The Marquise of O and Other Stories (29 page)

On one occasion, when Piachi happened to be out of the house, he was passing Elvira's door when he heard, to his surprise, the sound of someone talking in her room. A malicious hope at once flashed through his mind; he stooped down to look and listen through the keyhole and there, great heavens! what should he see but Elvira lying, in an attitude of swooning ecstasy, at someone's feet. He could not make out who it was, but he quite clearly heard her as, in the very accents of passionate love, she whispered the name ‘Colino'. With beating heart he went to the window in the passage and there took up a position from which he could watch her bedroom door without seeming to do so; and presently he heard the latch being quietly raised. Here at last, he told himself, was the exquisite moment for his unmasking of this spurious saint: but instead of the expected stranger it was Elvira herself who emerged from the room, casting a completely unperturbed and indifferent glance at him as she did so. She had a piece of handwoven cloth under her arm, and after locking her room with one of the keys which she carried with her, she walked quite calmly downstairs with her hand on the bannister. To Nicolo this hypocritical display of composure seemed the very height of cynical cunning; she was scarcely out of sight when he rushed to fetch a master key, and after looking cautiously about him he stealthily opened the bedroom door. But to his amazement the room was quite empty, and though he searched every nook and cranny he could find no trace of a man, except for a life-sized portrait of a young cavalier which stood in an alcove behind a red silk curtain, lit by a special lamp. Nicolo was startled, though without knowing why, and as the painted figure stared at
him with its wide-open eyes a host of thoughts rushed through his mind. But before he could collect and compose them he began to be apprehensive that Elvira would discover him and punish him in some way; he closed the bedroom door again in some confusion and withdrew.

The more he thought about this remarkable incident, the more convinced he became of the importance of the picture he had discovered, and the more acute and urgent grew his curiosity to know whose portrait it was. For he had clearly seen Elvira's posture: she had been kneeling, and it was quite certain that she had been doing so in front of the young nobleman on the canvas. In the uneasiness of mind that possessed him he went to Xaviera Tartini and told her of his strange experience. Xaviera was just as anxious as Nicolo to discredit Elvira, whom she blamed for all the difficulties that were being put in the way of their liaison; and she declared that she would like to see the portrait in the bedroom. For she could boast an extensive acquaintance among the Italian nobility, and if the young man in question had at any time been in Rome and was a person of the least consequence, the chances were that she would know him. Sure enough it happened before long that Piachi and his wife went into the country one Sunday to visit a relative; and no sooner was the coast thus clear than Nicolo hastened to Xaviera, brought her to the house accompanied by a small daughter whom she had had by the Cardinal, and introduced her into Elvira's room on the pretext that she was a lady wishing to see the paintings and embroideries. But no sooner had he drawn back the curtain than the child, whose name was Clara, utterly confounded him by exclaiming: ‘Why, God bless us, Signor Nicolo! but that's a picture of you!' Xaviera fell silent. The portrait did indeed, the longer she looked at it, bear a singular resemblance to him, especially when she remembered, as well she might, the Genoese costume he had worn a few months ago for their clandestine visit to the carnival.
Nicolo tried to laugh off the sudden flush of embarrassment which came over him; he kissed the little girl and said: ‘Indeed, my dear Clara, it's about as much like me as you are like the man who thinks he is your father!' But Xaviera, in whom the bitter pangs of jealousy were stirring, merely looked at him; and after stepping in front of the mirror and remarking that after all the identity of the person was a matter of indifference, she took her leave of him rather coldly and left the room.

As soon as Xaviera had gone, Nicolo fell into a great state of excitement over this scene. He remembered with delight the strange and violent turmoil into which Elvira had been thrown by his fanciful appearance on the night of the carnival; and the thought of having inspired a passion in this walking model of womanly virtue was almost as sweet to him as that of taking his revenge on her. Having now the prospect of gratifying both desires at one and the same time, he waited impatiently for Elvira's return and for the moment when he would look into her eyes and crown his still hesitant hopes with certainty. In this elation the one thing that gave him pause was the distinct recollection that when he had spied on her through the keyhole, the name which the kneeling Elvira had addressed to the picture had been ‘Colino'. And yet there was something about the sound of this name – a rather unusual one in Italy – that filled him with sweet reveries, though he could not tell why; and faced with the choice of disbelieving one of two senses, his eyes or his ears, he naturally inclined to the evidence that was more flattering to his desires.

