"I am awed," confessed Henrietta. "I don't know what made her do it. I was never told. Father never talked much about the D'Armands afterwards. I was with him in the yellow drawing room the evening he got the letter from the Marquis. After he read it he said something very extraordinary. You know it's full nine years ago and I was yet a child, yet I could not have dreamed it. I heard it distinctly. He dropped his hands and said, 'Austerlitz has done it.' What could he have meant?"
"It would be hard to guess the connection," said Cosmo, smiling at his sister's puzzled face. "Father must have been thinking of something else."
"Father was thinking of nothing else for days," affirmed Henrietta positively.
"You must have been a very observant child," remarked her brother. "But I believe you were always a clever girl, Henrietta. Well, I am going to see Adèle."
"Oh yes, you start in the morning to travel ever so far and for ever so long," said Miss Latham enviously. "Oh Cosmo, you are going to write to me—lots?"
He looked at her appreciatively and gave her another brotherly hug.
"Certainly I will write, whole reams," he said.
On his way from the harbour to the upper part of the town where his inn was situated Cosmo Latham met very few people. He had to pass through a sort of covered way; its arch yawned in front of him very black with only a feeble glimmer of a light in its depths. It did not occur to him that it was a place where one could very well be knocked on the head by evil-intentioned men if there were any prowling about in that early part of the evening, for it was early yet, though the last gleams of sunset had gone out completely off the earth and out of the sky. On issuing from the dark passage a maze of narrow streets presented itself to his choice, but he knew that as long as he kept walking uphill he could not fail to reach the middle of the town. Projecting at long intervals from the continuous mass of thick walls, wrought-iron arms held lanterns containing dim gleams of light. The enormous doors of the lofty gateways he passed were closed, and the only sound he could hear was that of his own deliberate footsteps. At a wider spot where several of those lanes met he stopped, and looking about him asked himself whether all those enormous and palatial houses were empty, or whether it was the thickness of walls that killed all the signs of life within; for as to the population being already asleep he could not believe it for a moment. All at once he caught sight of a muffled feminine form. In the heavy shadow she seemed to emerge out of one wall and gliding on seemed to disappear into another. It was undoubtedly a woman. Cosmo was startled by this noiseless apparition and had a momentary feeling of being lost in an enchanted city. Presently the enchanted silence was broken by the increasing sound of an iron-shod stick tapping the flagstones, till there walked out of one of the dark and tortuous lanes a man who by his rolling gait, general outline, and the characteristic shape of the hat, Cosmo could not doubt, was a seaman belonging to the English man-of-war in the harbour. The tapping of his stick ceased suddenly and Cosmo hailed him in English, asking for the way.
The sturdy figure in the tarpaulin hat put its cudgel under its arm and answered him in a deep pleasant voice. Yes, he knew the inn. He was just coming from there. If His Honour followed the street before him he would come to a large open space and His Honour's inn would be across the square. In the deep shadows Cosmo could make out of the seaman's face nothing but the bushy whiskers and the gleam of the eyes. He was pleased at meeting the very day he had reached the Mediterranean shore (he had come down to Genoa from Turin) such a fine specimen of a man-of-war's man. He thanked him for the direction and the sailor, touching his hat, went off at his slightly rolling gait. Cosmo observed that he took a turning very near the spot where the muffled woman had a moment before vanished from his sight. It was a very dark and a very narrow passage between two towering buildings. Cosmo, continuing on his way, arrived at a broad thoroughfare badly lighted but full of people. He knew where he was then. In a very few moments he found himself at the door of his inn in a great square which in comparison with the rest of the town might have been said to blaze with lights.
Under an iron lantern swung above a flight of three broad steps, Cosmo recognized his servant gazing into the square with a worried expression which changed at once into one of relief on perceiving his master. He touched his cap and followed Cosmo into a large hall with several doors opening into it and furnished with many wooden chairs and tables. At one of them bearing four candlesticks several British naval officers sat talking and laughing in subdued tones. A compactly built clean-shaven person with slightly sunken cheeks, wearing black breeches and a maroon waistcoat with sleeves, but displaying a very elaborate frill to his white shirt, stood in the middle of the floor, glancing about with vigilance, and bowed hurriedly to his latest client. Cosmo returned the greeting of Signor Cantelucci, who, snatching up the nearest candlestick, began to ascend a broad stone staircase with an air of performing a solemn duty. Cosmo followed him, and Cosmo's servant followed his master. They went up and up. At every flight broad archways gave a view of dark perspective in which nothing but a few drops of dim fire were forlornly visible. At last Signor Cantelucci threw open a door on a landing and bowing again:
"See, milord! There is a fire. I know the customs and habits of the English."
Cosmo stepped into a large and lofty room where in the play of bright flames under a heavy and tall mantelpiece the shadows seemed very much disturbed by his entrance. Cosmo approached the blaze with satisfaction.
"I had enough trouble to get them to light it," remarked the valet in a resentful tone. "If it hadn't been for a jack-tar with big whiskers I found down in the hall it wouldn't be done yet. He came up from the ship with one of these sea officers downstairs. He drove the fellows with the wood in fine style up here for me. He knows the people here. He cursed them each separately by their Christian names, and then had a glass of wine in the kitchen with me."
Meantime Signor Cantelucci, wearing the aspect of a deaf man, had lighted, on two separate tables, two clusters of candles which drove the restless gloom of the large apartment half way up to the ceiling, and retired with noiseless footsteps. He stopped in the doorway to cast a keen glance at the master and the man standing by the fire. Those two turned their heads only at the sound of the closing door.
"I couldn't think what became of you, sir. I was getting quite worried about you. You disappeared without saying anything to me."
"I went for a walk down to the sea," said Cosmo while the man moved off to where several cowhide trunks were ranged against the wall. "I like to take a look round on arriving at a new place."
"Yes, sir; but when it got dark I wondered."
"I tarried on a tower to watch the sunset," murmured Cosmo.
"I have been doing some unpacking," said the servant, "but not knowing how long you mean to stay . . ."
"It may be a long stay."
"Then I will go on, sir; that is if you are going to keep this room."
"Yes. The room will do. Spire. It's big enough."
Spire took up one of the two candelabras and retired into the neighbourhood of a sort of state bed heavily draped at the other end of the room. There, throwing open the trunks and the doors of closets, he busied himself systematically, without noise, till he heard the quiet voice of his young master.
"Spire."
"Yes, sir," he answered, standing still with a pile of shirts on his arm.
"Is this inn very full?"
"Yes, very," said Spire. "The whole town is full of travellers and people from the country. A lot of our nobility and gentry are passing this way."
He deposited the shirts on a shelf in the depths of the wall and turned round again.
"Have you heard any names, Spire?"
Spire stooped over a trunk and lifted up from it carefully a lot of white neckcloths folded neatly one within the other.
"I haven't had much time yet, sir. I heard a few."
He laid down the neckcloths by the side of the shirts while Cosmo, with his elbow on the mantelpiece, asked down the whole length of the room:
"Anybody I know?"
"Not in this place, sir. There is generally a party of officers from the man-of-war staying here. They come and go. I have seen some Italian gentlemen in square-cut coats and powdered hair. Very old-fashioned, sir. There are some Austrians too, I think; but I haven't seen any ladies. . . . I am afraid, sir, this isn't the right sort of inn. There is another about a hundred yards from here on the other side of the square."
