Taquisara

"Or of you, perhaps," she said, more kindly, and it was the first word of appreciation she had ever given him. "We are neither of us cowards.

That is why I am willing to tell you what I think of myself. It is almost what you think of me--that I have done a thousand things which might make Don Gianluca, and his father and mother, too, believe that if he recovers I mean to marry him. But you think me a heartless woman. I am not. There are things which you neither know, nor could understand if you knew them. I will ask you only one question. Is there any imaginable reason why I should wish to hurt him?"

"None that I can guess," answered Taquisara, looking into her eyes.

"Then you must understand what I have done. Out of too much friendship I have made a great mistake. What you can never understand, I suppose, is, that I can feel for him what you do--just that, and no more--or more of that, perhaps, and nothing else. A woman can be a man"s friend, as well as a man can. I never played with him--as you call it--though you have enough right to say it. I told him from the first that I could never marry him. I told him so again on the day when we had first fenced, and you went to walk after the rain."

"That is why he has been worse, since then. It began that very evening."

"Yes. I know it. Do you think I do not reproach myself for having gone so far that I had to speak? Indeed, indeed, I do, more than you know.

But what am I to do? He cannot go away, ill as he is. I cannot leave you all here. And then, I would not leave him, if I could. He is more to me than I can ever tell you--I would give my right hand for his life. Would you have me marry him, knowing that I can never love him? Is that what you would have me do?"

Taquisara was silent for a moment, looking earnestly at her, and he bit his lip a little.

"Yes," he said. "That is what you should do. It is all you can do, to try and save his life."

The moment he had spoken he turned from her and began to walk up and down again.

"Do you know what you are asking?" Veronica followed him with her eyes.

"It is a sacrifice," he said, pursuing his walk and not glancing at her.

"It is to give your life for his. I know it. But you can hardly give him more than he has given you--or you have taken from him. Yes--I know what the doctors say, that it is a disease which is known and understood. No doubt it is. But diseases of that sort may remain latent for a lifetime, unless something determines them. Until they have gone too far, they may be overcome. If he had not lived for weeks in a state of nervous tension that would almost make a strong man ill, he would not be in such a condition now. If he had never known you, he might have been as well as he ever was--he might have been well for twenty or thirty years, before it attacked him. It is not all your fault, but a part of it is. Take your friendship, and your mistakes, together--your wish that he may live, and your responsibility if he dies--two motives are better than one, when the one is not strong enough. You have two, and good ones.

Marry him, Donna Veronica--marry him and save his life, if you can, and your own remorse if he dies. Let me go to him now--he is not asleep--let me tell him that you have changed your mind, or made up your mind--that you love him, after all--"

"Please do not go on," said Veronica, drawing back a little, till she leaned against the mantelpiece.

He had placed himself in front of her before he had finished speaking.

He was excited, vehement, and not eloquent--like a man driven to bay by a crowd to argue a question in which he had no conviction, but which concerns his life. He stopped speaking when she interrupted him, and he seemed to be waiting for her to say more. She had drawn herself up a little proudly, with her head high.

"You hurt me," she said, breaking the silence, and hardly knowing why she said the words.

"Do you think it costs me nothing?" he asked, in a low voice.

His eyes burned strangely in the lamp-light. But he turned away quickly, to resume his walk. She could not help asking him a question.

"Why should it cost you anything? You are speaking for your friend--but I--"

She did not finish the sentence, for it seemed to her selfish to throw her right to happiness into the scale against Gianluca"s life. But she could not understand him.

"It is hard to do, for all that," he answered indistinctly. "I have said too much," he continued, stopping before her. "I meant to do the best I could. Perhaps I should have said nothing. This is no time to stop at trifles. The man is dying, and I have a right to say that I believe you might save his life--and a right to beg you to try. You have the right to refuse, to question, to doubt--all rights that are a woman"s in such a case. As for me--there is no question of me in all this. Since I must be here for him, since I have displeased you from the first, since you do not like me, look upon me as a necessary evil, do not consider my existence, think of me as a man who loves your best friend and is giving all he has--to save him."

"All you have," repeated Veronica, thoughtfully, but without a question.

"Yes!" he exclaimed.

The single word was spoken with a sort of pa.s.sion, as though it meant much to him. She liked him better now than when he walked up and down, giving her incoherent advice. Whatever he might mean, it was something which had power to move him.

"You are mistaken," she said. "I like you very much."

"You--Princess!" His surprise was genuine. "You have not made me think so," he added in a tone of wonder.

