The Italians Part 39

Again his eyes pleaded with hers; again found no response. Nera held out her hand to him.

"To-morrow," the full, ripe lips uttered--"to-morrow."

Seeing that he hesitated, Nera pointed with a gesture toward the door, and n.o.bili departed.

When the door had closed, and the sound of his retreating footsteps along the empty rooms had ceased, Nera raised her hand, then let it fall heavily upon the table.

"I have done it!" she exclaimed, triumphantly. "Now I can bear to think of that Orsetti ball. Poor n.o.bili! if he had spoken then! But he did not. It is his own fault."

After standing a minute or two thinking, Nora uncovered the lamp. Then she took it up in both her hands, stepped to a mirror that hung near, and, turning the light hither and thither, looked at her blooming face, in full and in profile. Then she replaced the lamp upon the table, yawned, and left the room.

Next morning a note was put into Count n.o.bili's hand at breakfast. It bore the Boccarini arms and the initials of the marchesa. The contents were these:

MOST ESTEEMED COUNT: As a friend of our family, I have the honor of informing you that the marriage of my dear daughter Nera with Prince Ruspoli is arranged, and will take place in a week. I hope you will be present. I have the honor to a.s.sure you of my most sincere and distinguished sentiments.

"MARCHESA AGNESA BOCCARINI."

In the night train from Lucca that evening, Count n.o.bili was seated.

"He was about to travel," he had informed his household. "Later he would send them his address." Before he left, he wrote a letter to Enrica, and sent it to Corellia.

PART IV.

CHAPTER I.

WAITING AND LONGING.

It was the morning of the fourth day since Count n.o.bili had left Corellia. All had been very quiet about the house. The marchesa herself took little heed of any thing. She sat much in her own room.

She was silent and preoccupied; but she was not displeased. The one dominant pa.s.sion of her soul--the triumph of the Guinigi name--was now attained. Now she could bear to think of the grand old palace at Lucca, the seigneurial throne, the nuptial-chamber; now she could gaze in peace on the countenance of the great Castruccio. No spoiler would dare to tread these sacred floors. No irreverent hand would presume to handle her ancestral treasures; no vulgar eye would rest on the effigies of her race gathered on these walls. All would now be safe--safe under the protection of wealth, enormous wealth--wealth to guard, to preserve, to possess.

Enrica had been the agent by which all this had been effected, therefore she regarded Enrica at this time with more consideration than she had ever done before. As to any real sentiments of affection, the marchesa was incapable of them--a cold, hard woman from her youth, now vindictive, as well as cold.

The day after the signing of the contract she called Enrica to her.

Enrica trod lightly across the stuccoed floor to where her aunt was standing; then she stopped and waited for her to address her. The marchesa took Enrica's hand within her own for some minutes, and silently stroked each rosy finger.

"My child Enrica, are you content?" This question was accompanied by an inquiring look, as if she would read Enrica through and through. A sweet smile of ineffable happiness stole over Enrica's soft face. The marchesa, still holding her hand, uttered something which might almost be called a sigh. "I hope this will last, else--" She broke off abruptly.

Enrica, resenting the implied doubt, disengaged her hand, and drew back from her. The marchesa, not appearing to observe this, continued:

"I had other views for you, Enrica; but, before you knew any thing, you chose a husband for yourself. What do you know about a husband? It is a bad choice."

Again Enrica drew back still farther from her aunt, and lifted up her head as if in remonstrance. But the marchesa was not to be stopped.

"I hate Count n.o.bili!" she burst out. "I have had my eye upon him ever since he came to Lucca. I know him--you do not. It is possible he may change, but if he does not--"

For the second time the marchesa did not finish the sentence.

"And do you think he loves you?"

As she asked this question she seated herself, and contemplated Enrica with a cynical smile.

"Yes, he loves me. It is you who do not know him!" exclaimed Enrica.

"He is so good, so generous, so true; there is no one in the world like him."

How pure Enrica looked, pleading for her lover!--her face thrown out in sharp profile against the dark wall; her short upper lip raised by her eager speech; the dazzling fairness of her complexion; and her soft hair hanging loose about her head and neck.

