Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Miss Lizzie Slayback was not profound, but she was genuine. She had no inherited tendency to feel profound emotions nor to get into tragic situations, but she was full of innocent sentiment. Like many persons who do not lead romantic lives, she was in love with romance, and she believed that romance had a sort of perpetual existence somewhere, so that by taking some pains one could really find it and live in it. Her fortune would be useful in the search, although it was unromantic to be rich. She had not read ‘Montecristo,’ because she was told that Dumas was old-fashioned. She was not very gifted, but she was very clever in detail. She did not understand Tebaldo in the least, for she was no judge of human nature, but she knew perfectly well how to keep him at arm’s length until she had decided to marry him. She was absolutely innocent, yet she had also the most absolute assurance, and bore herself in society with the independence of a married woman of thirty.

  ‘It is our custom in my country,’ she said to Vittoria, who was sometimes startled by her friend’s indifference to the smaller conventionalities.

  The two young girls spoke French together, and understood each other, though a third person might not at first have known that they were speaking the same language. Vittoria spoke the French of an Italian convent, old-fashioned, stilted, pronounced with the rolling southern accent which only her beautiful voice could make bearable, and more or less wild as to gender. Lizzie Slayback, as has been said, spoke fluently and often said the same things because she had a small choice of language. Occasionally she used phrases that would have made a Frenchman’s hair feel uneasy on his head, and her innocent use of which inspired disquieting doubts as to the previous existence of the person who had taught her.

  ‘We think,’ she said, ‘that it is better to enjoy yourself while you are young, and be good when you grow old, but in Europe it seems to be the other way.’

  ‘No one can be good all the time,’ answered Vittoria. ‘One is good a little and one is bad a little, by turns, just as one can.’

  ‘That makes a variety,’ said Miss Slayback. ‘That is why you Italians are so romantic.’

  ‘I never can understand what you mean by romantic,’ observed Vittoria.

  ‘Oh — everything you do is romantic, my dear. Your brother is the most romantic man I ever saw. That is why I think I shall marry him,’ she added, as though contemplating a new hat with a view to buying it, and almost sure that it would suit her.

  ‘I do not think you will be happy with him,’ said Vittoria, rather timidly.

  ‘Because he is romantic, and I am not? Well, I am not sure.’

  ‘There! You use the word again! What in the world do you mean by it?’

  Miss Slayback was at a loss to furnish the required definition, especially in French.

  ‘Your brother is romantic,’ she said, repeating herself. ‘I am sure he looks like Cæsar Borgia.’

  ‘I hope not!’ exclaimed Vittoria. ‘Surely you would not marry—’ she stopped.

  ‘Cæsar Borgia?’ enquired Lizzie Slayback, calmly. ‘Of all people, I should have liked to marry him! He was nice and wicked. He would never have been dull, even nowadays, when everybody is so proper, you know.’

  ‘No,’ laughed the Italian girl, ‘I do not think anybody would have called him dull. He generally murdered his friends before they were bored by his company.’

  Miss Lizzie laughed, for Vittoria seemed witty to her.

  ‘If I had said that at a party,’ she answered, ‘everybody would have told me that I was so clever! I wish I had thought of it. May I say it, as if it were mine? Shall you not mind?’

  ‘Why should I? I should certainly not say it myself, before people.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It would not be thought exactly — oh — what shall I say? We young girls are never expected to say anything like that. We look down, and hold our tongues.’

  ‘And think of all the sharp things you will say when you are married! That is just the difference. Now, in the West, where I come from, if a girl has anything clever to say, she says it, even if she is only ten years old. I must say, it seems to me much more sensible.’

  ‘Yes — but there are other things, besides being sensible,’ objected Vittoria.

  ‘Then they must be senseless,’ retorted Miss Lizzie. ‘It follows.’

  ‘There are all sorts of customs and traditions in society that have not very much sense perhaps, but we are all used to them, and should feel uncomfortable without them. When the nuns taught me to do this, or that, to say certain things, and not to say certain other things, it was because all the other young girls I should meet would be sure to act in just the same way, and if I did not act as they do, I should make myself conspicuous.’

