Part 40 (1/2)
”You have made it what it is,” he answered.
”How do you mean?” she asked quickly.
”You cannot do wrong,” he replied, with his faint, far-off laugh. ”If I had read in a book, of an imaginary person, all that you have written me of yourself, I should have said that most of it was absolutely impossible, or wildly rash, or foolishly unwise. You know how we are all brought up. We are nursed in the arms of tradition, we are fed on ideas of custom--we are taken to walk, as children, by incarnate prejudice for a nursery maid, and taught to see things that used to be, where modern things are. What can you expect? We have not much originality by the time we grow up.”
”Yes--you know that I was educated in a convent.”
”That is better than being educated at home by a priest.” Gianluca smiled again. ”Besides, you are different. That is why I say that if I have an opinion, you have made it for me. You are doing all those things which I could not have believed in a book, and they are turning out well. If society could see you here, it would not find it necessary to invent a duenna to chaperon you. But it is not everybody who could do what you have done, and succeed. I do not wonder that my mother is astonished, and my father, too. But at the same time, since you can do such things, it seems to me that you would have made a great mistake in doing anything else--as great a mistake as Julius Caesar would have made if he had chosen to remain a fas.h.i.+onable lawyer instead of mixing in politics, or Achilles, if he had taken a necklace or a bracelet and left the sword in Ulysses' basket. You would have found your mythical duenna a nuisance in real life.”
Veronica laughed.
”At the end of the first week I should have locked her up in the dungeon tower, to get rid of her,” she said.
”I have no doubt that you would, and your people would have thought it the most natural thing in the world. You could do anything you pleased in this place, I fancy. They would not think it strange if you tried and condemned a cheating steward and had him executed in that gloomy courtyard we pa.s.sed through when we came in yesterday.”
”The law might find fault with my vivacity,” said Veronica. ”But my people would say that I had done right if the man had really cheated them. It is quite true, I think. I could do almost anything here. I had a man locked up in the munic.i.p.al prison the other day for forty-eight hours, because he was tipsy and swore at Don Teodoro in the street. Of course, it is nominally the syndic who does that sort of thing; but he belongs to me, like everything else here, and I do as I please, just as my grandfather did, when he really had power of life and death in Muro, including the privilege of torture. The first article mentioned in the old inventory was forty palms of stout rope for giving the cord, as they called it. They did it under the main gate,--that is why it came first,--and they used to pull them up to the vault and then drop them with a jerk to within two feet of the ground. The ring is still there, just inside the gate.”
”My mother's uncle--the old Marchese di Rionero--once hanged a ruffian for mutilating one of his horses out of spite. And they say that Italy has not progressed! There is no hanging, not even for murder, nowadays.”
”Yes,” answered Veronica, thoughtfully, ”we have progressed, in a way.
That is our trouble--we have progressed too fast and improved too little, I think.”
”That sounds paradoxical.”
”Oh no! It is common sense, as I mean it. Progress costs money, improvement brings it. Progress means wearing clothes like other people, having splendid cities like other nations, keeping up armies and navies like other great powers. Improvement means helping poor people to earn more wages and to live better--giving them a possibility of happiness, instead of taking the little they have in order to give ourselves the appearance of greatness. That is why I say that in Italy we have too much progress and too little improvement.”
”Yes--how well you put it!” Gianluca looked at her with quick admiration.
”Do I? It is because you understand easily. Should you call me patriotic? I think I am. I am an Italian before anything else, before being a Serra, a woman, a member of society--anything! I feel as though I should like to give my heart for my people and my life for our country, if it would do any good. Of course, if it really came to making any great sacrifice, I suppose my courage would shrivel up and I should behave just like any one else.”
”No--you would not,” said Gianluca, gravely. ”There have been women--the great Countess, and Saint Catherine of Siena--”
”Yes!” Veronica laughed. ”And there were also my good ancestors, who tore Italy to pieces, joined hands with German Emperors, upset Popes, seized everything they could lay hands upon, and turned the country into a sort of perpetual gladiator's show. That is a proud and promising inheritance for an aspiring patriot, is it not? The less you and I talk of patriotism, the better--seeing what our people have done in history to make patriotism necessary in our time.”
”Perhaps so. Doing is better than talking, and you have begun by doing good and trying to make people happy. You have succeeded in one case, already.”
She looked at him with a glance of inquiry.
”What case?” she asked.
”I mean myself--of course. You have made me perfectly happy to-day.”
”I am glad,” she answered. ”I wish you to be always happy.”
She spoke thoughtfully, gravely, and gently, and then turned from him a little, and looked through the iron railing of the balcony, down at the deep distance of the valley. She was wondering, and justly, whether during the past hour she had not made a mistake, very cruel to him, in breaking down all at once the barrier of excessive formality which hitherto had stood between them when they met. Words rose to her lips, which with the utmost gentleness should quickly undeceive him, if he had been deceived; but when she looked at him and saw his happy, appealing eyes and his transparent face, her courage was not ready. Perhaps he was dying, as she had been told. She turned again and watched the misty depths.
”Don Gianluca--” she began, with a little hesitation. But as she spoke there was a footfall in the embrasure.
”What were you going to say?” asked Gianluca, knowing from her tone that she had meant to speak of some grave matter.