It was she who talked most, and he who listened. Yet he was very happy; and when they reached her villa, and he left them at the door, she gave him a white flower which he had found courage to beg for.
"May I call on you to-morrow?" he asked, trembling for the answer.
"If you would like to, yes," she answered readily. "Come early if you have nothing to do, and we will give you afternoon teaà l'Anglaise. By the bye," she added, a little shyly, "is there not something which you have forgotten?"
He divined her meaning at once.
"Of course, I ought to have told you my name!" he exclaimed hastily. "How stupid of me. It is St. Maurice—Lord St Maurice."
"Lord St Maurice! Then are you not the fortunate possessor of that delightful little yacht in the harbor?"
"Yes, if you mean thePandora, she's mine. Do you like sailing? Will you come for a sail?" he asked eagerly.
"We'll talk about it to-morrow," she laughed, holding out her hand. "Good-night."
He let her hand go. If he held it a moment longer, and a little more firmly than was absolutely necessary, was he much to blame?
"Good-night," he said. "Good-night, Signorina," he added, bowing to Margharita. "I shall come to-morrow afternoon."
Then he turned away, and walked with long swinging steps back to the hotel.
"Margharita!"
She had found her way into a lonely corner of the villa grounds, and, with her head resting upon her hands, she was gazing across the blue sunlit waters of the bay. Below, hidden by the thickly-growing shrubs, was the white, dusty road, and the voice which disturbed her thoughts seemed to come from it. She pushed the white flowering rhododendrons on one side, and peered through.
"Leonardo!" she exclaimed. "Leonardo!"
She seemed surprised to see him standing there, pale, dusty, and with a great weariness shining out of his black eyes, and it did not occur to her to offer him any greeting. She could not say that she was glad to see him, and yet her heart ached when she looked into his pale, sorrowful face. So she was silent.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
"Yes. Adrienne is in the house, I believe."
"Then I am coming in."
She looked troubled, but she could not send him away. He clambered over the low paling, and, pushing back the boughs of the shrubs which grew between them, made his way up the bank to her side.
"Have you been away?" she asked.
"Yes, I have been home. Home," he repeated bitterly. "I have wandered through the woods, and I have climbed the hills where we spent our childhood. I have looked upon the old scenes, and my heart is broken."
Her eyes filled with tears. For a moment her thoughts, too, went back to the days when they had been children together, and he had been her hero brother. How time had changed them both, and how far apart they had drifted. They could never be the same again. She knew it quite well. There had grown up a great barrier between them. She could not even pretend to sympathize with him, although her heart was still full of pity.
"Leonardo, I am sorry," she whispered. "How is it, I wonder, that all through life you seem to have set your heart upon things which are impossible."
"It is fate!"
"Fate! But you are a man, and man should control fate."
"Have I not tried?" he answered bitterly. "Tell me, do I so easily relinquish my great desire? Why am I here? Because I have said to myself that I will not be denied. Adrienne shall be mine!"
She looked at him steadily.
"We have not met, Leonardo, since the night after the concert. Do you know that we had an adventure on the way home?"
"Tell me about it," he answered, looking away.
"Is there any need, Leonardo?"
A faint tinge of color stole into his olive cheek.
"You guessed then," he said. "Tell me, does she know? Has she any idea?"
"None."
"She does not suspect me at all?"
"No; she thinks that it was an ordinary attack by robbers, and that the carriage was to take us a little way into the interior, so that they might hold us and demand a ransom. It was her own idea; I said nothing. I feel as though I were deceiving her, but I cannot tell her. She would never look upon your face again, Leonardo."
"You must not tell her," he muttered. "Swear that you will not!"
She shook her head.
"There is no need. I am not anxious to denounce my own brother as a would-be abductor."
"Margharita, I was desperate," he cried passionately. "And that cursed Englishman, he has become my evil genius. It was a miserable chance that enabled him to become your preserver."
"It was a very fortunate one for you, Leonardo."
"What do you mean?" he cried sharply. "Tell me, has he been here?"
"Yes."
He seemed to calm himself with a great effort. He was on the threshold of what he had come to know. He must keep cool, or she would tell him nothing.
"Margharita," he said slowly, "the time is fast coming when I shall have no more favors to ask you. Will you remember that you are my sister, and grant me a great one now?"
"If I can, Leonardo."
"It is good. I shall not ask you anything impossible or unreasonable. Tell me the truth about Adrienne and this Englishman, Tell me how you have spent your days since this affair, and how often he has been here. Then tell me what you yourself think. Tell me whether she cares for him; and he for her. Let me hear the whole truth, so that I may know how to act."
There was a moment's silence. A yellow-breasted bird flew between them, and a shower of rhododendron blossoms fell at their feet. The lazy murmur of insects floated upon the heavy afternoon air, so faint and breathless that the leaves which grew thick around them scarcely rustled. A clump of pink and white hyacinths grew out of the wall, the waxy heads bent with the weight of their heavy, bell-shaped petals. She snapped off a white blossom, and toyed with it in her fingers for a moment. The lazy joy of the hot afternoon seemed to grate upon her when she looked into that white, strained face, deep lined and suffering. What right had nature to put forth all her sweet sights and perfumes, to be so peaceful and joyous, while man, her master, could feel such agony? It was mockery, it was not right or fair.
She thrust the flower into his hand.