  ‘I never could see the harm in being conspicuous,’ said Miss Slayback. ‘Provided one is not vulgar,’ she added, by way of limitation.

  ‘Do you not feel uncomfortable, when you feel that everyone is looking at you?’

  ‘No, of course not, unless I am doing something ridiculous. I rather like to have people look at me. That makes me feel satisfied with myself.’

  ‘It always makes me feel dreadfully uncomfortable,’ said Vittoria.

  ‘It should not, for you are beautiful, my dear. You really are. I only think I am, when I have good clothes and am not sunburnt or anything like that — I never really believe it, you know. But when people admire me, it helps the illusion. I wish I were beautiful, like you, Vittoria.’

  ‘I am not beautiful,’ said the Sicilian girl, colouring a little shyly. ‘But I wish I had your calmness. I am always blushing — it is so uncomfortable — or else I am very pale, and then I feel cold, as though my heart were going to stop beating. I think I should faint if I were to do the things you sometimes do.’

  ‘What, for instance?’ laughed the American girl.

  ‘Oh — I have seen you cross a ballroom alone, and drive alone in an open carriage—’

  ‘What could happen to me in a carriage?’

  ‘It is not that — it is — I hardly know! It is like a married woman.’

  ‘I shall be married some day, so I may as well get into the habit of it,’ observed Miss Lizzie, smiling and showing her beautiful teeth.

  In spite of such inconclusive conversations, the two girls were really fond of each other. When Mrs. Slayback looked at Tebaldo’s sharp features, her heart hardened; but when she looked at Vittoria, it softened again. She was a very intelligent woman, in her way, and, having originally married for his money a man whom she considered beneath her in social standing and cultivation, she wished to improve his family in her own and her friends’ eyes by making a brilliant foreign marriage for his niece. ‘Princess of Corleone’ sounded a good deal better than ‘Miss Lizzie Slayback,’ and there was no denying the antiquity and validity of the title. There were few to be had as good as that, for the girl’s religion was a terrible obstacle to her marrying the heir of any great house in Europe in which money was not a paramount necessity. But Tebaldo assured her that he attached no importance whatever to such matters. Lizzie was in love with him, and he took pains to seem to be in love with her.

  Mrs. Slayback did not give more weight to her niece’s inclinations and fancies than Tebaldo gave to his religious scruples. The girl was highly impressionable to a very small depth, skin deep, in fact, and below the shallow gauge of her impressions she suddenly became hard and obstinate like her uncle. She had an unfortunate way of liking people very much at first sight if she chanced to meet them when she was in a good humour, and quite regardless of what they might really be. She had said to herself that Tebaldo was ‘romantic,’ and as his life hitherto might certainly have been well described by some such word, he had no difficulty in keeping up the illusion for her.

  He saw that she listened with wonder and delight to his tales of wild doings in Sicily, and he had not the slightest difficulty in finding as many of them to tell her as suited his purpose. He had been more intimately connected with one or two of his stories t
han he chose to tell her; but he was ready at turning a difficulty of that sort, and when he introduced himself he treated his own personality and actions with that artistic modesty which leaves vague beauties to the imagination. Never having had any actual experience of the rude deeds of unbridled humanity, Miss Lizzie liked revengeful people because they were ‘romantic.’ She liked to think of a man who could carry off his enemy’s bride in the grey dawn of her wedding day, escape with her on board a ship, and be out of sight of land before night — because such deeds were ‘romantic.’ She liked to know that a band of thirty desperate men could bid defiance to the government and the army for months, and she loved to hear of Leone, the outlaw chief, who had killed a dozen soldiers with his own hand in twenty minutes, before he fell with twenty-seven bullets in him — that was indeed ‘romantic.’ And Tebaldo had seen Leone himself, many years ago, and remembered him and described him; and he had seen most of the people whose extraordinary adventures he detailed to the girl, and had known them and spoken with them, had shot with them for wagers, had drunk old wine of Etna at their weddings, and had followed some of them to their graves when they had been killed. A good many of his acquaintances had been killed in various ‘romantic’ affairs.

