Fantasy: A Novel by Matilde Serao - HTML preview

 

PART V.

I.

The note was worded as follows:

“I could not bear it without you. I gave out that I was going shooting; have come to Naples instead. I implore you, let me see you for a moment; just the time to tell you that I love you more than ever.

“ANDREA.”

He had to wait for the answer, but it came:

“To-morrow, at ten. Let there be a closed carriage at the cloister of Santa Chiara, before the little door of the church. Blinds down and door open. I will come for a moment—to bid you farewell.

“LUCIA.”

All night long he paced the room that he had taken at an hotel, reading that kind and cruel letter—inexplicable as she who had written it—over and over again. With all its rich store of vitality, Andrea’s healthy temperament was impaired; his nervous and muscular system degraded and unstrung. He missed the vigour of his iron muscles: he felt as weak as if his legs must refuse to carry him. His appetite, served by the wonderful digestive faculties upon which the harmony of the entire organism depended, had forsaken him. And he had acquired the tastes of Lucia for glasses of iced water, barely tinted with wine, spiced viands and sweets. Red meat disgusted him as it did her. He felt ill. Within him or outside him, he could see but one remedy for his evil—Lucia. She only could cure and redeem him, make the rich blood run its old course through his veins, restore to him physical equilibrium, with the exuberant gaiety and joy of life that he had lost. He was ill for want of her; it was an unjust privation. He felt that the first kiss, on the first day of happy love, would give him again health, strength and comeliness, and the power of defying sorrow and ill-luck. The bare vision of it made him shut his eyes as if the sun had blinded him.

“Lucia, Lucia,” he kept repeating, with dishevelled hair and oppressed breathing. He could think of nothing but the appointment for the morrow, what Lucia would have to say to him, and how he would dissuade her from bidding him farewell. He was certain of dissuading her, for without Lucia he would die, and he did not mean to die. A thousand wild projects crowded his brain. He dreamt of kneeling before her and saying, “I have come to die by thy hand.” He would take a dagger with him and offer it to her. He dreamt of not replying to her arguments except by, “I love you, you shall be mine.” He dreamt of not saying a word, but of kissing her until his lips ached.

The livid November dawn found Andrea with parched lips and burning eyes, lost in fantastic hallucinations. He went out into the streets of Naples at seven, under a fine rain, without heeding the wet. At eight he was already driving up and down the Toledo, lolling on the cushions of a hired carriage, with his hat over his eyes and the curtains drawn down, consulting his watch every few minutes.

The heavy, iron-bound portière of padded leather fell behind a lady dressed in black, in deep mourning. There were few people in the church of Santa Chiara, which has but one nave, gay with gilding, large windows and bright painting; more of a drawing-room than a church. Lucia, crossing herself devoutly, took the holy water, and turned towards the principal entrance. Then she knelt before the altar of the Padre Eterno, a miraculous shrine hung with ex-voto offerings in wax and silver, in red or blue frames. She, kneeling on the marble steps, with her head against the balustrade, conversed with the Eternal Father, telling Him that He had thus ordained, for this was fate. Since bow she must to the decrees of Providence, she prayed Him to vouchsafe her counsel in that supreme hour. The Eternal Father had chosen to cast her into this tribulation, in which she had lost all peace and felicity: now she prayed Him to sustain her, to illumine her darkness so that she might find her way. Which was her way—the way of justice? To leave Andrea, so that he might do something desperate? Be his, in continual deceit? Be his, openly? She spoke humbly to the Eternal, awaiting the flash of the Holy Spirit that should illumine her terrible position.

“O Father, O Father, Thou wouldst have it so. Now help me.”

After saying three final Paternosters, she rose. Grace had not come to her: the Eternal had not permitted her to hear His voice: she arose from prayer offered in vain: God the Father had not heard her. She crossed the whole length of the church and tottered up to the image of the Madonna, where she fell on her knees. She was an ancient Madonna delle Grazie, with a cadaverous face and large pitiful eyes that appeared to look at you, to appeal to you, to follow you as you departed. Lucia told the Madonna of her trouble, of her misery, and with her head resting on the balustrade, weeping and sobbing, she said to her:

“O! Vergine Santissima, as Thou hast suffered in Thy motherhood, so do I suffer in my womanhood. The anguish of these sorrows was not Thine, but from high Heaven. Thou seest and dost fathom them. O! Vergine Santissima, mine was not the will to do this thing. Before the Divine mercy, I am innocent and unhappy. I was led into evil and it overcame me, for my strength could not withstand it; it was weakened by the misfortunes inflicted on me by Heaven. O! Holy Virgin, I may have sinned, but I am not a wicked woman. I am a tempest-tossed, tortured creature, a plaything of the fates. O! Holy Virgin, like unto Thee have they thrust seven swords into my heart; like unto Thee, for fifteen years, am I pursued by the sinister vision of martyrdom. I am the most bitter tribulation that is upon the earth. My heart bleeds, my brain is bound in leaden bands, my nerves are knotted by an iron hand, my mouth is parched. Madonna, do Thou help me, do Thou console me. O! Madonna, who hast not known human love, mercy on her who has learnt to know it, ardent, immense, devouring. O! Madonna, Thou who knowest not desire, mercy on her who has it within her, long, savage, insatiable. O! Madonna, do Thou tell me, shall I give myself to Andrea?”

But Lucia’s passionate eyes were turned in vain on the Madonna: the Virgin continued to consider Lucia who was praying earnestly, and a little woman who was reciting her rosary and beating her bosom, with the same compassionate gaze. Then Lucia recited half the rosary, on that lapis-lazuli fragment of hers. She stopped at a Paternoster, and looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock. Absent and indignant at last that Divine grace had been withheld from her, she was now only praying with her lips. They all left her to her fate, even God and the Madonna—poor leaf that she was, fallen from the bough and whirled in the vortex of destiny. It was of no avail: they were all against her, they left her defenceless and bereft of succour. In that dark hour, the ingratitude of the world and the indifference of Heaven were revealed to her. “Hyssop and vinegar, hyssop and vinegar, the drink they gave to Christ,” she kept repeating to herself, while she rearranged the folds of her black dress, and drew her crape veil over her face. Once more, when she passed the chief altar, she knelt and said a Gloria Patri, crossing herself from sheer force of habit. And it was with a gesture of decision that she sped through the little door and dropped the curtain behind her.

The two-horsed hired landau was waiting in front of the five steps. The wide quadrangle of the cloister was deserted. Perhaps the noble Sisters were peeping from behind those gratings. The fine close rain continued: the driver, indifferent and motionless, sheltered himself under a big umbrella. The carriage bore the letter M and the number 522. The door nearest the church was open. Lucia took in all these details. She walked down firmly, without looking behind her, and with one spring was inside the carriage. A voice cried: “A Posilipo,” to the driver, and the carriage-door closed with a snap; then it started.

“O! love, love, love,” murmured Andrea, folding her in his embrace.

She tore herself away, and laughing ironically, said:

“Do you know that our position is to be found in Madame Bovary? This is a novel by Flaubert!”

“I have not read it. How can you be so cruel as to say these things to me?”

“Because we are the performers in a bourgeois drama, or in a provincial one, which comes to the same thing.”

“I don’t know anything about it, I only know that I love you.”

“Is this all that you have to say to me?” she asked, with a sneer.

“Oh! Lucia, be human. True, I have lost all sense, all dignity, but ’tis for love of you. Think how I have suffered in these three days! Despair has nearly driven me to throw myself down from the Ponte della Valle.”

“They who talk of suicide are the last to commit it.”

“But if I love thee, I do not mean to die. Oh! cruel, not one kiss hast thou given me.”

“There are no more kisses for our love,” she replied, oracularly.

In her black attire, with her veil drawn over her face, under the green shade of the curtains, her feet hidden by her long skirt, and her hands by her gloves, without a thread of white on her person, her aspect was most tragic. Andrea shuddered with an acute sense of fear, he felt as if he were being irretrievably ruined by a malignant sorceress. But when she moved and the well-known perfume diffused itself in the circumscribed atmosphere, the painful sensation decreased and was soon gone.

“What is the matter with you?” he said. He had lost heart, and seeing all his projects melt away, found nothing to say to her.

“Nothing.”

“Do you love me?”

“I love you,” was Lucia’s frigid reply.

“How much?”

“I do not know.”

“Why did you say that there were no more kisses for our love?”

“Because, like Siebel, you are accursed of Mephistopheles. Siebel could not touch a flower without its fading and dying. You have kissed me, and I am fading and dying. There are no more flowers for Margaret, no kisses for our love.”

“I see,” said Andrea, absorbed in a sorrowful dream.

“This is what I have to say to you, we must forget each other.”

“No,” cried Andrea, in a passion.

“Yes, the hard law of duty imposes this upon us.”

“Duty is one thing, love is another.”

“That is why. Do you love Caterina?”

“I love you,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Well, you are happier than I am; I love Caterina, I love Alberto; to my mind, they are adorable beings.”

“You love too many people,” he said, bitterly. He tried to take her hand, she resisted. Outside, the rain increased; the carriage rolled on noiselessly over the wet pavement of Santa Lucia.

“Mine is a large heart, Andrea.”

“You shall love me only.”

“I cannot. I love your wife and my husband, I cannot sacrifice them to you. Let us say good-bye.”

“I cannot, Lucia. I am doomed to love you, for ever. You shall be mine.”

“Never, never, never!”

“But are you not afraid of me?” he cried, red in the face, furious. “But do you think you can say all this to me with impunity? Are you not afraid that I shall kill you? Couldn’t I do so, this instant?”

“Please yourself,” she replied, calmly.

“Forgive me, Lucia; I am a fool and a savage. You are my victim, I know it. I make you unhappy, and ill-treat you into the bargain. All the wrong is on my side. Will you forgive me? Tell me that you have forgiven me.”

“I forgive you.” She gave him her hand, which he kissed humbly, through her glove. “Listen to me attentively, Andrea,” she resumed; “when you have heard me, you will be convinced that I am right. In sorrow, but of your own free will, you will say good-bye for ever. Are you listening?”

“Say what you will. You cannot convince me, for I love you.”

“I shall convince you, you’ll see. I am not to blame for what has happened in this dark, tumultuous drama. I did not seek love, I did not seek you. I had married Alberto, willingly sacrificing my whole life to him, in all affection. I had already shunned you. Twice before you had crossed my path with your conquering, all-compelling love. I would not, I would not—you know that I would not. Do you confess to this?”

“Yes, I confess it; you would not,” repeated Andrea like an echo.

“Do me this justice. Step by step have I fought against your love, your tyrannic love. I have watched and prayed and wept; deaf is Heaven, deaf the world, and fate, the implacable statue that has no entrails, that no human love can move, is inexorable. Fate has willed it so.”

“Fate, fate,” repeated Andrea, in a tone of conviction.

