What depths of affection there were in Lucrezia’s heart! Not many girls, he thought, would have shown so desperate an anxiety as hers for the safety of her old father and mother and her many brothers and sisters. He remembered the intensity of her fear, that had quite separated her from him as they ran together into Pontefiore, and he marvelled at the richness of her nature that could give so generously to those she loved. But how had she fared among the smoke and falling ruins of the town? It occurred to him that he had been neglectful of her, in his solicitude for the Madonna, and that now he had better go quickly and see what help Lucrezia needed.
He had no hesitation about taking the Madonna with him. Violence had very nearly released her from her context, and it was easy enough to complete the separation with a jack-knife. Like so many others, she was a victim of war, and though Angelo was well aware of his good fortune in discovering her, like a lost mistress on the road with refugees, he told himself that he was giving her protection and a home when he cut the panel along the line of bullet-holes, and wrapped the severed triangle in a pillowslip from the bed. The Countess, he admitted, might not have understood the propriety of his action, but she, by happy chance, was not there to see and dispute it. The Countess …
Among the rubble in the corridor Angelo halted with a new question in his mind. Where was the Countess? He had assumed, so far as he had given her a thought, that she had long since fled from the castle; but what reason had he for thinking that, except the natural but possibly misleading hope that it was so? She could still be there, lying wounded in a corner, unconscious probably, or imprisoned by a wall’s collapse. Sorely though Lucrezia might need him, he could not leave the castle until he had made sure of the Countess’s escape. With the Madonna’s head under his arm he returned down the quaking corridor to the summer drawing-room that overlooked the garden.
The floor was covered with torn paper, and the Countess lay upon a couch. She was breathing hoarsely, snoring a little indeed, but though her face was unnaturally pale she did not appear to have been hurt.
Angelo knelt beside her and gently shook her arm. She groaned, but her eyes did not open, and he was puzzled by an unusual odour in the room. He took her by the shoulder and shook her more roughly.
‘Oh dear,’ she said at last. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! Do go away and leave me.’
‘Madam,’ said Angelo, ‘the castle is on fire.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘I feel as if all the world was coming to an end, and a good thing too.’
‘You must get up,’ said Angelo. ‘We really shouldn’t waste time.’
‘There’s too much time,’ said the Countess. ‘That’s the trouble with life. Oh dear,’ she repeated as she sat up and looked at the enormous litter of torn paper. ‘Oh dear, I do feel ill.’
‘Are you wounded?’
‘No, not now. I was, but that was a long time ago. They tore up my books, all my lovely Ouidas, and I didn’t know how I could live without them. But then I remembered something. In time of sorrow, I remembered, people often take to drink. So I thought I’d try it too. And it works. Oh dear, it works! You drink a bottle of brandy, and when you wake up you don’t feel anything at all except your stomach rising and your head going round. Do go away, Angelo, I want to go to sleep.’
‘But the castle is on fire, madam!’
‘Why should you worry about that? It isn’t your castle.’
‘But you, madam –’
The Countess groaned and lay down again. Then she whispered, ‘There’s a bottle of champagne in the little cupboard in the corner. Open it, Angelo, and look for a glass.’
The cork hit the ceiling and Angelo held to her lips a gently foaming goblet. She emptied it as though it had held a doctor’s draught, and he poured another dose.
‘It’s certainly surprising,’ said the Countess, ‘how quickly you learn vicious ways, once you start them. They seem quite practical too, and that’s a thing I never realized before. Have a glass yourself, Angelo.’
‘Madam,’ said Angelo, ‘we must hurry. We really must!’
‘And so we shall, as soon as we’ve drunk some champagne and my head’s a little clearer. It’s getting clear already. Very clear indeed. Oh, I’m not deluding myself, Angelo. I know that self-indulgence ought to be followed by repentance, but the fact of the matter is that champagne suits me better. Give me a little more, and help yourself when you’re at it.’
‘Do try to realize what a serious situation we are in,’ said Angelo in a voice of distress. ‘The castle is burning, you can smell the smoke.’
