‘Yes, indeed … How right you are … I did all I could to dissuade him! But the dear man is made like that. Anyway it doesn’t matter; we can say he didn’t want to bother Giacomo … we’ll find a reason. And you, do try to realise that one must take people as they are, be a bit circumspect. Have your fun,’ he added with a meaning little smile, ‘but without making it obvious, saving appearances. It’s unfortunate enough there was that bit of trouble earlier …’
‘Has Your Excellency anything else to tell me?’ asked Raimondo, interrupting him brusquely. ‘If not, I’ll bid you good night.’
Next day towards midday when the baron was expected and a palace carriage had gone to fetch him, suddenly Donna Ferdinanda appeared. It was over six months since she had been up the palace stairs, since in fact the day when Giulente entered. Till the last moment she had hoped to prevent the monstrous thing, but since slaps and pinches no longer had an effect on Lucrezia, as if she had been turned to stucco, and Giacomo was defending himself by throwing the blame on his uncle the duke, the Booby and on his own sister, the old spinster had finally gone off with a great banging of doors, shouting, ‘He’ll laugh best who’ll laugh last!’ As soon as she reached home she called her maid, cook and stable boy, taken a piece of paper from a cupboard and torn it into little pieces ‘Not one cent …’
She expected her nieces and nephews to obey and submit to her because of the money which, having no children, she would be leaving them. The punishment for their rebellion was destruction of her Will in the presence of servants. The prince had been silent at first, to let the storm blow over, then he sent Fra’ Carmelo with his son to visit his aunt, so that the sight of her favourite grand-nephew would placate her fury. Then he had gone to visit her himself and accepted, humble and mute, the hail of reproval flung at him by the old spinster. And gradually, from a need to feel courted, from being unable to renounce putting her nose into her nephews’ and nieces’ affairs, she had been placated, though without going to visit them; the home of her ancestors was profaned, contaminated by the presence of that beggar, that bandit, that assassin who called himself Benedetto Giulente, lawyer, LAWYER!
Not even Raimondo’s arrival had changed her determination; anyway her nephew came assiduously to her for advice. In her hatred for ‘the Palma woman’ and in order to destroy that marriage which had taken place against her own wish, she urged the young man to make a definite break. Like Giulente, ‘the Palma woman’ was a blot on the Uzeda house; she did not want her to set foot in there again. And she defended Donna Isabella against the accusations made against her; she too had been sacrificed to that ignoble Fersa, that farce of a man; nothing more natural than for that ill-assorted marriage to end badly; had they given the Pinto girl to Raimondo, ah, then!
Suddenly, close on each other, had come the news of the duke and baron’s arrival, and of an imminent reconciliation between her nephew and his father-in-law. Raimondo had not put in an appearance; the thing was about to happen unknown to her! It was time to get her horses harnessed and go straight off to the palace.
When she entered the Yellow Drawing-room she found there the prince and princess, Don Eugenio, the duke, Lucrezia with her fiancé, Chiara with her marchese, and Raimondo walking up and down like a caged lion. As soon as Benedetto Giulente saw her enter, he got up respectfully. She passed him by as if he were one of the pieces of furniture scattered round the room. She answered no one’s greeting except that of Raimondo, whom she drew apart towards a window.
‘Mad old bitch!’ said Lucrezia to her fiancé, her face suddenly flushing.
He shook his head with an indulgent smile, but the duke now came up to the couple, as if to make up for his sister’s rudeness.
‘The baron should be here by now,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I’d have gone to fetch him myself if I hadn’t feared giving too much importance to something which should have none …’
‘Your Excellency did very well,’ replied Benedetto. ‘There’d have been more gossip than ever … Not,’ he added, ‘that it in any way reduces Your Excellency’s merit for having brought peace back to a family which …’
‘Petty misunderstandings! Young folk have hot heads!’ exclaimed the Honourable Member with a smile partly of indulgence and partly of pleasure.
Meanwhile Raimondo had stopped talking to his aunt and begun walking up and down again. He was green in the face and chewing his moustaches, twisting his lips, with hands in pockets.
