Chapter Twenty Five.Billy Grenfell is Philosophic.“Then we must break up the home, I suppose?”“I suppose so, Billy, much as I regret it. But a fellow has to take advantage of the main chance in his life, you know, and this is mine?” declared George Macbean, leaning back in his padded chair at the breakfast-table in their high-up old room in Fig Tree Court, Temple.“I should think so! An appointment in the Italian Ministry of War at such a salary isn’t an offer that comes to every man, and you’d be a fool if you didn’t accept it. You must have some high official friend whom you’ve never told me about—eh?” And William Grenfell, barrister-at-law, known as “Billy” to his intimates, with whom Macbean shared chambers, took up his friend’s letter and re-read it, asking, “What’s the signature? These foreigners sign their names in such an abominable manner that nobody can ever read them.”“Angelo Borselli, the Under-Secretary. I met him in the summer, while I was staying with my uncle near Rugby.”“And he offers you a billet like this? By Jove, you’re lucky!” And the big, burly, clean-shaven fellow of about thirty-five, one of the ever-increasing briefless brigade, rose and looked out across the quiet courtyard. “You’ll throw over that pompous ass Morgan-Mason, won’t you? I wonder how you stood the cad so long.”“Necessity, my dear fellow. It has been writing letters for Morgan-Mason or starve—I preferred the former,” remarked Macbean, with a smile.The old panelled sitting-room, with its well-filled bookcase, its pipe-rack, its threadbare carpet, and its greasy, leather-covered chairs, worn but comfortable, differed but little from any other chambers in that old-world colony of bachelors. Macbean and Grenfell had had diggings together and employed the same laundress for the past three years, the former spruce and smart, mixing with the West End world in which his employer moved, while the latter was a thorough-going Bohemian, eccentric in many ways, unsuccessful, yet nevertheless a man brimming over with cleverness. They had been fast friends ten years before, and when opportunity had offered to share chambers they had eagerly embraced it.Billy never had a brief. He idled in the Courts with a dummy brief before him in order to impress the public, but his slender income was mostly derived from contributions to certain critical reviews, who took his “stuff” and paid him badly for it.George Macbean, though he could so ill afford it, bore the major portion of the expenses of their small household, for he knew well the little reverses of fortune that had been Billy’s, and what a good, generous fellow he really was at heart.Through those three years they had lived together no wry word had ever arisen between them, but this letter which Macbean had received caused them both to ponder.Grenfell was a man of even temper and full of good-humour. He bubbled over with high spirits, even in the face of actual adversity, while over at the Courts he was recognised as a wit of no mean order. But thought of the breaking up of their little home and their separation filled him with deepest regret.Macbean realised all that his friend felt, and said simply—“I’m very sorry to go, Billy. You know that. But what can I do? I must escape my present soul-killing drudgery. You don’t know of half the insults I’ve had to swallow from Morgan-Mason because I happen to be the son of a gentleman.”“I know, old chap; I know well. Of course you must accept this appointment,” said the other in a tone of quiet sadness. “I can shift for myself—or at least I hope so.”“To leave you is the only regret I have in leaving England, Billy,” declared Macbean, taking his friend’s hand and grasping it firmly.But the big fellow, with his eyes fixed before him across the square, remained sad and silent.The letter had come to George as a complete surprise, reviving within his mind pleasant memories of Orton, of the Minister Morini who had lived incognito, of Borselli, and of Mary most of all. He would, if he accepted, meet them again, and become on friendly terms with the most powerful men in Italy. The offer seemed almost too good to be real. Had it been the first of April he would have suspected fooling. But he read the big official letter headed “Under-Secretary for War—Rome” offering him the appointment, and saw that no fraud had been attempted.Both men filled their pipes mechanically, lit them from the same match, as was their habit, and smoked in silence. Both were too full of regret for mere words. They understood each other, and neither was surprised at the other’s heavy thought. Their friendship had been a very close and pleasant one, but in future their lives lay apart. Grenfell regarded it philosophically with a little smile, as was his wont whenever things went wrong with him, while Macbean pondered deeply as to what the future had in store for him.Before his eyes rose a vision of a lithe and dainty figure in a white dress on the tennis-lawn at Orton, that woman who was so delightfully cosmopolitan, with the slight roll of the r’s when she spoke that betrayed her foreign birth—the woman whom rumour had engaged to the young French count upon whom the honest village folk looked with considerable suspicion.“You’ll be glad to leave the service of that hog-merchant,” Billy remarked at last, for want of something better to say, “and I congratulate you upon your escape from him. What you’ve told me in the past is sufficient to show that he only regards you as a kind of superior valet. Had I been you I should have kicked the fellow long ago.”“The pauper may not kick the millionaire, my dear old chap,” said Macbean, smiling,—“or at least, if he does he kicks against the pricks.”“I can’t make out how some men get on,” remarked Grenfell between the whiffs of his huge pipe. “Why, it seems only the other day that Morgan-Mason had a shop in the Brompton Road, and used to make big splashes with advertisements in the cheap papers. I remember my people used to buy their butter there. An editor I know used to laugh over the puff paragraphs he sent out about himself. He’s made his money and become a great man all in ten years or so.”“My dear Billy, money makes money,” remarked his friend, with a dry laugh. “Society worships wealth nowadays. Such men as Morgan-Mason have coarsened and cheapened the veryentourageof Court and State. Let the moneyed creature be ever so vulgar, so illiterate, so vicious, it matters naught. Money-bags are the sole credentials necessary to gain admission to the most exclusive of houses, the House, even to Buckingham Palace itself. Men like Morgan-Mason smile at the poverty of the peerage, and with their wealth buy up heritage, title, and acceptance. The borrower is always servant to the lender, and hence our friend has many obsequious servants in what people call smart society.”“And more’s the pity! Society must be rotten!” declared Billy emphatically. “I don’t know what we’re coming to nowadays. I should think that the post of secretary to such an arrant cad must be about the worst office a gentleman can hold. I’d rather earn half-crowns writing paragraphs for the evening papers myself.”“Yes,” Macbean admitted, with a sigh, “I shall be very glad to leave his service. I only regret on your account.”“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m a failure, dear boy, like lots of others!” Grenfell declared. “There are dozens in the Temple like myself, chronically hard up and without prospect of success. I congratulate you with all my heart upon your stroke of good fortune. You’ve waited long enough for your chance, and it has now come to you just when you least expected it. Death and fortune always come unexpectedly: to all of us the former, and to a few of us the latter. But,” he added, “this Italian politician—Bore-something—must have taken a violent fancy to you.”“On the contrary, I only met him once or twice,” responded Macbean. “That’s what puzzles me. I don’t see what object he has in offering me the appointment.”“I do. They want an English secretary who knows Italian well. You’ll just fill the post. Foreign Governments make no mistakes in the men they choose, depend upon it. They don’t put Jacks-in-office like we do. Didn’t you tell me once that you met the Italian Minister of War? Perhaps he had a hand in your appointment.”“Possibly so,” Macbean admitted, recollecting that well-remembered day when he had greeted His Excellency on the lawn at Orton and the statesman had at once recognised him.“Well, however it has been arranged, it is a jolly good lift for you, old man,” declared Billy, smoking vigorously. “You should take a leaf out of Morgan-Mason’s book, and use everyone, even the most vulgar of moneyed plutocrats and the most hide-bound of bureaucrats, for your own advantage. If you do, you’ll get on in the world. It’s the only way nowadays, depend upon it. New men, new methods. All the old traditions of life, all the dignity and delicacy and pride of birth, have gone by the board in these days of brainy smartness and pushful go. Life’s book to-day, old fellow, is full of disgraced and blotted leaves.”George sighed. He was used to Billy’s plainly expressed philosophy. His criticisms were always full of a grim humour, and he was never tired of denouncing the degenerates of the present in comparison with bygone days. He was a Bohemian, and prided himself on that fact. He entertained a most supreme and withering contempt for modern place-hunters and for the many wind-bags in his own profession who got on because of their family influence or by the fortunate circumstance of being in a celebrated case. He declared always that no man at the bar came forward by sheer merit nowadays, and that all depended upon either luck or influence. Not, however, that he ever begrudged a man his success. On the contrary, he liked to see the advancement of his friends, and even though downhearted and filled with poignant regret at being compelled to part with George Macbean, yet he honestly wished him all the good fortune a true friend could wish.Mrs Bridges, the shuffling old laundress, whose chief weakness was “a drop o’ something,” who constantly spoke of her “poor husband,” and whose tears were ever flowing, cleared away the remains of their breakfast, and the two men spent the whole morning together smoking and contemplating the future.“I suppose they’ll put you into a gorgeous uniform and a sword when you get to Rome,” laughed Grenfell presently. “You’ll send me a photo, won’t you?” And his big face beamed with good-humour.“Secretaries don’t wear uniforms,” was the other’s response.“No, but you’ll soon rise to be something else,” the barrister assured him. “A fellow isn’t singled out by a foreign Government like you are unless he gets something worth having in a year or two! They’ll appreciate you more than our friend the provision-dealer has done. I shan’t forget the way the fellow spoke to me when I called upon you that morning. He couldn’t have treated a footman worse than you and me. I felt like addressing the Court for the defence.”“Well, it’s all over now,” laughed his friend. “This evening I shall give him notice to leave his service, and I admit frankly that I shall do so with the greatest pleasure.”“I should think so, indeed,” Billy remarked. “And don’t forget to tell him our private opinion of such persons as himself. He may be interested to know what a mere man-in-the-street thinks of a moneyed dealer in butter and bacon. By Jove! if I only had the chance I should make a few critical remarks that he would not easily forget.”“I quite believe it!” exclaimed George merrily. “But now I’m leaving him we can afford to let bygones be bygones. I only pity the poor devil who becomes my successor.”And both men again lapsed into a thoughtful silence, George’s mind being filled with recollections of those warm summer days of tea-drinking and tennis when he was guest of his uncle, the Reverend Basil Sinclair, at Thornby.What, he wondered, could have induced that tall, sallow-faced foreigner, the Italian Under-Secretary for War, to offer him such a lucrative appointment? He had only met him once, for a few moments, when the Minister’s wife had introduced them in an interval of tennis on the lawn at Orton.There was a motive in it. But what it was he could not discern.
