The change in his life became very dear to him, as all these things passed quickly through his mind; and with the consciousness of vivid contrast came the certainty that he loved Flavia far better than he had believed possible.
“And what shall I call you?” he asked, rather bluntly. He did not quite know whether it would be wise to use any term of endearment or not. Indeed, this was the weak point in his experience, but he supplemented the deficiency by a rough tenderness which was far from disagreeable to Flavia.
“Anything you like, dear,” she answered. San Giacinto felt the blood rush to his head with pleasure as he heard the epithet.
“Anything?” he asked, with a very unwonted tremour in his voice.
“Anything — provided you will love me,” she replied. He thought he had never seen such wicked, fascinating eyes. He drew her face to his and looked into them a moment, his own blazing suddenly with a passion wholly new to him.
“I will not call you anything — instead of calling you, I will kiss you — so — is it not better than any name?”
A deep blush spread over Flavia’s face and then subsided suddenly, leaving her very pale. For a long time neither spoke again.
“Did your father tell you the news before we left?” asked San Giacinto at last, when they were rolling over the Campagna along the Via Latina.
“No — what?”
“It is somewhat remarkable news. If you are afraid of fainting,” he added, with rough humour, “hold your bottle of salts ready.”
Flavia looked up uneasily, wondering whether there were anything wrong about San Giacinto. She knew very well that her father had been glad to get rid of her.
“I am not San Giacinto after all,” he said quietly. Flavia started and drew back.
“Who are you then?” she asked quickly.
“I am Prince Saracinesca, and you are the princess.” He spoke very calmly, and watched her face to see the effect of the news.
“I wish you were!” she exclaimed nervously. She wondered whether he was going mad.
“There seems to be no doubt about it,” he answered, “your father informed me of the fact as a wedding present. He has examined all the papers and will send the lawyers out to Frascati to prepare the case with me.”
He told her the whole story in detail. As he proceeded, a singular expression came into Flavia’s face, and when he had finished she broke out into voluble expressions of joy.
“I always knew that I was born to be a princess — I mean a real one! How could I be anything else? Oh! I am so happy, and you are such a darling to be a prince! And to think that if papa had not discovered the papers, those horrid Sant’ Ilario people would have had everything. Princess Saracinesca! Eh, but how it sounds! Almost as good as Orsini, and much nicer with you, you great big, splendid lion! Why did they not call you Leone? It is too good to be true! And I always hated Corona, ever since I was a little girl and she was the Astrardente, because she used to say I did not behave well and that Faustina was much prettier — I heard her say so when I was behind the curtains. Why did you not find it out ever so long ago? Think what a wedding we should have had, just like Sant’ Ilario’s! But it was very fine after all, and of course there is nothing to complain of. Evviva! Evviva! Do give me one of those cigarettes — I never smoked in my life, and I am so happy that I know it will not hurt me!”
San Giacinto had his case in his hand, and laughed as he presented it to her. Quiet as he was in his manner he was far the happier of the two, as he was far more capable of profound feeling than the wild girl who was now his wife. He was glad, too, to see that she was so thoroughly delighted, for he knew well enough that even after he had gained the suit he would need the support of an ambitious woman to strengthen his position. He did not believe that the Saracinesca would submit tamely to such a tremendous shock of fortune, and he foresaw that their resentment would probably be shared by a great number of their friends.
Flavia looked prettier than ever as she put the bit of rolled paper between her red lips and puffed away with an energy altogether unnecessary. He would not have believed that, being already so brilliant and good to see, a piece of unexpected good news could have lent her expression so much more brightness. She was positively radiant, as she looked from his eyes at her little cigarette, and then, looking back to him again, laughed and snapped her small gloved fingers.
“Do you know,” she said presently, with a glance that completed the conquest of San Giacinto’s heart, “I thought I should be dreadfully shy with you — at first — and I am not in the least! I confess, at the very moment when you were putting the ring on my finger I was wondering what we should talk about during the drive.”
“You did not think we should have such an agreeable subject of conversation, did you?”
“No — and it is such a pretty ring! I always wanted a band of diamonds — plain gold is so common. Did you think of it yourself or did some one else suggest the idea?”
“Castellani said it was old-fashioned,” answered San Giacinto, “but I preferred it.”
“Would you have liked one, too?”
“No. It would be ridiculous for a man.”
“You have very good taste,” remarked Flavia, eyeing him critically.
“Where did you get it? You used to keep a hotel in Aquila, did you not?”
San Giacinto had long been prepared for the question and did not wince nor show the slightest embarrassment. He smiled calmly as he answered her.
“You would hardly have called it a hotel, it was a country inn. I daresay I shall manage Saracinesca all the better for having kept a hostelry.”
