Chapter Sixteen.
Teresa was in her room—the room the sisters shared—when Sylvia came in. The girl’s steps dragged with a suggestion of weariness, but she was smiling, and gave Teresa no impression of anything serious or sad having touched her life.
“Where is Nina?” she asked.
“Nina is going about singing mournfully—
“Venerdi e dì di Marte Non si sposa, e non si parte.
“We shall break Nina’s heart with all the bad luck we set to work to bring down on our devoted heads. To-morrow is Tuesday, and we travel.”
“Must we?” said Sylvia uneasily.
“Oh, baby!” She kissed her. “Well, I’m glad you’re at home. I believe there’s a thunderstorm on the way. Look at Etna.”
Clouds—dark, splendid clouds—were rolling up behind the great mountain. The light seemed suddenly to die out of the room.
“I hope it won’t come in the night,” said the girl. “Do you think it will? Of course, you don’t know; but I do think one sees it more in the dark.”
Teresa’s thoughts were not with the storm. They tenderly wrapped Sylvia, wondering how deep the pain would go.
“Darling, didn’t granny say she wanted you? Perhaps you’d better go to her; and then, then, mind you come back to me. To me,” she repeated tenderly.
“There’ll be time before dinner,” Sylvia objected without moving.
“She’s waiting, dear.”
“I’d rather talk to you, Teresa, please. There’s something I want to say. And it’s all so funny!” she went on, breaking into a nervous laugh.
The laugh reassured Teresa. The first words had sent the blood back to her heart.
“I’m listening,” she said gaily. “I hope it’s very, very funny.”
“Well, it is. At least I suppose most people would think so. Oh yes, it’s funny, of course. Teresa, you will marry him, won’t you?”
The marchesa turned a whitely-amazed face to her sister.
“I? Marry! Who—what?”
“Walter. Oh, I shall be able to call him Walter then, of course,” said Sylvia, laughing again and nodding. And suddenly the laugh frightened Teresa. She laid her two hands on the girl’s shoulders and looked into her eyes.
“Don’t laugh, please, dear,” she said gravely; “but tell me what you have in your mind. Has Walter said anything to you?”
“I told him,” Sylvia answered proudly.
“What?”
“That we ought not to marry unless we both loved each other. You know, Teresa, that is quite right; and you know, too, that he isn’t fond of me any more, so, of course, we couldn’t. He thought we could. He thought perhaps it would do if I was happy; but I was sure I ought to say no. And so—” she drew a long breath—“I said it.”
“Ah, my poor dear!” cried Teresa, pulling down the pretty head upon her shoulder, and kissing her again. For the moment she had forgotten Sylvia’s first question, and it was the girl herself who reminded her.
“So now you will marry him, won’t you?”
Teresa had to keep check on herself, for she saw that Sylvia was in a state of tremulous excitement, and that she must speak very quietly, though inwardly fuming.
“What has put such a thing into your head—such an amazing thing? What could make you imagine that, under any possibility, I could marry Walter Wilbraham?”
“Because he likes you,” said Sylvia simply.
“Likes me? Likes everybody, I suppose!”—scornfully.
“Not me. If he did, of course we should be married. Now it will be much better that he should marry you.”
Teresa felt sick with the difficulty of convincing, and the remembrance of Wilbraham’s look. Sylvia’s ideas came but rarely, but once come it was next to impossible to dislodge them. She lifted the girl’s chin, and looked steadily into her eyes while she spoke.
“Listen, dear,” she said slowly. “I want you to understand very clearly. You have made a great mistake. He is nothing to me, nothing, nothing—he never can be anything.”
“He likes you,” repeated Sylvia obstinately.
“Don’t say such horrid things!” Teresa cried more hotly.
“And I should like him to have what he wants. I shall be so sorry if he goes away to-morrow.”
“Of course he must go.”
“Why?”
“Sylvia, I could shake you! Because if he is to be nothing to you, nobody else wants him.”
Sylvia stood staring out at the gathering clouds.
“Oh, but I want him,” she said at last.
“Dear! Why? How can you?”
“Of course I want him to be happy. When you are fond of any one—”
Teresa stared at her. What could she say? She saw that the girl was over-strained—nervous; but this firm grasp of the one point she had seized was not to be loosened.
“Ah, her love was worth something!” thought her sister, turning away with a sigh. She perceived that she must temporise.
“Dear, Mr Wilbraham—Walter—will do what he himself thinks best; we can’t possibly decide for him—”
“Please, ask him to stay,” Sylvia interrupted without heeding.
“Ah, that I can’t do.”
The girl twisted her fingers.
“Then I must,” she said. “I’m afraid I shan’t persuade him, because, of course, I never can—but I must try. It’s all so funny, isn’t it?”
“It’s horribly sad,” said Teresa to herself, “but certainly there will be no fear of the man staying. If it had been earlier in the day, he might have packed himself off at once. As it is, for a few hours, one must make the best of him and of it, and be thankful,”—she sighed—“that it has ended. I never wish to see him again. Oh, Sylvia, my little Sylvia! And I daresay he is persuading himself she doesn’t feel.”