“Now, although I know myself to be free from blame, my sensitive conscience makes me decry myself, as if I were a baneful creature. It is useless to struggle against fate; we have bowed to its decrees and we have loved. Oh! Andrea, I would not have said it to you—but at this supreme moment the soul must reveal itself stripped of all artifice; I have sacrificed all to you.”

“You are an angel....”

“No, I am a miserable woman, who loves and is capable of sacrifice. Peace, tranquillity, conjugal duties, the ties of friendship, serenity of conscience, mystic love, of all these have you bereft me. What have you to offer me in exchange?”

“Alas! I can but love you,” he cried, in despair at his own poverty.

“Love is not everything, Andrea.”

“It is everything to me, Lucia.”

“You would do anything for love?”

“Anything.”

“Tell the truth, speak as if you were drawing your last breath, before passing into the presence of your Judge; would you do anything?” She had seized his hands, she was gazing fixedly, ardently into his eyes, as if she would have drawn his soul from him. Andrea, completely subjugated, simply said:

“Anything.”

She permitted him to kiss both her hands. She was thinking. Then she raised the green curtain and looked out into the street. It was still raining—in fact the rain was heavier than ever, and fell in long, pointed drops, like needles. They had reached Mergellina. The sea under the rain was of a dirty grey colour, and a mist shrouded the green blot made in the landscape by the villa and the blurred blot made by the Fort. Neither boat nor sail on the sea.

“What desolation!” murmured Lucia, “on sea and land! Ours is an ill-starred love!”

“Lucia, Lucia, my beautiful Lucia, do not say these things. You have not yet given me one kiss.”

“Kissing is your refrain; kiss me if you will.”

She threw back her veil and let him kiss her cold, closed lips. He turned away from her, mortified.

“You are passionless; you do not care for me,” he said.

“But do you not realise, unhappy man, that I can never be yours? Do you not realise that in being yours I should attain the utmost joy? but that I deny myself? Do you not realise my renunciation of youth, passion, life? Oh! unfortunate, who can torment me because you cannot realise....”

“I admire you, Lucia, there is no other woman like you, and I do not deserve you.”

The driver stopped, they had arrived at Posilipo, on the road that leads between the villas on the heights and those that slope down to the sea.

“Via di Bagnoli,” cried Andrea from the window.

“Whither are you taking me, Andrea?”

“Far....”

“No; I must return to town. Alberto is awaiting me.”

“Do not speak to me of Alberto.”

“On the contrary, you must let me speak of him. He is ill. I told him I was going to confession. You must drive me quickly back to town.”

“I will never take you back,” he said emphatically.

Lucia looked at him, inquiringly, but a transient smile flitted over her lips.

“You shall stay with me, you shall come with me. I will not let you go, Lucia.”

She looked as if she were too stupefied to reply.... “You are going mad, Andrea.”

“I am not going mad, I am speaking in all seriousness; my mind is made up.”

The carriage had reached the Bagnoli shore.

“Let us get down here, it is rainy and deserted; no one will see us.”

He obediently opened the carriage-door, helped her to get down, and gave her his arm.

Leaving the carriage on the high-road, they walked down to the sea under a fine rain, their feet sinking in the moist sand. A damp mist hung over the deserted landscape. Nisida, the convicts’ isle, stood out before them, black on the pale horizon. Round it, the sea was dark and turbid, as if all the livid horrors from the bottom had floated to its surface: further on towards Baia, it shone with frigid whiteness. The Trattoria of Bagnoli, behind them, had all its windows closed; the covered terrace was bare and empty, its yellow walls were stained by the damp. Further back still spread the grey plain of Bagnoli, where the soldiers go through their exercise, and Neapolitan duellists settle their disputes.

“It is like a northern landscape,” she said, clinging to the arm of her companion. “It is not Brittany, for Brittany has bare rocks and terrible peaks. Neither is it Holland, for the Scheldt is white, and fair and placid, veiled in a milky mist. It is Denmark, with Hamlet gazing at the grey Baltic, with thoughtful eyes that betray his madness.”

He listened to her, only conscious of the music of the voice that re-echoed in his innermost being. The fine, close rain poured down upon them until they were drenched, but neither of them perceived it.

“Have you ever been here, Andrea, when the landscape was blue?”

“Oh, yes—look over there, behind those closed shutters. I once fought a duel in a big room in the inn.”

“Oh! my love, with whom?”

“With Cicillo Cantelmo, a friend of mine.”

“For whom?”

“... for a woman.”

An embarrassing silence ensued.

“How little I know of your life, Andrea,” she said gently, clinging ever closer to him. “I am a stranger to you.”

“The past does not exist, love; all that has been is dead.”

“Oh! love, I am dead, I am dead to happiness.”

“Let me carry you away. Oh! my heart, you shall be reborn.”

“To-day you talk like a poet, Andrea, like a dreamer.”

“You have taught me this language; I did not know it before. I had never dreamed. Come away, Lucia, come away with me.”

“It’s late, very late,” she replied. “Come back to the carriage: let us return to Naples.”

They regained the little green haven that cut them off from the rest of the world. They were both saddened. When they turned in to the Via di Fuorigrotta, Lucia shuddered, and turning to Andrea, said:

“And the future?”

“Do not think of it, let it come.”

“You are a child, Andrea.”

“No; you will find that I am a man. Will you trust me?”

“I am afraid, I am afraid;” and she clung to him.

“What are you afraid of?”

“I do not know.... I am afraid of losing myself. This love is ruin, Andrea. I can see the future. Shall I foretell it you? Shall I describe the fate that awaits us?”

“Tell, but give me your hands; tell, but smile.”

“There are two ways before me. The first is the path of duty. After this gloomy, melancholy drive in the rain, in a carriage like a hearse, driven by a spectral coachman, we can coldly kiss and say good-bye, renouncing love. Ever to be apart, never to meet again, to betake ourselves, you to Caterina’s side, I to ... Alberto, to a life as dry and arid as pumice-stone, to that humdrum existence that is the death of the soul. Forget our glorious dreams, our sweet realities: behold the future....”

“No; I cannot.”

“There is another future open to us. It is sin clothed in hypocrisy; it is hidden evil; it is fear-struck, trembling adultery, that degrades and deceives, that steals secret kisses, that is dependent on servants, porters, postmen, maids, and the tribe of them. It is what we have endured till now; it is odium, vulgarity, commonplace treason. To love as every one else loves! to imitate what a hundred thousand have done before us! It is unworthy of a woman like me, of a man like you!”

“Once you told me that deceit is merciful,” he murmured. “You love Caterina and Alberto, in this way you could save....”

She turned and looked at Andrea, her scholar who had learnt her theories so well, whom she had taught to deny truth.

“Then,” said Lucia, gloomily, “as I shall be never able to resign myself to hiding my love, since I can no longer practise deceit, we had better part.”

“No; I cannot.”

“We had better part.”

“I cannot; I shall die without you.”

“What can I do? There is no other way out of it. Die! I, too, will die.”

She turned up her eyes to the roof of the carriage and crossed her arms, as if she were waiting for death.

“I have let you speak,” he said calmly, in a tone of decision, “because you would have your say. But I have a plan of my own, the best, the only one. Humdrum adultery, you will have none of it. Well, then, we will have brazen adultery, open scandal. We will leave Naples together....”

“No,” she cried, covering her face in horror.

“... we will leave together, never to return. We will begin our life anew, in London, Paris, Nice or Brittany, wheresoever you will. Naples shall be wiped out of it. Since it is ordained that I love you, that you love me, we will pay our debt to fate.”

“Fate, fate,” she sobbed, convulsively, wringing her hands.

“Fate,” repeated Andrea, bitterly. “We should never have loved each other. Now it is too late to draw back; you are mine.”

“Oh, Caterina! oh, Alberto!” she exclaimed, weeping.

“It is fate, Lucia.”

“My husband, my dearest friend!” Sobs rent her bosom.

“I tell you again, your heart is too big. I love you and you only: you shall only love me.”

“What torture, Andrea!”

“Have you not said, hundreds of times, 'take me away?’ Now I am ready to take you away.”

“You will take a corpse with you, pale with remorse.”

“Then let us content ourselves with hypocrisy, with such love as suffices to others; yet that is what you cannot tolerate.”

“Oh! my God! what torture is this? I have not deserved it.”

Suddenly it turned dark. She uttered a cry of dismay.

“It is nothing, we are passing through the Grotta. Fear nothing, I love you.”

“This love is a misfortune, a tragedy.”

“Have you not already told me this in the park?”

“Yes....”

“Well, Lucia, my life shall be passed in craving your pardon for having brought this misery upon you, I know that you are my victim. I know that I brought you to ruin. I demand of you an immense sacrifice. I know it, but are you not the personification of sacrifice? You are an example of noble abnegation, you are virtue and purity incarnate. You will see what my love for you is—how I shall adore you.”

“And Caterina and Alberto?

“We will go away together, never to return,” he persisted obstinately.

“We shall be accursed, Andrea.”

“I shall take you away. Call me your executioner, I deserve it, but come with me.”

“We shall be unhappy.”

“Che!”

“Madonna mia, Madonna mia, why hast thou ordained my ruin?”

“Will you come to-day or to-morrow?”

“Neither to-day nor to-morrow. I am afraid; let me think. You are pitiless; no one has mercy on me.”

“You are an angel, Lucia, you know how to forgive. To-day or to-morrow?”

“Be merciful, give me time.”

“I will wait for you, my love. I will wait, for I know that you will come.”

A pale ray of light stole into the carriage through the blinds. Lucia was like one in a trance.

“You will leave me at the church Della Vittoria. I will pray there and walk home; it is only a few steps from home.”

“And what am I to do? It is for you to decide what I am to do.”

“Leave to-day for Caserta. In five or six days you will return to Naples, you and Caterina. By that time I.... shall have thought. But do not attempt to write to me or see me; do not ask me for appointments....”

“You hate me, don’t you?”

“I love you madly. But I must be left to myself for a time.”

“You don’t hate me for the harm I have done you?”

“Alas, no. We are all liable to do evil.”

“Not you; I am evil, but I love you.”

“Andrea, we have arrived; stop.”

“Lucia, remember that there is no way out of it. We must go away, absolutely. Give me a kiss, oh, my bride!”

She stood up and allowed him to kiss her.

“Till that day, Andrea,” said Lucia, with a gesture as tragic as if she were casting her life away.

“Till that day, Lucia.”

The door of the carriage closed and it drove off in the direction of Chiatamone.

She found the church closed. That made an impression on her.

“Even God so wills it. O Lord, do Thou remember, on the day of judgment.”

 

II.

Caterina was glad to return to Naples, to the house in Via Constantinopoli; for alone at Centurano, without the Sannas, and especially without Andrea (who had gone away shooting four times in a fortnight, to make up for lost time), she had been very dull. In those two weeks she had busied herself with putting the villa in order; the furniture had been encased in holland covers and the curtains taken down, Lucia’s room left intact, in readiness for next year. Then the house had been consigned to the care of Matteo, and when this was accomplished she was glad to get away.