"I don't want to meet anybody I know," said Cosmo Latham in a low voice.
Spire thought that this would make his stay in Genoa very dull. At the same time he was convinced that his young master would alter his mind before very long and change to that other inn patronized by travellers of fashion. For himself he was not averse from a little quiet time. Spire was no longer young. Thirty years ago, before the War and before the Revolution, he had travelled with Sir Charles in France and Italy. He was then only eighteen, but being a steady and trustworthy lad was taken abroad to look after the horses. Sir Charles kept four horses in Florence, and Spire had often ridden on Tuscan roads behind Sir Charles and the two Misses Aston, of whom one later became Lady Latham. After the family settled in Yorkshire he passed from the stables to the house, acquired a confidential position, and whenever Lady Latham took a journey he sat in the rumble with a pair of double-barrelled pistols in the pockets of his greatcoat and ordered all things on the road. Later he became intermediary between Sir Charles and the stables, the gardens, and in all out-of-door things about the house. He attended Lady Latham on her very last drive, all the details for that lady's funeral having been left to his management. He was also a very good valet. He had been called one evening into the library where Sir Charles, very gouty that day, leaning with one hand on a thick stick and with the other on the edge of a table, had said to him: "I am lending you to Mr. Cosmo for his travels in France and Italy. You will know your way about. And mind you draw the charges of the pistols in the carriage every morning and load them afresh."
Spire was then requested to help Sir Charles up the stairs and had a few more words said to him when Sir Charles stopped at the door of his bedroom.
"Mr. Cosmo has plenty of sense. You are not to make yourself a nuisance to him."
"No, Sir Charles," said the imperturbable Spire. "I will know how to look after Mr. Cosmo."
And if he had been asked. Spire would have been able to say that during the stay in Paris and all through France and Switzerland on the way to Genoa Mr. Cosmo had given him no trouble at all.
Spire, still busy unpacking, glanced at his young master. He certainly looked very quiet now, leaning on his elbow with the firelight playing from below on his young thoughtful face with its smooth and pale complexion. "Very good-looking indeed," thought Spire. In that thoughtful mood he recalled very much the Sir Charles of thirty or thirty-five years ago. Would he too find his wife abroad? There had been women enough in Paris of every kind and degree, English and French and all sorts. But it was a fact that Mr. Cosmo sought most of his company amongst men, of whom also there had been no lack and of every degree. In that, too, the young man resembled very much his father. Men's company. But were he to get caught he would get caught properly; at any rate for a time, reflected Spire, remembering Sir Charles Latham's rush back to Italy, the inwardness of which had been no more revealed to him than to the rest of the world.
Spire, approaching the candelabra, unfolded partly a very fine coat, then refolded it before putting it away on a convenient shelf. He had a moment of regret for his own young days. He had never married, not because there had been any lack of women to set their caps at him, but from a sort of half-conscious prudence. Moreover, he had a notion somehow or other that Sir Charles would not have liked it. Perhaps it was just as well. Now he was carefree, attending on Mr. Cosmo without troubling his head about who had remained at home.
Spire, arranging the contents of a dressing case on the table, cast another sidelong look at the figure by the fire. Very handsome. Something like Sir Charles and yet not like. There was a touch of something unusual, perhaps foreign, and yet no one with a pair of eyes in his head could mistake Mr. Cosmo for anything but an English gentleman.
Spire's memories of his tour with Sir Charles had been growing dim. But he remembered enough of the old-time atmosphere to have become aware of a feeling of tension, of a suggestion of restlessness which certainly was new to him.
The silence had lasted very long. Cosmo before the fire had not moved. Spire ventured on a remark.
"I notice people are excited about one thing and another hereabouts, sir."
"Excited. I don't wonder at it. In what way?"
"Sort of discontented, sir. They don't like the Austrians, sir. You may have noticed as we came along . . ."
"Did they like us when we held the town?"
"I can hardly say that, sir. I have been sitting for an hour or more in the couriers' room, with all sorts of people coming in and out, and heard very wild sort of talk."
"What can you know about its wildness?"
"To look at their faces was enough. It's a funny place, that room downstairs," went on Spire, rubbing with a piece of silk a travelling looking-glass mounted cunningly in a silver case which when opened made a stand for it. He placed it exactly in the middle of a little table and turned round to look at his master. Seeing that Cosmo seemed disposed to listen he continued: "It is vaulted like a cellar and has a little door giving into a side street. People come in and put as they like. All sorts of low people, sir,facchiniand carters and boatmen and suchlike. There was an old fellow came in, a gray-headed man, a cobbler, I suppose, as he brought a bagful of mended shoes for the servants of the house. He emptied the lot on the stone floor, sir, and instead of trying to collect his money from the people that were scrambling for them he made them a speech. He spouted, sir, without drawing a breath. The courier-valet of an English doctor staying here, a Swiss I think he is, says to me in his broken English: 'He would cut every Austrian throat in this town.' We were having a glass of wine together and I asked him, 'And what do you think of that?' And he says to me, after thinking a bit, 'I agree with him. . . .' Very dreadful, sir," concluded Spire with a perfectly unmoved face.
Cosmo looked at him in silence for a time. "It was very bold talk if that is what the man really said," he remarked. "Especially as the place is so public as you say it is."
"Absolutely open to the street, sir; and that same Swiss fellow had told me just before that the town was full of spies and what they callsbirrithat came from Turin with the King. The King is staying at the Palace, sir. They are expecting the Queen of Sardinia to arrive any day. You didn't know, sir? They say she will come in an English man-of-war. That old cobbler was very abusive about the King of Piedmont too. Surely talk like that can't be safe anywhere."
Spire paused suddenly and Cosmo Latham turned his back to the fire.
"Well, and what happened?" he asked with a smile.
"You could have heard a pin drop," said Spire in equable tones, "till that Signor Cantelucci—that's the padrone of this inn, sir . . ."
"The man who lighted me up?" said Cosmo.
"Yes, sir. . . . I didn't know he was in the room till suddenly he spoke behind my back telling one of the scullions that was there to give the man a glass of wine. And what the old fellow must do but raise it above his head and shout a toast to the Destructor of the Austrians before he tossed it down his throat. I was quite astonished, but Signor Cantelucci never turned a hair. He offered his snuffbox to that doctor's courier and myself and shrugged his shoulders. 'It was only Pietro,' he said, 'a little mad'—he tapped his forehead, you know, sir. The doctor's courier sat there grinning. I got suddenly uneasy about you, sir, and went out to the front door to see whether you were coming. It's very different from what it was thirty years ago. There was no talk in Italy of cutting foreigners' throats when Sir Charles and I were here. It was quite a startling experience."
Cosmo nodded. "You seem impressed. Spire. Well, I too had an experience, just as the sun was setting."
"I am sorry to hear that, sir."
"What do you mean? Why should you be sorry?"
"I beg your pardon, sir, I thought it was something unpleasant."
Cosmo had a little laugh. "Unpleasant? No! Not exactly, though I think it was more dangerous than yours, but if there was any madness connected with it, it had a very visible method. It was not all talk either. Yes, Spire, it was exciting."
