THEDANGEROUS INHERITANCECHAPTER I
THEDANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Thetown studio of Signor Jacobelli faced the west. It was situated on the top floor of an old eight-storied building in the West Fifties. Thirty years ago this had been given over entirely to studios, but now it was broken up into a more profitable mêlée of semi-commercial establishments and light-housekeeping apartments.
The signor, having no doubt the Old-World propensity for permanency, had maintained his studio here for over twenty years, without regard for the changing conditions around him, if indeed he were even conscious of them. His own immediate outlook and environment had remained the same. The view to the west and south from the deep, double-sized windows had varied little, and held a perpetual fascination for him. Thin red chimneys in neighborly groupings on adjacent roofs assumed delicate color values of amethyst and quivering saffrons from Jersey sunsets that turned eventhe old buildings down towards the riverfront into mystical genii palaces in the early twilight.
Dust lay unnoted upon bookshelves and music-racks about the large, friendly room. The Turkish rug that covered its floor had long since lost all outline of pattern and was as exquisite a blur as the rose-flushed sea mist that hung over the lower end of the island city.
Carlota stood in a window recess, her back to the signor and his unexpected guest, her fingers tying and untying the faded purple silk cord of the shade. From where he sat in the old winged armchair by the piano, Ward caught a perfect silhouette of her profile against the glow of western light. Listening to Jacobelli’s fiery protest in his usual silent way, his mind dwelt upon the blossoming of this foreign flower of girlhood who had so strangely attracted him from the first time he had ever looked into her eyes.
The Marchese Veracci had called him up from the Italian Club two years before, and had besought his good offices for the granddaughter of Margherita Paoli. The following evening they had called on him by appointment. He half closed his eyes, recalling the picture of the girl as he had first seen her. Theyawaited him in the Florentine room. Even then she had not thought of him, but had stood before a painting of Sorrento, a view through the ravine looking seaward, one hand laid on her breast, her eyes filled with the yearning of youth’s loneliness. She had met him silently, her hand cold as it rested an instant in his palm.
And the old Marchese had pleaded her cause with fervent eloquence.
“I have Jacobelli’s word on her voice,” he said. “What more would you? If you but speak Guido Jacobelli’s name to any European director, he bows to the old maestro’s dictum.”
“He has retired,” Ward returned.
“Retired, yes, from the money mart.” The Marchese had beamed upon the great international banker almost tolerantly. “You cannot comprehend his attitude. No amount of money could tempt him to teach the tyro, the climber, but he has heard Carlota. He knew Paoli well in Italy. It was her influence and friendship which first brought him fame and power. Now he has said that her voice lives again in the child, but there must be at least four years of incessant application and training. To keep her voice divine, she must never be troubled by material cares. She must havean abundance of everything that she needs that her whole nature may relax and expand to give her the freedom to devote her whole life to her career.”
Ward had understood. He knew Guido Jacobelli. While the old maestro was a high priest of art, his price for teaching genius was in proportion to his faith. It had been Carlota’s own attitude of indifference which had dominated his decision. While the Marchese had argued and pleaded for her future, and Maria Roma, her guardian, had hung upon the final word from Ward’s lips, she had listened gravely, her attention wandering constantly to the rare art treasures of the room. Once she had met his eyes as he asked her a direct question.
“You are very young to study seriously. Do you realize the sacrifices you must make?”
“I have always studied to be a singer, signor,” Carlota had told him, her eyes even then disconcerting in their wide intensity. “There are no sacrifices when you love your vocation.”
Ward had smiled back at the Marchese, quoting lightly,
“I did renounce the world, its pride and greed... at eight years old.”
“I did renounce the world, its pride and greed... at eight years old.”
“I did renounce the world, its pride and greed
... at eight years old.”
“My dear,” he added, “one of your owncountrymen has spoken so, Fra Lippo Lippi. No parallel, though, eh, Veracci? Here we have the consecration of genius. I will advance fifty thousand. Is it enough?”
Carlota had met his appraising eyes with the aloof resentment of an influence that disturbed her.
