To Leeward Part 24

"Meanwhile," said Marcantonio, "you will oblige me by giving up your harmless habit of going out with him every day. I should have supposed that you would at least have had the pride to deny it, after what occurred when he was here." Marcantonio was angry, but he reasoned rightly.

"You would have preferred that I should lie to you, my dear," said his wife disdainfully, in the full virtue of having told half the truth--the first half.

"I would not permit myself to apply such a word to anything you say,"

answered Marcantonio, with cold courtesy. "But I would have you observe that you are mistaken with regard to my sister, and that if she told me she heard the man insult you, he did. Perhaps you did not understand what he said. It is the same. You will not meet him again at the rocks--nor anywhere else."

"Why not? Why shall I not meet him?" she inquired, raising her eyebrows in disdain.

"Because I forbid you." He spoke shortly, as if that ended the matter.

Leonora shrugged her shoulders a little, with an expression of pity, and shifted her position, so as to face him.

"You forbid me, do you?" she asked, lowering her voice.

"Mais oui! I forbid you to see him anywhere."

"Do you know what you are saying?" she asked, and there was a tone of menace in her words.

"Oh, perfectly," answered her husband calmly; "and I will also take care that you obey me--bien entendu!"

"Then it is war?" asked Leonora, as though she hoped it might be, and to the knife.

"If you disobey, it is war," said Marcantonio, "but you will not."

"Why not?"

"Because I will prevent you. It is useless to prolong this discussion."

"Mon Dieu, I ask nothing better than to finish it as soon as possible,"

said Leonora.

"In that case, good-night," replied Marcantonio, rising.

"Good-night," answered Leonora, still seated. "I am not sleepy yet. You are not afraid that Monsieur Batis...o...b.. will be announced after you are gone to bed?"

She spoke scornfully, as though trying to drive a wound with every word.

She thought she knew her husband, and she felt triumphant.

Marcantonio did not answer, and withdrew in silence. In a few hours his whole character had developed, and he was a very different man from the Marcantonio of that morning. He had pa.s.sed through a few hours of a desperate crisis, and had come out of it with an immovable determination to clear up the whole affair, and to force his wife to break off her intimacy with Batis...o...b... Even now he could believe no evil,--only the foolish infatuation of a young woman for a man who had the romantic faculty strongly developed. It would cost an effort to break it off,--and Leonora would be very much annoyed, of course,--but it must be done. And so Marcantonio had gone about it in the boldest and simplest way, by attacking her directly. He congratulated himself, for at one stroke he had ascertained the truth of the servant's statement, and had gone through the much dreaded scene with his wife. Henceforth she knew what to expect; he had declared himself as a jealous husband, and had said he would be obeyed. He went to bed in the consciousness that he had done the best thing possible under the circ.u.mstances, and promising himself an early explanation with Batis...o...b...

But for all the success of this first move, he was wretchedly unhappy.

He still loved Leonora, as he would always love her, whatever she did, with all his might and main, though he saw well enough that she did not love him. But he was furiously jealous, and he swore by all the saints in the calendar that she should never love any one else. His jealousy had made a man of him.

CHAPTER XVI.

It was clear that after what had pa.s.sed between Leonora and her husband, the relations must a.s.sume the aspect described in diplomatic language as "strained," to say the least of it. The two met many times in the course of the day, and never referred to the subject of their difference; but Leonora was well aware that she was watched. If ever she sallied out into the garden, hoping to escape observation, her husband was at hand, offering to accompany her. She once even went so far as to go down some distance with him towards the rocks, she could not tell why,--perhaps because it would have been a comfort to her to catch a glimpse of Julius in the boat. But he was probably lurking behind the rocks, just out of sight, and she could not see him. She knew that he still kept his watch during half the day, not having yet invented a better plan,--for she was in correspondence with him,--and in the meanwhile, until new arrangements could be made, there was a bare chance that she might escape for a moment in the morning and be able to see him. Her husband never left her side in the afternoon.

Temistocle, the knave, had failed in his attempt to gain Marcantonio's favour, as has been seen, but he now reaped a golden harvest from the lovers, who paid him handsomely for carrying letters, with a reckless feeling that if he betrayed them the deluge might come,--but that without him they were utterly cut off from each other. He had at first carefully opened one or two letters and skilfully closed them again, but had desisted on finding that they were written in English, a language he unfortunately did not understand. It was now his business to encourage the correspondence to the best of his ability, in order that whenever it should be convenient to spring the mine, he might have some letter pa.s.sing through his hands, which he could show to Marcantonio. He made a bargain with an old man who had a little donkey cart, to hang about the lane leading to the villa in the afternoon hours, when Temistocle, being free from the cares of the pantry, found it convenient to play postman.

