Chapter 8

She stopped him with an impatient gesture, wondering what Mochales was saying to Gheta. A possibility suddenly filled her with dread--it was evident that the Spaniard was growing hourly more absorbed in Gheta, and the latter might----Lavinia could not support the possibility of Abrego y Mochales married to her sister. But, she reassured herself, there was little danger of that--Gheta would never make a sacrifice for emotion; she would be sure of the comfortable material thing, and now more than ever.

Anna Mantegazza moved to a piano, which, in the obscurity, she began to play. The notes rose deliberate and melodious. Gheta Sanviano told Orsi:

“That's Iris. Do you remember, we heard it at the Pergola in the winter?”

“Do go over to her,” Lavinia whispered.

He rose heavily and went to Gheta's side, and Lavinia waited expectantly for Mochales to change too. The Spaniard shifted, but it was toward the piano, where he stood with the rosy reflection of his cigarette on a moody countenance. It was Pier Mantegazza who sat beside her, with a quizzical expression on his long gray visage. He said something to her in Latin, which she only partly understood, but which alluded to the changing of water into wine.

“I am a subject of jest,” he continued in Italian, “because I prefer water.”

She smiled with polite vacuity, wondering what he meant.

“You always satisfied me, Lavinia, with your dark smooth plait and white simplicity; you were cool and refreshing. Now they have made you only disturbing. I suppose it was inevitable, and with you the change will be temporary.”

“I'll never let my hair down again,” she retorted. “I've settled that with Gheta. Mother didn't care, really.”

She was annoyed by the implied criticism, his entire lack of response to her new being. He had grown blind staring at his stupid old coins.

A step sounded behind her; she turned hopefully, but it was only Cesare Orsi.

“The others have gone outside,” he told her, and she noticed that the piano had stopped.

Mantegazza rose and bowed in mock serious formality, at which Lavinia shrugged an impatient shoulder and walked with Orsi across the room and out upon the terrace.

Florence had sunk into a dark chasm of night, except for the curving double row of lights that marked the Lungarno and the indifferent illumination of a few principal squares. The stars seemed big and near in deep blue space. Orsi was standing very close to her, and she moved away; but he followed.

“Lavinia,” he muttered, and suddenly his arm was about her waist.

She leaned back, pushing with both hands against his chest; but he swept her irresistibly up to him and kissed her clumsily. A cold rage possessed her. She stopped struggling; yet there was no need to continue--he released her immediately and opened a stammering apology.

“I am a madman,” he admitted abjectly--“a little animal that ought to be shot. I don't know what came over me; my head was in a carnival. You must forgive or I shall be a maniac, I----”

She turned and walked swiftly into the house and mounted to her room. All the pleasure she had had in the evening, the Viennese gown, evaporated, left her possessed by an utter loathing of self. Now, in the mirror, she seemed hateful, the clouded chiffon and airy clinging satin unspeakable. Looking back out of the dim glass was a stranger who had betrayed and cheapened her. Her pure serenity revolted against the currents of life sweeping down upon her, threatening to inundate her.

She unhooked the Verlat gown with trembling fingers and--once more in simple white--dropped into a deep chair, where she cried with short painful inspirations, her face pressed against her arm. Her emotion subsided, changed to a formless dread, and again to a black sense of helplessness. Suddenly she rose and mechanically shook loose her hair--footsteps were approaching. Her sister entered, pale and vindictive.

“You are to be congratulated,” she proceeded thinly; “you made a success with everybody--that is, with all but Mochales. It was for him, wasn't it? You were very clever, but you failed ridiculously.”

Lavinia made no reply.

“I hope Mochales excuses you because of your greenness.”

“Youth isn't any longer your crime,” Lavinia retorted at last.

“That dress--it would suit Anna Mantegazza; but you looked only indecent.”

“Perhaps you're right, Gheta,” Lavinia said unexpectedly. “I'm going to bed now, please.”

Her balance, restored by sleep, was once more normal when she returned to the Lungarno. It was again late afternoon, the daily procession was returning from the Cascine, and Gheta was at the window, looking coldly down. The Marchesa Sanviano was knitting at prodigious speed a shapeless gray garment. They all turned when a servant entered:

Signer Orsi wished to see the marchese.