She intended making many innovations in her winter quarters. She discussed them at great length with Andrea, whose advice was precious to her. For instance, the dining-room wanted redecorating; she was thinking of having it panelled half-way up with carved oak, an idea suggested by Giovanna Gabrielli-Casacalenda, past mistress in the art of elegance. Caterina had hesitated at first because of the expense, although Andrea had given her permission to spend as much as she chose. They were rich, and did not live up to their income; their property was well managed and lucrative; but she was economically-minded. As for altering the yellow drawing-room which Andrea considered too showy and too provincial, that would not be a serious expense, for the upholsterer was willing to take back all its furniture and hangings, and to exchange them for more modern, neutral-tinted ones. She often consulted Andrea on these matters; he gave her rather absent answers, being preoccupied with a lawsuit about a boundary-wall on their property at Sedile di Porto.

His conferences with his legal advisers often obliged him to be away from home. Indeed, that very morning he had been out since eight o’clock, returning at eleven, apparently exhausted.

“Well, how goes the lawsuit?” inquired Caterina at luncheon.

“Badly.”

“Why? Does our neighbour decline any compromise?”

“He does. He is obstinate; says the right is on his side.”

“But what is the lawyer doing?”

“What can he do? He is moving heaven and earth, like any other lawyer; or pretending to do so.”

“Why don’t you eat?”

“I am not very hungry; out of sorts.”

“After luncheon you ought to take a nap.”

“What an idea! I’ve got to go out again.”

“To the Court? This lawsuit will make you ill.”

“Then I shall have to get well again.”

“Listen to me. Suppose you let the neighbour have his own way?”

“It’s a question of self-respect; but perhaps you are right after all.”

“This lawsuit is a nuisance. This morning Alberto sent for you, and you were out.”

“Who is Alberto?”

“Alberto Sanna.”

“What did he want?”

“The maid told me that he wanted to see you, to ask you to attend to some business for him because he was confined to the house. She told me in confidence that Lucia wished me to know that Alberto spat blood last night in his sleep, but that he did not know it, and they were hiding it from him. She also said that Lucia was crying.”

“And Alberto is another nuisance,” he rejoined, crossly and with a shrug of his shoulders.

“It is for Lucia that I am grieving. How she must suffer!”

No answer.

“I should like to go there to-day, for half an hour,” she ventured to remark.

“What would be the good of it?”

“Only to comfort Lucia....”

“To-day I can’t go there with you, and you know I don’t care for you to go alone.”

“You are right, I won’t go; we will go together this evening.”

Luncheon was over, but they did not leave the table. Andrea was playing with his breadcrumbs.

“Besides our agent, Scognamiglio, will call to-day. He will bring some money for which you must give him a receipt. Tell him he can make a reduction for the third-floor tenants of No. 79 Via Speronzella. They are poor people.”

“Am I to say anything else to him?”

“Give him his monthly salary.”

“A hundred and sixty lire?”

“Yes; but let him give you a receipt.”

“All right; another cup of coffee?”

“Yes; give me another cup, it is weak to-day.”

“Because of your nerves. I wanted to ask you, are we going to the ball of the Unione?”

“... Yes.”

“Shall I order a dress of cream brocade for that ball?”

“Will the colour suit you?”

“The dressmaker says so.”

“They always say so. But order it, anyhow.”

“I will wear my pearls.”

He did not answer. He was gazing abstractedly into the bottom of his cup. Then he looked at her so long and so fixedly that Caterina wondered.

“Well,” he said at last, looking at his watch, “I must be going.”

He rose, and as usual she followed him. He went right through the house; stopping before his writing-table to take a bulky parcel out of it, which he put into his pocket.

“It makes you look fat,” she said, laughing.

“Never mind.”

He dawdled in his bedroom, as if he were looking for something that he had forgotten. Then he took up his hat and gloves.

“You should take your overcoat with you, the air is biting.”

“You are right; I will take it.”

He finished buttoning his gloves. She was standing, looking at him with her serene eyes. He stooped and gave her an absent kiss. Then he turned to go, followed by his wife.

“Arrivederci, Andrea.”

“... Arrivederci.”

He began to descend the stairs; she called out to him from the landing:

“Shall you return late?”

“No. Good-bye, Caterina.”

Lucia had risen late. She told Alberto that she had passed a feverish night. Indeed, her lips were dry and discoloured, her heavy eyelids had livid circles round them. At eleven, she languidly dragged herself, in a black satin dressing-gown, to be present at her husband’s breakfast—two eggs beaten in a cup of café-au-lait—capital stuff for the chest. She sat with her head in her hands. Every now and then dark flushes dyed her face, and she pushed her hair off her temples with a vague gesture that indicated suffering.

“What is the matter with you? You are sadder than usual!”

“I wish I could see you well, Alberto mio. I wish I could give you my heart’s blood.”

“What is it all about? Am I so ill, then?”

“No, Alberto, no. The season is trying to delicate lungs.”

“Well, then, what of it? But I see that you are so good as to be anxious about me. Thank you, dear. But for you I should have been dead by this time.”

“Do not say that—do not say it.”

“Now she is in tears, my poor little thing! I was joking. What a fool I am! My stupid chaff makes you cry. I entreat you not to cry any more.”

“I am not crying, Alberto mio.”

“Have a sip of my coffee.”

“No, thank you, I don’t care for any.”

“Have some; do have some.”

“I am going to take the Sacrament to-day, about one.”

“Ah! beg pardon. I never remember anything. What church are you going to?”

“The same church, Santa Chiara.”

“But your religion makes you suffer, dear.”

“Everything makes me suffer, Alberto mio. It is my destiny. But it is well to suffer for God’s sake!”

“Let us both take holy vows, Lucia.”

“You are joking, but I did seriously intend to be a nun. It was my father who prevented me from doing so. God grant that he may not repent of it.”

“Why, Lucia? Think, if you had become a nun, we should not have met and loved each other, and you would never have been my dear wife.”

“What is the good of love and marriage? All is corruption, everything in this world is putrid.”

“Lucia, you are lugubrious.”

“Forgive me, Alberto mio, the gloom that overshadows my soul leaks out and saddens my beloved one. I will smile sooner than you should be sad.”

“Poor dear, I know what I cost you. But you’ll see how soon I shall get strong, and how we shall amuse ourselves this winter. There will be fêtes, balls, races.”

“I shall never be gay again.”

“Lucia, I shall have to scold you.”

“No, no; let us talk of something else.”

“If you are going to church, you are but just in time.”

“Do you send me away, Alberto?”

“It is midday; you have to go as far as Santa Chiara ... and the sooner you go the sooner you will be back.”

“True, the sooner back.... I must go, mustn’t I?”

“Of course, the air will do you good. Go on foot, the walk will be good for you.”

“What will you do, meanwhile?”

“I shall wait for your return.”

“... You will wait.”

“Yes; perhaps I shall go to sleep in this chair.”

“Are your hands hot, Alberto?”

“No; feel them.”

“Pain in your chest?”

“Nothing of the sort, only slight stitches in the sides, automatic stitches, as the doctor calls them. What are you thinking of? Don’t you see that I am better? Yesterday, I coughed eighteen times; this morning, seventeen; I’m improving.”

“Alberto mio, may health be yours!”

“Yes, yes, I shall get as strong as Andrea! I sent for him this morning, but he never came. He is out in all sorts of weather. Lucky dog!”

She stood listening, with hanging arms and downcast eyes.

“Go and dress, dear; go.”

She moved away slowly, turning to look at him. In half an hour she returned, dressed in black, enveloped in a fur cloak, in which she hid her hands. She came and sat down by him, as if she were already tired.

“You are not fit to walk, Lucia; call a fiacchere.”

“I will....” she said in a faint voice.

“What have you got under your cloak?”

“The prayer-book, a veil, a rosary.”

“All the pious baggage of my little nun. Be a saint to thy heart’s content, my beauty. Thanks to you, we shall all get into Paradise.”

“Do not laugh at religion, Alberto.”

“I never laugh at the objects of your faith. Time’s up, my heart; go, and come back soon.”

Lucia threw her arms round his neck, kissed his thin face, and whispered:

“Forgive....”

“Am I to forgive you for taking the Sacrament? Hasn’t your confessor told you that I ... absolve you?”

She bowed low. Then she drew herself up and looked round, wildly. She went away, bent and tottering, but returned almost immediately.

“I had forgotten to bid you good-bye, Alberto.”

She squeezed his hand.

“Think of me in church, my saint.”

“I will pray for you, Alberto.”

And she went away—tall, black, and stately.

 

III.

Night was closing in; in the December twilight the air had grown more chill. Under the lighted lamp Caterina sat writing to her cousin Giuditta at school, to invite her to spend next Sunday with her. The clock struck six. “Andrea is late,” thought Caterina; “I am glad I made him take his overcoat, the days are getting so cold.” She finished her letter and laid her hand on the bell. Giulietta appeared.

“Have this letter posted, with a halfpenny stamp.”

“Shall I order dinner to be served?”

“Yes; your master will be home in a few minutes.”

But the master kept them waiting till half-past seven. Caterina waited patiently, yet she felt a certain inward spite towards the business that took up so much of Andrea’s time. It struck her that the house in Via Constantinopoli was rather cold, and it needed fireplaces. How long would it take to put in a grate? It would please Andrea.

The bell rang. That must be Andrea ... but it was only Giulietta.

“A letter from Casa Sanna, and one by post.”

“All right; you can go. See that dinner is kept hot.”

Although she was disappointed by Andrea’s non-arrival—it was nearly eight o’clock—Caterina eagerly opened the letter from Casa Sanna.

“Signora Caterina, for pity’s sake, come to me.

“ALBERTO.”

The handwriting was shaky and blurred, as if the pen had trembled in the writer’s hand. The address was in a different hand. Caterina was alarmed. What could have happened? Nothing to Alberto; no, for then Lucia would have written. Then something must surely be the matter with Lucia. What dreadful accident, what awful trouble, could it mean? She must go at once. She rang.

“The carriage, Giulietta.”

The maid looked at her in astonishment and left the room. All at once Caterina, who was proceeding to put on her bonnet and wrap, stood still. Andrea! Had she forgotten Andrea? If Andrea did not find her at home when he returned he would be angry. What was to be done? She sat down a moment to collect her thoughts; she was not accustomed to rely on herself in any difficulty—she had no will of her own. She decided on writing a line to Andrea, apologising for going out for half an hour, and enclosing Alberto’s note. She would return immediately; he was not to wait dinner for her. She placed the letter, with the letter-weight over it, in full view, on the writing-table. Then she saw the letter that had come by post. “From Giuditta,” she thought.