‘It reminds me of home,’ said the Countess. ‘The drawing-room chimney always used to smoke. We only used it on a Sunday, and whenever the wind was in the north or the east, or if it was raining, the chimney smoked. We were well brought up, in Bradford, and a happy family too.’
Angelo made a gesture of despair. ‘I also have happy memories,’ he said, ‘and because of them I do not want to stay here and be burnt to a cinder. I want to go and look for Lucrezia. Half the houses in Pontefiore are in flames –’
‘Good God!’ exclaimed the Countess, rising from the sofa and swaying slightly. ‘Have the Germans set it on fire?’
‘Not the Germans,’ said Angelo, ‘but the Allies. They came over this morning and bombed it.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said the Countess.
‘But it is true! They made a mistake, I dare say, but a bomb has no political opinions and will explode in the wrong place quite as loudly as in the right place. Pontefiore, I give you my word, is now in ruins.’
‘Then why do you let me sit here drinking and gossiping when there’s work to be done? You’re no sense of responsibility, Angelo, that’s the trouble with you. Now give me your arm, and stop talking.’
The Countess quickly recovered herself, and when they found that the fire in the hall had burnt itself out, she accused Angelo of wilfully exaggerating the damage in order to frighten her.
‘I assure you,’ said Angelo, ‘that a little while ago the smoke was most alarming.’
‘It took more than a little smoke to alarm us in Bradford,’ said the Countess, and with only an occasional stumble set off at a good pace for the village. There, having quickly perceived the extent of the damage, she wasted neither time nor breath on exclamations of astonishment or grief, but organized as many people as she could find – they had now emerged from their hiding-places to gaze with impotent sorrow on the wreckage of their homes – and set them to work to search the ruins for other survivors, to save whatever could be saved, and knock down such walls as would otherwise tumble of themselves and might claim more victims in their fall. With the deepest gratification she remembered her decision to send the young people of the village into the woods. There would have been many more casualties had they remained.
Angelo took the earliest opportunity of escaping from her benign conscription, and still carrying the Madonna’s head in its pillowslip, went feverishly in search of Lucrezia. But nowhere in the village could he find her, and no one he met had lately seen her. The Donatis’ house was unhurt, but the door stood open and none of the family was in. He grew almost frantic with fearful imaginings of her fate, and returned again and again to streets he had already traversed and to houses he had searched twice or three times in vain. Then, wandering haphazardly on the outskirts of the village, he came to a little garden where small pear trees grew among beds of homely vegetables, onions and the like, and frogs were croaking in a brick-sided pond till someone, splashing the water with a stick, frightened them to silence. He looked over the wall and saw Lucrezia sitting on stone steps that descended from the house, and near her, by the waterside, a sturdy child some two years old whom she watched with a doting joy. Angelo’s delight in finding her knew no bounds, but she, apparently, took little pleasure in being discovered. She answered all his questions in the shortest way, and made no response whatever to his many protestations of love and gratification. He sat down beside her, bu
t she refused his embrace and presently there was silence between them. The child continued to beat the water with a stick.
‘Who is that little boy?’ asked Angelo.
‘His name is Tommaso.’
‘Whose child is he?’
‘How should I know? There are many children in the village.’
‘But everyone in Pontefiore knows everyone else.’
‘Not now. Things are different now. People come and go, and one does not inquire too closely who they are, or what they leave behind them.’
‘I see,’ said Angelo, and sighed. ‘It is a pity when things like that happen. He is a fine-looking child, however, much fairer than most of the children here. Has his mother also gone away?’
‘That would have been the wisest thing for her to do.’
‘Tommaso,’ said Angelo, frowning now. ‘His name is Tommaso? Lucrezia, when you left me this morning, and ran off on your own, that was the name you were shouting. You were calling Tommaso, Tommaso!’
‘Somebody has to look after these poor children who have no fathers.’
‘But you were very agitated.’
‘Naturally.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Is it not natural to worry about an orphan child who is being bombed and murdered and possibly burnt to death before your very eyes?’