“Of course. Oh, I have such a delightful idea! Let us go to Aquila and keep the hotel together. It would be such fun! You could say you had married a little shop-keeper’s daughter in Rome, you know. Just for a month, Nino — do let us do it! It would be such a change after society, and then we would go back for the Carnival. Oh, do!”
“But you forget the lawsuit—”
“That is true. Besides, it will be just as much of a change to be Princess Saracinesca. But we can do it another time. I would like so much to go about in an apron with a red cotton handkerchief on my head and see all the queer people! When are the lawyers coming?”
“During the week, I suppose.”
“There will be a fight,” said Flavia, her face growing more grave. “What will Sant’ Ilario and his father say and do? I cannot believe that it will all go so smoothly as you think. They do not look like people who would give up easily what they have had so long. I suppose they will be quite ruined.”
“I do not know. Corona is rich in her own right, and Sant’ Ilario has his mother’s fortune. Of course, they will be poor compared with their present wealth. I am sorry for them—”
“Sorry?” Flavia looked at her husband in some astonishment. “It is their own fault. Why should you be sorry?”
“It is not exactly their fault. I could hardly have expected them to come to me and inform me that a mistake had been made in the last century, and that all they possessed was mine.”
“All they possessed!” echoed Flavia, thoughtfully. “What a wonderful idea it is!”
“Very wonderful,” assented San Giacinto, who was thinking once more of his former poverty.
The carriage rolled on and both were silent for some time, absorbed in dreaming of the greatness which was before them in the near future, San Giacinto enumerating in his mind the titles and estates which were soon to be his, while Flavia imagined herself in Corona’s place in Rome, grown suddenly to be a central figure in society, leading and organising the brilliant amusements of her world, and above all, rejoicing in that lavish use of abundant money which had always seemed to her the most desirable of all enjoyments.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FAUSTINA MONTEVARCHI WAS delighted when her sister was at last married and out of the house. The two had always been very good friends, but Faustina felt that she had an enemy in San Giacinto and was re
lieved when he was gone. She had no especial reason for her suspicions, since he treated her with the same quiet and amicable politeness which he showed to the rest of the household; but her perceptions were extraordinarily true and keen, and she had noticed that he watched her whenever Gouache was in the room, in a way that made her very uncomfortable. Moreover, he had succeeded of late in making Flavia accompany her to early mass on Sunday mornings on pretence of his wishing to see Flavia without the inevitable supervision of the old princess. The plan was ingenious; for Faustina, instead of meeting Gouache, was thus obliged to play chaperon while her sister and San Giacinto talked to their hearts’ content. He was a discreet man, however, and Flavia was ignorant of the fact that Faustina and Anastase had sometimes met in the same way, and would have met frequently had they not been prevented. The young girl was clever enough to see why San Giacinto acted as he did; she understood that he was an ambitious man, and that, as he was about to ally himself with her family, he would naturally disapprove of her attachment to Gouache. Now that he was gone, she wondered whether he had devised any steps which would take effect after his departure.
Faustina was quite as much in love as Gouache himself, and spent much time in calculating the chances of a favourable issue from the situation in which she found herself. Life without Anastase was impossible, but the probabilities of her becoming his wife in the ordinary course of events were very few, as far as she was able to judge, and she had moments of extreme depression, during which she despaired of everything. The love of a very young girl may in itself be both strong and enduring, but it generally has the effect of making her prone to extremes of hope and fear, uncertain of herself, vacillating in her ideas, and unsteady in the pursuit of the smaller ends of life. Throw two equal weights into the scales of a perfectly adjusted balance, the arm will swing and move erratically many times before it returns to its normal position, although there is a potential equilibrium in the machine which will shortly assert itself in absolute tranquillity.
Love in a very young person is rarely interesting, unless it is attended by heroic or tragic circumstances. Human life is very like the game of chess, of which the openings are so limited in number that a practised player knows them all by heart, whereas the subsequent moves are susceptible of infinite variation. Almost all young people pass through the early stages of existence by some known gambit, which, has always a definite influence upon their later lives, but never determines the latter entirely. The game is played between humanity on the one side and the unforeseen on the other; but that which can really not be foretold in some measure rarely presents itself until the first effects of love have been felt, a period which, to continue the simile, may be compared in chess to the operation of castling. Then comes the first crisis, and the merest tyro knows how much may depend upon whether he castles on the king’s side or on the queen’s.
Now the nature of Faustina’s first love was such as to make it probable that it would end in some uncommon way. There was something fatal in the suddenness with which her affection had grown and had upset the balance of her judgment. It is safe to say that not one young girl in a million would have behaved as she had done on the night of the insurrection in Rome; not one in a hundred thousand would, in her position, have fallen in love with Gouache.
