FOOTNOTES:
[9]An evening paper.
CHAPTER V
At the end of the week a telegram came from Madame, asking Antonio to go to Albano.
"She can't live without him," thought Regina, assailed by a spasm of real jealousy. "I feel scruples at having merely gone into her house in her absence, but she has no scruples, none! I won't allow him to go!"
She was unreasonable, and she knew it; but the delirium, the quiet madness of doubt, had become habitual with her.
As usual, however, she was unsuccessful in carrying out her proud intention. When Antonio suggested she should accompany him to Albano, she said "Yes."
She said "Yes" up to the last moment, but on Sunday morning changed her mind.
"Don't you go either," she said. "If Madame wants you, why can't she come to Rome? Are you her slave?"
"Regina!" he said, reprovingly.
"I am not Regina, not a queen—not even a princess! I'm sick to death of this life we are leading! All through the week we see each other only for a minute at a time, and now you are going away even on Sunday!"
"Just for once. Why won't you come too?"
"I won't, because I don't want to. I am nobody's toady, and it's time you gave up the office yourself! Is there any more necessity for it? If it's true our affairs are so prosperous," she went on, with open sarcasm, "then why——"
"There's no good discussing it with you," he interrupted, firing up. "You're always unreasonable!"
He set out at noon. In the afternoon Regina went for one of her rare visits to her mother-in-law. She stayed for dinner, and once more made part of the picture she had so detested, but now she had very different feelings from those of old. Thinking it over, she asked herself why that picture had appeared to her so vulgar. Merely as types of character the personages were interesting, or at least seemed so now.
Arduina and Massimo discussed celebrated authors—she with real animus, he with contempt for her. Gaspare told the conjugal misfortunes of one of his colleagues. Signor Mario picked his teeth, and Signora Anna lamented the terrible conduct of her servant. It was amusing—for once in a way. The dinner was good; they drank and laughed. Claretta admired herself in the glass, flirted with Massimo and even with Gaspare.
In fact, nothing in the environment had changed; yet Regina was no longer disgusted. Claretta was less elegant than herself, and Signora Anna took quite maternal satisfaction in pointing this out. She asked her niece why she didn't do her hair like Regina's.
"This suits me better," drawled the young lady, putting her hand to her head and settling the lace butterfly which decked her locks; "besides, it's the fashion."
"Excuse me," said Massimo, "the women of the aristocracy do their hair like Regina."
"Madame Makuline, perhaps?" said Claretta, ironically.
Regina glanced at her. Did she mean anything, the pretty cousin? Did she know anything?
When the others sat down to cards Regina went into the bedroom which once had seemed to her a haunt of incubi. It was open to the balcony, and the moon illuminated the curtains, projecting a silver dazzle across the interior. The great bed was a white square in the centre of the room, corners of chairs and tables caught the light, a scent of pinks perfumed the silence and the peace of that great matrimonial chamber, nest of humdrum bourgeois felicity. Regina thought if Antonio had brought her to Rome on a night like this, and had introduced her into that room shining thus, wrapped in the dreams of mid-May, nothing would have happened that had happened.
She leaned from the balcony; pinks were at her feet; over a sweet heaven of velvety blue passed the moon distant and melancholy, distant and pure, like a sail lost in the immensity of the ocean of dream.
Naturally Regina's thoughts flew to the terrace on the shore of the Albano lake, where rose-leaves fell like butterflies on the iridescent mother-o'-pearl of the moonlit water.
What was Antonio doing? Was it possible that the monstrous dream which crushed her could have any reality? Under the infinite purity of the heavens could such wickedness be wrought on earth?
But when she had returned home, the incubus settled down on her again, victor once more in that strife which too often proved her the weaker.
She expected Antonio by the last train. He did not come, neither did he send an explanatory telegram. Regina waited till midnight, then went to bed, but passed an agitated night, perhaps because for the first time she was alone.
Very early she had Caterina brought to her. The baby, in her little night-dress, sat on the pillow and seemed uneasy at her father's absence.
"Papa?" she asked.
"Papa isn't here. He'll come very soon, very soon, very soon! Go to sleep. Lie down. Give me little foot—my little foot. That other one is Papa's? Very well, you can give it to him when he comes," said Regina, drawing the baby down. Caterina was in the habit of giving one foot to Mamma and the other to Papa. Regina took both the little feet, but Caterina wished to keep Papa's free. Then she touched the lace on Regina's night-dress with her rosy finger.
"Ti è to?" she asked.
"Questo è tuo?—Is this yours?" translated Regina. "Yes, it's mine. And little Caterina, whose is she? Mine, isn't she? all mine! And a little bit Papa's; but very, very little, because Papa is naughty, and doesn't come home, and leaves poor little Mamma all alone!"
She relieved her mind thus, talking in baby language to the rosy little creature; and while she made Caterina give her wee, wee, wee, dear, dear little kisses, and felt there could be no greater pleasure, she still thought of the monstrous visions which had agitated her all night. Doubtless Antonio had slept at the villa on the shore of the lake, in a room of which the window was a wondrous picture of the landscape and the sky. And in the silence of the night, while outside the woods, the waters, the heaven, were a poem of beauty and purity, an odious idyl was taking place within.
"My little, little Caterina, my pet, put your arms round me! Let us sleep together," said Regina, laying the baby's hand on her face, and closing her eyes, as if to exclude the evil sights. "There! shut the little peepers! that's the way!"
The child obeyed for a moment, but suddenly became cross, struggled, and with her little open hand gave her mother a slap on the face.
"Oh, how naughty!" said Regina. "I'll tell Papa, you know! You are not to hit your Mamma! Ask my forgiveness at once; love me at once, like this! Say, 'Dear, dear Mamma, forgive Baby! Baby will never do it again.'"
