The coarseness and truth of her attack alike overwhelmed him. But her supreme insolence found him words, and he too burst forth.
“Yes! and I forbid you to do it! You despise me, perhaps, and think I’m feeble. But you’re mistaken. You are ungrateful and impertinent and contemptible, but I will save you in order to save Irma and our name. There is going to be such a row in this town that you and he’ll be sorry you came to it. I shall shrink from nothing, for my blood is up. It is unwise of you to laugh. I forbid you to marry Carella, and I shall tell him so now.”
“Do,” she cried. “Tell him so now. Have it out with him. Gino! Gino! Come in! Avanti! Fra Filippo forbids the banns!”
Gino appeared so quickly that he must have been listening outside the door.
“Fra Filippo’s blood’s up. He shrinks from nothing. Oh, take care he doesn’t hurt you!” She swayed about in vulgar imitation of Philip’s walk, and then, with a proud glance at the square shoulders of her betrothed, flounced out of the room.
Did she intend them to fight? Philip had no intention of doing so; and no more, it seemed, had Gino, who stood nervously in the middle of the room with twitching lips and eyes.
“Please sit down, Signor Carella,” said Philip in Italian. “Mrs. Herriton is rather agitated, but there is no reason we should not be calm. Might I offer you a cigarette? Please sit down.”
He refused the cigarette and the chair, and remained standing in the full glare of the lamp. Philip, not averse to such assistance, got his own face into shadow.
For a long time he was silent. It might impress Gino, and it also gave him time to collect himself. He would not this time fall into the error of blustering, which he had caught so unaccountably from Lilia. He would make his power felt by restraint.
Why, when he looked up to begin, was Gino convulsed with silent laughter? It vanished immediately; but he became nervous, and was even more pompous than he intended.
“Signor Carella, I will be frank with you. I have come to prevent you marrying Mrs. Herriton, because I see you will both be unhappy together. She is English, you are Italian; she is accustomed to one thing, you to another. And—pardon me if I say it—she is rich and you are poor.”
“I am not marrying her because she is rich,” was the sulky reply.
“I never suggested that for a moment,” said Philip courteously. “You are honourable, I am sure; but are you wise? And let me remind you that we want her with us at home. Her little daughter will be motherless, our home will be broken up. If you grant my request you will earn our thanks—and you will not be without a reward for your disappointment.”
“Reward—what reward?” He bent over the back of a chair and looked earnestly at Philip. They were coming to terms pretty quickly. Poor Lilia!
Philip said slowly, “What about a thousand lire?”
His soul went forth into one exclamation, and then he was silent, with gaping lips. Philip would have given double: he had expected a bargain.
“You can have them tonight.”
He found words, and said, “It is too late.”
“But why?”
“Because—” His voice broke. Philip watched his face—a face without refinement perhaps, but not without expression—watched it quiver and re-form and dissolve from emotion into emotion. There was avarice at one moment, and insolence, and politeness, and stupidity, and cunning—and let us hope that sometimes there was love. But gradually one emotion dominated, the most unexpected of all; for his chest began to heave and his eyes to wink and his mouth to twitch, and suddenly he stood erect and roared forth his whole being in one tremendous laugh.
Philip sprang up, and Gino, who had flung wide his arms to let the glorious creature go, took him by the shoulders and shook him, and said, “Because we are married—married—married as soon as I knew you were coming. There was no time to tell you. Oh, oh! You have come all the way for nothing. Oh! And oh, your generosity!” Suddenly he became grave, and said, “Please pardon me; I am rude. I am no better than a peasant, and I—” Here he saw Philip’s face, and it was too much for him. He gasped and exploded and crammed his hands into his mouth and spat them out in another explosion, and gave Philip an aimless push, which toppled him onto the bed. He uttered a horrified Oh! and then gave up, and bolted away down the passage, shrieking like a child, to tell the joke to his wife.
For a time Philip lay on the bed, pretending to himself that he was hurt grievously. He could scarcely see for temper, and in the passage he ran against Miss Abbott, who promptly burst into tears.
“I sleep at the Globo,” he told her, “and start for Sawston tomorrow morning early. He has assaulted me. I could prosecute him. But shall not.”
“I can’t stop here,” she sobbed. “I daren’t stop here. You will have to take me with you!”
III
Opposite the Volterra gate of Monteriano, outside the city, is a very respectable whitewashed mud wall, with a coping of red crinkled tiles to keep it from dissolution. It would suggest a gentleman’s garden if there was not in its middle a large hole, which grows larger with every rainstorm. Through the hole is visible, firstly, the iron gate that is intended to close it; secondly, a square piece of ground
