F. Marion Crawford

“ Montalto knows how you have lived and is not unjust nor ungrateful. But for his mother, I think a reconciliation would be possible.’
Maria started at the words, and turned even paler than before.
‘A reconciliation!’ she cried in a low and frightened voice.
‘Yes,’ answered Don Ippolito, who had resumed his seat. ‘He loves you still. It is my firm belief that he has never bestowed a thought on any other woman since he first wished to marry you. I know beyond all doubt that since he left you he has led a life such as few men of the world ever lead. ”

“ When shall I be a bersagliere, mama?’
‘Would you not rather be a sailor?’ asked Giuliana.
‘Oh, no!’ Leone laughed. ‘A sailor? To sit inside an iron box and shoot off guns at other iron boxes? That’s not fighting! But the bersaglieri, they charge the enemy and kill them with their bayonets. And sometimes they are killed themselves. But that doesn’t matter, for they have had the glory!’
‘What glory?’ inquired Maria, watching the small boy’s flashing eyes.
‘They kill the enemies of Italy,’ he answered. ”

“ She felt a little sick as she bent and tried to soothe him, forcing herself to lay kind hands upon his head, and then gently endeavouring to lift him to his feet, while he clasped her and implored her forgiveness in broken words. But she was very brave. He must not guess what she felt, nor feel that the hand that smoothed his hair grew cold from sheer loathing of what it touched.
There are women living who know what that is, and are brave for honour’s sake; but none are braver than Maria was on that day. She would not leave him for a moment, after that, until it was past seven o’clock. ”

“ If Giuliana Parenzo had been one of those nervous, sensitive women who are always thinking about themselves and fancying that their friends are on the point of betraying them, she would have noticed a little change in Maria’s manner after Castiglione’s visit to Rome. It was not that Maria was at all less fond of her than before, or less affectionate, or apparently less glad to see her. It was much more subtle than that. There is a great difference between a hungry man and a man who merely has an appetite. The one must have food, the other is only pleased to have it. ”

“ The door flew back on its hinges into total darkness, and there was a crash of broken glass as one of the mirrors fell from its panel to the marble Venetian pavement.
Maria uttered a little cry of hurt surprise, for what Schmidt had done seemed brutal to her; but she passed him quickly and went on into the dark, and the bits of broken mirror cracked under her tread. She was sure that the room had never been opened since she had left it, and she went straight to one of the windows without running against the furniture; the familiar fastenings had rusted and she could not move them quickly. ”

“ If not, it will end when we are both dead, but not before.’
‘It will never end,’ Maria answered. ‘But it must not be a weight to drag us down, it must be a strength to lift us. It shall be! Say that it shall be!’
‘I will do what I can.’
‘Balduccio,’ she went on earnestly, ‘it has lifted us already. It has made you live a better life than other men, though you do not believe in God. And though it made me a coward for a long time, it has given me strength to be brave at last, now that we have met again, strength to tell you the truth, strength to ask your forgiveness! ”

“ Castiglione knew that. People who love in earnest do not stop to ask if they are flattering themselves when they believe that they are loved in return.
The soldier was not at all analytical, though he had so long led an inward existence which no one suspected. He knew when his thoughts were ignoble, and he despised them then and was disgusted with himself; but during most of the time he merely looked upon the exceptional life he was leading for Maria’s sake as a duty, and therefore as something which must be done, whether he liked it or not. ”

“ I am very deeply conscious of your generosity in all ways, and this house is yours, not mine.’
‘It is ours,’ said Montalto, ‘except for Teresa Crescenzi. I do not wish you to think of it in any other way. And that brings me to the last point. May I inquire whether you have found yourself in any—how shall I say?—in any financial straits in which my fortune can be of service to you?’
You may judge a man of the world’s wisdom by the sort of wife he chooses, but the test of a gentleman is the way he treats his wife. ”

“ Maria would not have admitted that Montalto’s hesitation filled her with contempt. How could she despise the husband who overwhelmed her with undeserved kindness and almost fantastic generosity?
I once knew a most refined and cultivated epicure who sometimes felt an irresistible craving for a piece of coarse dry bread and a raw onion, and would go out secretly and buy those things, and eat them greedily in the privacy of his own dressing-room, after locking the door lest his own servant should catch him. ”

