II.
The circular drawing-room had been transformed into a garden of camellias, on whose close, dense, dark-green background of foliage the flowers displayed their insolent waxen beauty, white or red, perfumeless, icily voluptuous, their full buds swelling as if to burst their green chalices. A luxuriant vegetation covered the walls and the very roof, lending them a silent enchantment. In the midst of the shrubbery a Musa paradisiaca reared its lofty head, spreading out its vivid green leaves like an umbrella. Round the Musa ran a rustic divan roughly wrought in wood. Here and there were low rustic stools. Massive branches of camellia nearly hid the two doors leading to this room. A faint diffuse light shone through its opaque rose-coloured shades.
Three or four times during the evening, in the intervals of the dances, this room had filled with guests. Ladies, young and old, uttered little cries of delight in the rustic effect, in the coolness and the repose of it, as compared with the hard white glare of the ball-room, its oppressive atmosphere and noisy orchestra. They assumed attitudes of graceful languor. The men looked round with an air of suppressed satisfaction, as if they too were far from insensible to the beauties of Nature. A few timidly culled buds were offered as gifts.... A young lady in pale yellow, with a shower of lilies of the valley in her dark hair, recited some verses in a low murmur. Quiet women fanned themselves gently with noiseless, winged fans of soft grey feathers; but hardly had the triumphant appeal of the first notes of a waltz or the plaintive melting strains of the mazurka reached their retreat, when one and all flung themselves into the whirl of the ball and every couple vanished. Once more the shrubbery was silent and deserted, the red camellias again opened their lips. What were they waiting for?
Giovanna Casacalenda, the daughter of the house, entered the shrubbery on the arm of a young man. Taller than her partner, she seemed to look down upon him from the height of her regal beauty. She was draped in the clinging folds of a long dress of ivory crape, that ended in a soft floating train. Wondrous to behold was the low bodice of crimson satin, fitting without a crease; her arms were bare to the shoulder. One row of pearls round the firm white throat. A wreath of damask roses, worn low on the forehead, crowned her dark hair, drawn up close from the nape of her neck. This audaciously simple costume was worn with the repose of conscious beauty, proof against any weakness on its own account. A smile just parted her curved lips while she listened to her companion, a meagre undersized youth, with a bilious complexion; there were lines about his eyes and the hair was scanty on the temples. He was correct, refined, and finnikin.
“But, Giovanna, I have your promise,” he protested, “thy promise.”
“You need not 'thou’ and 'thee’ me,” she observed.
“Forgive.... I beg your pardon, I am always betraying my feelings,” he murmured; “it’s very clear that you are casting me off, Giovanna....”
“If it is so clear, why trouble to talk about it?”
“Why do I...? That you may contradict me. What have I done to thee?”
“Nothing; treat me to you, if you please. Now go on, I am in a hurry.”
“Then it has been a dream?”
“Dream, caprice, folly; call it what you will. You must make up your mind to the fact that we cannot marry. You have an income of eight thousand lire; I shall have six thousand. What can one do with fourteen thousand lire a year?”
Smiling, she said these things, without changing her easy attitude; the arm that plied the fan was carefully rounded, and she looked at him with a little air of superiority.
“But if my uncle dies ...” whined her victim.
“Your uncle is not going to die just yet, I have observed him carefully; he’s solid.”
“You are positively malevolent, Giovanna ... remember....”
“What would you have me remember? Do try to be sensible. Let us go back.”
They went away, and those superb camellias that Giovanna so closely resembled told no tales, neither did they murmur among themselves.
“Very fine indeed!” said Andrea Lieti, admiring the general effect, while the divan creaked under his weight. “But give me Centurano.”
“Real country must always surpass in beauty its counterfeit presentment,” mumbled timid Galimberti, Professor of History. “But these Casacalendas have a fine, luxurious taste.”
“Bah! respected Professor, they want to marry their daughter, and they are sure to succeed.”
“Do you really think...?”
