Ragna Part 42

The weeks drew into months, and Beppino in his turn was short-coated and crept about the floors with his playthings. Mimmo, after the first attack of infantile jealousy had pa.s.sed, succ.u.mbed to the fascinations of his baby brother and adored him with the whole strength of his little heart.

Beppino was a strange child, grave and self-contained; the selfishness of his nature made itself apparent from the very beginning, and it needed all the sunny brightness of Mimmo's character, all his childish good nature to cope with the other's exactions. Beppino wanted the blocks. Mimmo relinquished them to him. Beppino threw the precious red ball out of the window, to keep his brother from playing with it. Mimmo wept over the loss of his treasure but straightway invented a new game for the delectation of baby-brother. Beppino took a special delight in tormenting animals, p.u.s.s.y fled at his approach. Pallino, the little Pomeranian incontinently turned tail and sought shelter when the baby's toddling footsteps announced his coming. He loved to tear the wings off flies laughing at their vain efforts to escape, and once he carried his experiment too far, for he swallowed the hapless insects and Ragna was surprised by his rushing to her side his hands applied to his round little stomach, shrieking with fright.

"Mammina! Mammina! I can feel them crawling and buzzing inside!"

Egidio had come to spend less and less time at home, his affairs prospered, one commission followed another, and often Ragna hardly saw him for weeks together. They had moved into another and larger apartment in a good street, an apartment occupying two floors of the house in which it was situated, the living and reception rooms being on the first floor and the bedrooms above. Egidio's studio was also in the house, on the first floor, it had a separate street entrance and staircase and was connected with the rest of the apartment by a long winding pa.s.sageway.

In this studio, forbidden territory to the rest of the household, Valentini spent most of his time when in the house, rarely condescending to appear in the sitting-room, and these occasions were anything but occasions for rejoicing, as his bursts of temper grew more and more frequent, and when in the grip of one of the headaches from which he so often suffered, the whole household trembled at his approach. Once, in a fit of rage at the unintentional banging of a door he seized the tureen of steaming soup from the hands of the offending servant, and flung it, contents and all at the man's head, meeting Ragna's remonstrance with:

"I am master in my own house, if you please, and since you show yourself incompetent to train the servants, I must try my hand at it."

He had become openly contemptuous in his treatment of her; the brief glow of affection aroused by the birth of Beppino had soon faded and he took an unholy joy in holding her up to ridicule before the servants and the children. Mimmo especially, he taught to be impertinent, insolent even--a child is very ready to adopt the tone and manner of the head of the house, and when Ragna pleaded with him with tears in her eyes to desist, he laughed at her and asked her what she had ever done to deserve either consideration or respect.

"But I am your wife, Egidio, the mother of your children," she paused biting her lip, at the unfortunate slip of the tongue.

"Oh, yes, _my_ children--very fine indeed. Your generosity does you credit--but as a t.i.tle to veneration--"

"Leave me out then," she interrupted, flushing painfully, "consider only the boys. How do you think they will grow up, without love and respect for their parents?"

"Oh, I warrant you they will always respect me," he growled, "the hand that holds the purse-strings commands respect."

"So you think now, Egidio," returned Ragna, for once speaking out her mind--generally she schooled herself to submission, "but I tell you the time will come when all the disrespect you inspire them with towards their mother will be turned against yourself. You think you can hold them by your power over them, by your authority, I tell you that you are building on sand. Love begets love, coldness begets coldness and hatred begets hatred!"

Valentini's face grew red, the veins swelled in his forehead, his eyes glared from under the beetling brows.

"You talk of love and respect, you!" he roared, and she recoiled involuntarily from his violence. "How dare you speak to me like that?

Remember that I picked you out of the gutter--where would you be now if it were not for me? If I ever married you at all, it was because my head was still so weak from the fever that I knew no better than to let myself be roped in. And here I find myself, saddled with a bad tempered, puling wife and a family that is only half mine, where other young men of my age--"

"Egidio!" she cried with flashing eyes, "recollect please, that I only married you because you wore down my resistances, because you begged and implored--"

"Silence, you lie! How dare you interrupt me?"

"I dare because what I say is true."

"True!" his hands appealed to Heaven. "It is as false as h.e.l.l, like yourself! How much do you suppose I believed of that c.o.c.k-and-bull story you told me, about your being the light-of-love of a prince? A prince!--a gondolier perhaps, or a _facchino di piazza_!"

"Hush," she said, as pale as death, "the servants will overhear you."

"The servants! What do I care for the servants? Let them hear, I have nothing to conceal from them!"

The taunt was like a blow in the face; Ragna stiffened under it and turned cold.

"You forget, Signor Valentini, that in insulting me, you insult yourself, for when all is said and done, I am the wife you have chosen.

Policy at least should dictate another course of conduct towards me,--everything that lowers me in the eyes of the world lowers you, too."

His answer was to seize a large Contagalli vase, standing on a console between the windows and smash it on the tiled floor, then he turned and rushed from the room. Ragna stood looking after him a scornful smile creeping over her frozen face. In that moment she had seen revealed the innermost hideous recesses of the man's soul, the man who was her husband, the father of Beppino. In the silence there rose to her ears the reverberating bang of the _portone_, and the angry beat of his footsteps on the stone pavement outside.