  Everything he told her appealed strongly to Lizzie Slayback’s imagination, and he had the advantage, if it were one, of being really a great deal like the people he described, daring, unscrupulous, physically brave and revengeful, very much the type which is so often spoken of in Calabria with bated breath, as ‘a desperate man of Sicily.’ For the Italian of the mainland is apt both to dread and respect the stronger man of the islands.

  In addition to his accomplishments as a story-teller, Tebaldo possessed the power of seeming to be very much in love, without ever saying much about it. He flattered the girl, telling her that she was beautiful and witty and charming, and everything else which she wished to be; and when his eyelids were not drooping at the corners as they did when he was angry, he had a way of gazing with intense and meaning directness into Lizzie Slayback’s dark blue eyes, so that Vittoria would no longer have envied her, for she blushed and looked away, half pleased and half disturbed.

  Aliandra Basili thought Francesco much more ready and apt to anticipate her small wishes and to understand her thoughts than his brother. But when he chose to take the trouble, with cool calculation, Tebaldo knew well enough how to make a woman believe that he was taking care of her, which is what many women most wish to feel. With Aliandra, whom he loved as much as he was capable of loving anyone, Tebaldo felt himself almost too much at his ease to disguise his own selfishness. But he gave himself endless trouble for Miss Slayback, and she was sometimes touched by little acts of his which showed how constantly she was in his mind — as indeed she was, much more than she knew.

  In her moments of solitude, which were few, for she hated to be alone, she reflected more than once that her money must seem a great inducement to a poor Italian nobleman; but she was too much in love with the ‘romantic’ to believe that Tebaldo wished to marry her solely for her fortune. It was too hard to believe, when she looked at her own face in the mirror and saw how young, and pretty, and smiling she really was. Her dark lashes gave her blue eyes so much expression that she could not think herself not loved, a mere encumbrance to be taken with a fortune, but not without, in exchange for a title. She was fond of her refined but not very remarkable self, and it would have been hard to convince her that Tebaldo’s silent looks and ever-ready service meant nothing but greed of money. Very possibly, she admitted, he could not have thought of marrying her if she had been poor, but she believed it equally certain that if she had been an ugly, rich, middle-aged old maid, he would never have thought of it either.

  Besides, Tebaldo had watched with great satisfaction the growing intimacy between her and his sister, and he took care to play his comedy before Vittoria as carefully as before Miss Slayback herself. Vittoria, as he knew, was very truthful, and if her friend asked questions about him, she would repeat accurately what he had said in her presence, if she gave any information at all. To his face, Vittoria accused him of wishing to marry for money, but so long as he affirmed that he loved Miss Slayback, Vittoria would never accuse him behind his back, nor tell tales about his character which might injure his prospects. Though he knew that she rarely believed him and never trusted him, he knew that he could trust her. That fact alone might have sufficiently defined their respective characters.

  CHAPTER XXII

  TEBALDO HAD NOT been at all willing to believe that Aliandra Basili really meant to treat him differently after the meeting in which she had defined her position so clearly, but he soon discovered that she was in earnest. She was not a person to change her mind easily, and she had decided that it was time to end the situation in one way or the other. Tebaldo must either marry her, or cease to persecute her with his attentions. In the latter case she intended to marry Francesco.

  Like most successful singers, and, indeed, like most people who succeed remarkably in any career, she possessed the extraordinary energy which ultimately makes the difference between success and failure in all struggles for pre-eminence. Many have the necessary talent and the other necessary gifts; few have, besides these things, the restless, untiring force to use them at all times to the extreme limit of possibility. People who have the requisite facility but not the indispensable energy find it so hard to realise this fact that they have inverted our modern use of the word ‘genius’ to account for their own failures. The ancients, and even the mediævals, when beaten in a fair fight by men more enduring than themselves, were always ready to account for their defeat on the ground of a supernatural intervention against them. Similarly the people who are clever enough to succeed, nowadays, but not strong enough, nor patient enough, attribute to the man who surpasses them some sort of supernatural inspiration, which they call genius, and against which they tell themselves that it is useless to strive. Socrates called his acute sense of right and wrong his familiar spirit, his dæmon; but in those days of the supremacy of the greatest art the world has ever seen, or ever will see, at a time when most people still believed in oracles, no one ever attributed any such familiar spirit to Sophocles, to Praxiteles, nor to Zeuxis, nor to any other poets, sculptors, or painters. The Muses had become mere names even then, and the stories about them were but superstitious fables.

