‘Why are you going? Has it anything to do with the Corleone?’ she asked, and she was surprised at the unsteadiness of her own voice.
‘Yes. I will tell you some other time.’
‘Will you?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
She looked into his eyes a moment, and then took Campodonico’s arm again. Orsino moved on quickly and disappeared in the ballroom they had left, wondering inwardly at his mother’s manner as much as she was then wondering herself, and attributing it to her anxiety about his position with regard to Vittoria. Thinking of that, he stopped short in his walk just as he caught sight of the young girl in the distance, standing beside her mother. A man was before her evidently just asking her to dance. Orsino watched them while he tried to get hold of himself and decide what he ought to do.
Vittoria came forward and swept out with her partner into the middle of the room. Orsino slipped back a little behind a group of people, so that she should not easily see him, but he watched her face keenly. Her eyes were restless, and she was evidently looking for him, and not thinking of her partner at all. As they came round to his side, Orsino felt the blood rise in his throat, and felt that his face was warm; and then, as they swung off to the other side of the big ballroom, he grew cool again, and asked himself what he should do, repeating the question rather helplessly. She came round once more, and just as he felt the same heat of the blood again, he saw that her eyes had caught his. In a flash her expression changed, and the colour blushed in her face. A moment later she stopped, and remained standing with her partner so that Orsino could see the back of her head. She half turned towards him two or three times, instinctively; but she would not turn quite round so as to look at him. She knew that she must finish the dance before he could come to her.
But he, deeply stirred, and, at the same time, profoundly discontented with himself, suddenly left the room and went on till he stood all alone, out on one of the bridges which crossed the street to the garden at the back of the palace. The bridge was in the shadow, but the white moonlight fell full upon the fountain and the walks beyond; and moonlight has an extraordinary effect on people who do not habitually live in camps, or out of doors, at night. The sun shows us what is, but the moon makes us see what might be.
Orsino leaned against the stone parapet in the shadow, and made one of those attempts at self-examination which every honourable man has made at least once in his life, and which, with nine men out of ten, lead to no result, because, at such times the mind is in no state to examine anything, least of all itself. Indeed, no healthy-minded man resorts to that sort of introspection unless he is in a most complicated situation, since such a man is normally always perfectly conscious of what is honourable and right, without any self-analysis, or picking to pieces of his own conscience.
But Orsino Saracinesca was in great difficulty. He did not question the fact that he was very much in love with Vittoria, and that this love for a young girl was something which he had never felt before. That was plain enough, by this time. The real question was, whether he should marry her, or whether he should go away to Sicily with San Giacinto and try to avoid her in future until he should have more or less forgotten her.
He was old enough and sensible enough to foresee the probable consequences of marrying into such a family, and they were such as to check him at the outset. He knew all about the Pagliuca people, as his father did, and the phrase ‘the worst blood in Italy’ was familiar to his thoughts. Vittoria’s mother was, indeed, a harmless soul, provincial and of unusual manners, but not vulgar in the ordinary sense of the word. Vittoria’s father was said to have been a very good kind of man, who had been outrageously treated by his elder brother. But the strain was bad. There were hideous stories of treachery, such as Giovanni had quoted to his wife, which were alone enough to make Orsino hesitate. And then, there were Vittoria’s brothers, for whom he felt the strongest repulsion and distrust. In many ways it would have been wiser for him to marry a girl of the people, a child of Trastevere, rather than Vittoria d’Oriani.
He did not believe that any of the taint was on herself, that in her character there was the smallest shade of deceit or unfaithfulness. He found it hard to believe that she was really a Corleone at all. His arguments began from a premiss which assumed her practically perfect. Had he been alone in the world, he would not have hesitated long, for he could have married her and taken her away for ever — he was enough in love for that.
