"You are unjust, Egidio, she only wants me to be happy, and she is most kind in helping me. You must not speak of her like that!"

"Oh, she does not like me, I have always known it. She dislikes me because I am her husband's friend. All women are jealous at heart of their husbands' friends, male or female."

Ragna laughed at the absurdity of the idea and said playfully,

"Then I think you dislike her because she is my friend!"

"Perhaps that is it," agreed Valentini. "I am jealous of all who are near you, dear one, when I am away."

He smiled to himself and registered a mental vow that Ragna should see but little of Virginia in future. "She knows or guesses too much, and she has a sharp tongue," he thought.

Carolina, the Venetian maid, was the only one who openly expressed disapproval. She flounced about the kitchen, banging the pots and pans, in a state of continual ill-humour.

"I do not like that Signore!" she would say a dozen times a day, "I do not like him. You will be sorry if you marry him, Signorina mia!"

In vain did Ragna reprove her, in vain asked her the reason for her dislike of Valentini.

"I do not know why, Signorina, but I hate him. He has the evil eye, I know it--this marriage will bring you no luck. I shall burn candles to the Madonna, but it will do no good--even the Madonna can't exorcise the evil eye!"

Her croakings made Ragna uncomfortable, and she avoided Carolina to the serving-maid's intense distress.

Meanwhile time was pa.s.sing and the wedding day arrived. Egidio and Ragna accompanied by Ferrati and his wife, Agosti, a Neapolitan friend of Egidio's who was to be second witness, and the weeping Carolina bringing up the rear, made up the small cortege. It was a hot morning and the city was deserted. A few idle _facchini_ and women of the people followed them up to the _Sala de' matrimoni_, where a wheezy clerk read through the marriage contract, and a bored, perspiring official representing the absent Sindaco put the questions to the pair. As Ragna rose from her red velvet armchair to answer, it seemed to her that she must be dreaming. The dry rapid reading, the abrupt, indifferent manner of the official, the darkened musty hall, traversed by a stray beam of sunlight in which dust motes danced--could this be her wedding?

Mechanically she answered and when told to do so, signed her name in the registers under Egidio's; Ferrati and Agosti signed also, then the official gave her a copy of the certificate and wished her happiness. As in a trance she descended the stair, on Egidio's arm, and heard him say:

"You are my wife now, Ragna, you have promised to obey me and follow me everywhere--to the world's end--to h.e.l.l if I lead the way!"

An oppression stopped her breathing, her head swam, the premonition came over her that not to h.e.l.l would she follow the man at her side, but through a daily, living h.e.l.l, to the end of her life. She stumbled and would have fallen, but Egidio sustained her, and Ferrati hurrying forward caught her other arm.

"Poor child," he said, "it is the emotion and the heat, she is quite overcome! Let us get her quickly to the carriage!"

So, half supporting, half carrying her, they reached the landau, waiting below in the courtyard. Virginia would have taken the place beside Ragna but Egidio thrust her aside, and himself took the girl's head on his shoulder, and held the smelling salts to her nose.

"See," said Ferrati to his wife, "how fond he is of her!"

Virginia held her peace, but inwardly thought, "All for the gallery!"

In this she was not quite right, as Egidio, for the moment, was thoroughly honest in his anxiety for Ragna. She was his wife, his possession, his chattel; he loved her for the moment because she was fair to look upon, but above all because she was newly his.

Ragna's faintness soon pa.s.sed off, and crushing down her presentiment as silly weakness, she smiled up into her husband's face. Agosti came forward, hat in hand, wished them happiness and went his ways; Ferrati and Virginia took their places facing the pair, as Egidio still refused to relinquish his post by Ragna's side--a malicious desire to annoy Virginia had something to do with this, perhaps--and they drove to Ferrati's house where luncheon was spread. In spite of all efforts on the part of Ferrati it was but a half-earted affair, and all felt relieved when at the close Virginia carried Ragna off to her room to rest. They were all to dine together at the restaurant of the "Due Terrazze," and then the newly wedded couple were to go to the apartment Egidio had taken in the Via Serragli.