But Caterina struck her a second time, and Regina became really angry.
"You are very, very naughty," she exclaimed, taking the little hand and administering pandies. "Go away; I don't want Baby any more. Baby isn't my little, little one any more. I don't love her. She also has grown wicked!"
Caterina began to cry—real tears, and this consciousness of grief, so rare in a child, struck the young mother profoundly.
"No, no! My baby at least shall not suffer! It is too soon!" she thought, and again gathered the little one in her arms, smoothed her hair, and kissed her little trembling head.
"Come here, then! Hush! hush! hush! She won't be naughty any more. Hush! Mamma does love her! That's my own pet! There, there! Listen! Here comes Papa!"
At this suggestion Caterina calmed herself by magic. Then to Regina a thing she had already suspected was clearly revealed, and she marvelled that she had ever doubted it. Caterina loved her father more than she loved her mother! With that wondrous instinct of a babe, Caterina felt that he was the kinder, the weaker, the more affectionate of the two; that he loved her more blindly, more passionately, than her mother loved her. Consequently, she preferred him.
Regina was not jealous, nor did she question if this proved her too much or too little a mother. But that morning, in the whirl of sad and ugly things which veiled her soul, she felt an unexpected light, she felt that supreme sentiment of pity, which in the dissolving of all her dreams sustained her like a powerful wing, spread, not over herself, not over Antonio, but over their child. They two were already dead to life, corrupted by their own errors; but Caterina was the future, the living seed which had had its birth among withered leaves. The soil around it must be cleared. And for the first time she thought that, not for herself in a last vanity of sacrifice, not for him whose soul was eternally stained, but for the child, she must draw Antonio out of the mire.
He came back by the 7.20 train, and had scarcely time to dress, swallow his coffee, and run to the office.
At the midday meal he told of the wonders of Albano, of the villa, of the night on the lake.
"Such flowers! such roses! Marvellous! I lost the last train because I had meant to take it at Castel Gandolfo, and Madame and Marianna insisted on leaving the carriage and walking part of the way. You can't imagine the splendour—the moonlight. I was thinking of you the whole time! I didn't wire, because it was too late."
"Is any one blaming you?" asked Regina, absently.
"You were angry, Regina?"
"I? Why?"
Antonio must have seen that some distress was clouding her spirit, for he began to talk volubly, trying to distract her. He complained of the Princess.
"What a nuisance she is! She made me take this journey all for the sake of that old fur. 'Beg pardon?'" he went on, mimicking her. "'It's not for its money value, but because it's a precious remembrance——' Perhaps Georges Sand gave it to her! She talked of nothing else. Even Marianna couldn't stand it, and proposed to skin the furrier if he didn't send it back at once."
"Did you sleep at the villa?" asked Regina, who was not listening.
"Well, she couldn't well send me anywhere else!"
"Oh, of course not!" said Regina, with evident sarcasm. And, without raising her eyes from her plate, she went on, "Is Madame a Russian?"
"Why, yes—didn't you know it?" answered Antonio, quickly.
He said no more, but his voice had shaken with a scarce perceptible vibration, which Regina did not fail to observe.
Without a look, without a sign, at that moment they understood each other, and each knew it. Regina thought Antonio's face darkened, but she did not dare to look at him. She went on eating, and only after a minute raised her head and laughed. Why at that moment she laughed she never knew.
"I was awake all night," she said; "I felt just like a widow."
"Well, wouldn't you like to be a widow? I know quite well you don't love me any longer," he answered, half fun, whole earnest.
"Oh, zielo!" said Regina, light and cruel, imitating the cry of heartless jest which she had heard from a spectator at a popular theatre, "what a tragedy of a honeymoon gone wrong!" Then changing her voice, but still satirical, "On the contrary, my dear, it's you who want to be a widower."
"I don't see it."
"It's true."
"How do you make it out?"
"Why, what would happen if you were a widower? You'd marry again at once. You're one of the men who can't enjoy life alone—who are no good living alone. I'm sorry for those men."
"You are sorry for me?"
"I pity you heartily."
"Why? Because I am your husband?"
"Yes, because you're my husband. Take away!" said Regina to the maid, pushing her plate aside contemptuously. When they were again alone, she added, "Next time don't be so stupid as to marry a poor woman."
He looked at her, and she thought his eyes were illuminated by a flash of anger, cold, metallic, such as she had never seen in him.
"I shouldn't know what to do with riches," he answered quietly.
The servant reappeared at the door, and Regina was silent, struck with a sense of chill. It appeared to her that Antonio's words had an intention of dogged defence, a sharp and crushing reproach like a blow. She felt herself mortally wounded.
The strife was beginning then? For to-day they said no more. On the contrary, after their meal they went together to their room and took their siesta in company, and before going out Antonio kissed his wife with his accustomed slightly languid but affectionate tenderness.
But from henceforth Regina fancied he would be on guard ready to defend himself at all points.
After this they bickered continually. She found annoyance in nothings, criticising all his little defects, and accusing him veiledly in a manner that he ought to understand if he were guilty. Antonio defended himself, but without too much heat, too much offence. She could not avoid the thought that he feared to drive her to extremities, and great sadness overwhelmed her. Why were they each so cowardly? Why did she not dare to confront him openly, though all within her, all her thoughts, recollections, instincts, rose up against him and accused him? Well, at last she confessed it to herself. She was afraid; afraid of the truth. Above all, she was afraid of herself. She believed that nothing kept her generous, enabled her to contemplate pardon, but the hope she was deceived. If it were certainly true, would she pardon? Sometimes she feared she would not.
