[CHAPTER VI
'What strange people there are in the world,' said Corona Saracinesca to her husband, on the morning after the dinner at which the Corleone family had been present.
Giovanni was reading a newspaper, leaning back in his own especial chair in his wife's morning room. It was raining, and she was looking out of the window. There are not many half-unconscious actions which betray so much of the general character and momentary temper, as an idle pause before closed window panes, and a careless glance down into the street or up at the sky. The fact has not been noticed, but deserves to be. Many a man or woman, at an anxious crisis, turns to the window, with the sensation of being alone for a moment, away from the complications created by the other person or persons in the room, free, for an instant, to let the features relax, the eye darken, or the lips smile, as the case may be—off the stage, indeed, as a comedian in the side scenes. Or again, when there is no anxiety, one goes from one's work, to take a look at the outside world, not caring to see it, but glad to be away from the task and to give the mind a breathing space. And then, also, the expression of the features changes, and if one stops to think of it, one is aware that the face is momentarily rested. Another, who has forgotten trouble and pain for a while, in conversation or in pleasant reading, goes to the window. And the grief, or the pain, or the fear, comes back with a rush and clouds the eyes and bends the brow, till he who suffers turns with something like fear from the contemplation of the outer world and takes up his book, or his talk, or his work, or anything which can help him to forget. With almost all people, there is a sudden change of sensation in first looking out of the window. One drums impatiently on the panes, another bites his lip, a third grows very still and grave, and one, perhaps, smiles suddenly, and then glances back to the room, fearing lest his inward lightness of heart may have betrayed itself.
Corona had nothing to conceal from Giovanni nor from herself. She had realised the rarest and highest form of lasting human happiness, which is to live unparted from the single being loved, with no screen of secret to cast a shadow on either side. Such a life can have but few emotions, yet the possibility of the very deepest emotion is always present in it, as the ocean is not rigid when it is quiet, as the strong man asleep is not past waking, nor the singer mute when silent.
Corona had been moving quietly about the room, giving life to it by her touch, where mechanical hands had done their daily work of dull neatness. She loosened the flowers in a vase, moved the books on the table, pulled the long lace curtains a little out from under the heavy ones, turned a chair here and a knickknack there, set the little calendar on the writing-table, and moved the curtains again. Then at last she paused before the window. Her lids drooped thoughtfully and her mouth relaxed, as she made the remark which caused Giovanni to look up from his paper.
'What strange people there are in the world!' she exclaimed.
'It is fortunate that they are not all like us,' answered Giovanni.
'Why?'
'The world would stop, I fancy. People would all be happy, as we are, and would shut themselves up, and there would be universal peace, the millennium, and a general cessation of business. Then would come the end of all things. Of whom are you thinking?'
'Of those people who came to dinner last night, and of our boys.'
'Of Orsino, I suppose. Yes—I know—' He paused.
'Yes,' said Corona, thoughtfully.
Both were silent for a moment. They thought together, having long been unaccustomed to think apart. At last Giovanni laughed quietly.
'Our children cannot be exactly like us,' he said. 'They must live their own lives, as we live ours. One cannot make lives for other people, you know.'
'Orsino is so apathetic,' said Corona. 'He opens his eyes for a moment and looks at things as though he were going to be interested. Then he closes them again, and does not care what happens. He has no enthusiasm like Ippolito. Nothing interests him, nothing amuses him. He is not happy, and he is not unhappy. You could not surprise him. I sometimes think that you could not hurt him, either. He is young, yet he acts like a man who has seen everything, done everything, heard everything, and tasted everything. He does not even fall in love.'
Corona smiled as she spoke the last words, but her eyes were thoughtful. In her heart, no thoroughly feminine woman can understand that a young man may not be in love for a long time, and may yet be normally sensible.
'I was older than he when you and I met,' observed Giovanni.
'Yes—but you were different. Orsino is not at all like you.'
'Nor Ippolito either.'
'There is more of you in him than you think, Giovanni, though he is so gentle and quiet, and fond of music.'
'The artistic temperament, my dear,—very little like me.'
'There is a curious tenacity under all that.'
'No one has ever thwarted him,' objected Giovanni. 'Or, rather, he has never thwarted anybody. That is a better way of putting it.'
'I believe he has more strength of character than the other three together. Of course, you will say that he is my favourite.'