“Then we must break up the home, I suppose?”
“I suppose so, Billy, much as I regret it. But a fellow has to take advantage of the main chance in his life, you know, and this is mine?” declared George Macbean, leaning back in his padded chair at the breakfast-table in their high-up old room in Fig Tree Court, Temple.
“I should think so! An appointment in the Italian Ministry of War at such a salary isn’t an offer that comes to every man, and you’d be a fool if you didn’t accept it. You must have some high official friend whom you’ve never told me about—eh?” And William Grenfell, barrister-at-law, known as “Billy” to his intimates, with whom Macbean shared chambers, took up his friend’s letter and re-read it, asking, “What’s the signature? These foreigners sign their names in such an abominable manner that nobody can ever read them.”
“Angelo Borselli, the Under-Secretary. I met him in the summer, while I was staying with my uncle near Rugby.”
“And he offers you a billet like this? By Jove, you’re lucky!” And the big, burly, clean-shaven fellow of about thirty-five, one of the ever-increasing briefless brigade, rose and looked out across the quiet courtyard. “You’ll throw over that pompous ass Morgan-Mason, won’t you? I wonder how you stood the cad so long.”
“Necessity, my dear fellow. It has been writing letters for Morgan-Mason or starve—I preferred the former,” remarked Macbean, with a smile.
The old panelled sitting-room, with its well-filled bookcase, its pipe-rack, its threadbare carpet, and its greasy, leather-covered chairs, worn but comfortable, differed but little from any other chambers in that old-world colony of bachelors. Macbean and Grenfell had had diggings together and employed the same laundress for the past three years, the former spruce and smart, mixing with the West End world in which his employer moved, while the latter was a thorough-going Bohemian, eccentric in many ways, unsuccessful, yet nevertheless a man brimming over with cleverness. They had been fast friends ten years before, and when opportunity had offered to share chambers they had eagerly embraced it.
Billy never had a brief. He idled in the Courts with a dummy brief before him in order to impress the public, but his slender income was mostly derived from contributions to certain critical reviews, who took his “stuff” and paid him badly for it.
George Macbean, though he could so ill afford it, bore the major portion of the expenses of their small household, for he knew well the little reverses of fortune that had been Billy’s, and what a good, generous fellow he really was at heart.
Through those three years they had lived together no wry word had ever arisen between them, but this letter which Macbean had received caused them both to ponder.
Grenfell was a man of even temper and full of good-humour. He bubbled over with high spirits, even in the face of actual adversity, while over at the Courts he was recognised as a wit of no mean order. But thought of the breaking up of their little home and their separation filled him with deepest regret.
Macbean realised all that his friend felt, and said simply—
“I’m very sorry to go, Billy. You know that. But what can I do? I must escape my present soul-killing drudgery. You don’t know of half the insults I’ve had to swallow from Morgan-Mason because I happen to be the son of a gentleman.”
“I know, old chap; I know well. Of course you must accept this appointment,” said the other in a tone of quiet sadness. “I can shift for myself—or at least I hope so.”
“To leave you is the only regret I have in leaving England, Billy,” declared Macbean, taking his friend’s hand and grasping it firmly.
But the big fellow, with his eyes fixed before him across the square, remained sad and silent.
The letter had come to George as a complete surprise, reviving within his mind pleasant memories of Orton, of the Minister Morini who had lived incognito, of Borselli, and of Mary most of all. He would, if he accepted, meet them again, and become on friendly terms with the most powerful men in Italy. The offer seemed almost too good to be real. Had it been the first of April he would have suspected fooling. But he read the big official letter headed “Under-Secretary for War—Rome” offering him the appointment, and saw that no fraud had been attempted.
Both men filled their pipes mechanically, lit them from the same match, as was their habit, and smoked in silence. Both were too full of regret for mere words. They understood each other, and neither was surprised at the other’s heavy thought. Their friendship had been a very close and pleasant one, but in future their lives lay apart. Grenfell regarded it philosophically with a little smile, as was his wont whenever things went wrong with him, while Macbean pondered deeply as to what the future had in store for him.
Before his eyes rose a vision of a lithe and dainty figure in a white dress on the tennis-lawn at Orton, that woman who was so delightfully cosmopolitan, with the slight roll of the r’s when she spoke that betrayed her foreign birth—the woman whom rumour had engaged to the young French count upon whom the honest village folk looked with considerable suspicion.
“You’ll be glad to leave the service of that hog-merchant,” Billy remarked at last, for want of something better to say, “and I congratulate you upon your escape from him. What you’ve told me in the past is sufficient to show that he only regards you as a kind of superior valet. Had I been you I should have kicked the fellow long ago.”
“The pauper may not kick the millionaire, my dear old chap,” said Macbean, smiling,—“or at least, if he does he kicks against the pricks.”
“I can’t make out how some men get on,” remarked Grenfell between the whiffs of his huge pipe. “Why, it seems only the other day that Morgan-Mason had a shop in the Brompton Road, and used to make big splashes with advertisements in the cheap papers. I remember my people used to buy their butter there. An editor I know used to laugh over the puff paragraphs he sent out about himself. He’s made his money and become a great man all in ten years or so.”
“My dear Billy, money makes money,” remarked his friend, with a dry laugh. “Society worships wealth nowadays. Such men as Morgan-Mason have coarsened and cheapened the veryentourageof Court and State. Let the moneyed creature be ever so vulgar, so illiterate, so vicious, it matters naught. Money-bags are the sole credentials necessary to gain admission to the most exclusive of houses, the House, even to Buckingham Palace itself. Men like Morgan-Mason smile at the poverty of the peerage, and with their wealth buy up heritage, title, and acceptance. The borrower is always servant to the lender, and hence our friend has many obsequious servants in what people call smart society.”
“And more’s the pity! Society must be rotten!” declared Billy emphatically. “I don’t know what we’re coming to nowadays. I should think that the post of secretary to such an arrant cad must be about the worst office a gentleman can hold. I’d rather earn half-crowns writing paragraphs for the evening papers myself.”
“Yes,” Macbean admitted, with a sigh, “I shall be very glad to leave his service. I only regret on your account.”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m a failure, dear boy, like lots of others!” Grenfell declared. “There are dozens in the Temple like myself, chronically hard up and without prospect of success. I congratulate you with all my heart upon your stroke of good fortune. You’ve waited long enough for your chance, and it has now come to you just when you least expected it. Death and fortune always come unexpectedly: to all of us the former, and to a few of us the latter. But,” he added, “this Italian politician—Bore-something—must have taken a violent fancy to you.”
“On the contrary, I only met him once or twice,” responded Macbean. “That’s what puzzles me. I don’t see what object he has in offering me the appointment.”
“I do. They want an English secretary who knows Italian well. You’ll just fill the post. Foreign Governments make no mistakes in the men they choose, depend upon it. They don’t put Jacks-in-office like we do. Didn’t you tell me once that you met the Italian Minister of War? Perhaps he had a hand in your appointment.”
“Possibly so,” Macbean admitted, recollecting that well-remembered day when he had greeted His Excellency on the lawn at Orton and the statesman had at once recognised him.
“Well, however it has been arranged, it is a jolly good lift for you, old man,” declared Billy, smoking vigorously. “You should take a leaf out of Morgan-Mason’s book, and use everyone, even the most vulgar of moneyed plutocrats and the most hide-bound of bureaucrats, for your own advantage. If you do, you’ll get on in the world. It’s the only way nowadays, depend upon it. New men, new methods. All the old traditions of life, all the dignity and delicacy and pride of birth, have gone by the board in these days of brainy smartness and pushful go. Life’s book to-day, old fellow, is full of disgraced and blotted leaves.”
George sighed. He was used to Billy’s plainly expressed philosophy. His criticisms were always full of a grim humour, and he was never tired of denouncing the degenerates of the present in comparison with bygone days. He was a Bohemian, and prided himself on that fact. He entertained a most supreme and withering contempt for modern place-hunters and for the many wind-bags in his own profession who got on because of their family influence or by the fortunate circumstance of being in a celebrated case. He declared always that no man at the bar came forward by sheer merit nowadays, and that all depended upon either luck or influence. Not, however, that he ever begrudged a man his success. On the contrary, he liked to see the advancement of his friends, and even though downhearted and filled with poignant regret at being compelled to part with George Macbean, yet he honestly wished him all the good fortune a true friend could wish.
Mrs Bridges, the shuffling old laundress, whose chief weakness was “a drop o’ something,” who constantly spoke of her “poor husband,” and whose tears were ever flowing, cleared away the remains of their breakfast, and the two men spent the whole morning together smoking and contemplating the future.
“I suppose they’ll put you into a gorgeous uniform and a sword when you get to Rome,” laughed Grenfell presently. “You’ll send me a photo, won’t you?” And his big face beamed with good-humour.
“Secretaries don’t wear uniforms,” was the other’s response.
“No, but you’ll soon rise to be something else,” the barrister assured him. “A fellow isn’t singled out by a foreign Government like you are unless he gets something worth having in a year or two! They’ll appreciate you more than our friend the provision-dealer has done. I shan’t forget the way the fellow spoke to me when I called upon you that morning. He couldn’t have treated a footman worse than you and me. I felt like addressing the Court for the defence.”
“Well, it’s all over now,” laughed his friend. “This evening I shall give him notice to leave his service, and I admit frankly that I shall do so with the greatest pleasure.”
“I should think so, indeed,” Billy remarked. “And don’t forget to tell him our private opinion of such persons as himself. He may be interested to know what a mere man-in-the-street thinks of a moneyed dealer in butter and bacon. By Jove! if I only had the chance I should make a few critical remarks that he would not easily forget.”
“I quite believe it!” exclaimed George merrily. “But now I’m leaving him we can afford to let bygones be bygones. I only pity the poor devil who becomes my successor.”
And both men again lapsed into a thoughtful silence, George’s mind being filled with recollections of those warm summer days of tea-drinking and tennis when he was guest of his uncle, the Reverend Basil Sinclair, at Thornby.
