"Well, what does Ingeborg say?"

Although he could not read the letter, the handwriting was familiar.

Ragna, taken off her guard, answered:

"Aunt Gitta is dead and has left all her money to an orphanage; she wanted to change her will to one in my favour, at the last moment, but died before she could sign the new one."

An oath broke from Valentini's lips.

"And so you are a beggar!"

"Yes," a.s.sented Ragna wearily,--what was the use of disputing the fact?

Valentini felt his Castle in Spain crash about his ears. He had never ceased to hope that Fru Boyesen would become reconciled to the marriage of her niece, and he had never thought that in any circ.u.mstances, she would leave her niece penniless, even if she disposed of the bulk of her fortune in another way. He felt as though the ground had suddenly slipped from beneath his feet, and instinctively turned on the involuntary source of his disappointment.

"I suppose that that is one of your charming national customs? _Santo Dio_, why was I ever so left to myself as to marry a Norwegian?"

Ragna let the sarcasm fall unheeded, so with a rising intonation he tried again.

"You prate about honesty, yet you inveigled me into a marriage, by giving me to understand that you were your Aunt's heiress--yet you knew all the time what might be expected! Oh, yes, I have had a refreshing experience of Norwegian honesty and straightforwardness!"

She smiled disdainfully.

"Permit me, it was not I who held out any hopes of future riches, your memory misleads you. But had you been frank, Egidio, had you told me then your real reason for wishing to marry me, be very sure that I should have declined the honour."

"Yes," he sneered, "now lie about it. When it suits your convenience, you lie worse than anyone I ever heard. And your airs and graces! One would think you sprang from '_la cuisse de Jupiter_.' You were not quite so high and mighty when I married you! To exchange the gutter for a comfortable home--"

Mimmo, alarmed by Valentini's rough voice had fled to his mother's knee, and Ragna, stung into reply by the child's presence, said:

"Be careful, Egidio,--the child--"

The child! Ah, here was the way to hurt her! Valentini's laugh rang hatefully in her ears; he beckoned to the boy, but Mimmo refused to leave his refuge.

"Ask your mother, Mimmo caro, what a b.a.s.t.a.r.d is?"

Ragna sprang to her feet, her eyes blazing; she carried the child to the door, set him down outside, bidding him run to Carolina, and returned to face her husband, who sat leaning back in his chair, his legs crossed, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, a sneering expression on his face.

Ragna advanced to the table and leaning both hands on it leant forward, her eyes burning with a fierce light.

"I have borne much from you, Egidio Valentini, since you married me. I have been a dutiful wife to you, and a faithful one, I am the mother of your child; you have no just cause for complaint against me. I married you in the first place, induced by your insistence, by your pleadings, by the seemingly disinterested offers you made me of protection and comradeship. You made me many promises none of which have you kept.

Instead of that you have abused me morally and physically, you have taken pleasure in tormenting me and humiliating me; you have been openly unfaithful to me, you have even outraged me in my own home by ill-using my maid. All this I have stood, but to-day you have gone too far, you have struck at me through my child whom you bound yourself to cherish as your own. Coward!"

Egidio started from his chair threateningly, but she was not to be stopped.

"Yes, coward!" she repeated. "And I tell you, Egidio Valentini, I can bear no more, this is the end. I will take my child and go, I will shake the dust of your house off my feet, I will leave you to the curse of your own evil nature."

He turned upon her with a roar.

"Go, then, do! There is the door, I won't keep you, beggar, liar, ingrate! You spit on the hand that raised you from the dirt--well, you shall see! Go, yes go, I beg of you, you could do me no greater pleasure! Go, my sweet dove, my repentant Magdalen,--but you go alone, the child remains with me."

"I shall take the child, do you think I would let you keep him?" said Ragna, "He is mine, you have said it often enough, he goes with me."

"You forget, _cara mia_, or you are more ignorant than I thought. I acknowledged the child as my own, he is on the State register, 'Egidio, son of Egidio Valentini.' No, no, in the eyes of the State he is not all yours--the State does not know what we know. He is five years old, is he not, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d? From five years up, the State gives a child to the father. Mimmo is mine, by the law. A pleasant life he shall have,--my first born, my darling! Do not fear, he shall be brought up to appreciate his mother at her true worth!"

"Oh!" gasped Ragna, "you would not be so wicked."

"You have just given such a flattering opinion of me!"

"Oh, but there are limits to everything!"

"So you will soon find; I know how to keep my own. Be wise, Ragna, realize that you are absolutely powerless. If you want a scandal, beware! It will hurt you, not me; I know the good opinion people have of me, I could put it to public vote. Who are you? You have neither money nor powerful friends nor position, you are dependent on me for the clothes on your back and the bread you eat. You are far too rash. Your conduct is ungrateful and insulting; if I were not the most forbearing man alive I should have thrown you into the street long ago. Think it over, even you must realize the position you put yourself in."