"Leonardo," she whispered, "remember our watchword, 'Endurance.' I will tell you everything. Lord St. Maurice came on the day after our adventure. He stayed till evening, and we walked with him on the Marina. The next day we went yachting with him. Yesterday and to-day he has spent nearly the whole of his time here. I believe that he is in love with Adrienne, and as for her, if she does not love him already, I believe that she soon will. You have asked for the truth, my brother, and it is best that you should have it. Forgive me for the pain it must cause you."
He passed his arm round the gnarled branch of a small chestnut tree, and then, turning round, hid his face. There was a great lump rising in her throat, but she dared not attempt to console him. She knew that he was angry with her—that he blamed her for his fruitless love, and despised her for the lover she had chosen. In the days of their youth they had both been dreamers. He had been faithful to the proud, romantic patriotism which had been the keynote of their idealism; she, in his eyes at any rate, had been utterly faithless. Only her affection had remained steadfast, and even that he had commenced to doubt.
Presently he turned and faced her. His face was ghastly white, but his eyes were hot and red.
"Where is she?" he asked. "I am going to her. I am going to see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears, whether this story of yours be true. Where is she?"
She looked at him doubtfully.
"Leonardo," she said, "forgive me; but you will frighten her if you go as you are now. Your clothes are all dusty and ragged, and you look as though you were on the threshold of a fever. Besides, she is asleep. Go down to the hotel and change your clothes, and then ride up here to call. Somehow or other I will manage that she shall see you then."
He looked down at himself and smiled bitterly.
"It is true," he said, "I look but a sorry lover. Remember, Margharita, that I hold you to your promise. In an hour I shall return."
He left the grounds, and walked down the hill, with bent shoulders, and never a glance to the right or the left.
"Adrienne, I am the happiest man in the world."
"For how long, sir?"
"Pour la vie," he answered solemnly.
Her hand stole softly into his, and there was a long silence between them. What need had they of words? It is only the lighter form of love, fancy touched by sentiment, which seeks for expressions by such means. Their love was different; a silent consciousness of each other's presence sufficed for them. And so they sat there, side by side, steeped in the deep, subtle joy of that perfect love which upon the nature of both the man and the woman had so chastening and spiritualizing an influence. There was a new music in their lives, a sweeter harmony than either of them had ever been conscious of before. The world had grown more beautiful—and it was for them. The love which widens and deepens also narrows. Humanity was a forgotten factor in their thoughts. All that they saw and dreamed of was theirs to taste, to admire and to enjoy together. It was for them that the silvery moon and the softly burning stars cast upon the sleeping earth a strange new beauty. It was for them the air hung heavy with the faint perfume of spices, and the mingled scents of heliotrope and violets. It was for them that the dark pine trees waved softly backward and forward against the violet sky; for them that the far-away sea made melancholy music against the pebbly beach, and the soft night wind rustled among the tree tops in the orange groves. All nature was fair for their sakes. It is the grand selfishness of love—a noble vice.
"Adrienne!"
They both started and looked round. The voice was harsh and agitated, and it broke in like a jarring note upon their sweet, absorbed silence. It was Leonardo di Marioni who stood before them on the balcony—Leonardo, with white face and darkly-gleaming eyes. To Lord St. Maurice, that stifled cry had sounded like the hiss of the snake in paradise, and when he looked up the simile seemed completed.
"Is it you, Leonardo?" Adrienne said, letting go her lover's hand, and leaning back in her chair. "Your entrance is a little unceremonious, is it not? Were there no servants to announce you, or to bring me word of your presence? I dislike surprises."
"And I, too, Adrienne—I, too, dislike surprises," he answered, his voice quivering with passion. "I find one awaiting me here."
She rose and stood facing him, cold but angry.
"You are forgetting yourself, Count di Marioni, and your speech is a presumption. We have been friends, but, if you wish our friendship to continue, you will alter your tone. You have no right to speak to me in that tone, and I expect an apology."
His lips quivered, and he spoke with a strange bitterness.
"No right! Ay, you say well 'no right,' Adrienne. Will you spare me a few moments alone? I have a thing to say to you."
She frowned and hesitated for a moment. After all, she had a woman's heart, and she could not choose but pity him.
"Will not another time do, Leonardo?" she asked almost gently. "You see I have a visitor."
Yes, he saw it. He had looked up into the handsome, debonair face, with that proud, happy smile upon the parted lips, from the garden path below. How he hated it.
"I may be summoned away from Palermo at any moment," he said. "Cannot you spare me a short five minutes? I will go away then."
She looked down at her lover. He rose to his feet promptly.
"I'll have a cigar among the magnolias," he exclaimed. "Call me when I may come up."
A look passed between them which sent a swift, keen pain through the Sicilian's heart. Then Lord St. Maurice vaulted over the balcony, alighting in the garden below, and they were alone.
"Adrienne!" Leonardo cried, and his voice was low and bitter, "I dare not ask, and yet I must know. Tell me quickly. Don't torture me. You care for this Englishman?"
"Yes."
"You love him?"
"Dearly. With all my heart."
"You are going to marry him?"
"Yes."
And not all her pity could keep the joy from her tone as she uttered the last monosyllable.
"My God! My God!"
The suffering in his white face was awful to see. Her eyes filled with tears. She knew that she had done this man no wrong, that he had never had a single word of definite encouragement from her, that, time after time, she had told him that his love was hopeless. Yet her heart was heavy as she watched his anguish.