She opened it, still preoccupied with the thought of what could have happened to Lucia, and read:

“Oh! Caterina, mercy, Caterina; have pity upon me; mercy, mercy, mercy! I am unfortunate. I am leaving with Andrea. I am a miserable creature; you will never see me again. I suffer. I am leaving. I am dying. Have pity!”

“LUCIA.”

She read it over again, re-read it, and read it for the fourth time. She sat down by the writing-table, with the letter in her hands. She was stupefied.

“The carriage is at the door,” said Giulietta. Caterina’s head moved as if in reply. Then she rose to her feet, but she felt the floor give way beneath them. “If I move I shall fall,” she thought.

She stood still; her giddiness increased; the furniture turned round her; there was buzzing in her ears and a bright light in her eyes.

“Surely, I am dying,” she thought. But the giddiness began to decrease, the whirl became wider and slower, and then stopped. Then she read the letter over again, replaced it in the envelope, put it in her pocket and kept her hand over it. She passed into her room, took her bonnet and wrap out of the darkness, but did not put them on. She crossed the anteroom with them in her hands.

“Shall you return early, Signora?” said Giulietta.

She looked at her, dazed.

“... Yes, I think so.”

“What shall I say to the master?”

“There is ... yes, there is a note for him.”

She descended the stairs and entered the carriage. The coachman must have had his orders from Giulietta, for without waiting for further instructions he drove off through Via Sebastiano. Caterina, sitting on the edge of the cushion, without leaning back, had placed her bonnet and shawl opposite to her, and still kept her hand on the letter in her pocket. She felt the discomfort of the chill air that came in through the open window. She could not resist the impulse that led her, by the fugitive light of the street-lamps, to read Lucia’s letter over again for the sixth time. What with the movement of the carriage and the sudden shadows that succeeded the flashes of light, the written words jumped up and down; and Caterina felt them jumping in her brain, knocking against her brow and at the back of her head, beating in either temple. It was a tempest of little blows, a beating of the drum under her skull. Every now and then she bent her head, as if to escape it. She folded the paper; the sensation became less intense, died away, and stupefaction once more dulled her brain.

She mounted the stairs slowly, keeping a firm, mechanical hold on her shawl. She found the door wide open. In the anteroom the maid was talking with animation to the man-servant, emphasising her discourse by expressive gestures. When they saw her enter noiselessly, in indoor attire, without either bonnet or gloves, they became silent. Then she forgot where she was, halting in indecision. She no longer knew what she had come for, when the maid whispered to her that:

“The Signore was awaiting her.”

Of whom was she talking? Caterina looked fixedly at the maid, without the quiver of an eyelash.

“The poor Signore had again spat blood at about three o’clock. He noticed it this time. This evening, when he received the Signora’s letter, he turned red and screamed; he got very excited and coughed—and again spat blood, saving your presence.”

“La Signora, blood! what were they talking of?”

“Now I will show you in, Signorina. But bear up, both of you, it was inevitable.”

At these words Caterina trembled all over; a change came over her face. Glued to the spot, she gazed at the maid with eyes full of sorrow.

“What is done, can’t be undone, Signora mia! Let us go to the poor Signore.”

Preceded by the maid, she followed submissively. Lucia’s boudoir was in great disorder. The little armchairs were turned upside down; the music on the piano was torn and dispersed, the empty work-basket was topsy-turvy, the reels rolling about the carpet, the wools entangled, and the coarse canvas at which Lucia used to work was lying like a rag on the ground; the writing-case was opened on the little writing-table, the drawers were empty, the letters littered the ground: a battlefield.

“The Signore made this havoc, he was like a madman,” explained the maid.

Leaving the darkened drawing-room to the right, they entered the bedroom. Within was sufficient light to make darkness visible; a night-lamp under an opaque shade so placed that the bed lay in shadow. Profound silence: solitude. A pungent odour of drugs and the smell peculiar to sick-rooms filled the atmosphere. Instinctively, Caterina strained her eyes and advanced towards the bed. Alberto was lying there, supine, his head and shoulders resting upon a pile of graduated cushions. He was dressed, but his shirt was crushed and torn, and his legs were wrapped in a woman’s shawl. On a night-table by his side stood bottles, phials, glasses, wafers, red pill-boxes and packets of powders. A white handkerchief peeped out from under the pillow. On the side where Lucia slept, between the bed and the wall, the prie-Dieu had been turned upside down. Caterina stooped over the bed. His eyes were closed and his lips half open, the breath that escaped them was short and faint, his chest scarcely heaved. He opened his eyes, and when he saw her they filled with tears. The tears coursed down his spare cheeks and fell on his neck; the maid took a handkerchief out of the pocket of her apron and wiped them away. He signed to her with his hand to thank and dismiss her.

“Will you have another bit of snow?”

“Yes,” in a faint whisper.

The maid took a little from a basin and put it in his mouth.

“The powder; is it not time?”

“No; go away.”

She took a turn round the room and went away as quietly as possible. Caterina, hugging her shawl, had remained standing. Now she realised all that she saw and heard; indeed, sensation had become so acute that the noise of the words hurt her, the light dazzled her, the sick man’s hectic features became visible; she saw the knife-like profile, the thin protruding chin, the skeleton chest, the miserable legs. She saw, felt, and understood too much.

“Come nearer and be seated. I can neither turn nor raise my voice. It might bring on hæmorrhage again.”

She took a chair and sat down, facing the bed, so that she could see Alberto’s face, crossed her hands on her lap, and waited. He made an effort to swallow the bit of snow, then with all the despair of which a hoarse, low voice is capable said to her:

“You’ve heard, eh?”

Her eyelids quivered two or three times, but she found nothing to say to him.

Alberto, who was lying sunk in his pillows, with half-closed eyes and upturned chin, gazed vaguely at the white curtains instead of at her.

“I should never have suspected such treason. Would you have suspected it? No; of course not.”

Her gesture signified, “No.” Her inert will had no power over her nerves, so that she had absolutely no strength wherewith to articulate.

“Lucia appeared to be so fond of me. She was so good, she thought of nothing but me. You saw, you must have seen, how fond she was of me. How could she do this to me?”

Husbanding his breath, he continued his complaint in an undertone, never turning to Caterina, but addressing his lamentations to the bed, the room, the curtains.

“Even this morning she kissed me three times. I ought to have known that she was going away. I ought not to have let her go out.”

A short, harsh cough interrupted him.

“Give me ... give me a little snow.”

She handed the saucer to him; he put a little in his mouth and was silent until he recovered his breath.

“Has she written to you?”

Caterina drew the letter from her pocket and handed it to him. Alberto raised it eagerly to the level of his eyes.

“Not a word as to where they are going, nor at what time they left. But I have found out the hour. They left at half-past two, by the Paris-Turin express. They posted the letters at the station. What has Andrea written to you? What does he say? Why has he done this to me? What does he write?”

“Nothing,” said Caterina, whose head had fallen on her bosom.

“Nothing! But what infamous creatures they both are! They are a couple of assassins. Listen, listen; I tell you, they will certainly be the death of me.”

He had almost risen to a sitting posture, choked by impotent rage, clenching his diminutive fists, opening his mouth to breathe, to utter a cry. She gazed at him with wide-open eyes, struck once more with the stupor that from time to time paralysed her brain.

“Then you have not received anything but that letter; you know nothing of their doings? You know only that they have gone? That is why you are so cool! If you only knew ... only knew ... what infamy ... what infamy...!”

She exerted her will and succeeded in raising her head, drew nearer to him, and questioned him with her eyes.

“I will whisper it to you. The doctor advises me not to waste my breath. When you see me getting excited, stop me. Horrible treason! It has gone on for some time, you know, since our stay at Centurano....”

A wild look passed over the face of his listener, but he did not observe it.

“... but in reality, those infamous assassins were betraying us. Centurano indeed! It began before my marriage. One day that they were alone, in your house, Andrea kissed Lucia, on the neck....”

Caterina wrung the helpless hands that were lying in her lap.

“... afterwards they made love to each other under our very eyes; writing, speaking to each other, making appointments with an impudence.... We never noticed anything. All through that accursed Exhibition! How could I tell that they would have served me like this? Do you know that they kissed....”

He ground his teeth as he told these things, casting savage glances around him, revelling in the ecstasy, the intoxication of his rage when he recalled the voluptuous details of the love-story. On Caterina’s face, which was turned towards him, there was still the same look of grieved surprise.

“... they kissed again, the accursed assassins. He has tasted the ripe red lips of my Lucia, those lips that were mine, and mine only; he took them from me, and scorched and faded them with coarse, brutal kisses. I wish that in those kisses thou hadst sucked arsenic and strychnine, and that their sweetness had poisoned thee, vile thief, deceitful villain! Ah! they were sweet, were they, the kisses of my Lucia? Ah! they pleased you, and so you’ve taken them for yourself and gone off with them, vile thievish clod—brigand!”

A fit of coughing that lasted a long time choked him, his head rebounded on the pillow, and his chest heaved with a hoarse rasping sound. Trembling all over he grasped his handkerchief and expectorated, examining the handkerchief carefully with a hurried, frightened gesture.

“It is white,” he said, with a voice as thin as a thread. He fell back, paler than ever from fright, in his pillows, his chest heaving painfully. After this vehement attack, he was obliged to rest a little. She waited, watching his every movement: when he expectorated, a sense of nausea caused her to turn her head aside.

“Give me the blue bottle, with the spoon by it. It’s codeine.”

Caterina’s hand wandered over the table for some time before she could find what she looked for.... When she gave it him, he swallowed it, thanked her, and looked at her fixedly, perhaps because her trembling silence and her immobility began to strike him....

“It must have made a great impression upon you,” he muttered. “I was already upset, half dead, in fact, for I spat a little blood. I sent for the doctor and for Lucia, at the church of Santa Chiara, at once. The doctor came; Lucia didn’t come. They hadn’t found her at Santa Chiara. I was getting desperate; I went all over the house and turned it upside down. When, lo, and behold, a letter, brought by hand. I opened it, screamed, and fell down. I bit my hand and broke a pane of glass. I knocked the furniture about, all that had belonged to Lucia. If I could have got at her for a minute, ill and weak as I am, I should have strangled her. Then a fit of coughing came on, but I didn’t expectorate. Then a little scraping; it was red, red as flame. They have killed me, they have killed me....”

The fever of his complaint had left him in a stupor until the arrival of Caterina, now it was passing into the acute stage, as the temperature increased and the fever mounted from his chest to his brain. His ideas were becoming incoherent. “What happened afterwards, I don’t know. I sent for you, and the doctor came again. You see I threw the prie-dieu down; I wanted to kick it to pieces, but I couldn’t. She took away the Byzantine Madonna. She was pious, she was religious, she went to confession, she took the Sacrament; how could I tell that with all that she would commit this horrible crime! But ... you know ... they were a couple of lovers awaiting their honeymoon, like bride and bridegroom ... infamous wretches, assassins ... and to-night, to-morrow; while I lie here, dying alone, like a dog....” She shuddered, in terror at sight of the little mannikin wrapped up in a woman’s shawl.

