The Viceroys (84 page)

But if all, universally, blamed the prince, real consternation reigned amid servants, retainers, and hangers-on. The House of Francalanza at an end! The money to the girl! The palace to the wife! Had the end of the world come?…

One person only found difficulty in hiding her joy: the dowager Duchess Radalì. The fortune now concentrating in her elder son's hands would be huge! The young duke would have an immense income! If Giovannino did not marry—and she was there to see he didn't—the duke's riches would be enough to make one's head reel!… She almost felt her own reeling and could not understand how Michele remained indifferent to that announcement, how he could say:

‘Mother, I'm not thinking of that. I'm thinking of Giovannino … Can't you see? He's grim, taciturn, there are days when he terrifies me …'

She saw nothing, sure that Michele was exaggerating. Her joy could be read in her eyes, showed at her every act, in her every word. Teresa looked at her and did not understand. Alone among them all she knew nothing of her father's Will. She did not hear the mutters of her relations, did not understand people's allusions. A flame was burning in her breast, an enclosed flame which was gradually consuming her. Why had she not let him leave? Why had she not warded off the temptation? And his eyes were always saying, ‘So you want to send me mad?…'

She was incapable of hearing or understanding anything, under the weight of the tragedy she felt growing all around her. There were moments when she prayed for her father's death agony to last, for only that agony, that terror of death detached her from her corroding thought. What would happen after her father's death? Then, seeing the prince's atrocious torture, she blamed herself for her inhuman wish.

The prince was dying piece by piece, amid curses and prayers, raging and tears. At one moment he was afraid of being alone, at another the sight of healthy people made him furious. Having named his daughter his heiress, he thrust her away from him too, for as she was to inherit she must be hurrying on his death by her thoughts. No one talked to him either of the Will or anything else. He himself insisted on starting any subject of conversation. Most often his door was shut; no one could penetrate to him.

And one night a servant hurried off to the Radalì palace: the prince was dying. The news was told to the baron Giovannino for him to pass on to his brother, who was asleep with his wife.

‘What am I to do?… What am I to do?…' he stuttered, in prey to extraordinary confusion.

Finally he went to call his mother. The old dowager hurried into the marriage chamber. At her sudden appearance Teresa, who had been lying awake a long while, felt a great chill creep over her body. ‘My father?…' and with a cry she fell senseless on the bed. The old duchess shook Michele to wake him from his heavy sleep, and ran to find a cordial. The lady's maid and nurse also rushed in.

In the room next door the baron seemed stunned. His brother was calling him, the servants were saying to him as they hurriedly passed to and fro, ‘The poor young duchess!… Come in too, Your Excellency …' But he was staring at the threshold of the marriage chamber with fixed dilated eyes, as if seeing some horror there.

‘Giovannino!' suddenly called Michele.

He entered. She was lying on the bed with bare arms and naked breast, her golden hair spread over the pillow, her lips open and eyes turned up. ‘Help me to raise her …'

She was rigid as a corpse. He raised her by the armpits. As if his hands were burning he began rubbing them together. He was trembling. They were all trembling, for the night was icy cold.

‘She's coming to her senses,' announced the dowager.

Then he moved away, and went into the window-embrasure in the next room. Half an hour later they all three came out, Teresa supported by her mother-in-law and her husband. Michele said to his brother:

‘You go to bed … It's cold … I'll be back as soon as possible.'

At the prince's were gathered all the relations. Consalvo was in the Yellow Drawing-room with his uncles and aunts; at the dying man's bedside were only the princess and his uncle the duke. Teresa went and knelt beside her stepmother.

‘The sooner it's over the better' they were saying in the Yellow Drawing-room. ‘He's suffering so …'

Consalvo said nothing. He was thinking with terror of this fearful disease which could one day gnaw away and destroy his own body at that moment so full of life. The impoverished blood of the ancient race was making, after Ferdinando, another premature victim, for his father was scarcely fifty-five years old. Would he too die before his time, before achieving his truimph, killed by those terrible ills which struck down the Uzeda while they were still young? His father would have given all his riches to live a year, a month, a day longer. What would he not give himself for the vivid healthy blood of a peasant to flow in his own veins?… ‘Nothing!'

