And his arm went round her, his temple brushed hers. She was still crying, but from tenderness, not pain. After the horrors she had seen, after the gloom of her thoughts, her mind needed comfort, and those comforting words slid into her heart as sweetly as balsam. She, who had thought herself alone in the world, with no one to understand her, now abandoned herself with the trembling enjoyment of weakness to that strength, this sympathy. He dried her eyes, smoothed the disordered locks on her forehead. His hand was trembling.
‘Like this …’ he murmured … ‘There … like this.’
His arm went around her waist again, and he took one of her hands. The sobs racking her agonised breast made their embrace closer. He kissed her on the forehead.
She freed herself from the embrace and rose. The dowager was arriving.
From that moment each read blame in the other’s eyes. They avoided looking at each other but the thought persisted. If the hand or clothes of one brushed those of the other, their foreheads flushed and their minds clouded. She no longer thought of her father, who was dying, or of her children. Of temptation only, always. She went to throw herself before the Blessed Ximena; the votive lamp burnt ceaselessly, like the flame in her heart. Prayers were no use; no one heard her. Nothing was any use. She thought, ‘It will be today … or tomorrow …’
Her husband once said to her:
‘Giovannino rather worries me … he’s gone strange again, as after his illness, have you noticed?’
She had seen nothing. She was amazed no one had yet noticed her own confusion of mind.
‘He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t laugh; it must be that fixation tormenting him again … what can we do?’
What could they do?
One day, at table, Giovannino announced:
‘I’m leaving for Augusta.’
This is salvation, she was thinking, salvation, while the dowager and Michele exclaimed:
‘Again? To have a relapse? At this season?… We won’t let you leave here!’
This is salvation, she was thinking. And when Michele asked her, ‘It’s true he can’t leave, isn’t it?’
‘It’s unwise …’ she replied.
He raised his eyes to hers. They had not looked straight at each other for so long. Then she was afraid: those staring, flaming, terrible eyes, those eyes of a madman, were repeating to her, ‘D’you want to send me insane then?’
And he stayed. But he became wild. She noticed his madness at once, for it was turned against her. He avoided her, never said a word to her. When the babies were handed to him he pushed them away, as if he were touching herself in touching the flesh of her flesh. A terrible misanthropy assailed him, he no longer left the house. One day, when made to go out, he never came home. Next day he returned. No one knew where he had been.
The same day she was called at dawn by the princess. Prince Giacomo was in his death agony; the poisoned blood was gradually spreading gangrene over the whole body. The morning before, to everybody’s amazement, he had sent for Consalvo. He wanted to make a last effort to induce him to take a wife; fear of the Evil Eye ceded before the supreme necessity of ensuring a descendant. To his superstitious mind, weakened still more by illness, his son’s marriage was now the only means of wresting that dreadful power from him. Married, established in a home of his own, master of a bank-account and of his wife’s dowry, he would have no reason to wish his father short life.
Consalvo came at once, asked anxiously after his health, and sat at his bedside. The prince explained:
‘I’ve called you to say something … It’s time you took a wife.’
‘Your Excellency must think of recovery,’ exclaimed Consalvo. ‘Then we’ll talk about such matters.’
‘No,’ insisted the prince. ‘You must take a wife now …’ He did not add ‘because I’m going to die’.
Consalvo controlled a movement of irritation.
‘But what does Your Excellency fear? That our family will die out? Don’t worry about that … I’ll take a wife, I promise you that. But leave me a little time. Would you like me to give you a written assurance?’ he added smiling. ‘I’m ready … Will that please you?’
The sick man was silent a moment. Then he went on in a sharper tone:
‘I want you to lose no time. It must be done now.’
‘Now, at once, this minute?’ … replied Consalvo in the same jesting tone.
‘Now … or you’ll regret it.’
Consalvo had great difficulty in hiding a movement of rebellion.
