They were both silent in the ebbing of the tide which at the full had nearly swept them from their feet. At heart, in spite of all, there was something strangely innocent in them both. Castiglione’s friends would have wondered much if they could have understood him, as some of the graver sort might. Few men of his age, beyond the cloister, knew less of women’s ways and women’s love than he; few soldiers, indeed, and surely not one of his brother officers. To wear the King’s uniform ten years in the gayest and smartest cavalry regiment of the service is not a school for austere virtue or innocence of heart. All that Castiglione’s comrades noticed was that he talked but little of women, who were often the chief subject of the others’ conversation, and that he was very reticent about the ones he knew. They respected him for that, on the whole, though they sometimes chaffed him a little in a friendly way. They all agreed among themselves that he had some secret and lasting attachment for a woman of their own class whose name he succeeded in keeping from them in spite of their repeated attempts to find it out. He was such a manly man that they liked him the better for it; the more, because great reticence was not their own chief quality. For the rest, though, he was poorer than most of them, he was always ready to join in anything except a general raid on womankind. He played cards with them, and when he could lose no more, he said so; he was honest in matters of horseflesh and gave sound advice; he never shirked his duty and left it for another to do; he was good-natured in doing a comrade’s work when he was asked to do it for any good reason; he was the best rider in the regiment, and he never talked about what he had done, or could do, with a horse; he was not over clever, but he was good company and told a story with a touch of humour; and he never borrowed from a brother officer, nor refused to lend, if he had any money. Altogether, he was the best comrade in the world and everybody liked and respected him, from the rather supercilious colonel, who was an authentic duke, and the crabbed old major, who had been wounded at Dogali, to the rawest recruit that was drafted in from a Sardinian village or a shepherd’s hut in the Apennines.
But none of all those who liked and respected him guessed that in the arts of love he was considerably behind the youngest subaltern in the regiment, at least, so far as his own experience was concerned, for he could have written volumes about that of the rest as described by themselves. As a cadet, indeed, he had not been a model of austerity; but he had fallen in love with Maria a few days after he had received his commission, and such as he had been then he had remained ever since, except for her. If his colonel had known this, he would have smiled sarcastically and would have said that Castiglione was a case of arrested development, the old major would have stared at him stupidly without in the least comprehending that such a man could exist, and the rest of the mess would have roared with laughter and called him a crazy sentimentalist. But none of them knew the truth, and he had lived his life in his own way. There are not many men in the great world like Baldassare del Castiglione, but there are a few; and in the little world, in simple countries, there are more of them than the great world ever dreams of.
This long digression, if it be one, is to explain why Castiglione accepted Maria’s strangely exalted plan for the future of both, instead of telling her quite frankly that the chances in favour of its success were too small for poor humanity to count upon, and that the best way was to part again and to meet very rarely or not at all, until the fire of life should be extinguished in the grey years, and they could look at each other without seeing so much as a spark of it left in each other’s tired eyes. That is what he would have done, as a man of honour, if he had known as many other women of his own class intimately as some of his comrades did. Or, if he had been like them in other things too, and had loved Maria less truly, he would have sat down to besiege the fortress he had once stormed, and would have gone to work scientifically to demolish its defences, making pretence of accepting the trusting woman’s generous offer in order to outwit and conquer her by slow degrees. And if he had done either the one or the other, that is to say, if he had understood women’s ways, this would either have been the story of a vulgar fault, or it would have ended abruptly with Castiglione’s departure.
It is neither. Baldassare was innocent enough as well as honourable enough to believe that he and Maria could keep the promise they had made; and he loved her so dearly that the prospect of seeing her often was like a vision of heaven already half realised.
So on that day they began the new life together, trusting that they could live it faithfully to the end, but truly resolved to part again for ever if real danger came near them.
They believed in themselves and in each other. Maria had faith in a higher power from which she was to receive strength; Castiglione had little or nothing of this, but he said to himself plainly that if he broke his word he would die for it on the same day, and he loved mere life enough to think the forfeit a heavy one.
They counted upon themselves and upon each other. There was nothing to suggest that quite external circumstances might influence their lives to make the task easier or more difficult than they anticipated. Most certainly neither believed that there could be moments ahead which would be harder to bear than those through which they had already lived.
When Castiglione went away that afternoon they had agreed that he should come again on the next day but one, and once again before he went back to Milan, and that he should at once take steps to exchange into the Piedmont Lancers, if possible, as his old regiment was likely to remain in Rome fully eighteen months longer.