Where Angels Fear to Tread · Chapter 7 (1/2)

VII

At about nine o’clock next morning Perfetta went out onto the loggia, not to look at the view, but to throw some dirty water at it. “Scusi tanto!” she wailed, for the water spattered a tall young lady who had for some time been tapping at the lower door.

“Is Signor Carella in?” the young lady asked. It was no business of Perfetta’s to be shocked, and the style of the visitor seemed to demand the reception room. Accordingly she opened its shutters, dusted a round patch on one of the horsehair chairs, and bade the lady do herself the inconvenience of sitting down. Then she ran into Monteriano and shouted up and down its streets until such time as her young master should hear her.

The reception room was sacred to the dead wife. Her shiny portrait hung upon the wall⁠—similar, doubtless, in all respects to the one which would be pasted on her tombstone. A little piece of black drapery had been tacked above the frame to lend a dignity to woe. But two of the tacks had fallen out, and the effect was now rakish, as of a drunkard’s bonnet. A coon song lay open on the piano, and of the two tables one supported Baedeker’s Central Italy, the other Harriet’s inlaid box. And over everything there lay a deposit of heavy white dust, which was only blown off one moment to thicken on another. It is well to be remembered with love. It is not so very dreadful to be forgotten entirely. But if we shall resent anything on earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted room.

Miss Abbott did not sit down, partly because the antimacassars might harbour fleas, partly because she had suddenly felt faint, and was glad to cling onto the funnel of the stove. She struggled with herself, for she had need to be very calm; only if she was very calm might her behaviour be justified. She had broken faith with Philip and Harriet: she was going to try for the baby before they did. If she failed she could scarcely look them in the face again.

“Harriet and her brother,” she reasoned, “don’t realize what is before them. She would bluster and be rude; he would be pleasant and take it as a joke. Both of them⁠—even if they offered money⁠—would fail. But I begin to understand the man’s nature; he does not love the child, but he will be touchy about it⁠—and that is quite as bad for us. He’s charming, but he’s no fool; he conquered me last year; he conquered Mr. Herriton yesterday, and if I am not careful he will conquer us all today, and the baby will grow up in Monteriano. He is terribly strong; Lilia found that out, but only I remember it now.”

This attempt, and this justification of it, were the results of the long and restless night. Miss Abbott had come to believe that she alone could do battle with Gino, because she alone understood him; and she had put this, as nicely as she could, in a note which she had left for Philip. It distressed her to write such a note, partly because her education inclined her to reverence the male, partly because she had got to like Philip a good deal after their last strange interview. His pettiness would be dispersed, and as for his “unconventionality,” which was so much gossiped about at Sawston, she began to see that it did not differ greatly from certain familiar notions of her own. If only he would forgive her for what she was doing now, there might perhaps be before them a long and profitable friendship. But she must succeed. No one would forgive her if she did not succeed. She prepared to do battle with the powers of evil.

The voice of her adversary was heard at last, singing fearlessly from his expanded lungs, like a professional. Herein he differed from Englishmen, who always have a little feeling against music, and sing only from the throat, apologetically. He padded upstairs, and looked in at the open door of the reception room without seeing her. Her heart leapt and her throat was dry when he turned away and passed, still singing, into the room opposite. It is alarming not to be seen.

He had left the door of this room open, and she could see into it, right across the landing. It was in a shocking mess. Food, bedclothes, patent-leather boots, dirty plates, and knives lay strewn over a large table and on the floor. But it was the mess that comes of life, not of desolation. It was preferable to the charnel chamber in which she was standing now, and the light in it was soft and large, as from some gracious, noble opening.

He stopped singing, and cried “Where is Perfetta?”

His back was turned, and he was lighting a cigar. He was not speaking to Miss Abbott. He could not even be expecting her. The vista of the landing and the two open doors made him both remote and significant, like an actor on the stage, intimate and unapproachable at the same time. She could no more call out to him than if he was Hamlet.

“You know!” he continued, “but you will not tell me. Exactly like you.” He reclined on the table and blew a fat smoke ring. “And why won’t you tell me the numbers? I have dreamt of a red hen⁠—that is two hundred and five, and a friend unexpected⁠—he means eighty-two. But I try for the Terno this week. So tell me another number.”

Miss Abbott did not know of the Tombola. His speech terrified her. She felt those subtle restrictions which come upon us in fatigue. Had she slept well she would have greeted him as soon as she saw him. Now it was impossible. He had got into another world.

