F. Marion Crawford

“ No doubt Corbario had married for money, since he had nothing in particular and his wife had millions, but if ever a man had married for money and then behaved like an angel, that man was Folco Corbario and no other. He was everything to his wife, and all things to his stepson—husband, father, man of business, tutor, companion, and nurse; for when either his wife or Marcello was ill, he rarely left the sick-room, and no one could smooth a pillow as he could, or hold a glass so coaxingly to the feverish lips, or read aloud so untiringly in such a gentle and soothing voice. ”

“ But an instant later a flush of anger rose to Aurora's forehead, and the dark woman turned pale, and her brows were suddenly level and stern. They hated each other, as the one hung there held by the other's hands, and the black eyes gazed savagely into the angry blue ones. Aurora was not frightened any longer; she was angry because she was in Regina's power. The strong woman could save her if she would, and Aurora would despise herself ever afterwards for having been saved by her. Or the strong woman could let her fall, and she would probably be maimed for life if she were not killed outright. ”

“ Ercole said. "His name is Marcello Consalvi. They say that he lay ill for a long time at an inn on this road—"
"For the love of heaven, don't talk to me about Marcello Consalvi!" cried Paoluccio, suddenly in a fury. "Blood of a dog! If you had not the face of an honest man I should think you were another of those newspaper men in disguise, pigs and animals that they are and sons of evil mothers, and ill befall their wicked dead, and their little dead ones, and those that shall be born to them!"
Paoluccio's eyes were bloodshot and he spat furiously, half across the road. ”

“ Marcello laughed and filled the glasses.
"I am letting you kill yourself to amuse me," Regina said. "I am a very, very wicked woman. But you shall not do it any more. We will go away at once."
"I am perfectly well," Marcello answered, holding out a glass to her; but she would not take it.
"I do not want wine to-night," she said. "It is good when one has a light heart, but my heart is as heavy as a stone. What am I good for? Kill me. It will be better. Then you will live." ”

“ Corbario now and then looked from one to the other, as if to assure himself that they were quite comfortable, and his still face wore an unchanging look of contented calm as his eyes turned again to the sunlit sweep of the low Campagna. Marcello looked steadily away from Aurora, happily and yet almost painfully aware that her arm could not help pressing against his. The horses' hoofs beat rhythmically on the hard high road, with the steady, cheerful energy which would tell a blind man that a team is well fed, fresh from rest, and altogether fit for a long day's work. ”

“ Perhaps such a being as Marcello would be an impossibility anywhere but in Italy. Modern life tears privacy to tatters, and privacy is the veil of the temple of home, within which every extreme of human development is possible, good and bad. Take privacy away and all the strangely compound fractions of humanity are soon reduced to a common denomination. In Italy life has more privacy than anywhere else west of Asia. The Englishman is fond of calling his home his castle, but it is a thoroughfare, a market-place, a club, a hotel, a glass house, compared with that of an average Italian. ”

“ She would have screamed out the truth just as certainly if Corbario had already left Rome, or if he were in some hotel for the night—or even if she had really known nothing. In the last case Regina would have believed her, and would have let her go. There is no mistaking the accent of mortal terror, whether one has ever heard it or not.
Corbario was somewhere in the house, Marcello's enemy, and the man she herself had long hated. A wild longing came over her to have him in her power, bound hand and foot like Settimia, and then to torment him at her pleasure until he died. ”

“ This is the family of Regina. It is a race of assassins and wicked women. If I were your wife, that would be the family of your wife. If God sent children, that would be the blood they would have of me, to mix with that of your mother, who is one of the saints in heaven. This is the truth. If you think I am telling you one thing for another, let us go to the inn on the Frascati road. Paoluccio and Nanna know. They would laugh if they could see me dressed like a real signora, and they would say, 'This girl is her mother's daughter!' And so I am. ”

“ Regina stood perfectly motionless, her face as unchanging as marble.
Aurora rose to her feet, and leaned against the rock. She had suddenly felt herself at a disadvantage in remaining seated on the ground while her adversary was standing. It was the instinct of the animal that expects to be attacked. When two people who hate each other or love each other very much meet without warning in a very lonely place, the fierce old passions of the stone age may take hold of them and sway them, even nowadays. ”

“ It is not long since he used to bring his own solid silver spoon and fork with him, and he will generally rinse a glass out two or three times before he will drink out of it.
The kitchen of the inn was cool compared with the road outside, and though it smelt chiefly of the stale smoke of green wood, this was pervaded and tempered by odours of fern, fresh cabbages, goats'-milk cheese, and sour red wine. The brown earthen pot simmered over one of the holes in the hearth, emitting little clouds of steam; but boiling beans have no particular smell, as everybody knows. ”

