"Ah, of course you don't like it. That is, you like my interest--Idon't see how you can help liking that; but you don't like my freedom. That's natural enough; but, my dear young friend, I want only to help you. If a man had said to me--so many years ago--what Iam saying to you, I should certainly also, at first, have thought him a great brute. But after a little, I should have been grateful--Ishould have felt that he was helping me.""You seem to have been very well able to help yourself," said Stanmer. "You tell me you made your escape.""Yes, but it was at the cost of infinite perplexity--of what I may call keen suffering. I should like to save you all that.""I can only repeat--it is really very kind of you.""Don't repeat it too often, or I shall begin to think you don't mean it.""Well," said Stanmer, "I think this, at any rate--that you take an extraordinary responsibility in trying to put a man out of conceit of a woman who, as he believes, may make him very happy."I grasped his arm, and we stopped, going on with our talk like a couple of Florentines.
"Do you wish to marry her?"
He looked away, without meeting my eyes. "It's a great responsibility," he repeated.
"Before Heaven," I said, "I would have married the mother! You are exactly in my situation.""Don't you think you rather overdo the analogy?" asked poor Stanmer.
"A little more, a little less--it doesn't matter. I believe you are in my shoes. But of course if you prefer it, I will beg a thousand pardons and leave them to carry you where they will."He had been looking away, but now he slowly turned his face and met my eyes. "You have gone too far to retreat; what is it you know about her?""About this one--nothing. But about the other--""I care nothing about the other!"
"My dear fellow," I said, "they are mother and daughter--they are as like as two of Andrea's Madonnas.""If they resemble each other, then, you were simply mistaken in the mother."I took his arm and we walked on again; there seemed no adequate reply to such a charge. "Your state of mind brings back my own so completely," I said presently. "You admire her--you adore her, and yet, secretly, you mistrust her. You are enchanted with her personal charm, her grace, her wit, her everything; and yet in your private heart you are afraid of her.""Afraid of her?"
"Your mistrust keeps rising to the surface; you can't rid yourself of the suspicion that at the bottom of all things she is hard and cruel, and you would be immensely relieved if some one should persuade you that your suspicion is right."Stanmer made no direct reply to this; but before we reached the hotel he said--"What did you ever know about the mother?""It's a terrible story," I answered.
He looked at me askance. "What did she do?""Come to my rooms this evening and I will tell you."He declared he would, but he never came. Exactly the way I should have acted!
14th.--I went again, last evening, to Casa Salvi, where I found the same little circle, with the addition of a couple of ladies. Stanmer was there, trying hard to talk to one of them, but making, I am sure, a very poor business of it. The Countess--well, the Countess was admirable. She greeted me like a friend of ten years, toward whom familiarity should not have engendered a want of ceremony; she made me sit near her, and she asked me a dozen questions about my health and my occupations.
"I live in the past," I said. "I go into the galleries, into the old palaces and the churches. Today I spent an hour in Michael Angelo's chapel at San Loreozo.""Ah yes, that's the past," said the Countess. "Those things are very old.""Twenty-seven years old," I answered.
"Twenty-seven? Altro!"
"I mean my own past," I said. "I went to a great many of those places with your mother.""Ah, the pictures are beautiful," murmured the Countess, glancing at Stanmer.
"Have you lately looked at any of them?" I asked. "Have you gone to the galleries with HIM?"She hesitated a moment, smiling. "It seems to me that your question is a little impertinent. But I think you are like that.""A little impertinent? Never. As I say, your mother did me the honour, more than once, to accompany me to the Uffizzi.""My mother must have been very kind to you.""So it seemed to me at the time."
"At the time only?"
"Well, if you prefer, so it seems to me now.""Eh," said the Countess, "she made sacrifices.""To what, cara Signora? She was perfectly free. Your lamented father was dead--and she had not yet contracted her second marriage.""If she was intending to marry again, it was all the more reason she should have been careful."I looked at her a moment; she met my eyes gravely, over the top of her fan. "Are YOU very careful?" I said.
She dropped her fan with a certain violence. "Ah, yes, you are impertinent!""Ah no," I said. "Remember that I am old enough to be your father;that I knew you when you were three years old. I may surely ask such questions. But you are right; one must do your mother justice. She was certainly thinking of her second marriage.""You have not forgiven her that!" said the Countess, very gravely.
"Have you?" I asked, more lightly.
"I don't judge my mother. That is a mortal sin. My stepfather was very kind to me.""I remember him," I said; "I saw him a great many times--your mother already received him."My hostess sat with lowered eyes, saying nothing; but she presently looked up.
"She was very unhappy with my father."
"That I can easily believe. And your stepfather--is he still living?""He died--before my mother."
"Did he fight any more duels?"
"He was killed in a duel," said the Countess, discreetly.