This unusual formality on the part of Cesare Orsi could have but one purpose, and Lavinia and their mother gazed significantly at the elder sister.

“The marchese is dressing,” his wife directed.

She drew a long breath of relief and nodded over her needles. Gheta raised her chin; her lips bore the half-contemptuous expression that lately had become habitual; her eyes were half closed.

Lavinia sat with her hands loose in her lap. She was wondering whether or not, should she make a vigorous protest, they would send her back to the convent. The Verlat gown was carefully hung in her closet. Last night she had been idiotic.

The Marchese Sanviano appeared hurriedly and alone; his tie was crooked and his expression very much disturbed. His wife looked up, startled.

“What!” she demanded directly. “Didn't he----”

“Yes,” Sanviano replied, “he did! He wants to marry Lavinia.”

Lavinia half rose, with a horrified protest; Gheta seemed suddenly turned to stone; the knitting fell unheeded from the marchesa's lap. Sanviano spread out his hands helplessly.

“Well,” he demanded, “what could I do?... A man with Orsi's blameless character and the Orsi banks!”

V

The house to which Cesare Orsi took Lavinia was built over the rim of a small steep island in the Bay of Naples, opposite Castellamare. It faced the city, rising in an amphitheater of bright stucco and almond blossoms, across an expanse of glassy and incredibly blue water. It was evening, the color of sky and bay was darkening, intensified by a vaporous rosy column where the ascending smoke of Vesuvius held the last upflung glow of the vanished sun. Lavinia could see from her window the pale distant quiver of the electric lights springing up along the Villa Nazionale.

The dwelling itself drew a long irregular façade of white marble on its abrupt verdant screen--a series of connected pavilions, galleries, pergolas, belvedere, flowering walls and airy chambers. There were tesselated remains from the time of the great pleasure-saturated Roman emperors, a later distinctly Moorish influence, quattrocento-painted eaves, an eighteenth-century sodded court, and a smoking room with the startling colored glass of the nineteenth.

The windows of Lavinia's room had no sashes; they were composed of a double marble arch, supported in the center by a slender twisted marble column, with Venetian blinds. She stood in the opening, gazing fixedly over the water turning into night. She could hear, from the room beyond, her husband's heavy deliberate footfalls; and the sound filled her with a formless resentment. She wished to be justifiably annoyed by them, or him; but there was absolutely no cause. Cesare Orsi's character and disposition were alike beyond reproach--transparent and heroically optimistic. Since their marriage she had been insolent, she had been both captious and continuously indifferent, without unsettling the determined eager good-nature with which he met her moods.

During the week he went by launch into Naples in the interests of his banking, and did not return for luncheon; and she had long uninterrupted hours for the enjoyment of her pleasant domain. Altogether, his demands upon her were reasonable to the point of self-effacement. He laughed a great deal; this annoyed her youthful gravity and she remonstrated sharply more than once, but he only leaned back and laughed harder. Then she would either grow coldly disdainful or leave the room, followed by the echo of his merriment. There was something impervious, like armor, in his excellent humor. Apparently she could not get through it to wound him as she would have liked; and she secretly wondered.

He was prodigal in his generosity--the stores of the Via Roma were prepared to empty themselves at her desire. Cesare Orsi's wife was a figure of importance in Naples. She had been made welcome by the Neapolitan society--lawn fêtes had been given in villas under the burnished leaves of magnolias on the height of Vomero. The Cavaliere Nelli, Orsi's cousin and a retired colonel of Bersaglieri, entertained lavishly at dinner on the terrace of Bertolini's; she went out to old houses looking through aged and riven pines at the sea.

She would have enjoyed all this hugely if she had not been married to Orsi; but the continual reiteration of the fact that she was Orsi's wife filled her with an accumulating resentment. The implication that she had been exceedingly fortunate became more than she could bear. The consequence was that, as soon as it could be managed, she ceased going about.

