Читать книгу Because of These Things - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 7

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Francis Moutray did not admit to himself that he was flying from the influence of a girl to whom he had only spoken once. He argued that he was sick of his travels, sick of his travelling companion, weakened with fever, weary of the heat, that his estates needed him, that his neighbours would wonder at his absence, and so reconciled himself to a secret flight from the Palazzo Odaleschi.

He went to the "Corona d'Oro," and ordered a saddlehorse, and hired a servant to go with him as far as the frontier; his portmantles had not yet been brought to the Palazzo, save one that was no larger than he could carry himself.

The long summer Italian evening gave him ample leisure for these preparations, and the Contessa had too many guests and too much on her mind to pay any attention to the doings of so obscure a unit as the Scottish cavalier, and Mr. Middleton was too absorbed in extracting all the enjoyment he prudently could out of the Odaleschi's entertainment to give much heed to his friend whom he had lately found impossibly moody.

At supper Francis saw Giovanna again; the sight of her, powdered and adorned, radiant and admired, shook his senses into fierce protest against his flight. The meal was an agony, he could not eat nor scarcely speak, and the strong Italian wines he drank to give him strength fired him to a deeper delirium of anguish.

He fortified himself by the thought of his completed preparations; by the next dawn he would be out of Bologna, please God, and soon out of this cursed country.

His place was some distance from Giovanna, so that he could not hear her voice, and he was glad; yet he knew he fiercely hated the man seated beside her who was near enough to her to count the pearls on her neck ...to feel her breath on his cheek when she turned to speak to him.

He laughed at himself for this jealousy—some man would have her when he was gone—she might even become what her mother was ...and he wanted her in a convent! He was mad, he told himself with fierce contempt—mad to concern himself with the purity of Giovanna Odaleschi.

And he did not use the term "mad" in any conventional sense, there was no other word but that of "madness" to describe the new emotions, the revolt in his heart, the upset of all the values by which he had guided his life, the desperate resolve of flight—all these strange sensations and weaknesses that tormented him; he told himself that the fever had still hold of him, that the Italian sun and the Italian wines had made his mind cloudy. When he rose to leave the table he was shivering as if indeed the malaria had touched his blood.

He looked across the crowd at Giovanna; the last time, he told himself, that he ever would look at her. She was standing with her back to him, the long lines of her figure showed through the fine white folds of her hoopless dress; her small drooping head was crowned with a wreath of summer violets—little Italian violets odourless and brightly pale.

"Fair mischief," said Francis Moutray in his heart, "this is the last chance thou wilt have to dazzle me!"

He left the company unnoticed (the Contessa was hardly aware of his existence, and Mr. Middleton was absorbed), and went up to the great bed-chamber given him in the left wing of the palace.

To his Northern eyes it seemed large enough for a ballroom, the walls and the ceiling were painted with landscapes and figures, gay-coloured and heathen; the bed was draped with Genoa velvet and covered with a great square of rich hand-worked lace, inside the curtains hung the mosquito-nets. Francis, seeing them, shuddered, thinking of last night and how he had torn the nets in his fierce struggle with the phantom woman; and now she was a phantom no longer, but a creature to whom he had spoken—a creature who had cried out, "What have you done to me?"

His one candle in the stick of red Florentine copper gave a leaping light that did not touch the corners of the vast room nor the high ceiling; there were sconces and a chandelier, but Francis did not light them; he sat in the deep armchair between the bed and the wall and dropped his cheek on to his palm.

He felt bound, burning hot; every nerve in his body tingled to the sense of the alien in the atmosphere; everything was strange—the warm air, the vast room, the heavy furniture. He was acutely aware that all belonged to a world he did not understand but hated, and a world that had no place for him ...the world where Giovanna Odaleschi moved and flourished, where she would continue to bloom and laugh when he had gone.

The thought of her moving about this palace when he had put land and sea between them caused him a physical agony; he groaned, dropped his hand from his damp brow, raised his head. As he did so he gave a great start, for a second he thought another man, a complete stranger, was seated close beside him; then he saw that he was gazing at his own reflection in the great mirror hanging on the opposite wall. He saw himself engulfed in shadows, sunk in the huge chair, the ragged light of the candle on his face; it startled him to notice how strange he looked.

His face was flushed and softened, the dark brown hair loosened and falling over his white cravat, the fine features, usually so austere, expressing wild unhappiness ...he was frightened at his eyes, it seemed to him as if a soul that was not his looked out of them.

He put his right hand to his face, and with the other groped for the candle-light and put out the coarse flame.

He flung himself dressed, ready for his flight, on the bed, shrouded and concealed by the heavy curtains, face downwards on the great pillows where the darkness was like the darkness of oblivion.

But it brought him no peace; his wild thoughts threw the pale bright figure of the Contessa Giovanna on the intense blackness. He saw her, as he had seen the woman of his vision last night, advancing towards him, coming soft-footed to the bedside and holding out her arms.

