Ragna Part 49

Angelescu returned, hat in hand and they walked down the wide staircase and out the door, held open by an attentive flunkey.

"Where shall we go?" asked Angelescu as he beckoned to a cab on the rank.

"To Sta. Margherita a Montici," said Ragna to the driver as she took her seat.

She felt a reckless joy in driving thus publicly with Angelescu. In any ordinary circ.u.mstances, common prudence would have forbidden her such an act in defiance of public opinion, but this was her declaration of independence, the burning of her boats, the definite throwing off of the yoke, and she gloried in it.

Angelescu looked at her with undisguised admiration, though the thick veil she wore rather obscured her features. She was more beautiful by far than she had been as a girl, her figure had riper, richer lines while keeping its lissome grace, her hair was as bright and abundant as ever, and the years of stress and storm had given an added delicacy to her features, a depth to her eyes, the subtle air of having lived and suffered to her expression--a complex charm that no merely young and pretty face can ever possess.

They sat silent as the carriage drove through the Via Maggio and down the long, winding Via Romana, but as they left the Porta Romana behind them and the pace slackened on the long hill, Ragna, with a determined effort, broke the silence.

"I have not yet told you that I am married," she said.

"Married!" repeated Angelescu, "married!" He looked at her as though stunned.

The idea that she might have married had never occurred to him. When she had refused him, he had not, in his direct simplicity, thought of the possibility of her giving to another that which she denied to him. He recoiled instinctively at the thought of her possession by another, and this time no accident, no sudden impulse, but with her full consent, as the fact of marriage must necessarily imply. It sickened him. How could she have given herself to another when everything about her proclaimed her love for himself. Could she then pa.s.s so lightly from one man's arms to another's? Now she had turned to him, but in the light of her prior action, what value had her present appeal? And why this appeal, since she had already found a protector, a husband? What explanation could there be to her conduct, except that as a frail barque, she drifted where the currents of circ.u.mstance and impulse took her? Or was she dominated by fickleness, a fatal longing for change and excitement? But here, his native generosity came to his aid,--the pressure of extraordinary circ.u.mstances must have been brought to bear on her, he must hear her out before judging.

So he turned to her, as she sat apprehensively expectant and took her hand in his own, saying:

"Tell me all, dear, don't be afraid. I was surprised, for I had not guessed--"

His voice was tender, affectionate; he spoke as he would to encourage the confidence of a shrinking child, and the beauty of it all was his perfect naturalness, the outcome of his simple generous soul.

To Ragna, realising as she needs must, from his first involuntary start, his look of horror and surprise, what a shock her bald announcement had been to him, his quick recovery, the tender simplicity of his response seemed little short of miraculous; she had not dared hope for so much. A lump rose in her throat and the hand that lay in his trembled.

"There, there, little one, tell me all!"

He spoke again, soothingly, as he would have spoken to a child; he did not guess that the tears welling up in her eyes were tears of relief, of joy, the reaction from the oppression of dread.

So Ragna told her tale, the terrible discovery that she was about to become a mother--

"Why did you not write to me then?" he interrupted.

"Ah, dear," she answered, "I was too ashamed, I only wanted to hide myself from all who knew me, from you, most of all, because you loved me!"

"The very reason why you should have come to me," he reproved quietly; "Ah, well, you did not, more's the pity. Think of it, Ragna, we might have been so happy."

"G.o.d knows I should have been a better woman, at least," she said bitterly, "not the hard cynical creature I have become!"

"You hard and cynical, my little Ragna?"

"Wait until you have heard all, and you will see whether I have not had good reason for it," she rejoined.

The tenderness called forth in response to his own had died away under the bitter memories evoked by the recital of her trials. With growing hardness in her voice, she told of Valentini's offer, of her acceptance and of their marriage--and at this point of her tale she dared not look at Angelescu's face but kept her eyes obstinately fixed on the driver's back, and even as she talked, was curiously conscious of the brown and grey stripes of the man's coat and the deep crease in it where it bulged over the iron rail round the top of the box.

