"What were you going to say?" asked Gianluca, knowing from her tone that she had meant to speak of some grave matter.
"Nothing!" she answered with a little sharpness. "Pray take my chair, Duchessa," she said, turning to the good lady, who had come slowly forward till she stood with her head just out in the air. "It is time for luncheon," she added, as she made the Duchessa sit down, nodded quickly to Gianluca, and went in.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The regularity of the existence at Muro pleased the old couple, and contributed in a measure to allay their perpetual anxiety about their son and to calm their uneasiness about the whole situation. They were both too wise and too courteous to press the question of marriage upon Veronica under the present circumstances, but they did not feel that they were led too far by their affection for Gianluca when they told each other, in the privacy of the Duchessa's dressing-room, that after what Veronica had now done she was bound, in common self-respect, to marry him. That he would recover from his illness, they never doubted; for, as has been said, the truth had been kept from them, in so far as the prognostications of doctors could be looked upon as worthy of belief. He had certainly been much better since they had brought him to Muro, and they secretly wished that they might all stay where they were until the autumn.
On that first day, Veronica had been on the point of speaking very plainly to Gianluca, intending to tell him once again that he must not be deceived, that she should never marry him, and indeed had no intention of ever marrying at all. But she had been interrupted by the coming of the Duchessa; and, as she had not spoken at the first opportunity, she did not purposely create another at once. She was not skilful in such situations. When her directness came into conflict with her sense of delicacy, one or the other gave way; for in serious matters she instinctively hated complicated methods, and though she could be hard and perhaps unnecessarily cruel, yet she would at any time rather be over-kind than take refuge in the compromises of what most people call tact. The weaknesses of the strong are like the crevasses in a glacier; they have a general direction, but it is impossible to know certainly beforehand the precise depth or importance of any one of them, nor how far it may lead. The little strengths of weak people are like jagged rocks jutting up in shifting sands and changing tide, the more dangerous to the unwary because they are few and unexpected, and no one can tell where they lie, just below the surface. Many a brave enterprise has gone to pieces upon the stupid, unforeseen obstinacy of a despised weakling.
Veronica, like other people, even the very strongest, had weak points, or moments when some points of her character were weak, which comes to the same thing in result. She dreaded to hurt Gianluca, and since the occasion had passed when she might have made everything clear, and would have done so, she found it hard to decide how to act.
Taquisara had told her that the man was dying. If that were true, it could make no difference, whether he believed that she would marry him or not. The thought of his death was terribly painful, and she thrust it from her; for she was not heartless, and in the days that followed their conversation on the balcony, her affection grew to be as real and deep as it could possibly have been for a most dearly loved brother. For her, there had been none of those ties in which such affections live and grow and become parts of life itself. Fatherless, motherless, without brother, or sisters, the girl had grown up not knowing what she had to give, and giving scarcely anything at all of what was best in her. She was reticent and proud, and could never be attached to many people. Bianca had been her friend, in a way, but Bianca's life was mysterious to her, and Pietro Ghisleri had come between the two.
And now, through many months, by the intimacy of correspondence which had suddenly turned to an intimacy of real converse in which she had not been disappointed, she had grown—for it was a true growth—to the power of a most devoted friendship, capable of great and lasting sacrifice. It was a friendship, too, that was, as it were, pre-sanctified by the rising shadow of near death, fore-hallowed by the sure suffering of its coming end. It would be hard indeed to cut from Gianluca's heart the one flower of his loving belief.
But then, when she sat beside him on the balcony in the shady hours, and the great wave of life came up to her from the southern valley, she could not believe that he was really to die. And then, she hesitated, and she wished to do what was right and true by him, pain or no pain. Sometimes there was a little colour in his face, and often the deep blue light came into his beautiful eyes. He was to live, then, and she felt that she was cruel, and base, and cowardly to let his thoughts of her grow.
Those were the good days. There were worse ones, when he lay like a dead angel before her, and only in his eyes there was a little life. Then more than once, she gave him the magic of her touch, laid one hand softly upon one of his, or smoothed his silk pillow and arranged the shawl about him. Perhaps she was wrong to do such things, just because she was so young; but when she did them he breathed freely again, and the faint false dawn of a new day that might never brighten rose in the alabaster cheeks.