“ She remembered only too vividly the material repulsion for Montalto that had grown upon her quickly in the first months of their life together, and she knew that it would be stronger now than it had been then. Yet she must live through it and hide it. To her it seemed inconceivable that he should wish to come back to her at all. The nobler sort of women can never understand that men they dislike can love them, and to be given in marriage to one of them is a torment and feels like an outrage.
Maria meant to bear it all as well as she could. ”

“ One can forgive a single fault in those one is very fond of, but to forgive another is quite a different matter!’
‘There is no danger,’ Maria answered confidently. ‘But as for forgiving, the Bible says something about seventy times seven!’ she smiled.
‘My dear,’ rejoined Giuliana, with the unconscious humour of a virtue beyond all attack, ‘seventy times seven would be a great many, in practice. Besides, there is danger, I am sure. A woman capable of rising to the moral height you talk of must certainly feel an insurmountable horror of seeing the other man as long as her husband is alive. ”

“ And where the good is strong and rules a man’s secret life, it may lead him far.
But Castiglione was only human, and his jealousy of Montalto was cruel when it woke again. It had been great in old days, but it was ten times more dangerous now, for it had been long asleep in security and it awoke in anger. Maria had not been his own, but throughout that time no other man had called her his, and now Montalto claimed her, under his right to forgive an injury if he chose, and she was going to submit and surrender herself. ”

“ Society is always dull when one has no object in joining in its inane revels—love, ambition, stupid vanity, or a daughter to marry—unless, indeed, one possesses the temperament of a butterfly combined with the intelligence of an oyster. So it had been quite natural that Maria should not have met Castiglione during those days, and she had not chanced to meet him in the street. ”

“ We may see each other once a week, at least once a week! The world cannot blame us for that, after all these years. It will be little enough, once a week! And sometimes, perhaps, we might meet in some gallery, in some quiet museum where only the foreigners go, and we could walk about and talk, and the world will never know it.’
Castiglione smiled at her innocent ignorance of lovers’ tricks, for he was quieter now, and very happy at the thought of seeing her often. It would never have occurred to him to do the foolish thing of which Teresa Crescenzi had suspected him on the previous afternoon. ”

“ Montalto turned to her and spoke very slowly.
‘I shall believe every word you tell me. You never told me an untruth in your life.’
‘No, never. But I thank you for trusting me now. It is not every man that would. After he came back’—she was careful not to mention Castiglione’s name after the first time—‘I saw him again and again; I thought I hated him, Diego, but I loved him still.’
It was hard to say, but perhaps it was harder to hear. Yet her husband had never known how she had deceived herself into believing that she hated Castiglione, and he did not turn upon her as she had expected. ”

“ Maria did not remember that he had ever cried, either, even when he was in arms. Altogether, at the age of eight, Leone di Montalto was a personage with whom it was necessary to reckon.
Maria knew that she loved him almost to the verge of weakness, but she would not have been the woman she was if she had been carried beyond that limit. He was all she had left in life, and so far as lay in her she meant that he should be a Christian gentleman. Nature seemed to have made him without fear; and Maria [26] would have him reach a man’s estate without reproach. ”

“ According to his lights, Maria was sure that he was a good man. Don Ippolito Saracinesca knew human nature [207] well, and could not have been deceived for years in one whom he called his friend. Diego di Montalto was not a monster of cruelty; his love was real, his forgiveness was real, his liking for the boy he might so naturally have detested was real too—it was all awfully real. God in heaven would not have expected her to submit herself body and mind to be tormented by a wicked man for the rest of her life, in vengeance for one fault. ”

“ She saw fifty or sixty men fighting each other, their sticks flourishing, their hats flying in all directions, their arms and legs struggling confusedly. Instantly she thought of Leone. Giuliana had said there were never any disturbances till late in the afternoon, and her maid had smiled at the mere idea that anything of the kind could happen before noon; yet there was fighting going on already, under her window. She strained her eyes to find her boy and his tall tutor in the crowd, and opened the window to see more clearly. ”

“ If anything could strengthen the physical repulsion that made her shrink from her husband’s touch it was the sight of his unmanly tears and the sound of his hysterical sobbing. If anything could make it more difficult to hide her loathing it was the knowledge that she had wronged him and that she owed him gratitude for his free forgiveness. She would much rather have had him turn upon her like a maniac and strike her than be obliged to watch the painful heaving of his thin, bent shoulders, and feel the hot tears that ran down upon her hands. ”