As soon as the summer dawn showed in a pale line between the velvet curtains, he rose and made his few preparations for departure. For two nights he had scarcely slept, and he felt giddy, but he resolved to rest at the first inn—not here. "I shall not sleep," he said, "until I have left Bologna behind—until my face is set homeward."

He found water in his chamber and bathed his face; he put on his dark hat and mantle over the steel-blue silk he had worn the night before, took up his gloves and his small portmantle, left a note for Mr. Middleton and a guinea for the servant, and stepped out on to the grand staircase.

The palace was absolutely silent from garret to cellar. His spirits rose when he saw that he was not likely to meet any difficulty in making his escape (for escape he named it to himself); he had another guinea ready for the porter at the gates, who would be well enough used, he was sure, to people coming and going at all seasons.

He descended the first flight of stairs, turned down a corridor, came to another staircase, descended that, found himself in a part of the building strange to him, and realized with deep vexation that he did not know his way out.

When he had been conducted to his room he had not noticed where he was being guided; when he had come up after supper he had come by the back staircase from the salon that was not near the entrance.

He resolved, however, to return that way, and from the ground floor find an exit; but in retracing his steps again lost his way in the palace that was vaster far than any house in which he had ever been.

Vexed and humiliated he went from passage to passage, from staircase to staircase, then began to traverse a suite of state-rooms that opened from one to the other and were all painted and splendidly furnished; these rooms gave on to the garden, and Francis thought that from one of them steps must descend from the window to the terrace below.

When he had crossed the fourth room, however, he found himself in a windowless antechamber of white marble, lit only by a tall door of stained glass in a screen of cedar wood, that formed the end of the suite.

The light that struggled through the coloured squares was the uncertain light of dawn before sunrise, and the whole antechamber was dim, silent, and oppressive—a shadowed, chill whiteness in which Francis could hardly see his surroundings. He realized that he had been again foiled in his attempt to leave the palazzo, and was turning on his heel with a kind of impatient despair, when the low but distinct sound of a voice made him turn again and pause.

A woman's voice reciting Latin—a prayer, Francis thought; it came from behind the cedar-wood wall or screen, and Francis now guessed that a chapel or oratory was concealed by the glass doors, for he noticed a faint perfume of the powerful and, to him, infinitely repugnant incense such as the Papists used.

He had now a stronger reason for endeavouring to find his way out of the palace as quickly as possible, for one person at least was awake, and might any moment discover him. But instead of leaving, he lingered, and finally, putting his portmantle down by one dim white wall, he crossed to the stained glass door, shuddering, reluctant, but irresistibly drawn.

He thought that it was Giovanna's voice, that she was there praying to her images, and he thought that he was strong enough to look on her once more and then to go, when he had seen his vision of the torturing night—the tantalizing phantom, that always faded before it touched him, resolved into beautiful reality. He trembled at the thought of meeting her alone, in this remote, silent hour; he waited at the door of the oratory, his hat off and the brim pressed to his lips, for he could not bring himself to enter a Papist place of worship.

The voice faded into a silence that lasted so long that he had almost forced himself into pushing open the door that concealed her and her idol, when he heard a step.

Her step, he knew it already; he leant back against the carved cedar wood, and his heart gave a sick lurch.

"I will look on her once, and go," he said.

The door swung back with a gentle creak and Giovanna Odaleschi stepped into the white antechamber.

She was in white herself, a white gown that hung from throat to ankles, and a white scarf was twisted round her head, showing the pale oval of her face as she stood for a second in the open doorway; the heavy golden light from the chapel was upon her, changing her garments to an amber colour, and the bluish smoke of the incense and the sickly strong perfume of it rushed out into the cool air.

Francis moved a slow step forward, and she, seeing him, paused, and allowed the door to fall into place behind her.

With eager and despairing eyes he stared at her through the veil the obscure light put between them; the peculiarity of her person was heightened by the fantastic effect of her white figure in the white room. She looked abnormally tall, long-limbed, and slender, and her small head had an extraordinary look of delicacy, like the drooping bell of some Eastern flower.

When she saw the young man in his light travelling cloak leaning against the wall with his hat crushed to his breast and his feverish eyes fixed with such a passionate intentness on her, she gave a faint exclamation in her own language, but she showed no surprise, nor did he, nor had he felt any even when he first heard her voice. It seemed to him that from the first this was inevitable, in no way to be avoided. She spoke in an even, natural voice.

"You are up early," she said. "I often come here to pray—my rooms are near. How did you find your way here? These apartments are generally shut since my father died. They were his."

"I found the door open," answered Francis, marking with fury the Papist symbols about her, the dark crucifix hanging at her bosom, the breviary in her hand.

"Why did you come?" asked Giovanna; her manner was grave, even sad, all the coquetry that she had displayed last night had gone.

"I lost my way," he said hoarsely, knowing that he had but too well found it, that this way he had been meant to come by the magic that had bewitched him since he had entered Bologna.

"Lost your way?" she echoed; she came nearer, bringing with her the smell of the incense that was so hateful to him. "Why are you abroad so soon?" she added.

