The Patriot Part 16

"This one soul," said he, "that lives as if thinking only of a future life in which it does not believe, is indeed in error, but nevertheless, we are bound to admire it as the most n.o.ble, the greatest of all. It is something sublime!"

"But are you then sure that this soul is in error?"

"Oh, yes, yes!"

"And you yourself, to which category do you belong?"

The Professor really believed he was of the few who rule their actions entirely according to an aspiration towards a future life, but he would have been embarra.s.sed had he been called upon to demonstrate that his earnest study of Raspail, his zeal in the preparation of sedative water and camphor cigarettes, his horror of dampness and of draughts, were proofs of slight attachment to the present life. However, he would not answer, but said that though he did not belong to any church, he nevertheless, believed firmly in G.o.d and the future life, and that he could not judge of his own conduct.

Meanwhile, Franco, watering the little garden, had discovered that a new verbena had blossomed, and setting down his watering-pot, had come to the door of the loggia and was calling to Maria, to whom he wished to point it out. Maria let him call, and demanded "Missipip" again, whereupon the uncle put her down, and himself led her to her father.

"But, Professor," Luisa said, emerging by means of the living word from a course of occult ponderings, "do you not think one may believe in G.o.d and still be in doubt concerning the future life?"

Speaking thus she had dropped the tangled maze of net, and was looking the Professor straight in the face, with an expression of lively interest, and a manifest desire that he might answer yes. As Gilardoni did not speak she added--

"It seems to me some one might say: What obligation is G.o.d under to give us immortality? The immortality of the soul is an invention of human selfishness, which, after all, simply wishes to make G.o.d serve its own convenience. We want a reward for the good we do to others, and a punishment for the evil others do to us. Let us rather resign ourselves to complete death, which comes to every living thing, being just with ourselves and with others as long as we live, without looking for future reward, but simply because G.o.d wishes it, as he wishes every star to give light, and every tree to give shade. What do you think about it?"

"What can I say?" Gilardoni answered. "It seems to me a thought of great beauty! I cannot say: a great truth. Indeed I do not know. I have never thought about it, but it is very beautiful! I will say that Christianity has never had, has never even imagined a Saint so sublime as this _some one_! It is very beautiful, very beautiful!"

"And besides," Luisa continued after a short silence, "it might also be maintained that this future would not mean perfect happiness. Can there be happiness if we do not know the reasons of all things? If we may not explain all mysteries? And will this longing to know all things be satisfied in the future life? Will there not always remain one impenetrable mystery? Do they not teach us that we shall never understand G.o.d perfectly? Therefore, in our longing to know, shall we not end by suffering as at present, perhaps even more, because in a higher life that longing must become stronger? I can only see one way of arriving at a knowledge of everything, and that would be to become G.o.d----"

"Ah! You are a pantheist!" the Professor exclaimed, interrupting her.

"Hush!" said Luisa. "No, no, no, I am a Catholic Christian. I am only repeating what others might say."

"Pardon me, but there is a pantheism----"

"Philosophy still?" exclaimed Franco, coming in with the little one in his arms.

"Oh, misery!" grumbled Uncle Piero behind him.

Maria held a beautiful white rose in her hand. "Look at this rose, Luisa," said Franco. "Maria, give Mamma the flower. Look at the shape of this rose, its pose, its shading, the veins in its petals; look at that red stripe, and inhale its perfume. Now drop philosophy."

"You are an enemy of philosophy?" the Professor said, smiling.

"I am a friend of that simple and sure philosophy which even roses can teach me," Franco answered.

"Philosophy, my dear Professor," Uncle Piero put in solemnly, "is all contained in Aristotle. You can get all you want from that source."

"You are jesting," the Professor said, "but you yourself are a philosopher."

The engineer placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Listen, dear friend! My philosophy could all be put into eight or ten gla.s.ses."

"Mercy on us! Eight or ten gla.s.ses!" grumbled the housekeeper, who had caught her most temperate master's words of boastful intemperance, as she came in. "Eight or ten fiddlesticks!"

She had come to announce Don Giuseppe Costabarbieri, whose hollow but jolly voice was just then heard in the hall, saying heartily, "_Deo gratias_." Then the red and wrinkled face, the lively eyes, and the grey hair of the gentle priest appeared.