"I don't know what's come to them all. Everybody seems excited. There was not excitement in Italy thirty years ago when I was with Sir Charles and took four horses with only one helper from this very town to Florence, sir."
Cosmo with fixed eyes did not seem to hear Spire's complaining remark. He exclaimed: "Really it was very extraordinary," so suddenly that Spire gave a perceptible start. He pulled himself together and asked in a purely business tone:
"Are you going to dine in your room, sir? Time is getting on."
Cosmo's mood too seemed to have changed completely.
"I don't know. I am not hungry. I want you to move one of those screens here near the fire and place a table and chair there. I will do some correspondence to-night. Yes, I will have my dinner here, I think."
"I will go down and order it, sir," said Spire. "The cook here is a Frenchman who married a native and . . ."
"Who on earth is swearing like this outside?" exclaimed Cosmo, while Spire's face also expressed astonishment at the loud burst of voices coming along the corridor, one angry, the other argumentative, in a crescendo of scolding and expostulation which, passing the door at its highest, died away into a confused murmur in the distance of the long corridor.
"That was an English voice," said Cosmo. "I mean the angry one."
"I should think it's that English doctor from Tuscany that has been three or four days here already. He has been put on this floor."
"From what I have been able to catch," said Cosmo, "he seems very angry at having a neighbour on it. That must be me. Have you heard his name?"
"It's Marvel or some such name. He seems to be known here; he orders people about as if he were at home. The other was Cantelucci, sir."
"Very likely. Look here. Spire. I will dine in the public room downstairs. I want to see that angry gentleman. Did you see him, Spire?"
"Only his back, sir. Very broad, sir. Tall man. In boots and a riding coat. Are you going down now, sir? The dinner must be on already."
"Yes," said Cosmo, preparing to go out. "And by the by. Spire, if you ever see in the street or in that room downstairs, where everyone comes in and out as you say, a long fellow wearing a peculiar cap with a tassel, just try to find out something about him; or at any rate let me know when you have seen him. . . . You could perhaps follow him for a bit and try to see where he goes."
After saying those words Cosmo left the room before Spire could make any answer. Spire's astonishment expressed itself by a low exclamation, "Well, I never!"
Cosmo descended into a hall now empty and with most of its lights extinguished. A loud murmur of voices guided him to the door of the dining room. He discovered it to be a long apartment with flat pilasters dividing its whitewashed walls, and resembling somewhat a convent's refectory. The resemblance was accentuated by the two narrow tables occupying its middle. One of them had been appropriated by the British naval officers, had lights on it, and bristled with the necks of wine bottles along its whole length. The talk round it was confused and noisy. The other, shorter, table accommodated two rows of people in sombre garments who at first glance struck Cosmo as natives of the town and belonging to a lower station in life. They had less lights, less wine, and almost no animation. Several smaller tables were ranged against the walls at equal intervals, and Cosmo's eye was caught by one of them because of the candles in the sconce on the wall above it having been lighted. Its cloth was dazzlingly white, and Signor Cantelucci with a napkin in his hand stood respectfully at the elbow of its sole occupant, who was seated with his back to the door.
Cosmo was under the impression that his entrance had been unobserved. But before he had walked half the length of the room Signor Cantelucci, whose eyes had never ceased darting here and there while his body preserved its deferential attitude at the elbow of the exclusive client, advanced to meet him with his serious and attentive air. He bowed. Perhaps the signore would not mind sharing the table of his illustrious countryman.
"Yes, if my countryman doesn't object," assented Cosmo readily. He was absolutely certain that this must be the doctor of whom Spire had spoken.
Cantelucci had no doubt that His Excellency's company would be most welcome to his illustrious countryman. Then stepping aside, he added under his breath: "He is a person of great distinction. A most valued patron of mine. . . ." The person thus commended, turning his head ensconced in the high collar of his coat, disclosed to Cosmo a round face with a shaved chin, strongly marked eyebrows, round eyes, and thin lips compressed into a slightly peevish droop which, however, was at once corrected by an attempt at a faint smile. Cosmo, too, produced a faint smile. For an appreciable moment they looked at each other without saying a word while Cantelucci, silent too, executed a profound bow.
"Sit down, sir, sit down," said the elder man (Cosmo judged him to be well over forty), raising his voice above the uproar made by the occupants of the naval table and waving his hand at the empty chair facing his own. It had a high carved back showing some traces of gilding, and the silk which covered it was worn to rags. Cosmo sat down while Cantelucci disappeared and the man across the table positively shouted, "I am glad," and immediately followed that declaration by an energetic "Oh damn!" He bent over the table: "One can't hear oneself speak with that noisy lot. All heroes, no doubt, but not a single gentleman."
He leaned back and waited till the outburst of noisy mirth had died out at the officers' table. The corners of his mouth drooped again and Cosmo came to the conclusion that face in repose was decidedly peevish.
"I don't know what they have got to be so merry about," the other began, with a slight glance at the naval table and leaning forward again towards Cosmo. "Their occupation is gone. Heroes are a thoughtless lot. Yet just look at that elderly lieutenant at the head of the table. Shabby coat. Old epaulette. He doesn't laugh. He will die a lieutenant—on half pay. That's how heroic people end when the heroic times are over."
"I am glad," said Cosmo steadily, "that you recognize at least their heroism."
The other opened his mouth for some time before he laughed, and that gave his face an expression of somewhat hard jollity. But the laugh when it came was by no means loud and had a sort of ingratiating softness.
"No, no. Don't think I am disparaging our sea service. I had the privilege to know the greatest hero of them all. Yes, I had two talks with Lord Nelson. Well, he was certainly not . . ."
He interrupted himself and raising his eyes saw the perfectly still gaze of Cosmo fastened on his face. Then peevishly:
"What I meant to say was that he at least was indubitably a hero. I remember that I was very careful about what I said to him. I had to be mighty careful then about what I said to anybody. Someone might have put it into his head to hang me at some yard-arm or other."
"I envy your experience all the same," said Cosmo amiably. "I suppose your conscience was clear?"
"I have always been most careful not to give my conscience any license to trouble me," retorted the other with a certain curtness of tone which was not offensive; "and I have lived now for some considerable time. I am really much older than I look," he concluded, giving Cosmo such a keen glance that the young man could not I help a smile.
The other went on looking at him steadily for a while, then let his eyes wander to a door in a distant part of the long room as if impatient for the coming of the dinner. Then giving it up:
"A man who has lived actively, actively I say, the last twenty years may well feel as old as Methuselah. Lord Nelson was but a circumstance in my life. I wonder, had he lived, how he would have taken all this."
A slight movement of his hand seemed to carry this allusion outside the confines of the vaulted noisy room, to indicate all the out-of-doors of the world. Cosmo remarked that the hand was muscular, shapely, and extremely well cared for.
"I think there can be no doubt about the nature of his feelings if he were living." Cosmo's voice was exactly non-committal. His interlocutor grunted slightly.
"H'm. He would have done nothing but groan and complain about anything and everything. No, he wouldn't have taken it laughing. Very poor physique. Very. Frightful hypochondriac. . . . I am a doctor, you know."
Cantelucci was going to attend himself on his two guests. He presented to the doctor a smoking soup tureen enveloped in a napkin. The doctor assumed at once a business-like air, and at his invitation Cosmo held out his plate. The doctor helped him carefully.