Donna Ferdinanda now sat down next to the marchesa, who was in seventh heaven at being seven months with child. After two miscarriages in spite of following all the doctors’ prescriptions, all the midwives’ suggestions and all the old wives’ tales she could find, she had at last changed her system completely and was doing just whatever she liked, going out driving or walking, running up and down stairs, swallowing all the mixtures which she imagined must help her. She was declaring to her sister-in-law that never had she been so well as now.
‘Those idiots! Those impostors … And the midwives are no better. Why the other day Donna Anna had the courage to come and see me. I took her by the shoulders and said, “My dear Donna Anna, if you’d like you can come and see me three months after I’ve had the child. It’d be a pleasure, but for the moment you can go, for I don’t need you …” ’
Everyone around was talking in whispers as if in a sick room, but at the sound of a carriage entering the courtyard all speech ceased. The duke moved into the antechamber to meet his friend; but there instead was Cousin Graziella.
‘How is Your Excellency? I heard of your arrival and said to myself—I must go and kiss my uncle’s hand. My husband wanted to come too, but he’s been suddenly called to the Courts about some boring case. He’ll be coming later to do his duty …’
At sight of her, Raimondo sniffed louder than ever and exclaimed to his uncle, ‘Now this gossiping bitch too? Must the whole city be here?… Can’t Your Excellency see what a ridiculous scene …’
‘Patience … patience …’ began the duke. But now another carriage was entering the courtyard. He passed out of the room and shortly afterwards reappeared with the senator. The latter was very pale and his jaws could be seen nervously clenching under his cheeks.
‘Raimondo,’ exclaimed the deputy in a carelees and conciliating tone, ‘here’s your father-in-law …’
The count stopped. Without taking his hands from his pockets he gave a nod of greeting and said:
‘How are you?’
Palmi replied, ‘Well, and you?’ and turned to greet the others.
No-one breathed a word, every eye was on the baron. His hands too were trembling a little and he did not look his son-in-law in the face.
‘Please be seated, Don Gaetano,’ went on the duke, taking him by the arm and urging him in a friendly way. Then Palmi sat down between the princess and the marchesa. Donna Ferdinanda sat stiffly upright, her chin in her neck like an old chicken.
‘Is Matilde well?’ asked the princess.
‘Well, thank you.’
‘And the children?’
‘Very well.’
Raimondo was standing in the middle of the room, nervously snapping his fingers. The duke coughed a little, as if he were starting a sore throat, then asked him:
‘When are you going back to your wife?’
He replied shortly and briefly: ‘Tomorrow if need be.’
‘We’d like to have Matilde here a little,’ went on his uncle, looking at the other relations as if asking for their assent; but no one said a word. ‘Well,’ he went on then, ‘why not do this; go and fetch her and then you can all return together. What d’you think of that, baron?’
‘As you think best,’ replied Palmi.
Suddenly for the third time there was the sound of a carriage entering the courtyard, and all eyes turned towards the door. Who could it be? Ferdinando? The duchess?
In bounced Don Blasco.
Like his sister, the monk had not set foot inside the palace since
the day of Lucrezia’s engagement; like Donna Ferdinanda he had blamed it all on the prince, and had been so stubbornly deaf to all justifications that the latter had finally tired of insisting, having no legacy to hope for from him as he had from the other. Then, finding himself isolated, unable to take part in family affairs, forced to hear news of them at second or third hand through the Marchese Federico or strangers, the monk felt quite lost. Squabbles at the monastery kept him busy up to a point, but shouts and curses at Liberals, though redoubled as the new order became more established, were not enough, had no flavour unless made to his own relations in the very place where that renegade brother of his had his triumph, where that adventurer Giulente was sure to be spewing heresies. So, puffing frenziedly, he had been on the point more than once of going to visit the prince, but on getting half-way he had thought better of it, not wanting to give his nephew the satisfaction of seeing him yield first. At the news of the duke’s and the baron’s arrival, of the peace about to be made between father-in-law and son-in-law, he felt it was time for him to come to a decision.