He had the pleasure of seeing her wince, as the iron of his words entered into her soul. Her calm deserted her; his words had a paralysing hypnotic effect, she saw herself stripped and naked in a cold world inimical to her desolate state. Trembling with rage, she felt herself beaten, crushed by the power that circ.u.mstances and the law put into her husband's hands, and that he used like a bludgeon. Despairingly she searched her mind for any fact that she could turn to her advantage and found none. She felt herself sinking helplessly in the quicksand.

"I hate you!" she cried with all the intensity of her being. "I hate you! May G.o.d deal with you as you have dealt with me!"

"G.o.d is not a silly woman,"--he used the insulting word _femmina_. A smile curled his lips, for her expression of hatred was the cry of the weak creature driven to the wall. She had defied him, she had called him "ludicrous"? Well, he had sworn to punish her, and punish her he would.

Fate had placed her at his mercy.

He sauntered jauntily to the door, his thumbs in his armholes; she, leaning on the table, speechless with hatred, followed him with burning eyes.

As the door closed behind him, she sank to a chair, and falling forward, buried her face in her arms, in an att.i.tude of utter despair. One thought possessed her mind; she must get away, she must escape somehow, anyhow; this life was intolerable. Then from the depths of her inner consciousness rose the image of Angelescu--she would see him, she would ask him to help her. He would not refuse,--had he not said he would always be at her service?

Should she write, or should she go in person? She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the long dining-room, her hands clasped, twisting and untwisting her fingers. To and fro, to and fro, like a caged lioness she went, living over in her mind day by day the Calvary of the five years of her marriage. The sense of the oppression of it grew like the rising tide, engulfing prudence, common sense, even the thought of her children, leaving only the wild uncontrollable longing for freedom.

Free! She flung her head back and stretched out her arms. Almost she felt the salt kiss of the home-fjord on her face, she offered herself to the buffeting of the strong sea-wind, her lungs inhaled with rapture the balsam of the firs, the wild singing of the gale filled her ears. A mist rose before her eyes, she soared on imaginary wings to undreamt of heights.

Her rapture came to an end as raptures must, and she was again Ragna Valentini, pacing the long dining-room with its high vaulted ceiling, its solid early Renaissance furniture, the untidy remains of luncheon still littering the table, but she no longer felt the oppression of it all. It was as though a veil had been drawn aside disclosing a new landscape, or rather as though having toiled through hardship unspeakable to the uttermost depths of the Valley of Despondency, she saw before her the wondrous vision of sunlit peaks and the Promised Land beyond--no longer a mirage but a blessed actuality. All that she had to do was to enter. A light long extinguished came back to her eyes, she carried her head with a conscious air of resolution.

The manservant entering, started as though at an apparition, so different was she from the reserved, patient mistress he had served. And a scene with the _Padrone_ had had this effect! With admirable self-control the man held his peace, though questions all but burst from his lips--your Italian servant is on a very familiar footing with the family he serves--but his eyes were less discreet, in fact they never left his mistress during the time he spent clearing the table and setting the room to rights, and it may be said that he in no way hastened the process. When he finally withdrew, it was to expatiate in the kitchen on the marvellous change come over the _Padrona_.

"I said to myself, the Signora will require a gla.s.s of Marsala, for he was worse than usual to-day. _Mondo ladro!_ to have to live with a man like that! If it were not for the Signora who is an angel of goodness, I, for one,--"

"That's so," a.s.sented the cook.

"But _a.s.sunta mia_, there she was, she who has looked like wilted gra.s.s ever since I came, as fresh as a daisy, with a colour like a sunset in her cheeks. _Accitempoli!_ I all but dropped my tray! To think that with a bella Signora like her, the _Padrone_ should--" He winked knowingly.

"All men are pigs," opined the cook.

"Some things are above the comprehension of females," returned Nando, loftily, his masculine vanity ruffled,--"But all the same--"

He leisurely consumed the Marsala which he had found it unnecessary to offer Ragna, tilting back on the legs of his chair, alternately holding his gla.s.s up to the light to enjoy the clear amber colour, and appreciatively smacking his lips as he sipped. a.s.sunta, the cook, her portly form arrayed in a blue ap.r.o.n, stood by the sink rinsing the dishes under the tap and standing them in the overhead rack to drip. A square of sunshine lay on the red brick floor, and Civetta, the cat, lay basking in it, luxuriously curling and uncurling her velvet paws, stretching her neck to lick an unruly patch of fur and blinking at her surroundings with lazy topaz eyes. Copper kettles and pans decorated the whitewashed walls; the red brick stove and the dresser were well scrubbed and tidy.

Nando, having finished his wine, brought his chair back to the perpendicular and rose, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Mark my words, a.s.sunta, something is going to happen in this house!

When a woman looks like the Signora does to-day, it means trouble for somebody,--for--"

His dissertation was cut short by the bell, and in his haste to answer the summons he left the kitchen door open. a.s.sunta heard Ragna send him to call a _legno_.

She shook her head, as her little straw fan blew life into the dying charcoal embers; it was most unusual for Ragna to go out at this time of day,--something was surely in the wind! In any case, her sympathies were with the Signora, even though, with an eye to her own interests she allowed the _Sor Padrone_ to pump her as to the Signora's movements. The Signora never did anything wrong, so what harm could it do, she argued?