“Speak, cara mia,” Maria Roma had cried, tears streaming down her plump cheeks, as she clasped her arms enthusiastically around her charge. “Have you no word of thanks?”
And Ward had never forgotten the flash of challenge in the girl’s dark eyes as she had given him her hand.
“I will succeed and pay you back, signor,” she had said. He might have been merely a money-lender to a princess of the de’ Medici.
He had made only one stipulation and that half in jest, though Maria and the Marchese had agreed most earnestly. She was not to marry nor become entangled in love affairs during the period of her tuition. The concession had completely escaped Carlota’s attention. She had wandered by them out into the wide corridor, stifled by the somber silence of the great closed rooms. Not a single fountain falling in the distance, not a living flower anywhere, nothing but age-old treasures in a palatial, modern museum. He had not spokento her again, only she had heard his last words to Jacobelli.
“May the fruit fulfill the promise. I will come to see you now and then.”
Through the two years of study he had kept his word. Every few months, unawares, he would come to the old studio and sit for a while, listening to Jacobelli and watching his pupil. Even while he never spoke a word of direct intent to her, Carlota felt a vague uneasiness in his presence, under the steady power of his gaze. He carried with him the impression of a compelling, dominant masterfulness, all the more irresistible through its silence and tireless patience. He was in the late thirties at this time, tall and heavy-set, his head, with its thick, close-cut blond hair, thrust forward from a habit of silent intentness. There was the strongest suggestion of the leonine about him. Once, when she was a child, Carlota remembered being taken to see a captive Algerian lion that had just been brought across for the royal zoo. With a city mob surging forward to stare at him, the lion had lain with an imperial languor and indifference, gazing with unblinking eyes beyond the crowd and the city, seeing only the desert that held his whole life’s desire. Sometimes, in the studio, during one of Ward’s visits, shewould catch his eyes fixed upon her, while Jacobelli flamed out into some argument or dissertation, and she would shrink from the purpose that lay behind their patience.
To-day the voice of Jacobelli filled the studio, and Carlota’s delicate dark brows contracted sharply as she listened.
“What more can I do? I have given her all that I know of technique and harmony, and still her voice lacks that emotional quality which the greatest alone possess. The divine voice must have dramatic feeling, intensity. It must lose itself in the grandest passion of emotion. The child tries, but what would you? She does not understand the lack in her own nature. Her woman soul yet slumbers.”
Ward glanced at him with amused, quizzical eyes.
“Let it sleep, Jacobelli. Remember Paoli when she let love conquer her.”
For the moment the old maestro forgot the figure behind the window curtain. With arms thrown upward he turned on the banker.
“You know not anything about Paoli! I, Jacobelli, tell you that! You cannot speak of her with any understanding. She was a law to herself in her own generation. Few women can be that. But I, who know what lay behind the wall of Tittani, say to you I would rather thischild lay dead now, with no fulfillment in her life, than that she should know the agony and failure as an artiste that her grandmother did when she sacrificed her whole womanhood—for what? Love, pouf!”
“Can a woman’s nature reach its ripest fulfillment without love?” Ward’s tone was lowered. “History proves that the greatest geniuses have been those who suffered most.”
“But not the singer, signor.” Jacobelli paused in his march up and down the studio. “The singer is something different. It is instinctive. I have heard the most marvelous impassioned voices pour from the most commonplace peasant types. I have heard the greatest tenor of all times tear the emotions of thousands to pieces, and step into his dressing-room to rail at his wife for not providing his favorite dish for him after the opera, ravioli and lampreys. The most superb lyric voice of to-day comes from a little, stout contadina who picked up centimes around the flower-market in Naples when I was young. Do you think she acquired divinity of soul and utterance from some supreme emotion? Ridiculous. She is a gourmand, a virago, absolutely bourgeois, yet she sings like a seraph. Why, then, is it not in Carlota’s voice?”
Ward rose leisurely. The old silken curtainshung motionless. The shadows were heavy in the corners of the studio.
“She is a higher type,” he said in a low voice. “When you agree with me, bring her to me.”