Taquisara

"Say the words. I command you! I have the right--I am free!"

The priest"s face was white now. He stretched out his arms, lifting his eyes upwards.

A worse change was in Gianluca"s face before Don Teodoro had spoken the words he had to say. Taquisara saw it. Both he and Veronica bent over the motionless head. Still Veronica held the cold hand in hers.

Taquisara knew that in another instant the priest would speak. Gently, with womanly tenderness, though his soul was on the wheel of anguish, he took Veronica"s right hand and loosed it, and Gianluca"s fell cold and motionless from her fingers.

"He is gone," he whispered, close to her ear, and he held her right hand firmly, in his horror at the thought that she might be wedded to a man already dead.

Veronica made a slight effort of instinct, to loose his hold and to take the hand that had fallen from hers. But it was only instinctive and hardly conscious at all. Her eyes were on Gianluca"s face, and the blackness of a vast grief already darkened her soul.

There was but an instant. The tall old priest, with eyes lifted heavenwards, neither saw nor heard.

"Ego conjungo vos--" He said all the words, and then, high in air, he made the great sign of the cross. "Benedictas vos omnipotens Deus--" and he spoke all the benediction.

He closed his eyes a moment in instant prayer. When he opened them and looked down, his face turned whiter still. On each side, before him, knelt the living, Veronica and Taquisara, their hands clasped and wedded, as they had been when he had spoken the high sacramental words, and between them, white, motionless, the halo of his fair hair about his marble brow, lay Gianluca della Spina, like an angel dead on earth.

"Merciful Lord! What have I done!" cried the priest.

At the sound of his voice Taquisara turned quickly. But Veronica did not hear. The Sicilian saw where Don Teodoro"s starting eyes were fixed, and he understood, and his own blood shrieked in his ears, for he was married to Veronica Serra. Married--half married, wholly married, married truly or falsely, by the sudden leap of violent chance--but a marriage it was, of some sort. Both he and the priest knew that, and that it must be a voice of more authority than Don Teodoro"s which could say that it was no marriage. For the Church"s forms of office, that are necessary, are few and very simple, but they mean much, and what is done by them is not easily undone. But Veronica neither saw nor heard.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"I think--I a.s.sure you that n.o.body knows anything--but I think that Don Gianluca will improve rapidly after this crisis."

That was the opinion of the great doctor, when he had seen the patient on the afternoon of that memorable day. For Veronica, Taquisara, and Don Teodoro had all three been mistaken when they had thought that Gianluca was dead. As the doctor said, there had been a crisis, an inward convulsion of the nerves, a fainting which had been almost a catalepsy, and, several hours later, a return to consciousness with a greatly increased chance of life, though with extreme momentary exhaustion.

It was Taquisara who went to find the doctor, leaving Veronica on her knees, while Don Teodoro stood motionless at the foot of the couch, his hands gripping each other till his nails cut the flesh, his grotesque face invested for the moment with an almost sublime horror of what he had unwittingly done.

And then had come the physician"s systematic and painful search for life, his doubts, his hopes, his suspicions, his increasing hope again, his certainty at last that all was not over--and then the necessity for instantly carrying out his orders, the getting of all things needed for the sick man s.n.a.t.c.hed out of death, and all the confusion that rises when the whole being of a great household must exert its utmost strength in one direction, to save one life.

Amidst it all, too, the helpless father and mother ran about tearful, incoherent, wringing their hands, believing no one and yet believing the impossible, praying, crying, talking, hindering everything in their supreme parents" right to be in the way and nearest to what they loved best--hysterical with joy, both of them, at the end, when the physician said that Gianluca was to live, and was not dead as they had thought him, and wildly, pathetically, insanely grateful to Veronica.

"I saw that he was dying," she told them simply, when he was out of danger. "I sent for Don Teodoro, and we were married."

They fell upon her neck, the old man and the prematurely old woman, kissing her, pressing her in their arms, crying over her, not knowing what they did.

When he saw that she was telling them, Taquisara went away from them to his own room and stayed there some time. And Don Teodoro also went home, and for the second time on that day he bolted his battered door and made sure that he was alone. But he did not sit at his table playing with his spectacles, as in the morning. He knelt in a corner, against one of his rough bookcases, bowed to the ground as though a mountain had come upon him unawares, and now and then he beat his forehead against the parchment bindings of his favourite folio Muratori, as certain wild beasts crouch on their knees and with a swinging of slow despair strike their heads against the bars of their cage many times in succession.

