Corleone: A Tale of Sicily. F. Marion Crawford
'You will laugh at all this when I come back to you. You will wonder how you could have tried to frighten me with such tales.'
She looked at him a long time in silence, and then her lip quivered, so that she quickly raised one hand to her mouth to hide it.
'It would have been better if I had never left the convent,' she said in a broken voice. 'When they have killed you, I shall go back and die there.'
'When I come back, we shall be married, love—'
'Oh, no—not if you go to Camaldoli—we shall never be married in this world.'
The slight and graceful girl shook all over for a moment, and then seemed to grow smaller, as though something crushed her. But there were no tears in her eyes, though she pressed her fingers on her lips as though to force back a sob.
'Let us go back,' she said. 'I want to go home—I can pray for you, if I cannot save you. God will hear me, though you do not, and God knows that it will be your death.'
He put his arm about her and tried to comfort her, but she would not again lift her face, and he kissed her hair once more, when they were again in the shadow on the bridge. Then they waited till no one was passing through the small room, and went in silently to find her mother. She stopped him at the door of the ballroom.
'Promise me that you will not speak to my mother nor my brothers about—about us,' she said in a low voice.
'Very well. Not till I come back, if you wish it,' he answered.
And they went in amongst the people unnoticed.
CHAPTER VIII
Vittoria realised that it was beyond her power to keep Orsino in Rome, and she was in great trouble. She had begged him not to speak of their betrothal, scarcely knowing why she made the request, but she was afterwards very glad that she had done so. To her, he was a condemned man, and her betrothal was a solemn binding of herself to keep faith with a beloved being who must soon be dead. She did not believe that she could really outlive him, but if Heaven should be so unkind to her, she had already made up her mind to return to the convent where she had been educated, and to end her days as a nun. The acute melancholy which belongs to the people of the far south, as well as of the far north, of Norway and of Sicily or Egypt alike, at once asserted itself and took possession of her. The next time Orsino saw her he was amazed at the change. The colour was all gone from her face, her lips were tightly set, and her brown eyes followed him with a perpetual, mute anxiety. Her radiance was veiled, and her beauty was grievously diminished.
It was at a garden party, in a great, old villa beyond the walls, two days after the dance. Orsino had not been able to see her in the meantime, and had wisely abstained from visiting her mother, lest, in any way, he should betray their joint secret. She was already in the garden when he arrived with Corona, who caught sight of Vittoria from a distance and noted the change in her face.
'Vittoria d'Oriani looks ill,' said the Princess, and she went towards her at once.
She was too tactful to ask the girl what was the matter, but she saw how Vittoria's eyes could not keep from Orsino, and she half guessed the truth, though her son's face was impenetrable just then. An old friend came up and spoke to her, and she left the two alone.
They quietly moved away from the more crowded part of the garden, walking silently side by side, till they came to a long walk covered by the interlacing branches of ilex trees. Another couple was walking at some distance before them. Orsino glanced down at Vittoria, and tried to say something, but it was not easy. He had not realised how the mere sight of her stirred him, until he found himself speechless when he wished to say many things.
'You are suffering,' he said softly, at last. 'What is it?'
'You know,' she answered. 'What is the use of talking about it? I have said all—but tell me only when you are going.'
'To-morrow morning. I shall be back in a fortnight.'
'You will never come back,' said Vittoria, in a dull and hopeless tone.
She spoke with such conviction that Orsino was silent for a moment. He had not the smallest belief in any danger, but he did not know how to argue with her.
'I have thought it all over,' she went on. 'If you try to live there, you will certainly be killed. But if you only go once, there is a chance—a poor, miserable, little chance. Let them think that you are coming up from Piedimonte, by way of Randazzo. It is above Randazzo that the black lands begin, all lava and ashes, with deep furrows in which a man can lie hidden to shoot. That is where they will try to kill you. Go the other way, round by Catania. It is longer, but they will not expect you, and you can get a guide. They may not find out that you have changed your plan. If they should know it, they could kill you even more easily on that side, in the narrow valley; but they need not know it.'
'Nothing will happen to me on either side,' said Orsino carelessly.
Vittoria bent her head and walked on in silence beside him.
'I did not wish to talk about all that,' he continued. 'There are much more important things. When I come back we must be married soon—'
'We shall never be married if you go to Sicily,' answered Vittoria in the same dull voice.
It was a fixed idea, and Orsino felt the hopelessness of trying to influence her, together with a pardonable impatience. The couple ahead of them reached the end of the walk, turned, met them, and passed them with a greeting, for they were acquaintances. Where the little avenue ended there was a great fountain of travertine stone, behind which, in the wide arch of the opening trees, they could see the Campagna and the Sabine mountains to the eastward.
Vittoria stopped when they reached the other side of the basin, which was moss-grown but full of clear water that trickled down an almost shapeless stone triton. The statue and the fountain hid them from any one who might be coming up the walk, and at their feet lay the broad green Campagna. They were quite alone.
The young girl raised her eyes, and she looked already as though she had been in an illness.
'We cannot stay more than a moment,' she said. 'If people see us going off together, they will guess. I want it to be all my secret. I want to say goodbye to you—for the last time. I shall remember you always as you are now, with the light on your face.'
She looked at him long, and her eyes slowly filled with tears, which did not break nor run over, but little by little subsided again, taking her grief back to her heart. Orsino's brows frowned with pain, for he saw how profoundly she believed that she was never to see him again, and it hurt him that for him she should be so hurt, most of all because he was convinced that there was no cause.
'We go to-morrow,' he said. 'We shall be in Messina the next day. On the day after that go and see my mother, and she will tell you that she has had news of our safe arrival. What more can I say? I am sure of it.'
But Vittoria only looked long and earnestly into his face.
'I want to remember,' she said in a low voice.
'For a fortnight?' Orsino smiled lovingly, and took her hand.
'For ever,' she answered very gravely, and her fingers clutched his suddenly and hard.
He still smiled, for he could find nothing to say against such possession of presentiment. Common sense never has anything effectual to oppose to conviction.
'Goodbye,' she said softly. 'Goodbye, Orsino.'
She had not called him by his name yet, and it sounded like an enchantment to him, though it was a rough name in itself. The breeze stirred the ilex leaves overhead in the spring afternoon, and the water trickled down, with a pleasant murmur, into the big basin. It was all lovely and peaceful and soft, except