A Lady of Rome. F. Marion Crawford

were quite her own. Very good women are rarely witty, but they often have a happy faculty of seeing the funny side of things. Wit wounds, but humour disarms.

      Giuliana saw, too, that Maria did not like to be alone, even with Leone. The truth was that she slept little and was very nervous. Something had come back from the past to haunt her; often a nameless horror came near her, not at night only, for it was not the fear of an overwrought imagination, but in broad daylight too, when she was alone and chanced to be doing nothing. It was the more dreadful because she could not define it; she could not say that it was caused by the question Castiglione had asked her, and which she had promised to answer, but when she thought of that her mind refused to be reasonable, and the horror came upon her, and she felt that utter ruin was close at hand, lying in wait for her. She remembered the sensation well in the old days; she had sometimes fancied then that she was going mad, and had made great efforts to control herself, but she had never thought of asking a doctor what it was, for she had believed, and believed now, that it was a state of mind rather than the mere effect of anxiety and mental fatigue on her body. So she suffered much, and quite uselessly; but that was a small matter compared with the fact that she had promised Castiglione an answer before his fortnight’s leave was over, and that after several days she was no nearer to finding one than when he had left her.

      Again and again she thought of telling Giuliana all her trouble and asking her advice, but she was always deterred by an inward conviction that her friend would not understand. She was mistaken in this, but she could not believe that she was. Giuliana knew something, of course; all Rome believed Teresa Crescenzi’s story, of which the starting-point was that she had loved Baldassare del Castiglione innocently, and it was Giuliana who had repeated the tale to her. Maria had shaken her head, and had answered that there was not much truth in it, but that people might as well believe it as invent any other story, since she would never tell any one, not even Giuliana, exactly what had happened.

      ‘It does not concern me only,’ she had said gravely.

      Giuliana had asked no questions, and Maria had been sure that there would never be any need of referring to her secret again.

      But now the past had come back to ask a question which she could not answer. She had been in earnest when she had told Baldassare proudly that she did not mean to go to a priest for advice. He disliked all priests out of prejudice, as she knew. There might be good and bad soldiers, lawyers, writers, artists, or workmen, but in his estimation there could be very few good priests. Yet it was not to please him that she had said she would not go to her confessor; it was simply because she was quite sure that she could trust her own conscience and her own sense of honour to show her the right way; and perhaps she might have trusted both if her nerves had not failed her at the critical moment and left her apparently helpless. She was in great need of help and advice, and did not know where to go for either.

      Meanwhile she had not met Castiglione again. The season was over, and even at its height she did not go out much. Society is always dull when one has no object in joining in its inane revels—love, ambition, stupid vanity, or a daughter to marry—unless, indeed, one possesses the temperament of a butterfly combined with the intelligence of an oyster. So it had been quite natural that Maria should not have met Castiglione during those days, and she had not chanced to meet him in the street. On his side, he had kept away from the part of the city in which she lived, but he had gone to every friend’s house and public place where he thought there was a possibility of meeting her.

      After a week they met by what seemed an accident to them both. Maria was almost ill, and could no longer bear her trouble without some help. There was in Rome a good priest of her own class—a man in ten thousand, a man of heart, a man of courage, a man of the highest honour and of the purest life. If she had not always disliked the idea of meeting her confessor in the world, she would have chosen this man for hers long ago. If he had been in Rome in the darkest months of her life she would certainly have gone to him for advice; but he had then been working as a parish priest in a remote and fever-stricken part of the Maremma, and it was because his health had broken down that he had been obliged to give up his labours and come back to Rome. He was now a Canon of Saint Peter’s, and was employed as Secretary to the Cardinal Vicar, but found time to occupy himself with matters nearer to his heart. His name was Monsignor Ippolito Saracinesca; he was the second son of Don Giovanni, the head of the great family, and he was about forty years old.

      To him Maria Montalto determined to go in her extremity. She was not quite sure how she should tell him her story, but for the sake of what she had said to Castiglione she would not put it in the form of a confession. She would not need to tell so much of it but that she could lay it before him as an imaginary case—which is a foolish device when it is meant to hide a secret, but is useful as a means of communicating one that is hard to tell.

      Monsignor Saracinesca was generally at Saint Peter’s at about eleven o’clock, and Maria made sure of finding him there by telephoning to the Saracinesca palace, in which he had a small apartment of his own. At half-past ten she left her house alone, took a cab and drove across Rome to the Basilica. She got out at the front and went up the steps, for she had never before been to see any one in the Sacristy, and was not quite sure of what would happen if she went directly to it at the back of the church.

      She entered on the right-hand side, by force of habit. There is a very heavy wadded leathern curtain there, and she had to pull it aside for herself, which was not easy. Just as she was doing this, and using all her strength, some one pushed the curtain up easily from within, and she found herself face to face with Baldassare del Castiglione, and very near him. She started violently, for she was even more nervous than usual. He himself was so much surprised that he drew his head back quickly; then he bent it silently and stood aside, holding up the curtain for her to pass, as if not expecting that she would stop to speak to him.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said, going in.

      She tried to smile a little, just as much as one might with a word of thanks; but the effort was so great, and her face was so pale and disturbed, that it made a painful impression on him, and he watched her anxiously till she had gone a few steps forward into the church, for he was really afraid that she might faint and fall, and perhaps hurt herself, and there was no one near the door just then to help her.

      But she walked straight enough, and he had just begun to lower the heavy curtain, turning his head as he passed under it, when he heard her call him sharply.

      ‘Balduccio!’

      It was very long since she had called him familiarly by his first name, and his heart stood still at the sound of her voice. A moment later he was within the church, and met her as she was coming back to the door.

      ‘You called me?’

      ‘Yes.’

      They turned to the right into the north aisle, and walked slowly forwards, side by side. There were not many people in the Basilica at that hour, for it was a week-day, and the season of the tourists was almost over. At some distance before them, two or three people were kneeling before the closed gate of the Julian Chapel. Maria and Castiglione were as much alone as if they had been in the country, and as free to talk, for no conversation, even in an ordinary tone, can be heard far in the great cathedral. Nevertheless Maria did not speak.

      ‘You are ill,’ Castiglione said, breaking the silence at last. ‘Let me take you to your carriage.’

      ‘No. I came here for a good purpose, and I cannot go home without doing what I mean to do.’

      ‘I wish with all my heart that I had not come back to Rome to disturb your peace! It is my fault that you are suffering.’

      ‘No. It is not your fault.’ She spoke gently. ‘It is a consequence, that’s all. You had a right to ask me that question, and you have a right to an answer. But I cannot find one. That is what is troubling me.’

      ‘You are kind to me,’ said Castiglione. ‘Too kind,’ he added, and she knew by his tone how much he was moved.

      She turned in her walk before she answered, for they were already near the Julian Chapel.

      ‘No,’