Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  She looked up sideways at the dark woman’s face; for Regina stood upright, gazing down into the valley. Aurora turned her eyes away, and then looked up again; she had recovered her breath now.

  “Thank you,” she said, with an effort.

  “It is nothing,” Regina answered in an indifferent tone, and without so much as moving her head; she was no more out of breath than if she had been sitting still.

  The fair girl hated her at that moment as she had never hated any one in her short life, nor had ever dreamed of hating. The flush of anger rose again and again to her forehead, to the very roots of her auburn hair, and lingered a second and sank again. Regina stood perfectly motionless, her face as unchanging as marble.

  Aurora rose to her feet, and leaned against the rock. She had suddenly felt herself at a disadvantage in remaining seated on the ground while her adversary was standing. It was the instinct of the animal that expects to be attacked. When two people who hate each other or love each other very much meet without warning in a very lonely place, the fierce old passions of the stone age may take hold of them and sway them, even nowadays.

  For a time that seemed long, there was silence; without words each knew that the other had recognised her. The peasant woman spoke first, though with an evident effort, and without turning her eyes.

  “When you are rested, we will go down,” she said.

  Aurora moved a step towards the side on which Regina had climbed up.

  “I think I can get down alone,” she answered coldly.

  Regina looked at her and laughed with a little contempt.

  “You will break your neck if you try,” she said. “You cannot climb at all!”

  “I think I can get down,” Aurora repeated.

  She went to the edge and was going to begin the attempt when Regina seized her by the wrist and dragged her back in spite of her resistance.

  “I have something to tell you first,” Regina said. “Afterwards I will take you down, and you shall not fall. You shall reach the bottom safely and go home alone, or I will show you the way, as you please.”

  “Let go of my wrist!” Aurora spoke angrily, for the strong grasp hurt her and humiliated her.

  “Listen to me,” continued Regina, loosing her hold at once. “I am Regina. You are Aurora. We have heard of each other, and we have met. Let us talk. This is a good place and we are alone, and the day is long, and we may not meet again soon. We will say what we have to say now, and then we will part.”

  “What is there to be said?” Aurora asked coldly and drawing back a little.

  “We two love the same man,” Regina said. “Is that nothing? You know it is true. If we were not Christians we should try to kill each other here, where it is quiet. I could easily have killed you just now, and I wished to.”

  “I wonder why you did not!” exclaimed Aurora, rather scornfully.

  “I thought with myself thus: ‘If I kill her, I shall always have the satisfaction of it as long as I live. This is the truth. But I shall go to prison for many years and shall not see him again, therefore I will not do it. Besides, it will not please him. If it would make him happy I would kill her, even if I were to go to the galleys for it. But it would not. He would be very angry.’ This is what I thought; and I pulled you up. And now, I will not let you hurt yourself in getting down, because he would be angry with me if he knew that it was my fault.”

  Aurora listened to this extraordinary argument in silent surprise. She was not in the least frightened, but she saw at a glance that Regina was quite in earnest, and she knew her own people, and that the Roman peasants are not the gentlest of the Italians.

  “He would be very angry,” Regina repeated. “I am sure he would!”

  “Why should he be angry?” Aurora asked, in a tone half contemptuous and yet half sad.

  “I know he would, because when he raved in his fever he used to call for you.”

  Aurora started and fixed her eyes on Regina’s.

  “Yes,” Regina said, answering the look. “He often called you by name. He loved you once.”

  She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing herself up to her full height; and there was triumph in the light of her eyes. It is not every woman that has a chance of saying so much to her rival.

  “We were children then,” Aurora said, in the very words she had used to her mother more than two years earlier.

  She was almost as pale as Regina now, for the thrust had been straight and sure, and right at her heart. But she was prouder than the peasant woman who had wounded her.

  “I have heard that you saved his life,” she said presently. “And he loves you. You are happy!”

  “I should always be happy if he and I were alone in the world,” Regina answered, for she was a little softened by the girl’s tone. “But even now they are trying to part us.”

  “To part you?” Again Aurora looked up suddenly. “Who is trying to do that? A woman?”

  Regina laughed a little.

  “You are jealous,” she said. “That shows that you love him still. No. It is not a woman.”

  “Corbario?” The name rose instinctively to Aurora’s lips.

  “Yes,” Regina answered. “That is why I am left alone this morning. Signor Corbario is at Saint Moritz and Marcello is gone down to see him. I know he is trying to separate us. You did not know that he was so near?”

  “We only came yesterday afternoon,” Aurora answered. “We did not know that — that Signor Consalvi was here, or we should not have come at all.”

  It had stung her to hear Regina speak of him quite naturally by his first name. Regina felt the rebuke.

  “I am truly sorry that I should have accidentally found myself in your path,” she said, emphasising the rather grand phrase, and holding her handsome head very high.

  Aurora almost smiled at this sudden manifestation of the peasant’s nature, and wondered whether Regina ever said such things to Marcello, and whether, if she did, they jarred on him very much. The speech had the very curious effect of restoring Aurora’s sense of superiority, and she answered more kindly.

