Part 29 (1/2)
”You did not expect me so soon,” she said, speaking very gently. ”It was by a mere chance that I managed it.”
”I am very sorry,” said Marcantonio in a monotonous voice that had no life in it, and seemed not his own. ”If you had waited a little while I could have saved you the journey.”
”The journey is nothing,” said she. ”I am not tired at all, and I would come across the world to be with you.”
”Yes,” said Marcantonio, ”I know you would. It would have been better if we had met further on.”
”Further on?” she repeated, hoping he would give her some clue to his intentions.
The old habit of confidence was too strong for him; he wished her away, but he could not help speaking and telling her something. He had never concealed anything from her.
”In Turin,” he answered briefly.
”Ah,--is he there?” asked Diana in a low voice.
”He sent his box there,--he will go and get it.”
”And then?”
”And then,” said Marcantonio, the sullen fire burning in his reddened eyes, ”we shall meet.”
Diana was silent for a moment, determining what to do. All this she had expected, but she had not thought to find her brother so changed.
”Tell me, Marcantonio,” she said earnestly, ”did you think I would prevent your meeting with him?” He hesitated. She took his hand and looked into his face as though urging him to answer.
”Yes,” he said hoa.r.s.ely.
Diana understood. This was the reason of his evident annoyance at her coming. He thought she meant to prevent him from fighting Batis...o...b...
”You know better than that,” she said gravely. Marcantonio turned upon her quickly with an angry look.
”You prevented me before,” he said. ”If I had shot him then, this trouble would not have come. You know it,--why do you look at me like that?”
”If you had shot him before,” said she, ”this could not have happened.
But if he had shot you,--that was possible, was it not?--you gained nothing. If neither of you had killed the other, there would have been a useless scandal. The case is different.”
If she had found her brother overcome with his sorrow and abandoned to the suffering it brought, sensitive and shrinking from all allusion to his shame, she would have acted very differently. But she found him possessed of but one idea, how to kill Julius Batis...o...b..; he was hard and unyielding; he seemed to have forgotten the wife he had loved so well, in the longing to destroy the man who had stolen her away. She felt no hesitation in speaking plainly of the matter in hand, since his feelings needed no sparing. But her sympathy was so large and honest that she did not feel hurt herself because he was cold to her; she understood that he was scarcely in his right mind, and she could make all allowance for him.
Marcantonio did not answer at once. But her influence on him, as she sat there, was soothing, and he was gradually yielding under it--not in the least abandoning his one idea, but feeling that she might not hinder its execution after all.
”Do you mean to say,” he asked suddenly, ”that you will not try to prevent my meeting with him?” He turned and looked into her eyes, that met his honestly and fearlessly.
”a.s.suredly I will not prevent you,” said she.
”Really and truly?”
”So truly that if I thought you had meant to leave him alone, I would have tried to make you fight him.”
Marcantonio laughed scornfully, in a way that was bad to hear. It had never struck him that he could possibly have not wanted to fight. But in a moment he was grave again.