"Leonardo!" she said softly, "I am sorry. But surely you do not blame me? Is it my fault that I love him, and not you? Have I not begged you often to accept the only answer I could ever give you? Be generous, Leonardo, and let us be friends."
It was several moments before he spoke, and then it seemed as though there had been a conflict in the man, and the worse half had conquered. The dumb grief in his eyes, which had been so piteous to witness, had changed suddenly into a furious, passionate anger. He shook with the violence of his emotions, and though she was used to his stormy, impetuous nature, she was frightened.
"Friends! A curse upon such folly! Is it for friendship's sake that I have followed you here at the risk of my life, just to breathe the same air, to look but now and then into your face? Ah! Adrienne! Adrienne! listen once more to me. Do you think that he can love as I do? Never! never! I know that sluggish English temperament. Their wives are their servants or their dolls. Their passion is the passion of animals, and they have not even constancy."
She held out her hand. He had destroyed her pity. Henceforth he was obnoxious to her.
"Leave me," she commanded. "You are talking of what you do not understand. You are insulting me. I detest you!"
"Detest me!" he laughed hysterically, and the fire in his eyes grew brighter. "Since when? Since this cursed Englishman whispered his lies into your ears and stole you from me. Nay, do not shake your head. Mine you would have been some day, as surely as now you have made my life a hell. My love would have conquered in the end. It would have worn away your coldness and your resistance drop by drop. Mother of God! it shall conquer! Do I come of a race who are content to stand calmly by and see the woman they love stolen away by strangers? No!"
He stopped short, and there was a strange look in his face. Adrienne saw it, and trembled.
"Leonardo," she said, "I call a man who cannot bear a disappointment a coward. I do not love you; and under no circumstances whatever would it have been possible for me ever to have married you. Never! never!"
He turned on his heel and walked away.
"We shall see!" he said. "Au revoir, my cousin."
The emphasis in his tone, and a certain fixed look in his face chilled her. She held up her hands, and he stayed.
"Listen!" she said, speaking slowly, and with her eyes fixed steadily upon him. "I do not wish to think ill of you; I do not wish to think that you could harm the man I love; but, if you did—if you did, I say—you should taste a woman's vengeance! You think me weak, but there are things which will fire the blood and steel the nerve of a weaker woman than I am. Remember, Leonardo! Lift but your little finger against Lord St. Maurice, and all ties of kindred and country are forgotten. Those means which lie ready to my hand, I will use! I have warned you! Remember!"
Her tone had passed from earnestness to solemnity; her attitude, her final gesture, were full of dramatic grace. Beside her, he appeared mean and insignificant.
"I thank you for your candor, cousin," he said slowly. "If I harm your lover——"
"If you harm him," she interrupted fiercely, "you will win my undying hate, even while you are undergoing my vengeance. You know my power, Leonardo; you know the means which lie ready to my hand. Never doubt but that I shall use them."
He turned round and walked out of the house, passing Lord St. Maurice in the garden without even glancing toward him. In the road he paused for a moment, watching the long shadows pass quivering across the dark hills, and the gleam of the moonlight upon the water far away below.
"She would never dare!" he murmured to himself. "She is a woman, and she would forget."
Lord St. Maurice was in a good humor with himself and the entire world that night. He had spent nearly the whole of the day with the woman he loved, and whom he was shortly to marry, and with the prospect of another such day on the morrow, even his temporary exile from paradise was not a very severe trial. He was an ardent suitor, and deeply in love, but an hour or two alone with a case of excellent cigars, with delightful thoughts to keep him company, the softest air in Europe to breathe, and one of the most picturesque sights to look upon, could scarcely be esteemed a hardship. Above him, among the woods, twinkled the bright lights of the Villa Fiolesse which he had just quitted, and below was the gay little Marina, still dotted about with groups of men in soft hats and light clothes, and bright-eyed, laughing women, whose musical voices rang out on the still night air with strange distinctness.
Through the clinging magnolia bushes and rhododendron shrubs he pushed his way downward, the red end of his cigar shining out like a signal light in the semi-purple darkness. Every now and then he stopped to take a breath of air perfumed by a clump of hyacinth, or some star-shaped flower which had yielded up its sweetness to the softly-falling night. Now and then, too, he took a lover's look at the stars, and downward to the softly-heaving bosom of the Mediterranean. All these things seemed to mean so much more to him now! Adrienne had changed the world, and he was looking out upon it with different eyes. Sentiment, which before he had scoffed at a little, as became a sturdy young Briton but lately escaped from public school and college, had suddenly become for him something akin to a holy thing. He was almost a poet that night—he who had scarcely read a line of what the world calls poetry since his school days. There was a man whom he had hated all his life. Just then he began to think of him without a particle of anger or resentment. If he could have met him there, among those drooping, white-flowering shrubs, he felt that he could have shaken his hand, have asked him heartily after his health, and doubtless have fixed a day to dine with him. The world was a capital place, and Palermo was on the threshold of heaven. His big, boyish heart was full to over-flowing. Oh! it is a fine thing to be in love!
