Читать книгу Because of These Things - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 10

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There was no fête that night at the Palazzo Odaleschi, as Mr. Middleton well knew. Vittoria and her daughter Emilia were engaged for the Palazzo Rossi, and when Harry Middleton returned to the Contessa, he contrived by a skilful whisper to the languid Giovanna that she should also be of the company.

"Francis Moutray is coming," he said, and it was enough, more than enough—a spark to tinder. She was like a creature transfigured, she glowed at him with such honest gratitude, she seemed so frankly to include him in her love-affair, that he was touched to a sense of shame by her simplicity, her sincerity, and her unconsciousness.

When he saw her descend into the coach resplendent with the Odaleschi arms on the gilt leather panels, he had a sense that he had inflicted an injury on three people—the Contessa, Francis, and Giovanna.

But as he drove to the inn to fetch Francis, the mood of laughter returned.

"Those two, Gods!" he cried to himself, and he tried to picture Giovanna in the gloomy mansion at Glenillich, sewing with the maids, preserving fruit and baking pies, or sitting in the old church listening to a pastor, in Geneva gown and bands, preaching the gloomy theology of Calvin. "But it is impossible," he assured himself, "it can never be—neither love nor passion ever worked such a miracle as this."

So it came that Francis and Giovanna met at the fête in the Palazzo Rossi—he unconsciously, she prepared.

Francis, turning from the dances in the great painted saloon, came face to face with her, a late arrival, in the arch of the window, with a crystal lamp illuminating her ardent beauty, and behind her the garden and the moonlight—as behind her there had been the garden and the sunlight when he had met her in her mother's palace.

A black lace shawl was folded over her fair hair and hung down over the gold silk of her hoop; round her head was a coronet of cornelian stones, and on her breast hung a large cameo of a pale pink colour set in a gold filigree. He noticed this at once, and all the details of the gold stitching and embroidery on the billowings of her skirt.

He paused a couple of feet away from her, and anger showed in his face where she was eagerly looking for welcome.

"You look as if you had seen an enemy," she said, and shrank a little.

"So you may prove," he faltered, and put his palm across his eyes, for at the unexpected sight of her his strength was dwarfed, his resolutions shaken.

"Why?" asked Giovanna, without coquetry or lightness, but with a kind of tragic question and apprehension. "Are you afraid of me? Did you not know I was coming?"

"No," he replied, in a tone of such absolute firmness that she was at once convinced and shocked; the tragic look deepened in her eyes, her lips parted, she gave a short sigh.

"I should be on the Milan road," he said.

"I do not understand," she murmured; a certain gravity had fallen over the gay sweetness of her manner, a certain dignity touched the usual lightness of her demeanour. Francis instantly noticed this hint of depth in her, and it increased her attraction for him a thousandfold—opened up a thousand possibilities, a thousand tempting hopes—but he crushed and repelled them savagely.

"I am not a man for dalliance," he said in a low voice, "in—this world—I am out of place—in everything, these people, you—are different—therefore let me go."

He looked at her as if she held him actually bound and he pleaded for his release, and a certain gleam of triumph passed over her face and was gone in another sigh.

"Well," she said, "go."

She swung the pink cameo on her breast and gazed out into the gardens. He came a step nearer; he would go, of course, he told himself, but first he must see her face again—she must turn once more and look at him.

Behind him were the steps of the dancers sounding to the languid melody; before him she stood, and beyond her the garden, silver beneath the prodigal beauty of the moon, and in the air was a heavy sweet scent—he knew it now—the perfume of the white flowers that he had cast from his window ...His heart began to beat unsteadily ..."Because of these things"—yet she must look at him again.

"Donna Giovanna," he said, "you know that I go, not from discourtesy—but because I must?"

She looked at him now, and he came nearer.

"Who am I to keep you?" she returned. "I suppose we shall not meet again. Walk with me in the garden a while."

He was not a churl to refuse, nor a stoic to endure the anguish of leaving her now and facing the long struggle with himself alone in the inn bed-chamber. He was strong enough to snatch these foolish hours, to use them and fling them aside, and forget—so he said to himself as he obeyed her little gestures and followed her through the open window into the warm Italian night—warm, still, light, and perfumed.

