CHAPTER III
San Giacinto and his wife came to the dinner, and two or three others, and the d'Oriani made a sort of formal entry into Roman society under the best possible auspices. In spite of Corona's good taste and womanly influence, festivities at the Palazzo Saracinesca always had an impressive and almost solemn character. Perhaps there were too many men in the family, and they were all too dark and grave, from the aged Prince to his youngest grandson, who was barely of age, and whose black eyebrows met over his Roman nose and seemed to shade his eyes too much. Ippolito, the exception in his family, as Vittoria d'Oriani was in hers, did not appear at table, but came into the drawing-room in the evening. The Prince himself sat at the head of the table, and rarely spoke. Corona could see that he was not pleased with the Pagliuca tribe, and she did her best to help on conversation and to make Flavia San Giacinto talk, as she could when she chose.
From time to time, she looked at Orsino, whose face that evening expressed nothing, but whose eyes were almost constantly turned towards Vittoria. It had happened naturally enough that he sat next to her, and it was an unusual experience for him. Of course, in the round of society, he occasionally found himself placed next to a young girl at dinner, and he generally was thoroughly bored on such occasions. It was either intentional or accidental on the part of his hosts, whoever they might be. If it was intentional, he had been made to sit next to some particularly desirable damsel of great birth and fortune in the hope that he might fall in love with her and make her the future Princess Saracinesca. And he resented in gloomy silence every such attempt to capture him. If, on the other hand, he chanced to be accidentally set down beside a young girl, it happened according to the laws of precedence; and it was ten to one that the young lady had nothing to recommend her, either in the way of face, fortune, or conversation. But neither case occurred often.
The present occasion was altogether exceptional. Vittoria d'Oriani had never been to a dinner-party before, and everything was new to her. It was quite her first appearance in society, and Orsino Saracinesca was the first man who could be called young, except her brothers, with whom she had ever exchanged a dozen words. It was scarcely two months since she had left the convent, and during that time her mind had been constantly crowded with new impressions, and as constantly irritated by her mother's manner and conversation. Her education was undoubtedly very limited, though in this respect it only differed in a small degree from that of many young girls whom Orsino had met; but it was liberal as compared with her mother's, as her ideas upon religion were broad in comparison with Donna Maria Carolina's complicated system of superstition.
Vittoria's brown eyes were very wide open, as she sat quietly in her place, listening to what was said, and tasting a number of things which she had never seen before. She looked often at Corona, and wished that she might be like her some day, which was quite impossible. And she glanced at Orsino from time to time, and answered his remarks briefly and simply. She could not help seeing that he was watching her, and now and then the blood rose softly in her cheeks. On her other side sat Gianbattista Pietrasanta, whose wife was a Frangipani, and who was especially amused and interested by Vittoria's mother, his other neighbour, but paid little attention to the young girl herself.
A great writer has very truly said that psychological analysis, in a book, can never be more than a series of statements on the part of the author, telling what he himself fancies that he might have felt, could he have been placed in the position of the particular person whom he is analysing. It is extremely doubtful whether any male writer can, by the greatest effort of imagination, clothe himself in the ingenuous purity of thought and intention which is the whole being of such a young girl as Vittoria d'Oriani when she first enters the world, after having spent ten years in a religious community of refined women.
The creature we imagine, when we try to understand such maiden innocence, is colourless and dull. Her mind and heart are white as snow, but blankly white, as the snow on a boundless plain, without so much as a fence or a tree to relieve the utter monotony. There is no beauty in such whiteness in nature, except when it blushes at dawn and sunset. Alone on snow, and with nothing but snow in sight, men often go mad; for snow-madness is a known and recognised form of insanity.
Evidently our imagination fails to evoke a true image in such a case. We are aware that maiden innocence is a state, and not a form of character. The difficulty lies in representing to ourselves a definite character in just that state. For to the word innocence we attach no narrow meaning; it extends to every question that touches humanity, to every motive in all dealings, and to every purpose which, in that blank state, a girl attributes to all human beings, living and dead. It is a magic window through which all good things appear clearly, though not often truly, and all bad things are either completely invisible, or seen in a dull, neutral, and totally uninteresting shadow of uniform misunderstanding. We judge that it must be so, from our observation. This is not analysis, but inspection.
