A Lady of Rome

by F. Marion Crawford

The world was very hard to understand, she thought, and later, when she was alone, she pondered on this new mystery. It still seemed impossible that the least likely of all things should have happened: that Leone should have developed a whole-hearted, boyish admiration for Montalto was strange enough, but that Montalto should apparently have taken a real liking to Leone, and something more, was past her comprehension. It was almost too much, and a deep, unacknowledged feminine instinct was ready to rise up against it, though all her conscience and intelligence told her that she should be grateful to her husband for the large forgiveness he bestowed upon her in every act of kindness to the boy.

He had changed quickly since his return, and she sometimes found it hard to believe that he had come back to her looking like the wreck of a man, that his tears had run down like a nervous woman’s, scalding her hands till she had felt contempt for his unmanly weakness.

Certain people have what may be called dramatic constitutions and faces; a few hours of anxiety or pain make havoc of their looks; when others would merely look tired, they become haggard, their cheeks fall in, their eyes grow hollow; in a fortnight they grow thin till they seem shadowy. But when the pain is over, or the anxiety is relieved, their normal appearance returns with amazing rapidity. In three or four weeks after he had come home, Montalto was his old self again, saving his prematurely grey hair and beard; but even they no longer made him look old now that his still young face had filled out again and recovered its normal colour. He was once more a grave, dark, erect and rather handsome man, apparently endowed with a strong will of his own, and undoubtedly imbued with an almost exaggerated sense of his dignity. He was again the husband Maria had married nine years ago, and he had blotted out of his memory all that had happened from then till now.

He was almost the same again; and so was Maria herself. If he had remained as much changed as he had seemed to be at first, she might possibly have deluded herself with the idea that he was not really the same man, after all, so that he was now her real husband and she had dreamed all the rest. But even such an imaginary alleviation as that was denied her. He was only too really the same in all ways; she quivered at his gentlest touch and writhed under his loving caress, and presently she wondered why he never felt that she loathed him, even if he could not see it in her face.

A villainous idea suggested itself. Perhaps he both felt and saw her repugnance; perhaps his kindness was all a cruel comedy, his affection for Leone a diabolical deception; perhaps he was revenging himself in his own way, and delighting inwardly in the unspeakable suffering he inflicted.

But the thought was too unbalanced to sustain itself. According to his lights, Maria was sure that he was a good man. Don Ippolito Saracinesca knew human nature well, and could not have been deceived for years in one whom he called his friend. Diego di Montalto was not a monster of cruelty; his love was real, his forgiveness was real, his liking for the boy he might so naturally have detested was real too—it was all awfully real. God in heaven would not have expected her to submit herself body and mind to be tormented by a wicked man for the rest of her life, in vengeance for one fault. No, her husband was a good man, who had been generous beyond words; he had come home to take her back before the whole world, defying it to speak evil against his honoured wife, he had come home to be her husband and her child’s father. And when he touched her she trembled and felt sick; but this was her just expiation, and she must bear it as well as she could, and hide her horror of him till she died of it. Even that would not come soon. She had not a dramatic organisation like his, and she could be made to bear a great deal before the end. She would have been a good patient for the tormentors in older times, for she would not have fainted soon, or died, and felt nothing more. She was very quiet, a little subdued, and there was sometimes a startled, haunted look in her eyes, but that was all; she ate enough, she went about her occupations, she wrote letters to Giuliana and others, she looked after Leone, she even slept as much as was necessary, and people thought she was at last contented, if not happy, with the rather dull and formal husband who had come back to her. They saw, too, or believed, that she and Castiglione were completely estranged and hardly spoke when they happened to meet anywhere; but even such meetings were of very rare occurrence, because she and her husband were in such deep mourning.

The summer came, and they went northwards in a comfortable motor car. They stopped on their way to make short visits to more or less distant relations who were already at their country places; they spent a fortnight by the seaside, near Genoa, a day or two in Milan, a hot week in Venice near the end of July; and so they came by easy stages to Montalto, with its solemn towers, its deep woods and its waterfalls, its fertile valley, its rich farms and its thriving village; and there they stayed through the rest of the summer and into the early autumn.

Leone rode with Montalto every day, and by and by he was taught to hold a real gun in the right way, and then to shoot; and at last Montalto took him out one day and he fired his first shot at a pheasant and missed, but he killed a bird the second time, and was the happiest boy in the world for the rest of that day. Through all those months Montalto himself gained strength daily and recovered more and more of the comparative youthfulness which remains to a man not forty; and Maria changed little, if at all, though Leone thought the white patch near her left temple was growing larger.

Also, in those quiet days, the boy and the man became more and more closely attached to each other. Montalto took more real interest in teaching Leone to ride and shoot than he had ever shown in anything; and Leone was more entirely persuaded that Montalto was his ideal, though he still declared that he himself would be a soldier and nothing else.

During this time Maria frequently saw Orlando Schmidt, the steward. She had not seen him in Rome after her husband had arrived, and when she noticed the latter’s reserved tone in speaking of him, she had not mentioned him again and had soon forgotten his existence. There was no special reason why she should think of him at all, though she had found him very efficient and ready to serve her.