Chapter Nine.
Mrs Maxwell confessed herself to Teresa on their way back from church the next morning. Teresa had a momentary anger, but, as the other had said, she was very anxious to consider Wilbraham at this time, and contented herself with a passing outbreak of indignation.
“You are absolutely ridiculous, all of you! Supposing the man to be what you say, what possible harm can be done by my speaking to him? I’ve a great mind to find him out on my own account. I have only to go to the questura.”
“You won’t,” said Mrs Maxwell confidently.
And she did not. It appeared as if Wilbraham would be annoyed, and for Sylvia’s sake she must walk warily with Wilbraham. Only in the Palace of the Caesars, that afternoon, she allowed herself a little mockery towards him.
“So you’ve been undermining my projects,” she said gaily. “Did you expect me to be so meek as to give in?”
He flushed.
“I expected you to be annoyed,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell me yourself?”
“Would that have influenced you?”
“Why not?” returned Teresa, surprised. She went on very gently—“I hope, if only for Sylvia’s sake, that we shall always be friends.”
“Did you call me?” said Sylvia, looking round.
Teresa put out her hand to her and smiled.
“I call you now, at any rate,” she said. “I was talking about you.”
“And when Walter and I are together, he likes to talk of you,” said the girl happily.
Teresa smiled, thinking only that she was found useful to fill up blank spaces in the conversation. Love might idealise Sylvia, but could hardly go so far as to conjure interest into her talk. Not looking at Wilbraham, she was quite unconscious of his embarrassment, and returned to her subject.
“Mary and you both seem to think Cesare a dangerous man? Now I believe that sort of wild talk is mere froth.”
“I don’t know. It may be,” said Wilbraham, recovering himself with difficulty. “I daresay he is not really dangerous, but somehow I don’t like the fellow. I don’t care for you to have to do with him—”
He checked himself, and Teresa waited, expecting him to say more. As he was still silent, she remarked thoughtfully and with a slight hesitation—
“It is so difficult for us to throw ourselves into these foreign natures. We insist on judging them by our own standards. Yet,”—she laughed and broke off—“I find it dreadfully hard to have one standard for myself and another for other people, don’t you?”
It is doubtful whether Wilbraham had ever attempted it. What he did not approve of he banned. But he was not thinking of this.
“One knows what is right, I’m sure, always,” said Sylvia, trying to keep up with the talk.
“You do, dear, for yourself, I think, always,” Teresa returned quickly, looking at her kindly. “And what is more, you would do it. Now I wish he would say something nice,” she said to herself, glancing at Wilbraham. He was looking straight ahead, apparently he had not even heard, and she began to beat her brains, going back to the subject of characteristics. “When you think of it,” she said, “there is something remarkable in a race of their standing remaining in many ways so childlike.”
“Very remarkable,” said Wilbraham grimly. “Last summer they chose to be affronted because the band in the Colonna played Wagner oftener than pleased their patriotism, so they just fell on the poor chaps, wrecked the stand, and tore the music into atoms. Nice sensible proceeding!”
“I think I’ve heard of just as sensible in London and Paris,” retorted Teresa in a smooth voice. “Would you like me to mention a few instances?”
He looked at her and they both laughed. More softly still, she put in one further word—
“Other people’s folly is so very foolish!”
“I think some of the books one reads are very foolish,” Sylvia proclaimed.
“They talk about things which couldn’t possibly happen, just as if they were real. So silly!”
Wilbraham quickly looked away.
“It is provoking, sometimes,” said Teresa. “One gets mixed, at least I do.”
She glanced at Wilbraham, not at all understanding what was in his mind, but wishing that he would be more genial, more natural. Certainly she was getting nervous herself, for she had never been so conscious of Sylvia’s deficiencies. They had never before seemed sufficiently important to weigh against her beauty and sweetness. Now the little prosaic vague speeches disturbed her quite unduly.
She put herself yet more on the defensive.
They wandered round that imperial hill where memories jostle each other, and even under the divinely blue Roman sky great angry ghosts rise and stare at the petty intruders whom, in life, one hand-wave would have swept away. They sat on a bank, where, behind them, towered the brick fragment which may have looked on the trial of an apostle, and, before, lay that little space of crowded ruin of which each stone holds history. Teresa, foolish short-sighted Teresa, thinking only how best to shield and show off another, was at her best and brightest, touched each point with delicate fancies, twisted Sylvia’s inanities into playfulness, was delightful towards Wilbraham. She was a little surprised at last when he sprang up.
“I must be off,” he said briefly.
“Look here; shall I put you into a carriage, or do you mean to stop longer?”
“Oh, we will go,” answered Teresa, reflecting ruefully that she could not have been very successful in her valiant attempts to make the afternoon pleasant to him, when he ended it in such an abrupt fashion. But Sylvia drove home in excellent spirits.
“I like you to come with us, because Walter likes to talk to you,” she said cheerily. “You understand him better now, don’t you? I know he enjoyed himself this afternoon.”
“I expect he always enjoys himself when you are there.”
“Yes, of course,” the girl answered serenely. “He doesn’t say much, but I talk.”
Teresa was silent. Presently her sister began again.
“Teresa, Mary says that people who marry are sometimes very unhappy. She says you were unhappy.”
“Mary!” exclaimed Teresa angrily. “Mary says a great deal!”
“But were you?” Sylvia persisted. “Yes.”
The marchesa kept her face turned away.
“Why, I wonder? Did you love him?”
“Yes, at first.”
“Did he love you?”
“I thought so,” said Teresa with difficulty.
There was a pause.
“I don’t think I understand,” said Sylvia slowly. “Don’t people always know?”
The carriage rattled over rough stones and tram lines.
“No,” said Teresa. “Not always.”
“How funny! I know.”
“I hope you will be very fortunate, dear,” replied her sister, looking wistfully at her, and again over-estimating the power of the sweet face. “I think you will.”
“Of course,” Sylvia answered happily. “You see, Walter told me that he was fond of me, so I know. I suppose some people only imagine things? You must have imagined. Poor Teresa; and I wonder how you could! I think I should have found out.”
Donna Teresa that night stood looking from her window. Above the houses, Orion, brave hunter, strode across the sky, his dog at his heels, and soft fleecy clouds flying before him. For midwinter the air was extraordinarily mild. Sylvia’s innocent words had stirred gnawing memories, which never altogether left her. How miserable she had been! What humiliations she had endured! It had been in a certain measure her remembrance of this, and her dread lest Sylvia’s face should attract another marchese, which had made her, perhaps, unduly anxious for the solid, unromantic engagement with Wilbraham to come about. She had weighed and judged him. She thought him cold, unsympathetic, reserved, yet was sure he might be trusted, and never had the least doubt that he knew his own mind, and would keep to it. Why was not this still sufficient for her? At times it was, land at all times she fell back upon it for support. But there were moments when she could not convince herself, when in comparison with other women—never with herself—poor Sylvia’s limitations stared at her. Then she flung herself into the gap. Then, as this afternoon, she dug into her own stores, brought forth all her powers, exerted herself, covered Sylvia, and never once thought that here lay danger. On the contrary, she believed that she often failed, and laughed ruefully at the remembrance of Wilbraham’s sudden movement of escape.
But if it were all in vain! If he were beginning to realise a dreadful mistake! If before Sylvia there lay long unloved years, and before Wilbraham the heavyweight of weary disappointment—what then?
And all Teresa’s reflections ended in this. If—what then?