As the distance was considerable, and as Batis...o...b.. always gave him a gold piece for a letter, and Leonora another, he thought he could afford himself ten sous a day for the hire of his primitive cab, without any reckless extravagance.

The first letter he had carried was to Batis...o...b... Leonora informed him briefly of the scene with her husband, and begged that he would wait as usual for a few days, or until something better could be devised. But he waited in vain. Then he wrote and proposed that she should drive somewhere and meet him. But she answered that her husband always drove with her when she went out. He proposed to get into the garden at night, to scale her window,--anything. But Marcantonio had bought a brace of abominable English terriers that howled as though they had swallowed a banshee. Marcantonio also kept pistols, and slept with his windows open.

Meanwhile Marcantonio would have given anything to catch Batis...o...b.. and call upon him for an explanation,--but he was afraid to leave his wife for an hour, lest she should have an opportunity of going down to the sea. He could never be quite certain whether Batis...o...b.. were there or not, for the latter had grown cautious and lay very quietly in his boat just out of sight, knowing that Leonora would call if she wanted him, according to the agreement, and he only came in the morning now and waited till twelve o'clock, in order to be at home to receive her letters in the afternoon. Yet Marcantonio would not employ a spy to watch whether Batis...o...b.. were on the water. He could not do that--it was too utterly mean.

Leonora grew pale and thin. She was as thoroughly in love with Julius as a woman of strong temper and impulse can be with the first man she has ever cared for. She dreamed of him, thought of him, longed for him, during every hour of the day and night. He was to her the realisation of the strongest fancy of her life, the pa.s.sionate, ruthless, all-daring lover; and the consciousness of utter wrong that underlay her feelings only lent the strength of moral desperation to her pa.s.sion.

Having lost all right to other things, she had that left, and only that, on which to rely for all the happiness the world owed her. She would go to the end of it, and enjoy it all, now that she had found it; and then--then she would die, she said to herself, and no one should suffer by her fault. But she was long past the elementary stage, when love can be put upon a block and modelled and shaped with tools, or pulled to pieces, at will, being as yet but a fragile clay sketch and very yielding. The clay had been done into marble, and the marble set up in the inmost sanctuary of the temple,--and if the idol were broken the pieces could not be joined, and the temple must be empty and bare forever. It had come about very quickly--but what of that? Who shall say that pa.s.sion born in a moment, ready armed, is not so strong and enduring as that which is evolved like man from a pitiful thing with a tail--a mere flirtation, to the semblance of humanity, to the G.o.dlike presence of true love?

Or who shall tell us that love is less a real thing, because it is evil instead of being good? Devils are quite as real as angels, as I have no doubt many of us will find in due time. Do not underrate the strength of a thing because it is bad, nor doubt its reality because you do not like its looks.

Leonora was in love with all her might, and it makes no difference in the effect upon the individual whether love is lawful or not, so long as it is thwarted and opposed at every turn. Her character, from being vague and indistinct, reaching out after many things, and never wholly grasping any, had suddenly become definite and full of a mature purpose--the purpose to love Julius recklessly, without consideration or question. The one real thing which remained possible for her had come, dominating and crushing down the army of her most favourite unrealities.

The man she loved stood out from the chaotic darkness of the past and from the dreary shadows of the present as a glorious figure of light, magnificent in all that could be n.o.blest; and she gave to him her soul, her life, and her strength, without hesitation and without fear. She had no remorse, no pity for her husband, no present consciousness of sin, for she was too near the wrong, and too new to it, not to enjoy it.

The traditional hardened sinner, the very monstrosity and arch-deformity of complicated vice, held up by preachers as a bugbear and a moral scarecrow to the young, the creature without heart, conscience, or capacity of good, does not enjoy his wickedness in the least. It has lost its novelty for him and its sharp, peppery savour. The people who really enjoy it are young; they are those who have tasted little of life, and have yet all the sensibility and refinement of palate that can distinguish between one sauce and another--between green, red, and black pepper. They have dreamed of the pepper, have never been allowed to have it, and have been fed on a kind of moral pap that disagreed with them from childhood. Suddenly the spice is within their reach, and they make to themselves a glorious feast of hot things, vaguely hoping that they will recover from the indigestion before they are found out. And sometimes they do, though the recovery is very painful--and sometimes they do not.

