Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Castiglione saw them once from a distance, coming towards him, but he jumped his horse over the stiff fence into the meadow, crossed quickly, and was over into the ring again on the other side and out of the Villa by Porta Pinciana before the pair recognised him, for Montalto was rather near-sighted and Leone was so much interested in his lesson that even the uniform of the Piedmont Lancers no longer had great attractions for him. After that Castiglione gave up exercising his horses in the Villa.

  The fact of riding a real animal, that could move its tail, had destroyed in a day all Leone’s bright illusions of toy guns and tin helmets. A boy who could ride was half a man already, and even half a man must be above the suspicion of playing with sham weapons. After his third ride in the Villa, Leone solemnly presented his whole armoury to the children of the porter downstairs, and though his room seemed very bare for a day or two, he found consolation in sitting astride of a chair, conscientiously repeating to himself and practising the instructions he had received from Montalto.

  ‘Toes in! Grip the saddle with your knees, not with your calves! Elbows to your sides! Your heels down, in a line with your head and your shoulder! Hold the bridle lightly, don’t hold on by it! Head straight, not thrown back, nor forward either! Look before you, between the pony’s ears!’

  As he repeated each well-remembered precept Leone studied his position to be sure that he was really obeying the order. It was ever so much more real, even on a chair, than prancing about on his feet, astride of a stick, with a tin sabre, yelling the Royal March; and it was incomparably more dignified.

  Maria came to his room one afternoon and found him at his self-imposed exercise. She paused on the threshold, before he knew that she was there, and she watched him with a rather sad smile. He was so tremendously strong and vital, and she felt so subdued and weary! It seemed impossible that he should be her child. Yet hers he was.

  He ordered himself to sit very straight, and in the pause during which he made sure of having been very attentive, he heard her and turned his head. He laughed a little shyly at being caught.

  ‘It’s not play,’ he hastened to say. ‘It’s practice. I go over everything papa tells me, and I do it very carefully. Then he says I learn very fast, but he doesn’t know I practise. Of course, if he asked me, I’d tell him. It’s not wrong not to tell him, if he doesn’t ask me, is it, mama?’

  ‘No, dear,’ Maria answered, and she bent down and kissed the boy’s forehead.

  ‘Because I like to surprise him by doing it better than he expects,’ he went on. ‘Then he smiles, and I like him when he smiles.’

  ‘I think you always like him, my dear,’ said his mother. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But I wasn’t going to, though!’ The young jaw thrust itself forward viciously. ‘I thought I was going to hate him when he came in here with you that day. I did!’

  ‘You must try not to hate any one,’ said Maria; and again she kissed his forehead.

  ‘Oh, that’s all very well, mama!’ retorted the boy. ‘Why do you always kiss my forehead now?’ he asked suddenly. ‘It used to be the back of my neck, you know, just here!’

  He laughed, and put up his hand behind his head to the spot where the short hair was always trying to curl. But Maria had turned away to inspect his tooth-brush, as she often did after she had discovered the use he had made of one for cleaning his toy gun. She did not answer his question.

  ‘Oh, you needn’t look at it, mama,’ he said, watching her. ‘At least, not till I have a real gun. Besides,’ he added rather mournfully, ‘I brush my teeth now.’

  ‘Oh — I’m glad to hear it!’

  ‘Yes,’ Leone answered, with his hands in his pockets. ‘You see, papa does — so I suppose I must, too.’

  ‘But I always told you to!’ Maria could not help smiling. ‘Was not that enough, child?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. But it’s different. I want to be like papa.’

  Maria had not been prepared for this speech, and the smile faded from her face.

  ‘You could not do better,’ she said gravely. ‘He is an honest gentleman, if ever there was one.’

  ‘I’d give anything to look like him, too. But I suppose that’s impossible. I’d like to have a dark, grave face, like his, and at the same time to look so smart — most of all on horseback.’

  ‘You cannot change your looks, dear,’ Maria managed to say, and she pretended to continue her inspection of the room, lest he should see her face just then.

  The world was very hard to understand, she thought, and later, when she was alone, she pondered on this new mystery. It still seemed impossible that the least likely of all things should have happened: that Leone should have developed a whole-hearted, boyish admiration for Montalto was strange enough, but that Montalto should apparently have taken a real liking to Leone, and something more, was past her comprehension. It was almost too much, and a deep, unacknowledged feminine instinct was ready to rise up against it, though all her conscience and intelligence told her that she should be grateful to her husband for the large forgiveness he bestowed upon her in every act of kindness to the boy.

  He had changed quickly since his return, and she sometimes found it hard to believe that he had come back to her looking like the wreck of a man, that his tears had run down like a nervous woman’s, scalding her hands till she had felt contempt for his unmanly weakness.