Dinner was gayer than luncheon had been; Ragna, now quite herself again, feeling as does a bather when the first cold plunge has been made, entertained them all by her gay sallies and quiet wit. The coloured lanterns swinging from the _pergola_, the music on the terrace, the many tables of merry diners calling for _pesciolini d' Arno_, _fritto misto_ and _Chianti_ all seemed delightful to her unaccustomed eyes. They drank her health and Egidio's and she smiled, and sparkled; it seemed to her that she had really reached port, that the worst of her troubles must be over. So when Egidio squeezed her hand under the table, she returned the pressure, and Ferrati who saw the movement rejoiced that all was well.

Ragna smiled at him and at Egidio, but the latter's head being in the shadow, she did not see the expression of his burning, gloating eyes fixed on the flushed face and shining hair under the white lace hat. He did not, however, escape the watchful Virginia.

Dinner was over at last and Ferrati and his wife on their way home, accompanied by much cracking of the _fiaccheraio's_ whip, and Ragna seated in a carriage by Egidio's side let herself lapse into a sort of reverie. So it was done, she was married! She was the wife of Egidio Valentini, far from her home, her kindred! The sultry night air, through which a faint breeze was stirring, wafting the odour of the thick-lying dust to her nostrils, oppressed her. She longed for a breath from her native fjords, crisp and aromatic from mountain and fir woods, sharp with the tang of the sea. She closed her eyes to the noisy strolling crowd thronging the streets and a wave of homesickness swept over her.

She fought it down and found solace in the thought that at last anxiety and fear of a public shame were over for her, that she was saved from disgrace, and through Valentini. A flood of grat.i.tude welled up in her heart, she took his hand and raised it to her lips, tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g in her eyes.

"How good you are to me," she murmured, "How very good!"

He smiled and put his arm around her and she nestled back against it confidingly. Neither spoke again till they reached the house in the Via Serragli, but Egidio watched her obliquely out of those burning eyes of his, and his arm tingled where she leaned against it. He shifted his feet nervously once or twice and his breath came fast, but he gave no other sign of the emotion that possessed him. As they rattled over the Trinita bridge the full moon, reflected in the dark glancing waters below, shamed the yellow street lamps, and the houses towering above the Lung 'Arno Giucciardini glowed here and there with lights behind the barred windows. As the darkness of the narrowing street engulfed them, Ragna felt a vague uneasiness come over her--but was she not safe with her husband-friend?

They drew up before the door of a _palazzo_, Egidio paid the driver, and opened the heavy _portone_ with a large iron key. They climbed to the first floor and at the sound of their approach a door on the landing opened disclosing Carolina silhouetted against the light within.

"The Signora is tired," said Egidio, in a slightly hoa.r.s.e voice, "she wants to go to bed at once, take the light!" Then to Ragna, "Come, carissima, this is your room."

Carolina lit the way to a large bedroom, overlooking the street on one side and a garden on the other. It was furnished with a large old four-poster bed with canopy and valance, some armchairs, a table, a couch and a large writing desk. A screen hid the wash-stand, and Carolina had laid out Ragna's simple toilet necessaries on a monumental dressing table. A huge carved clothes-press stood against the wall.

"It is a beautiful room," said Ragna, but she shivered. With the wavering shadows of Carolina's guttering candle, it seemed an abode of grotesque and horrible ghostly shapes, a gloomy cavern haunted by kobolds and evil spirits.

"I am glad you like it," said Egidio gratified. "Good-night, _mogliettina_, sleep well." He kissed her on the forehead without bending, she was nearly as tall as he and withdrew.

Carolina helped her to undress and she crept into the huge bed with a sigh of relief, for the emotions of the day had tired her out. When the maid had left her she lay quite still, following with her eyes the unfamiliar outlines of this furniture, dimly seen by the flickering night-light. She wondered why she had felt no curiosity as to the rest of the apartment, why she had not even asked to see it. "Poor Egidio! I hope he was not disappointed! I shall be nicer to him to-morrow. He is so kind and this is a beautiful room, even if it is so large and strange and unhome-like--" Her thoughts were wandering drowsily on, when a sudden noise brought her to a sitting posture. A crack of light showed in the wall, then a door she had not seen before, opened and Egidio appeared, dressed for the night.