Most of all her own weaknesses saddened her—the contradictions and phantasms of her sick spirit. Day by day her soul was revealed to her. She had thought herself superior, delicate, understanding; instead, she found she was cowardly and weak. She was like a tree never brought under cultivation, which might have borne good fruit, but, with its tangle of barren branches, only succeeded in throwing a pestiferous shadow. Was it her own fault?
However, in measure as she learned to know herself, she tried to improve. Instinct, too, would not suffer her to persevere in a small strife, in vulgar and inconclusive affronts. The bickering ceased and a truce followed, the result of anguished incertitude and vain hope.
She compared herself to a sick person, who ought to submit to a dangerous operation, and has decided to do so, in hope of regaining health, but who for the present prefers to suffer, and postpones the fateful moment.
Meanwhile the outward existence of this pair followed its equable course, apparently tranquil, all compounded of sweet and monotonous habits. May died, having again become pure, blue, chilly. The sky, after a few days' rain, had taken an almost autumnal tint, beautiful and suggestive.
Like a vein of milk in a poisoned flood, nostalgia for her distant home mingled with Regina's sorrow. Memory absorbed her, penetrated to her blood with the scent of the new leaves which perfumed the shining evenings in Via Balbo. During some walk to Ponte Nomentano or in Trastevere, it sufficed for the splendour of silvery green on the Aniene, or the yellow vision of the Tiber, in the depths of the green, velvety, monotonous Campagna—like the harmonies of a primitive music—to give her attacks of almost tragic homesickness. But now-a-days she knew the nature of this malady—it was the vain longing for a land of dreams lost to her for ever.
She liked these little expeditions, which once she had despised, calling them the silly pleasures of little bourgeois resigned to their gilded mediocrity.
Sometimes Antonio proposed a walk beyond the Trastevere Station for the long, luminous afternoon; and she would meet him at the Exchange. More often they went to Ponte Nomentano, taking the baby with them, carried on the servant's arm. Antonio would amuse himself pretending to pursue Caterina; the maid would run and the baby contort herself with joy, screaming like the swifts, pink with the fearful delight of being hunted and not caught. Then Regina would linger behind, looking at the vermilion sky, the rosy lawns, the tranquil distance, all that grand country of aspect monotonous and solemn; like the life of a poet who has sung immortal songs without ever having had an adventure or committed a crime.
And, watching Antonio running after his child, quivering himself with innocent joy, she once again believed herself deluded in her mistrust of him.
CHAPTER VI
One evening, however, they were walking alone together towards Acqua Acetosa. Making a short cut to the Viale della Regina, they crossed certain narrow lanes beyond Porta Salaria, and Regina suddenly stopped before an osteria (tavern).
A bright interior was visible through an open doorway. At the far end of the room was a glass window coloured by the declining sun, and against this luminous background passed and re-passed, light-footed and black, a couple of dancers, dancing to the strains of a husky concertina. A girl, pale and thin, but bright-eyed, was seated by the door, her arm on the corner of a table, her fair hair mixing in with the shining background. She was something like Gabrie, and dressed like her in a pink blouse. For a moment Regina thought it was she.
"Why, look! there's Gabrie!"
"So it is," replied Antonio.
They drew nearer. The girl got up, thinking them customers. She was half-a-foot taller than Gabrie. The couple went on dancing, black and light against the orange brilliance of the window, and Regina and Antonio passed on. They were speaking of Gabrie. From that instant Regina felt a vague perturbation; but she had no idea of beginning a hateful discussion. She said, almost involuntarily—
"One of these days I mean to bring that poor girl with us. I hardly ever see her, but I do so pity her. She coughs incessantly."
"She is a poor thing; consumptive, I fancy," said Antonio. "You shouldn't let her kiss Caterina. But why is it you don't see her?"
"Because she's ill-natured. She does nothing but observe people and take away their characters."
By force of old habit, Antonio held Regina's hand in his as they walked. Before them spread the Viale. Visions of depths of the Campagna, vivid in its pure spring green, appeared in the distance to right and left through the motionless plane-trees, against a pearl-grey sky shot with colours from the sinking sun. The gardens were overrun with roses and lilies, whose fragrance mingled with the scent of herbs and of strawberries. Now and then a carriage went by and vanished into the distance of the deserted Viale.
"Who was it told me the same thing of Gabrie?" asked Antonio.
"Marianna, perhaps?" suggested Regina, sharply.
"I believe it was."
"She's just the same herself. One's no better than the other; that's what makes them friends."
"Oh, there's no one like Marianna," said Antonio, and looked away into the distance.
Then, in one second, flashing and following each other like lightning, a succession of ideas started up in Regina's mind. She would have snatched her hand from Antonio, but fancied he might guess her thoughts from the action, and she stiffened herself to endure the contact. She stiffened in appearance, but her heart was beating violently, two, three, ten, many strokes;—the hour had come!
It seemed to her that some one, some mysterious being, black in the sunset brilliance, had passed by smiting her heart with a hammer. And her heart awaked from the evil stupor of the long oppression. Now she could arise, shake herself, walk; walk, breathe, cry aloud; live, and make a supreme effort to rid herself of the shadow, of the weight of the incubus—or else she must fall again under that weight, under that black shadow, and must die.
From day to day Regina had expected this hour of conflict, yet from day to day she had put it from her like a bitter cup.
Now it had come, and she felt a mysterious fear. Again she would have wished to put it off; but a strange impulse, what seemed an instinct of self-preservation superior to her will, clutched her and forced her to speak.
She remembered none of the words prepared for weeks and months; only Antonio's sentence about Marianna gave her a thread to which she clung desperately, as to a thread which would guide her out of the dark labyrinth.
She had turned and turned in the maze of the evil dream, but she had come back to the precise point where she had stood on the day of the catastrophe.