"We are discussing philosophy, Don Giuseppe," said Luisa when greetings had been exchanged. "Come here and let us have your valuable opinion."

Don Guiseppe scratched his head, and then turning it slightly towards the engineer, with the expression of one who desires something for which he hardly dares to ask, gave utterance to this flower of his philosophical opinions.

"Wouldn't a little game of primero be better?"

Franco and Uncle Piero, who were only too glad to escape from Gilardoni's philosophy, sat merrily down to the little table with the priest.

As soon as he and Luisa were alone, the Professor said softly--

"The Marchesa left yesterday."

Luisa, who had taken Maria upon her lap, pressed her lips to the child's neck pa.s.sionately.

"Perhaps," continued Gilardoni, who had never known how to read in the human heart, or to touch its chords correctly, "perhaps sometime--it is only three years, yet--perhaps the day may come when she will yield."

Luisa raised her face from Maria's neck. "Perhaps _she_ may yield!" said she. The Professor did not understand, and giving way to the evil genius that invariably suggested to him the worst word at the worst moment, he persisted instead of breaking off. "Perhaps, if she could see Maria!"

Luisa pressed the little girl to her breast, and looked at him so fiercely that he was confused, and stammered, "I beg your pardon!"

Maria, in this close embrace, raised her eyes to her mother's strange face, grew very red, pressed her lips tight together, cried two great tears, and began to sob.

"No, no, dear!" Luisa murmured tenderly to her, "be quiet, be quiet! You shall never see her, never!"

As soon as the child was comforted the Professor, distressed at the mistake he had made, at having offended this Luisa, who seemed to him a superhuman being, wished to explain, to justify himself, but Luisa would not allow him to speak. "Pardon me, but that will do," said she, rising.

"Let us go and watch the game."

But, as a matter of fact, she did not go near the players. She sent Maria to amuse herself in the church-grounds with her little nurse, Veronica, and herself went to carry a piece of pudding to an old villager who had a voracious appet.i.te and a small voice, with which he would every day promise his benefactress the same precious recompense, "Before I die, I will give you a kiss."

Meanwhile the Professor was filled with scruples and remorse for the unfortunate step he had taken. Not knowing whether to go or to remain, whether the lady would or would not return, whether it would or would not be indiscreet to go in search of her, after having looked out towards the lake as if seeking advice from the fishes, towards the hills to see if she or some one of whom he could inquire about her happened to be at one of the windows, he finally went to watch the game.

Each one of the players kept his eyes fixed on the four cards he held in his left hand, placed one upon the other in such a way that the second and third projected above the others just enough to be recognisable, while the fourth remained carefully hidden.

The Professor reflected that he also held a secret card, a trump, and he was undecided whether to play it or not. He held old Maironi's will. A few days after Signora Teresa's death, Franco had told him to destroy it, and never breathe a word about it to Luisa. He had obeyed only so far as keeping silence was concerned. The doc.u.ment still existed, though of this Franco was ignorant, because its custodian had determined to await the development of events, to see if Cressogno and Oria would come to terms, or if, in consequence of prolonged hostilities, Franco and his family would be reduced to want, in which case he himself intended to do something. What he should do, he did not really know. He was nurturing the germs of several foolish plans in his head, and trusted that one or other of them would have ripened before the time for action arrived. Now, as he watched Franco play, he wondered how that man, so engrossed in his desire to win a pasteboard king, could ever have refused that other precious card, not even wishing to inform his wife of its existence. He attributed this silence to modesty, to a desire to hide a generous action, and although he had suffered more than one sharp rebuff from him, and felt that Franco esteemed him lightly, still he looked upon him with a respect full of humble devotion.

"Give me the cards! Give me the cards!" the priest exclaimed, and he shuffled them eagerly. Then the game, symbol of the universal struggle between the blacks and the reds, began once more.

The lake now lay sleeping, covered and encircled by shadows. Only on the east the great, distant mountains of the Lario were still in a glory of purple and rich, yellow gold. The first breath of the evening breeze out of the north, moved the tender branches of the pa.s.sion-flowers, ruffled, in spots, the surface of the grey waters towards the upper lake, and wafted a perfume of cool woods.

When Luisa returned the Professor had been gone some time.

