Читать книгу Because of These Things - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 12

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Francis Moutray wandered all night through the arcaded streets and across the magnificent piazza of Bologna, pursued by the scorpion lashes of remorse and thwarted desire; remorse that he had ever turned aside from his own sphere to dabble with the votaries of the Scarlet Woman, thwarted desire because his passions were roused and unsatisfied. And something softer and finer than passion was also awake for the first time in his heart and yearning for fulfilment—the instinct of tenderness, of devotion, of protection, all the delicate emotions belonging to real love; he wished to serve her, to watch her, to guard her—to see her in his home, to speak to her by her name and confide to her ail the fancies and resolves born of his loneliness and his melancholies; but these feelings he repressed as sternly as his sheer longing to be with her and to forget everything in her arms.

He had no thought of yielding; while she on her knees by her bed was considering desperately how she might give everything up and retain her love, he was fiercely revolving in his mind how he might retain everything in his life as it was and cast away from him even the memory of this violent love; but his struggle was as keen as hers; the thought of her clung to his soul as persistently as perfume clings to a garment, and was no more easily to be shaken off.

He wandered aimlessly; the city seemed to him a place of abomination, full of monstrous temples to the Devil and palaces where sin reigned supreme; lights flashed from high balconies, in side streets men fought and quarrelled, monks and priests slipped to and from the churches, coaches and sedans went up and down from one festa to another, and there was no peace or silence through the hot, moonlit night.

When the dawn came he was standing outside the great church in the piazza and watching the peasants and their mule carts laden with vegetables come in from the country to the market.

He stood huddled against the wall, a wretched figure, drooping together as if in shame, With his riding coat over his grey ball dress and his hat pulled over his eyes.

The sunlight crept over the buildings, changing the dusky shapes to ivory and rose colour and gold that was flushed with red like thick amber. Francis did not heed this sunshine nor the brightening blue above the fairy clouds of crimson that was certain promise of a joyous day; his limbs were weary and weak, his head heavy and hot with fever; he looked with fierce and bitter eyes on the alien city, the alien life—the alien people who were just gaily and thoughtlessly beginning another day of their pleasant, idle lives. Something of the fanatic's zeal possessed him; he longed for an angel with a sword to come and smite these people, for hell to open in the middle of the piazza and show the hungry flames that were waiting for all these wanton souls ...for they would surely all burn some day ...even she ...

Absolute despair overcame him as he thought of this, and again the wild possibility of saving her, body and soul, flashed into his distracted mind.

"But no," he said to himself, "it is but a trick of the Devil—that I may take this woman to myself and so allow her to destroy me."

People were beginning to come to early Mass; a few ladies, attended by pages and cavaliers, and a great number of peasants came up the low shallow steps and, passing under the leathern covering of the door that two beggars lifted, disappeared into the huge, dim interior of the church.

None of them noticed Francis—figures of all degrees of strangeness were too common in this city of licence.

He came forward a little and peeped under the leather the next time it was lifted; he had never been into a Romish church, and he looked with a shuddering distaste and apprehension at the incense-filled dusk through which the candles gleamed on hangings of gold and blue and crimson—and on images crowned and jewelled.

Here Giovanna must often worship her false gods, clasping the crucifix he had seen hanging to her fair bosom; here, when he had left Bologna, she would come to sob out to a leering priest her confession that she had loved a heretic—and he would be in Scotland trying to forget her—and neither would forget the other—ever—

Francis lifted his tired face to the gorgeous day.

"Something is wrong," he said in his heart. "She is not wicked, why should she be damned? And I, what have I done that I should be tempted ...almost beyond my strength?" He turned wearily away from the great church and wandered aimlessly about the city in the endeavour to silence the anguish of his soul by fatigue of body.

When it was near seven he turned past the two leaning towers that rise high above the houses and returned to the inn, meaning to order horses and to leave at once for the Milan road.