"No," she began, in a toneless voice; "you cannot guess how malignant Gabrie is. Oh, much more than Marianna! Marianna sees, and sometimes at least says nothing. But Gabrie——If you can bear it, I will tell you something, Antonio."
He turned round and looked at her. She looked at him. It seemed as if for that moment they understood each other without more words. However, she went on.
"You will be patient?"
He looked straight before him, indifferent, too indifferent.
"Go on."
"Gabrie says you are Madame Makuline's lover."
He reddened. Anger deformed his face. He dropped Regina's hand and flung it from him, opening his lips with gestures of astonishment and wrath.
"She said that to you?" he cried.
His voice resounded in the silence of the road.
"She told me, yes."
He stood still. Regina stood still. Her heart beat. His hands, hanging down, groped as if trying to lay hold of something. The gesture is customary with actors at the dramatic moments of their part. Regina feared that Antonio acted his part too well. Then she thought, forcing herself to be just—
"If he is innocent, it's natural he should be upset."
"And you, you——" he burst out, "did not strike her? You actually thought of bringing her with us to-day!"
"Antonio," exclaimed Regina, looking at him with feigned surprise, "you promised to be patient!"
"But it's abominable!" he said, lifting his hands. "How do you suppose I can be patient? If you are joking let me tell you it's a hideous joke. If what you tell me is serious, I am astounded at your calm."
His face paled rapidly as it had flushed, but it paled too much; it became almost grey.
Regina did not move an eyelash, so narrowly she was watching him. She saw that his agitation was real, but she did not know, could not find out, its precise cause. For some moments, however, the strong desire that Antonio should not belie his indignation induced in her a wave of joy. She abandoned herself to it. It was not mere desire, it was certainty of having been deceived! Yet—an inexplicable thing happened; the hope of having been deceived did not restore her kindness. She became cynical—cruel.
"Come!" she said, with bitter gaiety, "why should I be angry? why should I strike Gabrie? Suppose she had told me the truth? Let's walk on," she added, trying to take his arm again.
But he repulsed her, and remained standing.
"Let me alone! What do you mean by the truth?"
"The fact that every one believes it, without daring to tell me, as she dared——"
"Every one believes it? But—Regina, do you believe it?"
"I also!"
"Listen to me," he said, indignant again, but with an indignation different from the first—deeper, more scornful—"listen to me! Are you not ashamed of yourself?"
"Walk on," she said moving, but not trying to take his arm this time; "don't let us make a scene in the middle of the street."
And she walked on, blind, all involved again in the fearful shadow from which she had thought herself freed. The momentary hope was over. Why? She did not know. Can one know why the sky becomes suddenly covered with cloud?
Antonio's attitude was that of a man who is offended. He followed her scarcely a step behind, and repeated, mechanically—
"You ought to be ashamed——"
She was no longer able to abandon herself to her ardent desire of believing him innocent. She could not!—could not!
"Every one believes it?" repeated Antonio, walking by her side, but not touching her. "And you tell me in this way, in the street, suddenly, as if it were a joke! And you, you believe it yourself! And you speak of it like this!"
"How would you have me speak of it?"
"At least you should have spoken sooner."
"Perhaps I heard it to-day, a little while ago, for the first time."
"That's impossible! You were too calm a little while ago!"
"One can pretend," she said, with a forced smile, which furrowed her cheek like a sign of pain.
"A little while ago?" he repeated, closing his hand and shaking it on a level with her face. "Then why do you say every one believes it? Have you just learned that too? Did you hear it from that—that—I don't know what to call her—there is no word——And you—you aren't ashamed to demean yourself to such scandal-mongering with a creature like that, a degenerate——You——" he continued, forcing himself to scorn, "you, the superior woman, the exceptional fastidious woman, the great lady—the great lady!" he repeated, raising and coarsening his voice.
Then Regina fired up. Sombre redness made her face from forehead to chin a circle of fire; in their turn her hands were agitated in tragic gesticulation.
"Antonio, hush!" she said, not looking at him. "What do you expect? Life is like that—stupid and vulgar. The most horrible things are revealed by the gossip of silly women, and whole dramas are played on the high road in the course of an evening walk. It wouldn't do if that happened in a novel! The author would be accused of vulgarity, if not of nonsense. In real life, on the contrary, see what happens. The grand lady goes to a garret in Via San Lorenzo to discover the cause of her unhappiness; the superior woman comes out into the street to——"
"Regina, have done! have done!" cried Antonio. "You reason too much and too coldly for you to believe what you are saying. No, it is not true! You do not believe it! Tell me you don't believe it!"
And he tried to take her arm, but this time it was she who repulsed him.
"Let me alone! That is what you men are! If I had been another woman, another sort of wife, I should have lain in wait for you at home, like a tigress in her lair. I should have made a scene, one of those scenes called strong, which are so pleasing at the theatre or in a novel. Whereas, I have spoken to you quite quietly. I repeat a thing which every one is saying, and I ask nothing better than that we should laugh at it together. But you—you begin with noisy words, 'aren't you ashamed,' and 'scandal-mongering,' and 'the great lady.' Yes, certainly, I am a lady; more of a lady than those other women. It is just that I don't value conventionalities; that is the calamity."
"Then would you prefer me to be silent? Is that it? Don't torment me like this, Regina! In my opinion it would have been better to have this scene at home. Well, your jealousy is the last straw——"
Regina laughed. Her laugh was genuine but strident, hoarse, as if proceeding out of rusty iron.
"My dear, you are raving! Jealousy! Come, not that!"
"Why did you say you believed it?"
"Did I say so? Surely not."
"I tell you, you did say it."
"I said I believed people believed it."
"I don't think so," he protested. "Well, 'people' are always malicious."