Behind the blank lies, in the first place, the temperament, then the character, then the mind, and then that great, uncertain element of heredity, monstrous or god-like, which animates and moves all three in the gestation of unborn fate, and which is fate itself in later life, so far as there is any such thing as fatality.
Behind the blank there may be turbulent and passionate blood, there may be a character of iron and a man-ruling mind. But the blank is a blank, for all that. Catherine of Russia was once an innocent and quiet little German girl, with empty, wondering eyes, and school-girl sentimentalities. Goethe might have taken her for Werther's Charlotte. Good, bad, or indifferent, the future woman is at the magic window, and all that she is to be is within her already.
Vittoria d'Oriani was certainly not to be a Catherine, but there was no lack of conflicting heredities beneath her innocence. Orsino had thought more than most young men of his age, and he was aware of the fact, as he looked at her and talked with her, and carried on one of those apparently empty conversations, of which the recollection sometimes remains throughout a lifetime, while he quietly studied her face, and tried to find out the secret of its rare charm.
He began by treating her almost as a foreigner. He remembered long afterwards how he smiled as he asked her the first familiar question, as though she had been an English girl, or Miss Lizzie Slayback, the heiress from Nevada.
'How do you like Rome?'
'It is a great city,' answered Vittoria.
'But you do not like it? You do not think it is beautiful?'
'Of course, it is not Palermo,' said the young girl, quite naturally. 'It has not the sea; it has not the mountains—'
'No mountains?' interrupted Orsino smiling. 'But there are mountains all round Rome.'
'Not like Palermo,' replied Vittoria, soberly. 'And then it has not the beautiful streets.'
'Poor Rome!' Orsino laughed a little. 'Not even fine streets! Have you seen nothing that pleases you here!'
'Oh yes,—there are fine houses, and I have seen the Tiber, and the Queen, and—' she stopped short.
'And what else?' inquired Orsino, very much amused.
Vittoria turned her brown eyes full upon him, and paused a moment before she answered.
'You are making me say things which seem foolish to you, though they seem sensible to me,' she said quietly.
'They seem original, not foolish. It is quite true that Palermo is a beautiful city, but we Romans forget it. And if you have never seen another river, the Tiber is interesting, I suppose. That is what you mean. No, it is quite reasonable.'
Vittoria blushed a little, and looked down, only half reassured. It was her first attempt at conversation, and she had said what she thought, naturally and simply. She was not sure whether the great dark young man, who had eyes exactly like his mother's, was laughing at her or not. But he did not know that she had never been to a party in her life.
'Is the society in Palermo amusing?' he inquired carelessly.
'I do not know,' she answered, again blushing, for she was a little ashamed of being so very young. 'I left the convent on the day we started to come to Rome. And my mother did not live in Palermo,' she added.
'No—I had forgotten that.'
Orsino relapsed into silence for a while. He would willingly have given up the attempt at conversation, so far as concerned any hope of making it interesting. But he liked the sound of Vittoria's voice, and he wished she would speak again. On his right hand was Tebaldo, who, as the head of a family, and not a Roman, sat next to Corona. He seemed to be making her rather bold compliments. Orsino caught a phrase.
'You are certainly the most beautiful woman in Italy, Princess,' the Sicilian was saying.
Orsino raised his head, and turned slowly towards the speaker. As he did so, he saw his mother's look. Her brows were a little contracted, which was unusual, but she was just turning away to speak to San Giacinto on her other side, with an otherwise perfectly indifferent expression. Orsino laughed.
'My mother has been the most beautiful woman in Europe since before I was born,' he said, addressing Tebaldo rather pointedly, for the latter's remark had been perfectly audible to him.
Tebaldo had a thin face, with a square, narrow forehead, and heavy jaws that came to an overpointed chin. His upper lip was very short, and his moustache was unusually small, black and glossy, and turned up at the ends in aggressive points. His upper teeth were sharp, long, and regular, and he showed them when he smiled. The smile did not extend upwards above the nostrils, and there was something almost sinister in the still black eyes. In the front view the lower part of the face was triangular, and the low forehead made the upper portion seem square. He was a man of bilious constitution, of an even, yellow-brown complexion, rather lank and bony in frame, but of a type which is often very enduring. Such men sometimes have violent and uncontrolled tempers, combined with great cunning, quickness of intelligence, and an extraordinary power of taking advantage of circumstances.
