Yes--but do you not think that I am quite right?" asked Veronica, her tone changing suddenly as she seemed to appeal to him for support--she, who needed so little from anybody.

"Of course you are," he answered promptly.

He felt unaccountably flattered and pleased by the mere fact of her asking him the question. He felt instinctively that she had never asked any one's opinion about her conduct, and that she really desired his approval. She, on her part, was perhaps glad to speak freely at last about the position she had assumed. If he had called her rash just then, she would not have answered him as she had answered Don Teodoro when he had used the same word.

"You see," she said, "I am not like other women. I was brought up in a convent, like most of them, but the rest of my life has been quite different. Well--you know, if any one does. I used to write you all about what I meant to do while I was still living with Bianca, and you know that I have begun to carry out most of my ideas. Yesterday afternoon, while you were resting, your father and mother and I had tea together, and she found out for the first time that I had no companion. You should have seen her face! And then, when I tried to explain, she got the impression at once that I meant to live here in a sort of amateur convent, surrounded by women. I think she rather liked the idea. It seemed to settle her disturbed prejudices a little. Of course--it must seem stranger to people who all live in the same way as she does. Oh! how glad I am that we can talk about it, you and I!"

Again she laughed happily. To Gianluca, as his eyes met hers, it seemed as though a great wave of the huge, exuberant life that filled the full-blossoming world that day had rolled up out of the broad valley to his feet and were lifting him and penetrating him and sweeping its hot tide through the ebb of his failing blood.

"Yes," he answered her. "To be able to talk at last--at last, after so much waiting, that was only half talking."

He sighed gently, and his hand stroked the grey shawl on his knees, smoothing it first in one way and then backwards in the other. She watched him, and thought that she had never seen a hand so thin.

"We shall never go back to the old way, shall we?" he asked, before she spoke again.

"I hope not!" she answered. "It was so absurd, sometimes. Do you remember at Bianca's house--"

"The night before you left? When I forgot my stick?"

"Yes; but before that. You seemed to think that there was to be no more writing because I was coming here."

"Of course--that is, I supposed that it might make a difference--"

"And then you asked me. You should have seen your face! I can remember it now. It changed all at once."

"It is no wonder. You changed the whole future with one word. You seemed really to want my letters much more than I had imagined that you did."

As by the quick lifting of a dividing veil, all the awkward little incidents and memories of constraint had suddenly become parts of the much larger and more pleasant recollection of their semi-secret intimacy, and in blending with the broader picture the little ones somehow ceased to have anything disagreeable in them, and instead, there was a touch of humour and a suggestion of laughter each time that they compared what they had said and done with what they had written and felt. It was no wonder that the fascination grew on Gianluca with every dancing beat of the happy man's pulse.

They talked on, and in the way she talked Veronica showed that while her character had grown in three-quarters of a year from girlhood to womanhood, and from womanhood to the half-imperial masculinity of a dictatress, her heart was younger than the youngest, was as unsuspicious of itself as a child's, ready to give itself in an innocent generosity which could not conceive that giving might mean being taken, or be as like it as to deceive such a willing, love-sick man as poor Gianluca. She did not say that she loved him, she did not love him, she did not wish him to think that she could love him. Why should he think that she did? Surely, that he loved her, or thought so, could make no difference.

She was so very young, under her armour of despotism, that she might almost have loved him, as she had all but loved Bosio, had there been anything to love. But there was not. Gianluca was a shadow, an unmaterial being, a thought--anything ethereal, but not a man.

The dream-driven ghost of her dead betrothed was ten times more human and real than Gianluca was to her now, with his white angel's face and misty hands that seemed to hang weightless in the air before him when he moved them. There was more of living humanity in the fast fainting echo of Bosio's last words to her than in Gianluca's clear, sweet tones. If he should tell her that he loved her now, she should perhaps not even blush; for his whole being was sifted and refined and distilled, as the very spirit of star dust, in which there was nothing left of that sweet, earthly living, breathing, dying, loving flesh and blood without which love itself is but a scholar's word, and passion means but a vague, spiritual suffering, in which there is neither hope of joy to come nor memory of any past.

Yet Gianluca breathed, and was a human man, and loved her, and he would have been strangely surprised had he suddenly seen into her heart and understood that she looked upon him as though he were a being out of another world. The moment when she had first laid her hand upon his had been the supremest of his life yet lived, and all the moments since had been as supremely happy. It was something which he had not dared to hope--to hear her speaking as though there had never been that veil between them, against which he had so often struggled, to feel her warm touch, to see the happy light in her young eyes as she sat there looking at him, to be sure at last, beyond the half assurance of uncertain written words.

But he was wise, and he bridled back the words that most readily of all others would have come to his lips. Perhaps even in the midst of his new happiness, there was the unacknowledged fear of evil chance if he should speak too soon and put the beautiful gold to the touch while the magic transmutation was still so dazzlingly fresh. The present was so immeasurably better than the past, so near a perfection of its own, that he could wait in it a while before he opened wide his arms to take in the very whole of happiness itself, wherewith the beautiful future stood full laden before him.

As they talked, they went over and over much that they had written to each other during the long months of their correspondence, and at last Veronica came back to the question she had at first asked him.

"So you think that I am sensible in living as I do," she said. "I am glad. I value your opinion, you know."

She had perhaps never said as much as that to any one.

"You have made it what it is," he answered.

"How do you mean?" she asked quickly.