“... I had always loved her,” he said after a pause, speaking in a lower tone. “I married her for love, because she was good and beautiful and clever, and spoke poetically; ... because she was unhappy in her father’s house. I didn’t mind her marriage portion being small. Some of my friends remarked at the time that women always marry from interested motives. I didn’t believe it. She wrote me such beautiful letters! Oh! she was a famous hand at letter-writing. She wrote to Galimberti, who went mad; to me, to you; and she wrote some to Andrea. She gave them to him in books, she put them under the clock, everywhere. I ought to have known that she married me for money. Do you know what she has taken with her besides the Madonna? Her diamonds, the diamonds that I gave her.” And a sneer of irony distorted the invalid’s lips.

“The diamonds, you know! My mother’s ... who was an honest woman ... that I had given her. She will wear them in her ears for him, and he will kiss her throat; she will wear them in her hair, and he will kiss her hair; she will wear them on her bosom, and he will sleep on that bosom. O God! if you exist—cruel God, vile God!—make me die an hour before the time.”

A gloomy silence reigned in the room after that imprecation. She shrank away with outstretched hands, in dread of the delirious sufferer in whose thoughts fever of blood and brain had wrought such terrible havoc, while it lent him a fictitious vigour equal to the strength of a person in rude health.

“... Wherever they were, they betrayed us. At home, at the Exhibition, in the carriage—everywhere, everywhere they made fools of us. In the wood, in the English Garden they were together.... They snatched each other’s hands on the stairs, on the landing; they kissed each other, while we went on before. On the terrace, in the corner, they kissed over again. It’s a horrible, crying shame! I think the servants must have noticed it at Centurano. They must have laughed at us, that canaille must have laughed its fill behind our backs....”

There were two bright red spots on his cheekbones, and he was gasping.

“... And do you know why I call them assassins, why I say that they have killed me? And by God, I am right! The most odious, the most cruel part of it all is, that through their damned love affair I have caught this illness, that might have been spared me. On a chilly night, Lucia stood out on the balcony, the whole night through, and so did Andrea. I slept all night with the window open, with the cold air penetrating my lungs and inflaming them, making me cough for two months, making me so ill! They gazed at each other, called to each other and blew kisses: I caught the cough that has lasted two months, and made me spit this blood to-day.” He looked at her. In her horror, she hid her face in her hands. “You wonder how I know all this? You remember the novel that Lucia was writing? Another lie. It wasn’t a novel, it was a journal. Every day she wrote down all that happened to her, all her thoughts and fancies. The whole love affair is in it, from beginning to end—every look, every kiss, every act. Oh! there are splendid bits of description, beautiful things are narrated therein. It is instructive and interesting reading. You can profit by it, if you like. Read it, it will amuse you.”

Then grinning, like a consumptive Mephistopheles, he drew a bulky manuscript from under the pillow. He threw it into Caterina’s lap; she left it there, sooner than touch it, as if she were afraid of its burning her fingers.

“Yes,” he said, having reached the lowest depth of bitterness, “Lucia wished me to know how it all happened. She took the Madonna, she took the diamonds, but she has had the goodness to forget the journal! Do read it! It is a charming novel, a fine drama.”

He was exhausted, with the fever came a return of the stupor. His eyes were half closed, his feeble hands, with the violet veins standing out in relief, were like yellow wax. In the gloom, Caterina kept turning the pages of the journal, at first without reading, then glancing at a page here and there, grasping an idea, or discovering a fact amid the fantastic divagations in which its pages abounded. At certain parts she shuddered and fell back in her chair. He coughed weakly in his torpor, without unclosing his eyes. Suddenly a violent attack tore his chest, the cough began low, grew louder, died away, seemed to be over, and began again, cruelly, persistently. In the short intervals he groaned feebly, clutching at his ribs, as if he could bear it no longer. Then he expectorated again, and once more made that hurried gesture of examination. He fell back with a faint cry. He had spat blood. She had watched this scene; when she saw the blood, she shuddered and closed her eyes, as if she were about to faint.

“So these medicines are no good to me? The doctor is telling me a parcel of old woman’s tales. Why doesn’t he stop the hæmorrhage? I have swallowed such a lot of snow, I have taken such a lot of syrup of codeine and gallic acid, to stop the blood! Am I to spit all my blood away? Why haven’t they given me something stronger to-night, instead of to-morrow, if it is to do me any good?”

His lamentations, persistent, hoarse, torturing to his listener, filled the room. His voice had the aggrieved intonation that is peculiar to invalids who feel the injustice of not being cured. He continued to grumble at the doctor, the medicines, the syrup that failed to relieve his cough; the snow was useless, for it did not stop the hæmorrhage. Still complaining, he turned to Caterina:

“I beg your pardon; do you mind giving me that little paper of gallic acid, and a wafer?”

With the patience of one to whom these things are habitual, he made a pill and swallowed it, with an air of resignation. She had closed the journal.

“Had enough of it, eh? I have read every word of it, and shall read it again, to learn how these frightful crimes are committed. Well, I couldn’t have done such a thing to Lucia. To me she was the dearest and most beautiful of women. I was in love with her; via, to tell the truth, I was idiotically in love with her. She ought not to have behaved as she has done to me; she knew how ill I am, she might have spared me. She knew that I was alone, how could she abandon me...!”

He considered the deserted room, the prie-dieu lying upside down, the empty space where the Madonna had been, the open drawers, and fresh tears coursed down his cheeks. They were scant tears, that reddened the tight-drawn skin as they fell.

“What do you intend to do, Signora Caterina?”

She started and looked at him, questioningly, surprised.

“I asked you what you were going to do?”

“Nothing,” she said, gravely.

The despairing word rang through the room, accentuating its void.

“Nothing; true. What is there to be done? Those two love each other, have gone off together ... and good-night to them who remain behind. Follow them? It would be useless; useless to catch them. Besides, who is to go? They have killed me. Well, I am so weak, so mean, so vilely ridiculous, that, despite all, I feel that I still care for Lucia.... I care for her still—it’s no use denying it, for all her wickedness, her betrayal, and her perpetual deceit—I care for her, because I love her, ecco! I am so tied to her, so bound up in her, that the loss of her will kill me, if this hæmorrhage doesn’t. Oh! what a woman, what a woman it is! How she takes possession of you, and carries you away, and never loosens her hold on you...!”

His eyelids were wide open, as if he beheld the seductive vision of her; he held up his lips, and stretched out his arms to her, calling on her, in a transport of love, that was part of his delirium.

“Oh! if she could but return, for a moment! If she could but return, even if she went away again! Oh! return, that I might forgive her ... return, return, to see me die! Not to let me die alone, in this icy bed, that my fever does not warm; in this great room, where I am afraid to be alone!”

He was wandering. Presently he felt under the pillow, and drew out a letter and a small packet.

“... listen, she sent me this, with the letter. They are the wedding rings. Here is the one I gave her, here is the one you gave Andrea. Do you think she will ever return?”

“No,” said Caterina, rising to her feet, “they will never return.” She took her own ring and went away, leaving Alberto still wandering.

“If she had but lied a little longer; she might have waited for my death! She would not have had long to wait, miserable....”

 

IV.

In the night, in her dark room, seated beside her bed, Caterina pondered. She had returned home without speaking to any one; no one had said anything to her, for they all knew what had happened. The house was in order, composed, cold, and silent; on the table was the note she had written to her husband, to apologise for having gone out alone. She tore it up, and threw the pieces into the waste-paper basket. Giulietta, who had crept in after her, to try and proffer a word of consolation, was dismissed as usual with a gentle good-night. The maid told the coachman that the Signora had not shed a tear, but that the expression of her face was “dreadful.” They all pitied her, but they had long foreseen what would happen; they knew of it at Centurano: you’d have to be blind not to have seen it.

Then the conventicle dispersed, and the house was wrapped in profound silence. Caterina had extinguished the light in her own room, but had not undressed. Instinctively she craved for darkness, wherein to hang her head and think. She could distinguish the whiteness of the bed in the gloom, and it frightened her. She sat with one hand over the other, pressing the point of her nails against the third finger of the hand that bore the two marriage rings. Now and again, when she became aware of the contact of that second ring, she started and moaned. Her life, quiet and uniform as it had been, came before her with such distinctness of detail that it seemed as if she lived it over again. She had had a mother until she was seven; a father, until she was nine; and lived with her aunt until she was eleven. A peaceful childhood, except for the formless, shadowy sorrow of those two deaths, a sorrow bereft of cries or tears. She had always been ashamed to cry in the presence of other people; she had wept for her dead at night, in her little bed, with the sheet drawn over her face. Later, at her aunt’s, she had been seriously ill, a very dangerous illness—a combination of every disease that is incidental to childhood. She remembered that the Sacrament had been administered to her in great haste, in the fear that she would die. She had not understood its meaning, and had not been very strongly impressed; since then she had retained a calm religious piety, devoid of mystic enthusiasm, but characterised by the rigorous strictness of observance with which she fulfilled all her duties.

When she recovered, her aunt had put her to school, the best school in Naples, and had undertaken the management of her fortune. She was a cold, trustworthy, childless aunt, who did not incline to demonstrations of affection, but who visited her punctually on Thursdays in the parlour, and drove her out on Sundays, and took her to the theatre. Caterina recalled the first year at school, where she had been happier than at home, where she had given herself to the simple pleasure of being with other children; not playing, but watching them play; not speaking, but hearing them speak. Study she found rather hard; she had been obliged to apply herself to succeed in learning anything; the teachers had always given her the maximum marks for good conduct, but not so many for study. She had never been punished nor reproached that first year, and at the final examination she came out fifteen, among twenty-eight: she had gained a silver medal for good conduct.

The duality of her school-life began with the appearance of Lucia, whom she had met with in the second class. A wonderful pupil, who surpassed all her fellows; a slight, thin girl, whose long black plaits hung down her back, who spent three days in school and three in the infirmary, who was an object of charity to the teachers, the assistants, and her companions. She was a sickly, pensive child, whose great eyes swallowed up her whole face, and who could master anything without opening a book. Many girls desired her friendship, but one day she said to Caterina, in her weak voice:

“They tell me that you have neither mother nor father; my mother is dead too, and that is why I wear a black band round my arm, for mourning. Will you be my friend?” All at once, Caterina remembered that she had begun to love the lithe, melancholy creature with her whole heart, the girl who was as slender as a reed, who never played, and who talked like a maiden of fifteen when she was but a child of eleven. She remembered how this childish love was strengthened by their living together under one roof. In the hours of recreation they had walked up and down the corridors like the others, they had held each other by the hand, but without speaking. During school-hours they sat on the same bench, lending each other a pen, a scrap of paper, or a pencil: at table they sat opposite, looking at each other, and Caterina passed her share of pudding to Lucia, who could eat nothing else. In chapel they prayed together, and in the dormitory they were not far apart. In talent, in beauty, and in stature Lucia had always surpassed Caterina, a fact that Caterina had tacitly acknowledged, and the whole College recognised. In the College the two friends were always designated as, “the one who loved, and the one who submitted to be loved.” The one who permitted herself to be loved was the beauty, the bellezza; the one who loved was the capezza, the ass’s bridle, a patient, humble, devoted, servile thing. The bellezza was entitled to everything, the capezza had no rights, but all the duties. She was permitted to love, that was all. In the Altimare and Spaccapietra bond, Lucia was the bellezza, and Caterina the capezza.