Tebaldo smiled at Orsino's remark, not at all acknowledging that it might be intended as a rebuke.
'It is hard to believe that she can be your mother,' he said quietly, and with such frankness as completely disarmed resentment.
But Orsino in his thoughts contrasted Tebaldo's present tone with the sound of his voice when speaking to the Princess an instant earlier, and he forthwith disliked the man, and believed him to be false and double. Corona either had not heard, or pretended not to hear, and talked indifferently with San Giacinto, whose vast, lean frame seemed to fill two places at the table, while his energetic gray head towered high above everyone else. Orsino turned to Vittoria again.
'Should you be pleased if someone told you that you were the most beautiful young lady in Italy?' he enquired.
Vittoria looked at him wonderingly.
'No,' she answered. 'It would not be true. How should I be pleased?'
'But suppose, for the sake of argument, that it were true. I am imagining a case. Should you be pleased?'
'I do not know—I think—' She hesitated and paused.
'I am very curious to know what you think,' said Orsino, pressing her for an answer.
'I think it would depend upon whether I liked the person who told me so.' Again the blood rose softly in her face.
'That is exactly what I should think,' answered Orsino gravely. 'Were you sorry to leave the convent?'
'Yes, I cried a great deal. It was my home for so many years, and I was so happy there.'
The girl's eyes grew dreamy as she looked absently across the table at Guendalina Pietrasanta. She was evidently lost in her recollections of her life with the nuns. Orsino was almost amused at his own failure.
'Should you have liked to stay and be a nun yourself?' he inquired, with a smile.
'Yes, indeed! At least—when I came away I wished to stay.'
'But you have changed your mind since? You find the world pleasanter than you expected? It is not a bad place, I daresay.'
'They told me that it was very bad,' said Vittoria seriously. 'Of course they must know, but I do not quite understand what they mean. Can you tell me something about it, and why it is bad, and what all the wickedness is?'
Orsino looked at her quietly for a moment, realising very clearly the whiteness of her life's unwritten page.
'Your nuns may be right,' he said at last. 'I am not in love with the world, but I do not believe that it is so very wicked. At least, there are many good people in it, and one can find them if one chooses. No doubt, we are all miserable sinners in a theological sense, but I am not a theologian. I have a brother who is a priest, and you will see him after dinner; but though he is a very good man, he does not give one the impression of believing that the world is absolutely bad. It is true that he is rather a dilettante priest.'
Vittoria was evidently shocked, for her face grew extraordinarily grave and a shade paler. She looked at Orsino in a startled way and then at her plate.
'What is the matter?' he asked quickly. 'Have I shocked you?'
'Yes,' she answered, almost in a whisper and still looking down. 'That is,' she added with hesitation, 'perhaps I did not quite understand you.'
'No, you did not, if you are shocked. I merely meant that although my brother is a very good man, and a very religious man, and believes that he has a vocation, and does his best to be a good priest, he has other interests in life for which I am sure that he cares more, though he may not know it.'
'What other interests?' asked Vittoria, rather timidly.
'Well, only one, perhaps—music. He is a musician first, and a priest afterwards.'
The young girl's face brightened instantly. She had expected something very terrible, perhaps, though quite undefined.
'He says mass in the morning,' continued Orsino, 'and it may take him an hour or so to read his breviary conscientiously in the afternoon. The rest of his time he spends over the piano.'
'But it is not profane music?' asked Vittoria, growing anxious again.
'Oh no!' Orsino smiled. 'He composes masses and symphonies and motetts.'
'Well, there is no harm in that,' said Vittoria, indifferently, being again reassured.
'Certainly not. I wish I had the talent and the interest in it to do it myself. I believe that the chief real wickedness is doing nothing at all.'
'Sloth is one of the capital sins,' observed Vittoria, who knew the names of all seven.
'It is also the most tiresome sin imaginable, especially when one is condemned to it for life, as I am.'