She watched his smoke ring. The air had carried it slowly away from him, and brought it out intact upon the landing.

“Two hundred and five⁠—eighty-two. In any case I shall put them on Bari, not on Florence. I cannot tell you why; I have a feeling this week for Bari.” Again she tried to speak. But the ring mesmerized her. It had become vast and elliptical, and floated in at the reception room door.

“Ah! you don’t care if you get the profits. You won’t even say ‘Thank you, Gino.’ Say it, or I’ll drop hot, red-hot ashes on you. ‘Thank you, Gino⁠—’ ”

The ring had extended its pale blue coils towards her. She lost self-control. It enveloped her. As if it was a breath from the pit, she screamed.

There he was, wanting to know what had frightened her, how she had got here, why she had never spoken. He made her sit down. He brought her wine, which she refused. She had not one word to say to him.

“What is it?” he repeated. “What has frightened you?”

He, too, was frightened, and perspiration came starting through the tan. For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

“Business⁠—” she said at last.

“Business with me?”

“Most important business.” She was lying, white and limp, in the dusty chair.

“Before business you must get well; this is the best wine.”

She refused it feebly. He poured out a glass. She drank it. As she did so she became self-conscious. However important the business, it was not proper of her to have called on him, or to accept his hospitality.

“Perhaps you are engaged,” she said. “And as I am not very well⁠—”

“You are not well enough to go back. And I am not engaged.”

She looked nervously at the other room.

“Ah, now I understand,” he exclaimed. “Now I see what frightened you. But why did you never speak?” And taking her into the room where he lived, he pointed to⁠—the baby.

She had thought so much about this baby, of its welfare, its soul, its morals, its probable defects. But, like most unmarried people, she had only thought of it as a word⁠—just as the healthy man only thinks of the word death, not of death itself. The real thing, lying asleep on a dirty rug, disconcerted her. It did not stand for a principle any longer. It was so much flesh and blood, so many inches and ounces of life⁠—a glorious, unquestionable fact, which a man and another woman had given to the world. You could talk to it; in time it would answer you; in time it would not answer you unless it chose, but would secrete, within the compass of its body, thoughts and wonderful passions of its own. And this was the machine on which she and Mrs. Herriton and Philip and Harriet had for the last month been exercising their various ideals⁠—had determined that in time it should move this way or that way, should accomplish this and not that. It was to be Low Church, it was to be high-principled, it was to be tactful, gentlemanly, artistic⁠—excellent things all. Yet now that she saw this baby, lying asleep on a dirty rug, she had a great disposition not to dictate one of them, and to exert no more influence than there may be in a kiss or in the vaguest of the heartfelt prayers.

But she had practised self-discipline, and her thoughts and actions were not yet to correspond. To recover her self-esteem she tried to imagine that she was in her district, and to behave accordingly.

“What a fine child, Signor Carella. And how nice of you to talk to it. Though I see that the ungrateful little fellow is asleep! Seven months? No, eight; of course eight. Still, he is a remarkably fine child for his age.”

Italian is a bad medium for condescension. The patronizing words came out gracious and sincere, and he smiled with pleasure.

“You must not stand. Let us sit on the loggia, where it is cool. I am afraid the room is very untidy,” he added, with the air of a hostess who apologizes for a stray thread on the drawing room carpet. Miss Abbott picked her way to the chair. He sat near her, astride the parapet, with one foot in the loggia and the other dangling into the view. His face was in profile, and its beautiful contours drove artfully against the misty green of the opposing hills. “Posing!” said Miss Abbott to herself. “A born artist’s model.”

“Mr. Herriton called yesterday,” she began, “but you were out.”

He started an elaborate and graceful explanation. He had gone for the day to Poggibonsi. Why had the Herritons not written to him, so that he could have received them properly? Poggibonsi would have done any day; not but what his business there was fairly important. What did she suppose that it was?

Naturally she was not greatly interested. She had not come from Sawston to guess why he had been to Poggibonsi. She answered politely that she had no idea, and returned to her mission.

“But guess!” he persisted, clapping the balustrade between his hands.

She suggested, with gentle sarcasm, that perhaps he had gone to Poggibonsi to find something to do.

He intimated that it was not as important as all that. Something to do⁠—an almost hopeless quest! “E manca questo!” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, to indicate that he had no money. Then he sighed, and blew another smoke ring. Miss Abbott took heart and turned diplomatic.

“This house,” she said, “is a large house.”

