Part 9 (1/2)
”Do not pretend that you care for me, Agostino,” she said angrily; ”I will believe it only on one condition, that you accompany me to Magliana.”
”I have told you it is impossible, Imperia. Bazzi is an amusing fellow, a hundred times more entertaining than I.”
”I am tired of Bazzi. He is an insufferable idiot. I will not go unless you escort me, Agostino.”
”Then Raphael shall take you. His Holiness will be delighted to welcome him, as he desires him to plan some decorations for the villa; and you cannot, my Imperia, call Raphael an idiot.”
It was Imperia's turn to blanch as Raphael came forward and courteously asked the honour of her company.
But she quickly recovered herself, ”Raphael is too charming,” she said guilefully, ”and were it not that his heart is given to the beautiful Margherita I might be tempted to angle for it.”
”Ah!” exclaimed Chigi, well pleased, ”that is good news. Margherita is a rare prize, and I am glad to know that the unimpressionable Raphael at last really loves.”
The eyes of Imperia and Chigi were intently fixed on Raphael's face, striving to read his true feelings. He felt and resented the scrutiny.
”I doubt if the man lives who has not loved,” he said, flus.h.i.+ng.
”Perhaps it is because I love so deeply that I cannot speak of it.”
Imperia softened for an instant, and, taking a lute, sang, _Quant'e bella giovinezza_.[4] But the pent-up pa.s.sion that possessed her this evening woke again in the line, _Che si fugge tuttavia_, and she ended suddenly with a dry choking sob.
An embarra.s.sing silence fell upon us all, broken finally by Imperia. ”A little honesty might clear the atmosphere,” she said to Raphael; ”besides what need is there of such secrecy when we have all guessed the truth. No, you shall not escort me to Magliana. I will be no man's second choice, not even yours, Agostino,” and so saying she ungraciously departed from us.
”She is in a devil of a humour,” Chigi said to me, uneasily, when Raphael had bidden us good-night. ”What can have angered her? Is it possible that she suspects that her reign is over?”
”She suspects nothing,” I a.s.sured him, truthfully; in my heart I added, ”but she knows everything.”
”But will she go?” Chigi asked, anxiously; ”that is the immediate question. I cannot put her out by force.”
”You will never have to do that,” I replied. ”She will go, never fear.
Leave her to herself, her mood will have changed by morning. There is only one thing to be relied upon in women, and that is their inconstancy, not alone to men but to any fixed idea.”
In spite of the flippancy with which I had striven to beguile Chigi, I was vaguely but none the less genuinely troubled. Unable to sleep, I strolled toward dawn in the garden. A lamp burned in the tiny room a.s.signed to Margherita, and to my surprise there flitted across the window the shadow of Imperia. What business could she have there at such an hour? Certain expressions, to which I had given no weight at the time of their utterance, came back to me with sinister significance, and especially her declaration that Margherita must disappear, ”not for one day, but for ever.” I continued my watch until a gust of rain drove me into the house, and I fell asleep to dream that an oubliette lined with the blades of scythes (such as I knew existed in certain old Roman houses) had at Imperia's touch yawned beneath the couch of Margherita; and that the innocent barrier to Raphael's reconciliation with Maria had indeed ”dropped from his life.”
But I awoke at Chigi's cheery halloo to find that the storms of the previous evening had cleared. Imperia had expressed her readiness to spend the day at Magliana, and my host desired me to select horses for the excursion.
I never saw her gayer than on that day, and when I looked askance as she jested with his Holiness and flirted with Riario, daring him to give a supper in her honour in his new palace, she pressed my foot beneath the table and looked me smilingly in the face, as though striving to a.s.sure me that all was well.
But she would not comply with Leo's request for his father's canzone, _Quant e bella_, which she had sung with such effect the previous evening. She left the gay company while they were all clamoring for more, and insisted that I should urge the horses to the utmost as we dashed back to Rome.
Our common anxiety to know the outcome of Maria Dovizio's visit to Chigi's villa, together with her great longing for sympathy in this crisis of her life, so wrought with the favouring opportunity of that wild drive that Imperia granted me such a revelation of her inmost soul as I believe no other man can boast, and I knew her that night as G.o.d knew her.
She had sought Margherita the night before a criminal at heart, for she had determined to sacrifice the girl. Imperia possessed a house in Rome.
It was on her lips to tell Margherita that Raphael, who had met with an accident, was lying there at the point of death, and had sent for her to come to him. She had already instructed her servants, and had Margherita once entered that house its doors would never again have been opened for her.
But Imperia's guardian angel was kind. Before the words could be uttered Margherita had poured out her heart in grat.i.tude to the woman whom she believed to be her benefactress. While the girl spoke, Imperia strove to steel herself, repeating mentally the round of cruel reasoning which had been the Ixion's wheel on which her tortured brain had unceasingly revolved:
”If Margherita speaks to Maria Dovizio, Maria will never be reconciled with Raphael. Unless Maria weds Raphael she will surely marry Chigi.