Pietro Ghisleri Part 22

"Of course I think so, and my mother does. You shall see him one of these days--he is asleep now. Would you like to know how my day is pa.s.sed?"

And she went on to give him an account of the baby life that so wholly absorbed her thoughts. Ghisleri listened quietly as though he understood it all. He wished, indeed, that it were possible to talk of something else, and he felt something like a sensation of pain as Laura constantly called the child "Herbert," just as she had formerly been used to speak of her husband. Nevertheless, he was conscious also of a certain sense of satisfaction. During the month which had elapsed she had learned to hide her great trouble under the joy of early motherhood. There was something very beautiful in her devotion to the child of her sorrow, and hurt though Ghisleri was by her manner to him, she seemed more lovely and more admirable than ever in his eyes. He said so when he went to see Maddalena dell' Armi late in the afternoon.

"I have seen Lady Herbert to-day," he began. "It is the first time since poor Arden died."

"Is she very unhappy?" asked the Contessa.

"She must be, for she never speaks of him. She talks of nothing but the child."

"I understand that," said Maddalena, thoughtfully. "And then, it is such a compensation."

"Yes." Ghisleri sighed. He was thinking of what her life might have been if children had been born to her, and he guessed that the same thoughts were in her mind at the time.

"Did you ever think," she asked after a short pause, "what would become of me if you left me? I should be quite alone; do you realise that?"

Ghisleri remembered how nearly he had broken with her more than once and his conscience smote him.

"I would rather not think of it," he said simply.

"You should," she answered. "It will come some day. I know it. When it does I shall turn into a very bad woman, much worse than I am now."

"Please do not speak so; it hurts me."

"That is a phrase, my dear friend," said Maddalena. "I always tell you that you are too fond of making phrases. You ought not to do it with me.

You are not really at all sensitive. I do not even believe that you have much heart, though you used to make me believe that you had."

"Have I shown you that I am heartless?"

"That is always your way of answering. You are a very strange compound of contradictions."

"Do you know, my dear lady, that you are falling into the habit of never believing a word I say?"

"I am afraid it is true," a.s.sented Maddalena, sadly. "And yet I would not be unjust to you for the world. You have given me almost the only happiness I ever knew, and yet, from having believed too much, I know that I am coming to believe too little."

"And you even think it is a mere phrase when I tell you that your distrust hurts me."

"Sometimes. You are not easily hurt, and I do not believe either--" She stopped suddenly in the midst of her speech.

"What?" asked Ghisleri.

"I will not say it. I say things to you occasionally which I regret later. I told you that I would not be unjust, and I will try not to be.

Be faithful, if you can, but be honest with me. Do not pretend that you care for me one hour longer than you really do. It would be dreadful to know the truth, but it is much worse to doubt. Will you promise?"

"Yes," answered Pietro, gravely. "I have promised it before now."

"Then remember it. Be sure of what you mean and of yourself, if you can,--be quite, quite sure. You know what it would mean to me to break.

I have not even a little child to love me, as Laura Arden has. I shall have nothing when you are gone--nothing but the memory of all the wrong I have done, all that can never be undone in this world or the next."

Ghisleri was moved and his strong face grew very pale while she was speaking. He had often realised it all of late, and he knew how greatly he had wronged her. It was not the first time in his life that he had been so placed, and that remorse, real while it lasted, had taken hold of him even before love was extinct. But he had never felt so strongly as he felt to-day, and he did his best to comfort himself with the shadowy medicine of good resolutions. He had honestly hoped that he might never love woman again besides Maddalena dell' Armi, and as that hope grew fainter he felt as though the very last poor fragments of self-respect he had left were being torn from him piecemeal. She, on her part, was very far from guessing what he suffered, for she was unjust to him, in spite of her real desire not to be so, and it was in a measure this same injustice which was undermining what had been once a very sincere love--good in that one way, if sinful and guilty in all other respects. Unbelief is, perhaps, what a man's love can bear the least; as a woman's may break and die at the very smallest unfaithfulness in him she loves, and as average human nature is largely compounded of faithlessness and unbelief, it is not surprising that true love should so rarely prove lasting.

Ghisleri saw no one after he left Maddalena on that day. He went home and shut himself up alone in his room, as he had done many times before that in his life, despairingly attempting to see clearly into his own heart, and to distinguish, if possible, the right course from the wrong in the dim light of the only morality left to him then, which was his sense of honour. And the position was a very hard one. He knew too well that his love for Maddalena was waning, and he even doubted whether it had ever been love at all. Most bitterly he reproached himself for the evil he had already brought into her existence, and for the suffering that awaited her in the future. Again and again he went over in his mind the hours of the past, recalling vividly each word and gesture out of the time when the truest sympathy had seemed to exist between them, and asking himself why it might not take a new life again and be all that it once had been. The answer that suggested itself was too despicable in his eyes for him to accept it, for it told him that Maddalena herself had changed and was no longer the same woman whom he had once loved, and whom he could love still, he fancied, if she were still with him. It seemed so utterly disloyal to cast any of the blame on her that the lonely man put the thought from him with an angry oath. Of that baseness at least he would not have to accuse himself. He would never, by the merest suggestion, suffer himself to think one unkind thought of Maddalena dell' Armi.