"Don't forget the wine, my wine, Anzelmo," he said to Cantelucci, who answered by a profound bow. "I saved his life once," he continued after the innkeeper had gone away.
The tone was particularly significant. Cosmo, partly repelled and partly amused by the man, enquired whether the worthy host had been very ill. The doctor swallowed the last spoonful of soup.
"Ill," he said. "He had a gash that long in his side and a set of forty-pound fetters in his legs. I cured both complaints. Not without some risk to myself, as you may imagine. There was an epidemic of hanging and shooting in the South of Italy then."
He noticed Cosmo's steady stare and raised the corners of his mouth with an effect of geniality on his broad rosy face.
"In '99, you know. I wonder I didn't die of it too. I was considerably younger then and my humane instincts, early enthusiasms, and so on had led me into pretty bad company. However, I had also pretty good friends. What with one thing and another I am pretty well known all over Italy. My name is Martel—Doctor Martel. You probably may have heard. . . ."
He threw a searching glance at Cosmo, who bowed non-committally, and went on without a pause: "I am the man who brought vaccine to Italy, first. Cantelucci was trying to tell me your name but really I couldn't make it out."
"Latham is my name," said Cosmo, "and I only set foot in Italy for the first time in my life two days ago."
The doctor jerked his head sideways.
"Latham, eh? Yorkshire?"
"Yes," said Cosmo, smiling.
"To be sure. Sir Charles . . ."
"That's my father."
"Yes, yes. Served in the Guards. I used to know the doctor of his regiment. Married in Italy. I don't remember the lady's name. Oh, those are old times. Might have been a hundred years ago."
"You mean that so much history has been made since."
"Yes, no end of history," assented the doctor, but checked himself. "And yet, tell me, what does it all amount to?"
Cosmo made no answer. Cantelucci having brought the wine while they talked, the doctor-filled two glasses, waited a moment as if to hear Cosmo speak, but as the young man remained silent he said:
"Well, let us drink then to Peace."
He tossed the wine down his throat while Cosmo drank his much more leisurely. As they set down their empty glasses they were startled by a roar of a tremendous voice filling the vaulted room from end to end in order to "let Their Honours know that the boat was at the steps." The doctor made a faint grimace.
"Do you hear the voice of the British lion, Mr. Latham?" he asked peevishly. "Ah, well, we will have some little peace now here."
Those officers at the naval table who had to go on board rose in a body and left the room hastily. Three or four who had a longer leave drew close together and began to talk low with their heads in a bunch. Cosmo glancing down the room seemed to recognize at the door the form of the seaman whom he had met earlier in the evening. He followed the officers out. The other diners, the sombre ones, and a good many of them with powdered heads, were also leaving the room. Cantelucci put another dish on the table, stepped back a pace with a bow, and stood still. A moment of profound silence succeeded the noise.
"First rate," said Doctor Martel to Cosmo, after tasting the dish, and then gave a nod to Cantelucci, who made another bow and retreated backwards, always with a solemn expression on his face.
"Italian cooking, of course, but then I am an old Italian myself. Not that I love them, but I have acquired many of their tastes. Before we have done dining you will have tasted the perfection of their cookery, north and south, but I assure you are sharing my dinner. You don't suppose that the dishes that come to this table are the same the common customers get."
Cosmo made a slight bow. "I am very sensible of the privilege," he said.
"The honour and the pleasure are mine, I assure you," the doctor said in a half-careless tone and looking with distaste towards the small knot of officers with a twenty-four hours' leave who had finished their confabulation and had risen in a body like men who had agreed on some pleasant course of action. Only the elderly lieutenant lagging a little behind cast a glance at his two countrymen at the little table and followed his comrades with less eager movements.
"A quarter of a tough bullock or half a roast sheep are more in their way, and Cantelucci knows it. As to that company that was sitting at the other table, well, I daresay you can tell yourself what they were, small officials or tradesmen of some sort. I should think that emptying all their pockets—and they were how many, say twenty—you couldn't collect the value of one English pound at any given time. And Cantelucci knows that too. Well, of course. Still he does well here, but it's a poor place. I wonder, Mr. Latham, what are you doing here?"
"Well," said Cosmo with a good-humoured smile, "I am just staying here. Just as you yourself are staying here."
"Ah, but you never saved Cantelucci's life, whereas I did and that's the reason why I am staying here: out of mere kindness and to give him an opportunity to show his gratitude. . . . Let me fill your glass. Not bad, this wine."
"Excellent. What is it?"
"God knows. Let us call it Cantelucci's gratitude. Generous stuff, this, to wash down those dishes with. Gluttony is an odious vice, but an ambition to dine well is about the only one which can be indulged at no cost to one's fellow men."
"It didn't strike me," murmured Cosmo absently, for he was just then asking himself why he didn't like this pleasant companion, and had just come to the conclusion that it was because of his indecisive expression wavering between peevishness and jocularity with something else in addition, as it were, in the background of his handsome, neat, and comfortable person. Something that was not aggressive nor yet exactly impudent. He wondered at his mistrust of the personality which certainly was very communicative but apparently not inquisitive. At that moment he heard himself addressed with a direct inquiry.
"You passed, of course, through Paris?"
"Yes, and Switzerland."
"Oh, Paris. I wonder what it looks like now. Full of English people, of course. Let's see, how many years is it since I was last there? Ha, lots of heads rolled off very noble shoulders since. Well, I am trying to make my way there. Curious times. I have found some letters here. Duke of Wellington very much disliked, what? His nod is insupportable, eh?"
"I have just had a sight of the Duke two or three times," said Cosmo. "I can assure you that everybody is treating him with the greatest respect."
"Of course, of course. All the same I bet that all these foreigners are chuckling to themselves at having finished the job without him."
"They needn't be so pleased with themselves," said Cosmo scornfully. "The mere weight of their numbers . . ."
"Yes. It was more like a migration of armed tribes than an army. They will boast of their success all the same. There is no saying what the Duke himself thinks. . . . I wonder if he could have beaten the other in a fair fight. Well, that will never be known now."
Cosmo had a sudden sense of an epical tale with a doubtful conclusion. He made no answer. Cantelucci had come and gone solemnly, self-contained, with the usual two ceremonial bows. As he retreated he put out all the candles on the central table and became lost to view. From the illuminated spot at which he sat, Cosmo's eyes met only the shadows of the long refectory-like room with its lofty windows closely shuttered so that they looked like a row of niches for statues. Yet the murmur of the piazza full of people stole faintly into his ear. Cosmo had the recollection of the vast expanse of flagstones enclosed by the shadowy and palatial masses gleaming with lights here and there under the night sky thick with stars and perfectly cloudless.
"This is a very quiet inn," he observed.
"It has that advantage certainly. The walls are fairly thick, as you can see. It's an unfinished palace, I mean as to its internal decorations, which were going to be very splendid and even more costly than splendid. The owner of it, I mean the man who had it built, died of hunger in that hall out there."
"Died of hunger?" repeated Cosmo.
"No doubt about it. It was during the siege of Genoa. You know the siege, surely?"
Cosmo recollected himself. "I was quite a child at the time," he said.
The venerated client of Cantelucci cracked a walnut and then looked at Cosmo's face.
