Love was not peaceful, it was agitating and uncomfortable; and keeping up the pretence of being twenty-eight when one is forty-five is a labour and a toil. Of course, she adored Nino; the mere thought of his ever tiring of her, or leaving her, brought visions of despair and vengeance, of vitriol and dagger to her mind. But oh! how she envied those placid women who surrender their youth submissively, and slip serenely into gentle middle-age as a ship glides into quiet waters. With her, because her lover was young, she must grasp and grapple with the engulfing years. She must clutch at her youth as a child clutches a wild bird fluttering to escape. Alas! when the child opens its fingers the prisoner is dead. Better let it fly when it will.
So thought Nunziata Villari. The feathers and the wings still lay in her hand, but youth, the bird, was dead.
She took up the book, and stifled thought under the blanket of Matilde Serao's warm prose.
The excursion train ran into Naples at five o'clock, just as a florist in the Strada Caracciolo was threading a wire into the green throat of the last white rose for the Illustrissima. Fifty francs worth of roses in Naples in the month of June are enough to consummate the perfumed death in Freiligrath's "Blumenrache," and then enough to cover the maiden's coffin from wider to narrowest end. It took two men to carry them, tied in huge bunches, along the Strada Caracciolo to the Palazzo Imparato.
Nino from his cab saw two men bearing white flowers far ahead of him, and wondered vaguely for whom they might be.
Then he thought of Nunziata's face as he had last seen it—pallid, with a tortured smile, as she said good-bye. But now he would see her smile again, that pretty tilted smile that was still young....
(The men with the flowers had turned a corner. Nino's cab turned it, too, and there were the men again, marching before him.)
He had been a brute and a hound, but he would atone. He would do the right thing. Nunziata should not be left in tears again, nor again be driven to the little brazier of coke, like a love-sick grisette....
(The men with the white flowers were alongside. Now they were left behind.)
And now the carriage stopped at the door of the Palazzo Imparato. The driver handed the luggage down, and a waiting lazzarone grabbed and shouldered it. While Nino was paying the fare the men with the flowers came up, and Nino turned to glance at them as they passed. But they did not pass. They turned into the Palazzo Imparato and vanished in the shadow of the gateway.
Nino's heart leaped up, and stood still. The lazzarone, watching him, saw tragedy in his face, and was satisfied that the tip would be a large one; for the lazzarone knew that despair is as generous as happiness.
Nino ran, blind with his terrors, up the wide flights of stairs. On Nunziata's landing the men with the flowers stood waiting.
Teresa opened the door, and saw behind the roses Nino's wild, white face.
"The Signorino! Santa Vergine!"
In an instantaneous vision she thought of the Illustrissima, unpowdered, unprepared, reading Matilde Serao, her tresses lying on the dressing-room table. The servant's stupefied, stricken face confirmed Nino's fears. He stumbled forward, and, dropping into a seat in the hall, covered his face with his hands.
The Illustrissima, who had heard the noise, opened the drawing-room door. At a glance she saw it all, and quietly closed the door again.
When, an instant later, Nino rushed in, the room was darkened, the shutters closed; Nunziata lay on the couch with etiolated face, a soft shimmering scarf was wound becomingly round her head, but no blue shadows were under her eyes, for there had been no time to make them.
Then all began over again; for although she was peaceful and comfortable when Nino was away, as soon as he was present she felt that all things depended upon his love, and that his absence would end her life. Tighter and tighter she grasped the little dead bird in her white, ringed hands, and louder and louder she told her tired heart that youth was living and singing still.
Nino was kind and considerate. He also wrote letters to the Italian Consulates in Rio and Buenos Ayres, asking them to make sure that Eduardo Villari was really dead—as his cook, who had returned with a good deal of money and had married a baron, declared he was.
If the thought of Nancy knocked with light fingers at Nino's heart, he never opened the door.
XV
Clarissa in her villa on Lake Maggiore was bored, so she wrote to Nancy to come and stay with her.
"I am weary of my sweet blue lake and of my sour blue husband. Come and stay with me a month. You shall have a large room at the top of the house, with a huge table and an inkstand large enough to drown in, and before you the view that inspired Manzoni. Come and write your masterpiece."
By the same post she sent a note to her brother-in-law:
"Aldo, mon joli, do come. Carlo is insufferable. He growls all day and snores all night. Why did I marry him? This is the fourth time I invite you this year, and you never come. Last year it was different.
"P.S.—The little poetessa is going to stay here for a month."
He arrived next day. After greetings, he asked: "Where is Sappho, the violet-haired?" Clarissa explained that Nancy had not arrived, and he sulked and played the piano all the evening, while Carlo on the sofa snored. Clarissa looked from one to the other, uncertain which of the two was insulting her most.
Nancy arrived the following day. She had brought her notebooks with her and a broken ivory pen that she always wrote with; she was full of the masterpiece. She was going to work immediately.
Driving up from the landing-place to the Villa Solitudine she told her plans to Clarissa, who nodded and smiled as she whipped up the fat cob. She was going to write a book—The Book!—a great, noble piece of work, not a little volume of flyaway poems that one reads and forgets in a day. She was going to think of and dream of The Book; to live for The Book; to breathe and walk for it, to eat and sleep for it. In Milan, with people always round her, talking and distracting, it was impossible; but here in the large bare room at the top of the house–How sweet and dear of Clarissa to think of it! Never, never could Nancy thank her enough.... Clarissa nodded and smiled, and the fat cob turned into the chestnut drive of Villa Solitudine.
Down the steps, with a couple of dogs barking and leaping at his heels, came Aldo to meet them, clad in Neapolitan fashion in white flannels and scarlet sash. His uncovered head gleamed darkly in the sun.
"Behold Endymion awakened!" said Clarissa, laughing, to Nancy. "Charmides, Adonaïs, Narcissus! The gods have cast upon him all the beauty of the world!" As Nancy did not answer, Clarissa turned to look at her. "Oh, what a stern face, ma chérie! You are quite white. What are you thinking of?"
"The Book," said Nancy; and she felt as if it were a child of hers that was to die unborn.
"You shall write it, mon ange! Aldo shall not disturb you." And she threw the reins to the little stiff groom; then, daintily raising her fluffy skirts, she alighted in Aldo's uplifted arms. Nancy put her foot on the step, but Aldo raised her lightly and lifted her down. His red, smiling mouth was close to her face. She thanked him, and he kissed her hand with the ceremonious Southern salute, "Signora, I am your slave."
Nancy went to her room—the large, bare room with the beautiful view—and stayed there all the afternoon. She put her notes in order; she placed the large sheets of paper before her; and she dipped the broken ivory pen into the huge inkstand. Then she sat and looked out of the window. She could hear the dogs barking in the garden and Clarissa's trilling laugh. On the sweet blue lake a tiny sail, like a pocket handkerchief, dipped and curtseyed away, and through the open windows of the drawing-room Aldo could be heard playing a Valse Triste. Nancy dipped the pen into the inkstand again—and looked at the view.