The prince went towards him to kiss his hand. Lucrezia and Giulente, sitting together, were nearest the entrance doors. As the monk passed the young man got up as he had for the spinster, but Don Blasco went straight on towards the middle of the room. At this second affront Lucrezia became redder than ever and made her fiancé sit down.
‘They’ll pay for it, you’ll see!’ she said. ‘They’ll pay for it … Never will I set foot in this house again!… Never so much as look them in the face!…’
The duke did not seem to notice his brother’s arrival. To revive the languishing conversation and overcome the chill entrammelling all, and make herself useful, Cousin Graziella began asking about his journey through Italy, and the deputy now talked away at top speed:
‘What a confusion in Naples, eh? Such a place! You’d think that once the Court and Ministers and all the movement of a capital had gone it ought to lose population, reduce itself to a provincial town; instead of which every day it grows more animated than before. Turin is full of life too, but in a different way …’
‘In a different way …’ repeated the baron in a condescending tone, as if to avoid being silent.
‘Is it true that it’s rather like Catania?’ asked the marchese.
Raimondo broke out of his dumbness to say ironically:
‘Exactly like it! Two drops of water …’
‘The streets are said to be designed in the same way.’
‘Yes! Yes, indeed … Why not admit it! Turin is uglier, smaller, poorer, dirtier.’
Chiara then leapt to her husband’s defence:
‘This mania for criticising one’s own home town I’ve never understood.’
‘Excuse me,’ protested the duke, ‘no-one’s criticising here.’
‘One can’t really compare them,’ said Benedetto conciliatingly.
Donna Ferdinanda slowly raised her eyes and turned them in the direction whence the voice had come, but when she had them half-way there she switched them over to the window where Don Blasco was listening to his nephew’s account of developments.
‘He says he’ll join his wife and then they’ll both come here. Our uncle the duke arranged everything. As far as I’m concerned they can do just whatever they like. But they’ll begin all over again, you’ll see. I hope I’m mistaken, but We’re only at the start …’
‘Why did that old swine do it? Hasn’t he enough bees in his bonnet? Must he put his nose into this too? But I know the reason … Yes, I know … I know the reason …’
He was about to go on and have his full say when Baldassarre entered, grave and dignified as the solemnity of the occasion demanded.
‘Excellency,’ he said to the duke, ‘the representatives of various organisations are asking to pay Your Excellency their respects.’
Before the deputy had time to reply the baron had got to his feet.
‘Duke, do go, I leave you free.’
‘But no, stay, do … I’ll be back in a moment …’
‘I have a lot to do too. Many thanks!’
‘Won’t you at least come back to lunch with us?’
‘Thank you, no; I’m leaving today. I’ve arranged a special coach.’
It was useless to insist; the baron always put up a polite but cold refusal. He said goodbye to everyone and left accompanied by the duke, who was going downstairs to see his electors, while Raimondo went off to his own rooms. The three had scarcely vanished when a general murmur went up in the Yellow Drawing-room.
‘What a way of behaving!’ exclaimed Donna Ferdinanda. ‘He’s not said a dozen words in half an hour!’ said Cousin Graziella. ‘What’s wrong with him? What have they done to him?’ And the marchese said:
‘If one’s in that sort of mood one shouldn’t visit people.’ ‘And how haughty he was!’ added his wife.
From his place Benedetto Giulente observed:
‘His departure seems an excuse … to refuse …’
Then Don Blasco, without turning to the young man, as if answering the idea just put forward by him, boomed out:
‘The swine, idiot, and buffoon in this case is the one who invited him here!’
Benedetto, though the monk was not looking at him, made a gesture of the head that seemed part assent at what was said and part excuse of the duke’s insistence.
‘He might have been granting us a special grace, honouring us by his presence!’ Donna Ferdinanda was continuing meanwhile. ‘As if it had not been in his own interests! As if the fault for what’s happened weren’t his! And to make things worse that swine begging round him and agreeing with him! Just to make him all the more presumptuous and stuck-up …’
Benedetto, who was sitting almost opposite her, went on giving continual and regular nods of the head like an automaton, and as Cousin Graziella was chattering in a low voice with Chiara, and Don Blasco had drawn the marchese aside and was letting himself go, and the prince was sitting there silent, and the princess even more silent, that gesture of assent and approval eventually drew the spinster’s eyes.
