The Viceroys (43 page)

‘He might have been granting us a special grace, honouring us by his presence!' Donna Ferdinanda was continuing meanwhile. ‘As if it had not been in his own interests! As if the fault for what's happened weren't his! And to make things worse that swine begging round him and agreeing with him! Just to make him all the more presumptuous and stuck-up …'

Benedetto, who was sitting almost opposite her, went on giving continual and regular nods of the head like an automaton, and as Cousin Graziella was chattering in a low voice with Chiara, and Don Blasco had drawn the marchese aside and was letting himself go, and the prince was sitting there silent, and the princess even more silent, that gesture of assent and approval eventually drew the spinster's eyes.

‘While Raimondo is in the right,' she went on, ‘in not wanting to be spied on in his own home, in refusing to tolerate his
father-in-law's continual interference in every little family affair …'

Seeing she had glanced at him one or twice, Benedetto, still nodding approval, agreed:

‘Yes, the baron really has a very difficult character …'

Donna Ferdinanda made no reply, partly because at that moment the marchese rose and Chiara with him. But as she went off with her niece and nephew she gave a slight bow in reply to a new, deeper, ever more respectful one from the young man.

Meanwhile down in the steward's rooms the duke was receiving delegations and great numbers of influential electors, while a procession of admirers of all classes came to pay him their homage. It was the same scene as the night before, but on a bigger scale. Gradually the whole town seemed to be filing past the deputy; for two people who went away, four arrived; and there being no more places to sit everyone else stood, hat in hand, waiting for the handshake which the duke was distributing all around. A few improvised orators, people whom he did not even know, spoke in the name of their companions, affirming in reply to his expressions of modesty that the town would never forget what it owed to the Signor Duke. All the others listened open-mouthed, religiously intent on gathering the Honourable Member's words; when compliments stopped, he talked of public events, promised them Venice, had Rome in his pocket, assured them that as well as political revival, the country would have moral, agricultural, industrial and commercial revival too.

‘That was Cavour's programme. What a head that man had! He used to talk of Sicily as if he'd been born here. He knew the price of our crops and our sulphur better than one of our own merchants …' The Government had promised him many things for the island, although they had so much to think of; from education of youth to work for labourers. Little by little, with peace and amity, public and private prosperity would be achieved. He almost made them feel it within their grasp, and those come to hear what had happened about their requests for a small post or a subsidy or a pension went off praising him to the skies as if he had filled their pockets, and spread throughout
the town the news of the reconciliation between the count and his wife; all due to the duke, who had made the sacrifice of leaving the capital at a moment like this simply in order to induce his nephew to see reason. Paeans of praise for the deputy could be heard everywhere. From the palace courtyard to the Reading Club all were agreed that this had been both good and dutiful work on his part; only Don Blasco, at the pro-Bourbon chemist's, yelled like one obsessed:

‘Ah, that's what you think, is it?… Why d'you think he did it? To satisfy the mob! To have it said he's defending morality … And for yet another reason … to ingratiate himself with that other rascally friend of the lazy scum … That fellow who kept harping on
my
faults! That baron with seven pairs of b …!'

W
HEN
the Countess Matilde returned to her husband's family after two years' absence, they themselves did not recognise her at first. She had always been pale and thin, now she was wan and emaciated. Her chest was hollow, as if she were being eaten away by some slow relentless disease, her shoulders bent as if by weight of years, and her sunken eyes, in livid surrounds, glinting with fever, told of torturing thought, frenzied worry, mortal fear.

‘Poor Matilde! Have you been ill?' the princess asked her, in spite of her husband's injunctions not to take sides.

‘A little …' replied her sister-in-law, shaking her head with a sweet sad smile, ‘it's over now …'

In fact she felt reborn. Her father had refused to accompany her to that house or to let her bring the children. Yet forgetting all she had suffered there she entered it with a sense of relief, almost of confidence. The recent tempest had been so violent and harsh that she even thought with regret of former sorrows; they had seemed intolerable then, when she did not know how slowly and surely they would grow till they began to contend even with her hope of any kind of return to peace. How her heart had shut at the first disillusionment, at seeing that her love was not enough for Raimondo, that his mind was different from hers, that he found happiness in things which had no value for her! And yet at that time he had not betrayed her! But then betrayals had come, and she had forgiven because all men did such things, so it was said, though she herself suffered silently at them in the depths of her heart. What could she have done anyway? What could she have done before this greater danger,
this more dreadful threat? Leave him? He himself had left her!…

When she thought over those two years spent in Tuscany, of all she had suffered watching the building up of final ruin, unable to do anything to prevent it, she felt a need to kneel down and thank God, so miraculous seemed Raimondo's reform. Could she now hope it would last? How often had he seemed to recover his senses, and then behaved worse than ever? Two years ago, before the Fersa scandal broke, had she not thought all was over for her? At the news of that woman being thrust out by her own mother-in-law she had sensed that the apparent break between her and Raimondo was mere play-acting and foresaw quite lucidly what was to happen later … Even so the departure for the mainland had deceived her again. Distance, time, worldly pleasures for which he was always avid, would they not destroy the memory of that other woman in Raimondo's heart? But she, that other one, must have sworn to steal him from her at all costs, for she had followed him to Florence, and appeared far and near, in streets and in society, everywhere, tempting him, even in front of Matilde herself! She did not blame Raimondo now, did not suspect that he was in collusion with that other, that he had pretended to run away so as to find her the more surely. Matilde's suspicions and jealous accusations only fell on that woman; to Raimondo she merely addressed indulgent requests, humble petitions to spare her new sorrows. He grew furious, denied it all as at other times, blamed her for wanting to create embarrassments and dangers, and reduced her to silence with words which still rang in her ears: ‘That woman is the very last person in my thoughts; but if you don't stop vexing me I'll do something mad, you'll see!' She had not been able to tell then how far he was sincere …