From the present he began to think a little of the future. He was right in the clouds, and he began to dream. At twenty-five years old imagination is the master of the man; at forty the situations are reversed; but in losing the upper hand imagination often loses its power and freshness. Lord St. Maurice was in his twenty-sixth year, and he began to dream. He was his own master, and he was rich. There was a fine estate in Eastshire, a shooting lodge in Scotland, and a box in Leicestershire. Which would Adrienne prefer? How delightful it would be to take her to them in the proper seasons, and find out which one pleased her most. When they reached England, after a cruise as far as Cairo and back along the Mediterranean, July would be on the wane. It was just the best time. They would go straight to Scotland and have a few days alone upon those glorious moors before the shooting commenced. He remembered, with a little laugh, the bachelor invitations which he had given, and which must now be rescinded. Bother bachelor invitations! Adrienne was sure to like Scotland. This southern land with its profusion of flowers, its deep, intense coloring, and its softly-blowing winds, was beautiful enough in its way, but the purple covered moors and cloud-topped hills of Scotland had their own charm. Adrienne had never seen heather; and his long, low cottage was set in a very sea of it. How pleasant the evening would be, out on the balcony, with the red sun sinking down behind Bathness Hill. Ah! how happy they would be. Life had never seemed so fair a thing!
He was on the Marina by this time, elbowing his way among the people who were still lazily walking backward and forward, or standing in little knots talking. The open-air restaurant, too, was crowded, but there were a few vacant seats, and among them the little iron chair in which he had been lounging on that evening when Adrienne Cartuccio had passed by among the crowd. He stopped short, and stepping lightly over the railing, drew it to him, and sat down. The busy waiter was by his side in a moment with coffee and liqueurs, and taking a cigar from his case he began meditatively to smoke.
Since sundown the hot air had grown closer and more sulphurous, and away westward over the waters the heavens seemed to be continually opening and closing, belching out great sheets of yellow light. A few detached masses of black clouds were slowly floating across the starlit sky. Now one had reached the moon, and a sudden darkness fell upon the earth. With such a lamp in the sky illuminations in the hotel gardens were a thing unheard of, and the effect was singular. Only the red lights of the smokers were visible, dotted here and there like glow-worms. Conversation, too, dropped. Men lowered their voices, the women ceased to make the air alive with the music of their laughter. It was the southern nature. When the sky was fair, their hearts were light and their voices gay. Now there was a momentary gloom, and every one shivered.
The Englishman looked up at the cloud, wondered whether there would be a storm, and calmly went on smoking. The sudden hush and darkness meant nothing to him. In his state of mind they were rather welcome than otherwise. But in the midst of the darkness a strange thing happened.
He was neither superstitious nor impressionable. From either weakness he would contemptuously, and with perfect truth, have declared himself altogether free. But suddenly the sweet, swiftly-flowing current of his thoughts came to a full stop. He was conscious of a cold chill, which he could not in any way explain. There had been no sound of footsteps, nothing to warn him of it, but he fancied himself abruptly encountered by some nameless danger. The perspiration broke out upon his forehead, and the cigar dropped from his fingers. Was it a nightmare, the prelude to a fever? Was he going mad? Oh! it was horrible!
By a great effort of will he contrived to raise his eyes to the cloud. It had almost passed away from the face of the moon. The main body of it was already floating northward, only one long jagged edge remained. There could be only a second or two more of this unnatural gloom. His heart was thankful for it. Ah! what was that? He bit his tongue hard, or he would have called out. Either he was dreaming, or that was the warm panting breath of a human being upon his cheek.
He sprang up, with his arm stretched out as though to defend himself, and holding his breath; but there was no sound, save the dull murmur of whispered conversation around. One glance more at the cloud. How slowly it moved. Ah! thank God! the light was coming. Already the shadows were moving away. Voices were being raised; figures were becoming distinct; in a moment the moon would be free.
It was all over. Laughing voices once more filled the air. The waiters were running about more busily than ever; people rubbed their eyes and joked about the darkness. But the Englishman sat quite still, holding in his hand a long, curiously-shaped dagger, which the first gleam of moonlight had shown him lying at his feet.
He was no coward, but he gave a little shudder as he examined the thing, and felt its blueish steel edge with his finger. It was by no means a toy weapon; it had been fashioned and meant for use. What use? Somehow he felt that he had escaped a very great danger, as he put the thing thoughtfully into his pocket, and leaned back in his chair. The shrill voices and clatter of glasses around him sounded curiously unreal in his ears.
By degrees he came to himself, and leaning forward took a match from the little marble table, and re-lit his cigar. Then, for the first time, he noticed with a start, that the chair opposite to him was occupied, occupied, too, by a figure which was perfectly familiar. It was the Sicilian who sat there, quietly smoking a long cigarette, and with his face shaded by the open palm of his hand.
Lord St. Maurice made no sign of recognition. On the contrary, he turned his head away, preferring not to be seen. His nerves were already highly strung, and there seemed to him to be something ominous in this second meeting with the Sicilian. If he could have been sure of being able to do so unnoticed, he would have got up and gone into the hotel.
"Good-evening, Signor!"
Lord St. Maurice turned and looked into the white, corpse-like face of the Sicilian. It told its own story. There was trouble to come.
"Good-evening, Signor," he answered quietly.
The Sicilian leaned over the table. There were gray rims under his eyes, and even his lips had lost their color.
"A week ago, Signor," he remarked, "we occupied these same seats here."
"I remember it," Lord St. Maurice replied quietly.
"It is well. It is of the events which have followed that night that I desire to speak, if you, Signor, will grant me a few moments of your time?"
"Certainly," the Englishman replied courteously. After all, perhaps the fellow did not mean to quarrel.
"I regret exceedingly having to trouble you, Signor, with a little personal history," the Sicilian continued. "I must tell you, at the commencement, that for five years I have been a suitor for the hand of the Signorina Adrienne Cartuccio, my cousin."