“I don’t blame them. So magnificent a creature is not meant to be kept at home. Was she so beautiful when she was at school?”
“Beautiful ... dangerously beautiful, even at school.... I remember ...” passing his hand across his forehead, as if he were talking to himself.
Andrea Lieti opened his big blue eyes in amazement. The Professor remained standing in an awkward attitude, stooping slightly, and ill at ease in his easy attire. His trousers were too long, and bagged at the knees. The collar of his old-fashioned dress-coat was too high. Instead of the regulation shirt, shining like a wall of marble, he wore an embroidered one, with large Roman mosaic studs, a view of the Colosseum, the Column of Trajan, the Piazza di San Pietro. There he stood, with hanging arms, with his hideous, pensive head. The brow appeared to have grown higher and yellower. His eyes had the old oblique look, at once absent and embarrassed.
“These balls must bore you fearfully, Professor,” cried Andrea, as he rose and walked to and fro, conspicuous for his fine proportions and well-bred ease.
“Well ... rather ... I feel somewhat isolated in a crowd like this,” said Galimberti, confusedly.
“And yet you don’t dislike it?”
“A.... Two or three of my pupils are so good as to invite me.... I go out for recreation.... I read too hard.”
Again that weary gesture, as if to ease his brow of its weight of thought, and the wandering glance seeming to seek something that was lost.
“You must come to us, too, Professor,” said Andrea, full of compassion for the wretched little dwarf. “Caterina often speaks of you.”
“She was a good creature ... such a good creature. So good and gentle and sensible. Yours was an excellent choice.”
“I believe you,” said Andrea, laughing heartily. “Is it true that you always reproached her with a lack of imagination?”
“Did she tell you that too? Yes—sometimes ... a certain dryness....”
“Well, Caterina isn’t troubled with sentimental vagaries. But I like her best as she is. Have you seen her to-night? She’s lovely. If she were not my wife, I should be dancing with her.”
“She is ... or was with her friend....”
“With Lucia Altimare, to be sure.”
“With the Signorina Altimare,” repeated the Professor, gulping down something with difficulty.
“There’s another of your pupils! She must have plagued you, no end, with her compositions, to judge from the tiresome fantastic letters she writes to my wife.”
“The Signorina Altimare wrote divinely,” said the Professor, dryly.
“Eh! maybe,” muttered Andrea, choosing a cigarette. “Have one? No? I assure you they are not bad. I was saying”—he resumed his seat on the couch, and blew the smoke upwards—“that she must have bored you to tears.”
“The Signorina Altimare is a suffering, interesting being. She is so very unhappy,” persisted the Professor, with his cravat all awry, in the heat of his defence.
Andrea gazed at him with curiosity; then a faint smile parted his lips.
“She goes to balls, however,” he replied, quietly enjoying the study of the Professor.
“She does. She is obliged to, and it changes the current of her thoughts. You see she never dances.”
“Bah! because nobody insists on her doing so. What do you bet that, if I go and ask her, she won’t dance the waltz with me?”
“Nothing would induce her to dance, she is subject to palpitations. It might make her faint.”
“Che! If I give her a turn, you’ll see how she’ll trot! No woman has ever fainted in my arms....” He stopped short from sheer pity. Galimberti, who had turned from yellow to red, and stood nervously clutching at his hat, looked at Andrea with so marked an expression of pain and anger, that he felt ashamed of tormenting him.
“But she is too thin, too angular; we’ll leave her alone. Or you try it, Professor; you dance with her.” With a friendly gesture he took him by the arm, to lead him away.
“I don’t dance,” mumbled Galimberti, and his big head sank on his breast. “I don’t know how to dance.”
Enter once more Giovanna Casacalenda, leaning this time with a certain abandon on the arm of a cavalry officer. Her arm nestled against his coat, her face was raised to his. He, strutting like a peacock in his new uniform, was smiling through his blonde moustache; an ornamental soldier, who had left his sword in the anteroom.