It was the corrupt blood of his old race that made him what he was: Consalvo Uzeda, today Prince of Mirabella, tomorrow Prince of Francalanza. It was to that historic name, to those sonorous titles that he felt he owed his place in the world, the ease with which avenues opened before him. ‘All must be paid for!' thought he. But rather than give a thing for the long strong life of an obscure plebeian he would have given all, at the cost of any ill, for a single day of supreme glory … ‘Even at the cost of reason?' The only danger really terrifying him was that other obscure one weighing on all of his race. But then on considering the lucidity of his own spirit, the Tightness of his
judgment, the acuteness of his views, he felt reassured; those poor in spirit, those monomaniacs called Ferdinando and Eugenio Uzeda may have lost their reasons; he was not threatened … And at that moment, under the influence of those thoughts, of those fears, he almost came to judge himself severely for the long quarrel with his father. Were the stubbornnness and obduracy which he had shown not disturbing symptoms, signs that one day he might lose his way like those others? Though resisting his father's impositions, and even judging him according to his deserts, could he not have kept a certain restraint, respected forms, saved appearances? Why this present scandal? Might he not even have done his father wrong?… And now he felt almost disposed to change his attitude and ask the dying man's pardon.

In the sick-room they were reciting the prayers for the dying; the prince had reached his death rattle. In the sight of death fear again froze Consalvo's heart. He felt pity for his father, for all his family. Wild, hard, bullying maniacs; were they responsible for their own awful qualities? ‘All must be paid for!' and they were paying for their great name, their ostentatious style of living, their much-envied wealth. But that blank face of his father, that blind gaze, that ghastly rattle … The young man bent his knees, sensed things which he had denied. He who had made a jest of his sister's religion, accusing her of bigotry, realised now what a refuge for her were prayer and faith. Kneeling with joined hands, immobile as a figure on a tomb, she saw nothing, heard nothing. Consalvo almost envied the unfailing comfort to which she could have recourse in her sorrow.

Suddenly the priest watching over the dying man raised his arms. A sound of sobs came from the princess, of groans from the serving women, of sighs from the marchesa and Lucrezia.

Teresa did not weep; nor did the Duchess Radalì or Donna Ferdinanda in truth. All filed before the body, kissing the hands. Then the women were led away, except for daughter and wife. In the Red Drawing-room the old duchess kept repeating that perhaps it was best the poor man had died: his was no life recently. The Duke of Oragua with the major-domo and Benedetto Giulente were making the necessary arrangements,
while the servants put up all the shutters, closed all the gates. Michele came up to Consalvo, shook his hand and murmured, ‘Courage!…' The other was about to reply when he heard a voice say:

‘Excellency …'

It was the porter making a sign that he must speak to him.

‘Excuse me,' he said to his cousin, and went up to the servant thinking some order was wanted.

‘Excellency … come here …' whispered the other, drawing him into the next room with an air of mystery which Consalvo, in spite of the sad moment, considered faintly absurd. ‘Excellency!' he suddenly exclaimed, when they were alone, in a voice of horror which caused the young man a quiver of apprehension, ‘Excellency … A tragedy!… Your cousin the baron … the young duchess's brother-in-law …'

‘Giovannino?' he exclaimed, not understanding.

‘He's killed himself, he's dead!… Just now—yes, just now, the duchess's man came … I've left him down below … Dead from a pistol shot. To warn Your Excellency first … Someone should be sent …'

A gasp of panic and horror escaped from Consalvo. ‘The madman's son', madness, violent death!… Then all of a sudden he shook himself and gripped the servant's arm.