“ The past did not exist; it had never existed at all, because it had all been a horrible mistake, an untruth, and a loathsome sin; a sin confessed now, an untruth forgiven, a mistake explained and condoned. In the future all was love; and yet all was right and truthful and straightforward, as justice itself. Giuliana’s warning was but the well-meant preaching of a good friend who could never understand; the grim old monk’s words were far away. Where was the deadly risk, or the mortal sin? God was strong and good, and would make all good deeds seem easy ”

“ Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Castiglione; but in spite of himself his face betrayed his displeasure at the thought that an ecclesiastic should come between them.
‘I am going to see a priest whom I trust as a man,’ she went on. ‘I am going to Monsignor Saracinesca.’
‘Don Ippolito?’ Castiglione’s brow cleared, and he almost smiled.
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘I know him well. You could not go to a better man.’
‘I am glad to hear you say that. I may not follow his advice, after all, but I am sure he will help me to find myself again.’
‘Perhaps.’ Castiglione spoke thoughtfully, not doubtfully. ”

“ Mario Campodonico is a coward, and he lies like anything.’
‘Never mind Mario. I don’t want you to say that you hate priests.’
‘It’s the truth,’ retorted the terrible child. ‘Shall I say I love them?’
‘No. Listen to me. There are good people and bad people all over the world. So there are good and bad priests, but I think there are many more good ones than bad ones. You would not hate a good priest, would you?’
‘N—no,’ answered Leone, rather doubtfully. ”

“ Maria was almost ill, and could no longer bear her trouble without some help. There was in Rome a good priest of her own class—a man in ten thousand, a man of heart, a man of courage, a man of the highest honour and of the purest life. If she had not always disliked the idea of meeting her confessor in the world, she would have chosen this man for hers long ago. If he had been in Rome in the darkest months of her life she would certainly have gone to him for advice ”

“ It is true that all industrious persons are not truthful, but since Aristotle admits that even a woman or a slave may possibly be good, some good-natured people will perhaps allow that a novelist may sometimes write the truth.
Maria had passed a wretched night. After the two guests had gone Montalto had come to her room and had poured out all his remorse for his mad conduct, entreating her over and over again to forgive him, not breaking down in tears, but overwhelming her with every assurance and proof of his almost insane love. ”

“ Then Leone came in, straight and sturdy and bright-eyed; and he marched across the room to where she sat and threw his arms around her, as he sometimes did. And though he was but a small boy, she felt how strong he was when he squeezed her to him with all his might and kissed her, first on one cheek and then on the other; and in spite of herself she closed her eyes for a second and drew one short breath as she kissed him too. He was very quick to see and notice everything.
‘Did I hurt you, mama?’ he asked almost anxiously.
‘No, dear!’ She smiled. ”

“ Maria turned to him.
‘I would rather not tell you,’ she said gently. ‘It is quite useless for you to go to the police, for the letters will not be published.’
She spoke in a tone of perfect certainty that surprised him.
‘You seem very sure,’ he said.
‘I am quite sure.’
‘And you object to telling me why you are. Very strange!’
‘I don’t “object,” Diego. I only say I would rather not. I ask you not to question me.’
‘My dear,’ answered Montalto, ‘only reflect upon what you are saying. In the first place, you are a woman, and you may be mistaken.’
‘I am not. ”

“ She should have gone to her husband for protection, for his happiness was far less to him then than his honour. Some women would have invented an untruth as a means justified by the end. Maria might have told Montalto that she was suffering a persecution odious to her; she would have saved her husband’s honour and happiness together, and would even have raised her higher in his esteem. But she could not do it. It would be base, treacherous, and faithless. So she waited and prayed against her heart, and hoped against Castiglione’s nature. ”

“ The fact of riding a real animal, that could move its tail, had destroyed in a day all Leone’s bright illusions of toy guns and tin helmets. A boy who could ride was half a man already, and even half a man must be above the suspicion of playing with sham weapons. After his third ride in the Villa, Leone solemnly presented his whole armoury to the children of the porter downstairs, and though his room seemed very bare for a day or two, he found consolation in sitting astride of a chair, conscientiously repeating to himself and practising the instructions he had received from Montalto. ”

“ If Baldassare del Castiglione had been the wretch she had the courage to tell him he was when she bade him leave her for ever, Maria Montalto would not have hesitated an instant. He should have gone where justice sends such men, and she would have asked her husband to let her end her days out of the sight of the world she had known. ”