"Second cousin, I believe," Lord St. Maurice interposed.
The Sicilian waved his hand. It was of no consequence.
"Certain political differences with the Imperial party at Rome," he continued, "culminated two years ago in my banishment from Italy and Sicily. You, I believe, Lord St. Maurice, are of ancient family, and it is possible that you may understand to some extent the bitterness of exile from a country and a home which has been the seat of my family for nearly a thousand years. Such a sentence is not banishment as the world understands it; it is a living death! But, Signor, it was not all. It was not even the worst. Alas, that I, a Marioni, should live to confess it! But to be parted from the woman I love was even a sorer trial. Yet I endured it. I endured it; hoping against hope for a recall. My sister and I were orphans. She made her home with the Signorina Cartuccio. Thus I had news of her continually. Sometimes my cousin herself wrote to me. It was these letters which preserved my reason, and consciously or unconsciously, they breathed to me ever of hope.
"Not Adrienne's, I'll swear," the Englishman muttered to himself. He was a true Briton, and there was plenty of dormant jealousy not very far from the surface.
The Sicilian heard the words, and his eyes flashed.
"The Signorina Cartuccio, if you please, Signor," he remarked coldly. "We are in a public place."
Lord St. Maurice felt that he could afford to accept the rebuke, and he bowed his head.
"My remark was not intended to be audible!" he declared.
"For two years I bore with my wretched life," the Sicilian continued, "but at last my endurance came to an end. I determined to risk my liberty, that I might hear my fate from her own lips. I crossed the Alps without molestation, and even entered Rome. There I was watched, but not interfered with. The conclusion I came to was, that as long as I lived the life of an ordinary citizen, and showed no interest in politics, I was safe. I crossed to Palermo unharmed. I have seen the Signorina, and I have made my appeal."
The Englishman dropped his eyes and knocked the ash from his cigar. The fellow was coming to the point at last.
"You, Signor," the Sicilian continued, in a tone which, although it was no louder, seemed to gain in intensity from the smoldering passion underneath, "you, Signor, know what my answer was, for you were the cause. I have not told you this much of my story to win your pity; I simply tell it that I may reason with you. I have tried to make you understand something of the strength of my love for the Signorina. Do you think that, after what I have risked, after what I have suffered, that I shall stand aside, and see another man, an alien, take her from me? I come of a race, Signor, who are not used to see the women they love chosen for other men's wives. Have you ever heard of Count Hubert di Marioni, who, with seven hundred men, carried off a princess of Austria from her father's court, and brought her safely through Italy here to be one of the mothers of my race? It was five hundred years ago, and, among the ruins of ancient kingdoms, the Marionis have also fallen in estate. But the old spirit lingers. Lord St. Maurice, I am not a blood-thirsty man. I do not wish your life. Go back to your country, and choose for a bride one of her own daughters. Give up all thought of the Signorina di Cartuccio, or, as surely as the moon yonder looks down upon you and me, I shall kill you."
Lord St. Maurice threw his cigar away and shrugged his shoulders. The affair was going to be serious, then.
"You must forgive me, Signor, if I do not quite follow you," he said slowly. "The custom in our countries doubtless differs. In England it is the lady who chooses, and it is considered—pardon me—ill-mannered for a rejected suitor to have anything more to say."
"As you remark, the ideas and customs of our countries differ," the Sicilian rejoined. "Here a nobleman of my descent would consider it an everlasting shame to stand quietly on one side, and see the woman whom he worshiped become the bride of another man, and that man an alien. He would be esteemed, and justly, a coward. Let us waste no more words, Signor. I have sought you to-night to put this matter plainly before you. Unless you leave this island, and give up your pretensions to the hand of the Signorina Cartuccio, you die. You have climbed for the last time to the Villa Fiolesse. Swear to go there no more; swear to leave this island before day breaks to-morrow, or your blood shall stain its shores. By the unbroken and sacred oath of a Marioni, I swear it!"
To Lord St. Maurice, the Sicilian's words and gestures seemed only grotesque. He looked at him a little contemptuously—a thin, shrunken-up figure, ghastly pale, and seeming all the thinner on account of his somber black attire. What a husband for Adrienne! How had he dared to love so magnificent a creature. The very idea of such a man threatening him seemed absurd to Lord St. Maurice, an athlete of public school and college renown, with muscles like iron, and the stature of a guardsman. He was not angry, and he had not a particle of fear, but his stock of patience was getting exhausted.
"How are you going to do the killing?" he asked. "Pardon my ignorance, but it is evidently one of the customs of the country which has not been explained to me. How do you manage it?"
"I should kill you in a duel!" the Sicilian answered. "It would be easily done."
The Englishman burst out laughing. It was too grotesque, almost like a huge joke.
"Damn you and your duels!" he said, rising to his feet, and towering over his companion. "Look here, Mr. di Marioni, I've listened to you seriously because I felt heartily sorry for you; but I've had enough of it. I don't know whether you understand the slang of my country. If you do, you'll understand what I mean when I tell you that you've been talking 'bally rot.' We may be a rough lot, we Englishmen, but we're not cowards, and no one but a coward would dream of giving a girl up for such a tissue of whimperings. Be a man, sir, and get over it, and look here—none of this sort of business!"
He drew the dagger from his breast pocket, and patted it. The Sicilian was speechless and livid with rage.