"I should think you weren't seven years old at the time," he said in a judicial tone. "When I first came into Italy with the vaccine, you know, Sir Charles's marriage was still being talked about in Florence. I remember it perfectly though it seems as if it had all happened in another world. Yes, indubitably he died of hunger like ten thousand other Genoese. He couldn't go out to hunt for garbage with the populace or crawl out at night trying to gather nettles in the ditches outside the forts, and nobody would have known that he was dead for a month if one of the bombs out of a bomb-vessel with Admiral Keith's blockading squadron hadn't burst the door in. They found him at the foot of the stairs, and, they say, with a lot of gold pieces in his pockets. But nobody cared much for that. If it had been a lot of half-gnawed bones there would have been blood spilt, no doubt. For all I know there were or may be even now secret places full of gold in the thickness of these walls. However, the body was thrown into a corpse-cart and the authorities boarded the doorway. It remained boarded for years because the heirs didn't care to have anything to do with that shell of a palace. I fancy that the last of them died in the snows of Russia. Cantelucci came along, and owing to a friendship with some sort of scribe in the Municipality he got permission to use the place for his hostelry. He told me that he found several half ducats in the corners of the hall when he took possession. I suppose they paid for the whitewash, for I can't believe that Cantelucci had much money in his pockets."
"Perhaps he found one of those secret hiding-places of which you spoke," suggested Cosmo.
"What? Cantelucci? He never looked for any gold. He is too much in the clouds; but he has made us dine well in the palace of the starved man, hasn't he? Sixteen years ago in Naples he was a Jacobin and a friend of the French, a rebel, a traitor to his king if you like—but he has a good memory, there is no denying that."
"Is he a Neapolitan, then?" asked Cosmo. "I imagined they were of a different type."
"God only knows. He was there and I didn't ask him. He was a prisoner of the royalists, of the reactionaries. I was much younger then and perhaps more humane. Flesh and blood couldn't stand in the sight of the way in which they were being treated, men of position, of attainments, of intelligence. The Neapolitan Jacobins were no populace. They were men of character and ideas, the pick of all classes. They were properly liberals. Still they were called Jacobins and you may be surprised that I, a professional man and an Englishman . . ."
Cosmo, looking up at the sudden pause, saw the doctor sitting with the dull eyes and the expression of a man suddenly dissatisfied with himself. Cosmo hastened to say that he himself was no friend of reactionaries and in any case not conceited enough to judge the conduct of men older than himself. Without a sign that he had heard a word of that speech the doctor had a faint and peevish smile. He never moved at all till, after a longish interval, Cosmo spoke again.
"Were you expecting somebody that would want to see you this evening?" he asked.
The doctor started.
"See me? No. Why do you ask?"
"Because within the last five minutes somebody has put his head twice through the door; and as I don't expect either a visitor or a messenger, I thought he was looking for you. I don't know a single soul here."
The doctor remained perfectly unmoved. Cosmo, who was looking towards the distant door, saw the head again and this time shouted at it an inquiry. Thereupon the owner of the head entered and had not advanced half the length of the room before Cosmo recognized in him the portly figure of Spire. To his great surprise, however. Spire instead of coming up to the table made a vague gesture and stopped short.
This was strange conduct. The doctor sat completely unconscious, and Cosmo took the course of excusing himself and following Spire, who, directly he had seen his master rise, had retreated rapidly to the door. The doctor did not rouse himself to answer, and Cosmo left him leaning on his elbow in a thoughtful attitude. In the badly lighted hall he found Spire waiting for him between the foot of the stairs and the door which Cosmo presumed was leading to the offices of the hotel. Again Spire made a vague gesture which seemed to convey a warning, and approached his master on tiptoe.
"Well, what is it? What do you mean by flourishing your arm at me like this?" asked Cosmo sharply, and Spire ventured on a warning "Ssh!"
"Why, there is nobody here," said Cosmo, lowering his voice nevertheless.
"I wanted to tell you, sir, I have seen that fellow."
"What fellow? Oh yes. The fellow with the cap. Where did you see him?"
"He is here," said Spire, pointing to the closed door.
"Here? What could a man like that want here? Did you speak to him?"
"No, sir, he has just come in and for all I know he may be already gone away—though I don't think so."
"Oh, you don't think so. Do you know what he has come for?"
Spire made no answer to the question, but after a short silence: "I will go and see, and if you stand where you are, sir, you will be able to look right into the room. He may not be the man."
Without waiting for an answer he moved towards the closed door and threw it wide open. The room, very much like the dining room but smaller, was lighted gloomily by two smoky oil lamps hanging from the ceiling, over a trestle table having a wooden bench on each side. Bad as the light was Cosmo made out at once the peculiar cap. The wearer, sitting on one of the benches, was leaning with both elbows across the table towards the fair head of a girl half-hidden by a lace scarf. They were engaged in earnest conversation so that they never turned their heads at Spire's entrance. Cosmo had just time to discern the fine line of the girl's shoulders, which were half-tinned from him when Spire shut the door.
Returning to his bedroom, Cosmo found the fire of logs still playing fitfully upon the drawn curtains, upon the dim shape of the canopied bed of state, and perceived that Spire as directed had prepared the writing table and had placed a screen round the inviting-looking armchair.
He did not sit down to write. He felt more than ever that in a moment of amused expansion he had made a rash promise to his sister. The difficulty in keeping it had confronted him for the first time in Paris. Henrietta would have liked to hear of people he met, of the great world indulging in the new-found freedom of travel, the English, the French, the Poles, the Germans. Certainly he had seen quite a lot of people; but the problem was as to what could be said about them to a young girl, ignorant of the world, brought up in the country, and having really no notion of what mankind was like. He admitted to himself with introspective sincerity that even he did not exactly know what mankind was really like. He was too much of a novice, and she, obviously, was too innocent to be told of his suspicions and of what it was like. Even to describe the world outwardly was not an easy task—to Henrietta. The world was certainly amusing. Oh yes, it was amusing; but even as he thought that, he felt within him a certain distaste. Just before he had left Paris he had been at a rout given by a great lady. There was a fellow there who somehow became suspected of picking pockets. He was extremely ugly and therefore attracted notice. The great lady, asked if she had invited him, denied ever having seen him before, but he assured her that he had spoken to her already that evening. Her Ladyship then declared that if he was really the man he gave himself out to be, she was not aware that he was in Paris. She imagined him to be in Ireland. Altogether a peculiar story. Cosmo never knew how it had ended because his friend Hollis led him away to introduce him to Mrs. R., who was most affable and entertained him with a complete inventory of her daughter's accomplishments, the daughter herself being then in the room, obviously quite lovely and clever, but certainly a little odd; for a little later, on his being introduced, she had discoursed to him for half an hour on things of the heart, charmingly, but in a perfectly cool and detached manner. There was also Lady Jane, very much in evidence, very much run after, with a voice of engaging sweetness, but very free, not to say licentious, in her talk. How could he confide his impressions of her to Henrietta? As a matter of fact his head had been rather full of Lady Jane for some time. She had, so to speak, attended him all the way from Paris up to the morning of his arrival at Cantelucci's inn. But she had now deserted him. Or was it his mind that had dropped her out of a haunting actuality into that region where the jumble of one's experiences is allowed to rest? But was it possible that a shabby fellow in tight breeches and bad boots, with a peculiarly shaped cap on his head, could have got between him and Lady Jane about the time of sunset?