‘But by God’s goodness, why is Your Excellency in such a hurry? It isn’t as if I were a girl getting older and running the risk of not finding a husband. I’m just twenty-nine; I can still wait, make a good choice. In Your Excellency’s time boys of eighteen were given wives—now ideas are different. I don’t say that by the old system they turned out bad husbands and fathers … but I suppose it’s thought today, and I myself think, that one should have acquired a wide experience, be in the prime of life oneself before giving life to others. I may be mistaken, but if I took a wife now I can assure you I’d make my partner unhappy and be unhappy myself. I’d regret having listened to Your Excellency. I would like to please you, but that obedience to your wishes might bring consequences too grave to me and others.’
While his son was speaking, showing off his eloquence, the prince said not a word. When Consalvo left he seized the bell and rang furiously. The princess, the servants hurrying in, found him in a state that terrified them. Pale as if already dead, with taut cheeks and contracted jaw, the counterpane tight in his emaciated hands:
‘The notary! The notary! The notary!’ he was bellowing. At every word from his attendants asking him what was the matter, trying to calm him, he bayed like an angry dog:
‘The notary!… The notary!… The notary!…’
In this state Teresa found him. He would not calm down until the notary came. Then he disinherited his son. Only under the impetus of fury, to take revenge, had he been able to force himself to dictate his last wishes. And cutting short with raucous cries the remarks of the old notary, who could not believe his own ears and was trying to recall him to reason and prevent this monstrous act, he dictated:
‘I nominate universal heiress of all my patrimony, of all my patrimony, my daughter Teresa Uzeda, Duchess Radalì … with the obligation that she give her children my family surname and call them Uzeda-Radalì of Francalanza … So for all her descendants for ever …’
‘Excellency …’
‘Write!… I leave to my wife Graziella, Princess of Francalanza, my ancestral palace … with the express obligation, express, express, write, express, that she live in it alone during her natural life …’
‘My lord Prince!…’
‘Write!…’ and he continued to dictate legacies to servants, to relatives for mourning expenses, to churches for Masses, to priests for charities; and not a single word, not a hint of that son. He ordered that his funeral be celebrated with the pomp proper to his name, that his body be embalmed. But gradually as he expressed these wishes his voice became hoarse and his vital energies left him; when he ended, the notary thought that the last moment had come. Then the sick man revived, took the sheet of paper, read it word by word and signed it. When the last formalities were done and the Will was sealed, that violent agitation of his suddenly ran down. He had spoken of his own death! He had dictated his last wishes! He had made arrangements for his funeral! He had cast the Evil Eye on himself! Nothing now remained for him but to die! No one got another word out of him. Motionless, grim, he shut his eyes, waiting.
The notary had already hurried off to the Duke of Oragua.
‘The young prince is disinherited! Put out of his home! His daughter sole heiress! The palace to the stepmother! Was ever such a thing seen? Is the House of Francalanza at an end?… Do something!… Prevent the scandal!… Persuade that madman …’
The duke was very busy in those days; the Thirteenth Parliament had ended and electoral
committees were to meet on the 26th May. Though he had decided to retire once he obtained nomination as senator, he was presenting himself for re-election again because the nomination did not come through. And what with the devotion of old friends, and the disillusioned indifference of those who pinned their faith on the promised electoral reform to get rid of him, his candidature was going no worse than at other times. Giulente, who had thought himself on the point of obtaining the post, went back to canvassing for the duke. In spite of his preoccupations, on hearing the notary’s news the duke hurried off to the palace, but the prince had left orders that not a soul was to be allowed inside. Then he went to search out Consalvo. The latter was at the Town Hall, where he was presiding in the Council Chamber over a meeting of engineers for some new public works he had thought up, the building of big aqueducts destined to supply the town with water. On hearing that his uncle was calling for him, he asked those present to excuse him and went to receive him in his private office.
‘Do you know what’s happened?’ exclaimed the duke in a low voice but with an air of grave disquiet. And he told all.
‘Well?’ replied Consalvo, twirling his moustaches.