"I think I do--I think I know him better than you do," the marchesa answered, somewhat absently.

She was struck by Enrica's exceeding beauty, which seemed within the last few days to have suddenly developed and matured.

"The young man appreciates you, too, I do not doubt. I am told he is a lover of beauty."

This was added with a sneer. Enrica grew crimson.

"Well, well," the marchesa went on to say, "it is too late now--the thing is done. But remember I have warned you. You chose Count n.o.bili, not I. Enrica, I have done my duty to you and to my own name. Now go and tell the cavaliere I want him."

The marchesa was always wanting the cavaliere; she was closeted with him for hours at a time. These conferences all ended in one conclusion--that she was irretrievably ruined. No one knew this better than the marchesa herself; but her haughty reluctance either to accept Count n.o.bili's money, or to give up Enrica, was the cause of unknown distress to Trenta.

Meanwhile the prospect of the wedding had stirred up every one in the house to a sort of aimless activity. Adamo strode about, his sad, lazy eyes gazing nowhere in particular. Adamo affected to work hard, but in reality he did nothing but sweep the leaves away from the border of the fountain, and remove the _debris_ caused by the fire. Then he would go down and feed the dogs, who, when at home, lived in a sort of cave cut out of the cliff under the tower--Argo, the long-haired mastiff, and Tootsey, the rat-terrier, and Juno, the lurcher, and the useless bull-dog, who grinned horribly--Adamo fed them, then let them out to run at will over the flowers, while he went to his mid-day meal.

Adamo had no soul for flowers, or he could not have done this; he could not have seen a bright, many-eyed balsam, or an amber-leaved zinnia with tufted yellow breast, die miserably on their earthy beds, trampled under the dogs' feet. Even the marchesa, who concerned herself so little with such things, had often hidden him for his carelessness; but Adamo had a way of his own, and by that way he abided, slowly returning to it, spite of argument or remonstrance.

"Domine Dio orders the weather, not I," Adamo said in a grunt to Pipa when his mistress had specially upbraided him for not watering the lemon-trees ranged along the terraces. "Am I expected to give holy oil to the plants as Fra Pacifico does to the sick? Che! che! what will be will be!"

So Adamo went to his dinner in all peace; and Argo and his friends knocked down the flowers, and scratched deep holes in the gravel, barking wildly all the time.

The marchesa, sitting in grave confabulation with Cavaliere Trenta, rubbed her white hands as she listened.

There was neither portcullis, nor moat, nor drawbridge to her feudal stronghold at Corellia, but there was big, white Argo. Argo alone would pin any one to the earth.

"Let out the dogs, Adamo," the marchesa would say. "I like to hear them. They are my soldiers--they defend me."

"Yes, padrona," Adamo would reply, stolidly. "Surely the Signora Marchesa wants no other. Argo has the sense of a man when I discourse to him."

So Argo barked and yelped, and tore up and down undisturbed, followed by the pack in full chase after imaginary enemies. Woe betide the calves of any stranger arriving at that period of the day at the villa! They might feel Argo's glistening teeth meeting in them, or be hurled on the ground, for Argo had a nasty trick of clutching stealthily from behind. Woe betide all but Fra Pacifico, who had so often licked him in drawn battles, when the dog had leaped upon him, that now Argo fled at sight of his priestly garments with a howl!

Adamo, who, after his mid-day meal, required tobacco and repose, would not move to save any one's soul, much less his body.

"Argo is a lunatic without me," he would observe, blandly, to Pipa, if roused by a special outburst of barking, the smoke of his pipe curling round his bullet-head the while. "Lunatics, either among men or beasts, are not worth attending to. A sweating horse, a crying woman, and a yelping cur, heed not."

Adamo added many more grave remarks between the puffs of his pipe, turning to Pipa, who sat beside him, distaff in hand, the silver pins, stuck into her glossy plaits, glistening in the sun.

When Adamo ceased he nodded his head like an oracle that had spoken, and dozed, leaning against the wall, until the sun had sunk to rest into a bed of orange and saffron, and the air was cooled by evening dews. Not till then did Adamo rise up to work.