Corleone: A Tale of Sicily. F. Marion Crawford
river, the Tiber is interesting, I suppose. That is what you mean. No, it is quite reasonable.'
Vittoria blushed a little, and looked down, only half reassured. It was her first attempt at conversation, and she had said what she thought, naturally and simply. She was not sure whether the great dark young man, who had eyes exactly like his mother's, was laughing at her or not. But he did not know that she had never been to a party in her life.
'Is the society in Palermo amusing?' he inquired carelessly.
'I do not know,' she answered, again blushing, for she was a little ashamed of being so very young. 'I left the convent on the day we started to come to Rome. And my mother did not live in Palermo,' she added.
'No—I had forgotten that.'
Orsino relapsed into silence for a while. He would willingly have given up the attempt at conversation, so far as concerned any hope of making it interesting. But he liked the sound of Vittoria's voice, and he wished she would speak again. On his right hand was Tebaldo, who, as the head of a family, and not a Roman, sat next to Corona. He seemed to be making her rather bold compliments. Orsino caught a phrase.
'You are certainly the most beautiful woman in Italy, Princess,' the Sicilian was saying.
Orsino raised his head, and turned slowly towards the speaker. As he did so, he saw his mother's look. Her brows were a little contracted, which was unusual, but she was just turning away to speak to San Giacinto on her other side, with an otherwise perfectly indifferent expression. Orsino laughed.
'My mother has been the most beautiful woman in Europe since before I was born,' he said, addressing Tebaldo rather pointedly, for the latter's remark had been perfectly audible to him.
Tebaldo had a thin face, with a square, narrow forehead, and heavy jaws that came to an overpointed chin. His upper lip was very short, and his moustache was unusually small, black and glossy, and turned up at the ends in aggressive points. His upper teeth were sharp, long, and regular, and he showed them when he smiled. The smile did not extend upwards above the nostrils, and there was something almost sinister in the still black eyes. In the front view the lower part of the face was triangular, and the low forehead made the upper portion seem square. He was a man of bilious constitution, of an even, yellow-brown complexion, rather lank and bony in frame, but of a type which is often very enduring. Such men sometimes have violent and uncontrolled tempers, combined with great cunning, quickness of intelligence, and an extraordinary power of taking advantage of circumstances.
Tebaldo smiled at Orsino's remark, not at all acknowledging that it might be intended as a rebuke.
'It is hard to believe that she can be your mother,' he said quietly, and with such frankness as completely disarmed resentment.
But Orsino in his thoughts contrasted Tebaldo's present tone with the sound of his voice when speaking to the Princess an instant earlier, and he forthwith disliked the man, and believed him to be false and double. Corona either had not heard, or pretended not to hear, and talked indifferently with San Giacinto, whose vast, lean frame seemed to fill two places at the table, while his energetic gray head towered high above everyone else. Orsino turned to Vittoria again.
'Should you be pleased if someone told you that you were the most beautiful young lady in Italy?' he enquired.
Vittoria looked at him wonderingly.
'No,' she answered. 'It would not be true. How should I be pleased?'
'But suppose, for the sake of argument, that it were true. I am imagining a case. Should you be pleased?'
'I do not know—I think—' She hesitated and paused.
'I am very curious to know what you think,' said Orsino, pressing her for an answer.
'I think it would depend upon whether I liked the person who told me so.' Again the blood rose softly in her face.
'That is exactly what I should think,' answered Orsino gravely. 'Were you sorry to leave the convent?'
'Yes, I cried a great deal. It was my home for so many years, and I was so happy there.'
The girl's eyes grew dreamy as she looked absently across the table at Guendalina Pietrasanta. She was evidently lost in her recollections of her life with the nuns. Orsino was almost amused at his own failure.
'Should you have liked to stay and be a nun yourself?' he inquired, with a smile.
'Yes, indeed! At least—when I came away I wished to stay.'
'But you have changed your mind since? You find the world pleasanter than you expected? It is not a bad place, I daresay.'
'They told me that it was very bad,' said Vittoria seriously. 'Of course they must know, but I do not quite understand what they mean. Can you tell me something about it, and why it is bad, and what all the wickedness is?'
Orsino looked at her quietly for a moment, realising very clearly the whiteness of her life's unwritten page.
'Your nuns may be right,' he said at last. 'I am not in love with the world, but I do not believe that it is so very wicked. At least, there are many good people in it, and one can find them if one chooses. No doubt, we are all miserable sinners in a theological sense, but I am not a theologian. I have a brother who is a priest, and you will see him after dinner; but though he is a very good man, he does not give one the impression of believing that the world is absolutely bad. It is true that he is rather a dilettante priest.'
Vittoria was evidently shocked, for her face grew extraordinarily grave and a shade paler. She looked at Orsino in a startled way and then at her plate.
'What is the matter?' he asked quickly. 'Have I shocked you?'
'Yes,' she answered, almost in a whisper and still looking down. 'That is,' she added with hesitation, 'perhaps I did not quite understand you.'
'No, you did not, if you are shocked. I merely meant that although my brother is a very good man, and a very religious man, and believes that he has a vocation, and does his best to be a good priest, he has other interests in life for which I am sure that he cares more, though he may not know it.'
'What other interests?' asked Vittoria, rather timidly.
'Well, only one, perhaps—music. He is a musician first, and a priest afterwards.'
The young girl's face brightened instantly. She had expected something very terrible, perhaps, though quite undefined.
'He says mass in the morning,' continued Orsino, 'and it may take him an hour or so to read his breviary conscientiously in the afternoon. The rest of his time he spends over the piano.'
'But it is not profane music?' asked Vittoria, growing anxious again.
'Oh no!' Orsino smiled. 'He composes masses and symphonies and motetts.'
'Well, there is no harm in that,' said Vittoria, indifferently, being again reassured.
'Certainly not. I wish I had the talent and the interest in it to do it myself. I believe that the chief real wickedness is doing nothing at all.'
'Sloth is one of the capital sins,' observed Vittoria, who knew the names of all seven.
'It is also the most tiresome sin imaginable, especially when one is condemned to it for life, as I am.'
The young girl looked at him anxiously, and there was a little pause.
'What do you mean?' she asked. 'No one is obliged to be idle.'
'Will you find me an occupation?' Orsino asked in his turn, and with some bitterness. 'I shall be gratified.'
'Is not doing good an occupation? I am sure that there must be plenty of opportunities for that.'
She felt more sure of herself when upon such ground. Orsino did not smile.
'Yes. It might take up a man's whole life, but it is not a career—'
'It