What, he wondered, could have induced that tall, sallow-faced foreigner, the Italian Under-Secretary for War, to offer him such a lucrative appointment? He had only met him once, for a few moments, when the Minister’s wife had introduced them in an interval of tennis on the lawn at Orton.
There was a motive in it. But what it was he could not discern.
Chapter Twenty Six.A Millionaire’s Tactics.Mr Morgan-Mason, the Member for South-West Norfolk, sat alone in his gorgeous gilt and white dining-room with the remains of dessert spread before him. A coarse-faced, elderly man with grey side-whiskers, a wide expanse of glossy shirt-front, and a well-cut dinner coat, he was twisting his wineglass between his fingers while a smile played about his lips. His obese figure, with shoulders slightly rounded, a bull neck, and gross, flabby features, gave one the impression that he lived for himself alone, that his life was a selfish, idle one.His house in town and his place in the country were the typical abodes of anouveau riche. His motors, his yacht, and his racehorses were the very best that money could command, and yet with all his display of wealth he still carried the tenets of the counting-house into his private life. He gave “fifty-guinea-a-head” dinners at the Carlton, it was true, but his entertainments were not on a large scale. He lent the aristocracy money, and allowed them to entertain him in return. He considered it an honour to be made use of by the hard-up earl or by the peeress whose debts at bridge were beyond her means. A knighthood had been offered him, but he had politely declined, letting it be distinctly known to the Prime Minister that nothing less than a peerage would be acceptable; and this had actually been half promised! He was the equal, nay, the superior, of those holders of once-exclusive titles who left their cards upon him and who shot his grouse; for, as a recent writer has declared, the god Mammon is to-day gradually drawing into its foetid embrace all the rank and beauty and nobility that once made England the glorious land she is.He had taken a telegram from his pocket, and re-read it—a message from a woman bearing one of the noblest titles in the English peerage, asking audaciously for a loan, and inviting him up to her country-house in Durham, where an exclusive party was being entertained. He smiled with gratification, for the sovereign was among her ladyship’s guests.He touched the bell, and in answer the butler entered. “Tell Macbean to come here,” he ordered, without looking up. “And give me a liqueur. I don’t want coffee to-night.”The elderly, grave-faced servant served his master obsequiously, and noiselessly disappeared.A few minutes later there came a light rap at the door and George Macbean entered.“Just reply to this wire,” the millionaire said, handing it to his secretary. “Tell her ladyship that I’ll leave King’s Cross at eleven to-morrow, and that what she mentions will be all right. You need not mention the word loan; she’ll understand. I can’t dictate to-night, as I’m going to the club. Be here at seven in the morning, and I’ll reply to letters while I’m dressing.”Macbean took the telegram and hesitated.“Well? What are you waiting there for? Haven’t you had your dinner—eh?”“Yes, I have had my dinner, Mr Morgan-Mason,” was the young man’s quick reply, his anger rising. “I wish to speak a word to you.”“Well, what’s the matter? Work too hard? If so, you can take a month’s notice and go. Lots more like you to be got,” added the man with the fat, flabby face.“The work is not too hard,” was Macbean’s response, speaking quite calmly. “I only wish to say that I intend leaving you, having accepted a Government appointment.”“A Government appointment?” echoed the millionaire. “Has Balfour given you a seat in the Cabinet, or are you going to be a doorkeeper or something of that sort down at the House?”“Neither. My future is my own affair.”“Well, I wish you good luck in it,” sneered his employer. “I’ll see that the next secretary I get isn’t a gentleman. Airs and graces don’t suit me, my boy. I see too much of ’em in Mayfair. I prefer the people of the Mile End Road myself. I was born there, you know, and I’m proud of it.”“Shall I send the telegram from the Strand office?” asked Macbean, disregarding the vulgarian’s remarks. “It is Sunday night, remember.”“Send it from where you like,” was the man’s reply. And then, as the secretary turned to leave, he called him back, saying in a rather more conciliatory tone—“You haven’t told me what kind of appointment you’ve accepted. Whatever it is, you can thank my influence for it. They know that I wouldn’t employ a man who isn’t up to the mark.”“I thank you for your appreciation,” Macbean said, for it was the first kindly word that he had ever received from the millionaire during all the time he had been in his service.“Oh, I don’t mean that you are any better than five hundred others in my employ,” the other returned. “I’ve got a hundred shop-managers who would serve me equally well at half the wages I pay you. I’ve all along considered that you don’t earn what you get.”“In that case, then, I am very pleased to be able to relieve you of my services, and to take them where they will be at last appreciated.”“Do you mean to be insolent?”“I have no such intention,” replied Macbean, still quite cool, although his hands were trembling with suppressed anger. “The Italian Government will pay me well for my work, and will not hurl insults at me on every possible occasion and before every visitor. I have been your servant, Mr Morgan-Mason, your very humble servant, but after despatching this telegram I shall, I am glad to inform you, no longer be yours to command.”“The Italian Government!” exclaimed the millionaire, utterly surprised. “In what department are you to be employed?”“In the Ministry of War.”“What!—in the office of that man we saw regarding the Abyssinian contracts?—Morini his name was, wasn’t it?”“No. In the office of the Under-Secretary, Borselli.”“I suppose you made it right with them when I took you with me to Rome—made good use of your ability to speak the lingo—eh?”“I had then no intention of entering the Italian service,” was his reply. “The offer has come to me quite spontaneously.”Morgan-Mason was silent, twisting his glass before him and thinking deeply. The name Borselli recalled something—an ugly affair that he would have fain forgotten.“I thought you had secured an appointment in one of the English Government offices,” he said at last, with a sudden change of tactics. “Why go abroad? Why not remain with me? I’ll give you an increase of fifty pounds a year. You know my ways, and I hate strangers about me.”“I much regret that I cannot accept your offer,” replied George. “I have already accepted the appointment, which is at a salary very considerably in advance of that you have been paying me.”“But I’ll pay you the same as they offer. You are better off in England. How much do they intend to give you?”“I am too fond of Italy to refuse a chance of going out there,” Macbean replied. “I spent some years in Pisa in my youth, and have always longed to return and live in the warmth and sunshine.”A brief silence fell.Presently, after reflection, the Member of Parliament exclaimed, in a tone more pleasant than he had ever used before—“Let me speak candidly, Macbean. I would first ask you to forget the words I uttered a few moments ago. I am full of business, you know, and am often out of temper with everything. I was out of temper just now. Well, you want to leave me and go to Italy, while I desire you to remain. Tell me plainly what salary you will accept and continue in my service.”“I am as perfectly frank as you are,” George replied. “No inducement you could offer would keep me in England.”Mr Morgan-Mason bit his lip. He never expected this refusal from the clever man whom he had treated as an underling. It was his habit to purchase any service with his money, and this rebuff on the part of a mere servant filled him with chagrin—he who so easily bought the smiles of a duchess or the introduction of a marquis into the royal circle itself.He did not intend that Macbean should enter the service of Angelo Borselli. He had suspicion—a strong suspicion—and for that reason desired to keep the pair apart. His mind was instantly active in an attempt to devise some scheme by which his own ends could be attained. But if his secretary flatly refused to remain?“I think you are a consummate fool to your own interests,” remarked his employer. “Foreign Governments when they employ an Englishman only work him for their own ends, and throw him aside like a sucked orange.”“English employers often do the same,” answered Macbean meaningly.The millionaire was full of grave reflections, and in order to obtain time to form some plan, he ordered Macbean to despatch the telegram and return.An hour later, when George entered the splendidly appointed study wherein his employer was lounging, the latter rose, lit a cigar, and turning to him in the dim light—for they were standing beyond the zone of the green-shaded writing-lamp upon the table—said—“I wish very much, Macbean, that you would listen to reason, and refuse the appointment these Italians offer you. You know as well as I do the insecurity of Governments in Italy; how the man in power to-day may be disgraced to-morrow, and how every few years a clean sweep is made of all officials in the ministries. You have told me that yourself. Recollect the eye-opener into Italian methods we had when we saw the Minister of War regarding the contracts for Abyssinia. I wonder that you, honest man as you are, actually contemplate associating yourself with such a corrupt officialdom.” The arrogant moneyed man was clever enough to appeal to Macbean’s honour, knowing well that his words must cause him to reflect.“I shall only be an obscure secretary—an employee. Such men have no opportunity of accepting bribes or of pilfering. Theft is only a virtue in the higher grade.”“Well, since you’ve been out I’ve very carefully considered the whole matter. I should be extremely sorry to lose you. You have served me well, although I have shown no appreciation—I never do. When a man does his best, I am silent. But I am prepared to behave handsomely if you will remain. Your salary shall be raised to five hundred a year. That’s handsome enough for you, isn’t it?”Macbean slowly shook his head, and declared that no monetary inducement would be availing. He intended to go to Italy at all hazards.The millionaire stroked his whiskers, for he was nonplussed. Yet he was shrewd, and gifted with a wonderful foresight. If Macbean really intended to go to Rome, then some other means must be found by which to ingratiate himself with the man he had so long ill-treated and despised. There might come a day when Macbean would arise against him, and for that day he must certainly be prepared.He flung himself into his big morocco arm-chair and motioned George to the seat at the writing-table, having first ascertained that the door was closed. Then, with a few preliminary words of regret that the young man preferred service abroad, he said in a low, earnest voice—confidential for the first time in his life—“If you go to Rome it is for the purpose of improving your position—of making money. Now, I am desirous of obtaining certain information, for which I am prepared to pay very handsomely, and at the Ministry of War you can, if you go cautiously to work, obtain it.”“You mean some military secret?” remarked Macbean, looking quickly at his master. “I certainly shall never betray my employers.”“No, no, not at all,” protested the arrogant man before him, with a dry laugh. “It is a secret which I desire to learn—one for which I will willingly pay you ten thousand pounds in cash, if you can give me proof of the truth—but it is not a military one. You need have no fear that I am asking you to act the traitor to your employers.” The two men regarded each other fixedly. Each was suspicious of double-dealing. The millionaire was searching to discover whether the sum named was sufficiently tempting to induce his secretary to act as his spy, while the latter, scanning the large eyes of the other, endeavoured to read the motive of the mysterious offer.“You can earn ten thousand pounds easily if you are only wary and act with careful discretion,” went on the millionaire, seeing that Macbean had become interested. “It only requires a little tact, a few judicious inquiries, and the examination of a few official documents. To the latter you will no doubt have access, and if so it will be easy enough.”“And what is it?” asked George Macbean after a brief pause, shifting in his chair as he spoke. “What is it you desire to know?”“The truth regarding the exact circumstances of the death of poor Sazarac.”The other held his breath.“I desire to avenge his death,” went on the millionaire quietly, looking straight into the face of the astonished man, “and I intend to do so. He was my friend, you know. Discover the truth, and I will willingly pay you the sum I have named—ten thousand pounds.” George Macbean sat before his employer utterly bewildered, stupefied.
