“‘The secret has been killing us,’ she chimed in.
“‘The secret? Whose secret? How dare you—?’
“Gemma fell on her knees like a tragedy actress. ‘Strike me—kill me—it is I who am the offender! It was at my house that she met him—’
“‘Him?’
“‘Franz Welkenstern—my cousin,’ she wailed.
“I suppose I stood before them like a stunned ox, for they repeated the name again and again, as if they were not sure of my having heard it.—Not hear it!” he cried suddenly, dropping into a chair and hiding his face in his hands. “Shall I ever on earth hear anything else again?”
He sat a long time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper.
After a while he went on in a low deliberate voice, as though his words were balancing themselves on the brink of madness. With strange composure he repeated each detail of his brother’s charges: the meetings in the Countess Gemma’s drawingroom, the innocent friendliness of the two young people, the talk of mysterious visits to a villa outside the Porta Ticinese, the ever-widening circle of scandal that had spread about their names. At first, Andrea said, he and his wife had refused to listen to the reports which reached them. Then, when the talk became too loud, they had sent for Welkenstern, remonstrated with him, implored him to exchange into another regiment; but in vain. The young officer indignantly denied the reports and declared that to leave his post at such a moment would be desertion.
With a laborious accuracy Roberto went on, detailing one by one each incident of the hateful story, till suddenly he cried out, springing from his chair—“And now to leave her with this lie unburied!”
His cry was like the lifting of a gravestone from my breast. “You must not leave her!” I exclaimed.
He shook his head. “I am pledged.”
“This is your first duty.”
“It would be any other man’s; not an Italian’s.”
I was silent: in those days the argument seemed unanswerable.
At length I said: “No harm can come to her while you are away. Donna Marianna and I are here to watch over her. And when you come back—”
He looked at me gravely. “If I come back—”
“Roberto!”
“We are men, Egidio; we both know what is coming. Milan is up already; and there is a rumor that Charles Albert is moving. This year the spring rains will be red in Italy.”
“In your absence not a breath shall touch her!”
“And if I never come back to defend her? They hate her as hell hates, Egidio!—They kept repeating, ‘He is of her own age and youth draws youth—.’ She is in their way, Egidio!”
“Consider, my son. They do not love her, perhaps; but why should they hate her at such cost? She has given you no child.”
“No child!” He paused. “But what if—? She has ailed lately!” he cried, and broke off to grapple with the stabbing thought.
“Roberto! Roberto!” I adjured him.
He jumped up and gripped my arm.
“Egidio! You believe in her?”
“She’s as pure as a lily on the altar!”
“Those eyes are wells of truth—and she has been like a daughter to Marianna.—Egidio! do I look like an old man?”
“Quiet yourself, Roberto,” I entreated.
“Quiet myself? With this sting in my blood? A lover—and an Austrian lover! Oh, Italy, Italy, my bride!”
“I stake my life on her truth,” I cried, “and who knows better than I? Has her soul not lain before me like the bed of a clear stream?”
“And if what you saw there was only the reflection of your faith in her?”
“My son, I am a priest, and the priest penetrates to the soul as the angel passed through the walls of Peter’s prison. I see the truth in her heart as I see Christ in the host!”
“No, no, she is false!” he cried.
I sprang up terrified. “Roberto, be silent!”
He looked at me with a wild incredulous smile. “Poor simple man of God!” he said.
“I would not exchange my simplicity for yours—the dupe of envy’s first malicious whisper!”
“Envy—you think that?”
“Is it questionable?”
“You would stake your life on it?”
“My life!”
“Your faith?”
“My faith!”
“Your vows as a priest?”
“My vows—” I stopped and stared at him. He had risen and laid his hand on my shoulder.
“You see now what I would be at,” he said quietly. “I must take your place presently—”
“My place—?”
“When my wife comes down. You understand me.”
“Ah, now you are quite mad!” I cried breaking away from him.
“Am I?” he returned, maintaining his strange composure. “Consider a moment. She has not confessed to you before since our return from Milan—”
“Her ill-health—”
He cut me short with a gesture. “Yet to-day she sends for you—”
“In order that she may receive the sacrament with you on the eve of your first separation.”
“If that is her only reason her first words will clear her. I must hear those words, Egidio!”
“You are quite mad,” I repeated.
“Strange,” he said slowly. “You stake your life on my wife’s innocence, yet you refuse me the only means of vindicating it!”
“I would give my life for any one of you—but what you ask is not mine to give.”
“The priest first—the man afterward?” he sneered.
“Long afterward!”
He measured me with a contemptuous eye. “We laymen are ready to give the last shred of flesh from our bones, but you priests intend to keep your cassocks whole.”
“I tell you my cassock is not mine,” I repeated.
“And, by God,” he cried, “you are right; for it’s mine! Who put it on your back but my father? What kept it there but my charity? Peasant! beggar! Hear his holiness pontificate!” “Yes,” I said, “I was a peasant and a beggar when your father found me; and if he had left me one I might have been excused for putting my hand to any ugly job that my betters required of me; but he made me a priest, and so set me above all of you, and laid on me the charge of your souls as well as mine.”
He sat down shaken with dreadful tears. “Ah,” he broke out, “would you have answered me thus when we were boys together, and I stood between you and Andrea?”
“If God had given me the strength.”
“You call it strength to make a woman’s soul your stepping-stone to heaven?”
“Her soul is in my care, not yours, my son. She is safe with me.”
“She?