"You! You!" she stammered in surprise, clutching together the folds of her night-dress at the neck.

"Yes, I," he answered. "You did not think that was all the good-night I should ask for, did you?"

He used the familiar "tu," instead of the "Lei" he had always addressed her with heretofore. That and something rough in his voice alarmed her, a sudden fear froze her veins but she hid it, and said with well a.s.sumed calm,

"Egidio dear, it is good of you to say good-night again. You thought I would feel lonely?"

"Yes," he answered grimly, "I thought you would be lonely, so I have come to keep you company. Make room for me beside you, dear."

"Oh!" she laughed with a catch in her throat, "I am not so lonely as all that! I am quite sleepy--I shall sleep very well indeed. Good-night Egidio!"

He bent forward and she raised her cheek, but he kissed her on the mouth and as his lips touched hers his arms went around her and pressed her to him.

"Oh, no!" she panted, "oh, no! no! Not that, Egidio, not that! You said you would be a friend to me, a brother, nothing more!"

"I was a fool then," he muttered, "and you were a fool if you believed I could marry you, a woman like you, and be no more than a brother!"

She struggled wildly to free herself, but he clasped her tight, and forcing her hands away from his chest where she had braced them, said angrily:

"Look here, Ragna, after all, I am your husband, I have my rights and I mean to take them, _Intendiamoci_, I don't want to hurt you, but if you behave this way, I shall, so make an end of it! And remember this, you owe me a wife's duty in return for all I have done for you!"

With a groan she fell back on her pillows and his lips found hers again.

Thus did Ragna learn the most bitter of all humiliations, and it seemed to her, that night, that her very soul died within her, together with her newborn self-respect. Now indeed was all dust and ashes and gall--all that remained to her was the outward sh.e.l.l of respectability, "And G.o.d knows how dearly bought," she moaned into her pillow, as in the grey dawn she lay with aching head and dry painful throat from which rose hard tearless sobs of disgust and despair. Even if Egidio had loved her, she thought, but she knew now that his feeling for her was anything but love; a vile pa.s.sion brutal and overmastering, a desire that would bite rather than kiss, tear rather than caress, the pa.s.sion of a beast.

And all the tenderness, the consideration, the respect of the past few weeks? Sham, all sham! "Then Virginia was right, _this_ is what she tried to warn me against, and I would not listen!" thought Ragna. "And it is for always, there can be no escape--never until death!" Then she hugged herself in her arms, "Ah, little child, little child of mine, your name is dearly bought." So she lay, crushed and miserable, in the sad dawn, and there rose to her ears the creak and rattle of the axles of the heavy country carts, bringing in fowls and vegetables and hay from the country. One after another they creaked and groaned by, now and then a whip cracked, or a m.u.f.fled curse rose. Then came the sweepers with the swish of brooms and water and a few early street cries pierced the morning stillness.

And always in after life, these morning sounds, the creaking of the carts, the swish of the brooms, the hawkers' cries, were a.s.sociated in Ragna's mind, together with the chill and cruel dawn, with a dreary sense of hopelessness, as when the watcher by a sickbed sees, by the first livid streak of light, the ashen grey of death steal over some beloved face, and realizes the despairing cheerlessness of all the long day to follow, of all the cheerless dawns throughout the years.

CHAPTER III

Ragna's letter announcing her marriage reached Fru Boyesen as that lady and Ingeborg were eating their substantial early breakfast. Ingeborg, at her aunt's request, had come to spend some months with her, and though not as dear to the old lady's heart as Ragna, perhaps because the element of pride in an unquestioned intellectual supremacy was lacking, had won a place for herself by her quiet una.s.suming manners and gentle dependence of spirit.