'No, dear. You are very just. But you are more drawn to him.'
'Yes—strangely more—and for something in him which no one sees. It is his likeness to you, I think.'
'Together with a certain feminility.'
Giovanni did not speak contemptuously, but he had always resented Ippolito's gentle grace a little. He himself and his other three sons had the strongly masculine temperament of the Saracinesca family. He often thought that Ippolito should have been a girl.
'Do not say that, Giovanni,' answered his wife. 'He is not rugged, but he is strong-hearted. The artistic temperament has a certain feminine quality on the surface, by which it feels; but the crude creative force by which it acts is purely masculine.'
'That sounds clever,' laughed Giovanni.
'Well, there is dear old Guache, whom we have known all our lives. He is an instance. You used to think he had a certain feminility, too.'
'So he had.'
'But he fought like a man at Mentana; and he thinks like a man, and he certainly paints like a man.'
'Yes; that is true. Only we never had any artists in the family. It seems odd that our son should have such tendencies. None of the family were ever particularly clever in any way.'
'You are not stupid, at all events.'
Corona smiled at her husband. For all the world, she would not have had him at all different from his present self.
'Besides,' she added, 'you need not think of him as an artist. You can look upon him as a priest.'
'Yes, I know,' answered Giovanni, without much enthusiasm. 'We never were a priest-breeding family either. We have done better at farming than at praying or playing the piano. Ippolito does not know a plough from a harrow, nor a thoroughbred colt from a cart-horse. For my part I do not see the strength you find in him, though I daresay you are right, my dear. You generally are. At all events, he helps the harmony of the family, for he worships Orsino, and the two younger ones always pair together.'
'I suppose he will never be put into any position which can show his real character,' said Corona, 'but I know I am right.'
They were silent for a few minutes. Presently Giovanni took up his paper again, and Corona sat down at her table to write a note. The rain pattered against the window, cheerfully, as it does outside a room in which two happy people are together.
'That d'Oriani girl is charming,' said Corona, after writing a line or two, but not looking round.
'Perhaps Orsino will fall in love with her,' observed her husband, his eyes on the newspaper.
'I hope not!' exclaimed Corona, turning in her chair, and speaking with far more energy than she had yet shown. 'It is bad blood, Giovanni—as bad as any blood in Italy, and though the girl is charming, those brothers—well, you saw them.'
'Bad faces, both of them. And rather doubtful manners.'
'Never mind their manners! But their faces! They are nephews of poor Bianca Corleone's husband, are they not?'
'Yes. They are his brother's children. And they are their grandfather's grandchildren.'
'What did he do?'
'He was chiefly concerned in the betrayal of Gaeta—and took money for the deed, too. They have always been traitors. There was a Pagliuca who received all sorts of offices and honours from Joaquin Murat and then advised King Ferdinand to have him shot when he was caught at Pizzo in Calabria. There was a Pagliuca who betrayed his brother to save his own life in the last century. It is a promising stock.'
'What an inheritance! I have often heard of them, but I have never met any of them excepting Bianca's husband, whom we all hated for her sake.'
'He was not the worst of them, by any means. But I never blamed her much, poor child—and Pietro Ghisleri knew how to turn any woman's head in those days.'
'Why did we ask those people to dinner, after all?' enquired Corona, thoughtfully.
'Because San Giacinto wished it, I suppose. We shall probably know why in two or three years. He never does anything without a reason.'
'And he keeps his reasons to himself.'
'It is a strange thing,' said Giovanni. 'That man is the most reticent human being I ever knew, and one of the deepest. Yet we are all sure that he is absolutely honest and honourable. We know that he is always scheming, and yet we feel that he is never plotting. There is a difference.'
'Of course there is—the difference between strategy and treachery. But I am sorry that his plans should have involved bringing the Corleone family into our house. They are not nice people, excepting the girl.'
'My father remarked that the elder of those brothers was like an old engraving he has of Cæsar Borgia.'
'That is a promising resemblance! Fortunately, the times, at least, are changed.'
'In Sicily, everything is possible.'
The remark was characteristic of Giovanni, of a Roman, and of modern times. But there was, and is, some truth in it. Many things are possible to-day in Sicily which have not been possible anywhere else in Europe for at least two centuries, and the few foreigners who know the island well can tell tales of Sicilians which the world at large could hardly accept even as fiction.