The young girl looked at him anxiously, and there was a little pause.
'What do you mean?' she asked. 'No one is obliged to be idle.'
'Will you find me an occupation?' Orsino asked in his turn, and with some bitterness. 'I shall be gratified.'
'Is not doing good an occupation? I am sure that there must be plenty of opportunities for that.'
She felt more sure of herself when upon such ground. Orsino did not smile.
'Yes. It might take up a man's whole life, but it is not a career—'
'It was the career of many of the saints!' interrupted Vittoria, cheerfully, for she was beginning to feel at her ease at last. 'Saint Francis of Assisi—Saint Clare—Saint—'
'Pray for us!' exclaimed Orsino, as though he were responding in a litany.
Vittoria's face fell instantly, and he regretted the words as soon as he had spoken them. She was like a sensitive plant, he thought; and yet she had none of the appearance of an over-impressionable, nervous girl. It was doubtless her education.
'I have shocked you again,' he said gravely. 'I am sorry, but I am afraid that you will often be shocked, at first. Yes; I have no doubt that to the saints doing good was a career, and that a saint might make a career of it nowadays. But you see I am not one. What I should like would be to have a profession of some sort, and to work at it with all my might.'
'What a strange idea!' Vittoria looked at him in surprise; for though her three brothers had been almost beggars for ten years, it had never struck them that they could possibly have a profession. 'But you are a noble,' she added thoughtfully. 'You will be the Prince Saracinesca some day.'
Orsino laughed.
'We do not think so much of those things as we did once,' he answered. 'I would be a doctor, if I could, or a lawyer, or a man of business. I do not think that I should like to be a shopkeeper, though it is only a matter of prejudice—'
'I should think not!' cried Vittoria, startled again.
'It would be much more interesting than the life I lead. Almost any life would be, for that matter. Of course, if I had my choice—' He stopped.
Vittoria waited, her eyes fixed earnestly on his face, but she said nothing. Somehow she was suddenly anxious to know what his choice would be. He felt that she was watching him, and turned towards her. Their eyes met in silence, and he smiled, but her face remained grave. He was thinking that this must certainly be one of the most absurd conversations in which he had ever been engaged, but that somehow it did not appear absurd to himself, and he wondered why.
'If I had my choice—' He paused again. 'I would be a leader,' he added suddenly.
He was still young, and there was ambition in him. His dark eyes flashed like his mother's, a warmer colour rose for one instant under his olive skin; the fine, firm mouth set itself.
'I think you could be,' said Vittoria, almost under her breath and half unconsciously.
Then, all at once, she blushed scarlet, and turned her face away to hide her colour. If there is one thing in woman which more than any other attracts a misunderstood man, it is the conviction that she believes him capable of great deeds; and if there is one thing beyond others which leads a woman to love a man, it is her own certainty that he is really superior to those around him, and really needs woman's sympathy. Youth, beauty, charm, eloquence, are all second to these in their power to implant genuine love, or to maintain it, if they continue to exist as conditions.
It mattered little to Vittoria that she had as yet no means whatever of judging whether Orsino Saracinesca had any such extraordinary powers as might some day make him a leader among men. She had been hardly conscious of the strong impression she had received, and which had made her speak, and she was far too young and simple to argue with herself about it. And he, on his part, with a good deal of experience behind him and the memory of one older woman's absolute devotion and sacrifice, felt a keen and unexpected pleasure, quite different from anything he remembered to have felt before now. Nor did he reason about it at first, for he was not a great reasoner and his pleasures in life were really very few.
A moment or two after Vittoria had spoken, and when she had already turned away her face, Orsino shook his head almost imperceptibly, as though trying to throw something off which annoyed him. It was near the end of dinner before the two spoke to each other again, though Vittoria half turned towards him twice in the mean time, as though expecting him to speak, and then, disappointed, looked at her plate again.
'Are you going to stay in Rome, or shall you go back to Sicily?' he asked suddenly, not looking at her, but at the small white hand that touched the edge of the table beside him.
Vittoria started perceptibly at the sound of his voice, as though she had been in a reverie, and her hand disappeared at the same instant. Orsino found himself staring at the tablecloth, at the spot where it had lain.