The position of the professional artist and of the professional man of letters in modern European society is ill defined. As a man who has been brought up in a palace would undoubtedly betray his breeding sooner or later if transported to live amongst a gang of thieves, so a man who has grown to years of discretion in the atmosphere of studios or in the queer company from which most literary men have sprung, will inevitably, at one time or another, offend the susceptibilities of that portion of humanity which calls itself society. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. Among a set of people whose profession it is to do always, and in all things, precisely what their neighbours do, the man who makes his living by doing what other people cannot do, must always be a marked figure. Look at modern society. It cannot toil nor spin; it can hardly put together ten words in a grammatical sequence. But it can clothe itself. The man of letters can both toil and write good English, but his taste in tailoring frequently leaves much to be desired. If he would put himself in the hands of Poole, and hold his tongue, he might almost pass for a member of society. But he must needs talk, and his speech bewrayeth him for a Galilean. There are wits in society, both many and keen, who can say something original, cutting and neatly turned, upon almost any subject, with an easy superiority which makes the hair of the learned man stand erect upon his head. The chief characteristic of him who lives by his brains is, that he is not only able to talk consecutively upon some subject, but that he actually does so, which, in society, is accounted a monstrous crime against manners. Let him write what he wants to say, and print it; society will either not understand him at all, or will read his works with a dictionary in the secrecy of its own chamber. But if he will hold his tongue in public, society will give him a cup of tea and treat him almost like a human being for the sake of being said to patronise letters. Any one who likes society’s tea may drink his fill of it in consideration of wearing a good coat and keeping his wits to himself, but he will not succeed in marrying any of society’s sisters, cousins or aunts without a severe struggle.
Anastase Gouache did not quite understand this. He sometimes found himself amidst a group of people who were freely discussing some person unknown to him. On such occasions he held his peace, innocently supposing that his ignorance was without any importance whatsoever, among a set of men and women with whom not to know every detail concerning every one else is to be little better than an outcast.
“Now do tell me all about the Snooks and Montmorency divorce,” says Lady Smyth-Tompkins with a sweetly engaging smile, as she holds out her hand.
“I did not know there was such a case — I don’t know the people,” you answer.
“Oh! I thought, of course, you knew all about it,” Lady Smyth-Tompkins replies, and her features turn to stone as she realises that you do not know everybody, and leaves you to your own reflections.
O Thackeray, snobissme maxime! How well you knew them!
There are no snobs among the Latin races, but there is a worse animal, the sycophant, descended directly from the dinner-tables of ancient Rome. In old-fashioned houses there are often several of them, headed invariably by the “giornale ambulante,” the walking newspaper, whose business it is to pick up items of news during the day in order to detail them to the family in the evening. There is a certain old princess who sits every evening with her needlework at the head of a long table in the dismal drawing-room of a gigantic palace. On each side of the board are seated the old parasites, the family doctor, the family chaplain, the family lawyer, the family librarian, the peripatetic news-sheet and the rest.
“I have been out to-day,” says her excellency.
“Oh! Ah! Dear me! In this weather! Hear what the princess says! The princess has been out!” The chorus comes up the table, all the answers reaching her ears at once.
“And I saw, as I drove by, the new monument! What a ridiculous thing it is.”
“Ho! ho! ho! Hah! hah! hah! Dear me! What a monument! What fine taste the princess has! Hear what the princess thinks of the monument!”
“If you will believe it, the bronze horse has a crooked leg.” “He! he! he! Hi! hi! hi! Dear me! A crooked leg! How the princess understands horses! The princess saw that he had a crooked leg!”
And so on, for a couple of hours, in the cold, dimly-lighted room until her excellency has had enough of it and rises to go to bed, when the parasites all scuttle away and quarrel with each other in the street as they walk home. Night after night, to decades of years, the old lady recounts the little journal of her day to the admiring listeners, whose chorus of approval is performed daily with the same unvarying regularity. The times are changing now; the prince is not so easily amused, and the sycophant has accordingly acquir
ed the art of amusing, but there still survive some wonderful monuments of the old school.
Anastase Gouache was a man of great talent and of rising fame, but like other men of his stamp he preferred to believe that he was received on a friendly footing for his own sake rather than on account of his reputation. In his own eyes, he was, as a man, as good as those with whom he associated, and had as much right to make love to Faustina Montevarchi as the young Frangipani, for whom her father destined her. Faustina, on her part, was too young to appreciate the real strength of the prejudices by which she was surrounded. She could not understand that, although the man she loved was a gentleman, young, good-looking, successful, and not without prospects of acquiring a fortune, he was yet wholly ineligible as a husband. Had she seen this ever so clearly it might have made but little difference in her feelings; but she did not see it, and the disparaging remarks about Anastase, which she occasionally heard in her own family, seemed to her utterly unjust as well as quite unfounded. The result was that the two young people were preparing for themselves one of those terrible disappointments of which the consequences are sometimes felt during a score of years. Both, however, were too much in love to bear suspense very long without doing something to precipitate the course of events, and whenever they had the chance they talked the matter over and built wonderful castles in the air.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 395