Mr Morgan-Mason, the Member for South-West Norfolk, sat alone in his gorgeous gilt and white dining-room with the remains of dessert spread before him. A coarse-faced, elderly man with grey side-whiskers, a wide expanse of glossy shirt-front, and a well-cut dinner coat, he was twisting his wineglass between his fingers while a smile played about his lips. His obese figure, with shoulders slightly rounded, a bull neck, and gross, flabby features, gave one the impression that he lived for himself alone, that his life was a selfish, idle one.
His house in town and his place in the country were the typical abodes of anouveau riche. His motors, his yacht, and his racehorses were the very best that money could command, and yet with all his display of wealth he still carried the tenets of the counting-house into his private life. He gave “fifty-guinea-a-head” dinners at the Carlton, it was true, but his entertainments were not on a large scale. He lent the aristocracy money, and allowed them to entertain him in return. He considered it an honour to be made use of by the hard-up earl or by the peeress whose debts at bridge were beyond her means. A knighthood had been offered him, but he had politely declined, letting it be distinctly known to the Prime Minister that nothing less than a peerage would be acceptable; and this had actually been half promised! He was the equal, nay, the superior, of those holders of once-exclusive titles who left their cards upon him and who shot his grouse; for, as a recent writer has declared, the god Mammon is to-day gradually drawing into its foetid embrace all the rank and beauty and nobility that once made England the glorious land she is.
He had taken a telegram from his pocket, and re-read it—a message from a woman bearing one of the noblest titles in the English peerage, asking audaciously for a loan, and inviting him up to her country-house in Durham, where an exclusive party was being entertained. He smiled with gratification, for the sovereign was among her ladyship’s guests.
He touched the bell, and in answer the butler entered. “Tell Macbean to come here,” he ordered, without looking up. “And give me a liqueur. I don’t want coffee to-night.”
The elderly, grave-faced servant served his master obsequiously, and noiselessly disappeared.
A few minutes later there came a light rap at the door and George Macbean entered.
“Just reply to this wire,” the millionaire said, handing it to his secretary. “Tell her ladyship that I’ll leave King’s Cross at eleven to-morrow, and that what she mentions will be all right. You need not mention the word loan; she’ll understand. I can’t dictate to-night, as I’m going to the club. Be here at seven in the morning, and I’ll reply to letters while I’m dressing.”
Macbean took the telegram and hesitated.
“Well? What are you waiting there for? Haven’t you had your dinner—eh?”
“Yes, I have had my dinner, Mr Morgan-Mason,” was the young man’s quick reply, his anger rising. “I wish to speak a word to you.”
“Well, what’s the matter? Work too hard? If so, you can take a month’s notice and go. Lots more like you to be got,” added the man with the fat, flabby face.
“The work is not too hard,” was Macbean’s response, speaking quite calmly. “I only wish to say that I intend leaving you, having accepted a Government appointment.”
“A Government appointment?” echoed the millionaire. “Has Balfour given you a seat in the Cabinet, or are you going to be a doorkeeper or something of that sort down at the House?”
“Neither. My future is my own affair.”
“Well, I wish you good luck in it,” sneered his employer. “I’ll see that the next secretary I get isn’t a gentleman. Airs and graces don’t suit me, my boy. I see too much of ’em in Mayfair. I prefer the people of the Mile End Road myself. I was born there, you know, and I’m proud of it.”
“Shall I send the telegram from the Strand office?” asked Macbean, disregarding the vulgarian’s remarks. “It is Sunday night, remember.”
“Send it from where you like,” was the man’s reply. And then, as the secretary turned to leave, he called him back, saying in a rather more conciliatory tone—
“You haven’t told me what kind of appointment you’ve accepted. Whatever it is, you can thank my influence for it. They know that I wouldn’t employ a man who isn’t up to the mark.”
“I thank you for your appreciation,” Macbean said, for it was the first kindly word that he had ever received from the millionaire during all the time he had been in his service.
“Oh, I don’t mean that you are any better than five hundred others in my employ,” the other returned. “I’ve got a hundred shop-managers who would serve me equally well at half the wages I pay you. I’ve all along considered that you don’t earn what you get.”
“In that case, then, I am very pleased to be able to relieve you of my services, and to take them where they will be at last appreciated.”
“Do you mean to be insolent?”
“I have no such intention,” replied Macbean, still quite cool, although his hands were trembling with suppressed anger. “The Italian Government will pay me well for my work, and will not hurl insults at me on every possible occasion and before every visitor. I have been your servant, Mr Morgan-Mason, your very humble servant, but after despatching this telegram I shall, I am glad to inform you, no longer be yours to command.”
“The Italian Government!” exclaimed the millionaire, utterly surprised. “In what department are you to be employed?”
“In the Ministry of War.”
“What!—in the office of that man we saw regarding the Abyssinian contracts?—Morini his name was, wasn’t it?”
“No. In the office of the Under-Secretary, Borselli.”
“I suppose you made it right with them when I took you with me to Rome—made good use of your ability to speak the lingo—eh?”
“I had then no intention of entering the Italian service,” was his reply. “The offer has come to me quite spontaneously.”
Morgan-Mason was silent, twisting his glass before him and thinking deeply. The name Borselli recalled something—an ugly affair that he would have fain forgotten.
“I thought you had secured an appointment in one of the English Government offices,” he said at last, with a sudden change of tactics. “Why go abroad? Why not remain with me? I’ll give you an increase of fifty pounds a year. You know my ways, and I hate strangers about me.”
“I much regret that I cannot accept your offer,” replied George. “I have already accepted the appointment, which is at a salary very considerably in advance of that you have been paying me.”
“But I’ll pay you the same as they offer. You are better off in England. How much do they intend to give you?”
“I am too fond of Italy to refuse a chance of going out there,” Macbean replied. “I spent some years in Pisa in my youth, and have always longed to return and live in the warmth and sunshine.”
A brief silence fell.
Presently, after reflection, the Member of Parliament exclaimed, in a tone more pleasant than he had ever used before—
“Let me speak candidly, Macbean. I would first ask you to forget the words I uttered a few moments ago. I am full of business, you know, and am often out of temper with everything. I was out of temper just now. Well, you want to leave me and go to Italy, while I desire you to remain. Tell me plainly what salary you will accept and continue in my service.”
“I am as perfectly frank as you are,” George replied. “No inducement you could offer would keep me in England.”
Mr Morgan-Mason bit his lip. He never expected this refusal from the clever man whom he had treated as an underling. It was his habit to purchase any service with his money, and this rebuff on the part of a mere servant filled him with chagrin—he who so easily bought the smiles of a duchess or the introduction of a marquis into the royal circle itself.
He did not intend that Macbean should enter the service of Angelo Borselli. He had suspicion—a strong suspicion—and for that reason desired to keep the pair apart. His mind was instantly active in an attempt to devise some scheme by which his own ends could be attained. But if his secretary flatly refused to remain?
“I think you are a consummate fool to your own interests,” remarked his employer. “Foreign Governments when they employ an Englishman only work him for their own ends, and throw him aside like a sucked orange.”
“English employers often do the same,” answered Macbean meaningly.
The millionaire was full of grave reflections, and in order to obtain time to form some plan, he ordered Macbean to despatch the telegram and return.
An hour later, when George entered the splendidly appointed study wherein his employer was lounging, the latter rose, lit a cigar, and turning to him in the dim light—for they were standing beyond the zone of the green-shaded writing-lamp upon the table—said—
“I wish very much, Macbean, that you would listen to reason, and refuse the appointment these Italians offer you. You know as well as I do the insecurity of Governments in Italy; how the man in power to-day may be disgraced to-morrow, and how every few years a clean sweep is made of all officials in the ministries. You have told me that yourself. Recollect the eye-opener into Italian methods we had when we saw the Minister of War regarding the contracts for Abyssinia. I wonder that you, honest man as you are, actually contemplate associating yourself with such a corrupt officialdom.” The arrogant moneyed man was clever enough to appeal to Macbean’s honour, knowing well that his words must cause him to reflect.
“I shall only be an obscure secretary—an employee. Such men have no opportunity of accepting bribes or of pilfering. Theft is only a virtue in the higher grade.”
“Well, since you’ve been out I’ve very carefully considered the whole matter. I should be extremely sorry to lose you. You have served me well, although I have shown no appreciation—I never do. When a man does his best, I am silent. But I am prepared to behave handsomely if you will remain. Your salary shall be raised to five hundred a year. That’s handsome enough for you, isn’t it?”
Macbean slowly shook his head, and declared that no monetary inducement would be availing. He intended to go to Italy at all hazards.
The millionaire stroked his whiskers, for he was nonplussed. Yet he was shrewd, and gifted with a wonderful foresight. If Macbean really intended to go to Rome, then some other means must be found by which to ingratiate himself with the man he had so long ill-treated and despised. There might come a day when Macbean would arise against him, and for that day he must certainly be prepared.
He flung himself into his big morocco arm-chair and motioned George to the seat at the writing-table, having first ascertained that the door was closed. Then, with a few preliminary words of regret that the young man preferred service abroad, he said in a low, earnest voice—confidential for the first time in his life—
“If you go to Rome it is for the purpose of improving your position—of making money. Now, I am desirous of obtaining certain information, for which I am prepared to pay very handsomely, and at the Ministry of War you can, if you go cautiously to work, obtain it.”
“You mean some military secret?” remarked Macbean, looking quickly at his master. “I certainly shall never betray my employers.”
