CHAPTER XXXVIITREVANION FINDS AN ALLY
Trevanion, the drunkenness slipped from his face and the irksome limp discarded, came from the osteria door. His audience dwindled, he was minded for fresh air and a stroll. Behind the red glow of his segar his dark face wore a smile.
Just at the fringe of the foliage two stolid figures in servant’s livery stepped before him. Startled, he drew back. Two others stood behind him. He looked from side to side, pale with sudden anticipation, his lips drawn back like a lynx at bay. He was weaponless.
A fifth figure joined the circle that hemmed him—Paolo, suave, smiling, Corsican.
“Magnificence!” he said, in respectful Italian, “I bear the salutations of a gentleman of Ravenna who begs your presence at his house to-night.” Without waiting answer, he called softly, and a coach with six white horses drew slowly from the shadow.
For an instant Trevanion smiled in grim humor, half deceived. A simultaneous movement of the four in livery, however, recalled his distrust.
“Are these hisbravos?” he inquired in surly defiance.
“His servants, Magnificence!”
“Carry my excuses then—and bid him mend the manner of his invitations.”
“I should regret to have to convey such a message from the milord.” Paolo opened the coach door as he spoke. The inference was obvious.
Trevanion glanced swiftly over his shoulder toward the still hostelry. His first sound of alarm might easily be throttled. At any rate, he reflected, these were not the middle ages. To the owner of this equipage he was an English lord, and lords were not kidnapped and stilettoed, even in Italy. Some wealthy Ravennese, perhaps, not openly to flout public disapproval, chose thus to gratify his curiosity. Anticipating refusal, he had taken this method of urbane constraint. Well, perforce, he would see the adventure through! He shrugged his shoulders and entered the coach.
Paolo seated himself, and the horses started at a swinging trot. Through the windows Trevanion could discern the forms of the men-servants running alongside. He sat silent, his companion vouchsafing no remark, till the carriage stopped and they alighted at the open portal of a massive structure fronting the paved street. It was Casa Guiccioli.
The Corsican led the way in and the servants disappeared. With a word, Paolo also vanished, and the man so strangely introduced gazed about him.
The hall was walled with an arras tapestry of faded antique richness, hung with uncouth weapons. Opposite ascended a broad, dimly lighted stairway holding niches of tarnished armor. Wealth with penuriousness showed everywhere. Could this whimsical duress be the audacity of some self-willed dama, weary of hercavaliereserventeand scheming thus to gain a romantictête-à-têtewith the famed and defamed personage he had caricatured that day? Trevanion stole softly to the arras, wrenched a Malay kriss from a clump of arms, and slipped it under his coat.
A moment later his guide reappeared. Up the stair, along a tiled and gilded hall, he followed him to a widestanza. A door led from this at which Paolo knocked.
As it opened, the compelled guest caught a glimpse of the interior, set with mirrors and carven furniture, panelled and ornate with the delicate traceries of brush and chisel. In the room stood two figures: a man bent from age, his face blazing with the watch-fires of an unbalanced purpose, and a woman, young, lovely, distraught. She wore a dressing-gown, and her gold hair fell uncaught about her shoulders, as though she had been summoned in haste to a painful audience. Her eyes, on the man, were fixed in an expression of fearful wonder. One hand was pressed hard against her heart. Trevanion had never seen either before; what did they want with him?
“Your guest,” announced Paolo on the threshold.
“What do you mean to do?” cried the girl in frantic fear. “He is a noble of England! You dare not harm him!”
“I am a noble of Romagna!” grated the old man.
It was therealGeorge Gordon they expected—not he! Trevanion was smiling as Paolo spoke to him. With a hand on the blade he concealed he strode forward, past him, into the room.
“Your servant, Signore,” said he, as the door closed behind him.
There was a second of silence, broken by a snarl from the old count and a cry from Teresa—a sob of relief. She leaned against the wall, in the reaction suddenly faint. Her husband’s summons had filled her with apprehension—for she recalled the sound in the shrubbery—and his announcement, full of menace to Gordon, had shaken her mettle of resistance. She remembered an old story of a hired assassin whispered of him when she was a child. At the insane triumph and excitement in his manner she had been convinced and frightened. Terror had seized her anew—the shivering terror of him that had come to her on the monastery path and that her after-resentment had allayed.
