“Stand out of the path,” said Giulia then, with the tone and attitude and gesture that a Semiramis might have used to a slave rash enough to bar her way.
Beppo moved a hair’s-breadth on one side, as if constrained against his will to obey her behest. But it was only a hair’s-breadth; he still, in fact, barred the way, not only with his person, but with his hands as he raised them, and said in a piteous voice:
“Giulia! oh, Giulia! will you leave me in this way?”
And Giulia saw in the moonlight that the whole of his great stalwart frame was shaking with the intensity of his emotion as he spoke.
The fight was not, then, fought out yet; the victory not yet won: and if Giulia would win it, it behoved her to fight again, to fight now, and that well!
“What right have you to waylay me in this way?” she said; but her voice now shook, and was that of distress and sorrow, rather than of anger. “What right have you to come here to stop me?” she continued, with great difficulty preventing herself from bursting into tears. “It is not good of you. It is not kind. You must have known that if I had wished to speak to you, I should not have kept out of your way.”
“It was your wish, then, to go from Bella Luce without saying one word of adieu,—one word of kindness! Oh, Giulia! Giulia! is it possible? Can it be that you wished and intended this!” and his strong, manly voice seemed nearer to sobbing than even her own, as he spoke.
“Of course I intended it! What did your father intend when he fixed to start before daybreak? What did your mother intend when she sent me up to the curé all day to-day? What did the priest intend when he kept me there till all at home were in bed, or ought to be? What did they all intend?”
“What do I care what they all intended? I thought only of you, Giulia; and I did think notwithstanding—notwithstanding all, that you would not have refused to speak to me,—to part in kindness this last night. Oh, Giulia! what have I ever done, that you should hate me so?”
And as he said the words he clasped his hands together, and held them out towards her, and looked at her in a way that made the fight a very hard tight indeed to poor Giulia.
Nevertheless she was still fully purposed to conquer. She made a mighty effort to crush down the rising tide of sobs, to still the tumultuous beating of the heart, that terribly threatened to become convulsive—(and if it had, the battle would have been as good as lost),—and to assume the old tone in which she had so often answered him; and by which she had given him—and herself—so many a heartache.
“Hate you! What nonsense it is talking in that way, Beppo! You know as well as I do that I do not hate you. Why should I? We have always been very good friends; and should be so still, if you would not—persist so stupidly in—wanting to be something else.”
“Something else? Yes; I do want something else, and something more. You know what I want, cousin Giulia.”
“Yes; you want, like other big babies, just what you can’t have. So now let me pass, and make haste home, or la padrona will be wondering what has become of me. I am really very angry with you for coming here to waylay me in this way. And pray what on earth shall you say to them at home?”—(a little cold spasm shot through Giulia’s heart as she said the last word)—“I suppose, as usual, I shall get the credit of this piece of foolery.”
“None of them know that I am out of the house, except Carlo. They think I am in bed and asleep,” said Beppo, hanging his head.
“Except Carlo; as if all the village would not know it to-morrow. Carlo, indeed, for a confidant.”
“I could not help it; I hoped he would go to sleep, and that I could get out of the window without his being any the wiser. But he would not go to sleep.”
“And a pretty story he will make to-morrow.”
“I think not, Giulia. He wanted to stop my coming,—said he would call up my father; but I said a few words to him,” continued Beppo, as a look came over him which Giulia had never seen on his good-humoured face before; “and he did not say any more to prevent my coming; and I do not think he will speak of it to anyone.”
“It will be very unlike him, then. And what were the words you said to him, that produced so mighty an effect, pray?”
“I told him,” said Beppo, with the stern look that seemed to change all the character of his face, and speaking with a concentrated sort of calmness unnatural to him, “I told him that if bestirred from his bed I would knock his brains out against the wall; and that if he breathed ever to any human soul that I had left the house, I would shoot him like a polecat.”
“Beppo!” cried Giulia, in unfeigned astonishment and dismay, “you terrify me, and make me really hate you”—(she loved him at that moment better than she ever loved him before). “I did not suppose it was in you to think such wicked, horrid thoughts.”
“Giulia, I am desperate! You make me desperate; you make me feel as if neither my own life nor any other man’s life were worth a straw. Giulia, say a word to me, look kindly on me, and I will be good and kind and gentle to all the world. Oh, Giulia, don’t leave me in my despair and misery! Give me some hope, Giulia; some little hope, and it will save me!”
Certainly the fight was a very, very hard one. It was almost going against her; and if Beppo could only have known how nearly it was going in his favour, he would have conquered. As it was, it was wholly impossible to her to keep up the light and would-be-easy tone she had attemped at first.
“Hope, Beppo,” she said sadly; “what hope can I give you? Even supposing that I felt for you all that you would have me feel, what hope could I give you? Do you not know that there can be nothing between your father’s son and the outcast pauper who has lived upon his charity?”
