CHAPTER XII.
THE PRIMA DONNA’S HATE.
Lucia Guiscardini clutched at the iron bar against which she was half-leaning, and glared into the face of her husband, as if she would read his innermost soul.
“What does he know?” she whispered to herself. “How much does he know?”
There was a dead silence for a few seconds. The signs of emotion caused by the name of the friendless wretch who had sought his help were not lost upon Captain Desfrayne.
Madam Guiscardini was trying to rally her forces, and she could not reply in words. Paul Desfrayne repeated his inquiry in another form:
“You do know him?”
The half-terrified woman looked straight into his eyes—those honest eyes, so full of natural kindness and honor.
Fear had blanched her cheeks and lips; shame, perhaps, now drove the roseate hues in a flood back again, as she answered, in a tolerably steady voice:
“I do not. I have never heard of him.”
“Ah! I don’t suppose my domestic affairs can possess any interest for you, madam. It is merely a piece of egotistical gossip to inform you that I have taken Leonardo Gilardoni into my service.”
“Into your service?”
The words were pronounced slowly, with obvious difficulty, and in a husky voice.
Paul Desfrayne did not evidence, by the slightest sign, any triumph at the effect his unexpected shot had produced, but silently watched her face.
“Why—why have you done so? I mean, why do you tell me of it?”
“I cannot help having an idea that you knew something of the poor fellow at one time, though he has slipped from your memory,” Captain Desfrayne said, very calmly, shrugging his shoulders.
“Has he said—has he said——”
She could not continue; the effort at control was too great.
It was impossible to tell how much this quiet, now half-smiling, man before her might know of the terror that haunted her day and night.
“Has he saidwhat?” demanded Paul Desfrayne, looking her steadily in the face.
“Said he knew me?” Madam Guiscardini coolly replied.
But as she spoke, her fingers so convulsively twitched, as if she were trying her utmost to curb the secret emotions of her mind, that they snapped the delicate, carved ivory handle of her parasol.
Paul Desfrayne, who had not once removed his eyes from her face, laughed cynically, bitterly. His laughter had in it more of menace than an uncontrollable outburst of violent anger.
He thought: “What can be the secret between them?” But aloud he said, affecting to ignore the accidental betrayal so direful as well as the agitation of his wife:
“He has barely mentioned your name, and then simply in a passing way.”
“May I ask your reason for supposing I was acquainted with him?”
“I had more reasons than one. But a chief reason was that I knew he came from your part of Italy; and in a village everybody knows everybody else. Had he been an old friend of yours—don’t curl your lip: you were once as lowly placed as he, perhaps more so—you might perchance have cared to hear something of him. The poor wretch has been in grievous adversity, it seems: without a friend, often without a shelter, without money; so it is probably a fortunate thing for him that he has found a friend in me.”
“I hope he will serve you well,” said Madam Guiscardini, in an ice-cold tone. “It shows good taste on the part of Captain Desfrayne to recall the fact that the Guiscardini was once a poor cottage girl in poverty—in——”
Her eyes flashed, and she stopped, as if afraid of rousing her indomitable temper did she proceed. One sentencemight ruin her. She abruptly curbed herself, and swept another curtsy.
“I have the honor to wish Captain Desfrayne good morning, and shall be ready to receive his promised—his threatened visit——”
“On Monday afternoon,” Paul Desfrayne said sharply, as if in positive pain. “I can endure this slavery—this horrible bondage—no longer in silence.”
“On Monday afternoon be it. You know where to find me?”
“No, I do not.”
Madam Guiscardini looked with intent suspicion at him. She hated this handsome young man with concentrated hate, but she respected him profoundly, and she knew he would not utter a falsehood to gain a kingdom. Therefore she was obliged to believe him, though she had previously imagined that his presence in Porchester Square had been due to some plot of which she was the object.
She carefully watched him as she gave her address. It was like a duel to the death, each adversary narrowly eying the movements of the other. To her further mystification, Paul Desfrayne almost sprang back in his amazement when he heard her name the exact place where she lived.
“Where?” he demanded, as if unable to credit his ears.
She coldly repeated the name of the square and the number of the house.
“Why does he seem so astonished?” she said to herself, eying him with a glance akin to that in the yellow orbs of the leopardess a few steps from her. “What is the matter now?”
“On Monday afternoon, then, we will have a further explanation, Madam Guiscardini,” Paul Desfrayne said, mastering his surprise, and raising his hat with the ceremony he would have used to a total stranger.
He left her.
“Separated from my mother by a few layers of bricks and mortar,” he thought. “I have appointed an interview,but what good can come of it? None. I have made my bed—made it of thorns and briers, and must sleep therein with what comfort I may.”