  “You need not be sorry,” she said. “If you had not chanced to be here I should probably be lying amongst the rocks down there with several broken bones.”

  “If it were not by my fault I should not care,” Regina retorted, with elementary frankness.

  “But I should!” Aurora laughed, in spite of herself, and liking this phase of Regina’s character better than any she had yet seen. “Come,” she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and holding out her hand, “let us stop quarrelling. You saved me from a bad accident, and I was too ungenerous to be grateful. I thank you now, with all my heart.”

  Regina was surprised and stared hard at her for a moment, and then glanced at her outstretched hand.

  “You would not take my hand if there were any one here to see.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they have told you that I am a wicked woman,” Regina answered, a slight blush rising in her cheeks. “And perhaps it is true. But it was for him.”

  “I would take your hand anywhere, because you saved his life,” said Aurora, and her voice shook a little as she said the last words. “And besides, no one has told me that you are wicked. Come, what is the use of hating each other?”

  Regina took her hand reluctantly, but not suspiciously, and held it a moment.

  “It does not mean that I shall not hate you if he ever loves you again,” she said. “If I made you think that it would be treachery, and that is the worst sin.”

  “It only means that I thank you now, quite honestly,” Aurora answered, and their hands parted.

  “Very well.” Regina seemed satisfied. “And I thank you for taking my hand,” she added, with something oddly like real gratitude, “and because you said you would do it anywhere, even before other women. I know what I am, and what people call me. But it was for him. Let us not talk of it any more. I will help you down, and you shall go home
alone.”

  “My mother is waiting for me far down, towards the village,” Aurora said.

  “All the better. A young lady like you should not go about without any one. It is not proper.”

  Aurora suppressed a smile at the thought of being reproved concerning the proprieties by “Marcello’s Regina,” and she began the descent. Regina went down first, facing the rock, and planting the young girl’s feet in the best stepping places, one after the other, with constant warnings and instructions as to holding on with her hands. They reached the bottom in safety, and came to the place where Regina had left her hat and shoes. She sat down where she had been sitting when she had first heard the cry, and began to put them on.

  “I had taken them off for coolness as I sat here,” she explained. “You see, until I was fourteen I only wore them on Sundays.”

  “And yet you have such beautiful feet,” Aurora said.

  “Have I?” Regina asked indifferently. “I thought all feet were alike. But I have torn my stocking — it is hard to get the shoe on.”

  “Let me help you.” Aurora knelt down quickly, and began to loosen the lacing further, but Regina protested, flushing deeply and trying to draw her foot back.

  “No, no!” she cried. “You are a lady!”

  “What difference does that make?” asked Aurora, laughing and insisting.

  “This is not right!” Regina still protested, and the blush had not left her cheeks.

  But Aurora smoothed the torn stocking under the sole of each foot, and slipped on the shoes, which were by no means tight, and tied the lacing fast.

  “Thank you, Signorina,” Regina said, much confused. “You are too good!”

  She picked up her hat and put it on, but she was not clever with the pin, for she was used to having Settimia do everything for her which she had not learned to do for herself before she had come to Rome.

  “I can never manage it without Settimia,” she said, as if excusing herself for her awkwardness, as she again submitted to Aurora’s help.

  “Settimia?” repeated the young girl, as she put the hat on and thrust a long pin through it. “Who is Settimia?”

  “Our — I mean my maid,” Regina explained. “Thank you. You are too good!”

  “It is an uncommon name,” Aurora said, looking critically at the hat. “But I think I have heard it before.”

  “She is a wonderful woman. She knows French. She knows everything!”

  Aurora said nothing to this, but seemed to be trying to recall something she had long forgotten. Regina was very busy in her turn, pulling down the girl’s frock all round, and brushing it with her hand as well as she could, and picking off bits of dry grass and thistles that clung to the grey woollen. Aurora thanked her.

  “The way down is very easy now,” Regina said. “A few steps farther on we can see the road.”

  “After all, why should you not come with me till we find my mother?” Aurora asked.

  “No,” Regina answered with quiet decision. “I am what I am. You must not be seen with Regina. Do not tell your mother that you have been with me, and I shall not tell Marcello — I mean, Signor Consalvi.”

  “Why not?”

  “Neither of them would be pleased. Trust me. I know the world. Good-bye, and the Madonna accompany you; and remember what I said when I took your hand.”

  So they parted, and Regina stood up a long time, and watched the slender grey figure descending to the road in the valley.

  CHAPTER XIII

  “VARIETY, MY DEAR Marcello, variety! There is nothing like it. If I were you, I would make some change, for your life must be growing monotonous, and besides, though I have not the least intention of reading you a lecture, you have really made your doings unnecessarily conspicuous of late. The Paris chroniclers have talked about you enough for the present. Don’t you think so? Yes, finish the bottle. I always told you that champagne was good for you.”

  Marcello filled his glass and sipped the wine before he answered. It had not gone to his head, but there was colour in his lean cheeks, his eyes were brighter than usual, and he felt the familiar exhilaration which he had missed of late.

  “I have been drinking milk for ten days,” he said with a smile, as he set down the glass.