“Well, Giovanna, has the old boy made up his mind?”
“There is something brewing, but nothing settled,” she replied, wearily. “Indeed, it’s a sorry business.”
“All’s well that ends well. Courage, Giovanna; you are enchanting to-night.”
“Am I?” she murmured, looking in his face.
“More than ever ... when I think that old....”
“Don’t think about it, Roberto.... It must be,” she added seriously.
“I know that it must be; as if I hadn’t advised it! Of course your father would not give you to me: it’s no good thinking of it. Besides, he is a very presentable old fellow.”
“Oh! presentable....”
“Well, with the collar of his order under his coat, his bald head, and his white whiskers, he looks dignified enough for a husband, and....”
“It’s all so far off, Roberto,” she said, looking at him languidly but fixedly, with parted lips and sad eyes.
“Well, get it over; it rests with you....”
“You will never forget me, Roberto, my own Roberto?”
“Forget you, Giovanna, transcendent, fascinating as you are? Do you realise the extent of my sacrifice? I leave you to Gabrielli. Do you realise what I lose?”
“You do not lose all,” murmured Giovanna, with a catch in her breath. He bent down and imprinted a long kiss on her wrist. Her eyelids drooped, but she did not withdraw it; she was ready to fall into his arms, notwithstanding the nearness of the ball-room. The young officer, whose prudence was more than equal to his love, raised his head.
“It would be rash to loiter here,” he said; “the old boy might get jealous.”
“Dio mio, what a bore! Basta, for your sake.”
“Why do you not sing to-night?”
“Mamma won’t let me....” And they passed on.
The two friends were approaching the rustic seat: after carefully arranging their trains, they sat down together. Lucia Altimare sank as if from sheer fatigue. Her dress was of strange pale sea-green, almost neutral in tint; the skirt hung in plain ample folds, like a peplum. The bodice closely defined her small waist; her arms and shoulders were swathed in a pale veil, like a cloud in colour and texture. Some of her dark tresses were loosened on her shoulders, and, half buried in their waves, was a wreath of natural white flowers, fresh, but just beginning to fade. A bunch of the same flowers was dying in the folds of tulle that covered her bosom. The general effect was that of the fragile body of an Undine, surmounted by the head of a Sappho.
Next to her sat Caterina Lieti, radiantly serene and fresh, in her pretty pink ball-dress, wearing round her throat a dazzling rivière of diamonds, and in her hair a diamond aigrette that trembled as she leant over her friend, talking to her the while with animation. Lucia appeared to be lost in thought, or in the absence of it. She said, in her dragging tones, as if her very words weighed too heavily for her, “I knew I should meet you here. Besides, my father is so very youngish—it amuses him, he likes dancing. Why did you not answer my last letter?”
“I was on the eve of returning to Naples ... and so you see....”
“I hope,” said the other, with a somewhat contemptuous pout, “that you do not permit your husband to read my letters.”
Caterina, blushing, denied the impeachment.
“He is a good young man,” admitted Lucia, in an indulgent tone. “I think your husband suits you. You are pretty to-night: too many diamonds, though.”
“They were a present from Andrea,” proudly.
“I hate jewels; I shall never wear them.”
“If you were to marry, Lucia....”
“I marry? You know what I wrote you.”
“But listen; there is that Galimberti, who follows you everywhere; who admires you from a distance; who loves you without daring to tell his love. I am sorry for him.”
“Alas! ’tis no fault of mine, Caterina, sai.”
“You know; perhaps he is poor; perhaps his feelings are hurt in all these rich houses, where he follows you. You are good. Spare him. He looks so unhappy.”
“What can I do? He is, like myself, a victim of fate, of fatality.”
“Of what fatality?”
“He is ill-starred, he deserves to be wealthy and handsome, and that is just what he is not. I ought to have come into the world either as an ignorant peasant or as queen of a people to whose happiness I could have ministered. We console ourselves by a correspondence which gives vent to our souls.”