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“What is to be done? It would be the best and wisest course to immediately inform my mother of the exact state of affairs. I wish I had done so at first. I am like those very immoral little boys in the story-books of one’s youth, who don’t tell in time, and so the agony goes on piling up until the culprit is next to smothered. What is to be done with this Gordian knot? I have not the courage to cut it. I wonder they didn’t include moral cowardice among the deadly sins. I wonder what would be the consequences if I did summon up sufficient nerve to inform my mother of my culpable behavior three years ago? Come, Paul Desfrayne, it must be done. Better be brave at once, and march up to the cannon’s mouth, than be found out ignominiously some day sooner or later. Shall it be done to-day—this evening?”
His reverie was broken by a light, caressing touch upon his arm. Turning round suddenly, with a strange sensation of nervous alarm, he found his mother by his side.
Smiling, pleasant, unsuspicious, her sunny brow unclouded by a shadow that might possibly produce a future wrinkle, she looked deliciously happy, and perfectly confident, to all appearance, of his trust and affection.
She started as he turned his face full upon her.
“You are pale, my dear. Are you not well?” she anxiously inquired.
“Not very well, mother. The heat—the crowd—it is such a bore altogether, that I am weary, and I should be glad to escape.”
“My dear Paul, I have seen so little of you lately, that I grudge to lose you when I have fairly secured a chance of your company. But”—she glanced round at the gay, ever-moving crowd, with its lively colors, at the faces, dotted here and there, with which she was familiar, and a faint smile dimpled the corners of her lips—“if you will, let us go somewhere else. Where would you like to go?”
“Anywhere. I want a little talk with you—one of our own old gossips, mother. It is impossible to obtain the least chance of an uninterrupted talk here.”
Yet as he spoke, his heart sank within him. It seemed as if his confession would be more difficult to-day than ever. To make his path more thorny, that beloved face looked so confiding, so sure that there could not be the shadow of a secret, that it would have been a thousand times easier to walk up to the cannon’s mouth, than to speak the few words that must break forever the steady bond linking them together.
But for all Mrs. Desfrayne’s calm, suave looks, she was keenly watching her son. His absence alone had hindered her from finding out long ago that some shadow lay between them. Her practised, maternal eyes could read him through.
“What has happened, and why is he afraid to tell me?” she meditated, while to outward seeming engaged in regarding the pleasant scene about her with half-childish interest.
Her brain ran swiftly over every imaginable train of events, possible or impossible, that might have happened, seeking some clue to the evident mystery.
Not for a moment did her mind revert to what, after all, was the most simple and obvious explanation.
They moved to quit the gardens.
“Is not that the Guiscardini?” she asked of Paul.
“I believe so.”
Mrs. Desfrayne had put up her glass, so the look and tone with which her inquiry was answered escaped her.
“I don’t know why,” she continued; “but I have taken an inveterate dislike to that woman. She reminds me of a magnificent cobra. You know, Paul, I have a foolish way of taking likes and dislikes.”
At the next step she encountered Miss Turquand.
In spite of her resolve to cultivate the young girl’s friendship, a cold inclination of the head was all that passed between them.
A warmer salutation to Lady Quaintree followed, butMrs. Desfrayne was too impatient to hear what her son had to say, to be able to stop just then for a little idle, sunshiny gossip.
Paul handed her into the brougham that was in waiting.
It was a hired one, as Mrs. Desfrayne always remembered as she was about to enter it. She had longed for the days when either by some brilliant matrimonial stroke on her own part, or that of her son, she should be the happy possessor of such carriages and horses as might please her fancy. Yet now she was secretly determined to hinder, if possible, her son’s acceptance of a fortune that far exceeded her most sanguine dreams.
With anxiety she regarded Paul’s face as he seated himself beside her. He was ashy pale, and his eyes were bright with the brightness of fever.
“Home,” she said to the coachman.
Too wary to hasten the unwilling confession by ill-timed or injudicious questions, Mrs. Desfrayne nestled back in her cozy corner, and began to flirt her garden-fan, waiting patiently.
It is always the first step that forms the difficulty, and even yet Paul could not resolve on precipitating himself into those cold waters he so dreaded. Even did he take the plunge, how could he introduce the subject?
The drive passed, therefore, in constrained silence.
It was not until they were seated in the cool, pleasant room, called by Mrs. Desfrayne her own special retreat, that Paul could break the ice.
Mrs. Desfrayne gazed with wonderment at the handsome face of her boy, as he sat on a low chair before her, his eyes cast down, his hands nervously playing with the silken fringe on her dress, so unlike what she had ever known him before.
“Paul,” she said softly, leaning toward him, “you look like a criminal. What is the matter with you?”
The tone was mellow and tender, and yet with a tinge of gentle gaiety.
Paul raised his eyes.
“Like a criminal?” he repeated slowly. “I look like what I am. Oh! my mother—my mother!”
He slipped from the low chair, on his knees, and bowed his face on his mother’s hands. She felt hot tears wet her fingers, and a great terror seized her heart, for she adored her boy.
“Paul,” she whispered, “tell me what has happened!”