"That, at any rate, is true. People are malicious. You see, our position has changed; we are living comfortably in spite of our slender income, so at once people hatch a scandal. The very excuse you make that you have become a speculator just now, when you might have been one all along——"
"That is absurd!" interrupted Antonio. "I was a bachelor before, and had more money than I knew what to do with. Besides, you are supposed to have money of your own. No one knows that I began speculating by a mere chance——"
"What has all this to do with it? The world has no need to know our affairs. Chance!" she repeated, her face darkening as she remembered the "chance" in which she had so childishly believed, while instinct had warned her of fiction, fiction clever but thin, like the invention in a novelette.
"What do you mean?" she went on, reassailed by a stifling wave of rage and suspicion. "The world is malicious just because every day, every hour, these strange chances are happening. You know the background of life better than I do. Shame upon shame! How often have you not yourself pointed out to me smart young men who are living on their mistresses?"
Antonio made no answer, and she continued—
"So I said to myself, 'The appearance itself that we are not living merely on our fixed income, the excuse that you play, and have capital at your disposal in result of a game where, as at every game, one sometimes wins but sometimes loses, or the excuse that you are that woman's agent—confidential servant—all that has given rise to suspicion.' What do you expect?" she repeated for the third time. "The world is malicious. We—you—are seen for ever going to that house. Everything is seen, commented on, suspected. Your own relations—do you think your own relations have no doubts, make no allusions? Why, a few days ago Claretta——"
Having reached this point Regina became alarmed and silent. She felt herself saying things untrue, giving form to the phantasms of her suspicions. She had no wish to deceive. She wanted the truth. Was she to seek it with lies? No; the truth must be sought with truth. This was her desire, but she was unequal to achieving it. As during their nocturnal walk along the Po, that evening of Antonio's arrival, so now she felt a veil suspended between them. They saw, but could not touch each other—so near were they, yet so far, separated by the black veil of lies. Why continue this conversation woven of deceits? Words, words! Cold, vain, vulgar words! The truth was in silence, or at least in those words which the lying lips were unable to shape. Regina reflected—
"If I dare not speak my real thought, I who have nothing shameful to conceal, how can he speak his? It is useless to insist. He will not confess. None the less, we may come to an understanding. I will say to him, 'Let us go back to living modestly as we did at first. Let us break off all relation with that woman, and it will shut people's mouths.' He will understand. He will return to me purified by my silent pardon, by my delicacy. And it will be all over. How is it I never had this happy thought before?"
But she had no sooner formulated the "happy thought" than it seemed to her just one of her usual romantic ideas—a phantasy on a pleasant walk at sundown, along the paths of a spring landscape. Life was a different matter! Reality, naked and ugly, but at least sincere, was a different matter!—like an ugly woman who makes no effort to deceive any one. Away, away with every veil! away with each stained garment! They must listen to each other; they must rend every disguise, even if it were generous and of the ideal.
While she was hurriedly weighing these thoughts in her mind, Antonio interrupted—
"And you knew all this and said nothing? Why did you say nothing? I can't make it out. Certain things have become clear—your ill-humour, your hints and insinuations, your obstinacy in not coming to Albano. But I cannot comprehend your silence. Ah! how hideous all this is! Hideous! Hideous! Certainly the world is malicious; its malice would be monstrous if it weren't ridiculous! We needn't pay attention to it! You are right; in a city like Rome, where anything seems possible, and nobody believes what is said——"
"No, we must pay attention to it," said Regina; "just because in a city like Rome anything seems possible. It mayn't matter so much to me, but suppose the calumny should reach the ears of my mother, down there in that corner of a province, where the smallest things seem gigantic! My mother has had great sorrows, but none of them could equal this."
"And do you suppose my mother wouldn't care just as much?" interrupted Antonio, piqued.
"No doubt she would. But it's for you to consider your mother, I mine! However, it shows you that even at Rome one must heed the clatter of tongues. If it were only you and I in face of that clawing animal, the world, I'd laugh at it. But, my dear, we aren't alone! Caterina will grow up. And if she were to know——"
At this he gave a cry almost wild.
"If she were to know! But has it been my fault?"
Again Regina felt as if a stone had struck her full in the face. Yes; if there was fault, it came home to herself! She was the mother of the evil which was stifling them. Antonio's cry was one not of defence, but of accusation.
She rebelled against it.
"I admit," she said, "the fault is not entirely yours. But neither is it all mine."
"Who's saying the fault is yours?"
"I have said it to myself a thousand times. Antonio, there is no reproach that I have not made to myself. How often have I not groaned, 'If I had not been guilty of that lightness of which I was guilty, Antonio would not have forced himself to change our position. He would not have become that woman's servant, not——'"
"You said it to yourself a thousand times?" he interrupted. "Do you mean you have been thinking of this for a long while? Why did you not first speak to me? Why? Why? That's what I require to know!"
"Oh, don't get angry again!" prayed Regina. "Why didn't I tell you? Because I didn't believe it."
"Do you mean you do believe it now? And that you waited to tell me till exactly now, to-day, at this moment?"
"I waited for an opportunity——"
"Nonsense! There was no lack of opportunities—worse ones even than this!"
"I repeat I don't study conventionality. Another woman would have made a scene, conjured you sentimentally to swear the truth on the head of our child. I don't do such things. Once only I was betrayed into a piece of dramatic nonsense. Once was enough!"
"What has this to do with it?" he said, angrily. "You could have spoken just as you are speaking now. Well, speak on. Say again what you said a minute ago. You said that you reproached yourself a thousand times as having been the cause of this—calumny. What did you mean?"
