Olive in Italy Part 19

The Marchesa's cloth of gold drew the prolonged "Oh!" of admiration that is only accorded to the better kind of fireworks, and hearing it, she smiled, well satisfied. Mamie followed with Filippo. Her dress of rose-coloured brocade was exquisite. It clung to her and seemed to be her one and only garment; one could almost see the throb of her heart through the thin stuff. She let her furred cloak fall as she got out of the car and then drew it up again about her bare arms and shoulders.

"Who is the black-curled scarlet thing?"

"Beatrice."

"What! half naked! She is more like one of the _donnine_ in the _Decameron_."

Her Dante, overhearing, hurried her up the steps. His eyes were bright with anger in the shadow of his hood, but they changed and darkened as he caught sight of one girl's face in the crowd. At the foot of the grand staircase he turned, muttering some excuse and leaving Mamie and her mother to go up alone, and hurried back and out into the street. He stood aside as though to allow some newcomers to pa.s.s in. The girl he had come to see was close to him, but she was half hidden behind a _carabiniere's_ broad epauletted shoulders.

"_Scusi_," murmured the Prince as he leant across the man to pull at her sleeve. "I must see you," he said urgently. "When? Where?"

"When you like," she answered, but her eyes were startled as they met his. "No. 27 Borgo San Jacopo. The only door on the sixth landing."

"Very well. To-night, then, and in an hour's time."

The press of incoming masqueraders screened them. The _carabiniere_ knew the Prince by sight, and he listened with all his might, but they spoke English, and he dared not turn to stare at the girl until the tall figure in the red _lucco_ had pa.s.sed up the steps and gone in again, and by that time she had slipped away out of sight.

Filippo came to the Borgo a little before midnight and crossed the dingy threshold of No. 27 as the bells of the churches rang out the hour. The old street was quiet enough now but for the wailing of some strayed and starving cats that crept about the shadowed courts and under the crumbling archways, and the departing cab woke strange echoes as it rattled away over the cobble stones.

The only door on the sixth landing was open.

"What are you doing here?" Filippo said, wonderingly, as he groped his way in. The room was in utter darkness but for one ray of moonlight athwart it and the faint light of the stars, by which he saw Olive leaning against the sill of one of the unshuttered windows, and looking, as it seemed, towards him.

"Come in," she said. "You need not be afraid of falling over the furniture. There is not much."

"You seem partial to bare attics."

"Ah! you are thinking of my room in the Vicolo dei Moribondi."

"Yes!" he said as he came towards her from the door. "I cannot rest, I cannot forget. For G.o.d's sake tell me about the end! I have been to Siena since I heard, but I dared not ask too many questions. Was she--did she suffer very much before she died? Answer me quickly."

"Throw back your hood," she said. "Let me see your face."

Impatiently he thrust the folds of white and scarlet away and stood bare-headed. She saw that his strong lips quivered and that his eyes were contracted with pain.

"No, she died instantly. They said at the inquest that it must have been so."

"Her face--was she--" his voice broke.

"I did not see it. It was covered by a handkerchief," she said gently.

"Don't! Don't! I did not think you would suffer so much."

"I suffer horribly day and night. Love is the scourge of the world in the hands of the devil. That is certain. She is buried near the south wall of the Campo Santo. Oh, G.o.d! when I think of her sweet flesh decaying--"

Olive, scarcely knowing what she did, caught at his hand and held it tightly.

"Hush, oh, hush!" she said tremulously. She felt as though she were seeing him racked. "I do believe that her soul was borne into heaven, G.o.d's heaven, on the day she died. She was forgiven."

"Heaven!" he cried. "Where is heaven? I am not guilty of her death.

She was a fool to die, and I shall not soon forgive her for leaving me so. If she came back I would punish her, torment her, make her scream with pain--if she came back--oh, Gemma!--_carissima_--"

The hard, hot eyes filled with tears. He tried to drag his hand away, but the girl held it fast.

"You are kind and good," he said presently in a changed voice. "I am sorry if I did you any harm with the Lorenzoni, but the woman told me she meant to send you away in any case because of the Marchese."

Then, as he felt the clasp of her fingers loosening about his wrist, "Don't let go," he said quickly. "Is he really going to take you to Monte Carlo with him?"

"Does his wife say so? Do you believe it?"

He answered deliberately. "No, not now. But you cannot go on living like this."

"No."

He was right. She could not go on. Her little store of coppers was dwindling fast, so fast that the beggars at the church doors would soon be richer than she was. And she was tired of her straits, tired of coa.r.s.e food and a bare lodging, and of the harsh, clamorous life of the streets. The yoke of poverty was very heavy.

Filippo drew a little nearer to her. "I could make you love me."

"Never."

He made no answer in words but he caught her to him. She lay for a moment close in his arms, her heart beating on his, before she cried to him to let her go.

He released her instantly. "Well?"

"I must light the lamp," she said unsteadily. She was afraid now to be alone with him in the dim, starlit room, and she fumbled for the matches. He stood still by the window waiting until the little yellow flame of the _lucerna_ burnt brightly on the floor between them, then he smiled at her, well pleased at her pallor. "You see it would be easy," he said.

She answered nothing.

"I am going to Naples to-morrow by the afternoon train. Will you come with me? We will go where you like from there, to Capri, or to Sicily; and you will help me to forget, and I will teach you to live."

There was silence between them for a while. Olive stared with fascinated eyes at this tall, lithe man whose red _lucco_, falling in straight folds to his feet, became him well. The upper part of his face was in shadow, and she saw only the strong lines of the cleft chin, and the beautiful cruel lips that smiled at her as though they knew what her answer must be.

She was of those who are apt to prefer one hour of troubled joy to the long, grey, eventless years of the women who are said to be happy because they have no history, and it seemed to her that the moment had come when she must make a choice. This love was not what she had dreamed of, longed for; other lips, kinder and more true, should have set their seal on her accomplished womanhood. She knew that this that was offered was a perilous and sharp-edged thing, a bright sheath that held a sword for her heart, and yet that heart sang exultantly as it fluttered like a wild bird against the bars of its cage. It sang of youth and life and joy that cares not for the morrow.

It sang.

Filippo watched her closely and he saw that she was yielding. Her lips parted, and instinctively as he came towards her she closed her eyes so nearly that he saw only a narrow line of blue gleaming between her lashes. But as he laid his hands upon her shoulders something awoke within her, a terror that screamed in her ears.

"I am afraid," she said brokenly. "Leave me and come back to-morrow morning if you will. I cannot answer you now."

As he still held her she spoke again. "If I come to you willingly I shall be more worth having, and if you do not go now I will never come. I will drown myself in the Arno."

"Very well. I will come to-morrow."

When he was gone she went stumblingly across the room to the mattress on the floor in the farthest corner, and threw herself down upon it, dressed as she was.

There was no more oil in the little lamp, and its flame flickered and went out after a while, leaving her in the dark. The clocks were striking two. Long since the moon had set behind the hills and now the stars were fading, or so it seemed. There was no light anywhere.

Olive did not sleep. Her frightened thoughts ran to and fro busily, aimlessly, like ants disturbed, hither and thither, this way and that.

He could give her so much. Nothing real, indeed, but many bright counterfeits. For a while she would seem to be cared for and beloved.