He did not answer; he realized that they were talking in a great intimacy, with no restraint or embarrassment, and it was not his way to be easy, especially with foreigners and women. He watched her as she came slowly across the white floor, even as his vision had come, slowly towards him. In that moment he hated her; she stood for all that was alien and evil, and he hated her the more that her presence troubled him, and she shook his soul to tumults of longing and desire.

She gazed at him in a calm way, then her glance fell on the portmantle beside him.

"Ah, you are going?" she said.

He was usually acutely sensitive to anything approaching the undignified, and avoided ridicule as he avoided dishonour, but now it did not occur to him that there was anything foolish in being caught by the daughter of his hostess in attempting an escape from her house. These outside considerations did not affect him at all, the issue seemed to be only and entirely between him and her.

"Yes, I am going," he answered, and squared his shoulders as if he replied to a challenge.

She did not ask why; she threw out her hands with a foreign gesture and said softly: "You hate us all."

"I hate the Papists," he said bitterly, "and all their mummery and witchcraft."

Giovanna made the sign of the cross hastily.

"Of course you are a heretic," she said.

Francis laughed.

"I am leaving Bologna. I am leaving Italy. Farewell, Signora, for we are not likely to meet again."

"Ah Dio!" she exclaimed with an intense accent; she moved swiftly towards him and held out her two slim hands exactly as his vision had done.

"Signore, how have I offended you? Yesterday you would not speak to me nor look at me, and now you leave me!"

He drew back before her.

"You have been very hospitable," he answered hoarsely, "but I was not made for these soft delights."

"I do not understand," said Giovanna in a humble voice.

Francis felt for her a sudden pang of pity that quenched his hate; how could she understand anything? He flushed and quivered as again the thought came to him that perhaps she might be saved from the damnation surrounding her—that he might save her.

"Why would you not be my cavalier?" asked Giovanna. She slowly unwound the white scarf from her head and neck, and the light was now strong enough to reveal the soft lines and hues of her bared throat and ears, the crushed coronal of curls on her small head.

Francis averted his eyes.

"I am going," he said.

She was puzzled, bewildered, like a hurt child; she lifted her hand and let it fall.

"Your country is very far off?" she asked, and in that sentence he saw the ignorance of her mind laid bare; she was no more than a child, he thought, and like a child might be taught and led ...

"I come from Scotland," he answered her.

"There arc many Scotch gentleman in Rome," said Giovanna.

"They are cursed Jacks and traitors and Papists," returned Francis, "men who would never dare show their faces at home. I am Mr. Moutray of Glenillich."

The light was now strong in the antechamber and they could see each other clearly, could mark how pale and strained the features of either were—her eyes seemed red with weeping, and his were heavy and flushed with blood.

"You have not slept," she said.

"No," he admitted in a rough voice; "and you?"

"I have been praying—"

"To those images!"

She pressed her hands tightly over her heart with a gesture of terror.

"How different we are, you and I!" she cried—"different in everything! I never met before one like you!—nor you a woman like me, I think—"

"There is a gulf between that nothing can bridge," said Francis hoarsely. "Go back to your idolatry—it is not for such as me to strive for the souls of such as you!"

"My soul?" repeated Giovanna. "Are you thinking of my soul? I am good, Signore; I am but newly come from the convent—I mean to be good all my life."

"Poor child!" said Francis.

"Why do you say that? Do you think I am a useless creature? I know that I am—only a woman—but a woman can do something."

"What can she do?" asked Francis.

"Love," said Giovanna simply.

At that one word, at her voice and her look, he trembled all over, and, turning hastily round to conceal his emotion, caught up his portmantle.

"Tell me how I may leave the palace," he asked, "and farewell again, Signora."

She put out her hand, then withdrew it; he moved away from her, his cloak slipped from his shoulder on to the marble floor. She moved as if to pick it up, he with a word of protest stooped and their hands met.

As her fingers touched his she began to sob.

"Are you going?" she asked, "are you going?"

He raised her, repelling her light weight that seemed to lean towards him; her hands clung to his wrist ruffles.

"Are you going?" she repeated for the third time.

He stared down on to her closed eyes.

"What else," he asked, "can I do?"

He pushed her gently away from him, and she suddenly retreated and looked at him, bright eyed and very white.

"Go, then," she said, "doubtless it is better."

"Before God," cried Francis Moutray, "it is better."

But his heart was sick and heavy and his feet faltered as he turned away.

"When do you leave Bologna?" she asked.

He struggled with himself, he knew that servant and horses were waiting for him even now at the inn, and that he had meant by full sunrise to be well on the way to Milan; but he was making compromises, desperate compromises, with himself.

"To-night," he answered.

"Where are you staying?" she asked.

The name of the inn was on his lips, but he made a violent effort over his weakness.

"I shall spend the hours seeing Bologna," he answered with an unsteady laugh.

Giovanna drew her breath sharply.

"Go through these rooms," she said, "and take the second staircase—it will lead you to the gates."

He bent his head, then dared a last look at her; she was faintly smiling, and it fired his blood with ecstasy and terror.