For Taquisara and Don Teodoro knew, each knowing also that the other knew, that what Veronica believed to have been done that day had not been really done, save in the intention, and that what had really been done must by Church law and right be undone before she could be truly married to Gianluca della Spina. That is to say, if the thing done had any value whatsoever before G.o.d and man.

It is easy to say that in other lands and under other practices of faith the four persons concerned in what had happened might have honestly told themselves that such a marriage was no marriage at all. An unbelieving Italian, and there are many in the cities, though few in the country, would have laughed and said that the important point was the legal union p.r.o.nounced by the munic.i.p.al authority, and that since there had been none here, there was nothing to undo. Yet if by any similar chance--more difficult to imagine, of course, but conceivable for argument"s sake--the same mistake had occurred in a legal marriage by a syndic, that same unbelieving Italian would have felt in regard to it precisely what Taquisara and Don Teodoro felt, namely, that the union was well nigh indissoluble. For Italy, as a nation and a whole, while imitating other nations in many respects, has again and again refused to listen to any suggestion embodying a law of divorce. To all Italians, high, low, atheists, bigots, monarchists, republicans,--whatever they may be,--marriage is an absolutely indissoluble bond. The most that they will allow, and have always allowed, is that in such cases as Veronica"s, it is in the power of the highest authority, ecclesiastic or legal, according to their persuasion, to annul a marriage altogether and declare that it never took place at all, on the ground that the requirements of the Church or of the law have not been properly fulfilled.

In society, of the two forms, which are both looked upon as necessary together, the blessing of the Church is considered by far the more indispensable, though most people acknowledge the importance and validity of the other, as well as its wisdom; and society, as an aristocratic body, as a rule refuses absolutely to receive within its doors an Italian couple who have not been married by a priest. Among all society"s many traditions and prejudices, there is none more ancient, more deep-rooted, or more rigorous to-day than this one.

Under these circ.u.mstances it is not surprising that Taquisara, strong, loyal, and simple as he was, should honestly believe with all his heart that he had been married to Veronica; nor that Don Teodoro himself should look upon what he had unwittingly done as being something which he alone had no power to undo, if, in all conscience and truth, it had been done at all.

The worst point of all, in the opinion of those two men, was that Veronica sincerely believed herself married to Gianluca, as in her intention she really was, while Gianluca himself, having p.r.o.nounced the solemn "I will" with his last conscious breath and being told on coming to himself that the sacramental words had been spoken, had no reason at all for doubting that he was actually her husband. The position was as full of difficulties as could be imagined. To let Gianluca know the truth would have been almost certain to kill him. To speak of it to Veronica for the present seemed almost equally impracticable, though it was quite impossible to take any steps towards the annulling of the marriage without her open concurrence and help, as well as Taquisara"s.

Meanwhile, not only she and Gianluca, but the Duca and d.u.c.h.essa, too, regarded the matter as altogether settled and accomplished. At any moment Veronica had it in her power to send for the syndic of Muro and cause the necessary formalities of the munic.i.p.al marriage to be properly executed. She would then be legally married to Gianluca, while in the eyes of the Church she was already Taquisara"s wife, by the fact of form though not by the intention of any one.

It did not occur either to Taquisara or to the priest that they could keep their secret forever and allow matters to proceed to such a conclusion. Don Teodoro was far too earnest a believer and a churchman at heart to allow what he should consider a great sin to be committed without any attempt to hinder it, and with the Sicilian the point of honour was concerned, as well as a deeply rooted adherence to social tradition and to the forms and ceremonies of religion in which he had been brought up. They were neither of them men to have so repudiated all they held the most sacred in faith and honour, even if either of them had held the secret alone without the other"s knowledge.

But each knew that the other knew the truth, and on that first day, each departed to his own room lest he should be suddenly brought face to face again with the other.

It was his unwillingness to allow a thing to be done which, as a man and a gentleman, he thought both dishonourable and wrong, that prevented Taquisara from leaving Muro at once. For himself, his first impulse was to escape from the situation, from the horrible temptation he endured when he was with Veronica, from the barest possibility of any unfaithfulness to his friend. At that time the Italians were fighting in Ma.s.sowah and as an officer of the reserve he could have volunteered for active service at a moment"s notice--with a terribly good prospect of never coming back alive.

But even his death would hardly have mended matters, in his scrupulous opinion, unless Veronica should of her own accord and without any especial reason insist upon being again married in church, contrary to the Church"s own rule, but on the reasonable ground that Gianluca had been unconscious during a part of the ceremony. If Taquisara were dead, such a marriage would be valid, of course; but the prospect of his death gave him no a.s.surance that she would ever do such a thing at all; and, moreover, in spite of his pa.s.sionate temperament, he was far too sensible a man to think deliberately of sacrificing his life for such reasons. Like many another man suddenly placed in a hard position as an obstacle in the path of a loved woman, he asked himself the question, whether, in honour and against religion, he should not commit suicide.