“No, no, not at all,” protested the arrogant man before him, with a dry laugh. “It is a secret which I desire to learn—one for which I will willingly pay you ten thousand pounds in cash, if you can give me proof of the truth—but it is not a military one. You need have no fear that I am asking you to act the traitor to your employers.” The two men regarded each other fixedly. Each was suspicious of double-dealing. The millionaire was searching to discover whether the sum named was sufficiently tempting to induce his secretary to act as his spy, while the latter, scanning the large eyes of the other, endeavoured to read the motive of the mysterious offer.
“You can earn ten thousand pounds easily if you are only wary and act with careful discretion,” went on the millionaire, seeing that Macbean had become interested. “It only requires a little tact, a few judicious inquiries, and the examination of a few official documents. To the latter you will no doubt have access, and if so it will be easy enough.”
“And what is it?” asked George Macbean after a brief pause, shifting in his chair as he spoke. “What is it you desire to know?”
“The truth regarding the exact circumstances of the death of poor Sazarac.”
The other held his breath.
“I desire to avenge his death,” went on the millionaire quietly, looking straight into the face of the astonished man, “and I intend to do so. He was my friend, you know. Discover the truth, and I will willingly pay you the sum I have named—ten thousand pounds.” George Macbean sat before his employer utterly bewildered, stupefied.
Chapter Twenty Seven.Vito is Inquisitive.Three months had gone by.The winter season in Florence had commenced in real earnest, and the streets of the grey old city were agog with the crowd of wealthy foreigners who migrate there for blue sky and sunshine. The Via Tornabuoni was bright with smart toilettes, the Lung Arno was crowded with handsome equipages, the Cascine was full of life at the fashionable hour of four, while Vieusseux’s and the Floreal tea-shop overflowed, and there was gay laughter and cosmopolitan chatter everywhere.Florence had awakened from her summer siesta beneath the glare and heat, and with her streets still sun-blanched she had put on that air of irresponsibility which is always so attractive to the leisured foreigner. Florentine hostesses were already beginning to receive, and the mass of small and jealous cliques, which calls itself English society, had started their five o’clock and teacup scandals.The Englishman who visits Florence to inspect her art treasures and to bask in the sunshine of the Lung Arno or the heights of Fiesole is entirely ignorant of its curious complex society—of the blood pride of the Florentines, or of the narrow-minded prejudices of those would-be cosmopolitan Britons, mostly with double-barrelled names, who are residents. Probably there is no circle in all the world so select and so conservative as the society of the aristocratic Florentines. The majority of the princes, marquises, or counts are on the verge of bankruptcy, be it said; nevertheless, they still retain all their pride of race, and neither man nor woman is judged by his pocket. Those huge, ponderous cinquecento palaces, with their gloomy cortiles and their closely barred windows, may have been stripped of their pictures, their sculptures, and their antique furniture long ago, yet at the receptions given in those bare skeletons of ancestral homes no one comments upon the pinch of poverty that is so painfully displayed.Your Florentine aristocrat makes a brave show to the world and to the little English cliques around him. He has a grand carriage with his arms and coronet boldly emblazoned on every panel, he drives fine horses, he has his clothes made in London, and his wife’s dresses come from the Rue de la Paix; he gambles at the circolo, and he lounges picturesquely at Giacosa’s or Doney’s. And yet in his great palace, the doors of which are rigorously closed, he lives frugally in a few huge, barely furnished rooms, and is scarcely able to make both ends meet.The American invasion has, however, commenced to break down even this barrier of caste, for several men of the bluest Florentine blood have, of necessity, married American wives, in order to save themselves from ruin, and have been loudly condemned for so doing.In those bright January days all Florence was agog regarding the engagement of Count Jules Dubard with Mary Morini, daughter of the popular War Minister. By reason of her mother’s health, they had remained on at the villa all the autumn; for neither had any desire for the wild gaieties and entertaining which residence in Rome entailed upon them, and preferred the quiet life of their ancient hillside home.Daily through the streets of Florence Mary and Dubard flashed in the Minister’s motor-brougham, hither and thither, paying calls or shopping, being greeted and congratulated on every hand. Her father’s official position had given Mary theentréeto the most exclusive set, and in Florence she was always as popular as she was in the court circle at the Quirinale. She dressed usually in cream flannel, with a large black hat and a huge ostrich boa; while Dubard, smiling and elegant, was ever at her side in the smart conveyance which rushed everywhere with loud trumpeting.Her family, in ignorance of the tragedy of her young life, were delighted with the engagement, and on every hand had she received heartiest good wishes. For a girl to marry an Englishman or Frenchman is considered the height ofchicin Italy, and Mary’s social prestige was increased a hundredfold by her prospect of becoming a French countess. The young pair became the most striking and popular figures in the best Florentine society, while the English sets all vainly struggled to get them to their houses. Madame Morini being too unwell to go out at night, Mary was usually chaperoned by the old Princess Piola, a well-known society leader; and solely in order to please her mother, Mary went to all the functions to which she was bidden.The Minister’s wife, however, had never entertained any great affection for the English set in Florence. She had once been an English governess herself, and having known them all well through twenty years, had become thoroughly disgusted with their petty bickerings and constant scandal-mongering. Strange that the English on the Continent always divide into a quantity of small cliques. The French, the Germans, even the Scots, all join harmoniously and patriotically in a continental tour; but, as the Italians are so fond of saying, “the English is a good but strange nation.”With the exception of the British Consul-General’s wife, who was an old friend of her mother’s, Mary visited no other English house.“The Italian law of caste is bad enough, my dear,” her mother had said to her one day, “but the English backbiting is infinitely worse.”And so, with the man she was engaged to marry, she was seen night after night at those huge old mediaeval palaces, often dimly lit on account of the penury of their owners, and where the refreshments frequently consisted of home-made lemonade and tarts from the pastrycook’s.One night at a dance at the great Cusani Palace on the Lung Arno, where the old Marchioness Cusani was entertaining her friends, she found herself chatting with Vito Ricci, the deputy, who, wearing on the lapel of his coat the dark green ribbon and white cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, had bowed low over her hand and murmured his congratulations.The great salon, with its polished floor, faded gilding, and crumbling frescoes, was of the ornate style of three centuries before, but over everything was a faded and neglected aspect. Those empty niches in the wall had once contained statues by Donatello, Niccolo Pisano, and Montorsoli, all of which had been sold and exported from Italy to America years ago; while the two large panels painted white had each contained a Raphael, long since disposed of to the National Gallery in London. And although the supper consisted of sandwiches from Doney’s, and in lieu of champagne sweet Asti at two-francs-fifty the bottle, yet the nobility of Florence far preferred gathering there to being patronised by the wealthy Americans or English.The music was good, and Ricci invited Mary to the waltz which at that moment was just commencing. She had known her father’s secret agent ever since she had been a child; therefore, nothing loth, she gave him the favour he requested. Both were excellent dancers. Ricci went into society of necessity, in order to keep in touch with the trend of affairs, and was equally well known in Rome as in Florence, in Turin, or in Naples. His sponsor had been Morini himself, and he was one of the very few of the rank and file of the Camera who moved actually in the best sets.“I have wanted to meet you for quite a long time, Miss Mary,” he said in Italian, after they had finished dancing and were strolling through one of the high old ante-rooms, where two or three cavalry officers were lounging with their partners. At dances in Italy a hostess is always careful to have a sprinkling of the military on account both of the brilliant uniforms and of the fact that they are all dancing men. “I suppose, however,” he added, bending to her and speaking in a low tone that could not be overheard, “I suppose that, now you are to marry Jules, any question that concerns him is debarred—eh?”“What do you mean?” she inquired, looking at him quickly with her fine dark eyes.“I mean that I hesitate to put a question to you lest you should be offended.”“It all depends upon the nature of the question,” she answered, as they turned into a long, dim corridor, where they found themselves alone.“Well,” he said, “as you are aware, I am your father’s friend, and have been so through many years. Recently there was a—well, a crisis, which was averted in a very unexpected and mysterious manner.”“I know,” she remarked, turning rather pale. She wore turquoise blue that night, a beautiful gown of Paquin’s which suited her admirably. “My father has told me everything. You made every effort to wreck the Socialist conspiracy—and you were fortunately successful. I return you my very warmest thanks. You saved my father.”“No; you are quite mistaken. I did not. The questions were abandoned for some mysterious motive which I am still endeavouring to discover. It is in pursuance of my inquiries that I am now approaching you. Do you follow me?”“Perfectly.”“As far as I can gather, your father’s enemies have only postponed their blow. It may fall at any time, therefore we must be prepared for it. Montebruno received orders in secret to postpone his attack, and there must have been a reason for this. Perhaps the time was not yet ripe—perhaps the Socialists feared a retaliation which might crush them. In any case, we must get at the truth, and thus be forearmed.”“And how can I assist you?” she asked, knowing the bitter truth of her self-sacrifice, but determined to keep her secret to herself.“By being frank with me.”“Well?”“You are to marry Jules Dubard?”“Yes.”“At your father’s instigation?”She was silent, and her cheeks turned slightly paler. Their long acquaintance gave him the right to put such a question to her, yet within her heart she resented it. Why should this secret agent, this man who was an adventurer, although so useful in her father’s service, seek to learn the truth?“My father gave his consent to our marriage,” she replied simply.“I know that. He has already told me so. I speak plainly, and say that I am desiring to get at the truth.”“The truth of what? I don’t understand you.”“The truth regarding certain circumstances which are exceedingly curious. I have been for three months in active pursuit of knowledge, and in my inquiries have discovered some very strange things. Remember, I am working in the interests of your father, and anything you may say to me is in strict confidence. We have known each other for a long time, Miss Mary,” he added—“indeed, ever since you wore short frocks and used to flirt with me in the salon at San Donato. Do you recollect it?”She laughed as a slight blush suffused her cheeks at recollection of her girlhood days before she went to school at Broadstairs. She recollected how in those youthful days she had admired Vito Ricci, the well-dressed, debonair deputy who was her father’s closest friend.“I remember,” she admitted, laughing.“Then let us speak in confidence,” he went on, deeply in earnest. “You were acquainted with Felice Solaro, captain in the 6th Alpine Regiment, who fell in love with you?”She nodded, with eyes open in surprise.“He declared his love, and you refused him. Your father, who suspected that the young captain had had the audacity to court you, was furious, and forbade you to receive him. But you saw him in secret one day to bid him farewell as he was ordered to a garrison on the French frontier. Your father being absent, you received him, at his own suggestion, in the library of the palace in Rome. While you were talking with him you heard some visitors approaching, and you rushed out, locking him in the library, pretending that your father had taken the key. He remained there in secret for over two hours, until you could escape from the callers, release him, and let him out in secret. Is that so?”She blushed to the roots of her hair at recollection of that youthful escapade, and admitted that all he had alleged was the truth.“And that man is now in prison, charged with having sold military secrets to France—a copy of a confidential document which was in a drawer in your father’s writing-table.”She stood staring at him, utterly speechless.“But that is not the charge against him,” she hastened to declare. “He is believed to have sold the plans of the Tresenta fortress.”“That is so, but there is also the graver charge—the copying of that document which was in your father’s keeping, and one of the most secret and important concerning our army.”“But he is innocent?” she exclaimed. “I know he is innocent, Signor Ricci. He is the victim of a woman named Nodari, at Bologna, who gave perjured evidence against him.”“I know the whole facts. I have read the depositions given at the secret court-martial, but I have no means of judging whether he is innocent or guilty. One fact, however, I desire to learn, and it is this. Has the count ever mentioned to you the captain’s name, or has he ever admitted acquaintance with him?”“Never to my knowledge,” was her frank answer. “Felice Solaro once declared his love for me, and therefore, in order not to arouse the count’s jealousy, I have never referred to him.”“Naturally. But the fact is all the more curious that the allegation of Solaro’s sale of the copy of the secret document to France—the copy of that obtained from your father’s writing-table—was actually made by the count.”“By the count?” she cried. “Then it was actually upon his evidence that poor Felice has been degraded and condemned?”“Exactly. But the motive is utterly incomprehensible, for it would really seem as though the captain was actually guilty of the treasonable offence.”Mary was silent as they paced down the long, deserted corridor. Then at last she turned slowly to her companion, and in a strange, hoarse voice said—“Yes, it is incomprehensible why an innocent man should be made to suffer, unless—unless my father and the count have acted in accord to secure poor Felice’s ruin and disgrace.”“But why?”No words escaped her. She only shrugged her white shoulders. Yet the man at her side saw in her fine dark eyes the light of unshed tears. But even he did not suspect the truth.