"Nor have you made me think that you liked me," she answered.

"Gianluca thought I did not," said Taquisara, slowly, as though speaking to himself.

Veronica smiled.

"When I first knew you, when we talked together at the villa on that morning before Christmas, I liked you better than him," she said.

He started sharply.

"Please--" He checked himself almost before the one word had escaped his lips.

"Please--what?" she asked, naturally enough.

"Nothing."

His face quickened as he walked again, and she watched him curiously.

"As friends of one friend, we must be friends," she said, after a pause.

"We have spoken frankly to-night, both of us. It is much better. With his life between us we can say things, perhaps, which neither of us would have said before. You are doing all you can. You ask me to do more than I can--I think. As for his life--let us not talk of what may happen. I think of it enough, as it is."

She turned as she spoke the last words, for she did not trust her face.

But he heard the true note of sorrow in her tone.

"Is it possible that you do not love him a little?" he asked, in a low voice.

"It is true," she answered mechanically, as though hearing him in a dream. "I could never love him."

Then, all at once she straightened herself and left the chimneypiece.

"We must not talk of these things any more," she said. "Good night. We understand each other, do we not?"

She held out her hand to him, which she very rarely did. He took it quietly.

"I understand you--yes," he said.

She looked at him a moment longer, smiled faintly, and then left the room. After she was gone, he sat down in the chair she had occupied, crossed one knee over the other, folded his hands, and stared at the carpet. He sat there for a long time, motionless, as though absorbed in the study of a difficult problem. But his expression did not change, and he did not speak aloud to himself as some men do when they are alone and in great trouble, as he was then. He was not a man of theatrical instincts, nor, indeed, of any great imagination. Least of all was he given to anything like self-examination, or arguing with his conscience.

He was exceedingly simple in nature. He either loved or hated, either respected or was indifferent or despised altogether, with no half-measures nor compromises.

Just then he was merely revolving the situation in his mind, and trying to see some way of escaping from it, without abandoning his friend. But no way occurred to him which did not look cowardly, and when he rose from his seat, he had made up his mind to face his troubles as well as he could, since he could not avoid them.

He went to Gianluca"s room before he went to bed. A small light burned behind a shade in a corner, and at first he could barely see the white face on the white pillow. The sick man lay sound asleep, breathing almost inaudibly, one light hand lying upon the coverlet, the other hidden. Gradually, as Taquisara looked, his eyes became accustomed to the light, and he gazed earnestly at his sleeping friend. He saw the dark rings come out beneath the drooping lids, and the paleness of the parted lips, and the terrible emaciation of the thin hand.

But there was life still, and hope. Hope that the man might still live and stand among men, hope that he might yet marry Veronica Serra--and be happy. In the half-darkness, Taquisara set his teeth, biting hard, as though he would have bitten through iron, lest a sharp breath should escape him and disturb the sleeper"s rest.

That frail thing, that ghost, that airy remnant of a man, lay there, alive in name, between Taquisara and the mere right to think of his own happiness; and next to the reality of the shadow of his dream, he loved best on earth this shadow of reality that would not die. For he loved Veronica with all his heart, and after her, Gianluca della Spina. Above both stood honour.

He knew that he was loyal and true as he stood there, and that there was not in the inmost inward heart of him a mean, double-faced wish that his friend might die there, peacefully, and leave to the winning of the strong what the weak had wooed in vain. He had spoken the truth when he had said that for his friend"s life he was giving all he had, when he did his best to persuade Veronica that she must marry the dying man, in the bare hope of saving him while there was yet time. He had done his best, though it was no wonder that there was no conviction, but only vehemence, in his tone. It had been different on that day, now long ago, when he had first spoken for Gianluca in the garden. He had not loved her then. She had been no more to him than any other woman. But even on that day, when he had left her, he had half guessed that he might love her if opportunity gave possibility the right of way. He had guessed it, and even to guess it was to fear it, for Gianluca"s sake. He was not quixotic. Had he been first, death or life, he would not have given another room at her side, had that or that man been twenty times his friend or his brother. Even if it had been a little otherwise, if Gianluca had not confided in him from the beginning, and had stood out as any other suitor for her hand, Taquisara, as he loved her now, would hardly have drawn back because his friend had been before him. But Gianluca had come to him, told him all; asked his advice, taken his help--all that, when Veronica had still been nothing to Taquisara--less than nothing, in a way, because she was such a great heiress, and he would have hesitated before asking for her hand, being but a poor Sicilian gentleman of good repute, few acres, and old blood.