He hoped wearily that Mr. Middleton, with his curiosity, his laughter and his mocking, would not be there; he flushed with anger against the man, recalling how he had inveigled him to the Palazzo Rossi when he must have been aware that Giovanna would be present.

Mr. Middleton was not in the little painted parlour overlooking the dusty yard and dusty vine when Francis entered, but a lady in a gorgeous gown rose from the rush-bottomed chair by the window and smilingly gave him "good morning."

It was Vittoria Odaleschi.

Francis stood, like a rustic, utterly at a disadvantage; he had entirely forgotten to wonder at the Contessa's desire, as reported by Mr. Middleton, for him to leave Bologna, and he was absolutely unprepared for her to take any step in the matter, nor, though he knew her reputation for eccentricity, could he have believed that she would come to his inn and wait for him in this fashion.

He took off his hat with an effort at dignity; he was cruelly conscious of his dishevelled clothes and of the freshness of her attire.

"I could not have looked for this, Madam," he stammered.

"No," she replied in her excellent English; "if you had expected me I should not have been kept waiting half an hour."

She resumed her seat, with her back to the light. She wore a lace mob cap in the English fashion, her velvet gown came to her throat in lawn ruffles; she was painted and powdered, but she looked beautiful, and remote from any thought of age. The charm of her smiling, composed presence was a potent one, and Francis, looking at her, thought her a wonderful woman—Satan's handmaiden—but wonderful; not like Giovanna though, he decided eagerly.

"I thought you scarcely knew me," he said.

"I marked you," she replied, "at the festa last night."

"You came here to see me?" he asked with a mechanical desire to speak, and yet to gain time.

The Odaleschi smiled.

"You love the Contessa Giovanna," she said directly.

Francis stood grasping the edge of the table and staring at the lady, the blood stormed his face, and he could find no reply to this sudden and extraordinary statement.

Vittoria allowed her contempt to show in her sparkling brown eyes and in the curl of her sensitive, painted mouth.

"Has your passion," she asked, "deprived you of your reason?"

Francis drew himself erect; her scorn cleared and steadied his senses.

"Who told you my feelings for your daughter?" he demanded, and disdain equal to her own fired his weary eyes.

The Contessa, eagerly watching him from behind her languid white lids, saw in his look and speech a flash of a quality she had not hitherto expected; she saw he was neither coward nor fool.

"Giovanna told me," she answered, still smiling.

Again he was utterly at a loss. All his ideas of modesty, reserve, and delicacy in a woman were outraged by the thought of Giovanna telling her mother of their tremulous love-affair; scarcely even in his own soul had he said yet definitely, "I love her "—and she had already hurried to climax and catastrophe. Still there was a suggestion in this of swift feeling, of sincere abandon, and the reflection that she too struggled with passion stirred anew his pulses ...He shivered and pulled at the lace on his right cuff.

"She told you, Madam, perhaps of her own feelings?" he asked, probing into this miracle of a woman with fear and a swooning sense of delight.

The Contessa was too out of touch with his world to read him; she thought his remark was a challenge, and as such replied.

"You know better than I, Signore, that she imagines herself in love," she said, shrugging her shoulders, "notwithstanding that she could choose her gallants from those of her own country and station—a woman's caprice, Signore."

The oblique insult of words, the direct insult of tone, were not lost on Francis; rage and loathing of the woman, and all she stood for, surged up in his heart.

"I have not asked you for your daughter's hand," he said in a deliberate tone.

She seized the black fan from her side with a gesture as if she drew a dagger.

"There is no question of marriage," she replied with infinite haughtiness, "between you "—she pointed the fan at him still as if it were a weapon—"and an Odaleschi."

"Then why," asked Francis with a bitter gleam in the intent dark eyes he never moved from her face, "did you trouble to come here to see me, Contessa?"

"To suggest to you that you leave Bologna," said Vittoria, rising.

"Are you afraid of me?" he demanded.