Three months had gone by.
The winter season in Florence had commenced in real earnest, and the streets of the grey old city were agog with the crowd of wealthy foreigners who migrate there for blue sky and sunshine. The Via Tornabuoni was bright with smart toilettes, the Lung Arno was crowded with handsome equipages, the Cascine was full of life at the fashionable hour of four, while Vieusseux’s and the Floreal tea-shop overflowed, and there was gay laughter and cosmopolitan chatter everywhere.
Florence had awakened from her summer siesta beneath the glare and heat, and with her streets still sun-blanched she had put on that air of irresponsibility which is always so attractive to the leisured foreigner. Florentine hostesses were already beginning to receive, and the mass of small and jealous cliques, which calls itself English society, had started their five o’clock and teacup scandals.
The Englishman who visits Florence to inspect her art treasures and to bask in the sunshine of the Lung Arno or the heights of Fiesole is entirely ignorant of its curious complex society—of the blood pride of the Florentines, or of the narrow-minded prejudices of those would-be cosmopolitan Britons, mostly with double-barrelled names, who are residents. Probably there is no circle in all the world so select and so conservative as the society of the aristocratic Florentines. The majority of the princes, marquises, or counts are on the verge of bankruptcy, be it said; nevertheless, they still retain all their pride of race, and neither man nor woman is judged by his pocket. Those huge, ponderous cinquecento palaces, with their gloomy cortiles and their closely barred windows, may have been stripped of their pictures, their sculptures, and their antique furniture long ago, yet at the receptions given in those bare skeletons of ancestral homes no one comments upon the pinch of poverty that is so painfully displayed.
Your Florentine aristocrat makes a brave show to the world and to the little English cliques around him. He has a grand carriage with his arms and coronet boldly emblazoned on every panel, he drives fine horses, he has his clothes made in London, and his wife’s dresses come from the Rue de la Paix; he gambles at the circolo, and he lounges picturesquely at Giacosa’s or Doney’s. And yet in his great palace, the doors of which are rigorously closed, he lives frugally in a few huge, barely furnished rooms, and is scarcely able to make both ends meet.
The American invasion has, however, commenced to break down even this barrier of caste, for several men of the bluest Florentine blood have, of necessity, married American wives, in order to save themselves from ruin, and have been loudly condemned for so doing.
In those bright January days all Florence was agog regarding the engagement of Count Jules Dubard with Mary Morini, daughter of the popular War Minister. By reason of her mother’s health, they had remained on at the villa all the autumn; for neither had any desire for the wild gaieties and entertaining which residence in Rome entailed upon them, and preferred the quiet life of their ancient hillside home.
Daily through the streets of Florence Mary and Dubard flashed in the Minister’s motor-brougham, hither and thither, paying calls or shopping, being greeted and congratulated on every hand. Her father’s official position had given Mary theentréeto the most exclusive set, and in Florence she was always as popular as she was in the court circle at the Quirinale. She dressed usually in cream flannel, with a large black hat and a huge ostrich boa; while Dubard, smiling and elegant, was ever at her side in the smart conveyance which rushed everywhere with loud trumpeting.
Her family, in ignorance of the tragedy of her young life, were delighted with the engagement, and on every hand had she received heartiest good wishes. For a girl to marry an Englishman or Frenchman is considered the height ofchicin Italy, and Mary’s social prestige was increased a hundredfold by her prospect of becoming a French countess. The young pair became the most striking and popular figures in the best Florentine society, while the English sets all vainly struggled to get them to their houses. Madame Morini being too unwell to go out at night, Mary was usually chaperoned by the old Princess Piola, a well-known society leader; and solely in order to please her mother, Mary went to all the functions to which she was bidden.
The Minister’s wife, however, had never entertained any great affection for the English set in Florence. She had once been an English governess herself, and having known them all well through twenty years, had become thoroughly disgusted with their petty bickerings and constant scandal-mongering. Strange that the English on the Continent always divide into a quantity of small cliques. The French, the Germans, even the Scots, all join harmoniously and patriotically in a continental tour; but, as the Italians are so fond of saying, “the English is a good but strange nation.”
With the exception of the British Consul-General’s wife, who was an old friend of her mother’s, Mary visited no other English house.
“The Italian law of caste is bad enough, my dear,” her mother had said to her one day, “but the English backbiting is infinitely worse.”
And so, with the man she was engaged to marry, she was seen night after night at those huge old mediaeval palaces, often dimly lit on account of the penury of their owners, and where the refreshments frequently consisted of home-made lemonade and tarts from the pastrycook’s.
One night at a dance at the great Cusani Palace on the Lung Arno, where the old Marchioness Cusani was entertaining her friends, she found herself chatting with Vito Ricci, the deputy, who, wearing on the lapel of his coat the dark green ribbon and white cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, had bowed low over her hand and murmured his congratulations.
The great salon, with its polished floor, faded gilding, and crumbling frescoes, was of the ornate style of three centuries before, but over everything was a faded and neglected aspect. Those empty niches in the wall had once contained statues by Donatello, Niccolo Pisano, and Montorsoli, all of which had been sold and exported from Italy to America years ago; while the two large panels painted white had each contained a Raphael, long since disposed of to the National Gallery in London. And although the supper consisted of sandwiches from Doney’s, and in lieu of champagne sweet Asti at two-francs-fifty the bottle, yet the nobility of Florence far preferred gathering there to being patronised by the wealthy Americans or English.
The music was good, and Ricci invited Mary to the waltz which at that moment was just commencing. She had known her father’s secret agent ever since she had been a child; therefore, nothing loth, she gave him the favour he requested. Both were excellent dancers. Ricci went into society of necessity, in order to keep in touch with the trend of affairs, and was equally well known in Rome as in Florence, in Turin, or in Naples. His sponsor had been Morini himself, and he was one of the very few of the rank and file of the Camera who moved actually in the best sets.
“I have wanted to meet you for quite a long time, Miss Mary,” he said in Italian, after they had finished dancing and were strolling through one of the high old ante-rooms, where two or three cavalry officers were lounging with their partners. At dances in Italy a hostess is always careful to have a sprinkling of the military on account both of the brilliant uniforms and of the fact that they are all dancing men. “I suppose, however,” he added, bending to her and speaking in a low tone that could not be overheard, “I suppose that, now you are to marry Jules, any question that concerns him is debarred—eh?”
“What do you mean?” she inquired, looking at him quickly with her fine dark eyes.
“I mean that I hesitate to put a question to you lest you should be offended.”
“It all depends upon the nature of the question,” she answered, as they turned into a long, dim corridor, where they found themselves alone.
“Well,” he said, “as you are aware, I am your father’s friend, and have been so through many years. Recently there was a—well, a crisis, which was averted in a very unexpected and mysterious manner.”
“I know,” she remarked, turning rather pale. She wore turquoise blue that night, a beautiful gown of Paquin’s which suited her admirably. “My father has told me everything. You made every effort to wreck the Socialist conspiracy—and you were fortunately successful. I return you my very warmest thanks. You saved my father.”
“No; you are quite mistaken. I did not. The questions were abandoned for some mysterious motive which I am still endeavouring to discover. It is in pursuance of my inquiries that I am now approaching you. Do you follow me?”
“Perfectly.”
“As far as I can gather, your father’s enemies have only postponed their blow. It may fall at any time, therefore we must be prepared for it. Montebruno received orders in secret to postpone his attack, and there must have been a reason for this. Perhaps the time was not yet ripe—perhaps the Socialists feared a retaliation which might crush them. In any case, we must get at the truth, and thus be forearmed.”
“And how can I assist you?” she asked, knowing the bitter truth of her self-sacrifice, but determined to keep her secret to herself.
“By being frank with me.”
“Well?”
“You are to marry Jules Dubard?”
“Yes.”