"You aren't listening. I reproached myself for having involuntarily given birth to this calumny, by constraining you to become that woman's slave. It was natural people should be suspicious. They are suspicious also of men much richer and much less attractive than you. Madame got rid of the others, Cavaliere R—— and Signor S——, to make a place for you. Naturally, those men spoke ill of you. Probably they started it. However," she continued, returning to her first point, "remember, Antonio, that I repented of my caprice. Remember well. I gave up all my pretensions and follies and came home to you because I had at last understood that your love was all I required for happiness."
"You said so, I know. But I didn't believe you. You said it because you pitied me. I didn't want your pity, Regina!" he went on, drawing a deep breath, as if struggling with a sob. "Now it is I who am playing the sentimental part, saying that you had humiliated me overmuch because I—had not tried to content you. Shall I follow your lead and say I am not like other men? Better or worse—who knows? I don't set up to be superior, as you do" (his voice shook with angry grief). "I'll call myself inferior, yes—a little bourgeois! How often have you not thrown that in my teeth! But for that very reason——What was I saying?"
Regina, overwhelmed herself by a strange mingling of grief and contempt, replied ironically—
"You were saying that we are two beings unlike the rest of the world, a hero and heroine of romance, in fact. Perhaps some day Gabrie will pick us up, as one picks mushrooms!"
"At this moment, with your scornful superiority, you are a poisonous mushroom!"
Regina had been staring straight before her, with eyes lost in the luminous distance. Now she turned to look at him, ready to make a bitter reply. But she saw his face so grey and miserable she did not venture to speak. What, moreover, could she say? Why continue vainly to beat about the bush, talking of the edifice of their error, without daring to penetrate within it?
Antonio went on—
"Yes, you had humiliated me overmuch! I must say it to you once straight out. After reading your letter I would have committed any crime only to free myself from the insulting weight of your reproaches. It was driving me mad. It was a degrading accusation which you had brought against me! And I wanted to get you back—as much out of pride as passion! To get you back, not by force, not by love, but by money. That was my obsession. Money—money at all costs! So I went and gambled. And I took the post which I did not particularly admire. I offered myself to Madame. That was my crime, because now I recognise that Cavaliere R—— was only doing precisely what I did myself a little later."
Regina listened and was silent, but she shook her head. He was lying, still lying. He was accusing himself of venial errors to make her believe him innocent of his real sin. Lies—always lies; and yet——
"I thought you had perhaps repented and would come home; but by this time I knew you! Your letter, your manner, had revealed your character. You would come home to live with me, perhaps resigned, perhaps not, but certainly unhappy. And I was ready to give my blood to prevent that! I wanted you happy. I loved you, Regina, just for your pretensions, which proved you the delicate, fastidious creature, above me by birth and by breeding. Who, you say, can know the dark secrets of his own heart? In a few days I had become another man. I dared to improve my position. I succeeded. And now you blame me for what I have done for you—only for you!"
Regina made no answer. He also kept silence, perhaps thinking her convinced. They went on a little way. A light-haired man, dressed like a Protestant minister, had come up with them, and walked by their side. Carts, laden with bottles, passed, and carriages going to Acqua Acetosa.
Regina thought—
"He doesn't want my pity. He was driven mad by humiliation! I see. Perhaps he thought I should come home only to torment him, and that presently I should desert him again. And I am still trying to persuade myself he is innocent, while he doesn't even know how to keep up the lie! Yet he has been lying for two years, every day, every hour, every minute. How, how has he been able to do it? Well, and wasn't I brooding over my project of flight secretly for days and for months? Was not that also treason? And are we not both lying now? Why all these vain words, these sous-entendus, if we are not each in turn trying to deceive the other? What is he thinking at this moment? What do I know of his soul, or he of mine? We have always mistaken each other, and we mistake more than ever at this moment. No, we do not know each other. We are more of strangers to one another than to that man passing along at our side. We have shared our bed and our board, we have a child, part of ourselves, and yet we are strangers! We are enemies—we offend each other; each in our turn, we hide that we may wound deeper!"
"Shall we go back by Ponte Molle, or by the way we went the last day?" asked Antonio.
"There might be a carriage down there, perhaps?" said Regina.
"To go back!" she thought, in profound desolation. "To take up our life of deception and shame! No, I will not! I will not! It must not go on!"
And at last she felt the courage to bring in the end that very day.
Her resolution calmed her. She seemed to lift her head, to open her eyes, to see again round her the beauties of Nature, the purifier. Just here the road broadened out. Never had she seen the Campagna so beautiful, so splendidly and magically coloured. It seemed a picture by a luminist painter—a green landscape with detached pines waving against the dazzling background of crimson and gold, an exaggeration of light, in whose intensity the figures of the passers-by, the half-naked vendors of the spa water, the mounted soldiers, the beggars lying in wait at the cross roads, stood out like bronze statues.
Regina had taken her resolution, but at the cross roads it sufficed her to note the angry movement with which Antonio flung a coin to the beggars to understand that her husband was still offended, and to revive her forlorn hope of his innocence.
They took the short cut. Up and down, up and down by a little path, dark, fragrant, part warm grass, part sand. The Protestant pastor, who seemed uncertain of the way, followed them.
The sun was sinking, silver on the gold horizon; over the flushed grass, the shadows of the pines grew long; the eastern sky took opaque tones—the ashy violet of a pastel. For a moment Regina could have believed herself in the mountains. She could see no more than the path mounting through grass to the low summit, all green against the luminous void. Up and up! The free breath of spring restored the natural colour to Antonio's face. Spring is intolerant of ugly people. The countenance of the fair young minister became like a pink peony, scarcely opened.
But here they were at the low summit, and from it appeared the azure vision of the real mountains.