  Certain people have what may be called dramatic constitutions and faces; a few hours of anxiety or pain make havoc of their looks; when others would merely look tired, they become haggard, their cheeks fall in, their eyes grow hollow; in a fortnight they grow thin till they seem shadowy. But when the pain is over, or the anxiety is relieved, their normal appearance returns with amazing rapidity. In three or four weeks after he had come home, Montalto was his old self again, saving his prematurely grey hair and beard; but even they no longer made him look old now that his still young face had filled out again and recovered its normal colour. He was once more a grave, dark, erect and rather handsome man, apparently endowed with a strong will of his own, and undoubtedly imbued with an almost exaggerated sense of his dignity. He was again the husband Maria had married nine years ago, and he had blotted out of his memory all that had happened from then till now.

  He was almost the same again; and so was Maria herself. If he had remained as much changed as he had seemed to be at first, she might possibly have deluded herself with the idea that he was not really the same man, after all, so that he was now her real husband and she had dreamed all the rest. But even such an imaginary alleviation as that was denied her. He was only too really the same in all ways; she quivered at his gentlest touch and writhed under his loving caress, and presently she wondered why he never felt that she loathed him, even if he could not see it in her face.

  A villainous idea suggested itself. Perhaps he both felt and saw her repugnance; perhaps his kindness was all a cruel comedy, his affection for Leone a diabolical deception; perhaps he was revenging himself in his own way, and delighting inwardly in the unspeakable suffering he inflicted.

  But the thought was too unbalanced to sustain itself. According to his lights, Maria was sure that he was a good man. Don Ippolito Saracinesca knew human nature well, and could not have been deceived for years in one whom he called his friend. Diego di Montalto was not a monster of cruelty; his love was real, his forgiveness was real, his liking for the boy he might so naturally have detested was real too — it was all awfully real. God in heaven would not have expected her to submit herself body and mind to be tormented by a wicked man for the rest of her life, in vengeance for one fault. No, her husband was a good man, who had been generous beyond words; he had come home to take her back before the whole world, defying it to speak evil against his honoured wife, he had come home to be her husband and her child’s father. And when he touched her she trembled and felt sick; but this was her just expiation, and she must bear it as well as she could, and hide her horror of him till she died of it. Even
that would not come soon. She had not a dramatic organisation like his, and she could be made to bear a great deal before the end. She would have been a good patient for the tormentors in older times, for she would not have fainted soon, or died, and felt nothing more. She was very quiet, a little subdued, and there was sometimes a startled, haunted look in her eyes, but that was all; she ate enough, she went about her occupations, she wrote letters to Giuliana and others, she looked after Leone, she even slept as much as was necessary, and people thought she was at last contented, if not happy, with the rather dull and formal husband who had come back to her. They saw, too, or believed, that she and Castiglione were completely estranged and hardly spoke when they happened to meet anywhere; but even such meetings were of very rare occurrence, because she and her husband were in such deep mourning.

  The summer came, and they went northwards in a comfortable motor car. They stopped on their way to make short visits to more or less distant relations who were already at their country places; they spent a fortnight by the seaside, near Genoa, a day or two in Milan, a hot week in Venice near the end of July; and so they came by easy stages to Montalto, with its solemn towers, its deep woods and its waterfalls, its fertile valley, its rich farms and its thriving village; and there they stayed through the rest of the summer and into the early autumn.

  Leone rode with Montalto every day, and by and by he was taught to hold a real gun in the right way, and then to shoot; and at last Montalto took him out one day and he fired his first shot at a pheasant and missed, but he killed a bird the second time, and was the happiest boy in the world for the rest of that day. Through all those months Montalto himself gained strength daily and recovered more and more of the comparative youthfulness which remains to a man not forty; and Maria changed little, if at all, though Leone thought the white patch near her left temple was growing larger.

  Also, in those quiet days, the boy and the man became more and more closely attached to each other. Montalto took more real interest in teaching Leone to ride and shoot than he had ever shown in anything; and Leone was more entirely persuaded that Montalto was his ideal, though he still declared that he himself would be a soldier and nothing else.

  During this time Maria frequently saw Orlando Schmidt, the steward. She had not seen him in Rome after her husband had arrived, and when she noticed the latter’s reserved tone in speaking of him, she had not mentioned him again and had soon forgotten his existence. There was no special reason why she should think of him at all, though she had found him very efficient and ready to serve her.

  But now he appeared again, and as a personage of considerable importance, who came to her husband’s study almost every day on matters connected with the estate. She met him the first time when she was alone in the great avenue that led from the park gate to the castle. He lived in a small house just outside the village at the foot of the hill, and he usually walked up by the avenue.

  He bowed ceremoniously to the Countess from a considerable distance, and carried his hat in his hand as he came nearer. He blushed a little when she bent her head at last and said good-morning in passing; and as she did not stop to say more, he went on. He turned after he had gone on a few steps and looked after her, being quite sure that she would not do the same. Why should the Countess of Montalto condescend to look round at such a humble person as Orlando Schmidt? So he walked slowly and turned again and again to watch the graceful figure that was slowly gliding into the distance under the shade of the ancient elms. When he could no longer see her distinctly he glanced at his watch and went on his way quickly.