‘While Raimondo is in the right,’ she went on, ‘in not wanting to be spied on in his own home, in refusing to tolerate his father-in-law’s continual interference in every little family affair …’
Seeing she had glanced at him one or twice, Benedetto, still nodding approval, agreed:
‘Yes, the baron really has a very difficult character …’
Donna Ferdinanda made no reply, partly because at that moment the marchese rose and Chiara with him. But as she went off with her niece and nephew she gave a slight bow in reply to a new, deeper, ever more respectful one from the young man.
Meanwhile down in the steward’s rooms the duke was receiving delegations and great numbers of influential electors, while a procession of admirers of all classes came to pay him their homage. It was the same scene as the night before, but on a bigger scale. Gradually the whole town seemed to be filing past the deputy; for two people who went away, four arrived; and there being no more places to sit everyone else stood, hat in hand, waiting for the handshake which the duke was distributing all around. A few improvised orators, people whom he did not even know, spoke in the name of their companions, affirming in reply to his expressions of modesty that the town would never forget what it owed to the Signor Duke. All the others listened open-mouthed, religiously intent on gathering the Honourable Member’s words; when compliments stopped, he talked of public events, promised them Venice, had Rome in his pocket, assured them that as well as political revival, the country would have moral, agricultural, industrial and commercial revival too.
‘That was Cavour’s programme. What a head that man had! He used to talk of Sicily as if he’d been born here. He knew the price of our crops and our sulphur better than one of our own merchants …’ The Government had promised him many things for the island, although they had so much to think of; from education of youth to work for labourers. Little by little, with peace a
nd amity, public and private prosperity would be achieved. He almost made them feel it within their grasp, and those come to hear what had happened about their requests for a small post or a subsidy or a pension went off praising him to the skies as if he had filled their pockets, and spread throughout the town the news of the reconciliation between the count and his wife; all due to the duke, who had made the sacrifice of leaving the capital at a moment like this simply in order to induce his nephew to see reason. Paeans of praise for the deputy could be heard everywhere. From the palace courtyard to the Reading Club all were agreed that this had been both good and dutiful work on his part; only Don Blasco, at the pro-Bourbon chemist’s, yelled like one obsessed:
‘Ah, that’s what you think, is it?… Why d’you think he did it? To satisfy the mob! To have it said he’s defending morality … And for yet another reason … to ingratiate himself with that other rascally friend of the lazy scum … That fellow who kept harping on my faults! That baron with seven pairs of b …!’
WHEN the Countess Matilde returned to her husband’s family after two years’ absence, they themselves did not recognise her at first. She had always been pale and thin, now she was wan and emaciated. Her chest was hollow, as if she were being eaten away by some slow relentless disease, her shoulders bent as if by weight of years, and her sunken eyes, in livid surrounds, glinting with fever, told of torturing thought, frenzied worry, mortal fear.
‘Poor Matilde! Have you been ill?’ the princess asked her, in spite of her husband’s injunctions not to take sides.
‘A little …’ replied her sister-in-law, shaking her head with a sweet sad smile, ‘it’s over now …’
In fact she felt reborn. Her father had refused to accompany her to that house or to let her bring the children. Yet forgetting all she had suffered there she entered it with a sense of relief, almost of confidence. The recent tempest had been so violent and harsh that she even thought with regret of former sorrows; they had seemed intolerable then, when she did not know how slowly and surely they would grow till they began to contend even with her hope of any kind of return to peace. How her heart had shut at the first disillusionment, at seeing that her love was not enough for Raimondo, that his mind was different from hers, that he found happiness in things which had no value for her! And yet at that time he had not betrayed her! But then betrayals had come, and she had forgiven because all men did such things, so it was said, though she herself suffered silently at them in the depths of her heart. What could she have done anyway? What could she have done before this greater danger, this more dreadful threat? Leave him? He himself had left her!…
The Viceroys Page 32