“ The picture of the small brigantine, fighting for existence, had graved itself in her memory. With its crew so near death, it had been the only thing within sight that suggested human life after Marcello was gone. The utter impossibility of a man's swimming out through the raging sea that broke upon the bar was nothing compared with Aurora's inward conviction that the little vessel had borne away the secret of his disappearance. And she had not been wrecked: Aurora knew that, for a wreck anywhere on the Roman shore would have been spoken of at once. ”

“ She was stimulated, too, by the wish to appear well before Marcello, lest he should ever be ashamed of her. That was all. She never had the least illusion about herself, nor any hope of raising herself to his social level. She was far too much the real peasant girl for that, the descendant of thirty or more generations of serfs, the offspring of men and women who had felt that they belonged body and soul to the feudal lord of the land on which they were born, and had never been disturbed by tempting dreams of liberty, equality, fraternity, and the violent destruction of ladies and gentlemen. ”

“ Ercole produced a small green morocco pocket-book, of the sort made to hold a few visiting cards and a little paper money, and held it to Nino's muzzle.
Nino smelt it, looked up to his master's face inquiringly, smelt it again, and then, as if to explain that it did not interest him, lay down in the sand with his head on his forepaws.
"You see!" growled Ercole. "You cannot even tell whether it belonged to the boy or to Corbario. An apoplexy on you! You understand nothing! Ill befall the souls of your dead, you ignorant beast!" ”

“ An unearthly sound rent the stillness. The huge dog sat upright on his haunches, his head thrown up and back, his terrible lower jaw trembling as he howled, and howled again, waking great echoes where the roar of wild lions had rung long ago.
Regina started, though she did not move a step; but an unreasoning fear fell upon Ercole. He could not see her face, as the dark veil hung down. She was so motionless and fearless; only the dead could be as fearless of death and as still as she. ”

“ She was reflecting that if Aurora had not chanced to meet Marcello just when Regina was with him the girl might never have thought of him again, except with a half-amused recollection of the little romantic tenderness she had once felt for the friend and playfellow of her childhood. Maddalena was a wise woman now, and did not underestimate the influence of little things when great ones were not far off. That is a very important part of worldly wisdom, which is the science of estimating chances in a game of which love, hate, marriage, fortune, and social life and death may be the stakes. ”

“ Not a muscle of Folco's still face moved.
"Yes," he answered quietly. "I know it very well. It is nothing but the sudden wish for a little harmless excitement, nothing else in the world, my dear boy, and it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It does not follow that it is at all convenient to yield to it, but we feel it because we lead such a very quiet life."
"But surely, we are perfectly happy," observed Marcello.
"Perfectly, absolutely happy. I do not believe that there are any happier people in the world than we three, your mother, you, and I. We have not a wish unfulfilled." ”

“ Nothing she had done in her life seemed very bad to her, because it had all been for Marcello. If Ercole had killed her, she thought that God would have forgiven her after a time. But if she killed herself she would instantly be seized by devils and thrust into real flames, to burn for ever, without the slightest chance of forgiveness. She had been taught that, and she believed it, and the thought of the fire made her shut the clasp-knife and slip it into her dress with a sigh. ”

“ Regina laughed, but Marcello looked displeased.
"It is not honest to do such things," he said.
"Not honest?" Regina stared at him in amazement. "How does honesty enter into the question? Is Settimia honest? Then honest people should all be in the galleys! And if you knew how he writes to her! Oh, yes! You are the 'dear patient,' and I am the 'admirable companion.' They have known each other long, those two. They have a language between them, but I have learned it. They have no more secrets that I do not know. ”

“ But the Signora Corbario would not go.
"Your pony looks fatter and quieter than ever," said Maddalena dell' Armi with a smile. "If you do not ride him, he will turn into a fixture."
"He is already a very solid piece of furniture," observed Folco, looking at the sleek animal.
"He is very like the square piano I practise on," said Aurora. "He has such a flat back and such straight thick legs."
"More like an organ," put in Marcello, gravely. "He has a curious, half-musical wheeze when he tries to move, like the organ in the church at San Domenico, when the bellows begin to work." ”