But such a marriage meant that he should bring her brothers intimately into his father’s house; that he and his own family must accept Tebaldo and Francesco Pagliuca, and possibly the third brother, whom he did not know, as near relations, to be called, by himself at least, ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’ and by their baptismal names. Lastly, it meant that Vittoria’s mother and his own should come into close terms of intimacy, for Maria Carolina would make the most of the connection with the Saracinesca. That thought was the most repugnant of all to the young man, who looked upon his mother as a being apart from the ordinary world and entitled to a sort of veneration. Maria Carolina would not venerate anybody, he thought.
On the other side, there was his honour. He did not care what the young men might think, but he had certainly led the girl herself to believe that he meant to marry her. And he was in love. Compared with giving up Vittoria, and with doing something which seemed dishonourable, the accumulated wickedness of generations of the Corleone shrank into insignificance. There was a sort of shock in his mind as he brought up this side of the question.
Had there been any difficulty to be overcome in winning Vittoria’s own consent, it would have been easier to decide. But he knew that he had but a word to say, and his future would be sealed irrevocably in a promise which he never would break. And in a day or two he was to leave Rome for a long time. It was clear that he ought to decide at once, this very night.
His nature rejected the idea of taking advice, and, generally, of confiding in anyone. Otherwise, he might have laid the matter before his mother, in the certainty that her counsel would be good and honourable. Or he might have told his favourite brother the whole story, and Ippolito would assuredly have told him what was right. But Orsino was not of those who get help from the judgment or the conscience of another.
It seemed to him that he stayed a long time on the bridge, thinking of all these things, for the necessity of finally weighing them had come upon him suddenly, since San Giacinto had given him warning to get ready for the journey. But presently he was aware that the distant music had changed, that the waltz during which he had watched Vittoria was over, and that a square dance had begun. He smiled rather grimly to himself as he reflected that he might stand there till morning, without getting any nearer to a conclusion. He turned his back on the moonlight impatiently and went back into the palace. In the distance, through an open door, he saw faces familiar to him all his life, moving to and fro rapidly in a quadrille. He watched them as he walked straight on towards the ballroom, through the rather dimly lighted chamber with which the bridge communicated.
He was startled by the sound of Vittoria d’Oriani’s voice, close beside him, calling him softly but rather anxiously.
‘Don Orsino! Don Orsino!’
She was all alone, pale, and standing half hidden by the heavy curtain on one side of the door opening to the ballroom. Orsino stood still a moment, in great surprise at seeing her thus left to herself in an empty room. Then he went close to her, holding out his hand.
‘What is the matter?’ he asked in a low voice, for several men were standing about on the other side of the open door, watching the dance.
‘Nothing — nothing,’ she repeated nervously, as he drew her aside.
‘Who left you here alone?’ asked Orsino, in displeasure at some unknown person.
‘I — I came here—’ she faltered. ‘I slipped out — it was hot, in there.’
Orsino laughed softly.
‘You must not get isolated in this way,’ he said. ‘I
t is not done here, you know. People would think it strange. You are always supposed to be with someone — your partner, or your mother. But I am glad, since I have found you.’
‘Yes, I have found you,’ she said softly, repeating his words. ‘I mean—’ she corrected herself hurriedly— ‘I mean you have found me.’
Orsino looked down to her averted face, and in the dim light he saw the blush at her mistake — too great a mistake in speech not to have come from a strong impulse within. Yet he could hardly believe that she had seen him go out that way alone, and had followed in the hope of finding him.
They sat down together, not far from the door opening upon the bridge. The colour had faded again from Vittoria’s face, and she was pale. During some moments neither spoke, and the music of the quadrille irritated Orsino as he listened to it. Seeing that he was silent, Vittoria looked up sideways and met his eyes.
‘It was really very warm in the ballroom,’ she said, to say something.
‘Yes,’ he answered absently, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘Yes — I daresay it was.’
Again there was a pause.
‘What is the matter?’ asked Vittoria at last, and her tone sank with each word.
‘I am going away,’ said Orsino, slowly, with fixed eyes.