But the answer was a foregone conclusion, and it was plainly his duty to stand by his friend and by Veronica, alive and able to do the best he could for them both. In immediate present circ.u.mstances his presence was of the greatest importance to Gianluca, who depended on him almost entirely for help, in his sensitive dislike of being touched and moved by servants.

And the man who was thus thrust into a situation from which it seemed hard to escape at all, loved Veronica Serra with all his heart, with all his soul, with the broad, deep, simple pa.s.sion of simpler times, having in him much of that old plainness of character which made men take without question the things they wanted, and hold them by main strength and stoutness of heart against all comers while they lived.

There had been a time when he had been able to speak coldly to her, and to seem to dislike her. That was past, and his devotion was even in his hands and visible, if he did with them the smallest act for her service.

She saw it, and was glad, for he pleased her more and more in the days that followed the great day, while Gianluca lay pale and happy and gaining a little strength, and she, as his wife, sat through many hours of the day by his bedside, reading to him, and telling him much about her life, but not often allowing him to speak much, lest he should lose ground and be in danger again. It seemed to her at that time that Taquisara was learning to be another friend to her, less in most ways than Gianluca had been, but having much that Gianluca had not--the strength, the decision, the toughness. She did not miss those things in Gianluca. She would not have had him otherwise than he was, but she saw them all, and felt their influence, and admired them in the other man.

She felt, too, that she had often treated him with unnecessary and almost unmannerly coldness, and repenting of it, she meant, in pure innocence of maiden purpose, to make it up to him now, by being more kind. Indeed, she could not understand why she had ever been so hard to him in former days, excepting when he had spoken so rudely to her at Bianca"s house; and since she had seen and learned to value his loyal affection for Gianluca, she had not only forgiven him for what he had said, but had found that, on the whole, he had been right to say it.

As for her marriage with Gianluca, it seemed to her to have changed nothing, beyond the great change it had wrought in him for the better.

She talked with him as before. She felt, as before, that he was her dearest and best friend. To please him, she made plans with him for their future, though sometimes the sharp fear for his life ran through her heart like a needle of ice. They could live half the year in Naples and the other six months in Muro, but sometimes, when he should be quite well, they would travel and see the world together. It was pleasant to think that they had the right to be always together, now, for it would have seemed terrible even to Veronica to go back to the old days of letter-writing. To her, their marriage had been the final cementing of the most beautiful friendship in the world. She was glad that she had given her life for him, since, after all, the giving of it now changed it so little. It was clear, she thought, that she was made for friendship and not for love; and since she was so made, she had done the best in marrying her best friend.

One day, when Gianluca was asleep, she had gone alone to her little rose garden up by the dungeon tower. The autumn was beginning in the mountains; there were few roses left, and the northerly breeze blew up to her out of the vast depth at her feet. Alone there, she thought of all these things and of how she was intended by her nature for this friendship of hers. Seasoning about it with herself, she took an imaginary case. Suppose, she thought, that she had begun to be Taquisara"s friend, instead of Gianluca"s, on that day in Bianca"s garden. Her mind worked quickly. She pictured to herself the long correspondence, the intimacy of thought, the meeting and the destruction of the dividing barrier, the daily, hourly growing friendship, and then--the marriage, the touch of hands, the first kiss.

The scarlet blood leapt up like fire to her face. She started and looked round, half dreading lest some one might be there to see. But she was quite alone, and she wondered at herself. It must be shame, she thought, at the mere idea of marrying another man when she was Gianluca"s wife. At all events, she said in her heart, she would not think of such things again. It was probably a sin, and she would remember to speak of it, at her next confession. Don Teodoro would tell her what he thought. For in lonely Muro, she had no other confessor, nor desired any. Her faults, great and small, were such as she would have acknowledged and discussed with the good man, in her own drawing-room as willingly as in church--as, indeed, she often did. But not wishing to be alone with herself any longer on that day, she came down from the tower and went to her room, where she spent an hour with Elettra in examining the state of her very much reduced wardrobe.

"Your Excellency is in rags," observed the woman. "You cannot appear in Naples as a bride with any of the things you have. In the first place, you have scarcely anything that is not black or white. But also, though some of these clothes had a cheerful youth, their old age is very sad."

Veronica laughed at Elettra"s way of expressing herself, and they went over all the wardrobe together that afternoon.