"Ah, here is _Sciora_ Luisa!" said Don Giuseppe, who was feeling quite satisfied, having had his fill of primero, and he gently stroked the modest rotundity of his ribs and belly. Then this little personage of the world of long ago remembered the second object of his visit. He had wished to speak a little word to Signora Luisa. The engineer had gone out to take his usual short walk as far as the Tavorell hill, which he jokingly called the St. Bernard, and Franco, after a glance at the moon which was just then sparkling above the black brow of the Bisgnago, and below, in the undulations of the water, began improvising on the piano outpourings of ideal sorrow, that floated out of the open windows upon the deep sonorousness of the lake. His musical improvisations were more successful than his elaborate poems because in music his impulsive feelings found a mode of expression more facile, more complete, and the scruples, the uncertainties, the doubts which rendered the labour of language most wearisome and slow, did not torment his fancy at the piano. There he would give himself up, body and soul, to the poetic rage, and quivering to the roots of his hair, his clear, speaking eyes reflecting every little shade in the musical expression, while his face worked with the continuous movement of inarticulate words, his hands, though neither very agile nor very supple, would make the piano sing ineffably.

At the present moment he was pa.s.sing from one tone to another, breathing hard, and putting all the strength of his intellect into those pa.s.sages, eviscerating the instrument, as it were, with his ten fingers, and almost with his glowing eyes as well. He had begun to play under the spell of the moonshine, but as he played, sad clouds had arisen from the depths of his heart. Conscious that as a youth he had dreamed of glory and that later he had humbly laid aside all hope of attaining it, he said, almost to himself, with his sad and pa.s.sionate music, that in him there was indeed some glow of genius, some of the fire of creation seen only by G.o.d, for not even Luisa exhibited that esteem for his intellect which he himself lacked, but which he could have wished to find in her; not even Luisa, the heart of his heart. She praised his music and his poetry in measured terms, but she had never said: "Follow this path, dare, write, publish." He was thinking of this as he played on in the dark hall putting into a tender melody the lament of his love, the timid, secret lament he would never have dared to put into words.

Out on the terrace in the quivering light-and-shade formed by the breath of the north wind and the pa.s.sion-flower vines, by the moon and its reflection in the lake, Don Giuseppe was telling Luisa that Signor Giacomo Puttini was angry with him on account of Signora Pasotti, who had repeated to him the false report that he, Don Giuseppe, was going about preaching the necessity of a marriage between Puttini and Marianna. "May I be struck dead," the poor priest protested, "if I ever breathed a single word! Not a single word! It is all a lie!" Luisa would not believe poor Barborin guilty, but Don Giuseppe declared he had it straight from the Controller himself. Then she understood at once that the cunning Pasotti was indulging in a joke at the expense of his wife, Signor Giacomo, and the priest, and declining to interfere in the matter as Don Giuseppe wished her to do, she advised him to speak to Signora Pasotti herself. "She is so terribly deaf!" said the priest, scratching his head; and he finally departed, dissatisfied, and without saluting Franco, whom he did not wish to interrupt. Luisa went towards the piano on tiptoe, and stopped to listen to her husband, to hear the beauty, the richness, the fire of that soul which was hers, and to which she belonged for ever. If she had never said to Franco, "Follow this path, write, publish!" it was perhaps because in her well-balanced affection she believed, and with reason, that he would never be able to produce anything superior to mediocrity, but it was above all, because, although she had a fine feeling for music and poetry, she did not really esteem either of much account. She did not approve of a man's dedicating himself wholly to either, and she had an ardent longing that her husband's intellectual and material activity should flow in a more manly channel. Nevertheless, she admired Franco in his music more than if he had been a great master; she found in this almost secret expression of his soul something virginal, something sincere, the light of a loving spirit, most worthy to be loved.

He did not perceive her presence until two arms brushed his shoulders and he saw two little hands hanging on his breast. "No! no! Play, play!"

Luisa murmured, for Franco had grasped the hands; but, without answering, his head thrown back, he sought her, sought her lips and her eyes, and she kissed him and then raised her face, repeating, "Play." He drew the imprisoned wrists still farther down, silently praying for the sweet, sweet mouth: then she surrendered, and pressed her lips upon his in a long kiss, full of understanding, and infinitely more exquisite, more exhilarating than the first. Then she once more whispered, "Play."