But the great question remained unsolved. Was what was now left really love in any sense, or not, and if not must he keep his promise and tell her the truth, or would it be more honourable to live for her sake by a rule of devotion and faithfulness which his strong will could make real in itself and in the letter, if not in the spirit? He knew that she was in earnest in what she had said. If she knew that he had ceased to love her, she would feel utterly alone in the world, and might well be driven to almost any lengths in the desperate search for distraction. She had not said it, but he knew that in her heart she would lay all the sins of her life at his door and that in this at least she would not be wholly unjust.

With such a character as Ghisleri's it is not easy to foresee what direction impulse will take when it comes at last. He was quite capable of giving up the attempt to understand himself and of leaving the whole matter to chance, with a coolness which would have seemed cruel and cynical if it had not been the result of something like despair. He was capable, if he failed to reach a conclusion by logical means, of tossing up a coin to decide whether he should tell poor Maddalena dell' Armi that he did not love her, or else stand by her in spite of every obstacle and devote his whole life to the elaborate fiction of an unreal attachment. Strangely enough Laura Arden played a part, and an important one, in bringing about his ultimate decision. He a.s.suredly had no thought of loving her, nor of the possibility of loving her at that time. He would even have thought it an exaggeration to say that he was devotedly attached to her in the way of friendship. And yet he felt that she exercised a dominating influence over his mind. He found himself laying the matter before her in imagination, as he should never be likely to do in fact, and submitting it to her judgment as to that of a person supremely capable of distinguishing right from wrong and false from true. It was singular, too, that he should make no comparison between her and Maddalena, though possibly no such comparison could have been made. But he compared himself with her--the depth of his moral degradation in his own eyes with the lofty purity of thought and purpose which he attributed to her. The consequence could hardly fail to be a certain aspiration, vague and almost sentimental, to become such a man as might not seem to her wholly unworthy of trust. This did not help him much, however, and when at last he went to bed, having forgotten to go out and dine, and weary of the hard problem, he was not much further advanced than when he had sat down to think of it last in the afternoon.

In the morning everything seemed simpler, and the necessity for immediate decision disappeared. He had not yet by any means reached the point of not loving Maddalena at all, and until he did there was no reason why he should form any plan of action. It would in any case, be very hard to act upon such a plan, for the dreaded moment would in all likelihood be a stormy one, and he could not foresee in the least what Maddalena herself would do.

After that he felt for a long time much more of the old sympathy with her than he had known of late, and he tormented himself less often with the direction of his own motives and thoughts. He saw much of Laura, too, in those days, and spent long hours beside her as she lay upon her sofa. He always left her with a sensation of having been soothed and rested, though he could not say of her that she was much inclined to talk, or showed any great satisfaction at his coming. Probably, he thought, she was willing to see him so often because he had been Arden's friend. He did not understand that she did not quite like him and that his presence was often irksome to her, for she was far too kind by nature to let him suspect it. He only thought that he was in her eyes a perfectly indifferent person, and he saw no reason for depriving himself of her society so long as she consented to receive him. They rarely talked of subjects at all relating to themselves, either, and their conversation turned chiefly upon books and general topics. Ghisleri read a good deal in a desultory way, and his memory was good. It interested him, too, to propound problems for her judgment and to see how nearly she would solve them in the way he expected her to choose. He was rarely mistaken in his expectations.

Little by little, though Laura's princ.i.p.al feeling in regard to him did not change perceptibly, she became interested in his nature, beginning to perceive that there were depths in it which she had not suspected.

"Are you a happy man?" she once asked him rather abruptly, and watching the expression of his face.

"Certainly not at present," he answered, looking away from her as though to hinder her from reading his thoughts. "Why do you ask that?"

"Forgive me. I should not put such a question, I suppose. But you interest me."

"Do I?" He glanced quickly at her as he spoke, and she saw that he was pleased. "I am very glad that you should take any interest in me,--of any kind whatever. Would you like to know why I am unhappy?"

"Yes."

"I can only tell you in a general way. I make no pretence to any sort of goodness or moral rect.i.tude, beyond what we men commonly include in what we call the code of honour. But I am perpetually tormented about my own motives. Knowing myself to be what I am, I distrust every good impulse I have, merely because it is not a bad one, because my natural impulses are bad, and because I will not allow myself to act any sort of comedy, even in my own feelings. That sort of honesty, or desire for honesty, is all I have left--on it hangs the last shred of my tattered self-respect."

"How dreadful!" Laura's deep eyes rested on him for the first time with a new expression. There was both pity and wonder in their look--pity for the man and wonder at a state of mind of which she had never dreamed.

"Does it seem dreadful to you?" he asked.

"If you really feel as you say you do," answered Laura, "I can understand that you should be very unhappy."

"Why do you doubt that I feel what I have told you?" Ghisleri wondered, as he asked the question, whether he was ever to be believed again by any woman. "Do you think I am untruthful?"

"No," said Laura, quickly. "Indeed I do not. On the contrary, I think you very scrupulously exact when you speak of things you know about. But any one may be mistaken in judging of himself."

"That is precisely the point. I am afraid of finding myself mistaken, and so I do not trust my own motives."

"Yes--I see. But then, if you do what is right, you need not let your motives trouble you. That seems so simple."

"To you. Do you remember? I once told you that you were horribly good."

"I am not," said Laura, "but if I were, I should not see anything horrible in it."

"I should, and I do. When I see how good you are I am horrified at myself. That is what I mean."

"Why do you so often talk about being bad? You will end by making me believe that you are--if I do not believe it already."

"As you do, I fancy. What difference can it make to you?"

"Everything makes a difference which lowers one's estimate of human nature," Laura answered, with a wisdom beyond her age or experience.