“I think I shall go and talk to Nina,” said the girl. Her eyes looked bright, and a feverish spot burned in each cheek.
“Dear—stay here.”
“Must I?” The old wistful dependence upon Teresa had come back. “I think it’s going to thunder, and that always frightens me. Nina says things which are nice.”
“Lie down on your bed. I’ll hang up something over the window; Nina shall come and sit with you, and you’ll find yourself asleep before you know where you are. I’ll come back before dinner.”
“Nina is going to make me some latte di gallina to-night,” said Sylvia, unresisting.
Teresa made her lie down, covered, coaxed, kissed her, then shrouded the window, guiltless of shutters. Nothing could be seen of Etna behind heavy menacing clouds which swept stormily up, and drifted sullenly along the purple slopes. The sea was lashing its white wild waves, which raced and plunged and flung themselves each on the other. Sylvia chattered about a hundred trifles—what Mary Maxwell had heard from England; whether her hat could not go in with Teresa’s; whether they had really better start on a Tuesday. If Teresa succeeded in stopping her, she quickly began again. Her sister decided at last that Nina might manage better, and was going to seek her. But when she reached the door, there was a sharp sudden terrified cry from Sylvia.
“Teresa! Don’t go! Don’t leave me here by myself!”
She had started up. Her sister instantly went back.
“I won’t, dear, I won’t. I was only going to find Nina, because there isn’t the ghost of a bell in the house.”
“Yes, I should like Nina,” said the girl, settling down again. Teresa called from the door, and the little woman hurried in with her long “Eh-h-h-h-h!” at sight of the darkened room.
“It is the storm,” Teresa explained.
“Eh, the storm? It will not come yet,” said Nina, with the almost unerring certainty by which an Italian peasant foretells the weather. “The signorina may sleep, and I will be here, but the storm not yet. Ecco!”
Sylvia seemed content. Teresa flew to her grandmother’s room, longing to give vent to her pent-up indignation. She felt herself in the most hateful position in the world, and, woman-like, flung the whole weight of blame on Wilbraham. But Mrs Brodrick, whose eyes had long been open, was juster.
“It was time it ended,” she said. “It has been a dreary mistake from first to last, and every day would have made it worse.”
“I suppose so. And yet, and yet—”
“Yes?”
“If you had heard! Not one of us could have taken it so well. I don’t think she once remembered that it was hard on herself. Oh, I shall never forgive him!”
“Ah!”
“He had no right, no right!” cried Teresa hotly.
“Ah!”
“I—who have only tried to look at him with Sylvia’s eyes, for Sylvia’s sake!”
“There you have it,” said Mrs Brodrick, with a smile. “The poor man was bewildered between two sets of eyes. I’m much more charitable, and so I’m not surprised.”
“You’re very nearly as bad as he!” cried Teresa indignantly. “And, oh, what shall we do to stop Mary Maxwell’s remarks!”
“Let her make them, I suppose; they will finish the sooner.”
“There will be a great many to endure before they finish.”
“Life is made up of such endurances,” said her grandmother patiently. “She can talk to me. I am old and dull; but a figure-head will serve at a stretch for a listener, and always has the advantage of not answering back again.”
“And after all,” said Teresa hopefully, “her being with us is more cheerful for Sylvia. I think, poor dear, we shall be able to make her happy again in a little while—when he is well out of the way, as he will be soon.”
Mrs Brodrick took up her knitting.
“Shall you speak to him?” she asked carelessly.
“If he wishes it. Certainly.”
Teresa had thrown her head back like a spirited horse as she spoke, and at the same moment a knock came at the door. The English gentleman would be obliged if her excellency would give him a few words on the terrace.
“Her excellency will,” she returned, flinging a defiant look at her grandmother, and resenting a shadow of doubt in her manner. She went out of the room quickly and silently, and Wilbraham, who was watching the windows from the end of the terrace, threw away his cigar and came to meet her. She saw that he was very pale, and her own manner was hard as she stood waiting for him to speak.
“I feel that I owe you an explanation,” he began.
“I thought, on the contrary, that you might be asking for one from us,” said Teresa at once coldly. “Sylvia has broken her engagement, she tells me.”
He hesitated, and turned away his look.
“I should have tried to make her happy,” he said, weighing his words.
“You have failed, however, so far.”
“It seems so.” He had hesitated again.
“It is a pity,” went on Teresa relentlessly, “that you had not discovered the extent of your powers before attempting to apply them. You might have been saved this—”
“Humiliation?”
“Humiliation.”
She stood upright, a slim dark figure, her eyes judging him gravely and coldly. Behind her were the thunder-clouds of Etna.
“If humiliation were all, it would be nothing,” he said, his breath coming shortly. Perhaps he hoped she would have questioned him further. But her thoughts were with Sylvia.
“No,” she said, “nothing.”