‘What d’you mean “well”?… Go and throw yourself at his feet!… Ask his pardon … Surrender just this once …’
‘Me?… Why?…’ And with an ambiguous smile he added, ‘Can he take from me what is mine by law? No, he can’t. He can do what he likes with the rest!’
His uncle stood there looking at him, in amazement, not understanding. Was it really true then? Was this Uzeda here different from all the others? When the others were quarrelling and scuffling with each other, riding roughshod over all scruples and laws so as to make money, did this one here remain indifferent, even smiling at hearing himself disinherited?
‘But you don’t realise what you’re losing!… The palace left to his wife to prevent your having it! Don’t you understand that? Aren’t you sorry?…’
Consalvo let his uncle have his say. Then he answered:
‘Has Your Excellency finished? May I say that my portion by law, that is a quarter of the patrimony, is enough for me, in fact too much? As for the palace …’ He was silent for a moment as that did really rather bother him; the prince had known where to get his blow in. ‘As for the palace, there’s no lack of houses, and with money a finer one than ours can be set up. Now if Your Excellency will allow me; the deputation is waiting.’
The news spread throughout the city. And with one voice the prince was blamed by high and low. Antipathy, hatred for his son, there might be. But surely not to such a point? One’s soul to God and one’s property to whoever had the right to it!… Did he not remember that his mother the old princess had hated him too but even so had treated him as she did her favourite?… Such a thing was only possible in that cage of madmen. Mad the father and mad the son! But the young prince’s partisans exclaimed: ‘You see how disinterested he is?… Though being a man of character and not budging, he loses a fortune and doesn’t care a rap!’
But if all, universally, blamed the prince, real consternation reigned amid servants, retainers, and hangers-on. The House of Francalanza at an end! The money to the girl! The palace to the wife! Had the end of the world come?…
One person only found difficulty in hiding her joy: the dowager Duchess Radalì. The fortune now concentrating in her elder son’s hands would be huge! The young duke would have an immense income! If Giovannino did not marry—and she was there to see he didn’t—the duke’s riches would be enough to make one’s head reel!… She almost felt her own reeling and could not understand how Michele remained indifferent to that announcement, how he could say:
‘Mother, I’m not thinking of that. I’m thinking of Giovannino … Can’t you see? He’s grim, taciturn, there are days when he terrifies me …’
She saw nothing, sure that Michele was exaggerating. Her joy could be read in her eyes, showed at her every act, in her every word. Teresa looked at her and did not understand. Alone among them all she knew nothing of her father’s Will. She did not hear the mutters of her relations, did not understand people’s allusions. A flame was burning in her breast, an enclosed flame which was gradually consuming her. Why had she not let him leave? Why had she not warded off the temptation? And his eyes were always saying, ‘So you want to send me mad?…’
She was incapable of hearing or understanding anything, under the weight of the tragedy she felt growing all around her. There were moments when she prayed for her father’s death agony to last, for only that agony, that terror of death detached her from her corroding thought. What would happen after her father’s death? Then, seeing the prince’s atrocious torture, she blamed herself for her inhuman wish.
The prince was dying piece by piece, amid curses and prayers, raging and tears. At one moment he was afraid of being alone, at another the sight of healthy people made him furious. Having named his daughter his heiress, he thrust her away from him too, for as she was to inherit she must be hurrying on his death by her thoughts. No one talked to him either of the Will or anything else. He himself insisted on starting any subject of conversation. Most often his door was shut; no one could penetrate to him.
And one night a servant hurried off to the Radalì palace: the prince was dying. The news was told to the baron Giovannino for him to pass on to his brother, who was asleep with his wife.
‘What am I to do?… What am I to do?…’ he stuttered, in prey to extraordinary confusion.
Finally he went to call his mother. The old dowager hurried into the marriage chamber. At her sudden appearance Teresa, who had been lying awake a long while, felt a great chill creep over her body. ‘My father?…’ and with a cry she fell senseless on the bed. The old duchess shook Michele to wake him from his heavy sleep, and ran to find a cordial. The lady’s maid and nurse also rushed in.