‘Oh. Well, yes, I suppose it is.’
‘Well, then.’
Lucrezia, expressionless, stared straight in front of her, and Angelo could not think what to say next. In his mind a monstrous suspicion had come suddenly to life, and though he was very properly ashamed of it, he could not quell it, and Lucrezia’s words had done nothing to dispel it. She had merely made it difficult for him to ask more questions, unless he made a very blunt unmannerly inquiry; which he dared not do.
The orphan Tommaso continued to beat the water with his stick, but otherwise an embarrassed silence lay upon the garden. Then came a louder splash, a childish cry, abruptly muffled, and for a moment Tommaso’s legs appeared like sunburnt branches among a foliage of silver leaves. Briefly he vanished below the greenish surface of the water, and Lucrezia with a hoarse scream leapt to her feet and a moment later was groping in the wavy pool. Quickly she found and hauled ashore the choking boy, and clasped him dripping-wet to her bosom, and passionately kissed his distorted features. He yelled for half a minute, then recovered from his fright, and asked what had become of his stick. In a loving voice Lucrezia scolded him, took off his soaking clothes, and roughly dried him with her skirt. He escaped her grasp and ran naked to the other side of the pool. There he caught sight of a small green lizard panting on a warm stone, and stood stock-still to gaze at it. Lucrezia, sitting on her heels, watched him with adoring eyes.
Angelo’s voice, when he spoke to her, was so tremulous that he could hardly shape his words. His lips were dry, and the blood receding from his brain had left his cheeks a little pale, and made him feel weak and ill. ‘Lucrezia,’ he stammered, ‘that child –’
‘He is mine,’ she said.
He knelt beside her, speechless now. ‘You were away for three years,’ said Lucrezia.
‘You cannot blame me for that. It was not by my own choice but by force of circumstance that I became a soldier.’
‘Was it not more unnatural for you to become a soldier than for me to become a mother?’
‘So you are going to defend yourself?’ cried Angelo. ‘You are shameless, are you?’
‘I must speak for myself, because no one else will. Women are less fortunate than soldiers. The poets and historians of the world are always at hand to argue that soldiers are justified in their horrid trade of destroying life, but if a woman is guilty of creating life she can find no advocate but herself.’
‘This is not a proper occasion to become philosophical!’ said Angelo indignantly. ‘Philosophy is all very well in its way, but when a woman betrays the man who loves her, philosophy is merely an impertinence.’
‘I have done worse than that,’ said Lucrezia sadly. ‘I have betrayed the man whom I love.’
‘You have the hardihood to say that? You have the audacity to say that you still love me?’
‘I do,’ said Lucrezia.
‘You have chosen a strange way to prove it.’
‘I had other ways in mind. I had hoped that one of my sisters would look after Tommaso –’
‘To conceal your fault? You meant to go on deceiving me?’
‘You might have been happier if I had.’
Angelo hid his face in his hands, and in a muffled voice asked, ‘Who is the father?’
‘Why should I tell you that?’
‘I insist on your telling me!’
‘You have no right to know, unless you mean to forgive me.’
‘How can I forgive you unless I know all the circumstances?’
Lucrezia said slowly, ‘He is nothing to me now. Indeed, he is less than nothing, for we quarrelled long ago when he showed himself to be quite an untrustworthy person with whom, when I discovered his true character, I had no wish to associate.’ Her manner grew warmer, her voice more rapid. ‘Imagine my feelings,’ she said, ‘when I found that he was making love to other girls! Even before Tommaso was born he was having an affair with Vittoria Carpaccio, and then another with Francesca Cori, and quite lately he has got Bianca Miretti into trouble, who suffered already from a squint in one eye, about which she was extremely sensitive, and very soon she will have a great deal more to be ashamed of. That is the sort of man he turned out to be, after he had taken advantage of the little friendship that in decency I could not refuse him, and the sympathy that his plight demanded. No, Angelo, you need have no fear. He means nothing to me now, except as a type of selfish inconstancy that I heartily despise.’