“At your father’s instigation?”
She was silent, and her cheeks turned slightly paler. Their long acquaintance gave him the right to put such a question to her, yet within her heart she resented it. Why should this secret agent, this man who was an adventurer, although so useful in her father’s service, seek to learn the truth?
“My father gave his consent to our marriage,” she replied simply.
“I know that. He has already told me so. I speak plainly, and say that I am desiring to get at the truth.”
“The truth of what? I don’t understand you.”
“The truth regarding certain circumstances which are exceedingly curious. I have been for three months in active pursuit of knowledge, and in my inquiries have discovered some very strange things. Remember, I am working in the interests of your father, and anything you may say to me is in strict confidence. We have known each other for a long time, Miss Mary,” he added—“indeed, ever since you wore short frocks and used to flirt with me in the salon at San Donato. Do you recollect it?”
She laughed as a slight blush suffused her cheeks at recollection of her girlhood days before she went to school at Broadstairs. She recollected how in those youthful days she had admired Vito Ricci, the well-dressed, debonair deputy who was her father’s closest friend.
“I remember,” she admitted, laughing.
“Then let us speak in confidence,” he went on, deeply in earnest. “You were acquainted with Felice Solaro, captain in the 6th Alpine Regiment, who fell in love with you?”
She nodded, with eyes open in surprise.
“He declared his love, and you refused him. Your father, who suspected that the young captain had had the audacity to court you, was furious, and forbade you to receive him. But you saw him in secret one day to bid him farewell as he was ordered to a garrison on the French frontier. Your father being absent, you received him, at his own suggestion, in the library of the palace in Rome. While you were talking with him you heard some visitors approaching, and you rushed out, locking him in the library, pretending that your father had taken the key. He remained there in secret for over two hours, until you could escape from the callers, release him, and let him out in secret. Is that so?”
She blushed to the roots of her hair at recollection of that youthful escapade, and admitted that all he had alleged was the truth.
“And that man is now in prison, charged with having sold military secrets to France—a copy of a confidential document which was in a drawer in your father’s writing-table.”
She stood staring at him, utterly speechless.
“But that is not the charge against him,” she hastened to declare. “He is believed to have sold the plans of the Tresenta fortress.”
“That is so, but there is also the graver charge—the copying of that document which was in your father’s keeping, and one of the most secret and important concerning our army.”
“But he is innocent?” she exclaimed. “I know he is innocent, Signor Ricci. He is the victim of a woman named Nodari, at Bologna, who gave perjured evidence against him.”
“I know the whole facts. I have read the depositions given at the secret court-martial, but I have no means of judging whether he is innocent or guilty. One fact, however, I desire to learn, and it is this. Has the count ever mentioned to you the captain’s name, or has he ever admitted acquaintance with him?”
“Never to my knowledge,” was her frank answer. “Felice Solaro once declared his love for me, and therefore, in order not to arouse the count’s jealousy, I have never referred to him.”
“Naturally. But the fact is all the more curious that the allegation of Solaro’s sale of the copy of the secret document to France—the copy of that obtained from your father’s writing-table—was actually made by the count.”
“By the count?” she cried. “Then it was actually upon his evidence that poor Felice has been degraded and condemned?”
“Exactly. But the motive is utterly incomprehensible, for it would really seem as though the captain was actually guilty of the treasonable offence.”
Mary was silent as they paced down the long, deserted corridor. Then at last she turned slowly to her companion, and in a strange, hoarse voice said—
“Yes, it is incomprehensible why an innocent man should be made to suffer, unless—unless my father and the count have acted in accord to secure poor Felice’s ruin and disgrace.”
“But why?”
No words escaped her. She only shrugged her white shoulders. Yet the man at her side saw in her fine dark eyes the light of unshed tears. But even he did not suspect the truth.
Chapter Twenty Eight.“Was Sazarac your Friend?”It was a bright morning in Rome.“You will recollect, Miss Mary, that when I congratulated you at Orton upon your engagement to Dubard, you declared that you had no thought of any such thing,” exclaimed George Macbean, with a smile. “I suppose I may now be permitted to repeat my congratulations?”“If you wish,” was the girl’s mechanical reply. “And I thank you very much,” she added, her face quite serious.They were standing together one morning in one of the smaller reception-rooms of her father’s palace. He had called on the Minister on official business, and they had met quite accidentally in the great mediaeval courtyard, where the plashing of the old marble fountain broke the quiet, playing on as it had done for nearly four hundred years; that courtyard that was so full of stirring memories of the long past ages, and the stones of which had echoed to the tramp of the armed retainers of the great prince whose ancestral home it once was.Since his arrival in Rome two months ago fortune had certainly smiled upon George Macbean General Borselli had given him a lucrative appointment in the Ministry at a salary which enabled him to rent a comfortable little bachelor apartment in the Via Sistina. The work was very different from the drudgery from Morgan-Mason’s correspondence, and he had quickly found that his position at once gave him theentréeto the official society of the Italian capital. The Under-Secretary was kindness itself, and he soon found that his office was one of those sinecures with fat emoluments which are found more or less in every Government department.For three weeks or so after his arrival he had no occasion to meet His Excellency the Minister, but when he one day entered Morini’s private cabinet, he took the opportunity of thanking him for the appointment. The Minister thereupon, as though suddenly recollecting their previous acquaintanceship, made a number of inquiries as to what office he was filling in the Ministry and the nature of his work, the outcome of which was that within six weeks of his arrival in the Eternal City he found himself appointed private secretary to the Minister himself.This displeased Borselli, he thought; for when he informed him of the Minister’s order, he remained silent and his sallow face assumed an expression of distinct disapproval. The general had not expected that Morini would take the young man into his service, or he would probably have hesitated to call him from London. Nevertheless, the Under-Secretary was too clever to openly exhibit any annoyance at the chief’s decision. Indeed, he was always humble and obedient, bowing to every decree of his superior, even though in his heart he was ever plotting against him. And so George Macbean had become one of His Excellency’s private secretaries, and very soon enjoyed a good deal of the confidence of his principal.Hitherto, however, his work lying always at the Ministry, he had never had occasion to go to the palace. From the first moment of his arrival in Rome his mind had been full of recollections of Mary. He had seen her driving on the Pincio on the bright winter afternoons; he had passed her in the Corso, and had seen her, exquisitely gowned, seated with her mother in a box at the Constanzi. But she had never once noticed him, and on that morning, when he had been compelled to call at the palace to receive instructions from his chief, who was unwell, they had come suddenly face to face for the first time.The meeting gave them mutual satisfaction. There was no doubt upon that point. She had looked hard at him ere she recognised him, for, like all the corridors in those mediaeval palaces, it was not very light, and she would have passed him without acknowledgment had he not uttered her name.While standing there in that painted room with the tarnished gold furniture and mosaic floor, so different from the country drawing-room at Orton, with its bright chintzes and flowers, he had briefly told her of the unexpected offer that had reached him in England, of his acceptance, and of his ultimate appointment to be one of her father’s private secretaries.“Only fancy!” she laughed. “The world is really very small, is it not? I never thought, when we played tennis together at your uncle’s tournament at Thornby, that you would be given an office in the Ministry of War. But I remember now how well you spoke Italian, and that you told me how fond you were of Italy.”“I owe all my good fortune to your father, Miss Morini. Believe me, it has lifted me out of a world of drudgery and insult—for, as I think I told you, I have been secretary to a Member of Parliament named Morgan-Mason.”“Ah! of course!” she exclaimed quickly, regarding him with a curious, fixed look. “You were secretary to Mr Morgan-Mason.”“Yes. Do you know him?”“Not personally,” she faltered, with some confusion. “I—well, I’ve heard of him. Some English friends of mine know him very well, and through them I have heard of the fellow’s pompous egotism.”“Then you can well understand how very deeply I thank your father for his kindnesses towards me.” And then he spoke of her engagement, about which everyone in Rome was at that moment talking.He noticed her disinclination to speak of the man whom she was to marry—that man whom he knew so well.“The count is in Paris,” she answered briefly, when he inquired about him. “Have you not met him yet? I recollect when in England he was very anxious to meet you.”“No. I have not seen him to congratulate him upon his good fortune,” replied George, with a touch of bitterness; “but no doubt he will soon return, and we shall come across each other.”“He is due back in a week in order to go to the royal reception at the Quirinale on the nineteenth,” she said. “When I write to-morrow I will tell him that you are now in Rome.”“No,” exclaimed Macbean quickly. “Don’t tell him. I like giving old friends pleasant surprises. When he returns I will call on him unexpectedly.”His was a good excuse, and he was gratified to see that she accepted it. It would, he knew, never do for her to write and inform her lover of his presence in Rome. If she did, he certainly would not dare to return to the Eternal City. George had resolved to conceal his presence from the Frenchman and to carefully watch his movements. Therefore he induced the Minister’s daughter to make no mention of him.He found her somewhat more wan and pale than she had been in England. She seemed preoccupied,distraite, with a touch of sadness in her deep, liquid eyes that was scarcely in keeping with the passion and ecstasy of an engagement. She was not her old self, bright, lighthearted, and careless, as she had been in those summer days in England. Something had occurred, but what it was he had no means of ascertaining.The one thought that held him spellbound was the reflection that she was actually to marry Jules Dubard.She was about to sacrifice herself, and yet he dare not tell her the terrible truth. He stood gazing into her great brown eyes, speechless before that calm and wondrous beauty that had for months arisen constantly before his eyes amid the whirl of London life. Yes, he loved her—he had fallen to worship at her shrine ever since those warm afternoons when they had played tennis on the level English lawns, and now this re-encounter had awakened within him all the wild passion of his yearning heart.During those days in Rome he had heard much of her, for she was popular everywhere, a reigning beauty in the gay, exclusive circle which surrounded the royal throne, and one of the most courted of all the unmarried girls in the capital. The season was at its height, therefore she was seen everywhere, mostly in company with Dubard. If the truth were told, however, it was much against her own inclination. She was in no mood for gaiety. All the life and gaiety had been crushed from her heart, and she only attended the various functions because it was her duty towards her father to do so. Many a sleepless night she spent in prayer and in tears.Long ago she had become nauseated by all the glare and glitter, the chatter and music of those gilded salons where smart Rome amused themselves each evening. Whenever she could, she made excuses to stay at home in the quiet and silence of her own room; but as it was part of her father’s statecraft that she should be seen and congratulated, she was compelled very often to put on her magnificent gowns with a sigh, dance when her heart was leaden, and smile even though she was bursting with grief.Yet she rigorously kept the secret of her self-sacrifice, and none suspected that the young Frenchéléganthad compelled her to accept him as husband. Indeed, Dubard was already very popular in Rome. He was possessed of means, belonged to the most exclusive Italian club, and drove a smart phaeton and pair each afternoon, frequently with Mary at his side.The men and women who were Dubard’s friends were among the highest in society, yet none knew the truth save Borselli and George Macbean, neither of whom dare, for their own sakes, utter one single word in denunciation.“You told me at Orton that the count was an old friend, Mr Macbean,” exclaimed Mary, after a brief pause. She had met his gaze unflinchingly, and then lowered her eyes to the ground. She looked fresh and neat in her plain black tailor-made gown, for she was dressed ready to go out for her morning walk in the Corso.“Yes. We met several years ago,” was Macbean’s reply.“Where?”“In London.”“You must have been close friends,” she remarked, “for he has on several occasions asked whether I had heard of you.”George smiled, for his reflections were bitter ones. “Yes,” he said, “I knew him quite well; but we drifted apart, as friends so often do.”“Then you will, of course, be glad to meet him again.”“For one reason, very glad. Because I want to inquire of him what has become of one who was our mutual friend, and who mysteriously disappeared—a very curious affair.”“Was it a man?” asked Mary, suddenly interested.“Yes—a French army officer—a General Felix Sazarac.”“Sazarac!” she gasped, with open mouth and cheeks suddenly blanched as the name recalled to her the strange conversation between Borselli and her father. “Was Sazarac your friend?”