Cosmo thought suddenly that one's personal life was a very bizarre thing. He could write to his sister that before he had been three hours in Genoa he had been involved in passing secret correspondence from Italy to the Island of Elba. Henrietta had solemnly charged him to write everything he could find out, hear, or even guess about Napoleon. He had heard certainly a lot of most extraordinary stories; and if he had not made any guesses he had been associating with persons who actually had been doing nothing else; frightened persons, exulting people, cast-down people, frivolous people, people with airs of mystery or with airs of contempt. But by Jove, now he had been in personal touch and had actually helped a man of the people who was mysteriously corresponding with Elba. He could write something about that but, after all, was it worth while? Finally he concluded he wouldn't write home at all that evening; pushed the table away, and throwing himself into the armchair extended his legs towards the fire. A moody expression settled on his face. His immobility resembled open-eyed sleep with the red spark of the fire in his unwinking eyes, and a perfect insensibility to outward impressions. But he heard distinctly Spire knocking discreetly at the door. Cosmo's first impulse was to shout that he wasn't wanted, but he changed his mind. "Come in."
Spire shut the door carefully, and crossing the room at once put a log on the fire. Then he said:
"Can't get any hot water this evening, sir. Very sorry, sir. I will see that it won't happen again."
At the same time he thought, "Served him right for picking out such an inn to stay at." Cosmo, still silent, stared at the fire, and when he roused himself at last he perceived Spire in the act of putting down in front of his chair a pair of slippers of shiny leather and red heels.
"Take your boots off, sir?" suggested Spire under his breath.
Cosmo let him do it. "Going to bed now, sir?" asked Spire in the same subdued tone.
"No, but you needn't wait. I won't need you any more to-night."
"Thank you, sir." Spire lingered, boots in hand. "The two small pistols are on the bedside table, sir. I have looked to the primings. This town is lull of rabble from all parts just now, so I hear. The lock of your door is fairly poor. I shall be sleeping just outside in the corridor, sir. They are going to put me a pallet there."
"You will be very cold," protested Cosmo.
"It will be all right, sir. I have got the fur rug out of the carriage. I had everything taken out of the carriage. The yard isn't safe, sir. Nothing is properly safe in this house, so far as I can see."
Cosmo nodded absent-mindedly. "Oh, wait a moment, Spire. That man, that fellow in the cap, is he still downstairs?"
Spire thought rapidly that he wouldn't be a party to bringing any of those ragamuffins up to the bedroom. "Gone a long time ago, sir," he said stolidly.
Cosmo had a vivid recollection of the man's pose of being settled for an earnest and absorbing conversation to last half the night.
"He doesn't belong to this house?" he asked.
"No, sir, he only came to talk to a young woman. I left him taking leave of her to come up to you, sir. I suppose he was the man you meant, sir."
"Yes," said Cosmo, "I have no doubt about it. He will probably turn up again."
Spire admitted reluctantly that it was likely. He had been telling a long tale to that young woman. "She is very good-looking, sir."
"Is she a servant here?"
"Oh no, sir. She came in with that old cut-throat cobbler. They seem to be friendly. I don't like the looks of the people in this house."
"I wonder," said Cosmo, "whether you could manage to obtain for me a quiet talk with that man on the next occasion he comes here."
Spire received this overture in profound silence.
"Do you think you could?" insisted Cosmo.
A dispassionate raising of the eyebrows preceded the apparently irrelevant remark. "The worst of this house, sir, is that it seems open to all sorts of rabble."
"I see. Well, try to think of some way. Spire. You may go now."
Spire, carrying the boots, walked as far as the door, where he turned for a moment. "The only way I can think of, sir," he said, "would be to make friends with that young woman." Before Cosmo could recover from the surprise at the positive statement Spire had gone out and had shut the door.
Cosmo slept heavily but fitfully, with moments of complete oblivion interrupted by sudden starts, when he would lie on his back with open eyes, wondering for a moment where he was, and then fall asleep again before he had time to make a movement. In the morning the first thing he did was to scribble a note to the Countess Montevesso to ask her permission to call that very morning. While writing the address he smiled to himself at the idea that it was after all the little Adèle whom he remembered but dimly, mostly as a fair head hovering near his father's armchair in the big drawing room, the windows of which opened on the western terrace. As a schoolboy during his holidays he saw the two girls, Adèle and his sister, mostly in the evening. He had his own out-of-door pursuits while those girls stayed upstairs with their governess. Remembering how he used to catch glimpses of them, the fair and the dark, walking in the Park, he felt a greater curiosity to see the Countess de Montevesso than if he had never seen her before. He found it impossible to represent her to himself grown up, married for years, the daughter of an ambassador.
When the family of D'Armand departed from Latham Hall, it was as if a picture had faded, a picture of faces, attitudes, and colours, leaving untouched the familiar background of his Yorkshire home, on to which he could never recall them distinctly. He would be meeting a complete stranger and he wondered whether that lady, who, young as she still was, had lived through tragic times and had seen so many people, would remember him at all. Him personally. For as to his home he had no doubt she had not forgotten; neither the stones, nor the woods, nor the streams. And as to the people Cosmo had a distinct notion that she was more familiar with his father than he and Henrietta ever had been. His father was not a man whom anybody could forget. And that Countess of Montevesso, more difficult for him to imagine than a complete stranger, would remember his mother better than he could himself. She had seen so much more of her day after day for something like three years; whereas he was at home only at intervals and while there took Lady Latham for granted, a kind, serene presence, beautifully dressed.
He handed the note to Spire with orders to send it off by one of the ragged idlers about the hotel door. There would be an answer. Then, approaching the window, he perceived that he could not see very much out of it. It was too high above the piazza, which furthermore was masked by the jutting balconies. But the sky was blue with a peculiar deep brilliance and the sunlight slanted over the roofs of the houses on the other side of the piazza. When he opened the window the keen pure air roused his vitality. The faint murmur of voices from below reached him very much as it had reached him downstairs the night before through the closed shutters of the dining room, as if the population of the town had never gone to bed.
While Spire was serving his breakfast in his room he wondered what the Countess of Montevesso would look like. The same fair head but higher above the ground and with the hair no longer flowing over the shoulders, but done up no doubt most becomingly and perhaps turned darker with age. It would be the hair of the daughter of an ambassador, able to judge of men and affairs, a woman of position, a very fine lady. Perhaps just a fine lady; but the memory of the child came to him with renewed force, gracious, quiet, with something timid and yet friendly in all its gestures, with his father's hand smoothing the fair hair. . . . No. Not merely a fine lady.
Cosmo had no inborn aptitude for mere society life. Though not exactly shy, he lacked that assurance of manner which his good looks and his social status ought to have given him. He suspected there was too much mockery in the world, and the undoubted friendliness he had met with, especially from women, seemed to him always a little suspect, the effect not of his own merit, of which he had no idea, but of a shallow, good-natured compassion. He imagined himself awkward in company. The very brilliance of the entertainments, of which he had seen already a good many, was apt to depress his spirits. Often during talk with some pretty woman he would feel that he was not meant for that sort of life, and then suddenly he would withdraw into his shell. In that way he had earned for himself the reputation of being a little strange. He was to a certain extent aware of it, but he was not aware that this very thing made him interesting.