She could remember having been punished several times in her stead, for having been bewitched into following her in an escapade, for having taken her part against the maestra, for having done the sums that were too dry for Lucia’s poetic mind. Lucia wept, was in despair, fainted, when Caterina was punished for a fault of hers; and Caterina ended by consoling her, telling her that it was nothing, praying her to stop crying, because she rather liked punishment. Lucia was a profoundly affectionate creature, expansive to enthusiasm, ever ready to sacrifice herself for the sake of friendship; Caterina, who could never find words to express herself, whose affection was calm and silent, who could never behave enthusiastically, and who had never fainted, was sometimes ashamed of loving so little. In everything Lucia surpassed her. So they passed from class to class. Caterina was always a mediocre scholar, obtaining a bronze medal or honourable mention at the examinations, on which occasions she never came to the fore—an insipid pupil, who was neither appreciated nor bullied by the professors. There was nothing interesting in her character—like, for instance, Artemisia Minichini, who was insolent and sceptical; or Giovanna Casacalenda, who was provoking and coquettish. The Directress did not give herself the trouble of watching her. Her greatest charm, her only distinguishing quality, was her friendship for Lucia—“Where is Altimare?” “Spaccapietra, tell us where Altimare is.” “How is Altimare?” “Spaccapietra, surely thou knowest how Altimare is to-day!”

Lucia, on the contrary, passed a brilliant yearly examination, took the gold medal for composition, and wrote congratulatory addresses on the Directress’s birthday. Her compositions were notable productions: one of them had been read in the presence of three assembled classes. But more remarkable than anything else was the strange disposition which aroused the curiosity of the entire College. Her fits of mysticism, her fits of deep despondency, the tears she shed in shady nooks, about the College; her passion for flowers, her nausea in the refectory, her convulsive nervous attacks, claimed universal attention. When she passed, tall, lithe, with dreamy, pensive eyes, the other scholars turned and pointed her out to each other, and whispered about her.

The Directress watched her. Cherubina Friscia had special instructions with regard to Lucia Altimare; the professors kept their eye on her. In the parlour, the little girls described her to their mothers in undertones as, “Un tipo strano,” an extraordinary type. She knew it, and cast languid glances round her, and indulged in pretty, pathetic movements of the head. She was the incarnate expression of suffering—slow, continual, persistent suffering, that weighed her down for weeks together, and ended in a heartbreaking crisis. Oh! Caterina had always felt a profound compassion for her, which she had never been able to express, but was none the less as intense as it was sincere. The last year at school had been a tumultuous one, it was a wonder that Caterina had maintained her placid serenity in the midst of all those girls, who were yearning for freedom, panting for life; who already boasted adorers, affianced husbands and lovers; who hated the College, and treated the maestre with impertinence. Her aunt had informed her that Andrea Lieti was to be her husband; she had no anxiety for her own future. But she was very anxious about Lucia, who during this last year had been unusually delicate, who had turned Galimberti’s head, who had made up her mind to be a nun, and attempted to commit suicide. Caterina had saved her life. And last, like a dream, the last night at school, when they had entered the chapel, had knelt down and sworn, before the Madonna, to love each other for ever, reproduced itself in her memory....

Lucia vanished, Andrea entered upon the scene. Andrea had been kind and amiable to Caterina during their courtship. At first, it had been a marriage of convenience; the young man wanted a wife, her fortune suited him, and the orphan girl had to be married. Andrea was a very good match for her; the engaged pair got on capitally together. Andrea’s vigorous, often violent temperament, was well balanced by Caterina’s calm and gentle nature. He neither wrote letters nor offered flowers, nor paid more than two or three visits during the week, while they were engaged, but Caterina had not missed these demonstrations of love. Love she read in Andrea’s honest, merry eyes, when they met hers. She had admired him from the first, for the herculean comeliness of his fine physique, and the grace of a gentlemanlike athlete, with which he wore either morning or evening attire. And immediately she had begun to love him, because she had found him good and honest and just. The strong man, who could be a very child, in whom she divined a feminine delicacy, won her heart. As usual, from timidity and the habit of reserve, her emotion was self-contained. Later on, in her married life, she had always been shy and retiring with her husband, neither expressing her love for him by well-turned phrases or poetic imagery. But perhaps he knew it, for from morning till night she busied herself in the house, and with the food, forestalling his wishes, preparing a cool sitting-room for him in the summer, and a warm bedroom in winter. The viands he preferred his wife carefully dressed, ever placid and smiling. No, she had never found words to tell him the happiness that flooded her heart when he raised her in his strong arms, kissed her throat, and called her “Nini”; but every day her gratitude proved it to him, and her constant thought and care for him. She did not tell him that when he went shooting and left her alone for days, she wearied after him, and longed for his return.... On his return, he was so happy and so pleasantly tired, that she had never spoken of those solitary hours to him. If they separated for eight or ten days, she wrote to him every day, just a line about household matters, or the people who had called.... There was no flourish about her letters; they began with Caro Andrea, and ended with la tua affezionatissima moglie, Caterina. She murmured inwardly against her own timidity, and often felt that she was very stupid. That poor Galimberti had once said to her: “Spaccapietra, you are entirely wanting in imagination.” Then she had taken heart when it occurred to her that Andrea must know how well she loved him; if she said nothing, her every act spoke for her. Luckily Andrea was of a frank, open disposition; he did not like affected grimaces, he did not make melting speeches; his was a well-conditioned love that could exist without his perpetually asking her during the honeymoon, “Do you love me?” Besides, she knew of no other answer than “Yes.” Again Lucia appeared on the scene; Lucia, more beautiful than herself, nervous, suffering, fantastic. Lucia and Andrea stood together in the foreground of her life. Oh! how she could recall her trouble, through their disputes and their reciprocal dislike. Her heart had been torn between love for Andrea, to whom Lucia was odious, and love for Lucia, who held Andrea in contempt. She could neither venture to coerce them, nor could she divide herself in two. She loved them both, each in a different fashion. When they had begun to know each other, and their antipathy had turned to a more cordial sentiment, then there had been thanksgiving in her heart, that the miracle she prayed for with all her might had come to pass. She had not told either of them how much her love for them had grown since they had deigned to be friends; but during the whole year she had tried to prove her gratitude to them. She passed her life between them, for them, ever devising a way to make their life pleasant; tending and caring for them, body and soul, thinking of naught but the two persons in whom her life was centred. Thus had Caterina Lieti lived and had her being, thus it was that her whole existence appeared to her like a series of events, of which she was a spectator on that winter night. Her memory was as clear and definite as the facts it recalled. With calm patience, staring into the darkness the better to discern them, she searched for other memories; if perchance she had overlooked any incident of a different nature, anything singular, exceptional, like all that she had already recalled. Was there nothing, really nothing? Twice she repeated this question to herself, but she found nothing. Her conscience had been calm, equal, unvaried; it had known two constant and active loves—Andrea, Lucia.

Well, now all was clear to her. The science of life had come to her in a flash, sweeping faith and innocence from her heart. Her intellect opened wide to the cruel lesson, applied as by a blow from a hammer. She felt like another woman, one suddenly aged and become more capable, a woman of cool, clear judgment, searching eye, and an implacable conscience. She no longer discovered in herself either indulgence, pity, kindness, nor illusions; in their stead she found the inflexible justice that could weigh men and things.

Now she understood it all. Lucia’s personality encroached on the life around her; Lucia the Protagonist, Lucia the Sovereign. The personality rose, clearly defined against her horizon, as if in harsh relief, without any softening or veiling of the contours, without any optical illusion, cruel in its truth. In vain Caterina closed her dazzled eyes not to see this truth, it filtered through her lids, like the sun. The gigantic figure attracted all the others, fascinated them, bewitched them, seized them, absorbed them, and down below there only remained certain pitiful, shrunken shades, that vaguely struggled and despaired within a grey mist. Lucia reigned, beautiful and cruel, not bending her eyes on those who wrung their hands, nor hearing their groans, her eyes half closed so that she might not see, her ears unheeding; contemplating herself, adoring herself, making an idol of herself.

Surely this was a monstrous creature, a spirit ruined in infancy, an ever-swelling egoism that assumed the fair cruel features of fantasy. At bottom, the heart was cold, arid, and incapable of enthusiasm; its surface was coated with a prodigious imagination that magnified at will every sensation and impression. Within, a total absence of sentiment; without, every form of sentimentalism. Within, indifference to every human being; without, the delirium of noble Utopian theories, fluctuating aspirations round a vague ideal. Within, a harsh spongy pumice-stone, that nothing can soften, that is never moved; without, the sweetness of a voice and the tenderness of words. And artifice, so deeply rooted in the soul as to mock nature, artifice so complete, so perfect that by night, alone with herself, she could persuade herself that she was really unhappy and really in love: artifice that had become one with disposition, temperament, blood and nerves, until she had acquired the profound conviction of her own goodness, her own virtue, and her own excellence.

The vision became more and more distinct, cynically revealing the falseness of its character, and the lie that was incrusted in its every line. To have the fantasy of error, the fantasy of sentiment, the fantasy of love, the fantasy of friendship, the fantasy of sorrow; never anything but blinding, corroding fantasy, put forward in the guise of all that is sweet and wholesome. To weave fancies on God, the Madonna, the affections, on everything; to barter the realities of life for the unreality of a dream; to be master of the fantasy that endows the eye with seductive charm, the voice with voluptuous melody, the smile with fascination that makes the kiss irresistible; to feed one’s nerves on the torments of others, bringing about the enacting of the drama that is artificial for oneself, and terribly earnest for everybody else. That was Lucia.