‘Not a word to anyone, d'you understand? I'll go myself. Wait for my return. Don't say I've left …'

He felt a need for action. And that urge, the clarity of his perception, the speed of his decision, gave him a real sense of relief, of confidence, as if he had come out of an unpleasant dream and just that second realised himself to be awake and safe … Yes; in his cousin's madness and suicide Teresa was somehow involved; he did not know how far, but he was sure it was not just heredity, not just illness that had overwhelmed Giovannino's brain. So the suicide must be hidden from Teresa, the family, from the people. And as soon as he reached the Radalì palace, as soon as he entered the room where the corpse lay on the floor beside a sofa beneath a trophy of weapons, he exclaimed to the consternated servants:

‘Oh these accursed weapons! He thought the revolver wasn't loaded … Poor Giovannino! What a tragedy!…'

No-one dared reply. Before representatives of the law arrived he took away the weapon gripped in the dead man's fist, extracted the five remaining cartridges, and put it back into the corpse's hand. And to the magistrate, who had heard of Prince Giacomo's death and was saying in sorrowful tones:

‘Your Lordship the Prince!… What tragedies!… Two at once!… It seems incredible.'

‘It does indeed …' he agreed in a clear and completely steady voice.

That ‘Your Lordship the Prince', which the magistrate was the first to call him, was a reminder of a new era opening for him. The firmness he had shown, the promptness with which he had seen what must be done reassured him. He had no fear of falling into the Uzeda madness: all he had inherited from his family were its riches and its power. And this deception of justice by him was another reason for self-congratulation. He said to the police magistrate:

‘My poor cousin was alone in the house. He had a passion for firearms … And thought this revolver was unloaded. Instead of which, look, there was just one forgotten cartridge …'

F
OR
a month the two duchesses lay between life and death. The mother's sorrow was terrible, for in the ghastly tragedy she saw the hand of God. That death had been permitted in order that she should realise her own error and measure the sin she had committed by not loving, not caring for, that poor boy. She had almost calculated on his death, for the other brother to enjoy the fruits! She had not even heeded the first threat, when the poor wretch had been on the brink of the abyss! So before the bleeding body she collapsed as if a hand had felled her. On recovering her senses she wept on and on, and at the sight of her other son's mute, inconsolable sorrow, she was almost suffocated by sobs.

As for Teresa, all were amazed at the extraordinary strength she showed in the first moments. The two disasters which threw two families into mourning hit her more than anyone, as she was part of both. And yet in the first hours, when the others lost their heads, she showed incredible fortitude. That she should seem untouched by the baron's death was thought almost natural, as she had just closed her father's eyes and so was under an even greater sorrow. Consalvo alone could not understand how the new disaster, which affected the others by its tragic coincidence with the first and even more by its unpredictable suddenness, had neither shaken his sister nor caused her to show any sign of surprise, as if she had foreseen it. Torn herself from the prince's deathbed, she alone was able to tear her husband and mother-in-law from Giovannino's corpse, she alone induced them to leave their house and move with the children to the Francalanza palace. She was up all night with never a
tear, drying the tears of others, moving from stepmother to mother-in-law, children to husband. Only with the new day, when the sound of the deathbell rang from San Martino de' Bianchi, did she put her hand to her heart and fall to the floor.

Pity for her was immense. ‘Only God could give her such strength,' said priests, ‘another would have been burnt out on the spot.' And womenfolk, servants, the humble exclaimed, ‘To think that she saw the dead bodies of her father and her brother-in-law all within two hours!… It's a wonder she didn't go mad!' Donna Ferdinanda, Lucrezia, and Chiara with perfect calm took turns at the bedside of the three sick ladies, for the princess too had to take to her bed. Consalvo was often with his sister, keeping Michele company. At night, he had the register open to the public at the porter's lodge brought upstairs, counted the hundreds of signatures arranged in columns, and looked at the hundreds of visiting-cards heaped on two large salvers. He read the obituary notices all ending with ‘our deepest condolences to the inconsolable son', the motions of sympathy passed by the Town Council, the Chamber of Commerce, political groups. Those were all a documentation and measure of his popularity and credit, for big and small, known and unknown, the whole population of the town passed through the palace gates.