“ Marcello had a bad chance at the start, and Maddalena dell' Armi, who knew the world well in all its moods, and had suffered by it and sinned for it, and had shed many tears in secret before becoming what she was now, foresaw danger, and hoped that her daughter's fate might not be bound up with that of her friend's son, much as she herself liked the gentle-hearted boy. ”

“ No woman could do more for a man than she had done. She had been his salvation and his good angel; when she had found out that the life in Paris that amused her was killing him, she had brought him back to himself, she had made him at last fit and able to face those who would have destroyed him. She had loved him like a woman, she had obeyed him and served him like a devoted servant, she had watched over him like a faithful dog ”

“ A strong manhood sometimes follows a weak boyhood, very much to the surprise of those who have long been used to find feebleness where strength has suddenly developed. Marcello Consalvi had never been cowardly, or even timid; he had only been weak in will as in body, an easy prey to the man who had tried to ruin him, body and soul, in the hope of sending him to his grave.
"I really cannot understand you, my dear boy," Corbario said very sweetly. "You used to be so gentle! But now you fly into a passion for the merest thing." ”

“ Ercole's confidence in the good intentions of his fellow-men was not great; he was quite lacking in the sort of charity which believeth all things, and had a large capacity for suspicion of everybody and everything; he held all men to be liars and most women to be something worse.
"Men are at least Christians," he would say to Nino, "but a female is always a female."
If he took a liking for any one, as for Marcello, he excused himself for the weakness on the ground that he was only human after all, and in his heart he respected his dog for snarling at everybody without discrimination. ”

“ But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve pity, and life looked very bright to him, very easy, and very peaceful. He could hardly have thought of anything at all likely to happen which could darken the future, or even give him reasonable cause for anxiety. There was no imaginative sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined evil, no melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often an affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the weak, or of average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but not degenerate ”

“ The wind howled round San Pietro in Montorio and the Spanish Academy, and whistled through the branches of the plane-trees along the winding descent, and furiously tore the withering leaves. They struck Ercole's weather-beaten face as he sat beside the coachman with bent head, with his soft hat pulled down over his eyes, and the rain dripped from his coarse moustache. Kalmon and Marcello leaned as far back as they could, under the deep hood and behind the high leathern apron.
"There is some animal following us," the cabman said to Ercole as they turned a corner. ”

“ Have we not all we want? When you marry, your wife will live in the splendid villa on the Janiculum, and when you are tired of her, you will come and see Regina here. I hope you will always be tired of her. Then I shall be happy."
Marcello would laugh a little, and then he would look grave and thoughtful, for he had not forgotten Aurora, and sometimes wondered what she was doing, as a young man does who is losing his hold upon himself, and on the things in which he has always believed. He who has never lived through such times and outlived them, knows neither the world nor himself. ”

“ Nino watched the whole operation with bloodshot eyes, his tongue hanging out and quivering rhythmically as he panted in the heat to cool himself. When the knife disappeared, and the chance of a crust with it, the dog got up, deliberately turned his back to his master, and sat down again to look at the view.
"You see," said Ercole to himself and Nino, "this is an affair which needs thought. One must be just. It is one thing to kill a person's body, but it is quite another thing to kill a person's soul. That would be a great sin, and besides, it is not necessary. Do I wish harm to any one? ”

“ That is what happens when men and women are not saints. Look at me!"
"You were never in that position. Others were to blame, who made you marry when you were too young to have any will of your own."
"Blame no one," said the Contessa gravely. "I shall give Aurora Regina's message, and if she is willing to go and see her, I shall bring her to-morrow morning—to-night, if there is no time to be lost. The world need never know. Go and tell Regina what I have said. It may comfort her a little, poor thing." ”

“ Marcello blushed again, hardly knowing why. Corbario seemed deeply interested.
"She must be a very unusual sort of girl," he observed thoughtfully. "There are not many like her, I fancy."
"There is nobody like her," Marcello answered with conviction. "That is why I want to marry her. I owe it to her. You must admit that. I owe her my life, for I certainly should have died if she had not taken care of me. And then, there is the rest. She has given me all she has, and that is herself, and she asks nothing in return. She is very proud, too. ”

“ Regina at once left his side to go and open the door. It was not till she had left the room that Marcello rose, asking himself suddenly why it had not occurred to him to go himself. He realised that he had always allowed her to wait on him without question. Yet if she were his wife, he would not think of letting her do what she was doing now. He would even open the door of the room for her to go out.
He knew why he had never treated her in that way. She was a peasant girl, she had been a servant in an inn; it was natural that she should serve him too. ”