'I think—I hope we shall stay in Rome,' she answered. 'My brother has a great deal of business here.'
'Yes. I know. He sees my cousin San Giacinto about it almost every day.'
'Yes.'
Her face grew thoughtful again, but not dreamily so as before, and she seemed to hesitate, as though she had more to say.
'What is it?' asked Orsino, encouraging her to go on.
'Perhaps I ought not to tell you. The Marchese wishes to buy Camaldoli of us.'
'What is Camaldoli?'
'It is the old country house where my mother and my brothers lived so long, while I was in the convent, after my father died. There is a little land. It was all we had until now.'
'Shall you be glad if it is sold, or sorry?' asked Orsino, thoughtfully, and watching her face.
'I shall be glad, I suppose,' she answered. 'It would have to be divided among us, they say. And it is half in ruins, and the land is worth nothing, and there are always brigands.'
Orsino laughed.
'Yes. I should think you might be very glad to get rid of it. There is no difficulty about it, is there?'
'Only—I have another brother. He likes it and has remained there. His name is Ferdinando. No one knows why he is so fond of the place. They need his consent, in order to sell it, and he will not agree.'
'I understand. What sort of a man is your brother Ferdinando?'
'I have not seen him for ten years. They are afraid of—I mean, he is afraid of nothing.'
There was something odd, Orsino thought, about the way the young girl shut her lips when she checked herself in the middle of the sentence, but he had no idea what she had been about to say. Just then Corona nodded slightly to the aged Prince at the other end of the table, and dinner was over.
'I should think it would be necessary for San Giacinto to see this other brother of yours,' observed Orsino, finishing the conversation as he rose and stood ready to take Vittoria out.
The little ungloved hand lay like a white butterfly on his black sleeve, and she had to raise her arm a little to take his, though she was not short. Just before them went San Giacinto, darkening the way like a figure of fate. Vittoria looked up at him, almost awe-struck at his mere size.
'How tall he is!' she exclaimed in a very low voice. 'How very tall he is!' she said again.
'We are used to him,' answered Orsino, with a short laugh. 'But he has a big heart, though he looks so grim.'
Half an hour later, when the men were smoking in a room by themselves, San Giacinto came and sat down by Orsino in the remote corner where the latter had established himself, with a cigarette. The giant, as ever of old, had a villainous-looking black cigar between his teeth.
'Do you want something to do?' he asked bluntly.
'Yes.'
'Do you care to live in Sicily for a time?'
'Anywhere—Japan, if you like.'
'You are easily pleased. That means that you are not in love just at present, I suppose.'
San Giacinto looked hard at his young cousin for some time, in silence. Orsino met his glance quietly, but with some curiosity.
'Do you ever go to see the Countess Del Ferice?' asked the big man at last.
Orsino straightened himself in his chair and frowned a little, and then looked away as he answered by a cross-question, knocking the ash off his cigarette upon a little rock crystal dish at his elbow.
'Why do you ask me that?' he inquired rather sternly.
'Because you were very much attracted by her once, and I wished to know whether you had kept up the acquaintance since her marriage.'
'I have kept up the acquaintance—and no more,' answered Orsino, meeting his cousin's eyes again. 'I go to see the Countess from time to time. I believe we are on very good terms.'
'Will you go to Sicily with me if I need you, and stay there, and get an estate in order for me?'
'With pleasure. When?'
'I do not know yet. It may be in a week, or it may be in a month. It will be hot there, and you will have troublesome things to do.'
'So much the better.'
'There are brigands in the neighbourhood just now.'
'That will be very amusing. I never saw one.'
'You may tell Ippolito if you like, but please do not mention it to anyone else until we are ready to go. You know that your mother will be anxious about you, and your father is a conservative—and your grandfather is a firebrand, if he dislikes an idea. One would think that at his age his temper should have subsided.'
'Not in the least!' Orsino smiled, for he loved the old man, and was proud of his great age.
'But you may tell Ippolito if you like, and if you warn him to be discreet. Ippolito would let himself be torn in pieces rather than betray a secret. He is by far the most discreet of you all.'