She was now at the window, immersed in a melancholy sense of total isolation; the water stirring along the masonry below, a call from a shadowy fishing boat dropping down the bay, filled her with longing for the cheerful existence of the Lungarno. She had had a letter from Gheta that morning, the first from her sister since she had left Florence, brief but without any actual expression of ill will. After all was said, she had brought Gheta a great disappointment; if she had been in the elder's place probably she would have behaved no better.... It occurred to her to ask Gheta to Naples. At least then she would have some one with whom to recall the pleasant trifles of past years. She would have liked to ask Anna Mantegazza, too; but this she knew was impossible--Gheta had not forgiven Anna for her part on the night that had resulted in Orsi's proposal for Lavinia.

She wondered, more obscurely, whether Abrego y Mochales was still in Florence. He loomed at the back of her thoughts, inscrutably dark and romantic. It piqued her that he had not made the slightest response to her palpable admiration. But he had been tremendously stirred by Gheta, who was never touched by such emotions.

A desire to see Mochales grew insidiously out of her speculations; a desire to talk about him, hear his name. Lavinia deliberately shut her eyes to the fact that this last became her principal reason for wishing to see Gheta.

She told Cesare, with a diffidence which she was unable to overcome, that she had written asking her sister for a visit. Seemingly he didn't hear her. They were at breakfast, on the wine-red tiling of a pergola by the water, and he had shaken his fist, with a rueful curse, in the direction of Naples. Before him lay an open letter with an engraved page heading.

“I said,” Lavinia repeated impatiently, “that Gheta will probably be here the last of the week.”

“The sacred camels!” Orsi exclaimed; then: “Oh, Gheta--good!” But he fell immediately into an angry reverie. “If I dared--” he muttered.

“What has stirred you up so?”

“It's difficult to explain to any one not born in Naples. Here, you see, all is not in order, like Florence; we have had a stormy time between brigands and secret factions and foreign rulers; and certain societies sprang up, necessary once, but now--when one still exists--a source of bribery and nuisance. This letter, for example, congratulates me on the possession of a charming bride; it expresses the devotion of a hidden organization, but points out that in order to guarantee your safety in a city where the guards are admittedly insufficient it will be necessary for me to forward two thousand lire at once.”

“You will, of course, ignore it.”

“I will certainly send the money at once.”

“What a cowardly attitude!” Lavinia declared contemptuously. “You allow yourself to be blackmailed like a common criminal.”

Orsi laughed, his equilibrium quickly restored.

“I warned you that a stranger could not understand,” he reminded her. “If the money weren't sent, in ten days or two weeks perhaps, there would be a little accident on the Chiaja--your carriage would be run into; you would be upset, confused, angry. There would be profuse apologies, investigation, perhaps arrests; but nothing would come of it. If the money was still held back something a little more serious would occur. Nothing really dangerous, you understand; but finally the two thousand lire would be gladly paid over and the accidents would mysteriously cease.”

“An outrage!” Lavinia asserted, and Orsi nodded.

“If you had an enemy,” he continued, “you could have her gown ruined in the foyer of the San Carlos; if it were a man he would be caught at his club with an uncomfortable ace in his cuff. At least so I'm assured. I haven't had any reason to look the society up yet.” He laughed prodigiously. “Even murders are ascribed to it. Careful, Cesare, or a new valet will cut your throat some fine morning and your widow walk away with a more graceful man!”

“Your jokes are so stupid.” Lavinia shrugged her shoulders.

He laid the letter on the table's edge and a wandering air bore it slanting to the floor, but he promptly recovered it.

“That must go in the safe,” he ended; “it is well to have a slight grasp on those gentlemen.”

He rose; and a few minutes later Lavinia saw his trim brown launch, with its awning and steersman in gleaming white, rushing through the bay toward Naples.

VI

The basin from which the launch plied lay inside a seawall inclosing a small placid rectangle with a walk all about and iron benches. Steps at the back, guarded by two great Pompeian sandstone urns, and pressed by a luxuriant growth, led up to the villa. Gheta looked curiously about as she stepped from the launch and went forward with her brother-in-law. Lavinia followed, with Gheta's maid and a porter in the rear.

