The life at Montalto went on a little longer after that, and the work on the garden made it a little less monotonous. Not that Maria disliked that side of it. Since she was to live her married life again, it was a little easier to live it in that deep retirement, where she could so often be left to herself for half the day while Montalto and Leone were out shooting, or riding, or visiting some distant part of the estate. To be alone as much as possible was her chief aim in the arrangement of her day. There had been a time when she had been happy to have Leone always by her side; but now he talked to her so incessantly of her husband and of what they had done and were going to do together, that she often wished he would be silent or go away.
The time had come when the boy began to turn to the man for what he wanted, even more readily than to his mother; and there is nothing quite like a mother’s loneliness of heart when she sees that she can no longer compete with the manly influence in amusing and interesting her only boy. How can pretty stories and sugar-plums stand against horse, and dog, and gun, and a day’s sport? And what is motherly love to a healthy boy, compared with the qualities of a father who can give him such things and share in his enjoyment of them? Also, the smaller the boy the greater his delight in any grown-up sport, and Leone had begun to ride and shoot at an age when most Roman boys are scarcely out of the nursery. It is true that he looked two or three years older than his age, and had fought with boys bigger than himself, like Mario Campodonico, and had ‘hammered’ them, as he called it.
This was the situation between Montalto, his wife and the boy, when they all came back to Rome towards the end of October; and Orlando Schmidt went before them to see that everything was ready and to take the place of the old steward, who had at last died, leaving the estate in a confusion worthy of his well-meaning stupidity. Schmidt was to set matters right, and find a proper man to manage the Roman lands under his general direction, while he himself administered the Montalto estate as heretofore. He had, in fact, been promoted to be the agent for all the property owned by the Count in Italy.
In October, too, six months after the Dowager Countess’s death, Maria and her husband put on half mourning, according to the strict rule that prevails in Rome in those matters; and though they would not go to balls and big dinners yet, they were permitted to see something of their friends—and even of their acquaintances.
That was really the end of the quiet life they had led together for five months. Maria was to go back, take her place in society as a Roman lady, and be a great personage once more in that old-fashioned, ceremonious life which has survived in scarcely any other city in the world, and is fast disappearing in Rome itself.
So far had Maria dragged herself on the thorny path of her expiation without much help from without, and with little hope within.
CHAPTER XIV
Monsieur Jules de Maurienne gambled, and, like most rich men who do, he generally won more than he lost. He did not gamble for the sake of winning money, however, for he was a gentleman and avarice was not among his faults, though he was not extravagant in his way of living, and knew very nearly to a penny what he spent from month to month. What he enjoyed was the excitement of fearing that he was going to lose, as he occasionally did, though with no serious damage to his fortune. Some people do daring things when there is a good reason for doing them, and they are like cats at bay; others are incapable of physical fear and never believe in danger, and they are likely healthy puppies; but one meets men now and then who fully realise every risk, and take a real pleasure in trying how far they can go without breaking their necks. None of the lower animals will do this; it is a characteristic of the born gambler.