"You are a coward!" he hissed. "You shall fight with me!"
"That I won't," Lord St Maurice answered good-humoredly. "Just take my advice. Make up your mind that we both can't have her, and she's chosen me, and come and give me your hand like a man. Think it over, now, before the morning. Good-night!"
The Sicilian sprang up, and looked rapidly around. At an adjoining table he recognized two men, and touched one on the shoulder.
"Signors!" he cried, "and you, Signor le Capitaine, pardon me if I ask you for your hearing for an instant. This—gentleman here has insulted me, and declines to give me satisfaction. I have called him a coward and a rascal, and I repeat it! His name is Lord St Maurice. If he forfeits his right to be considered a gentleman, I demand that his name be struck off the visitors' club."
The three men had risen to their feet. Two of them were gentlemen of the neighborhood with whom Lord St Maurice had a bowing acquaintance. The third was a French officer. They looked inquiringly at Lord St. Maurice.
"It's quite true, gentlemen," he said with easy self-possession. "He's been calling me all the bad names under the sun, and I have declined to give him what he calls satisfaction. I haven't the least objection to your knowing it."
The two Palermitans looked at one another doubtfully. The officer, giving his moustache a twist, stepped forward and bowed.
"Might we inquire your reasons for declining the duel?" he asked.
The Englishman shrugged his shoulders.
"Certainly," he answered. "In the first place, I am an officer in the service of Her Majesty the Queen, and duelling is strictly forbidden; in the second, Signor di Marioni is too excited to know what he is talking about."
"In England, Signor, your first objection is valid; here, it is scarcely so. As to the latter, Monsieur le Count seems now to be perfectly composed. I am on the committee of the club, and I fear that I must erase your name if you persist in your refusal."
"I don't care two straws about your club," Lord St. Maurice answered carelessly. "As for the duel, I decline it, once and for all. We Englishmen have a code of honor of our own, and it is more to us than the custom of the countries which we chance to visit. I wish you good-night, gentlemen."
They fell back, impressed in spite of themselves by the coolness and hauteur of his words. Suddenly, with the swiftness of a tiger-cat, the Sicilian leaped forward and struck the Englishman on the cheek.
"Perhaps you will tell us all, Signor, how the men of your country resent an insult such as that," he cried.
Every one turned round at the sound of the scuffle. The eyes of all were upon the Englishman, who stood there, head and shoulders above all the crowd, with blazing eyes and pale cheeks. He was in a towering passion, but his voice never shook or faltered.
"You shall see for yourself, Signor!" he cried.
The Sicilian struggled, but he was like a child in the Englishman's arms. He had caught him up in a vice-like grasp, and held him high over the heads of the astonished onlookers. For a moment he seemed as though he were going to throw him right out of the restaurant on to the Marina, but at the last moment he changed his mind, and with a contemptuous gesture set him down in the midst of them, breathless and choking.
"You can send your seconds as soon as you like," he said shortly. "Good-evening, gentlemen."
They fell back before him like sheep, leaving a broad way right into the hotel, through which he passed, stern and self-possessed. The Sicilian watched him curiously, with twitching lips.
"There goes a brave man," whispered one of the Palermitans to the French officer. "But his days are numbered."
The Frenchman gazed at the Sicilian and nodded. There was death in his face.
'Ah! why should love, like men in drinking songs,Spice his fair banquet with the dust of earth?'
'Ah! why should love, like men in drinking songs,Spice his fair banquet with the dust of earth?'
Lord St. Maurice walked straight into his room without perceiving that it was already occupied. He flung his hat into a corner, and himself into an easy-chair, with an exclamation which was decidedly unparliamentary.
"D—n!" he muttered.
"That's a lively greeting," remarked a voice from the other end of the room.
He looked quickly up. A tall figure loomed out of the shadows of the apartment, and presently resolved itself into the figure of a man with his hands in his pockets, and a huge meerschaum pipe in his mouth.
"Briscoe, by Jove! How long have you been here?"
"About two hours. I've been resting. Anything wrong downstairs? Thought I heard a row."
"Strike a light, there's a good fellow, and I'll tell you."
The new-comer moved to the window, and pulled aside the curtain.
"Moon's good enough," he remarked. "I hate those sickly candles. Great Scott! what's the matter with you? You look as black as thunder."
Lord St. Maurice told him the whole story. Martin Briscoe listened without remark until he had finished. Then he pushed the tobacco firmly down into the bowl of his pipe and re-lit it, smoking for a few minutes in silence.
"I tell you what, Maurice," he said at length, "of all the blood-thirsty little devils that ever were hatched, that Marioni takes the cake. Why, I'm going to fight him myself to-morrow morning."
"What!" cried St. Maurice, starting up in his chair.
"Fact, I assure you. Margharita told me that he was going to be troublesome, but I'd no idea that he was such a little spitfire. I landed two hours ago, and came straight here. I'd scarcely had a tub, and made myself decent, when in the little beggar walks, and kicks up no end of a row. I listened for a bit, and then told him to go to hell. In five minutes he'd got the whole thing arranged, seconds and all. To-morrow morning, at 6.30, on the sands, 'll see me a dead man, if he can use his tools as well as he can talk, little beast."
"Briscoe, this is a horrible mess," Lord St. Maurice declared emphatically. "I don't know what you think of duels; I hate them."