A gust of diffidence came over him while he was trying to eat some breakfast. "I really don't want to see that Countess," he thought. Then remembering the intonation in his father's voice when talking of Adèle, he wondered whether perchance he would find an uncommon personality. Cosmo had a profound belief in his father, though he was well aware that he had never understood him thoroughly. . . . But if she is a woman out of the common, he reflected further, then she can't possibly be interested in a rough schoolboy grown into a young man of no particular importance. No doubt she would be amiable enough. . . .
"Clear away all these things. Spire," he said, "and go downstairs to see if the messenger is back."
The messenger was not back yet; and assisted by Spire, Cosmo began to dress himself with extreme care. The tying of his neckcloth was an irritating affair, and so was Spire's perfectly wooden face while he was holding up the glass to him for that operation. Cosmo spoiled two neckcloths and became extremely dissatisfied with the cut and colour of various articles of attire which Spire presented to him one after another. The fashions for men were perfectly absurd. By an effort of mind Cosmo overcame this capricious discontent with familiar things and finished his dressing. Then he sent Spire once more downstairs to inquire if the messenger was back. Obediently, Spire disappeared, but once gone it did not seem as though he meant to return at all. There was no Spire. There was no bell-pull in the room either.
Cosmo stuck his head out through the door. Absolute silence reigned in the well of the stairs. A woman in black, on her knees beside a pail of water and scrubbing the floor of the corridor, looked up at him. Cosmo drew his head in. She was a pitiful hag. . . . He was sure of a gracious reception, of course. He was also sure of meeting a lot of people of all sorts. He wondered what sort of society she received. Everybody, no doubt; Austrians, Italians, French; all the triumphant reactionaries, all the depressed heads bobbing up again after the storm, venomous, revengeful, oppressive, odious. What the devil had become of Spire?
The long window right down to the floor had remained open. Suddenly the sound of a drum reached Cosmo's ears. Stepping out on a balcony, he saw a company of infantry in white coats marching across a distant corner of the piazza. Austrians! Yes, their time had come. A voice behind him said: "The messenger is back, sir." Cosmo stepped in and saw Spire empty-handed. "There's a verbal answer, sir."
"What is it? You haven't spoken with the messenger, have you?"
"I have seen him, sir, but I got the message through the innkeeper. He speaks a little English. The lady would be glad to see you as soon after the fourth hour as possible. They have their own way of reckoning time, but as far as I can understand it, sir, it means something between ten and eleven. At any rate, it's what Cantelucci says, and he can tell the time by an English watch all right."
"Shut the window, Spire. I don't want to hear that drum. Yes, it would mean as soon after ten as possible, but why has the fellow been so long? Is it very far?"
"No, sir, I think it's quite close, really. He was so long because he has been trying to give your note to the lady herself and there was some difficulty about it. That innkeeper tells me that instead of handing it to the porter the fellow got in through the kitchen door and was dodging about a passage for some time."
Cosmo looked fixedly at Spire, whose face expressed no opinion whatever on those proceedings.
"Dodging in a passage," repeated Cosmo. "But did he see the lady herself?"
"Apparently not, sir. Cantelucci slanged him for being so long, but he said he thought he was acting for the best. He would have been there yet if a black woman hadn't come along and snatched the letter out of his hand. It was she too who brought down the message from the lady."
"Oh, yes," said Cosmo. "Don't you remember there was a black maid?"
"Yes, sir, I remember perfectly well, in the house-keeper's room. She learned to talk English very quickly, but she was a little spitfire."
"Was she?"
Spire busied himself in brushing Cosmo's hat while he remarked in an explanatory tone: "She could never understand a joke, sir."
He attended Cosmo into the hall, where Cantelucci with his usual intense gravity and a deep bow asked whether the signore would want a carriage. Cosmo, however, preferred walking; therefore the youth who had taken Cosmo's note was directed to guide the English milord to the Palazzo Brignoli. He had a tousled head of hair and wore a jacket that might have belonged at one time to a hussar's uniform, with all its trimmings and buttons cut off and a ragged hole in each elbow. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes rolled expressively, and his smile discovered a set of very sound teeth.
"Si, si, Palazzo Rosso," he said.
Cantelucci explained in his imperturbable and solemn manner that the populace gave that name to the Palace on account of the red granite of which it was built, and the thin-faced lad, bounding forward, preceded Cosmo across the piazza, looking over his shoulder from time to time. Cosmo's doubts and apprehensions disappeared before the inevitable charm and splendour of the town. At the corner of a narrow lane and a small open space with some trees growing in the centre of it the ragged guide stopped and, pointing at a dark and magnificent building, left him alone. Massive and sombre, ornate and heavy, with a dark aspect and enormous carvings, the Palace where little Adèle was living had to Cosmo's eye the air of a sumptuous prison. The portal with its heavy iron-studded doors was reached by a flight of shallow steps, a segment of a wide circle, guarded on each side by an enormous griffin seated, tensely alert with wing and claw, on a high and narrow pedestal. On ascending the steps Cosmo discovered that the heavy door was ajar, just enough to let him slip in; and, at once, from the gloom of the arched passage he saw the inner sunshine on the oleanders of the inner court, flagged with marble, from whence a broad staircase ascended to the colonnaded gallery of the first floor.
Cosmo had seen no porter or other living soul, and there was no sound of any sort, no appearance of movement anywhere. Even the leaves of the oleanders kept perfectly still. In the light of the morning a slanting shadow cut the western wall into two triangles, one dark, the other glowing as with a red fire; and Cosmo remained for a moment spellbound by a strong impression of empty grandeur, magnificence, and solitude.
A voice behind him, issuing from somewhere in the big gateway through which he had passed, cried: "Ascend, signore!" Cosmo began to mount the open staircase, embarrassed as though he had been watched by thousands of eyes. In the gallery he hesitated, for the several doors he could see remained closed, and the only sound that reached his ears was the gentle plashing of the fountain in the court below him.
Before he had made up his mind the door in front of him opened fairly wide, but he could not see the person till he had entered an anteroom with narrow red and gilt settees ranged along its white walls. The door shut behind him and, turning round, he confronted a dark, plump mulatto woman who was staring at him with an expression of intense admiration. She clapped her hands in ecstasy and, opening her mouth, exhibited her white teeth in a low cackling laugh.
"Bonjour, Aglae," said Cosmo readily.
The woman laughed again in sheer delight. "You remember my name, Mr. Cosmo! You quite frighten me, you grow so big. I remember you climb tree and throw nice ripe apple to the black girl. . . ." Her eyes gleamed and rolled absurdly.
Cosmo was so strangely touched by this extremely slight reminiscence of his tree-climbing boyhood, that when she added, "That was a good time," he was quite ready to agree, thereby provoking another burst of delightful laughter. But Aglae was controlling herself obviously. Her laughter was subdued. It had not the unbounded freedom of sound that used to reverberate exotically in the dark passages at the back of Latham Hall; though there, too, Aglae tried to subdue it in view of rebukes or sarcastic comments in the servants' hall. It stopped suddenly and Aglae in a tone of sober respect wanted to know how the Seignior was. Cosmo said that his father was very well.