It was a bright morning in Rome.
“You will recollect, Miss Mary, that when I congratulated you at Orton upon your engagement to Dubard, you declared that you had no thought of any such thing,” exclaimed George Macbean, with a smile. “I suppose I may now be permitted to repeat my congratulations?”
“If you wish,” was the girl’s mechanical reply. “And I thank you very much,” she added, her face quite serious.
They were standing together one morning in one of the smaller reception-rooms of her father’s palace. He had called on the Minister on official business, and they had met quite accidentally in the great mediaeval courtyard, where the plashing of the old marble fountain broke the quiet, playing on as it had done for nearly four hundred years; that courtyard that was so full of stirring memories of the long past ages, and the stones of which had echoed to the tramp of the armed retainers of the great prince whose ancestral home it once was.
Since his arrival in Rome two months ago fortune had certainly smiled upon George Macbean General Borselli had given him a lucrative appointment in the Ministry at a salary which enabled him to rent a comfortable little bachelor apartment in the Via Sistina. The work was very different from the drudgery from Morgan-Mason’s correspondence, and he had quickly found that his position at once gave him theentréeto the official society of the Italian capital. The Under-Secretary was kindness itself, and he soon found that his office was one of those sinecures with fat emoluments which are found more or less in every Government department.
For three weeks or so after his arrival he had no occasion to meet His Excellency the Minister, but when he one day entered Morini’s private cabinet, he took the opportunity of thanking him for the appointment. The Minister thereupon, as though suddenly recollecting their previous acquaintanceship, made a number of inquiries as to what office he was filling in the Ministry and the nature of his work, the outcome of which was that within six weeks of his arrival in the Eternal City he found himself appointed private secretary to the Minister himself.
This displeased Borselli, he thought; for when he informed him of the Minister’s order, he remained silent and his sallow face assumed an expression of distinct disapproval. The general had not expected that Morini would take the young man into his service, or he would probably have hesitated to call him from London. Nevertheless, the Under-Secretary was too clever to openly exhibit any annoyance at the chief’s decision. Indeed, he was always humble and obedient, bowing to every decree of his superior, even though in his heart he was ever plotting against him. And so George Macbean had become one of His Excellency’s private secretaries, and very soon enjoyed a good deal of the confidence of his principal.
Hitherto, however, his work lying always at the Ministry, he had never had occasion to go to the palace. From the first moment of his arrival in Rome his mind had been full of recollections of Mary. He had seen her driving on the Pincio on the bright winter afternoons; he had passed her in the Corso, and had seen her, exquisitely gowned, seated with her mother in a box at the Constanzi. But she had never once noticed him, and on that morning, when he had been compelled to call at the palace to receive instructions from his chief, who was unwell, they had come suddenly face to face for the first time.
The meeting gave them mutual satisfaction. There was no doubt upon that point. She had looked hard at him ere she recognised him, for, like all the corridors in those mediaeval palaces, it was not very light, and she would have passed him without acknowledgment had he not uttered her name.
While standing there in that painted room with the tarnished gold furniture and mosaic floor, so different from the country drawing-room at Orton, with its bright chintzes and flowers, he had briefly told her of the unexpected offer that had reached him in England, of his acceptance, and of his ultimate appointment to be one of her father’s private secretaries.
“Only fancy!” she laughed. “The world is really very small, is it not? I never thought, when we played tennis together at your uncle’s tournament at Thornby, that you would be given an office in the Ministry of War. But I remember now how well you spoke Italian, and that you told me how fond you were of Italy.”
“I owe all my good fortune to your father, Miss Morini. Believe me, it has lifted me out of a world of drudgery and insult—for, as I think I told you, I have been secretary to a Member of Parliament named Morgan-Mason.”
“Ah! of course!” she exclaimed quickly, regarding him with a curious, fixed look. “You were secretary to Mr Morgan-Mason.”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“Not personally,” she faltered, with some confusion. “I—well, I’ve heard of him. Some English friends of mine know him very well, and through them I have heard of the fellow’s pompous egotism.”
“Then you can well understand how very deeply I thank your father for his kindnesses towards me.” And then he spoke of her engagement, about which everyone in Rome was at that moment talking.
He noticed her disinclination to speak of the man whom she was to marry—that man whom he knew so well.
“The count is in Paris,” she answered briefly, when he inquired about him. “Have you not met him yet? I recollect when in England he was very anxious to meet you.”
“No. I have not seen him to congratulate him upon his good fortune,” replied George, with a touch of bitterness; “but no doubt he will soon return, and we shall come across each other.”
“He is due back in a week in order to go to the royal reception at the Quirinale on the nineteenth,” she said. “When I write to-morrow I will tell him that you are now in Rome.”
“No,” exclaimed Macbean quickly. “Don’t tell him. I like giving old friends pleasant surprises. When he returns I will call on him unexpectedly.”
His was a good excuse, and he was gratified to see that she accepted it. It would, he knew, never do for her to write and inform her lover of his presence in Rome. If she did, he certainly would not dare to return to the Eternal City. George had resolved to conceal his presence from the Frenchman and to carefully watch his movements. Therefore he induced the Minister’s daughter to make no mention of him.
He found her somewhat more wan and pale than she had been in England. She seemed preoccupied,distraite, with a touch of sadness in her deep, liquid eyes that was scarcely in keeping with the passion and ecstasy of an engagement. She was not her old self, bright, lighthearted, and careless, as she had been in those summer days in England. Something had occurred, but what it was he had no means of ascertaining.
The one thought that held him spellbound was the reflection that she was actually to marry Jules Dubard.
She was about to sacrifice herself, and yet he dare not tell her the terrible truth. He stood gazing into her great brown eyes, speechless before that calm and wondrous beauty that had for months arisen constantly before his eyes amid the whirl of London life. Yes, he loved her—he had fallen to worship at her shrine ever since those warm afternoons when they had played tennis on the level English lawns, and now this re-encounter had awakened within him all the wild passion of his yearning heart.
During those days in Rome he had heard much of her, for she was popular everywhere, a reigning beauty in the gay, exclusive circle which surrounded the royal throne, and one of the most courted of all the unmarried girls in the capital. The season was at its height, therefore she was seen everywhere, mostly in company with Dubard. If the truth were told, however, it was much against her own inclination. She was in no mood for gaiety. All the life and gaiety had been crushed from her heart, and she only attended the various functions because it was her duty towards her father to do so. Many a sleepless night she spent in prayer and in tears.
Long ago she had become nauseated by all the glare and glitter, the chatter and music of those gilded salons where smart Rome amused themselves each evening. Whenever she could, she made excuses to stay at home in the quiet and silence of her own room; but as it was part of her father’s statecraft that she should be seen and congratulated, she was compelled very often to put on her magnificent gowns with a sigh, dance when her heart was leaden, and smile even though she was bursting with grief.
Yet she rigorously kept the secret of her self-sacrifice, and none suspected that the young Frenchéléganthad compelled her to accept him as husband. Indeed, Dubard was already very popular in Rome. He was possessed of means, belonged to the most exclusive Italian club, and drove a smart phaeton and pair each afternoon, frequently with Mary at his side.
The men and women who were Dubard’s friends were among the highest in society, yet none knew the truth save Borselli and George Macbean, neither of whom dare, for their own sakes, utter one single word in denunciation.
“You told me at Orton that the count was an old friend, Mr Macbean,” exclaimed Mary, after a brief pause. She had met his gaze unflinchingly, and then lowered her eyes to the ground. She looked fresh and neat in her plain black tailor-made gown, for she was dressed ready to go out for her morning walk in the Corso.
“Yes. We met several years ago,” was Macbean’s reply.
“Where?”
“In London.”
“You must have been close friends,” she remarked, “for he has on several occasions asked whether I had heard of you.”
George smiled, for his reflections were bitter ones. “Yes,” he said, “I knew him quite well; but we drifted apart, as friends so often do.”
“Then you will, of course, be glad to meet him again.”
“For one reason, very glad. Because I want to inquire of him what has become of one who was our mutual friend, and who mysteriously disappeared—a very curious affair.”
“Was it a man?” asked Mary, suddenly interested.
“Yes—a French army officer—a General Felix Sazarac.”
“Sazarac!” she gasped, with open mouth and cheeks suddenly blanched as the name recalled to her the strange conversation between Borselli and her father. “Was Sazarac your friend?”