As Taquisara saw how those around him seemed to have recovered from the terrible emotions through which they had pa.s.sed, and how the life in the castle quickly subsided again to its monotonous level and ran on in its old channel, the temptation to solve all difficulties by letting matters alone presented itself to him with considerable force. Ten days had gone by, and he had not once found himself alone with Don Teodoro. When they met, they avoided each other"s eyes, and each remained separately face to face with the same trouble, while each had a trouble of his own with which the other had nothing to do.

There was little or no change now from what had formerly been the daily round. Again, as before, Taquisara carried his friend daily from his own room to the large one in which Veronica and the Sicilian again fenced almost every day. Sometimes, when it was fine and warm, Gianluca was taken out upon the balcony for a couple of hours. He no longer suffered in being moved; but his lower limbs were now completely paralyzed. He hardly thought of the fact, in his constant and increasing happiness. It was only when he saw the fencing that he sometimes looked down sadly at his useless legs and thin hands, for fencing was the only exercise for which he had ever cared. He had none of that sanguine vitality which would have made such an existence intolerable to Taquisara, or even to Veronica. With her beside him, or if he could not have her, with books or conversation, he was not only contented, but happy. It must be remembered, too, that he was not aware that his condition was hopeless and that he might live a total cripple for many years to come. If he had known that, he might have been less gay; not knowing it, married to the woman he loved and looking forward to complete recovery, life was little short of a paradise within sight of a heaven.

Veronica never tired of taking care of him, and one might have supposed that she was satisfied with the prospect of nursing him all her life, or all his. But she herself by no means believed the doctor"s predictions.

She had been too sure that he was to die, and too much surprised and delighted by his recovery, to accept on mere faith of any man"s verdict the a.s.surance that he was never to walk again. There was the reaction, too, after the strong emotion and the heart-rending anxiety, the relaxation of mind and nerve, and the willingness to be happy again after so much strain and stress.

As Gianluca"s general health improved, the Duca and d.u.c.h.essa began to speak of an early departure for their own place near Avellino. Their eldest son"s illness had placed him first with them, but they had several other children, all of whom had been under the care of a sister of the d.u.c.h.essa during the latter"s stay at Muro. The motherly woman was beginning to be anxious about them, and the old gentleman had a fair-haired little daughter of eleven summers, whom he especially loved and longed to see.

They thought that before long Gianluca might be moved. It was growing colder, day by day, in the first chill of early autumn, and they believed that a little warmth would do him good. Veronica should come and pay them a visit, and Taquisara, too.

As for the marriage, they meant that it should be an open secret for a little while longer. The servants knew of it, and would tell other servants of course, and the d.u.c.h.essa had written of it to her sister, on hearing which fact Veronica had written to Bianca Corleone, telling her exactly what had happened, lest Bianca should hear of it from some one else. It was long before she had an answer to this letter, and when it came Bianca"s writing was full of her own desperate sadness, though there were words of congratulation for Veronica, such as the occasion seemed to require. Bianca wrote from a remote corner of Sicily, where she was living almost alone on her husband"s princ.i.p.al estate. There had been trouble. Corleone had suddenly taken it into his head to come home for a few weeks. Then Bianca"s brother, Gianforte Campodonico, had appeared and had taken a violent dislike to Pietro Ghisleri, so that Bianca feared a quarrel between them. Before anything had happened, she had induced Ghisleri to go to Switzerland, and she herself had gone to Sicily, whither her brother had accompanied her. But he had been obliged to leave her soon afterwards, and she suspected that he had followed Ghisleri to the north in order to pick a quarrel with him. She was very unhappy, and there was much more about herself in her letter than about Veronica"s marriage.

The old couple grew daily more anxious to leave for Avellino. They proposed that as soon as Gianluca could safely travel, the whole party should go there together. Before returning to Naples for the winter, the legal formalities of the munic.i.p.al wedding could be fulfilled, and the marriage should then be formally announced. Gianluca and Veronica would come and spend the winter in the Della Spina palace, wherein, as in all Italian patriarchal establishments, there was a s.p.a.cious apartment for the establishment of the eldest son whenever he should marry.

Once, when this was discussed before them, Taquisara met Don Teodoro"s eyes, and the two men looked steadily at each other for several seconds.

But even after that they avoided a meeting. It did not seem absolutely necessary yet, and each knew that the other had not yet found the solution of the difficulty. To every one"s surprise, Gianluca opposed the plan altogether. They all seemed to have taken it for granted that he need not be consulted, and Veronica, in her complete self-sacrifice, would have been willing to do whatever pleased the rest. But Gianluca quietly refused to go to Avellino at all. So long as his wife would give him hospitality, he said with a proud smile, he would stay in Muro.