She came beside him silently; she lifted her skirt from her feet—she wore mules of dark velvet with big rosettes on them—as she walked the high heels tapped on the stone paths. She was without words because she could not understand; he was silent because he understood too much; both were burdened with thoughts and uneasy with misgivings.

They walked on till the palace was far behind them and they could no longer hear the dance music; the moon shone behind the tall cypress trees, cutting a disc of fierce white silver in the dense blackness of the foliage. They came to a pond surrounded by formal walks and hedges of roses; facing the water was a stone bench beneath a stone figure, both gleaming now like molten silver.

It was so utterly still that he could hear her low breath, and the whisper of her gold silk skirt seemed a great thing.

She seated herself on the bench, and he, without a word, beside her, and together they looked at the water black in the shadow of the cypress save for the moon mirrored in the centre of the darkness. The smooth air and the perfume seemed to permeate his blood, the struggle in his soul was lulled, his uneasiness was soothed. He looked up at the great expanse of deep luminous blue, and as he looked it seemed to him as if his feet were lifted from the earth; he thought how seldom men looked full up at the heavens, and, somehow, his constant fear of God, his constant thought of God, slipped from him and seemed to be absorbed into and lost in the great sweep of midnight sky.

He turned to glance at Giovanna; her face was towards him, and the moonlight showed a smile on her lips like a smile of triumph, but faint and soft and sweet.

Again a feeling of apprehension came over him—he had seen such a smile on the face of the painted Madonna above his bed the first night he had slept in Bologna. He turned to go, but again glancing up at the deep violet sky starred with fire, the sensation of peace and enervation returned to his heart.

He rose, but did not move away, and she sat with her hands folded in her lap, and the great stillness seemed to close about them like a mantle being swept tighter round their souls.

Giovanna rose also, and the black lace slipped from her hair which looked misty dull under the circle of the cornelian coronet.

"I have lost my shoe," she said, and gave a little exclamation and stooped over the shadows round the seat.

Her shoes were made like the clogs Francis had seen in his own country, and slipped easily from the feet; they were dark too, and the missing one was not easily found in the shadows, though both searched. She sat down again at length and held out her silk-clad foot, and laughed.

"How can I return—so?" she laughed.

"I will find it," said Francis. He was on one knee before her, the end of the ruffles of his cravat touched the ruffles of her petticoat; he looked up, and she was gazing down at him with an air of solicitude, leaning so far forward that the lace and lawn on her bosom were pressed against her knee. He forgot the shoe, he continued to look at her through the veil of the moonlight; he was calm and at peace. It seemed to him that she belonged to him, was even part of him, and that this was an inevitable fact which no person could alter and no circumstance overcloud. She had the same sweet certainty; she smiled, and he lowered his head against the hand she drooped against her knee.

She looked at the bent dark head in the attitude of surrender with something of pity and compassion mingled with the great tenderness that made her features radiate; then she stooped lower, and drew him gently and steadily to her so that his face rested on her bosom. He came without resistance, almost weakly, as if the strength had been all smitten out of him; but she, as she folded him to her heart, dilated with a dominant triumph as she gazed down on the arrogance, pride, and reluctance, now so still, in her embrace.

She bent to kiss his hair, and he moved then and got to his feet and drew her to hers, and she stood in one stockinged foot and one shoe.

"You love me?" he said.

"Yes," she said.

He put his arm round her waist and she hers round his neck.

"Do you love me?" he asked with a quick fierceness.

"Yes," said Giovanna.

"Have you ever loved anyone before?"

"No."

"You are not playing with me?"

"I do not play with these things."

"Kiss me," said Francis; he now was the one alert and triumphant, while she stood weakly as if only his support kept her from falling.

She kept her face hidden on the velvet lapels of his coat.

"Call me Giovanna now," she said. She spoke as if they had both entered into a new world where everything was different, and he understood with a thrill, that shook to his heart, the chance there was for him as well as for her. For a while both were silent, the new and marvellous sensation of the near presence of the other being overwhelming; they could hear each other's hearts, and she felt his breath passing her ear and on her neck.

"Kiss me," he repeated.