Raimondo's fancy for Donna Isabella, in truth, had been calmed as soon as satisfied. The fuss about separation, the fear of finding some heavy material responsibility on his shoulders, had flung a good deal of water on the flame of his desires. In Florence, where they had arranged to meet, he wondered how to break in some way the chain he felt growing tighter; what he longed for was a gay and varied life which was above all free. But as news spread of the domestic drama in which he had been
the hero he found himself higher in the estimation of his reckless Tuscan friends, whose judgment meant more to him than anything else; the conquest of a genuine lady of quality like Donna Isabella Fersa brought smiles of rather envious pleasure from the dare-devils he took as models. So he became a little less indifferent to Donna Isabella. But his wife's jealousy eventually tightened this link to a point which he found almost burdensome.

Every time Matilde made a begging remonstrance to him he felt it his duty, as a kind of compensation, to increase his demonstrations of affection to his mistress; the more submissively his wife begged him not to leave her too much to herself, the stronger was his craving to rush out of the house. She knew what he was like, how intolerant he was of every obstacle, of any contradiction, of any comment by her; but could she keep silent, pretend to ignore what was happening? Could she, without a sob at least, allow him to leave her alone for long days and longer nights, to abandon his children, so as to go off with that other woman, to show himself publicly in her company, to take his friends to the other's house as if it were another of his homes? And when she had once burst out not against him but against that other woman, Raimondo ordered her to be silent, in a loud voice, with an evil look and raised hand …

This wretched scene had taken place on the day before her father was to pass through Florence on his way to Turin. Terror of the two men clashing had made her be silent, and as her father, who was beginning to suspect Raimondo again, had suddenly switched with his usual violence from warm affection for his son-in-law to suspicion and watchful coldness, she had to gulp down her own tears, cancel traces of them, and look gay and pleased, to prevent the two attacking each other. So she had consumed herself, suffering in silence, forcing down bitter draft after bitter draft, invoking God for strength to continue pretending, deluding herself to believe that no serious danger was threatening.

But it was already too late. All that his wife in her jealousy said against his mistress urged Raimondo more and more into the latter's arms; as Matilde spoke badly of her, she must be the very first among women. This idea became the deeper rooted
in his head since Donna Isabella on her side never said a word against the countess; at most she hinted a mild complaint at his wife's dislike for her.

‘When she meets me she turns her back on me … She talks against me. What have I done to her?' Or she would suggest they break off their relationship, offering herself in sacrifice to ensure peace in his family.

‘Don't worry about me! I'll go off, I'll live alone, as God wills … I'll go and fling myself at my husband's feet; maybe he'll forgive me …' Then in return he would insist on doing things which she herself did not want him to do; if he had not hidden their friendship before, he now made an open display of it; if he had been seldom enough at home before, he now would let whole weeks go by without setting foot in his home, without seeing his own children; at the theatre he spent the entire evening, from beginning to end of the show, in his mistress's box; at the parade, if he was with friends, he would not answer his wife's greeting when they met; and while the countess dissolved in tears at the back of her carriage, he would go and lounge at Donna Isabella's carriage door.

Early that summer, at Livorno, the scandal had grown to such a point that a few good friends of Raimondo, his landlord Count Rossi among them, had advised him to be less imprudent. In these days Matilde, whose heart had been so long in torture, had a new affliction. Her little daughter Lauretta, whose health was always uncertain, fell ill as soon as they left Florence. One night when the child was moaning in fever she stayed up till dawn watching over her, terrified at how quickly she had got worse and waiting anxiously for Raimondo's return. At daybreak he came back. He must have been drunk. For just because, tortured by anxiety and exhaustion, alarmed by her child's illness and terrified at its danger, she dared to say:

‘What a life you're leading …' He stared in her face, with bloodshot eyes, tightened his fists and swore at her. What did he do next? Or say? She did not know. All she remembered was that on coming round from her swoon, Stefana her maid told her that the master had gone off, in the same evening clothes in which he had come, taking only a small grip in which he had thrown a few things haphazard. She remembered what torture
it had been to be unable to hurry after him, to be unable to leave her poor daughter in that state; how she had sent Stefana to Florence, thinking he had gone back there; how she heard next day that after going first to a hotel in Livorno itself he had taken ship for Sicily.

The baron arrived like lightning from Turin before she had given him any news of what had happened. Then another torment was added to the many already tearing at her. Her father's rancour against his son-in-law suddenly burst out, in all its terror.

‘He's gone off, has he? So much the better!' he said at first. But as she burst into tears, not knowing what to do and seeing her very existence destroyed, a violent gust of rage thrust all the blood into his head.

‘So you're regretting him, are you? You'd like to defend him, would you? You'd even go running after him, would you?'

Terrified, her hands joined in entreaty, she brought out between sobs, ‘What about my children … my little orphans?' But he interrupted with an even more savage outburst: