CHAPTER XVI DISCUSSES SEVERAL MATTERS OF MOMENT

The men drank Marsala—always offered in the afternoon in an Italian house—and smoked in the garden, while we women wandered wherever we liked. Those of my companions who had not before seen the interior of an Italian villa were interested in everything, even to the culinary arrangements, so different from those in England. The Italian cook makes his dishes over some half-a-dozen small charcoal fires about the size of one's hand, which he keeps burning by a kind of rush fire-screen, the English grate being unknown.

We had been there a couple of hours, and to all of us the change had been pleasant after so long a spell at sea. Velia was sitting apart in the garden, and we were chatting, she telling me of the perfect tranquillity of her married life. Rino was, she declared, a model husband, and she was perfectly happy; indeed, her life was a realisation of those dreams that we both used to have long ago in the old neglected garden of the convent, when we walked together hand-in-hand at sundown.

She recalled those days to me—days when I, in my childish ignorance, believed the world outside to be filled with pleasant things. We had not met since we had parted at the convent, she to enter Florentine society and to marry, and I to drift about the world in search of a husband.

"Suor Teresa's counsels were so very true," she said to me, as we recalled the grey-eyed Sister who had been our foster-mother. "Haven't you found them so, just as I have, even though you have lived in England, your cold, undemonstrative England, and I here, in Italia?"

"Suor Teresa gave us so much good advice. To which of her precepts do you refer?" I asked.

"Don't you recollect how she was always saying that, as women, the first thing of importance was always to be content to be inferior to men—inferior in mental power in the same proportion as we are inferior in bodily strength. Facility of movement, aptitude and grace, the bodily frame of woman may possess in a higher degree than that of man; just as in the softer touches of mental and spiritual beauty her character may present a lovelier aspect than his. Yet the woman will find, Suor Teresa used to say, that she is by nature endowed with peculiar faculties—with a quickness of perception, facility of adaptation, and acuteness of feeling, which fit her especially for the part she has to act in life, and which, at the same time, render her, in a higher degree than man, susceptible both to pain and pleasure. These, according to our good Sister, are our qualifications as mere women."

"Yes," I said, "I remember now. Some of Suor Teresa's counsels I've followed, but others, I fear, I threw to the winds. She was a good woman—a very good woman, Suor Teresa. Do you remember how she used to lecture us girls, and say: 'When you are women of the world, how wide is the prospect which opens before you—how various the claims upon your attention—how vast your capabilities—how deep the responsibility which those capabilities involve! In the first place, you are not alone; you are one of a family—of a social circle—of a community—of a nation. You are a being whose existence will never terminate, who must live for ever, and whose happiness or misery through that endless future which lies before you will be influenced by the choice you are now in the act of making.' Do you remember the kind of lectures she used to give us?"

"Perfectly well," answered Velia. "But she is dead, poor woman; she died of fever last summer."

"Dead!" I echoed

A pang of regret shot through my heart, for I remembered how sweet and kind she had always been, how just and how devout in all her religion. To her I owed many stimulating ideas about good and evil, few of which, I fear, remained long enough in my memory. It was she who taught me to love the virtuous and the good, and the recollection of those early days of her tender guidance formed a bright spot in my life, to which, I suppose, the mind will take me back at intervals as long as existence lasts.

Velia was about my own age, and at the convent we had treated one another as if we were sisters. Therefore when we fell to talking of those old days before the courses of our lives ran so far apart, my memory drifted back to those home-truths which Suor Teresa and her fellow-nuns had striven to instil into our rather fickle minds.

My fellow-guests left about five o'clock, for they had arranged to continue on the sea-road and ascend to the famed pilgrimage church of Montenero—one of the sights of Western Tuscany. As I had made a pilgrimage there in my school-days, at Velia's invitation I remained behind to dine with her, promising Ulrica to return on board later in the evening.

In the glorious blaze of crimson sunset which flooded the broad, clear Mediterranean, causing the islands of Gorgona, Capraja, and Corsica to stand out in purple grandeur in the infinite blaze of gold, I sat upon the marble terrace, lolling in a long cane chair, and chatting with the Countess.

How different had been our lives, I reflected. She, married happily, surrounded by every comfort that wealth could provide, a child which was her idol, and a husband whom she adored; while I, one of those unattached women who form the flotsam of society, world-weary, forlorn, and forsaken, was beaten hither and thither up and down Europe by every gust of the social wind.

I contrasted our lives, and found my own to be a hollow and empty sham. Of all the passions which take possession of the female breast, a passion for society is one of the most inimical to domestic enjoyment. Yet how often does this exist in connection with an amiable exterior! It is not easy to say whether one ought most to pity or to blame a woman who lives for society—a woman who reserves all her good spirits, all her pretty frocks, her animated looks, her interesting conversation, her bland behaviour, her smiles, her forbearance, her gentleness, for society. What imposition does she not practise upon those who meet her there! Follow the same individual home; she is impatient, fretful, sullen, weary, oppressed with headache, uninterested in all that passes around her, and dreaming only of the last evening's excitement, or of what may constitute the amusement of the next; while the mortification of her friends at home is increased by the contrast her behaviour exhibits in the two different situations, and her expenditure upon comparative strangers of feelings to which they consider themselves to have a natural and inalienable right. I was terribly conscious of my own failings in this respect, and in society Ulrica had been my chief example.