Meanwhile several days passed before Elvira returned from the country, where she had been staying with a cousin; from his house she brought back with her a young kinswoman who wanted to see Rome, and being occupied with polite attentions to this young lady, she cast only a fleeting and insignificant glance at Nicolo as with the most amiable courtesy he helped her out of her carriage. For several weeks, which were devoted to the entertainment
of her guest, the house was in an unwonted turmoil; visits were made to places in and outside the city which would be likely to appeal to a young and lively girl; and Nicolo, busy in his office and therefore not invited on any of these expeditions, began again to harbour keen resentment against Elvira. Bitter feelings rankled in him as he thought of the unknown man she so devoutly adored in secret; and the torment of his depraved heart reached its height on the evening after the young kinswoman's departure, an evening for which he had waited with longing, but on which Elvira, instead of speaking to him, sat in silence for an hour at the dining-room table, busy with a piece of needlework. It so happened that Piachi, a few days earlier, had been inquiring after the whereabouts of a box of little ivory letters with which Nicolo had been taught to read as a boy; for since no one needed them now, it had occurred to him to make a present of them to a small child in the neighbourhood. But the maidservant who had been told to look for them among various other discarded objects had only been able to find the six letters that formed the name Nicolo; no doubt because the others, having less relevance to the boy himself, had attracted his interest less, and had at one time or another been thrown away. These six letters had now been lying in the dining-room for several days, and Nicolo, as he sat gloomily brooding at the table with his head propped on his arm, picked them up and toyed with them; and as he did so he discovered – purely by chance, for he had never in his life been so astonished – the combination of the letters that spelt the name ‘Colino'. Nicolo, who had been quite unaware of this anagrammatic aspect of his name, was once again seized by the wildest hopes, and cast a hesitant anxious glance at Elvira who was sitting beside him. The correspondence between the two words struck him as more than merely fortuitous; with secret delight he pondered the implications of his strange discovery, and taking his hands from the table he waited with beating heart for the moment when Elvira would look up and see
the name lying there plainly visible. His expectations were not disappointed; for no sooner had she, in an idle moment, noticed this display of the letters and unsuspectingly leaned forward (for she was a little short-sighted) to read them, than she fixed a sudden strange look of anguish on Nicolo's face as he sat gazing down at them with affected indifference. She resumed her work with an indescribable expression of sadness; thinking herself unobserved she wept quietly, and a soft flush covered her cheeks. These signs of emotion did not escape Nicolo, who was unobtrusively watching her, and he no longer had any doubt that she had merely been disguising his own name by this transposed spelling. He saw her put out her hand and gently disarrange the letters, and his wild hopes reached their height as she rose, laid aside her sewing and disappeared into her bedroom. He was just about to leave his seat and follow her when Piachi entered and, on inquiring for Elvira was told by one of the maidservants that she had felt unwell and gone to lie down. Piachi, without seeming particularly alarmed, turned and went to her room to see how she was; and when he returned a quarter of an hour later, announced that she would not appear for dinner, and then did not mention the matter again, Nicolo remembered the many mysterious scenes of this kind that he had witnessed, and felt convinced that he now held the clue to their meaning.

The following morning, as he sat gloating over his new discovery and considering how he might best exploit it, he received a note from Xaviera in which she asked him to come and see her, as she had some interesting news for him about Elvira. Xaviera, as the Bishop's protégée, enjoyed the intimate acquaintance of the Carmelite monks; and since it was to the Carmelite monastery that Nicolo's adoptive mother went to confession, he had no doubt that Xaviera must have succeeded in eliciting some information about the secret history of her feelings which would prove favourable to his unnatural desires. There was, however, an unpleasant
surprise in store for him; for Xaviera, after greeting him with an oddly roguish air and drawing him down beside her on to the divan where she was sitting, declared that what she had to tell him was simply that the object of Elvira's love was a man who had already been dead and buried for twelve years. The original of the portrait he had found in her bedroom in the alcove behind the red silk curtain was Aloysius, Marquis of Montferrat; an uncle in Paris in whose house he had been educated had called him Collin, this being later changed in Italy to the nickname Colino; and he was the young Genoese nobleman who had so heroically rescued her from the fire when she was a child and been mortally injured in doing so. Xaviera added that she must ask Nicolo not to make any use of this secret, as it had been entrusted to her in the Carmelite monastery, under the seal of absolute discretion, by someone who himself had no right to it. Nicolo, flushing and turning pale by turns, assured her that she could set her mind at rest; and being quite unable to conceal from her mischievous glances the embarrassment into which this disclosure had flung him, he excused himself on the pretext of having some business and took his hat, his upper lip twitching unpleasantly as he left her.