She went on and told of her rapid disillusionment, hiding nothing, using words brutal in their revealing frankness, such as she had often used to herself; then of the birth of Mimmo, of that of Beppino, of the increasing unhappiness of her life, as time went on, and lastly of Carolina's story, the death of Fru Boyesen, the loss of her hopes, and the culminating scene of the morning. She reached this point as the carriage drove past the gate of the Torre al Gallo, where Galileo lived and worked, and through the little town of Arcetri, perched on the hill-top.

Both sat silent as they rattled through the long, narrow stone-paved street, Ragna lost again in the horror of all those awful years, now more unbearable than ever as she compared them to what might have been, Angelescu, his brow drawn into deep furrows of thought, the blaze of indignation in his eyes, a muscle working in his lean cheek, just as he had sat listening to her. As they left the last houses behind them, and came to a piece of undulating sunken road running between high stone walls on the tops of which iris and rose ran riot against the gnarled trunks and silvery leaves of the olives, he drew a long sigh and shrugged his shoulders as though throwing off the weight of some incubus.

"Poor little girl!" he said, and his voice shook with the depth of his emotion. After a pause, he spoke again, and this time his voice was full, deep, decided.

"You can't live with him any longer you know, you must come with me."

Then for an instant his anger blazed out like the sudden flare of lightning on a summer evening.

"By G.o.d, if ever I see that man,--no, that beast, I shall kill him!"

A thrill of savage joy ran through Ragna,--here then, was the man, the defender! The primitive woman in her leaped in response to his calm taking possession of her. Here was no questioning as to right, merely the a.s.sumption of herself and her burdens as the most perfectly obvious and natural thing in the world. Yes, he was right, she was his; she proudly acknowledged his right to command, to take her; she hugged the consciousness of her recognition of his mastery. Here was a lord she acknowledged with all her sentient being, one whom her soul delighted to honour. Mentally she compared with him the man who had been so long her hated and feared master, and the paltriness of Egidio made her wonder how she had let herself feel insulted by the words and actions of one so mean, so morally insignificant. She longed to throw out her arms to the man beside her, in one glorious gesture of self-abandonment, offering all that she was and could be, her whole being.

But the coachman was pointing with his whip to the beauties of the landscape, austere Fiesole and Settignano nestled in the lap of the hills, across the valley, and perched on the scarred pine-crowned hill between the Casa al Vento, all swimming in rosy amethyst, to Monte alle Croci, on which one distinguished the tiny mortuary chapels, the back of S. Miniato, the Arcivescovado masked in scaffolding, the Capucine monastery with its expresses, and nearer still the slopes of silvery olive and green waving grain, where cornflowers and poppies began to appear. So she only leaned forward and looked into Angelescu's eyes, clasping both her hands on his. She had thrown back her veil and her face appeared radiant, lit from within by the light of her love in its pa.s.sionate consciousness of supremacy.

A steep bit of hill, and the horse, goaded into a momentary effort drew up panting in the little piazza before the Church which stood as on a pinnacle, the land on both sides sweeping away to a deep valley. On the right hand one saw range upon range of bare hill-tops with olive-covered slopes, and down below small white houses, each surrounded by its "podere," with here and there a "fattoria" or a villa, dotted the green valley. On the near hill-slopes the gorse was in blossom, its yellow flowers straggling over the rough ground like a ragged mantle of cloth of gold, and the strong sweet perfume of it a.s.sailed the nostrils.

Across the piazza, opposite the grey old church was the priest's garden, an old-fas.h.i.+oned straggling garden sweet with wall-flowers, pinks and stocks, planted as borders to the onions, carrots, cabbages and lettuces; misshapen fig-trees ran riot and the _nespoli_ showed the golden glow of ripened fruit among the heavy foliage. Lizards ran to and fro over the wall, from the crevices of which sprouted tufts of gra.s.s, snap-dragon, saxifrage and a kind of small fern.

The third side of the piazza, was bounded by a low wall, connecting the _orto_ with the church and presbytery, and a flight of stone steps led to the terraced plantations below, where grain grew between the olives, and wild gladiolus, cornflower and poppy starred the undulating green surface.

Ragna, one of whose favourite haunts it was, led the way to the lichen-covered steps. At the foot of them an uneven gra.s.sy slope stretched downward, winding in and out among the terraces, and down this they wandered. The gra.s.s was still green for the summer heat and drought were yet far off, and many flowers grew in the light shade of the trees.