That day the picture of the Acqua Acetosa had a character almost biblical. Men were sleeping on the grass beside their carts, in which the load of flasks sparkled in the sun; women, children, many dogs, a little black donkey, were all so still as to seem painted on the green background of the Tiber; a line of scarce distinguishable sheep were coming down to the river to drink; boats rocked softly among the bushes of the bank. A soft breeze diffused the perfume of the flowering elders.
While Antonio and Regina were descending the steps cut out on the hillside, a carriage arrived laden with five foreign ladies wearing the usual impossible little hats made of one ear of corn, a poppy, and a bunch of gauze. The lady who got out last began a dispute with the driver.
"Everywhere these horrible foreigners!" said Regina, nervously, and let Antonio go down to the fountain by himself.
She made her way to the river-bank, far up beyond the excise official's hut. He was walking about before the tavern, and the point to which Regina advanced remained completely solitary. Low noises reached her, overpowered by the song of the larks and the music of a streamlet gurgling at the bottom of a cleft near by. In the hedge leaves rustled like the frou-frou of silk, and the elder-flowers, already over-blown but still sweet and rosy in the sun, leaned forward as if to listen to the gurgle of the water. Beyond the cleft a mass of greyish flowers covered the declivity; below the Tiber rolled on, clear, calm, imperial. The reflection of the setting sun crossed an angle of the river, making an enormous, trembling, fiery serpent across the water, which seemed brought to a halt on its incandescent back. Sparkles of gold caught fire, went out, and lighted up again, swiftly, irrepressibly, where the reflection of the sun terminated. Everything suggested the illusion of a fight between the water and the raging fire in the river's depths. Far off, where the sky grew pale, the water had conquered and was already spreading the solemn sadness of its ashy calm.
Of course Regina thought of her own distant river. She sat on the rough grass of the declivity and waited.
Never had she felt quieter and stronger than at that hour. As over the river so over her soul, ashy calm was advancing, subduing the vain fire of passion. An old thought started afresh into her mind.
"Every hour will come. This one has come, and others, and others are on their way, and at last the hour of death. Why do we torment ourselves? My life and Antonio's from henceforth will be like a faded garment; yes, like this——!" she said, drawing round her feet the edge of her white but soiled dress. "Well? that means that we shall wear it more contemptuously, but also more comfortably, without considering it so much—thus!" she cried aloud, casting her skirt's hem away from her, over the rough, sand-covered grass.
She looked if Antonio were coming. For some moments he had been speaking with the owners of the five little hats. Then Regina saw him take them down, down, as far as to one of the boats moored at the bank. The boatman ran up, spoke with Antonio, and presently the boat laden with the five little hats was on her way to Ponte Molle.
Then Antonio looked round for his wife and came to her with his swift, light step.
"I put them in the boat partly that we might get their carriage," he said, throwing himself on the grass at her side. "I hope I haven't made you jealous, Regina, now you've begun at it!"
His voice was gay; too gay.
"On the contrary, I hope I have done with it," she said coldly. "If you have no objection, we will speak further and end the matter."
"Oh, I knew we'd have to go on! Well, speak!" he said, kicking at a branch of elder. "To begin with, tell me what were the allusions, the insinuations made by my cousin—by my relations—by every one, in fact—as a treat——"
Regina watched the nervous movement of Antonio's hand. Her eyes had again become sweet, soft, child-like, but with the sweetness of childish eyes when they are sad.
"Listen, dear," she began, and her voice also was sweet but sad; "don't let us fall into scandal-mongering. If the thing isn't true, what does it matter? If it is true——"
"If it were true——" he interrupted, raising his head, while his hand still shook. Regina was silent not looking up. "What would you do? Would you leave me again?"
She shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.
"If it is true. Then you are still supposing it! Ah, that's what I cannot endure, Regina! It means you don't believe me. It means the malicious words of some stranger have more value for you than mine!"
She was tempted to reply, "And are not you a stranger to me?" but dared not yet.
"Yes, yes! I see that's what it is!" he went on, despairingly. "Now this suspicion has got into your head, now, now you believe me no longer! But I hope to cure you, see! I hope. Begin by telling me everything. You ought to tell me, you ought, do you hear? It concerns your honour—everybody's honour. Tell me! tell me!"
She shook her head.
"What is the use?"
"Tell me all," he commanded. "There's a limit to my patience also!"
"Don't raise your voice, Antonio! The excise officer is there. Don't be so small!"
"Have done with your own smallness! I am small; yes, I'm small, and that's just the reason why I want to know! You see, you are driving me mad! Tell me! I insist."
Regina turned and looked at him. Her eyes, large and melancholy, sparkled in the reflection of the sunset. Never had Antonio seen them more beautiful, sweeter, deeper. At that moment he was overpowered by some sort of fascination and could not turn away from those eyes, burning and sad like the dying sun. Regina said—
"And when I shall have told you everything you want to know, what will you do? How will you know, how do I know, if the things I have heard are or are not real illusions, evil surmises? or whether the doubt has not come of my own instinct?"
"But a few minutes ago you said you didn't believe it! I don't understand you, Regina!"
"And I, do I understand you? Can we understand each other? Think, Antonio, think. Have we ever understood each other? How do I know you speak the truth? How do you know I speak the truth? Look," she said, stretching her hand towards the Tiber; "we seem near to each other, while, on the contrary, we are distant as the banks of this river, which for ever gaze at each other, but will never come into touch!"
"For pity's sake, finish it!" he said, bitterly, but supplicatingly and humbly. "Be merciful, my dear, and don't torment me. Don't say these horrible things. It's very possible I don't understand you, but you, you ought to understand me. Let us discuss, let us see together what is to be done. I—I will do whatever you wish. Haven't I always done so? Am I not good to you? Do you say I am not good to you? Tell me what I am to do, but don't doubt me! It's the last straw. If we lose our peace, our concord, what is there left for us?"