‘But who is he?’ asked Angelo.
‘Do you remember the Englishman whom you saw in the castle when you came here last year?’
‘You mean Corporal Trivet?’
‘Does my conduct seem worse to you because he is a foreigner? But Angelo, that in fact was the reason for my weakness. He was so far from home, he was so lonely and terribly unhappy that I, being ignorant then of his true character, was sorry for him. It was pity that moved me, nothing else.’
‘You became his lover,’ said Angelo, ‘purely out of charity?’
‘I am sure that is the correct way to think of it,’ said Lucrezia.
‘He has a very pleasant way with him,’ said Angelo.
‘Until you know him really well,’ Lucrezia admitted, ‘he is an agreeable companion.’
‘And he is quite good-looking.’
‘Most certainly!’ said Lucrezia. ‘Do you think I would have misbehaved with anyone whose appearance was repulsive? I am not so wicked as that, I hope. Trivet has good features, white teeth, and truly handsome eyes. Tommaso has inherited his father’s eyes.’
‘You liked him, did you?’
‘But of course!’
‘So you let him make love to you,’ said Angelo, ‘not merely because you were sorry for him, but because that was what you wanted.’
‘How can you make such a dreadful suggestion!’ exclaimed Lucrezia. ‘No, Angelo, it is one thing to like a person, but quite another thing to want him to become the father of your orphan child. That I never desired. But I was sorry for Trivet in his loneliness, I felt for him in his unhappiness, and to comfort him I gave him my sympathy. There is the truth of the matter, whether you believe it or not.’
‘All over Italy,’ said Angelo, ‘there are girls who have become the mothers of orphan children whose fathers, for whom they felt no love but were infinitely sorry, were homeless Germans, disconsolate Englishmen, yearning Americans, melancholy Poles, miserable negroes, afflicted Greeks, desolate Scotchmen, woebegone Japs – yes, there are Japanese fighting on our side in the American army – and weeping Brazilians and suffering Goums.’
‘No, no!’ cried Lucrezia. ‘It is impossible to be sorry for a Goum.’
&nbs
p; ‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Angelo. ‘But all the others can inspire sympathy, I suppose, and because of that and the nature of women, there are orphans of every kind and colour in all the towns and villages of Italy, and their mothers have but the one excuse: it was charity that did it. They were kind to strangers, they were sympathetic beyond all care for themselves, and that is why their cradles are full and babies are crawling on every doorstep in the country. And this is happening, not only in Italy, but throughout the world. In England there are English girls who have been sorry for nice young men from New York and San Francisco, from Amsterdam and Bergen and Paris and Lyons, from Brussels and Warsaw and Montreal. In France they were sorry for the soldiers who first of all came from Birmingham and Leeds and Edinburgh, and then from Hamburg and Munich and Dresden, and now are arriving from Chicago and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. All over the world it is the same, and everywhere young women, with their orphan children in their arms or clinging to their skirts, cry to their startled sweethearts and bewildered husbands, “But we did it out of charity!” – And what are the men to say? Are they to remove their hats and lower their eyes, look humbly to the ground and say, “You are nobler creatures than we ever realized. Thank God and you for this lesson you have taught us!” Or are they to say, “You were wantons from the beginning, and now you are liars in addition, so out of my house with you and never return!’”
‘It will be better for everyone,’ said Lucrezia, ‘if they believe.’
‘That charity was the motive?’
‘Yes,’ said Lucrezia. ‘For charity is the Christian virtue. On charity our faith must stand or fall.’
‘But if their plea is false?’ demanded Angelo. ‘Suppose there was no charity in the act, and nothing but simple lust? What shall a man do then?’
‘If a woman pleads that charity was the motive,’ said Lucrezia, ‘it shows that she is aware of the high place that charity should have in life. It is an aspiration to virtue on her part that she should lay claim to charity. She has the seeds of virtue in her, if not virtue itself, because she knows the poor world’s need of charity. Give her credit for that, and believe her if you can.’
Private Angelo Page 20