That smiling and weeping monster, with the moving tears, the enchanting voice, the bewitching flexibility and poetry of diction, that profound and feminine egoism, had absorbed all that surrounded her.... Caterina had pitied and loved her, Galimberti had loved and pitied her, Alberto had loved her, Andrea had loved her. She had stood in their midst and had drawn all the love out of them. At the languor of her countenance, all had languished; in her mystic prostration, all had suffered; her mock passion had burned deep into their flesh. Her egoism had battened on sacrifice and abnegation: yet they who loved her, loved her more and more. Whoever had approached her had been taken. Those whom she took never regained their freedom. Their souls blended with her soul, they thought her thoughts, dreamed her dreams, shuddered with her thrills; their bodies clung to her irrevocably, without hope of deliverance, receiving from her their health and their disease. And for the aggrandisement of this potent egoism, its glory and its triumph, Caterina beheld the misery of those who had surrounded Lucia: the fate of Galimberti, who was dying in a madhouse; the misery of his starving, despairing mother and sister; the lugubrious and dishonoured agony of Alberto, the husband she had abandoned; the dishonour of her father and her name; the ruin of Andrea, who left home, wife, and country to live a life of despair with Lucia; and the last most innocent victim, Caterina herself, bereft by Lucia of her all.

All these wrongs were irreparable. Horrible was the agony of the dying, who cried for Lucia and loved her; horrible the life of the survivors, who hated, cursed, and loved her. Irreparable the past, irreparable the present. Lucia towered above the ruins, enthroned, audacious, triumphant, formidable, casting on the earth the shadow of her inhuman egoism, obscuring the sky with it.

The dawn rose livid and frozen. Caterina was still there, stiffened in her chair, pressing the wedding ring that had been returned to her between her icy fingers. She uttered a cry of terror when, in the grey morning light, she saw the white bed, so smooth and cold; a cry so terrible that it did not sound human. She opened her arms and threw herself down on the spot where Andrea had slept—and wept upon that tomb.

 

V.

“You had better go to bed, Signora,” said Giulietta, pityingly; “you haven’t even undressed.”

“I was not sleepy,” replied Caterina, simply.

“Will you breakfast?”

“No.”

“At least, I may bring you your coffee?”

“Bring me the coffee.”

The tears had ceased to flow, but her eyes burned painfully. She passed into her dressing-room and began to bathe them with cold water. She dipped her whole head into the basin, and felt refreshed. When Giulietta entered with the coffee she found her still bathing her head.

“The maid has come from Casa Sanna. The poor gentleman wandered all night; this morning, saving your presence, he spat blood again. The maid says it is a heartrending sight. Madonna mia, how did this dreadful thing happen?”

Caterina raised her cold, severe eyes, and looked at her. Giulietta, who was intimidated, held her peace.

In the kitchen, she announced to the man-servant, the coachman, and the cook that “the Signora was a woman in a thousand. You will see with what courage she will bear her misfortune.”

“What can she do?” quoth the man-servant. “If Signor Sanna were well, she could have gone to stay with him....”

“Sst!” the cook silenced him. “The Signora is not a woman of that kind. I know her well, for I have seen a great deal of her. She wouldn’t do it.”

“I say there is no chance of the master’s returning,” added the cook later. “My! that Donna Lucia is a clever woman.”

Caterina busied herself in her room, putting away the few things that were lying about, such as her bonnet and shawl; opening and shutting the wardrobes, reviewing the linen shelves, counting their contents, as if she thought of cataloguing them. She stopped to think every now and then, as if she were verifying the numbers. This long and minute examination took some time. All her husband’s things were there, and in one corner stood his gun and cartridge-box. The room was in order. She passed into the morning-room, where on the previous evening she had read that letter. The drawers of her husband’s bureau were open, and the key was in one of them; she inspected them, paper on paper, letter on letter. They were business papers, contracts, donations, leases, bills, letters from friends, letters that she, Caterina, had written to him during his absence: all the Exhibition documents were there, reports and communications. She patiently turned all these pages, and read them all, holding the drawer on her knee, leaning her elbow against the bureau, with her forehead resting on her hand. She was conscious of feeling stunned, of a void in her head and a buzzing in her ears. But that passed, and she soon recovered the lucidity of her mind. When she had finished reading, she tied up all the letters with string, made separate packets of the business papers, and wrote the date and name on each in her round, legible hand. It did not tremble while she wrote, and when she had finished her arduous task she wiped the pen on the pen-wiper and shut down the cover of the inkstand. At the bottom of the big drawer she found another bundle, containing ten pages of stamped paper, forming her marriage contract. She read them all, but replaced them without writing on them. She closed the drawers, and added the key to the bunch that she kept in her pocket.

“It is midday,” said Giulietta. “Will you breakfast, or will you wear yourself to rags?”

She ventured on the brusque, affectionate familiarity that is peculiar to Neapolitan servants when there is trouble in a house.

“Bring me another cup of coffee.”

“At least dip a rusk in it; you mustn’t starve.”

Caterina seated herself in the armchair, waiting for Giulietta to bring her the cup of coffee. She sat without thinking, counting the roses on the carpet, and observing that one turned to the left and the other to the right. She drank her coffee and then went over to her little writing-table, where she kept her own letters. They were already classified, with the order which was characteristic of her. There were letters from her aunt, from Giuditta, from her teachers, and from Andrea. The bulkiest packet was the one labelled “Lucia.” This packet smelled of musk; she untied and with calm attentiveness read those transparent, crossed, and closely written pages, one by one. They took her so long to read that her face began to show signs of fatigue. She locked the writing-table and added the key to the others in her pocket. Lucia’s letters had remained in her lap; she lifted up her dress like an apron, knelt down before the fireplace, and there burned the letters, page by page. The thin paper made a quick, short-lived flame, that left behind it a white evanescent ash, and a more pungent odour of musk, blended with that of burnt sealing-wax. She watched the pyre, still kneeling. When it was consumed, she rose to her feet, mechanically flicking the dust off her dress at the knees. The iron safe stood next to the mantelpiece. Andrea had left it and his bureau unlocked, with the keys in them. She opened it and inspected its contents. Andrea had taken with him a hundred thousand francs in coupons payable to bearer, and in shares of the National Bank. He had left the settlements of his inheritance, Caterina’s marriage contract, and a bundle of other bonds. In one corner were the cases containing Caterina’s jewels. She counted the money, classified the gems, and wrote a list of both on a scrap of paper, which she left in the bureau, took some small change and a ten-franc-note, and locked the safe. A new impulse caused her to spring to her feet again. She passed into an adjoining room, and from thence into the drawing-room, whose windows she threw wide open. The splendid December day broke in with its deep blue sky, its glare of light and its soft air. Caterina had nothing to do in the drawing-room, but in passing she stopped near a window to gracefully arrange the folds of a curtain, moved the Murano glasses from one table to another, and went a few steps away from them to judge of the effect. When she had inspected everything, in the bright light that lit up pearl-grey brocaded hangings into which were woven coral-coloured flowers, the crystals, the statues, the bric-à-brac, she closed the windows, fastened the shutters, and left the drawing-room and the yellow room behind her in darkness.

When she reached the dining-room, Giulietta hastened to meet her, thinking that her mistress would eat something. But Caterina was only looking at the high sideboards, making mental calculations.

“How many glasses are missing from the Baccarat service, Giulietta?”

“One large tumbler and a wineglass.”

“That’s right; and this set of Bohemian glass?”

“Only one; Monzu knocked it down with his elbow.”

“I see. I think there is a fork with a crooked prong.”

“Yes, Signorina.”

“Well, you can go; I know you have some ironing to do to-day.”

Giulietta went away quite comforted. If the Signora had time and inclination to take such minute interest in the house, it was a sign that she had made up her mind to bear her trouble. And if men were such wretches, what was the good of taking it to heart? The master used to be good, but he had quite changed of late. Giulietta, standing before a table heaped up with rough-dried linen, sprinkled it with the water she took up out of a basin in the hollow of her hand. Caterina passing slowly by her, stopped for a moment.

“Be careful of the shirts, Giulietta; last week there were two scorched.”

“That was because I overheated the irons; I will be careful to-day.”

Caterina entered the kitchen. Monzu, who was carrying on an animated conversation with the man-servant, became suddenly silent. She cast a cool glance of inspection round her, the look of the mistress, severe and just.

“Monzu, tell your kitchen-boy to scour the corners well. It is no good cleaning just in the middle of the floor.”

“I have told that boy about it so often, but Signora mia, he’s good for nothing. I’ll give him a scolding when he comes to-day.”

“Are your accounts made up, Monzu?”

“We were to settle on Monday, the day after to-morrow.”

“Let us settle to-day instead.”

He drew out the large account-book in its red leather binding, and placed it on the corner of the table, where his mistress added it up. He had sufficient money in hand for another week.

“Am I to provide for the Signora only?”

“Do not provide for me; I shall not be dining at home. Think of the servants.”

The cook cast a triumphant glance after her, as turning quickly she went away; he knew that the Signora was a woman of spirit, and was not going to give way....

Caterina went back to her room and looked at her watch. It was about three, she had barely time to dress. She chose her black cashmere gown and her fur. Slowly, bestowing on her toilet the utmost care, she changed from head to foot. She had already wound her hair in a great knot, and fastened it with a light tortoiseshell comb. She looked at herself in the glass: she was rather pale, with two red lines under her eyes; but for that she looked much as usual. She put her handkerchief and purse in her pocket, and while she was drawing on her black gloves she called Giulietta.

“Order the carriage,” she said.

She waited in her room for the carriage to be announced. Had she forgotten anything? No, nothing. The house was in order from top to bottom; there was nothing lying about, nothing out of place; everything was locked up and the keys were on the ring. She had not overlooked anything. She felt in her pocket for an object that she needed, and found it there; nothing had been omitted. She waited without impatience; she had plenty of time, having, as usual, dressed early. When Giulietta returned, she rose and let her put her wraps on her. Passing before her she said:

“Giulietta, I am going to Centurano on business.”

“But there is no one at Centurano, except Matteo!”

“He will do. You can keep house here.”

“May I not come?”

“I shall only stay one night at Centurano.”

“Then you will return to-morrow?”

“Of course. Arrivederci, Giulietta.”

“The Madonna be with you, Signorina; never fear, all will be right here.”

She accompanied her as far as the stairs. Caterina went away without looking back, with rhythmic step, and veil drawn down over her eyes.

“The Madonna be with you, and give you a good journey and a speedy return.”

“Good-bye, Giulietta.”

The latter went, however, to look after her mistress from the window of the anteroom that overlooked the courtyard. Caterina entered her carriage without turning to look behind her, and said to the coachman:

“To the station.”

In the Via di Foria she met Giovanna Casacalenda, in a daumont, with her husband. Giovanna sat, upright and beautiful, with the black brim of her Rubens hat shading her proud, voluptuous eyes: the Commendatore Gabrielli wore the look of composure that became his age, his beard correctly trimmed to a fringe, his oblique glance from behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, and the twitch of the lips that denoted a tendency to apoplexy. Husband and wife neither spoke to nor looked at each other. Behind them followed a smart, high equipage, with spider-like wheels, driven by Roberto Gentile, in his showy, cavalry uniform. He drove close to the daumont, while Giovanna assumed unconsciousness, and her husband maintained his grave, assured demeanour. Giovanna smiled and waved her hand to Caterina, the husband raised his hat. It was evident that her friends had not yet heard anything.