"You cannot do wrong," he replied, with his faint, far-off laugh. "If I had read in a book, of an imaginary person, all that you have written me of yourself, I should have said that most of it was absolutely impossible, or wildly rash, or foolishly unwise. You know how we are all brought up. We are nursed in the arms of tradition, we are fed on ideas of custom--we are taken to walk, as children, by incarnate prejudice for a nursery maid, and taught to see things that used to be, where modern things are. What can you expect? We have not much originality by the time we grow up."

"Yes--you know that I was educated in a convent."

"That is better than being educated at home by a priest." Gianluca smiled again. "Besides, you are different. That is why I say that if I have an opinion, you have made it for me. You are doing all those things which I could not have believed in a book, and they are turning out well. If society could see you here, it would not find it necessary to invent a duenna to chaperon you. But it is not everybody who could do what you have done, and succeed. I do not wonder that my mother is astonished, and my father, too. But at the same time, since you can do such things, it seems to me that you would have made a great mistake in doing anything else--as great a mistake as Julius Caesar would have made if he had chosen to remain a fashionable lawyer instead of mixing in politics, or Achilles, if he had taken a necklace or a bracelet and left the sword in Ulysses' basket. You would have found your mythical duenna a nuisance in real life."

Veronica laughed.

"At the end of the first week I should have locked her up in the dungeon tower, to get rid of her," she said.

"I have no doubt that you would, and your people would have thought it the most natural thing in the world. You could do anything you pleased in this place, I fancy. They would not think it strange if you tried and condemned a cheating steward and had him executed in that gloomy courtyard we passed through when we came in yesterday."

"The law might find fault with my vivacity," said Veronica. "But my people would say that I had done right if the man had really cheated them. It is quite true, I think. I could do almost anything here. I had a man locked up in the municipal prison the other day for forty-eight hours, because he was tipsy and swore at Don Teodoro in the street. Of course, it is nominally the syndic who does that sort of thing; but he belongs to me, like everything else here, and I do as I please, just as my grandfather did, when he really had power of life and death in Muro, including the privilege of torture. The first article mentioned in the old inventory was forty palms of stout rope for giving the cord, as they called it. They did it under the main gate,--that is why it came first,--and they used to pull them up to the vault and then drop them with a jerk to within two feet of the ground. The ring is still there, just inside the gate."

"My mother's uncle--the old Marchese di Rionero--once hanged a ruffian for mutilating one of his horses out of spite. And they say that Italy has not progressed! There is no hanging, not even for murder, nowadays."

"Yes," answered Veronica, thoughtfully, "we have progressed, in a way. That is our trouble--we have progressed too fast and improved too little, I think."

"That sounds paradoxical."

"Oh no! It is common sense, as I mean it. Progress costs money, improvement brings it. Progress means wearing clothes like other people, having splendid cities like other nations, keeping up armies and navies like other great powers. Improvement means helping poor people to earn more wages and to live better--giving them a possibility of happiness, instead of taking the little they have in order to give ourselves the appearance of greatness. That is why I say that in Italy we have too much progress and too little improvement."

"Yes--how well you put it!" Gianluca looked at her with quick admiration.

"Do I? It is because you understand easily. Should you call me patriotic? I think I am. I am an Italian before anything else, before being a Serra, a woman, a member of society--anything! I feel as though I should like to give my heart for my people and my life for our country, if it would do any good. Of course, if it really came to making any great sacrifice, I suppose my courage would shrivel up and I should behave just like any one else."

"No--you would not," said Gianluca, gravely. "There have been women--the great Countess, and Saint Catherine of Siena--"

"Yes!" Veronica laughed. "And there were also my good ancestors, who tore Italy to pieces, joined hands with German Emperors, upset Popes, seized everything they could lay hands upon, and turned the country into a sort of perpetual gladiator's show. That is a proud and promising inheritance for an aspiring patriot, is it not? The less you and I talk of patriotism, the better--seeing what our people have done in history to make patriotism necessary in our time."

"Perhaps so. Doing is better than talking, and you have begun by doing good and trying to make people happy. You have succeeded in one case, already."

She looked at him with a glance of inquiry.

"What case?" she asked.

"I mean myself--of course. You have made me perfectly happy to-day."

"I am glad," she answered. "I wish you to be always happy."

She spoke thoughtfully, gravely, and gently, and then turned from him a little, and looked through the iron railing of the balcony, down at the deep distance of the valley. She was wondering, and justly, whether during the past hour she had not made a mistake, very cruel to him, in breaking down all at once the barrier of excessive formality which hitherto had stood between them when they met. Words rose to her lips, which with the utmost gentleness should quickly undeceive him, if he had been deceived; but when she looked at him and saw his happy, appealing eyes and his transparent face, her courage was not ready. Perhaps he was dying, as she had been told. She turned again and watched the misty depths.

"Don Gianluca--" she began, with a little hesitation. But as she spoke there was a footfall in the embrasure.

"What were you going to say?" asked Gianluca, knowing from her tone that she had meant to speak of some grave matter.

"Nothing!" she answered with a little sharpness. "Pray take my chair, Duchessa," she said, turning to the good lady, who had come slowly forward till she stood with her head just out in the air. "It is time for luncheon," she added, as she made the Duchessa sit down, nodded quickly to Gianluca, and went in. _

Read next: Chapter 23

Read previous: Chapter 21

Table of content of Taquisara


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book