Now, however, her fear calmed, indignation at what she deemed a ruse to compel an admission of concern that had but added to her husband’s fury, sent the blood back to her cheeks. All the repressed feeling that his cumulative humiliations had aroused burst their bonds. She turned on him with quivering speech:
“Evviva, Signore!” she said bitterly. “Are you not proud to have frightened a woman by this valorous trick? Have you other comedies to garnish the evening?Non importa—I leave them for your guest.”
Trevanion’s face wore a smile of relish as she swept from the room. He was certain now of two things. The old man hated George Gordon; the girl—was she daughter or wife?—did not. Had he unwittingly stumbled upon a chapter in the life of the man he trailed which he had not known? He seated himself with coolness, his inherent dare-deviltry flaunting to the surface.
Through the inflamed brain of the master of the casa,as he stared at him with his hawk eyes, were crowding suspicions. Paolo’s description had made him certain of the identity of the man in the garden. But his command to his secretary had named only the milord at the osteria. That the two were one and the same, Paolo could not have known—otherwise he would not have brought another. But how had he been deceived? How, unless the man before him was a confederate—had played the other’s part at the inn? It was a decoy, so the lover of his wife, with less risk in the amour, might laugh in his sleeve at him, the hoodwinked husband, the richest noble in Romagna! His lean fingers twitched.
“May I ask,” he queried, wetting his lips, “what therealmilord—who is also in town to-day—pays you for filling his place to-night?”
Possessed as he was, his host could not mistake the other’s unaffected surprise. Before the start he gave, suspicion of collusion shredded thin.
“He is in Venice,” said Trevanion.
“He came to Ravenna this afternoon.”
His enemy there? Trevanion remembered the laugh of the woman in the wagonette. Jane Clermont had mocked him! She lied! She had come there to meet Gordon. Vicious passion gathered on his brow, signs readily translatable, that glozed the old man’s anger with dawning calculation.
“You have acted another’srôleto-night,” Count Guiccioli said, leaning across the table, “and done it well, I judge, for my secretary is no fool. I confess to a curiosity to know why you chose to appear as the milord for whom I waited.”
Trevanion’s malevolence leaped in his answer: “BecauseI hate him! And hate him more than you! In Italy I can add to the reputation he owns already in England! I want his name to blacken and blister wherever it is spoken! That’s why!”
The count made an exclamation, as through his fevered blood the idea of the truth raced swiftly. The town loungers had gaped at the osteria to see the carousal of the milord—so Paolo had said. Why, it was as good as a play! He smiled—and thought further:
The Englishman had been in Ravenna and had eluded his grasp. Here before him was youth, clever and unscrupulous; if less cunning, yet bolder—a hatred antedating his own—a ready tool. Who could tell to what use such an ally might be put? The suggestion fascinated him. He laughed a splintered treble as he rang the bell sharply for his secretary.
“A bottle of Amontillado!” he commanded. “My good Paolo, we drink a health to the guest of the casa.”
As the secretary disappeared Trevanion drew the kriss from beneath his coat and handed it to its owner. “A pretty trifle,” he said coolly; “I took the liberty of admiring it as I waited. I quite forgot to replace it.”
“My dear friend!” protested the count, pushing it back across the table, “I rejoice that you should fancy one of my poor possessions! I pray you accept it. Who knows? You may one day find a use for the play-thing!”
They sat late over the wine. They were still conversing when a window in the casa overlooking the garden opened and Teresa’s face looked out. Her straining emotions had left her trembling. Who wasthe swarthy, fierce-eyed man? At the first sight of him she had felt an instinctive recoil.
But her puzzle fell away as she gazed out into the soft night with its peace and somnolent incense. From the garden below, where she and Gordon had sat, came the beat of a night-bird bending the poppies. Overhead tiny pale clouds drifted like cherry-blossoms in the breeze. Far off the moon dropped closer to the velvet clasp of the legend-haunted hills. To-night, foreboding seemed treason while her heart held that one meeting, as the sky the stars, inalienable, eternal. Gordon was safe, on his way to Venice, and with him was her letter—on which hung her hope for a papal separation,—all that was possible under the seneschalship of Rome.
At length she closed the shutter, knelt at the ivory crucifix that hung in a corner of the raftered chamber, and crept into bed.
She fell asleep with a curl—the one he had kissed—drawn across her lips.