“Of course,”—the words shot out from him in spite of himself—“you only see one side. I suppose I can’t induce you to judge fairly?”
“I cannot see that my opinion is concerned. The affair is my sister’s. She has decided for herself. Absolutely independently,” she added, with the desire to drive home Sylvia’s capability.
“But you approve?”
“I think she has acted for her own happiness,” said Teresa guardedly.
He looked gloomily at her.
“Some day you may be kinder to me.”
“Do you think so?” Her tone was not pleasant. “You will leave us to-morrow, of course, and it is unlikely that we shall often meet again.”
He walked away a few steps and returned.
“I tell you we will!” he said in a sharp passionate voice, which stung Teresa’s anger like a lash. She flung back her head and cried.
“I never wish to see you again.”
“That may be.” His words breathed thickly. “But I will see you.”
A sudden dread of a scene swept over her, and forced self-control.
“Whether we meet or not is of no possible consequence,” she said coolly. “I do not think it would be pleasant, and I hope you will have left Rome when we return. Meanwhile you and Sylvia must get through this evening as best you can. You have misunderstood her hitherto, and I suppose you will misunderstand her to the end.”
She nodded and left him, not without thankfulness that he did not follow. It had been a sharp interview, charged with dangerous feeling, which enraged her against him. The table d’hôte hour was near, and she went to her own room, hoping to find Sylvia sleeping. As she opened the door, however, she heard her chatter.
“Oh, Sylvia,” she said reproachfully—“when I wanted you to rest! And you haven’t even the excuse of a thunderstorm,” she added, pulling down her defence from the window, “for it has not come.”
“But it is coming, eccellenza,” said Nina, joining her and speaking in a low voice. “It is coming in less than three hours. And there will be enough of it. It will keep people in the house to-night, that is one good thing.”
“Why?” laughed Teresa.
Nina’s face expressed blank unconsciousness.
“Why? Who knows! We have a saying in my country, eccellenza, that where the eye does not see, mischief will not reach. A foolish saying, eh-h-h-h-h! But there are foolish ones everywhere, even at Viterbo.”
“Get up and dress, Sylvia,” said her sister cheerfully. “And put on your prettiest frock.”
But Sylvia for once was determined to wear nothing but a black which she generally hated.
“What does it matter?” reflected Teresa. And yet she was wrong.
Two or three Austrians had arrived that afternoon, so that there was a larger company than usual at the table, where great bunches of white and purple irises were stuck at intervals. The Maxwells came in late and tired, having climbed to the castle at the back of Taormina. Teresa was glad that Mary was thinking more of her fatigue and her dinner than of Sylvia’s affairs, and that the talk contrived to be general. It grew early dark, for the sky was by this time heavy with cloud, and thunder was muttering. The little Hungarian doctor and his wife were smoking cigarettes. Maxwell and Wilbraham had got hold of an English newspaper; Maxwell was confounding his own luck in not having his juniors’ chances over some of the little wars which England was waging, and Wilbraham answering at long intervals. Teresa took Mary Maxwell in hand, and goaded herself into sympathy over an account of her woes with her mother-in-law, hoping to leave Sylvia to talk or not as she liked. She found her work hard, for Mrs Maxwell was far too shrewd to put up with a perfunctory attention, and Teresa’s own mind was running through many sensations. She could not be sure how much Sylvia felt, how it would affect her; whether the kind of light chatter, into which she heard her break, acted as a relief or carried danger. She was sure that Wilbraham would construe it into the indifference of a trivial nature, and was torn between her desire that he should hold Sylvia less lightly and satisfaction that he could not believe himself mourned. The idea that it was she, she, whom ironical fate had chosen to interpose between Sylvia’s image and Wilbraham’s heart, made her coldly, cruelly contemptuous. That he should dream!
“I shall go to bed,” yawned Mrs Maxwell, “though I don’t believe I shall be able to sleep a wink. Shall I take Jem away? He is such a blind old goose, he never sees that he is monopolising our lovers. But Sylvia is in high spirits to-night.”
“Oh, don’t disturb anybody,” implored Teresa. “The thunder is getting nearer, and I shall have to sweep away Sylvia in ten seconds; she hates it so! I’ll come up for a minute afterwards if I may speak to you.”
“Haven’t we been speaking?” laughed Mrs Maxwell, opening her eyes. “But come, come, by all means.”
Her movement brought about others. Her husband went after her to fetch some newly-acquired treasure, which he wanted to show to the Hungarians; Wilbraham stood up, flung a hesitating glance on the group near the table, and stepped out on the terrace. Sylvia instantly and unexpectedly followed him. Teresa half rose, but Mrs Brodrick pulled her back.
“Leave her,” she said. “It is her right. What a flash! What—”
They stared at each other. Before the almost instantaneous answer of the thunder rolled out, a sharp short report anticipated it. The Hungarian doctor sprang up and dashed through the window, Teresa only a step behind him.
“My God! Who is shot?” she heard him cry.