“Exactly,” was his gloomy reply. “And when my poor wife died⁠—” He got up, went in, and walked across the landing to the reception room door, which he closed reverently. Then he shut the door of the living room with his foot, returned briskly to his seat, and continued his sentence. “When my poor wife died I thought of having my relatives to live here. My father wished to give up his practice at Empoli; my mother and sisters and two aunts were also willing. But it was impossible. They have their ways of doing things, and when I was younger I was content with them. But now I am a man. I have my own ways. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do,” said Miss Abbott, thinking of her own dear father, whose tricks and habits, after twenty-five years spent in their company, were beginning to get on her nerves. She remembered, though, that she was not here to sympathize with Gino⁠—at all events, not to show that she sympathized. She also reminded herself that he was not worthy of sympathy. “It is a large house,” she repeated.

“Immense; and the taxes! But it will be better when⁠—Ah! but you have never guessed why I went to Poggibonsi⁠—why it was that I was out when he called.”

“I cannot guess, Signor Carella. I am here on business.”

“But try.”

“I cannot; I hardly know you.”

“But we are old friends,” he said, “and your approval will be grateful to me. You gave it me once before. Will you give it now?”

“I have not come as a friend this time,” she answered stiffly. “I am not likely, Signor Carella, to approve of anything you do.”

“Oh, Signorina!” He laughed, as if he found her piquant and amusing. “Surely you approve of marriage?”

“Where there is love,” said Miss Abbott, looking at him hard. His face had altered in the last year, but not for the worse, which was baffling.

“Where there is love,” said he, politely echoing the English view. Then he smiled on her, expecting congratulations.

“Do I understand that you are proposing to marry again?”

He nodded.

“I forbid you, then!”

He looked puzzled, but took it for some foreign banter, and laughed.

“I forbid you!” repeated Miss Abbott, and all the indignation of her sex and her nationality went thrilling through the words.

“But why?” He jumped up, frowning. His voice was squeaky and petulant, like that of a child who is suddenly forbidden a toy.

“You have ruined one woman; I forbid you to ruin another. It is not a year since Lilia died. You pretended to me the other day that you loved her. It is a lie. You wanted her money. Has this woman money too?”

“Why, yes!” he said irritably. “A little.”

“And I suppose you will say that you love her.”

“I shall not say it. It will be untrue. Now my poor wife⁠—” He stopped, seeing that the comparison would involve him in difficulties. And indeed he had often found Lilia as agreeable as anyone else.

Miss Abbott was furious at this final insult to her dead acquaintance. She was glad that after all she could be so angry with the boy. She glowed and throbbed; her tongue moved nimbly. At the finish, if the real business of the day had been completed, she could have swept majestically from the house. But the baby still remained, asleep on a dirty rug.

Gino was thoughtful, and stood scratching his head. He respected Miss Abbott. He wished that she would respect him. “So you do not advise me?” he said dolefully. “But why should it be a failure?”

Miss Abbott tried to remember that he was really a child still⁠—a child with the strength and the passions of a disreputable man. “How can it succeed,” she said solemnly, “where there is no love?”

“But she does love me! I forgot to tell you that.”

“Indeed.”

“Passionately.” He laid his hand upon his own heart.

“Then God help her!”

He stamped impatiently. “Whatever I say displeases you, Signorina. God help you, for you are most unfair. You say that I ill-treated my dear wife. It is not so. I have never ill-treated anyone. You complain that there is no love in this marriage. I prove that there is, and you become still more angry. What do you want? Do you suppose she will not be contented? Glad enough she is to get me, and she will do her duty well.”

“Her duty!” cried Miss Abbott, with all the bitterness of which she was capable.

“Why, of course. She knows why I am marrying her.”

“To succeed where Lilia failed! To be your housekeeper, your slave, you⁠—” The words she would like to have said were too violent for her.

“To look after the baby, certainly,” said he.

“The baby⁠—?” She had forgotten it.

“It is an English marriage,” he said proudly. “I do not care about the money. I am having her for my son. Did you not understand that?”

“No,” said Miss Abbott, utterly bewildered. Then, for a moment, she saw light. “It is not necessary, Signor Carella. Since you are tired of the baby⁠—”

Ever after she remembered it to her credit that she saw her mistake at once. “I don’t mean that,” she added quickly.

“I know,” was his courteous response. “Ah, in a foreign language (and how perfectly you speak Italian) one is certain to make slips.”

She looked at his face. It was apparently innocent of satire.