She raised her head. He freed one hand to take her under the chin and draw her face near to his; his lips pressed hers so fiercely that she moaned, but the sound was stifled in her throat; he seemed to her to be drawing the soul from her body. Her senses reeled, her hands fell nerveless from his neck, and still his lips remained on hers; she felt her mouth crushed beneath his mouth and her chin pressed by his chin; her eyes closed, and she lost all sense of time and place—her throat heaved with her pent breath. He released her at last and led her to the seat, and she fell across it. She pulled a handkerchief from the bosom of her gown and pressed it to her smarting lips; when she took it away she saw, by the silver light, that it was stained by tiny drops of blood; she thrust it back into her gown. It pleased her that he had hurt her in the passion of his kiss; it pleased her to hear him breathing heavily like a spent runner and gazing at her with eyes that held no thought for anything but her ...

"You will not go now?" she asked hoarsely.

At these words the outer world rushed in on Francis and overwhelmed him. He made no answer; he had kissed her too recently; the moist warmth of her lips still lingered on his own; he could not reason.

"Oh Dio!" said Giovanna, "this is love—love!"

"Have pity on me," broke from Francis. "I must go—"

She stared at him incredulously.

He turned to her with anguish in his face, in his voice in his gesture.

"Would you give up your God for me?" he asked.

She shrank away in horror and clasped her hands together in an attitude of prayer, as if she begged her outraged saints to spare the speaker.

"One cannot give up God," she whispered.

"You will not!" cried Francis; "you cling to your creed. And I cannot surrender mine."

Giovanna understood; she had dimly pre-visioned this barrier—a terrible one, she knew—he was a heretic. Her mother's words came back to her, stinging her through the delight of her new joy; she too hated foreigners and heretics—but he did not seem to her to be either; he was now a thing apart, not to be judged by ordinary standards.

"Leave this now," she implored.

"I cannot," he replied passionately; "it is between us and always will be—"

"Oh—" said Giovanna. "Oh," she added helplessly—"but we love each other."

He looked at her with a bitter desperation.

"God is against it," he said. "Say adieu to me while we can speak it—we must not meet again—"

She rose.

"Your love is weak after all," she answered.

"No—no—"

"You leave me for fear of hell," she continued.

Francis trembled.

"I will not deny God for you," he returned, "and how may I take you without? You must be united to me in honour—"

"Either honour or dishonour I am yours," she broke in.

"Honour only can we consider because I love you," he said simply, "and such a marriage as ours would be cursed by heaven and earth."

She had not been taught to regard marriage as the sole end of love, but she had only one desire—to give all her life to the man before her, and, as he spoke, the idea of marriage assumed a new proportion in her eyes; instead of a convenience or a stepping-stone, she saw it as an indissoluble bond between two who loved, keeping them apart and sacred from the world. His words too showed her the quality of his passion; this was no episode of a summer night—if he loved her at all he would love her as his wife.

She felt an extraordinary gratitude and an extraordinary humility; she stretched out her hands imploringly towards him and began to weep silently.

"My dearest!" whispered Francis, "my sweet, dear girl!" he took the two pleading little hands and impressed gentle kisses on them. "I shall never marry ...always you ...in my heart. Do not weep—your tears sear my soul—we should never have met ..."

She crouched away on the marble seat.

"Is it impossible?" she asked from a dry throat. "Is—our love so monstrous and unnatural that we must kill it thus?" she added in a tone that was sharp as if with physical agony.

"You torture me," said Francis; "help me instead to be strong—Giovanna."

She rose at that, instantly.

"I will try," she answered. "You think you must go away? It seems—wrong. Why should we have such—pain?"

She put both her hands to her left side as if she had been stabbed there and was concealing the wound.

"I am right," he said violently and fiercely. "You know I am right."

She was thinking of his kiss; she was bewildered; she wished to help him, to understand. The magnitude of the obstacles dividing them she did comprehend, but she needed time to think—to consider. Meanwhile he was going. She drew herself erect; there seemed a certain chill in the air that cooled her passion; she thought in one flash of her God, her country, her family—

"It is better that you should go," she said, adding in her own language, "There is the nunnery for me!"

He did not dare to touch her, no, nor to look long at her, he did not even offer to take her back to the Palazzo.

He turned alone through the silent garden; he knew nothing by which to measure the anguish of that solitude, the misery of walking away from her ..."Farewell," he kept saying in his heart—"farewell, farewell."