She amended the sentence.

"Afraid for you, perhaps, Signore. I have plans for my daughter which are not to be interfered with by you—no, I shall not endure interference."

It was monstrous, intolerable, to Francis that this woman should imagine that he—Moutray of Glenillich—should deign to unite himself with her house of tarnished splendour and notorious wantonness.

"There is everything between me and your daughter," he said—"country, custom, and God. If you knew me better you would not suspect me of taking a wife from—the Palazzo Odaleschi!"

She understood him and smiled.

"My father was an English Duke," she replied, "and you are a little Scots lord; that a girl's whim should bring me to this discussion with you—!"

He interrupted her, speaking with stiff, pale lips.

"I do not wed with a foreign Papist nurtured in the wickedness of this city," he said,—"therefore why should we longer speak of this?"

"If you will not wed her," replied Vittoria, regarding him with narrowed eyes, "why do you make love to her—first in the dawn and then in the moonlight—and each time leave her weeping? Is your aim amusement?"

"You insult her!" cried Francis, torn between his hatred of the mother and his desire to protect and spare the daughter.

"We have a different morality," said the Contessa coldly. "I fear we do not understand each other. Giovanna is not destined for a convent, but a good husband, and she shall not spoil her chances by such incidents as last night, do you understand me? There are enough ladies in this city who will very willingly listen to your flatteries, but my daughter is not for your diversion. When she is married she chooses her own gallants; while she is with me—"

"You guard the bait that is to lure riches into your trap!" flung out Francis. His whole being was burnt dry with pity for Giovanna; he saw her now as an ignorant child, a mere pawn, in the hands of this monstrous woman.

"Put it as you please," smiled the Contessa. "You may say, if you will, that I wish to see my child great and happy in the fashion—such as she deserves—but it is no matter. Leave Bologna to-day."

It had been his own resolve to go, but now she threatened him—now he thought of Giovanna dominated by her mother, hating, perhaps, her life, but helpless—now he had this new bewildering vision of her overwhelmed by passion, every instinct fiercely urged him to stay; indeed, to go seemed a coward's act, unpardonable—yet reason whispered that it were the wisest thing for her as well as for him.

He sank down on the rush-bottomed chair by the table and turned his haggard face away from Vittoria, while his right hand fumbled mechanically with the basket hilt of his sword.

In the thin authoritative profile, in the sweep of frowning brow, in the full compressed lips, in the dilation of the sensitive nostril, Vittoria's antagonistic gaze discerned a strength of purpose and of passion equal to her own, however alien and different in expression.

She had no pity for him as she stood observing him; fair-looking and composed in her fashionable silks, she was considering by what means she best could, if he proved obdurate, have him removed from Bologna to disappear in a Papal prison.

During the pause of silence that was upon them both, the door opened impetuously, and she who was the centre of the whirling thoughts of both stepped into the room—Giovanna, in white, with knots of rose colour and a frivolous straw hat shading a piteous, pallid face.

"A rendezvous!" said the Contessa with a soft bitterness, "and an indiscreet one!"

Francis sprang to his feet; Giovanna answered her mother.

"No—I came to say farewell to him—to see if he had gone," she said confusedly; "and you? Why are you here?"

"To give a warning to your reluctant lover."

"My reluctant lover?"

"This man," said Vittoria in Italian, pointing at him scornfully,—"disdains to match with you, and values you only as a passing diversion."

Francis understood the words; his whole body became taut with ardour and energy.

"Giovanna," he said, "will you come with me? Will you leave all this and come with me?"

He spoke on a fierce impulse that overwhelmed all the careful cautions of reason—the impulse of love renewed at the sight of her, at the thought of her coming to him—the impulse of hate against this woman who wanted to take her away from him and bring her up a wanton.

Instantly she crossed the room, leant over the back of the chair that stood before him, and flung her arms round his neck.