Leonora had subsisted on what she could get in the way of enjoyment, but her capacity far exceeded the supply that presented itself. She was not one of those people who can live for days in happiness from one sight of something beautiful, from a glimpse at a great picture, or from the memory of one strain of music. She liked all that was artistic, and especially that which was admirable for novelty, fineness of execution, or boldness of conception. She was not impressed with the beauty of small and unpretending things,--the art that amused her was necessarily of the most brilliant kind. The people she liked were the stirring, active, original people who either make history or make public fools of themselves, or both. The philosophies she had dabbled in were such as could produce in her a sensation of odd possibility rather than such as could satisfy a logical intellect, and they resolved themselves into a vast sea of aspirations, emotions, and potential pa.s.sions, in which she loved to disport herself, diving and splashing and floating, like a magnificent sea-nymph in fullest enjoyment of her wild vitality,--sitting, an hour afterwards, on some lonely rock, and wringing her white hands to heaven in despair, because, being but half divine, she was less G.o.ddess-like than the great G.o.ddesses of Olympus.

She could not help it if she grew pale and thin,--she was so wretched without him; and, without his letters and the sense that he was not so very far from her after all, she would have gone mad. She would sit for hours in her room staring at nothing; or she would go through elaborate processes of toilet before the gla.s.s, looking at herself and wondering if he would find her changed,--perhaps that very day some chance would offer, and she might see him. Everything was possible. That was the colour he liked best, and that bit of jewelry,--put it on, in case he should come. And again, she would change it all, because she would not wear for her husband the things she wore for her sweet lover; and then she would change once more, perhaps, and put back the colours and the ornaments he loved, so that she might the better think of him while she was with Marcantonio; she had a thousand idle thoughts and fancies which she strove hard to train into the semblance of a little happiness, the hollowest image of a little joy.

The days came and went miserably for nearly a fortnight. In all that time Marcantonio watched her closely, never relaxing in his vigilance.

She might have escaped, perhaps, but she would have been missed in half an hour, and she had not the courage to do anything so desperate,--the time must come, she thought, when things should change. But meanwhile she grew haggard and worn.

Marcantonio had abandoned the idea of sending for a friend to deal with Batis...o...b... What he had to say could, he thought, best be said directly, and there could then be no difficulty in establishing a pretext for fighting. But first of all he must keep his wife out of danger. Feeling that he held her entirely at his mercy, he was willing to take some time for deliberation. She could not see Julius, and it would be the best possible test to ascertain how she bore the trial. Marcantonio had grown hard and calculating in his jealousy, but he ground his teeth as he watched her and saw that she was falling ill,--and it was not so much for sympathy with her, as for anger that she should so love another. At last he determined upon a new course.

"Leonora," he said briefly, one day, "we will leave this place immediately, since it does not suit you. Will you be so amiable as to give orders to have your things packed?"

Leonora started a little, and looked at him. It was not often that she cared to look at him now.

"Why do you wish to go?" she asked at last.

"Because, as I said, this place does not suit you. You are ill--miserable. Ma foi! do you think I will allow you to stay in a place where you are always pale and eat nothing?"

"I am not ill," said she, "and I have a very good appet.i.te. I do not wish to go away. Besides, you have taken the villa for the whole summer.

It would be such a useless waste of money to move again."

"Ah! You become economical. It is very well; but economy does not enter into this case at all. We will go to Cadenabbia, or to any place in the lakes, where it is far cooler."

"I do not mind the heat," said Leonora, "as you know. Why not say at once that you are tired of Sorrento, and wish to go away to please yourself? It would be much simpler and more honest."

"Pardon me, my dear, I am perfectly well here. I could spend the rest of my life at Sorrento. But you are not well--whatever the cause may be--and there is a possibility that you may be better elsewhere. Donc"--

"Oh, of course," interrupted Leonora, "if you have made up your mind I must submit. If you think you can make me more miserable anywhere else than you can here, I must let you try. I hardly think you can. You might be satisfied. Nevertheless, let us go."

"I do not wish to make you miserable, you know perfectly. I wish to make you happy and free."

"Free?" repeated Leonora. "Indeed, you have a singular fashion of making me free, to watch me day and night, as though I intended to run away with your silver. Free, indeed! Free from what?"