"It isn't duels I hate, it's the being spitted," Briscoe answered gloomily. "I can fence a bit, but it's always been with foils. I'm not used to swords, and I expect that fellow is a regular 'don' at it. There's a sort of corpse-like look about him, anyway. Got any 'baccy, St. Maurice? Mine's so beastly dry."
"Help yourself, old fellow. Who the devil's that?"
There was a knock at the door, and one of the servants of the hotel appeared. With some difficulty, for he was a native, and spoke French execrably, he explained that there were some gentlemen below who desired to speak with Lord St. Maurice.
The two men exchanged glances.
"My time has come, you see," Lord St Maurice remarked grimly. "Wait for me."
In the desertedsalle à mangerthe French officer and one of the Palermitan gentlemen were talking together. The latter approached Lord St. Maurice and drew him on one side.
"I do not know how you may be situated here for friends, Lord St. Maurice," he said, "but I felt that you would only consider it courteous of me to offer my services to you in case you are without a second in this affair. My father wrote to me from Rome of your visit here, and I went to your yacht to call this afternoon. My name is Pruccio—Signor Adriano Pruccio."
Lord Maurice bowed.
"I remember your father quite well," he said, "and I am glad to commence our acquaintance by accepting the favor you offer. Will you be so good as to make all the necessary arrangements with the Count Marioni's second, and let me know the result."
The Palermitan withdrew into a corner of the room with the Frenchman, and a few minutes' whispered conversation took place between them. Then he rejoined Lord St. Maurice, who was standing at the window.
"I am sorry to say that Count Marioni, who is the insulted person in this affair, chooses swords."
Lord St. Maurice nodded.
"When, and where?"
"At a place below the cliffs to which I shall conduct you at six o'clock to-morrow morning."
"At six o'clock! But he has another affair on at half-past."
"So I understand," the Palermitan answered, "I pointed out that we should prefer an interval of at least a day; but Monsieur le Capitaine there explains that the Count de Marioni, having dispensed with his incognito, is hourly in danger of arrest on account of some political trouble, and is therefore anxious to have both affairs settled. I have agreed, therefore, with your permission, to waive all etiquette in the matter."
"I don't know that it makes any difference to me," Lord St. Maurice answered. "To-night, by moonlight, would have suited me best."
Signor Pruccio laughed.
"You are in a great hurry, Lord St. Maurice. May I ask whether you are proficient with your weapon?"
"I never fenced since I was at school," he answered coolly. "I suppose Marioni is dangerous?"
The Palermitan looked very grave. He began to see that it would be more like a murder than a duel.
"Count Marioni is one of the finest swordsmen in Italy," he answered. "Perhaps, if I were to explain that you are not accustomed to the rapier——"
"Pray don't," Lord St. Maurice interrupted. "He'd be just as likely to shoot me."
"That is true," Signor Pruccio assented. "I have seen him do wonderful things with the pistol. If you can spare an hour or two, Signor, I should be happy to give you a little advice as to the management of your weapon. There is a large room at the top of my house where we fence."
Lord St. Maurice shook his head.
"Thank you, I'll take my chance," he answered.
"At five o'clock, Signor. Will you not come to my house for the night?"
"I'm much obliged, but I must write some letters. Good-night, Signor."
"Good-night, Signor. Sleep well!"
The golden light died out of the waning moon, and afar off in the east a long line of red clouds seemed to rise out of the sea. The air was still and calm and breathless. Even the sea seemed hushed as the yellow stars faded from the sky. Behind that bank of glowing clouds was the promise of the richer and fuller day. Amber was becoming golden, and pink purple, till through a very rainbow of coloring the sun's first rays shot across the chilled waters.
Lord St. Maurice had fallen asleep, with his head resting upon his arms, close to the open window. By his side, with the ink scarcely dry upon either, were his will, and his farewell letter to Adrienne. No one but himself would ever know the agony, the hopeless grief, which had rent his heart, as word after word, sentence after sentence of passionate leave-taking had found their way on to those closely-written sheets of paper. But it was over now—over and done with. When some faint sound from below, or a breath of the morning breeze from the bosom of the sea awoke him, and he commenced making a few preparations for the start, he was surprised to find how calm he was. The passion of his grief had spent itself. He thought of those hours before sleep had fallen upon him with horror, but they seemed to him very far away. He was face to face with death, but he felt only that he was about to make a journey into an undiscovered land. His imagination was dulled. He remembered only that he was going out to meet death, and it behoved him to meet it as an honorable English gentleman.
He plunged his head into a basin of cold water and made a careful toilette, not forgetting even the button-hole which Adrienne had fetched for him with her own fingers on the evening before. Then he quietly left the hotel, and walked slowly up and down the Marina until Signor Pruccio arrived.
Two men stood facing one another on a narrow belt of sand, stripped to the shirt, and with rapiers in their hands. One was the Sicilian, Leonardo di Marioni, the other the Englishman, Lord St. Maurice. Their attitude spoke for itself. They were about to fight for each other's life.
It was a fair spot which their two seconds had chosen to stain with bloodshed. Close almost to their feet, the blue waters of the Mediterranean, glistening in the early morning sunlight, broke in tiny, rippling waves upon the firm white sand. Inland was a semi-circle of steep cliffs, at the base of which there were great bowlders of rock, fern-covered and with hyacinths of many colors growing out of the crevices, and lending a sweet fragrance to the fresh morning air. It was a spot shut off from the world, for the towering cliffs ran out into the sea on either side, completely enclosing the little cove. There was only one possible approach to it, save by boat, and that a difficult and tedious one, and, looking upward from the shore, hard to discover. But on the northward side the cliffs suddenly dropped, and in the deft was a thick plantation of aloes, through which a winding path led down to the beach.