'Yes. You are right, as usual. You have a good eye for a good man. What do you think of all these Pagliuca people, or Corleone, or d'Oriani—or whatever they call themselves?' Orsino looked keenly at his cousin as he asked the question.
'Did you ever meet Corleone? I mean the one who married Norba's daughter,—the uncle of these boys.'
'I met him once. From all accounts, he must have been a particularly disreputable personage.'
'He was worse than that, I think. I never blamed his wife. Well—these boys are his nephews. I do not see that any comment is necessary.' San Giacinto smiled thoughtfully.
'This young girl is also his niece,' observed Orsino rather sharply.
'Who knows what Tebaldo Pagliuca might have been if he had spent ten years amongst devout old women in a convent?' The big man's smile developed into an incredulous laugh, in which Orsino joined.
'There has certainly been a difference of education,' he admitted. 'I like her.'
'You would confer a great benefit upon a distressed family, by falling in love with her,' said San Giacinto. 'That worthy mother of hers was watching you two behind Pietrasanta's head, during dinner.'
'Another good reason for going to Sicily,' answered Orsino. 'The young lady is communicative. She told me, this evening, that you were trying to buy some place of theirs,—I forget the name,—and that one of her brothers objects.'
'That is exactly the place I want you to manage. The name is Camaldoli.'
'Then there is no secret about it,' observed Orsino. 'If she has told me, she may tell the next man she meets.'
'Certainly. And mysteries are useless, as a rule. I do not wish to make any with you, at all events. Here are the facts. I am going to build a light railway connecting all those places; and I am anxious to get the land into my possession, without much talk. Do you understand? This place of the Corleone is directly in my line, and is one of the most important, because it is at a point through which I must pass, to make the railway at all, short of an expensive tunnel. Your management will simply consist in keeping things in order until the railway makes the land valuable. Then I shall sell it, of course.'
'I see. Very well. Could you not give my old architect something to do? Andrea Contini is his name. The houses we built for Del Ferice have all turned out well, you know.' Orsino laughed rather bitterly.
'Remind me of him at the proper time,' said San Giacinto. 'Tell him to learn something about building small railway stations. There will be between fifteen and twenty, altogether.'
'I will. But—do you expect that a railway in Sicily will ever pay you?'
'No. I am not an idiot.'
'Then why do you build one, if that is not an indiscreet question?'
'The rise in the value of all the land I buy will make it worth while, several times over. It is quite simple.'
'It must take an enormous capital,' said Orsino, thoughtfully.
'It needs a large sum of ready money. But the lands are generally mortgaged for long periods, and almost to two-thirds of their selling value. The holders of the mortgages do not care who owns the land. So I pay about one-third in cash.'
'What becomes of the value of a whole country, when all the land is mortgaged for two-thirds of what it is worth?' asked Orsino, carelessly, and half laughing.
But San Giacinto did not laugh.
'I have thought about that,' he answered gravely. 'When the yield of the land is not enough to pay the interest on the mortgages, the taxes to the government, and some income to the owners, they starve outright, or emigrate. There is a good deal of starvation nowadays, and a good deal of emigration in search of bread.'
'And yet they say that the value of land is increasing almost all over the country,' objected Orsino. 'You count on it yourself.'
'The value rises wherever railways and roads are built.'
'And what pays for the railways?'
'The taxes.'
'And the people pay the taxes.'
'Exactly. And the taxes are enormous. The people in places remote from the projected railway are ruined by them, but the people who own land where the railways pass are indirectly very much enriched by the result. Sometimes a private individual like myself builds a light road. I think that is a source of wealth, in the end, to everyone. But the building of the government roads, like the one down the west coast of Calabria, seems to destroy the balance of wealth and increase emigration. It is a necessary evil.'
'There are a good many necessary evils in our country,' said Orsino. 'There are too many.'
'Per aspera ad astra. I never knew much Latin, but I believe that means something. There are also unnecessary evils, such as brigandage in Sicily, for instance. You can amuse yourself by fighting that one, if you please; though I have no doubt that the brigands will often travel by my railway—and they will certainly go in the first class.'
The big man laughed and rose, leaving Orsino to meditate upon the prospect of occupation which was opened to him.