In the room next door the baron seemed stunned. His brother was calling him, the servants were saying to him as they hurriedly passed to and fro, ‘The poor young duchess!… Come in too, Your Excellency …’ But he was staring at the threshold of the marriage chamber with fixed dilated eyes, as if seeing some horror there.
‘Giovannino!’ suddenly called Michele.
He entered. She was lying on the bed with bare arms and naked breast, her golden hair spread over the pillow, her lips open and eyes turned up. ‘Help me to raise her …’
She was rigid as a corpse. He raised her by the armpits. As if his hands were burning he began rubbing them together. He was trembling. They were all trembling, for the night was icy cold.
‘She’s coming to her senses,’ announced the dowager.
Then he moved away, and went into the window-embrasure in the next room. Half an hour later they all three came out, Teresa supported by her mother-in-law and her husband. Michele said to his brother:
‘You go to bed … It’s cold … I’ll be back as soon as possible.’
At the prince’s were gathered all the relations. Consalvo was in the Yellow Drawing-room with his uncles and aunts; at the dying man’s bedside were only the princess and his uncle the duke. Teresa went and knelt beside her stepmother.
‘The sooner it’s over the better’ they were saying in the Yellow Drawing-room. ‘He’s suffering so …’
Consalvo said nothing. He was thinking with terror of this fearful disease which could one day gnaw away and destroy his own body at that moment so full of life. The impoverished blood of the ancient race was making, after Ferdinando, another premature victim, for his father was scarcely fifty-five years old. Would he too die before his time, before achieving his truimph, killed by those terrible ills which struck down the Uzeda while they were still young? His father would have given all his riches to live a year, a month, a day longer. What would he not give himself for the vivid healthy blood of a peasant to flow in his own veins?… ‘Nothing!’
It was the corrupt blood of his old race that made him what he was: Consalvo Uzeda, today Prince of Mirabella, tomorrow
Prince of Francalanza. It was to that historic name, to those sonorous titles that he felt he owed his place in the world, the ease with which avenues opened before him. ‘All must be paid for!’ thought he. But rather than give a thing for the long strong life of an obscure plebeian he would have given all, at the cost of any ill, for a single day of supreme glory … ‘Even at the cost of reason?’ The only danger really terrifying him was that other obscure one weighing on all of his race. But then on considering the lucidity of his own spirit, the Tightness of his judgment, the acuteness of his views, he felt reassured; those poor in spirit, those monomaniacs called Ferdinando and Eugenio Uzeda may have lost their reasons; he was not threatened … And at that moment, under the influence of those thoughts, of those fears, he almost came to judge himself severely for the long quarrel with his father. Were the stubbornnness and obduracy which he had shown not disturbing symptoms, signs that one day he might lose his way like those others? Though resisting his father’s impositions, and even judging him according to his deserts, could he not have kept a certain restraint, respected forms, saved appearances? Why this present scandal? Might he not even have done his father wrong?… And now he felt almost disposed to change his attitude and ask the dying man’s pardon.
In the sick-room they were reciting the prayers for the dying; the prince had reached his death rattle. In the sight of death fear again froze Consalvo’s heart. He felt pity for his father, for all his family. Wild, hard, bullying maniacs; were they responsible for their own awful qualities? ‘All must be paid for!’ and they were paying for their great name, their ostentatious style of living, their much-envied wealth. But that blank face of his father, that blind gaze, that ghastly rattle … The young man bent his knees, sensed things which he had denied. He who had made a jest of his sister’s religion, accusing her of bigotry, realised now what a refuge for her were prayer and faith. Kneeling with joined hands, immobile as a figure on a tomb, she saw nothing, heard nothing. Consalvo almost envied the unfailing comfort to which she could have recourse in her sorrow.
The Viceroys Page 63
