Old Macomer came back and closed the door behind him.
"What is this?" he asked, at once; but though his voice was hard, it was trembling with the antic.i.p.ation of a great victory. "Has Veronica consented?"
"No one has spoken to her," answered Bosio, before Matilde could speak.
"As though that mattered!" cried the countess, with contempt. "There is time for that!"
Gregorio"s eyelids contracted with an expression of cunning.
"Oh!" he exclaimed thoughtfully, "I understand." He began to walk up and down in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the furniture of the small sitting-room, bending his head between his high shoulders. "I see," he repeated. "I understand. But if Veronica refuses? You have been rash, Matilde."
"Veronica loves him," answered the countess. "And of course you know that he loves her," she added, and her smooth lips smiled. "You need not deny it before us, Bosio. You have loved her ever since she came from the convent--"
"I?" Bosio"s pale face reddened with anger.
"See how he blushes!" laughed Matilde. "As for Veronica, she will talk to no one else. They are made for each other. She will die if she does not marry Bosio soon."
The yellow reflexion danced in her eyes, as she fastened them upon her brother-in-law"s face, and he shuddered, remembering what she had said before the Duca had come.
"If that is the case," said Macomer, "the sooner they are married, the better. Save her life, Bosio! Save her life! Do not let her die of love for you!"
He, who rarely laughed, laughed now, and the sound was horrible in his brother"s ears. Then he suddenly turned away and left the room, still drily chuckling to himself. It was quite unconscious and an effect of his overwrought and long-controlled nerves.
Matilde and Bosio were alone again, and they knew that he would not come back. Bosio sank into his chair again, and pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes, resting his elbows on his knees.
"The infamy of it!" he groaned, in the bitterness of his weak misery.
Matilde stood beside him, and gently stroked his hair where it was streaked with grey. He moved impatiently, as though to shake off her strong hand.
"No," she said, and her voice grew as soft as velvet. "It is to save me--to save us all."
He shook her off, and rose to his feet with spasmodic energy.
"I cannot--I will not--never!" he cried, walking away from her with irregular steps.
"But it will be so much better--for Veronica, too," she said softly, for she knew how to frighten him.
He turned with startled eyes. Then, with the impulse of a man escaping from something which he is not strong enough to face, he reached the door in two quick strides, and went out without looking back.
Matilde watched the door, as it closed, and stood still a few seconds before she left the room. Her eyes wandered to the clock, and she saw that it was nearly midnight.
The look of triumph faded slowly from her face, and the brows contracted in a look which no one could easily have understood, except Bosio himself, perhaps, had he still been there. The smooth lips were drawn in and tightly compressed; and she held her breath, while her right hand strained upon her left with all her might. Then the lips parted with a sort of little snap as she drew breath again; and she turned her head suddenly, and looked behind her, growing a trifle paler, as though she expected to see something startling.
She tried to smile, and roused herself, rang the bell for the servant to put out the lights, and left the room. It was long before she slept that night. In the next room she could hear Gregorio"s slow and regular footsteps, as he walked up and down without ceasing. In his own room upstairs, Bosio Macomer sat staring at the ashes of the burnt-out fire on his hearth. Only Veronica was asleep, dreamless, young, and restful.
CHAPTER III.
Naples, more than any other city of Italy, is full of the violent contrasts which belong to great old cities everywhere, and the absence of which makes new cities dull, be they as well built, as well situated, as civilized and as beautiful as they can be made by art handling nature for the greater glory of modern humanity.
In Naples, there is a fashionable new quarter, swept, watered, and garnished with plants and trees, but many of the great palaces stand in old and narrow streets, rising up, grim and solemn and proud, out of the recklessly vital life of one of the worst populaces in the world. Fifty paces away, again, is a wide thoroughfare, perhaps, raging and roaring with traffic from the port. A hundred yards in another direction, and there is a clean, deserted court, into which the midday sun pours itself as into a reservoir of light,--a court with a quiet church and simple old houses, through the doors of which pale-faced ecclesiastics silently come and go.
Round the next corner leads a dark lane, between hugely high buildings that press the air and keep out the sun and all sky but a thin ribband of blue. And the air is heavy with all vile things, from the ill-washed linen that hangs, slowly drying, from the upper windows, thrust out into the draught with sticks, to the rotting garbage in the gutters below.
The low-arched doors open directly upon the slimy, black pavement; and in the deep shadows within sit strange figures with doughy faces and gla.s.sy eyes, breathing in the stench of the nauseous, steamy air,--working a little, perhaps, at some one of the shadowy, back-street trades of a great city, but poisoned to death from birth by the air they live in, diseased of the diseased, from very childhood, and prolific as disease itself, multiplying to fatten death at the next pestilence.
And then, again, a vast square, gaudy with coloured handbills, noisy with wheels and the everlasting Neapolitan chattering of a thick-lipped, loud, degenerate dialect. There the little one-horse cabs tear hither and thither, drivers lashing their wretched beasts, wheels whirling, arms gesticulating, bad eyes flashing and leering, thick lips chattering everlastingly: and the tram-cars roll along, crowded till the people cling to one another on the steps; and the small boys dodge in and out between the cars and the carriages and the horses and the foot-pa.s.sengers, some screaming out papers for sale, some looking for pockets to pick, some hunting for stumps of cigars in the dust,--dirty, ragged, joyous, foul-mouthed, G.o.d-forsaken little boys; and then through the midst of all, as a black swan swimming stately through muddy waters, comes a splendid, princely equipage, all in mourning, from the black horses to the heavy veil just raised across a young widow"s white face--and so, from contrast to contrast, through the dense city, and down to the teeming port, and out at last to the magic southern sea, where the clean life of the white-sailed ships pa.s.ses silently, and scarce leaves a momentary wake to mar the pure waters of the tideless bay.
