The Greatest Works of Edith Wharton - 31 Books in One Edition. Edith Wharton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ my arm. “It is not for myself I plead but for her—for her, Egidio! Don’t you see to what a hell you condemn her if I don’t come back? What chance has she against that slow unsleeping hate? Their lies will fasten themselves to her and suck out her life. You and Marianna are powerless against such enemies.”

      “You leave her in God’s hands, my son.”

      “Easily said—but, ah, priest, if you were a man! What if their poison works in me and I go to battle thinking that every Austrian bullet may be sent by her lover’s hand? What if I die not only to free Italy but to free my wife as well?”

      I laid my hand on his shoulder. “My son, I answer for her. Leave your faith in her in my hands and I will keep it whole.”

      He stared at me strangely. “And what if your own fail you?”

      “In her? Never. I call every saint to witness!”

      “And yet—and yet—ah, this is a blind,” he shouted; “you know all and perjure yourself to spare me!”

      At that, my son, I felt a knife in my breast. I looked at him in anguish and his gaze was a wall of metal. Mine seemed to slip away from it, like a clawless thing struggling up the sheer side of a precipice.

      “You know all,” he repeated, “and you dare not let me hear her!”

      “I dare not betray my trust.”

      He waved the answer aside.

      “Is this a time to quibble over church discipline? If you believed in her you would save her at any cost!”

      I said to myself, “Eternity can hold nothing worse than this for me—” and clutched my resolve again like a cross to my bosom.

      Just then there was a hand on the door and we heard Donna Marianna.

      “Faustina has sent to know if the signar parocco is here.”

      “He is here. Bid her come down to the chapel.” Roberta spoke quietly, and closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her patter away across the brick floor of the salone.

      Roberto turned to me. “Egidio!” he said; and all at once I was no more than a straw on the torrent of his will.

      The chapel adjoined the room in which we sat. He opened the door, and in the twilight I saw the light glimmering before the Virgin’s shrine and the old carved confessional standing like a cowled watcher in its corner. But I saw it all in a dream; for nothing in heaven or earth was real to me but the iron grip on my shoulder.

      “Quick!” he said and drove me forward. I heard him shoot back the bolt of the outer door and a moment later I stood alone in the garden. The sun had set and the cold spring dusk was falling. Lights shone here and there in the long front of the villa; the statues glimmered gray among the thickets. Through the window-pane of the chapel I caught the faint red gleam of the Virgin’s lamp; but I turned my back on it and walked away.

      *

      All night I lay like a heretic on the fire. Before dawn there came a call from the villa. The Count had received a second summons from Milan and was to set out in an hour. I hurried down the cold dewy path to the lake. All was new and hushed and strange as on the day of resurrection; and in the dark twilight of the garden alleys the statues stared at me like the shrouded dead.

      In the salone, where the old Count’s portrait hung, I found the family assembled. Andrea and Gemma sat together, a little pinched, I thought, but decent and self-contained, like mourners who expect to inherit. Donna Marianna drooped near them, with something black over her head and her face dim with weeping. Roberto received me calmly and then turned to his sister.

      “Go fetch my wife,” he said.

      While she was gone there was silence. We could hear the cold drip of the garden-fountain and the patter of rats in the wall. Andrea and his wife stared out of window and Roberto sat in his father’s carved seat at the head of the long table. Then the door opened and Faustina entered.

      When I saw her I stopped breathing. She seemed no more than the shell of herself, a hollow thing that grief has voided. Her eyes returned our images like polished agate, but conveyed to her no sense of our presence. Marianna led her to a seat, and she crossed her hands and nailed her dull gaze on Roberto. I looked from one to another, and in that spectral light it seemed to me that we were all souls come to judgment and naked to each other as to God. As to my own wrongdoing, it weighed on me no more than dust. The only feeling I had room for was fear—a fear that seemed to fill my throat and lungs and bubble coldly over my drowning head.

      Suddenly Roberto began to speak. His voice was clear and steady, and I clutched at his words to drag myself above the surface of my terror. He touched on the charge that had been made against his wife—he did not say by whom—the foul rumor that had made itself heard on the eve of their first parting. Duty, he said, had sent him a double summons; to fight for his country and for his wife. He must clear his wife’s name before he was worthy to draw sword for Italy. There was no time to tame the slander before throttling it; he had to take the shortest way to its throat. At this point he looked at me and my soul shook. Then he turned to Andrea and Gemma.

      “When you came to me with this rumor,” he said quietly, “you agreed to consider the family honor satisfied if I could induce Don Egidio to let me take his place and overhear my wife’s confession, and if that confession convinced me of her innocence. Was this the understanding?”

      Andrea muttered something and Gemma tapped a sullen foot.

      “After you had left,” Roberto continued, “I laid the case before Don Egidio and threw myself on his mercy.” He looked at me fixedly. “So strong was his faith in my wife’s innocence that for her sake he agreed to violate the sanctity of the confessional. I took his place.”

      Marianna sobbed and crossed herself and a strange look flitted over Faustina’s face.

      There was a moment’s pause; then Roberto, rising, walked across the room to his wife and took her by the hand.

      “Your seat is beside me, Countess Siviano,” he said, and led her to the empty chair by his own.

      Gemma started to her feet, but her husband pulled her down again.

      “Jesus! Mary!” We heard Donna Marianna moan.

      Roberto raised his wife’s hand to his lips. “You forgive me,” he said, “the means I took to defend you?” And turning to Andrea he added slowly: “I declare my wife innocent and my honor satisfied. You swear to stand by my decision?”

      What Andrea stammered out, what hissing serpents of speech Gemma’s clinched teeth bit back, I never knew—for my eyes were on Faustina, and her face was a wonder to behold.

      She had let herself be led across the room like a blind woman, and had listened without change of feature to her husband’s first words; but as he ceased her frozen gaze broke and her whole body seemed to melt against his breast. He put his arm out, but she slipped to his feet and Marianna hastened forward to raise her up. At that moment we heard the stroke of oars across the quiet water and saw the Count’s boat touch the landing-steps. Four strong oarsmen from Monte Isola were to row him down to Iseo, to take horse for Milan, and his servant, knapsack on shoulder, knocked warningly at the terrace window.

      “No СКАЧАТЬ