She did not start nor show any surprise, but the colour began to leave her lips. The irritating quadrille went pounding on in the distance, through the hackneyed turns of the familiar figures, accompanied by the sound of many voices talking and of broken laughter now and then.
‘You knew it?’ asked Orsino. ‘How?’
‘No one told me; but I knew it — I guessed it.’
Orsino looked away, and then turned to her again, his glance drawn back to her by something he could not resist.
‘Vittoria,’ he began in a very low tone.
He had never called her by that name before. The quadrille was very noisy, and she did not understand. She leaned forward anxiously towards him when she spoke.
‘What did you say? I did not hear. The music makes such a noise!’
The man was more than ever irritated at the sound; and as she bent over to him, he could almost feel her breath on his cheek. The blood rose in him, and he sprang to his feet impatiently.
‘Come!’ he said. ‘Come outside! We cannot even hear each other here.’
Vittoria rose, too, without a word, and went with him, walking close beside him, and glancing at his face. She was excessively pale now; and all the golden light seemed to have faded at once, even from her hair and eyes, till she looked delicate and almost fragile beside the big dark man.
‘Out of doors?’ she asked timidly, at the threshold.
‘Yes — it is very warm,’ answered Orsino, in a voice that was a little hoarse.
Once out on the bridge, in the shadow, over the dark street, he stopped, and instantly his hand found hers and closed all round it, covering it altogether.
Vittoria could not have spoken just then, for she was trembling from head to foot. The air was full of strange sounds, and the trees were whirling round one another like mad black ghosts in the moonlight. When she looked up, she could see Orsino’s eyes, bright in the shadow. She turned away, and came back to them more than once; then their glances did not part any more, and his face came nearer to hers.
‘We love each other,’ he said; and his voice was warm and alive again.
She felt that she saw his soul in his face, but she could not speak. Her eyes looking up to his, she slowly bent her little head twice, while her lips parted like an opening flower, and faintly smiled at the sweetness of an unspoken word.
He bent nearer still, and she did not draw back. His blood was hot and singing in his ears. Then, all at once, something in her appealed to him, her young delicacy, her dawn-like purity, her exquisite fresh maidenhood. It seemed a crime to touch her lips as though she had been a mature woman. He dropped her hand, and his long arms brought her tenderly and softly up to his breast; and as her head fell back, and her lids drooped, he kissed her eyes with infinite gentleness, first the one and then the other, again and again, till she smiled in the dark, and hid her face against his coat, and he found only her silky hair to kiss again.
‘I love you — say it, too,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘Ah, yes! so much, so dearly!’ came her low answer.
Then he took her hand again, and brought it up to his lips close to her face; and his lips pressed the small fingers passionately, almost roughly, very longingly.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must be alone — come into the garden.’
He led her across the bridge, and suddenly they were in the clear moonlight; but he went on quickly, lest they should be noticed through the open door from within. The air was warm and still and dry, as it often is in spring after the evening chill has passed.
‘We could not go back into the ballroom, could we?’ he asked, as he drew her away along a gravel walk between high box hedges.
‘No. How could we — now?’ Her hand tightened a little on his arm.
They stopped before a statue at the end of the walk, full in the light, a statue that had perhaps been a Daphne, injured ages ago, and stone-gray where it was not very white, with flying draperies broken off short in the folds, and a small, frightened face that seemed between laughing and crying. One fingerless hand pointed at the moon.
Orsino leaned back against the pedestal, and lovingly held Vittoria before him, and looked at her, and she smiled, her lips parting again, and just glistening darkly in the light as a dewy rose does in moonlight. The music was very far away now, but the plashing of the fountain was near.
‘I love you!’ said Orsino once more, as though no other words would do.
A deep sigh of happiness said more than the words could, and the stillness that followed meant most of all, while Vittoria gently took his two hands and nestled closer to him, fearlessly, like a child or a young animal.
‘But you will not go away — now?’ she asked pleadingly.
Orsino’s face changed a little, as he remembered the rest of his life, and all he had undertaken to do. He had dreamily hoped that he might forget it.