  That restless energy was part of the Sicilian singer’s nature. Whether her other gifts were great enough for greatness remained to be seen, and the question had nothing to do with Tebaldo Pagliuca. Her singing gave him pleasure, but it was not what chiefly attracted him. He was in love with her in a commonplace and by no means elevated way, and artistic satisfaction did not enter into his passion as a component factor. There was nothing so elevated about it.

  Aliandra’s very womanly nature made her vaguely aware of this, and she had a physical suspicion, so to say, that if Tebaldo ever lost his head, he would be much more violent than his brother, who had frightened her so badly one evening at the theatre. She was inclined to think that it would not be safe to irritate Tebaldo too much; yet she was sure that it was of no use to prolong the present ambiguous situation, in which she was practically accepting and authorising the love of a man who would not marry her if he could help it.

  After she had finally told him what she meant to do, nothing could move her, and she entirely refused to see him alone. Hitherto she had used her privilege as an artist in this respect, and had often sent away her worthy aunt, the Signora Barbuzzi, during his visits. But now, when he came, the black-browed, grey-haired, thin-lipped old woman kept her place beside her niece on the little green sofa of the little hired drawing-room, her withered fingers steadily knitting black silk stockings. This was her only accomplishment, but it was an unusual one, and she was very proud of it, and of her wonderful eyes, which never needed glasses, and could count the minute black stitches even when the light was beginning to fail on a winter’s afternoon.

  Th
en Tebaldo sat uneasily on his chair, and wished the old woman might fall dead in an apoplexy, and that he had the evil eye, and by mere wishing could bring her to destruction. And Aliandra leaned back in the other corner of the sofa, behind her aunt, and smiled coolly at what Tebaldo said, and answered indifferently, and looked at her nails critically but wearily when he said nothing, as if she wished he would go away. And he generally went at the end of half an hour, unable to bear the situation much longer than that, after he had discovered that the Signora Barbuzzi was in future always to sit through his visits.

  ‘And now, my daughter,’ said the aunt one day when he had just gone, ‘the other will come in a quarter of an hour. The sun sets, the moon rises, as we say.’

  Which invariably happened. Francesco did not like being caught with Aliandra by his brother, as has been already seen. He had, therefore, hit upon the simple plan of spying upon him, following him at a distance until he entered Aliandra’s house, and then sitting in a little third-rate café opposite until he came out. Tebaldo, who was extremely particular about the places he frequented, because he wished to behave altogether like a Roman gentleman, would never have entered any such place as Francesco made use of for his own purposes. Francesco knew that, and felt perfectly safe as he sat at his little marble table, with a glass of syrup and soda water, his eyes fixed on the big front door which he could see through the window from the place he regularly occupied. He was also quite sure that, as Tebaldo had always just left the house when he himself came, there was no danger of his elder brother’s sudden appearance.

  The Signora Barbuzzi was decidedly much more civilised than her brother, the notary of Randazzo, for she had been married to a notary of Messina, which meant that she had lived in much higher social surroundings. That, at least, was her opinion, and Aliandra was too wise to dispute with her. She had given the deceased Barbuzzi no children, and in return for her discretion he had left her a comfortable little income. Notaries are apt to marry the sisters and daughters of other notaries, and to associate with men of their own profession, for they generally have but little confidence in persons of other occupations. The Signora Barbuzzi might have been a notary herself, for she had the avidity of mind, the distrustfulness, the caution about details, and the supernormal acuteness about the intentions of other people which are the old-fashioned Italian notary’s predominant characteristics. She looked like one, too.