Corleone: A Tale of Sicily. F. Marion Crawford
get ready for the journey. But presently he was aware that the distant music had changed, that the waltz during which he had watched Vittoria was over, and that a square dance had begun. He smiled rather grimly to himself as he reflected that he might stand there till morning, without getting any nearer to a conclusion. He turned his back on the moonlight impatiently and went back into the palace. In the distance, through an open door, he saw faces familiar to him all his life, moving to and fro rapidly in a quadrille. He watched them as he walked straight on towards the ballroom, through the rather dimly lighted chamber with which the bridge communicated.
He was startled by the sound of Vittoria d'Oriani's voice, close beside him, calling him softly but rather anxiously.
'Don Orsino! Don Orsino!'
She was all alone, pale, and standing half hidden by the heavy curtain on one side of the door opening to the ballroom. Orsino stood still a moment, in great surprise at seeing her thus left to herself in an empty room. Then he went close to her, holding out his hand.
'What is the matter?' he asked in a low voice, for several men were standing about on the other side of the open door, watching the dance.
'Nothing—nothing,' she repeated nervously, as he drew her aside.
'Who left you here alone?' asked Orsino, in displeasure at some unknown person.
'I—I came here—' she faltered. 'I slipped out—it was hot, in there.'
Orsino laughed softly.
'You must not get isolated in this way,' he said. 'It is not done here, you know. People would think it strange. You are always supposed to be with someone—your partner, or your mother. But I am glad, since I have found you.'
'Yes, I have found you,' she said softly, repeating his words. 'I mean—' she corrected herself hurriedly—'I mean you have found me.'
Orsino looked down to her averted face, and in the dim light he saw the blush at her mistake—too great a mistake in speech not to have come from a strong impulse within. Yet he could hardly believe that she had seen him go out that way alone, and had followed in the hope of finding him.
They sat down together, not far from the door opening upon the bridge. The colour had faded again from Vittoria's face, and she was pale. During some moments neither spoke, and the music of the quadrille irritated Orsino as he listened to it. Seeing that he was silent, Vittoria looked up sideways and met his eyes.
'It was really very warm in the ballroom,' she said, to say something.
'Yes,' he answered absently, his eyes fixed on hers. 'Yes—I daresay it was.'
Again there was a pause.
'What is the matter?' asked Vittoria at last, and her tone sank with each word.
'I am going away,' said Orsino, slowly, with fixed eyes.
She did not start nor show any surprise, but the colour began to leave her lips. The irritating quadrille went pounding on in the distance, through the hackneyed turns of the familiar figures, accompanied by the sound of many voices talking and of broken laughter now and then.
'You knew it?' asked Orsino. 'How?'
'No one told me; but I knew it—I guessed it.'
Orsino looked away, and then turned to her again, his glance drawn back to her by something he could not resist.
'Vittoria,' he began in a very low tone.
He had never called her by that name before. The quadrille was very noisy, and she did not understand. She leaned forward anxiously towards him when she spoke.
'What did you say? I did not hear. The music makes such a noise!'
The man was more than ever irritated at the sound; and as she bent over to him, he could almost feel her breath on his cheek. The blood rose in him, and he sprang to his feet impatiently.
'Come!' he said. 'Come outside! We cannot even hear each other here.'
Vittoria rose, too, without a word, and went with him, walking close beside him, and glancing at his face. She was excessively pale now; and all the golden light seemed to have faded at once, even from her hair and eyes, till she looked delicate and almost fragile beside the big dark man.
'Out of doors?' she asked timidly, at the threshold.
'Yes—it is very warm,' answered Orsino, in a voice that was a little hoarse.
Once out on the bridge, in the shadow, over the dark street, he stopped, and instantly his hand found hers and closed all round it, covering it altogether.
Vittoria could not have spoken just then, for she was trembling from head to foot. The air was full of strange sounds, and the trees were whirling round one another like mad black ghosts in the moonlight. When she looked up, she could see Orsino's eyes, bright in the shadow. She turned away, and came back to them more than once; then their glances did not part any more, and his face came nearer to hers.
'We love each other,' he said; and his voice was warm and alive again.
She felt that she saw his soul in his face, but she could not speak. Her eyes looking up to his, she slowly bent her little head twice, while her lips parted like an opening flower, and faintly smiled at the sweetness of an unspoken word.
He bent nearer still, and she did not draw back. His blood was hot and singing in his ears. Then, all at once, something in her appealed to him, her young delicacy, her dawn-like purity, her exquisite fresh maidenhood. It seemed a crime to touch her lips as though she had been a mature woman. He dropped her hand, and his long arms brought her tenderly and softly up to his breast; and as her head fell back, and her lids drooped, he kissed her eyes with infinite gentleness, first the one and then the other, again and again, till she smiled in the dark, and hid her face against his coat, and he found only her silky hair to kiss again.
'I love you—say it, too,' he whispered in her ear.
'Ah, yes! so much, so dearly!' came her low answer.
Then he took her hand again, and brought it up to his lips close to her face; and his lips pressed the small fingers passionately, almost roughly, very longingly.
'Come,' he said. 'We must be alone—come into the garden.'
He led her across the bridge, and suddenly they were in the clear moonlight; but he went on quickly, lest they should be noticed through the open door from within. The air was warm and still and dry, as it often is in spring after the evening chill has passed.
'We could not go back into the ballroom, could we?' he asked, as he drew her away along a gravel walk between high box hedges.
'No. How could we—now?' Her hand tightened a little on his arm.
They stopped before a statue at the end of the walk, full in the light, a statue that had perhaps been a Daphne, injured ages ago, and stone-gray where it was not very white, with flying draperies broken off short in the folds, and a small, frightened face that seemed between laughing and crying. One fingerless hand pointed at the moon.
Orsino leaned back against the pedestal, and lovingly held Vittoria before him, and looked at her, and she smiled, her lips parting again, and just glistening darkly in the light as a dewy rose does in moonlight. The music was very far away now, but the plashing of the fountain was near.
'I love you!' said Orsino once more, as though no other words would do.
A deep sigh of happiness said more than the words could, and the stillness that followed meant most of all, while Vittoria gently took his two hands and nestled closer to him, fearlessly, like a child or a young animal.
'But you will not go away—now?' she asked pleadingly.
Orsino's face changed a little, as he remembered the rest of his life, and all he had undertaken to do. He had dreamily hoped that he might forget it.
'We will not talk