  Two days later Maria met him almost in the same place, and at almost the same hour in the morning; which was natural enough, for she had dropped into the dull punctuality in doing unimportant things at regular times which is the foundation of a woman’s life in a country house where there are no visitors; and as it was Schmidt’s business to be exact about his duties, there was really no reason why she should not pass him in the same place and nearly at the same moment, on every fine day.

  This time Schmidt stood still at a short distance, as if he wished to say something, and when Maria stopped, he inquired if he could be of service to her in any way. She was a little surprised at the question.

  He meant to ask, he said, whether she had any wishes with regard to the grounds or the garden. The Count, he explained, took no interest in those matters, but would be much pleased if her Excellency would give them some attention. He, Schmidt, had done his best to keep up the place since he had been in charge of it, but he was only too conscious that he knew nothing of landscape gardening and very little about flowers. Maria said quietly that she understood neither, though she knew what she liked.

  Thereupon Schmidt observed that a quantity of handsome stone-work of the fifteenth century was lying piled up in the kitchen court, and he thought it must have been put there about a hundred and twenty or thirty years ago, when a Countess of Montalto had thought it would be an improvement to destroy the beautiful mediæval close garden in the course of constructing a miniature Versailles which had never been finished. He, Schmidt, would take pleasure in showing the stone-work to her Excellency if she would take the trouble to look at it. He had also found an old plan of the former garden amongst the papers of his own great-grandfather, who had been steward of Montalto from 1760 to 1800. At a small cost the really beautiful mediæval well and cloistered walk could be reconstructed, and he ventured to suggest that they would be more in keeping with the whole place than a wretched little imitation of Lenôtre’s vast work.

  Maria thought so, too, and after saying that she would ask her husband about it, she nodded kindly to the thoughtful young man and continued her walk.

  In the evening, when Montalto had told her the political news he had read before dinner, and had opened a third Havana cigarette to roll it over again in French paper, Maria told him what Schmidt had said. Montalto was naturally as punctual in all his little ways as his wife was rapidly becoming by acquired habit. The post came late in the afternoon, and he always spent half an hour in reading the newspapers before he dressed for dinner. Just as invariably, too, he told his wife what he had read, and he almost always reached the end of his budget of intelligence just as he began to make his third cigarette. Maria did not always listen to what he was telling her, but the third cigarette was a landmark in the long dull evening, and when it was reached she knew that Montalto expected her to make a little conversation in return for his carefully repeated news. On this particular occasion she was glad to have something to say, and at once asked him about the old garden.

  To her surprise Montalto did not give her any answer at once, and she waited for his reply, watching the motion of his well-made fingers, of which the first two were stained a deep yellowish brown from smoking cigarettes. They rolled the cigarette slowly, but very neatly.

  ‘Yes,’ Montalto said after a long time, when he had got a light and was leaning back in his chair. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, in a tone of profound meditation. ‘Yes, by all means, if it amuses you, my dear.’

  ‘Then you think Schmidt is right about the old things?’ said Maria with a renewed interrogation in her tone.

  Another pause, and several small puffs of smoke.

  ‘Maria,’ Montalto began, as if he had reached a conclusion, ‘you are not what people call a highly accomplished woman, but you have a great deal of sense.’

  The Countess wondered what was coming, and answered by a preliminary and deprecating smile. Montalto often told her that in his opinion she was the most beautiful creature in the world; after such nonsense it was a relief to be called a sensible woman. She might not be even that, but at all events the statement was not likely to lead to one of those outbreaks of his passion for her which she dreaded.

  ‘Maria,’ he said, as if he were beginning over again, ‘I have great confidence in your judgment.’

  ‘But I know nothing about gardening or mediæval wells,’ she protested.

  ‘Possibly
not, though you know vastly more about both than I do. I was brought up under the influence of the Spanish taste of the eighteenth century, and I like it. Ippolito Saracinesca says it is atrocious, and of course he knows. But I like it, nevertheless.’

  ‘At least, you have the courage of your opinion,’ said Maria, still completely in the dark, but feeling that she must say something.

  ‘That does not matter, for it is not the question,’ returned her husband. ‘We neither of us know anything about architecture, I am sure. But I shall be glad if you will go into this question with Schmidt, and then give me an opinion.’

  ‘It will be worthless.’

  ‘Not your opinion of the garden, my dear, but your opinion of Schmidt.’

  ‘Oh!’ Maria was very much surprised. ‘But why? I told you in Rome that I thought him an excellent person and very intelligent!’

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that he might be too intelligent?’

  ‘No. But perhaps I don’t understand just what you mean. Do you think he is educated above his station? Too good for his place?’

  ‘Not at all. But sometimes, in money dealings and positions of trust, a man may be too clever. That is what I mean.’