"I have been waiting for you to ask me!" she said passionately, and with great simplicity and sweetness.

He put up his hot hands and grasped her wrists as they rested on his shoulders.

"Will you come with me? You must be sincere with me now," he said hoarsely, hardly able to command himself in this moment of her surrender.

"Do you hear him?" asked Vittoria, who surveyed them with a smile of scorn and sadness; "do you understand him? He wants you to leave everything for him—your God—your country—your people—"

Giovanna looked with questioning bewilderment at Francis—the significance of the little English word "leave" touched her brain.

"'Leave?'" she repeated; "but you will stay in Bologna?"

In the intensity of his disappointment he put her away from him with a force that was almost violence.

"I asked you to come with me, to leave this cursed life, your idols and your wantonness—to put it all behind you for ever."

Giovanna shrank away from him; her face was tragic in the shade of the gay rose-pink hat; she put her hand to her heart and looked at her mother. Vittoria stood immovable.

"Are you going with him?" she demanded.

The girl's fingers fumbled for the crucifix on her heart, her eyes grew round with horror, and her lips fell apart. She glanced again from her mother, who stood for all she knew, valued, and feared; to her lover—who stood for the contrasted wild, dangerous sweetness of love.

"Will you not stay here?" she asked in a shaken voice. Bologna was her universe—contained all that she had hitherto loved.

"I leave the city within the hour," said Francis, "either with you or alone."

Vittoria moved; the stiff rustle of her silk flounces sounded harshly.

"Go with him," she said, "mount behind him like a trooper's wench—you, an Odaleschi! Let him caress you till he is tired, then leave you in the first ditch he passes. If you have chosen that way—go, I say!"

Francis turned his back on her.

"Giovanna, you may trust me," he said. "I think you know it. The first Protestant priest we meet shall marry us. I am a Moutray; in my own country there do not lack those who would speak for me."

"Go with him," smiled Vittoria.

"No," panted Giovanna, "no—Maria Vergine, this is awful!"

She staggered to the impassive, dominant figure of her mother, and put up feeble hands.

"God would curse me!" she whispered in terrified tones. "I dare not— "

Vittoria still stood immovable, regarding Francis with the clear, mocking gaze that had quelled so many.

Pride and anger sealed his lips. He could not plead with the girl under that contemptuous glance; besides, he recognized in Giovanna the strength that was in himself. He would not leave his people and his God for her, and when it came to the actual moment she clung, too, to those things which were hers by birth and breeding.

There was a dreadful silence, then he raised his face, over which a look of indifference, akin to a look of death, had settled.

"Farewell," he said; then to the Contessa, "You may believe that I shall leave Bologna."

She also was very pale beneath the rouge that showed unnaturally bright on her cheeks.

"Yes, I believe you now," she answered; she put her arm round her daughter's shoulders, "God will help you to forget this, Vanna," she added seriously.

The girl moaned like one half-insensible with pain, and allowed Vittoria to draw her towards the door.

When he saw her being actually taken away from him, an awful despair took possession of Francis; he sprang forward, passionately addressing Giovanna:

"Dear, my dearest—say one word to me—do not go like this—"

She looked at him, but she did not resist Vittoria's gentle but insistent strength drawing her away.

"I will pray for you," she muttered.

"I also, Signore," said Vittoria with a wise smile, and the door closed on them.

It seemed to Francis that it had closed on all that made life desirable for him; he stood rigid, bewildered, by his loss. In two days she had grown as needful as the air he breathed; she loved him, she had stood before him in sweet submission, and now she was gone—to a life that in his eyes spelt damnation.

He stared at the window, but he did not see the shrivelled oleanders, the dusty clusters of the vine, the fierce violet of the sky—all was black and bitter as the final waters of oblivion to a lost soul.

He was still standing so when the Italian valet entered to know what time he wished the horses.

"As soon as they can be saddled," said Francis. He went upstairs to change into his riding clothes.