Ragna, full of the exuberance of the moment, laughed joyously and long like a child; she threw back her head, eyes half closed, the parted lips showing her white even teeth, and her laughter pulsated in her throat, rose in clear ripples. It reminded Angelescu of the song of a bird, of the clear water bubbling up in a spring. She had thrown off the weary years of pain as one casts off a dark cloak; all the youth, the girlish _insouciance_ so long repressed rose triumphant to the surface, she irradiated the wonderful joy of life, of love. The sunlight, flecked with narrow, quivering shadow illuminated her white dress, the gold of her hair, the rosy flush of her cheek. She was like a bird escaped from its cage, mad with the newness of its freedom, intoxicated with the wine of life.

Her mood was infectious, it caught Angelescu, and he pursued her among the olive trees, following her light bounds, her lithe turnings and twistings. It was a page of Pagan fable,--there in the soft sunlight, under the grey gnarled olives, on the elastic carpet of flower-starred turf, the perfumed breeze fluttering Ragna's skirts as she laughingly eluded her pursuer. They were Apollo and Daphne and the world was young again. But this Daphne was no restive nymph, and when Angelescu caught her at length, panting and rosy, to his breast, she raised her mouth to his and closed her eyes. The colour fled from her face, she became grave with the mysterious gravity of all true pa.s.sion as in that sacramental kiss she felt the utter surrender of her soul to his.

After this they sat down on the gra.s.s, among the twisted olive roots, Ragna with her back against a distorted trunk, Angelescu stretched at full length beside her, his elbow on a root, his head supported by his hand. Dreamily happy, silent, like two people to whom the gates of Paradise have suddenly been set ajar, they gazed out over the valley below, where the s.h.i.+ning reaches of the Arno reflected the sky. The pink-tiled roofs of the city trailed out like the embroidered hem of a robe from beyond Monte alle Croci, one could see up the valley as far as Ponte a Sieve and the green peaks of Vallombrosa. The sky was that deep, soft blue shading to amethyst on the horizon, that seems peculiar to Italy, and against it the slender olive leaves, s.h.i.+vering in the gentle breeze, stood out in delicate gold-illumined tracery.

Angelescu heaved a deep sigh of contentment, and Ragna echoed it; her wild exuberance of spirits had fallen and it was now the marvel of it, the beautiful tender mystery of this love, the only real love she had ever known, that dominated her. It seemed to her that all she had been through, the pain, the humiliation, the brutal servitude had been but a preparation for this, but the stony path leading to this summit of perfect happiness, whence she looked out and secure in her bliss, saw the whole of the world beneath her feet. "Stay, fleeting moment!" she half-whispered--and smiled, why should not the fleeting moment be eternal, was it not to be her life hence forward? Had not her path at last led her out of the shadow into the suns.h.i.+ne? Oh, perfect day that had broken her bondage! But even as she looked, the soft plum-coloured shadows lengthened in the valley, the sunlight mellowed with the waning day.

It was Angelescu who first broke the silence, there was still so much to be said, so much to be arranged. He leaned forward and took her hand which was idly playing with a bee-orchid she had plucked.

"Ragna dear, we must come back to earth again and consider what we are to do."

She started almost resentfully, so far adrift had she been on the happy sea of her realized day-dream that she had lost sight of all other considerations. It seemed to her that thus must she float on and on, from day to day, lapped in the sweetness of her new found love and exalted above all mundane concerns. She turned to him impulsively,

"Oh, why can't we live in dreamland just a little longer?"

He smiled.

"All our life is to be one long dream, darling, from which there will be no awakening,--but we have yet to make it ours."

"Are we not together? Is that not enough?"

"Yes, darling, and you are coming away with me to a new life,--but we must prepare that new life."

She sat up, throwing off her childish unreasonableness, even as she put back the disordered locks of her hair and straightened her hat.

"Tell me what I am to do,--I am all yours, dear, you shall decide for me."

"Have you a friend with whom you can spend the night? I do not like the idea of your going back for even so few hours to--to your husband," he p.r.o.nounced the word with an effort.