There was only a pair of German fellow-travellers in the first-class carriage, occupied by the solitary little lady who was so neatly gloved and wrapped in furs. Whether they were husband and wife, brother and sister, uncle and niece, or father and daughter, it was impossible to decide, so red were they of face, light of hair, indefinite as to age, and alike in all respects. They were laden with shawls, rugs, bags, and Baedekers; they gabbled continually, glancing furtively betimes at the little lady, who, seated in a corner, gazed at the Neapolitan twilight landscape. When they arrived at Caserta, the youthful lady crossed the carriage, and bending in salutation, descended: the two travellers uttered a sigh of relief.

“Raise the hood, and drive to Centurano,” she said to the driver of a fly. Only once, in passing the Palazzo Reale, solemn, silent, and closed, pale with the solitude that had once more fallen upon it, she leant forward to contemplate it, a stretch of park, and far, far away a white line that was the waterfall, through the arch of the great gate. But she drew herself back immediately, and did not look out again through the rest of the drive. The short winter twilight deepened; a fresh breeze blew over the ploughed fields and the bare trees.

The villas of Centurano were nearly all closed, except two or three that were inhabited by their owners all the year round. Little lights shone in the dwellings of the tenantry. Matteo, who was leaning against the portico quietly smoking his pipe, did not at first recognise his mistress until she had paid the driver. After the latter had wished her “una santa notte” (a holy good-night), he turned and drove away.

“O Signorina.... O Signorina....” stammered Matteo, in confusion, hiding his pipe behind his back.

“Good evening, Matteo; is it open up there?”

“I have the key here, Signora.”

“Can one pass a night here?”

“Certainly, Signora; it is always ready—beds made, floors swept.”

Taking an oil-lamp from his room on the ground-floor, he led the way upstairs, jingling his keys as he went.

“And the Signore, will he be here soon?”

“No, the Signore is not coming. I can manage without him.”

“I wanted to show him how fit Fox and Diana are. They are getting so fat, from having nothing to do.”

“I will tell him to-morrow.”

“Shall you stay here to-night, Signorina?”

“Just for one night. I must find some important documents, and I had no one I could send.”

“But about dinner, Signorina? If you don’t mind it, Carmela can toss you up an omelette and a handful of vermicelli with tomato sauce. Of course, it’s no food for you, but for once....”

“I have dined at Naples; I don’t want anything.”

Despite Matteo’s care, the upstairs department looked cold, dreary, and unhabited. She shivered when she entered the drawing-room, where she had passed so much of her country life.

“No; we’ll soon have a fire burning in the grate.”

While he knelt down and blew the lighted wood she drew off her gloves, stretched them, and placed them on the table.

“Beg pardon, Signorina, but how is the Signora Donna Lucia?”

“She’s well.”

“All the better, poor young thing; she was always so sickly. And that husband of hers, who hadn’t a ha’p’orth of health, the Signor Don Alberto, how is he?”

“He’s ill.”

“The severe weather, eh? But when the Lord calls we must obey.”

“True, Matteo; so the house is in order.”

“From top to bottom, Signorina mia. What you have told me to do, that I have done. The Signora Donna Lucia’s room is just as she left it. Would you like to see it?”

“Let’s see it.”

She followed Matteo, who carried a light, into the room. On the threshold she was arrested by the same shivering sensation.

“Every morning I air the room and let in the sun. Carmela sweeps, I dust. Look, look, Signorina, there is no dust. Tell the Signore....”

“Yes, I will tell him. Shut the door, Matteo; we will go to mine.”

They went there. When they got inside her teeth began to chatter.

“Shall I light the fire in here, too, Signorina?”

“Yes, light it, and bring me another lamp.”

She took off her furs and threw them on the bed. The room was full of shadows, which the faint light of the wick of the lamp he held, of the kind in use among the peasantry, did not dispel. Matteo returned with a larger lamp. She took her place on the sofa. Matteo remained standing before her, as if he were ready to make his report.

“Well, what news?” inquired Caterina, seeing that Matteo wished to be questioned.

“It happened a week ago that the wind was very high, and through the forgetfulness of Carmela, who had left the windows open, four panes were broken in the dining-room.”

“Have you had them replaced?”

“Certainly.”

“You will put them on the bill?”

“Don Claudio, the parish priest, called. They want a new roof to the church, and count on the charity of the faithful. He says that he hopes that the Signorina, who gives so much away in alms, won’t forget the church.”

“What did you say?”

“That he must write to you at Naples.”

“That was right. And what else?”

“And then the Mariagrazia’s boy died.”

“That fine child?”

“Gnorsi[3]: Mariagrazia has been at death’s door herself, saving your presence.”

“You will tell Mariagrazia how sorry I am for her. What is she going to do?”

“She is going to service in Naples, poor woman. Did Pepe Guardino go to Naples?”

“Yes, he came.”

“Then he must have given you the message about the millstone that split. Have I told you all? Yes, it seems to me that I have. No; I was forgetting the best. One day that she was dusting, Carmela found a paper, with writing, under the clock. She always meant to put it in an envelope and send it you, Signorina. Then, as I had to go to Naples, I said, 'I will take it to the Signora myself.’ Shall I go and fetch it?”

“Go,” she said.

A slight expression of fatigue came over her face, the heavy lids dropped for want of rest. The warmth from the grate had overcome the sensation of cold. She tried to shake off the torpor. Matteo returned, carrying a sheet of foreign letter-paper, folded into microscopic compass.

“As neither Carmela nor I can read, your fate might have been written here, and we should have been none the wiser.”

She opened the sheet and read it. Its perusal made no visible impression on her. She put it in her pocket.

“It is a list of certain things that I had forgotten. You can go to bed, Matteo.”

“There is nothing I can do for you?”

“Nothing else.”

“Don’t be afraid of anything, Signorina. I shall be here below. The bell rings in my room; if you want anything, ring.”

“I will, if I want anything. But I shall not want anything.”

“What time will you have your coffee in the morning? Carmela knows how to make coffee.”

“At nine. I shall leave by the twelve o’clock train.”

“The gig at the door at eleven, then?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want anything else, Signorina?”

“No.”

“Do you want to write?”

“I have nothing to write to any one.”

“I am going to supper; a leaf or two of salad and a scrap of cheese, and then to bed; but always ready for your Excellency’s service. Perhaps you’d like your bed warmed?”

“No.”

“It would be no trouble to light a bit of fire in the kitchen.”

“No.”

“Good-night, Signorina; sleep well.”

“Good-night, Matteo.”

He went away with his lamp, closing the door behind him. She heard the steps dying away in the distance, and the last door close. At that moment the clock struck half-past eight. She fell back on the sofa, as pale as though she had fainted.

She waited for two hours without rising from the sofa, in a species of stupor that made her limbs ache. She heard the quarters ring while she counted them. The fire in the grate had gradually turned to ashes, leaving a tepid warmth in the room. She turned her back on the moon. When the clock struck twelve she rose to her feet. The two hours’ rest had restored her strength. She went to the window, but could not distinguish anything. Then, without moving the light, she entered the drawing-room, one window of which overlooked the courtyard. There was no light in Matteo’s room; he must have been asleep, for two hours profound silence reigned in the house.

Then she thought the hour had come. She returned to her room, and with infinite precaution passed out of it again through the drawing-room, the billiard-room, the dining-room, and the ante-chamber. She shaded the light with her hand, and as she passed through the room her little black shadow grew, as it was projected on the wall, to giant stature. She passed a landing, descended two steps, and entered the kitchen. She rested the light on a marble table, crossed the kitchen on tiptoe, placed a chair against the panelling, and unhooked from the wall, where it hung amid shining saucepans and moulds, a copper brazier, with brass feet fashioned like cat’s claws. It was heavy, and the weight of it nearly threw her down. She placed it on the ground near the hearth; then, stooping over the arched angle where coals were kept, she noiselessly took up some pieces of coke with the tongs and filled the brazier with them one by one. She blew the coal off her fingers, but when she came to raise the brazier she found that it needed the support of her two hands, and that it was not possible to carry the light at the same time. She put it down, and carried the light back to her room. Then, in the dark, she crept back to the kitchen and took the brazier, setting it down before every door, which she closed behind her. She crossed the entire length of the house, carrying the burden that bore her down. She had seen an old newspaper lying in the drawing-room, picked it up, entered her room, and locked the door. When she saw her hands in the lamplight she perceived that the coke had soiled them, and proceeded to wash and dry them carefully. She crossed to the window with the intention of closing the shutters; the stars shone high and bright in the night, and the fountain in the street sang its fresh, eternal melody. She preferred to leave the shutters open, returned to the fireplace, and burned the letter in which Lucia had craved her pity—and the love-letter to Andrea that Matteo had found. She mixed the ashes, as she had done at Naples, so that no trace was left of anything. She took the fur wrap off the bed and laid it on the sofa. Was there anything else to be done? Yes; the keys. She took them out of her pocket and laid them on the mantelshelf, well in sight. That was all she had to do.

Then she placed a chair under the image of the Madonna by the bedside, and, kneeling on the carpet, prayed as she used to pray in her school-days. Her face was buried in her hands; she prayed without looking at the Madonna. She neither wept nor sobbed, nor even sighed. It did not transpire whether she repeated her usual prayers or only told the Virgin her thoughts. It was a long, calm, mute prayer, unbroken by thrill, start, or shiver. Twice she made the sign of the cross, glanced for an instant at the Madonna, and rose. Then she put the chair back in its place. She tore a strip off the newspaper, and folded it in four. This she placed under the door, thereby effectually shutting out the draught. With a small roll of paper she closed the keyhole, from which she had previously withdrawn the key. She tore another strip and placed it under the window. She stopped up a tiny hole that let in the rain-water. She placed her head against the window fastening to feel if there were any draught: no, the two sides closed so accurately that there was none. She looked round, wondering if the air could get in anywhere. No. She drew the brazier into the middle of the room, and, with a strip of paper lighted at the lamp, set fire to two small pieces of coal. She blew the fire to spread it. Then she carried the light to the bedside and unlooped the white curtains, standing a moment absorbed in thought. She turned to look at the brazier; one coal caught fire from another, and the whole mass was gradually becoming incandescent. She felt an increasing weight in her head. Without hesitation she blew out the light, and, drawing the curtains, lay down on the bed, on the place where she had been accustomed to sleep.

The bright winter sun shed its light on a room flooded with a light haze. Behind the white curtains lay a little dead woman. She was dressed in black, her feet outstretched and close together, her head resting on the pillows. She looked like a child, smaller than in life. Her face was of leaden hue. The hair was unruffled, the mouth open as if in the effort to breathe, the lips violet, the chest slightly elevated, and the rest of the body sunken in the bed. The glazed eyes of the little dead woman were wide open, as if in stupefaction at an incredible spectacle; and round the violet fingers of the leaden-hued hands there was twisted part of a broken rosary of lapis-lazuli.