I hated it all, and envied the woman who sat there chatting with me so merrily.

There, in the fading afterglow, when the sun had disappeared behind the distant headland, I told her, in reply to her question, of my love and its disillusionment. I told her his name—Ernest Cameron—and at mention of it I thought I detected her dark brows grow narrow for an instant. But surely it was only fancy, for these two had certainly never met.

"You have all my sympathy, Carmela," she said, in her soft Italian, when I had told her the truth. "You have suffered, poor child. Your words tell me so."

"Yes," I responded frankly. "I have suffered, and am still suffering. Another woman stole his love from me, and I am left deserted, forlorn; outwardly a smart figure as you see me, but within my heart is the canker-worm of hatred."

"He may return to you," she said. "His fancy may be a mere passing one. Men are so very fickle."

"No," I declared quickly, "it is all ended between us. I loved only once—loved him with all the charm of a first attachment. She who entertains this sentiment lives no longer for herself. It was so in my case. In all my aspirations, my hopes, my energies; in all my confidence, my enthusiasm, my fortitude, my own existence was absorbed in his interests. But now I am despised and forgotten."

She was so sympathetic that more than once I was tempted to confide to her the whole of the strange facts and the mysteries that were so puzzling to me. But I hesitated—and in my hesitation resolved to keep my own counsel.

We dined together, taking our wine from the big rush-covered fiasco of Chianti placed in its swinging stand, according to the custom of Tuscany; eating various dishes peculiarly Italian, and being waited upon by two maids who spoke in that quaint but musical dialect of the Tuscan shore.

Throughout the meal my thoughts wandered from my surroundings to the dastardly plot formed to destroy the Vispera. Where, I wondered, was old Mr. Keppel? For aught I knew, both he and his unseen accomplice were engaged in buying explosives for the purpose of causing the contemplated disaster.

Velia believed my preoccupation to be due to our conversation before dinner, and I allowed her to continue in that belief.

Dinner in an Italian household is a very different meal to the French table d'hôte or the English evening meal. The courses are varied, and from the anti-pasti to the dolci, all is new to the English palate. Those who have lived sufficiently long in Italy to become imbued with its charm know well how difficult it is to relish the substantial English cooking when one goes on a visit to the old country; just as difficult as it is to enjoy the grey skies and smoky cities of money-making Britain after the brightness and sunshine of the garden of Europe.

At ten o'clock, after we had idled in the salon with our coffee and certosa—a liqueur made by the old monks of the Certosa, outside Florence, and not obtainable beyond the confines of Tuscany—Velia's brougham came round, and reluctantly I took leave of her.

Our reunion had certainly been full of charm, for in those hours I had allowed myself to forget my present position, and had, in thought, drifted back to the placid days of long ago that had been passed within the high grey walls of the ancient convent.

"Good-bye, Carmela," Velia said, holding my hand in hers warmly after I had entered the carriage. "Remember your promise to return here before you sail. I shall expect you."

I repeated my promise gaily, and then giving her a final "Addio, e buona notte," I was driven out of the great gates and into the night.

The road from Ardenza to Leghorn, a magnificent drive by day, is not very safe at night. The trees lining it form a refuge for any thieves or footpads, and because of this it is patrolled continually by a pair of mounted carbineers.

At length we came to the great iron gates of the city, which stretch across the wide highway, flanked on either side by huge porticos, in which are stationed the officers of the dazio, as the octroi in Italy is called.

Every article entering an Italian city is inspected with a view to the imposition of taxes, hence every conveyance, from the country cart of the contadino laden with vegetables for the market, to the private brougham, is stopped at the barrier, and the occupant is asked to declare what he or she has with him.

In front of the barrier the brougham was brought to a halt, and one of the dazio guards, in his peaked cap and long overcoat with silver facings, opened the door, inquiring whether I had anything liable to be taxed.

"Niente," I responded, and was preparing to resettle myself for the journey, when the man, looking rather hard at me in the semi-darkness, said:

"The signorina is named Rosselli, I believe?"

"Yes," I replied, surprised at the man's knowledge of my name.

He fumbled in the pocket of his overcoat for a moment, produced a letter, and then handed it to me in quite a surreptitious manner, saying in a low tone:

"This is for the signorina."

Then he banged to the door with a great show of officiousness, without waiting for me to thank him, and we drove forward along the deserted promenade.

As it was quite dark within the carriage, I was unable to read the communication that had so suddenly been handed to me.

What, I wondered, did it contain? Who had taken the precaution to bribe one of the dazio guards to hand it to me?

Surely it must contain something of the highest importance and strictest privacy.