After a few days of sullen silence, he appeared before her one evening before dinner, a little box in his hand. It was never his way to offer an apology, but the desire for peace which stood to him for remorse, frequently took the form of material reparation. Never would he, in any circ.u.mstances, have admitted himself in the wrong. He opened the box, displaying a ruby ring set with diamonds, saying:

"You must admit that I am a generous husband, my dear!"

"Thank you," said Ragna, without looking up, "I do not care for it."

"Not care for it!" he exclaimed, straightening up suddenly as though struck by some unseen missile. "A nice return I get for all my kindness.

Of all the ungrateful--"

She raised her eyes slowly and something in their cold, scornful gaze silenced him. He stood uncertainly opening and shutting the box.

Meanwhile a thought came to her--why not take the jewel after all? Why not take all that she could get? Life with this man was becoming fast unbearable, and when at last she should be able to endure it no longer, these trinkets might provide her with the means of escape.

"If you very much desire it," she said coldly, "I will accept your gift."

"I thought you would when you came to think it over. It is a good stone," he said taking up the ring and holding it in the light of the lamp, "and it is worth considerably more than I gave for it. I am not one of your fools who pay the fancy prices of a fashionable jeweller--indeed it is they who come to me for advice, they know I have a good eye for stones, and for a bargain."

"So have the Jews," said Ragna, biting her thread, she was sewing a little garment for Beppino.

"The Jews!" said Valentini, glaring at her, "what do you mean by that?

Of course you are so accustomed to the society of princes and grandees that you think yourself above prudence and wise expenditure. You are a fool, which of your princes would have done for you what I have done?"

Ragna bowed her head over her work; she tried to hold herself above the continual taunts and reproaches, and she realized that sometimes, as in this instance, she drew them on herself by her resentment of her husband's little meannesses. He never gave her a present but he expatiated on his shrewdness in buying at a p.a.w.n-broker's sale at the proper moment or in taking advantage of some impoverished n.o.bleman's hour of need. The things were, many of them, beautiful and valuable both artistically and intrinsically but the pleasure of their possession was spoiled to Ragna by the unvarying circ.u.mstances of their purchase and bestowal.

Egidio's meanness showed itself also in other ways. In September he had accompanied his wife and children to the sea-side for a fortnight and having installed them in the lodgings he had taken, went out for a stroll. It lacked two hours to dinner-time and as little Mimmo was hungry and the baby fretful, Ragna requested the landlady to send up two bowls of bread and milk. Valentini returned in the midst of this frugal repast and with lowering brow inquired the meaning thereof.

"The children were hungry," said Ragna, "and it is too long for them to wait for dinner."

"Too long! They can wait if I can! Besides you should have thought of it before and brought something with you. I tell you, Ragna, your senseless extravagance will be the ruin of me! If you dare ever again to order extras without my permission--" The rest of the threat was lost as he seized the bowls and emptied them out of the window. He then beat a rapid retreat leaving Ragna to quiet as best she could the disappointed and hungry children.

This was one of the many instances that rose to her mind as she sat there sewing, choking down the lump in her throat, while Egidio flashed the ruby admiringly in the ray of the lamp. When times were hard, she had understood his economies, but now that they were prosperous, that there was no need for it! She did not understand that certain meannesses were ingrained in his character, as were certain generosities--that it was as much a part of his nature to stint her in handkerchiefs and stockings as it was to bestow costly jewels upon her--yet, the key to it was simple, the one redounded publicly to his credit, the other was unknown except to himself and to her. She had long ago lost any feeling of grat.i.tude towards him, he had shown her all too clearly what personal motives had actuated him at the time of their marriage, and his attempts to throw the onus of the transaction on her, caused her a bitter amus.e.m.e.nt; they revealed so plainly the innate selfishness of him, his desire to divest himself of responsibility, and yet to claim grat.i.tude, where according to his own showing, it least was due!

"Your friends will admire this ring," said Valentini, "but I must beg of you, Ragna, not to give it away. The things I buy for you I do not intend to let pa.s.s out of the family." This because she had once sent a small and not particularly valuable brooch he had given her, to her sister Ingeborg, much to the latter's pleasure and surprise, though Fru Boyesen had sniffed when the gift was shown her.

"Why don't you answer?" demanded Valentini, "you might at least attend to what I say. When I give you a thing it is for yourself, not for others."

"But if it should please me better to give it to a sister whom I love, than to wear it myself?"

"You have no right to squander my property or my gifts."

"Very well," said Ragna wearily, "I have not the slightest intention of giving the ring away."

They relapsed into silence and Egidio read the evening paper. The rustling of the pages grated so on her nerves that she thought she must scream and she jerked her needle in and out till the thread snapped.

Generally she took but little interest in the local news, but to-night, when Egidio laid the paper on the table, she took it up, and in turning the pages over, her eye fell by chance on the list of names of travellers stopping at the large hotels. An involuntary exclamation rose to her lips as the name "Count Angelescu" stared at her from the printed column.

"What is it?" inquired Egidio suspiciously.

"Nothing--I have p.r.i.c.ked my finger--" She still held her sewing crushed in her left hand.

He turned again to the design he was making on the back of an old envelope.

Angelescu in Florence! Angelescu! The blood surged and beat in her temples, her hands shook as she raised the paper to her eyes. No, there could be no mistake, it must be he and no other!