  “Good in its way, no doubt,” Corbario answered genially, “but a little tiresome. One should often change from simple things to complicated ones. It is the science of enjoyment. Besides, it is bad for the digestion to live always on bread and milk.”

  “I don’t live on that altogether,” laughed Marcello.

  “I mean it metaphorically, my dear boy. There is such a thing as simplifying one’s existence too much. That sometimes ends in getting stuck. Now you cannot possibly allow yourself to get stuck in your present position. You know what I mean. Oh, I don’t blame you! If I were your age I should probably do the same thing, especially if I had your luck. Blame you? No! Not in the least. The cigarettes are there. You’ve not given up smoking too? No, that’s right. A man without a small vice is as uninteresting as a woman without a past or a landscape without shadows. Cigarettes never hurt anybody. Look at me! I used to smoke fifty a day when I was your age.”

  Marcello blew a cloud of smoke, stirred his coffee, and leaned back. He had scarcely heard what Corbario said, but the elder man’s careless chatter had put him at his ease.

  “Folco,” he said quietly, “I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me seriously. Will you?”

  “As well as I can,” answered Corbario, instantly changing his tone and growing earnest.

  “Don’t be surprised,” Marcello said, half apologetically, as if he were already weakening. “I shall never do anything without your advice. Of course you know how I feel about all this, that I am leading a disorderly life, and — well, you understand!”

  “Perfectly, my dear boy. I only wish to help you out of it as soon as possible, if you want to be helped. I’m quite sure that you will pull through in time. I have always believed in you.”

  “Thank you. I know you have. Well, I’ll ask you my question. You know well enough that I shall never care for society much, don’t you?”

  “Society will care for you,” answered Folco. “What is the question?”

  “I’m coming to it, but I want to explain, or it will not be quite clear. You see, it is not as if I were a personage in the world.”

  “What sort of personage? Please explain.”

  “I mean, if I were the head of a great house, with a great title and hereditary estate.”

  “What has that to do with it?” Folco was mystified.

  “If I were, it would make a difference, I suppose. But I’m not. I’m plain Marcello Consalvi, no better than any one else.”

  “But vastly richer,” Folco suggested.

  “I wish I were not. I wish I were a poor clerk, working for my living.”

  “The air of this place is not good for you, my boy.” Folco laughed gaily.

  “No, don’t laugh! I’m in earnest. If I were a poor man, nobody would think it at all strange if—” Marcello hesitated.

  “If what?”

  “If I married Regina,” said Marcello rather desperately.

  Folco’s expression changed instantly.

  “Was that the question you were going to ask me?” he inquired.

  “Yes.”

  Marcello grew very red and smoked so fast that he choked himself.

  “Is there any earthly reason why you should marry her?” asked Folco very quietly.

  “It would be right,” Marcello answered, gaining courage.

  “Yes, yes, undoubtedly,” Folco hastened to admit. “In principle it would undoubtedly be right. But it is a very serious matter, my dear boy. It means your whole life and future. Have you” — he hesitated, with an affectation of delicacy— “have you said anything to her about it?”

  “I used to, at first, but she would not hear of it. You have no idea how simple she is, and how little she expects anything of
the sort. She always tells me that I am to send her away when I am tired of her, to throw her away like an old coat, as she says herself. But I could never do that, you know. Could I?”

  Marcello blushed again, hardly knowing why. Corbario seemed deeply interested.

  “She must be a very unusual sort of girl,” he observed thoughtfully. “There are not many like her, I fancy.”

  “There is nobody like her,” Marcello answered with conviction. “That is why I want to marry her. I owe it to her. You must admit that. I owe her my life, for I certainly should have died if she had not taken care of me. And then, there is the rest. She has given me all she has, and that is herself, and she asks nothing in return. She is very proud, too. I tried to make her accept a string of pearls in Paris, just because I thought they would be becoming to her, but she absolutely refused.”

  “Really? I suppose you gave the pearls back to the jeweller?”

  “No, I kept them. Perhaps I shall get her to wear them some day.”

  Folco smiled.

  “You may just as well encourage her simple tastes,” he said. “Women always end by learning how to spend money, unless it is their own.”

  Having delivered himself of this piece of wisdom Folco chose a cigar, nipped off the end of it neatly with a gold cutter, lit it and snuffed the rich smoke up his nose in a deliberate manner.

  “Regina is a very remarkable woman,” he said at last. “If she had been well educated, she would make an admirable wife; and she loves you devotedly, Marcello. Now, the real question is — at least, it seems to me so — you don’t mind my talking to you just as I would to myself, do you? Very well. If I were in your position, I should ask myself, as a man of honour, whether I really loved her as much as she loved me, or whether I had only been taken off my feet by her beauty. Don’t misunderstand me, my boy! I should feel that if I were not quite sure of that, I ought not to marry her, because it would be much worse for her in the end than if we parted. Have you ever asked yourself that question, Marcello?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  Marcello spoke in a low voice, and bent his head, as if he were not sure of the answer. Corbario, satisfied with the immediate effect of his satanic speech, waited a moment, sighed, looked down at his cigar, and then went on in gentle tones.