“But he will fall over head and ears in love.”
“I cannot love any one: it is not given to me to love;” and Lucia fell into a rigid, all but statuesque attitude, like a Greek heroine caught in the act of posing. Caterina neither asked her why nor wherefore. In Lucia’s presence she was under the spell that fantastic divagations sometimes exercise over calm reasonable beings.
“Caterina, I have begun to visit the poor in their homes. It is an interesting humanitarian occupation. It is the source of the sweetest emotion. Will you come with me?”
“I will ask Andrea.”
“Must you needs ask his permission for everything? Have you bartered your liberty so far as that?”
“Sai, a wife!”
“Tell me, Caterina, what is the happiness, the charm of married life?”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Tell me why is marriage the death of love.”
“I don’t know, Lucia.”
“Then marriage is to be the eternal mystery of life?”
“Who tells you these things, Lucia?”
“My own heart, Caterina,” replied the other, rising.
Then, assuming a solemn tone and raising her hand to swing it swordwise through the air—“One thing only exists for certain.”
“What?”
“Passion, it’s the only reality.”
“The favoured mortal is always a young man,” remarked the Commendatore Gabrielli, his mouth twitching with a nervous tic to which he was subject.
“But that is not my ideal,” replied the enchanting voice of Giovanna.... “I have always felt a tacit contempt for those idlers, deficient alike in character and talent, who waste their youth and their fortune on gambling and horses and other less worthy pursuits....” She pretended to blush behind her fan.
“Well, Signora Giovanna, you are perhaps right. But a reformed rake makes a good husband.”
“I do not think so, Commendatore; with all due deference, I am not of your opinion. Think of Angela Toraldo’s husband; what a pearl! I hear that if she weeps or complains he boxes her ears. A horror! These young husbands are brutes. Look at Andrea Lieti! how roughly he must treat that poor little Caterina...! While with a man of mature age....”
“Has this often occurred to you, Signora Giovanna?”
“Always.... A grave man who takes life seriously; who lives up to a political idea....”
“You would know how to grace a political salon,” he murmured, gazing at her.
She shut her fan and shrugged her beautiful shoulders, as if they were about to take leave of their crimson cuirasse. The Commendatore’s catlike eyes blazed behind his gold spectacles. Giovanna again plied her fan; it fluttered caressingly, humbly.
“Oh! I am not worthy such honour.... He would shine; and I should modestly reflect his light. We women love to be the secret inspirers of great men. Could you read our hearts....”
And she leant on his arm, against his shoulder, smiling perpetually, smiling to the verge of weariness, while the bald head of the Commendatore shone with a crimson glow.
“What madness,” whispered Lucia Altimare, sinking on the divan. “Perfect madness, for which you are responsible. I ought not to have waltzed....”
“Pray forgive me,” said Andrea, apparently embarrassed, but really bored. He was standing before her in a deferential attitude.
“It is your fault,” she said, looking up at him through her lashes. “You are strong and robust, and an odd fancy came into your head. I ought to have refused.... At first it was all right, a delicious waltz.... You bore me along like a feather, then my head began to whirl.... The room swam round, the lights danced in my brain.... I lost my breath....”
“May I get you something to drink?”
“No,” she answered curtly at his interruption of her eloquence.
“A glass of punch? Punch is a capital remedy,” he continued hurriedly; “it warms, and it’s the best possible restorative. I am going to have some. Pray drink something, unless you mean to overwhelm me with remorse. All our ills come from the stomach. Shall I call Caterina to insist on your taking it?”
“Caterina did not see us come in here?”
“I think not, she was dancing with my brother-in-law, Federigo Passalancia. Caterina is looking her loveliest to-night, isn’t she?”
But Lucia Altimare made no answer; she turned extremely pale, breathed heavily, and then slipped off the divan on to the floor, in a dead faint.
Andrea swore inwardly, with more energy than politeness, against all women who waltz, and at the folly of men who waltz with them.