Lavinia realized that her sister looked badly; in the unsparing blaze of midday the wrinkles about her eyes were apparent, and they had multiplied. Although it was past the first of June, Gheta was wearing a linen suit of last year; and--as her maid unpacked--Lavinia saw the familiar pink tulle and the lavender gown with the gold velvet buttons.

“Your dressmaker is very late,” she observed thoughtlessly.

A slow flush spread over the other's countenance; she did not reply immediately and Lavinia would have given a great deal to unsay her period.

“It isn't that,” Gheta finally explained; “the family find that I am too expensive. You see, I haven't justified their hopes and they have been cutting down.”

Her voice was thin, metallic; her features had sharpened like folded paper creased between the fingers.

“It's very good form here,” she went on, dancing about her room. It was hardly more than a marble gallery, the peristyle choked with flowering bushes, camellias and althea and hibiscus, barely furnished, and filled with drifting perfumes and the savor of the sea. “What a shame that these things must be got at a price!”

Lavinia glanced at her sharply; until the present moment that would have expressed her own attitude, but said by Gheta it seemed a little crude. It was, anyhow, painfully obvious, and she had no intention of showing Gheta the true state of her being.

“Isn't that so of everything--worth having?” she asked, adding the latter purely as a counter.

The elder drew up her fine shoulders.

“That's very courageous of you,” she admitted--“especially since everybody knew your opinion of Orsi. Heaven knows you made no effort to disguise your feeling to others.”

Lavinia smiled calmly; Cesare was really very thoughtful, and she said so. Gheta replied at a sudden tangent:

“Mochales has been a great nuisance.”

Lavinia was gazing through an opening in the leaves at the sparkling blue plane of the bay. She made no movement, aware of her sister's unsparing curiosity turned upon her, and only said:

“Really?”

“Spaniards are so tempestuous,” Gheta continued; “he's been whispering a hundred mad schemes in my ear. He gave up an important engagement in Madrid rather than leave Florence. I have been almost stirred by him, he is so slender and handsome.

“Simply every woman--except perhaps me--is in love with him.”

“There's no danger of your loving any one besides yourself.”

“I saw him the day before I left; told him where I was going. Then I had to beg him not to take the same train. He said he was going to Naples, anyhow, to sail from there for Spain. He will be at the Grand Hotel and I gave him permission to see me here once.”

Lavinia revolved slowly.

“Why not? He turned my head round at least twice.” She moved toward the door. “Ring whenever you like,” she said; “there are servants for everything.”

In her room she wondered, with burning cheeks, when Abrego y Mochales would come. Her sentimental interest in him had waned a trifle during the past busy weeks; but, in spite of that, he was the great romantic attachment of her life. If he had returned her love no whispered scheme would have been too mad. What would he think of her now? But she knew instinctively that there would be no change in Mochales' attitude. He was in love with Gheta; blind to the rest of the world.

She sat lost in a day-dream--how different her life would have been, married to the bull-fighter! She would have become a part of the fierce Spanish crowds at the ring, traveled to South America, seen the people heap roses, jewels, upon her idol....

Cesare Orsi stood in the doorway, smiling with oppressive good-nature.

“Lavinia,” he told her, “I've done something, and now I'm in the devil of a doubt.” He advanced, holding a small package, and sat on the edge of a chair, mopping his brow. “You see,” he began diffidently, “that is, as you must know, at first--you were at the convent--I thought something of proposing for your sister. Thank God,” he added vigorously, “I waited! Well, I didn't; although, to be completely honest, I knew that it came to be expected. I could see the surprise in your father's face. It occurred to me afterward that if I had brought Gheta any embarrassment I'd like to do something in a small way, a sort of acknowledgment. And to-day I saw this,” he held out the package; “it was pretty and I bought it for her at once. But now, when the moment arrives, I hesitate to give it to her. Gheta has grown so--so formal that I'm afraid of her,” he laughed.

Lavinia unwrapped the paper covering from a green morocco box and, releasing the catch, saw a shimmering string of delicately pink pearls.

“Cesare!” she exclaimed. “How gorgeous!” She lifted the necklace, letting it slide cool and fine through her fingers. “It's too good of you. This has cost hundreds and hundreds. I'll keep it myself.”

He laughed, shaking all over; then fell serious.