‘We will not talk of that,’ he answered.
‘How can I help it, if it is true? You will not go — say you will not go!’
‘I have promised. But there is time — or, at least, I shall soon come back. It is not so far to Sicily—’
‘Sicily? You are going to Sicily?’ She seemed surprised.
‘I thought you knew where I was going—’ he began.
‘No — I guessed; I was not sure. Tell me! Why must you go?’
‘I must go because I have promised. San Giacinto would think it very strange if I changed my mind.’
‘It is stranger that you should go — and with him! Yes — I see — you are going to take possession of our old place—’
Her voice suddenly expressed the utmost anxiety, as she sprang from one conclusion to another without a mistake. She pressed his hands tightly, and her face grew pale again with fear for him.
‘Oh please, please, stay here!’ she cried. ‘If it were anywhere else — if it were to do anything else—’
‘Why?’ he asked, in surprise. ‘I thought you did not care much for the old place. If I had known that it would hurt you—’
‘Me? No! It is not that — it is for you! They will kill you. Oh, do not go! Do not go!’ She spoke in the greatest distress.
Orsino was suddenly inclined to laugh, but he saw how much in earnest she was.
‘Who will kill me?’ he asked, as though humouring her. ‘What do you mean?’
Vittoria was more than in earnest; she was almost in terror for him. Her small hands clung to his arm nervously, catching him and then loosing their hold. But she said nothing, though she seemed to be hesitating in some sort of struggle. Though she loved him with all the whole-hearted impulses of her nature, it was not easy to tell him what she meant. The Sicilian blood revolted at the thought of
betraying her wild brother, who had joined the outlaws, and would be in waiting for Orsino and his cousin when they should try to take possession of the lands.
‘You must not go!’ she cried, suddenly throwing her arms round his neck as though she could keep him by force. ‘You shall not go — oh, no, no, no!’
‘Vittoria — you have got some mad idea in your head — it is absurd — who should try to kill me? Why? I have no enemies. As for the brigands, everyone laughs at that sort of thing nowadays. They belong to the comic opera!’ He let himself laugh a little at last, for the idea really amused him.
But Vittoria straightened herself beside him and grew calmer, for she was sensible and saw that he thought her foolishly afraid.
‘In Rome the outlaws belong to the comic opera — yes,’ she answered gravely. ‘But in Sicily they are a reality. I am a Sicilian, and I know. People are killed by them almost every day, and the mafia protects them. They are better armed than the soldiers, for they carry Winchester rifles—’
‘What do you know about Winchester rifles?’ asked Orsino, smiling.
‘My brothers have them,’ she said quietly. ‘And the outlaws almost all have them.’
‘I daresay. But why should they wish to kill me? They do not know me.’
Vittoria was silent a moment, making up her mind what she should tell him. She was not positively sure of anything, but she had heard Francesco say lately that Camaldoli was a place easier to buy than to hold while Ferdinando was alive, and she knew what that meant, when coupled with the occasional comments upon Ferdinando’s mode of life, which escaped in Francesco’s incautious conversation at home. To a Sicilian, the meaning of the whole situation was not hard to guess. At the same time Vittoria was both desperately anxious for Orsino and afraid that he might laugh at her fears, as he had done already.
‘This is it,’ she said at last in a low and earnest voice. ‘It has nothing to do with you or your cousin, personally, nor with your taking possession of Camaldoli, so far as I am concerned. But it is a wild and desolate place, and all through this year a large band of outlaws have been in the forests on the other side of the valley. They would never have hurt my brothers, who are Sicilians and poor, and who did not trouble them either. But you and your cousin are great people, and rich, and not Sicilians, and the mafia will be against you, and will support the brigands if they prevent you from taking possession of Camaldoli. You would be opposed to the mafia; you would bring soldiers there to fight the outlaws. Therefore they will kill you. It is certain. No one ever escapes them. Do you understand? Now you will not go, of course, since I have explained it all.’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 883