Humiliation, lust and the desire for revenge now conspired in his mind to engender a deed of unutterable vileness. He well knew that deception would be the only access to Elvira's pure soul; and at the first opportunity Piachi gave him by going for a few days into the country, he prepared to execute the satanic plan on which he had decided. He procured again the very same costume in which he had appeared to Elvira a few months earlier as he was secretly returning late at night from the carnival; and putting on the cloak and doublet and feathered hat of Genoese cut, exactly as the figure in the portrait wore them, he stealthily entered her room just before bedtime. He hung a black cloth over the picture in the alcove, and with a staff in his hand, in the
precise posture of the young nobleman on the canvas, awaited Elvira's adoring homage. And his reckoning, sharpened by shameful passion, had been entirely correct; for she presently entered, undressed quietly and calmly, and had no sooner drawn back as usual the silk curtain of the alcove and set eyes on him, than with a cry of ‘Colino! my beloved!' she fell senseless to the floor. Nicolo stepped out of the alcove; he stood for a moment absorbed in contemplation of her charms and gazed at her delicate figure now suddenly paling in the embrace of death; but presently, since there was no time to be lost, he took her up in his arms, snatched the black cloth from the portrait, and carried her to the bed in the corner of the room. Having done this he went to bolt the door, but found it already locked; and confident that even after recovering her disordered senses she would offer no resistance to the fantastic and supernatural apparition for which she must take him, he now returned to the bed and set about reviving her with burning kisses on her lips and breasts. But the Nemesis that dogs the heels of crime had decreed that Piachi, who was to have been absent, as the wretched Nicolo supposed, for another few days, should chance to return to his house unexpectedly at that very moment. Thinking Elvira would already be asleep, he crept softly along the corridor; and as he always carried the keys with him, he was able to open the door without making a sound and stepped suddenly into the room. Nicolo stood speechless; and as there was no possibility of dissembling his disgraceful intentions, he threw himself at the old man's feet and implored his forgiveness, vowing never to cast eyes upon his wife again. And Piachi did, indeed, feel inclined to deal with the matter discreetly. Bereft of words by something which Elvira whispered to him as she revived in his arms and gazed with horror at her assailant, he merely closed the curtains of her bed, took a whip from the wall, opened the door and pointed to it, indicating thereby to Nicolo in what direction he must now immediately betake himself. But
the latter, seeing that nothing was to be gained by his show of penitence, behaved at this point in a manner worthy of Tartuffe himself: he suddenly stood up and declared that it was for Piachi to leave the house, for he, Nicolo, was now its owner by deed of gift and he would defend his title to it against all comers. Piachi could scarcely believe his ears; disarmed by this inconceivable piece of effrontery, he put down the whip, took his hat and stick and ran to the house of his old friend, the lawyer Dr Valerio. He rang the bell until a maid opened the door, and on reaching his friend's room collapsed unconscious beside his bed before he could utter a word. The lawyer took him, and later Elvira as well, into his house for the night, and set off in haste next morning to procure the arrest of the abominable Nicolo. But the infernal scoundrel's legal position was strong; and while Piachi vainly sought ways and means to dispossess him of the property over which he had already given him full rights, he had at once gone hotfoot with his deed of settlement to the Carmelite monks and appealed to them for protection against, as he said, the old fool who was now trying to evict him. In the end, after he had consented to marry Xaviera, whom the Bishop wanted taken off his hands, wickedness prevailed, and this prince of the Church was able to induce the authorities to issue a decree confirming Nicolo's title to the property and enjoining Piachi to leave him in possession without further interference.