He spoke softly, humbly, almost sweetly, but with that sweetness one employs towards a sick and fractious child. He took her hand and laid it on his knee, and on it he laid his own. Regina felt his hand pulsing and vibrating, but its fondness no longer had power to stir her blood.
Yes, it was undeniable. He had always done her will. He was the weak one, and this was at once his crime and his defence. Yes, he was kind, too kind. He had given her in sacrifice not his spirit only, but his body; this miserable mortal flesh he had sold for her. He had given her all; he would still give her all. In a moment, if she demanded it of him, he would confess his shame. How could she have doubted it? Then she told him the whole story.
"Listen. One day I went to see Gabrie, who had been ill——"
CHAPTER VII
She told him all with brief, quiet words. She spoke softly, her eyes, her fingers, resting on the embroidery of her dress. She seemed the guilty one, but dignified in her error, ready to be punished. She told of her doubts, how they had swelled and flamed. She repeated the reproaches she had made to herself, described her visions, her delirious cruelty, her suspicions, the dream, the presentiment, her intention of pardon.
Meanwhile the sun went down. The golden serpent withdrew to the shore, following the sparkling veil of victorious water. The river was divided into two zones—one of tender violet under the pale heaven of the east, the other blood-stained beneath the burning west.
But in water and sky the conflict was ended between the colours and the lights. All was unified and confounded into one supreme harmony of peace. The light had re-entered into the shadow; the shadow still sought the light. The pale water floated into the luminous zone, and the glowing waves retreated slowly towards a mysterious distance, beyond the horizon, whither the human gaze could not follow.
The crowd of grey flowers slept on, motionless on the declivity. The leaves were silent; everything had become drowsy, lulled by the simple song of the trickle in the depth of the miniature abyss.
And in all this harmonious silence, Regina, as she ended her tale, felt the solemn indifference of nature for man and for his paltry fortunes.
"We are alone," she concluded, taking suggestion from this impression of solitude and abandonment; "alone in the world of our sins, if there is really such a thing as sin. Let us pity, each in our turn, and renew our existence. If we are at war, who will help us? Our relations, our friends, might die for us without their death bringing our suffering one moment of relief. I once read of a husband who wished to kill his wife. At the moment he tried to wound her she—bewildered—flung herself on his breast, instinctively seeking his protection against the murderer. How often have not I, in those days of doubt, while—to my shame—I was spying upon you, while I was wrestling with the idea of turning to strangers that I might know—know—how often have I not felt the impulse to come to you, to pray you to speak, to save, to protect me! See! Nature herself is indifferent to us at this moment, while, perhaps, our whole future is being decided. Every atom, every sparkle, every wave, runs to its own destiny without attending to us. We are alone; alone and lost. If we separate, where shall we go? and, moreover, if we did wrong, was it not precisely that we might not be separated?"
"But," said Antonio, with one last attempt at defence, "you once wished——"
And Regina felt a final touch of impatience. She was speaking as he ought to have spoken, and was he still resisting? What did he want?
"There's no good in beginning all over again!" she cried. "This is enough. It seems to me that already I am reasoning too much for you to understand that between you and me there is no longer room for reproaches."
"Yes, Regina," he sighed; "you reason too much, and that is what terrifies me!"
His eyes sank. He looked at his hand, raised it, and let it fall heavily on Regina's, which he had retained all this while on his knee.
"Why do I reason too much? Why are you terrified?"
"Because if you really believed in my guilt you would not speak as you are speaking. You speak like this because you do not believe it—yet——"
She felt her heart beat. He was right! But she summoned her forces and overcame herself.
"Look at me!" she commanded.
Antonio looked at her. His eyes were veiled in tears.
Then it was true.
Regina had never seen her husband weep, nor had she ever imagined he could weep.
At that moment, when everything darkened within her, not in swift passing eclipse, but in unending twilight, a confused recollection came to her of something far off—so far off that for years and years it had not returned to her mind. She saw again a man seated before a burning hearth. This man crouched, his elbows on his knees, his face on his hands, and he wept; while a woman bent over him, her hand laid on his bald head.
The man was her father, the spendthrift; the woman her patient mother.
Was it a dream? or a reality of her unconscious infancy, far away, forgotten? She did not know; but at that moment in the shadow of her soul a light appeared, rose-red like the reflection of the burning hearth in that distant picture of human error and of human pity.
She did not think of laying her hand on her husband's head as her mother had laid hers on the head of that father who, perhaps, had been more guilty than Antonio; but she remembered the serene and beautiful life of that woman who had fulfilled her cycle as all good women must fulfil theirs, mid the love of her children and for their sake. Never had the widow made those sad memories to weigh upon her children. If they suffered, as by law of nature all born of woman must suffer, the memory of her did not add to their grief, but softened it.
"And I, too," thought Regina, "must fulfil my cycle. Our child must never know that we have suffered and have erred."
So she must pardon; more than ever she must pardon! Like the waters of the river, she must pass silently towards the light of an horizon beyond the earth, towards the sea of infinite charity, where the greatest of human errors is no more than the remembrance of an extinguished spark.
They came home in the carriage left by the five foreigners. A tender and transparent twilight had fallen around and within them. Resigned to the Nostalgia of a light lost for ever, not joyous nor very sad, like husband and wife re-united after a long separation, they clasped each other by the hand, silently promising to help each other as one helps the blind.
Thus they returned into the circle of the city and of the past.
It seemed to Regina that a long time, a whole period of life, had passed since she and her husband had stopped before the wayside tavern. But, returning, as their driver pulled up at the same place to light his lamps, she saw the girl in the pink blouse still sitting by the inside door, and the couple, light-footed and black against the background of golden glass, were at their dancing still.
THE END
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