The Passport

by Richard Bagot

To say the truth, her step-mother's evident distress had made Bianca almost regret that she had allowed herself to speak so plainly as she had done the day before. Resolute and strong-willed as she could be when she chose, her nature was both sensitive and warm-hearted; and although she would not have retracted one word that she had said, or retreated one inch from the attitude she had taken up, she felt sorry and disturbed in her mind at the pain she had evidently occasioned the princess. After all, it was not unnatural that her step-mother should consider it to be her duty to impede by every means in her power a marriage of which she disapproved. It was not unnatural, either, that she should disapprove. Bianca, whose sense of justice was unusually strong, would have scorned to be unjust to any individual simply because she happened not to be in agreement with that individual. She was quite aware, too, that her conduct had been certainly not in accordance with that which was considered fitting to a young girl in any position. She should, of course, have refused to allow Silvio to speak a word of love to her until he should first have gained the consent of her step-mother. No doubt she had been wrong—immodest, perhaps, as her step-mother had said—but all the same, she was glad she had not repulsed Silvio that day in the ilex grove. Glad, did she say? But that was an untruth. She had never thought of repulsing him, could not have done so, for she wanted love. She had wanted it for so long, and she had understood that Silvio had it to give her. And she wanted somebody whom she could love, not merely some one towards whom she was perpetually being told she should be dutiful. No, it was absurd to say she was glad she had listened to him, and had let him tell her his love in his own way. It was worse than absurd—it was a lie told to herself. Ever since that Christmas night when she had seen him in the church of the Sudario, she had understood that she loved, and that he loved her. And she had never thought of repulsing him. She had thought only of the moment when she should hear him tell her of his love; when she should feel his arms around her and his lips on hers; when she could show him that she, too, knew what love was.

From which reflections it was evident that Monsieur d'Antin had been right in his diagnosis of Bianca Acorari's temperament, and in coming to the conclusion that his sister and the Abbé Roux would be preparing for themselves a disillusion if they continued to regard her as little more than a child.

Bianca retired to her room early that night. It was certainly not cheerful to sit alone in the drawing-room after dinner, trying to read a book by the light of one or two old-fashioned moderator lamps, which only served to cast gloomy shadows into the corners of the vast apartment. The princess had caused a pianoforte to be sent from Rome; for the Érard which stood at one end of the drawing-room was reduced by age and damp to a compass of some two octaves of notes which, when played upon, produced sounds that were strange but scarcely musical; while the upper and lower octaves of the key-board had ceased to produce any sound whatever, save a spasmodic, metallic tapping as the hammer struck the broken wires. Bianca used to touch the instrument sometimes, and wonder whether it had belonged to her mother, and if her hands had pressed the yellow keys. She knew that her mother had passed the last year or two of her life at Montefiano, and that she herself had first seen the light there.

But to-night she was not in the humor for either reading or playing the piano. She felt weary, mentally and bodily; for, after the excitement of the discussion the previous day with her step-mother, reaction had set in. She was depressed, and, a thing very unusual to her, nervous. An almost intolerable sensation of loneliness haunted her. It seemed strange to think that a few hundred metres away, down in the paese, people were talking and laughing and living their lives. She was not living hers; life was going on all around her, but she had no part or share in it. Ah, if only she could hear something from Silvio!—hear of him, even—she would not feel quite so lonely. She would feel sure then, though they were separated, though probably they would be divided for months and years to come, that they were together in their thoughts; that he was faithful and true to her, as she was struggling with all her force to be faithful and true to the promise she had made him there, under the ilex-trees at the Villa Acorari.

Passing quietly through her step-mother's apartment, lest she should be perhaps already asleep, Bianca was about to enter her own room, when the princess called to her.

"Come here, figlia mia," she said, gently, "I am not asleep."

Bianca approached the bed and remained standing by it. Princess Montefiano took her hand and held it in hers for a moment.

"You think me very cruel, do you not, Bianca?" she said; "like the cruel step-mothers in the fairy-tales," she added, with a little attempt at a laugh. "Well, some day you will understand that if I am unkind, it is for your good. But there is something else I want to say to you. I do not intend to discuss the other matter—the Rossano matter. I shall never change my opinion on that point—never! And so long as you are under my authority, so long shall I absolutely forbid any question of a marriage between you and a son of Professor Rossano, and communication of any sort to pass between you. What I wish to say to you is this. Because I will not consent to your marriage with this young Rossano, you must not think that I wish to influence you or compel you to listen to my brother. That would not be my idea of what is my duty towards you as my husband's child, for whose happiness I am responsible, both before God and before the world. You must understand that you are free, Bianca, absolutely free to do as you choose as regards accepting or not the affection my brother offers you. It may be, perhaps, that when you are in a more reasonable frame of mind, and have realized that under no circumstances would you be allowed to marry out of your own sphere in life—and certainly not the son of an infidel professor, who, no doubt, shares his father's abominable principles and ideas—you will hesitate before throwing away my brother's love."

Bianca shook her head. "It is useless to think of that," she said, "and it is useless to tell me that under no circumstances shall I marry Silvio Rossano. Unless one of us dies, I shall marry him. I have nothing more to say than what I said yesterday, and nothing to unsay. You ask me if I think you unkind. No; I do not think that."

"Surely," exclaimed the princesse, almost wistfully—"surely you can understand that in all this miserable business I am only doing what my conscience tells me to be my duty towards you!"