“Everything I have--all, all--is yours,” he assured her. Lavinia turned away with an uncomfortable feeling of falseness. “What do you predict--will Gheta take it, understand, or will she play the frozen princess?”

“If I know Gheta, she'll take it,” Lavinia promptly replied.

Orsi presented Gheta Sanviano with the necklace at dinner. She took it slowly from its box and glanced at the diamond clasp.

“Thank you, Cesare, immensely! What a shame that pink pearls so closely resemble coral! No one gives you credit for them.”

A feeling of shame for her sister's ungraciousness possessed Lavinia and mounted to angry resentment. She had no particular desire to champion Cesare, but the simplicity and kindness of his thought demanded more than a superficial admission. At the same time she had no intention of permitting Gheta any display of superiority here.

“You need only say they were from Cesare,” she observed coldly; “with him, it is always pearls.”

Such a tide of pleasure swept over her husband's countenance that Lavinia bit her lip in annoyance. She had intended only to rebuke Gheta and had not calculated the effect of her speech upon Cesare. She was scrupulously careful not to mislead the latter with regard to her feeling for him. She went to a rather needless extreme to demonstrate that she conducted herself from a sense of duty and propriety alone.

Her married life, she assured herself, already resembled the Mantegazzas', whose indifferent courtesy she had marked and wondered at. Perhaps in time, like them, she would grow accustomed to it; but now it took all her determination to maintain the smallest daily amenities. It was not that her actual condition was unbearable, but only that it was so tragically removed from what she had imagined; she had dreamed of romance, it had been embodied for her eager gaze--and she had married Cesare Orsi!

Gheta returned the necklace to its box and the dinner progressed in silence. The coffee was on when the elder sister said:

“I had a card from the Grand Hotel a while ago; Abrego y Mochales is there.”

“And there,” Orsi put in promptly, “I hope he'll stay, or sail for Spain. I don't want the clown about here.”

Gheta turned.

“But you will regret that,” she addressed Lavinia; “you always found him so fascinating.”

Lavinia's husband cleared his throat sharply; he was clearly impatiently annoyed.

“What foolishness!” he cried. “From the first, Lavinia has been scarcely conscious of his existence.”

Lavinia avoided her sister's mocking gaze, disturbed and angry.

“Certainly Signore Mochales must be asked here,” she declared.

“I suppose it can't be avoided,” Orsi muttered.

It was arranged that the Spaniard should dine with them on the following evening and Lavinia spent the intervening time in exploring her emotions. She recognized now that Gheta hated both Cesare and herself, and that she would miss no opportunity to force an awkward or even dangerously unpleasant situation upon them. Gheta had sharpened in being as well as in countenance to such a degree that Lavinia lost what natural affection for her sister she had retained.

This, in a way, allied her with Cesare. She was now able at least to survey him in a detached manner, with an impersonal comprehension of his good qualities and aesthetic shortcomings; and in pointing out to Gheta the lavish beauty of her--Lavinia's--surroundings, she engendered in herself a slight proprietary pride. She met Abrego y Mochales at the basin with a direct bright smile, standing firmly upon her wall.

Against the blue water shadowed by the promise of dusk he was a somber and splendid figure. Her heart undeniably beat faster and she was vexed when he turned immediately to Gheta. His greeting was intensely serious, his gaze so hungry that Lavinia looked away. It was vulgar, she told herself. Cesare met them above and greeted Mochales with a superficial heartiness. It was difficult for Cesare Orsi to conceal his opinions and feelings. The other man's gravity was superb.

At dinner conversation languished. Gheta, in a very low dress, had a bright red scarf about her shoulders, and was painted. This was so unusual that it had almost the effect of a disguise; her eyes were staring and brilliant, her fingers constantly fidgeting and creasing her napkin. Afterward she walked with Mochales to the corner of the belvedere, where they had all been sitting, and from there drifted the low continuous murmur of her voice, briefly punctuated by a deep masculine note of interrogation. Below, the water was invisible in the wrap of night. Naples shone like a pale gold net drawn about the sweep of its hills. A glow like a thumb print hung over Vesuvius; the hidden column of smoke smudged the stars.