"He a very-great gentleman," commented Aglae. "I always tremble when I see him. You very fine gentleman too, Mr. Cosmo."
She moved to one of the inner doors, but as Cosmo was following her she raised her hand to prevent him and opened the door only a little way, then came back and said in a lower tone, "It's to hear the bell better when it rings. . . . Will you wait a little bit here?" she asked anxiously.
"I will," said Cosmo, "but surely you don't want to tremble before me. What is the matter?"
"Nothing at all is the matter." Aglae tossed her head, tied up in a bandana handkerchief, with something of the spirit of the old days.
Cosmo was amused. "I no tremble before you," she continued. "I always like you very much. I am glad with all my heart to see you here."
All the time she turned her ear to the door she had left the least bit ajar. She had on a high-waisted white calico dress, white stockings, and Genoese slippers on her feet. Her dark brown hands moved uneasily.
"And how is Madame la Comtesse?" asked Cosmo.
"Miss Adèle very well. Anyway she never says anything else. She very great lady now. All the town come here, but she wants to see you alone after all these years."
"It's very kind of her," said Cosmo. "I was wondering whether she remembered me at all."
Now the excitement of seeing him had worn off, he was surprised at the careworn expression of the mulatto's face. For a moment it seemed to him like a tragic mask, then came the flash of white teeth, strangely unlike a smile.
"She remember everything," said Aglae. "She . . . she . . . Mr. Cosmo, you no boy now. I tell you that Miss Adèle had not a moment's peace since she drive away from your big home in the country one very cold day. I remember very well. Little birds fall dead off the tree. I feel ready to fall dead myself."
"I was away at school," said Cosmo. He remembered that on his return the disappearance of those people had not produced a very strong impression on him. In fact, the only thing he had missed was, in the evening, the fair head of the stranger Adèle near the dark head of his sister Henrietta. And the next evening he had not even missed that!
While these thoughts were passing through his head he waited, looking at Aglae with a faint smile of which he was not aware. The mulatto girl seemed to have concentrated all her faculties on listening for the sound of a bell. It came at last. Cosmo heard it, too, very distant, faint and prolonged. A handbell.
"Now," said Aglae under her breath, and Cosmo followed her through a suite of rooms, magnificent but under-furnished, with the full light excluded by half-closed jalousies. The vista was terminated by a white and gold door at which Aglae stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder with an air of curiosity, anxiety, or was it hesitation? But certainly without a smile. As to his own it had stiffened permanently on his lips. Before turning the handle of the door the mulatto listened for a moment. Then she threw it open, disclosing a room full of light indeed but which Cosmo could not see in its full extent because of a screen cutting off the view. His last thought as he crossed the threshold was, "It will be interesting," and then he heard the door shut behind him, leaving him as it were alone with the heavy screen of figured velvet and three windows through which sunshine poured in a way that almost blinded him after his long experience of half lights.
He walked clear of the screen, and he was surprised at the vast size of the room. Here and there were other screens and a quite unexpected quantity of elegant furniture amongst which he felt for a moment as if lost. All this shone and gleamed and glowed with colour in the freshness and brilliance of the sunny morning. "Why, there's nobody here," he thought with a mingled sense of disappointment and relief. To his left above a square of carpet that was like a flower-bed rose a white mantelpiece which in its proportion and sumptuosity was like a low but much carved portal surmounted by an enormous sheet of glass reaching up to the cornice of the ceiling. He stepped on to the flowers, feeling now somewhat vexed, and only then perceived away at the other end of the room, in a corner beyond a fourth window, a lady seated at a writing table with her back to him. Barred by the gilt openwork of the chair-back he saw her dress, the only bit of blue in the room. There was some white lace about her shoulders, her fair head was bent, she was writing rapidly.
Whoever she was she seemed not to be aware of his presence. Cosmo did not know whether to wait in silence or say something, or merely warn her by a slight cough. What a stupid position, he thought. At that moment the lady put the pen down and rose from her chair brusquely, yet there was a perceptible moment before she turned round and advanced towards him. She was tall. But for the manner of his introduction, which could leave no room for doubt, the impression that this could not be the lady he had come to see would have been irresistible. As it was Cosmo felt apologetic, as though he had come to the wrong house. It occurred to him also that the lady had been from the very first aware of his presence. He was struck by the profundity of her eyes, which were fixed on him. The train of her blue robe followed on the floor. Her well-shaped head was a mass of short fair curls, and while she approached him Cosmo saw the colour leave her cheeks, the passing away of an unmistakable blush. She stopped and said in an even voice:
"Don't you recognize me?"
He recovered his power of speech but not exactly the command of his thoughts, which were overwhelmed by a variety of strong and fugitive impulses.
"I have never known you," he said with a tone of the profoundest conviction.
She smiled (Cosmo was perfectly sure that he had never seen that sort of smile or the promise even of anything so enchanting), and sank slowly on to a sofa whose brocaded silk, gray like pure ashes, and the carved frame painted with flowers and picked with gold, acquired an extraordinary value from the colour of her dress and the grace of her attitude. She pointed to an armchair, close by. Cosmo sat down. A very small table of ebony inlaid with silver stood between them, her hand rested on it; and Cosmo looked at it with appreciation, as if it had been an object of art, before he raised his eyes to the expectant face.
"Frankly," he said, "didn't you think that a complete stranger had been brought into the room?"
He said this very seriously, and she answered him in a light tone. "For a moment I was afraid to look round. I sat there with my back to you. It was absurd after having been imprudent enough to let you come in the morning. You kept so still that you might have been already gone. I took fright, I jumped up, but I need not have hesitated. You are still the same boy."
Cosmo paid very little attention to what she said. Without restraint and disguise, in open admiration he was observing her with all his might, saying to himself, "Is it possible—this—Adèle!" He recollected himself, however, sufficiently to murmur that men changed more slowly and perhaps less completely than women. The Countess of Montevesso was not of that opinion, or, at any rate, not in this case.
"It isn't that at all. I know because I used to look at you with that attention worthy of the heir of the Latham name, whereas you never honoured the French girl by anything more than a casual glance. Why should you have done more? You had the dogs, the horses, your first gun. I remember the gun. You showed it to both of us, to your sister and myself while we were walking in the park. You shouted to us and came across the grass, brandishing your gun, while the governess—I don't remember her name—screamed at you. Ohmon dieu! N'approaches pas!You paid not the slightest attention to her. You had a flushed face. Of course her screaming frightened us at first, and just as we were preparing to get very interested in your gun you walked off with a look of contempt."
"Did I behave so badly as that?" said Cosmo, feeling suddenly very much at ease with that lady with whom he had never even exchanged a formal greeting. She had grown more animated. As he was very fond of his sister he answered her numerous questions about Henrietta with interest and pleasure. From that subject the lady on the sofa, who may or may not have been Adèle d'Armand at one time, went on putting a series of questions about the house and all the people in it in a manner that proved a precise and affectionate recollection of those days. The memory of the countryside seemed to have been cherished by her too, and Cosmo's heart warmed to the subject. She remembered certain spots in the park and certain points of view in the neighbourhood as though she had left them but a year before. She seemed not to have forgotten a single servant in the house. She asked after Spire.