But there is life everywhere,--reckless, excessive, and the desire for life as a supreme good, worth living for its own sake--even if it is to be food for the next year"s pestilence--a life that can support itself on anything, and thrive in its own fashion in the flashing sun, and the dust and the dirt, and multiply beyond measure and mysteriously fast.
Only here and there in the swarm something permanent and fossilized stands solid and unchanging, and divides the flight of the myriad ephemeral lives--a monument, a church, a fortress, a palace: or, perhaps, the figure of some man of sterner race, with grave eyes and strong, thin lips, and manly carriage, looms in the crowd, and by its mere presence seems to send all the rest down a step to a lower level of humanity.
Such a man was Taquisara, the Sicilian, of whom the old Duca della Spina had spoken. He had no permanent abode in Naples, but lived in a hotel down by the public gardens, beyond Santa Lucia; and on the day after the Duca had been to see the Countess Macomer, he strolled up as usual, by short cuts and narrow streets, to see his friend Gianluca in the Spina palace, in the upper part of the city. Many people looked at him, as he went by, and some knew him for a Sicilian, by his face, while some took him for a foreigner, and pressed upon him to beg, or made faces and vile gestures at him, as soon as he could not see, after the manner of the lower Neapolitans. But he pa.s.sed calmly on, supremely indifferent, his handsome, manly face turning neither to the right nor the left.
He might have stood for the portrait of a Saracen warrior of the eleventh century, with his high, dark features and keen eyes, his even lips, square jaw, and smooth, tough throat. He had, too, something of the Arabian dignity in his bearing, and he walked with long, well-balanced steps, swiftly, but without haste, as the Arab walks barefooted in the sand, not even suspecting that weariness can ever come upon him; erect, proud, without self-consciousness, elastic; collected and ever ready, in his easy and effortless movement, for sudden and violent action. He was not pale, as dark Italians are, but his skin had the colour and look of fresh light bronze, just chiselled, and able to reflect the sun, while having a light of its own from the strong blood beneath. That was the reason why the Neapolitans who did not chance to have seen Sicilians often, took him for a foreigner and got into his way, holding out their hands to beg, and making ape-like grimaces at him behind his back. But those who knew the type of his race and recognized it, did nothing of that sort. On the contrary, they were careful not to molest him.
The friend whom he sought, high up in the city, in a luxurious, sunlit room overlooking the harbour and the wide bay, was as unlike him as one man could be unlike another--white, fair-haired, delicate, with soft blue eyes and silken lashes, and a pa.s.sive hand that accepted the pressure of Taquisara"s rather than returned it--the pale survival of another once conquering race.
Gianluca was evidently ill and weak, though few physicians could have defined the cause of his weakness. He moved easily enough when he rose to greet his friend, but there was a mortal languor about him, and an evident reluctance to move again when he had resumed his seat in the sun. He was m.u.f.fled in a thickly wadded silk coat of a dark colour. His fair, straight hair was brushed away from his thin, bluish temples, and the golden young beard could not conceal the emaciation of his throat when his head leaned against the back of his easy-chair.
Taquisara sat down and looked at him, lighted a black cigar and looked again, got up, stirred the fire and then went to the window.
"You are worse to-day," he said, looking out. "What has happened?" He turned again, for the answer.
"It is all over," said Gianluca. "My father was there last night. She is betrothed to Bosio Macomer."
His voice sank low, and his head fell forward a little, so that his chin rested upon his folded hands. Taquisara uttered an exclamation of surprise, and bit the end of his cigar.
"She? To marry Bosio Macomer? No--no--I do not believe it."
"Ask my father," said Gianluca, without raising his eyes. "Bosio was there, in the room, when they told my father the news."
"No doubt," said Taquisara, beginning to walk up and down. "No doubt,"
he repeated. "But--" He lit his cigar instead of finishing the sentence, and his eyes were thoughtful.
"But--what?" asked his friend, dejectedly. "If it had not been true, they would not have said it. It is all over."
"Life, you mean? I doubt that. Nothing is over, for nothing is done.
They are not married yet, are they?"
"No, of course not!"
"Then they may never marry."
"Who can prevent it? You? I? My father? It is over, I tell you. There is no hope. I will see her once more, and then I shall die. But I must see her once more. You must help me to see her."
"Of course," answered Taquisara. "But what strange people you are!" he exclaimed, after a moment"s pause. "Who can understand you? You are dying for love of her. That is curious, in the first place. I understand killing for love, but not dying oneself, just by folding one"s hands and looking at the stars and repeating her name. Then, you do nothing. You do not say, "She shall not marry Macomer, because I, I who speak, will prevent it, and get her for myself." No. Because some one has said that she will marry him, you feel sure that she will, and that ends the question. For the word of a man or a woman, all is to be finished. You are all contemplation, no action--all heart, no hands--all love, no anger! You deserve to die for love. I am sorry that I like you."