Perhaps of all the little group gathered down there to witness and take part in the coming tragedy, Signor Pruccio, Lord St. Maurice's second, was looking the most disturbed and anxious. His man, he knew, must fall, and an ugly sickening dread was in his heart. It was so like a murder. He pictured to himself that fair boyish face—and in the clear morning sunlight the young Englishman's face showed marvelously few signs of the night of agony through which he had passed—ghastly and livid, with the stamp of death upon the forehead, and the deep blue eyes glazed and dull. It was an awful thing, yet what could he do? What hope was there? Leonardo di Marioni he knew to be a famous swordsman; Lord St. Maurice had never fenced since he had left Eton, and scarcely remembered the positions. It was doubtful even whether he had ever held a rapier. But what Signor Pruccio feared most was the pale, unflinching hate in the Sicilian's white face. He loathed it, and yet it fascinated him. He knew, alas! how easily, by one swift turn of the wrist, he would be able to pass his sword through the Englishman's body, mocking at his unskilled defense. He fancied that he could see the arms thrown up to heaven, the fixed, wild eyes, the red blood spurting out from the wound and staining the virgin earth; almost he fancied that he could hear the death-cry break from those agonized white lips. Horrible effort of the imagination! What evil chance had made him offer his services to this young English lord, and dragged him into assisting at a duel which could be but a farce—worse than a farce, a murder? He would have given half his fortune for an earthquake to have come and swallowed up that merciless Sicilian.
A few yards away Martin Briscoe was standing with his second. He and Lord St. Maurice, at this tragical moment of their lives, had been nearer a quarrel than ever before. Briscoe, with some justice, had claimed priority with the Sicilian, and had maintained his right in the face of Lord St. Maurice's opposition. But the Sicilian had stepped in, and insisted upon his privilege to decide for himself whom he should first meet. The times had been distinctly stated, he reminded them, six o'clock by Lord St. Maurice's second, and half-past six by Mr. Briscoe's. He had arranged it so with a definite purpose, and he claimed that it should be carried out. There was no appeal from his decision. He was in the right, and Martin Briscoe, with a dull red glow of anger in his homely rugged cheeks, had been forced to retire and become a most unwilling spectator of what he feared could only be a butchery.
Signor Pruccio had delayed the duel as long as he could, under the pretext of waiting for the doctor who had been instructed to follow them, but who had not yet arrived. Twice the Sicilian had urged that they should commence, and each time he had pleaded that they might wait for a few minutes longer. To enter upon a duelà l'outrance, save in the presence of a medical man, was a thing unheard of, he declared. But at last this respite was exhausted, for the opposing second, with a pleasant smile, had remarked that he himself was skilled in surgery, and would be happy to officiate should any necessity arise. There was no longer any excuse. Lord St. Maurice himself insisted upon the signal being given. Sadly therefore he prepared to give it. Already both men had fallen into position. The word trembled upon his lips.
A flock of sea-birds flew screaming over their heads, and he waited a moment until they should have passed. Then he raised his hand.
"Stop!"
The cry was a woman's. They all looked round. Only a few yards away from them stood Adrienne, her fair hair streaming loose in the morning breeze, and her gown torn and soiled. She had just issued from the sloping aloe plantation, and was trembling in every limb from the speed of her descent.
The cloud on the Sicilian's face grew black as night.
"This is no sight for you to look upon!" he cried, between his teeth. "You will not save your lover by waiting. You had better go, or I will kill him before your eyes!"
She walked calmly between them, and looked from one to the other.
"Lord St. Maurice, I need not ask you, I know! This duel is not of your seeking?"
"It is not!" he answered, lowering his sword. "This fellow insulted me, and I punished him publicly in the restaurant of the Hotel de l'Europe last night. In my opinion, that squared matters, but he demanded satisfaction, and from his point of view, I suppose he has a right to it. I am quite ready to give it to him."
The seconds had fallen back. They three were alone. She went up to the Sicilian and laid her hand upon his arm.
"Leonardo, we have been friends, have we not? Why should you seek to do that which will make us enemies for ever? I have broken no faith with you; I never gave you one word of hope. I never loved you; I never could have loved you! Why should you seek to murder the man whom I do love, and make me miserable for ever?"
His face was ghastly, but he showed no sign of being moved by her words.
"Bah! You talk as you feel—just now!" he said quickly. "I tell you that I do not believe one word. If he had not come between us, you would have been mine some day. Love like mine would have conquered in the end. Away! away!" he cried, pushing her back in growing excitement, and stamping on the ground with his feet. "The sight of you only maddens me, and nerves my arm to kill! Though you beg on your knees for his life, that man shall die!"
"I shall not beg upon my knees," she answered proudly. "Yet, Leonardo, for your own sake, for the sake of your own happiness, I bid you once more consider. You would stain your hand with the blood of the man who is more to me than you can ever be. Is this what you call love? Leonardo, beware! I am not a woman to be lightly robbed of what is dear to me. Put up your sword, or you will repent it to your dying day."
Her voice rang out clear and threatening upon the morning stillness, and her eyes were flashing with anger. It was a wonderful tableau which had grouped itself upon that little strip of sand.
The Sicilian was unmoved. The sight of the woman he loved championing his foe seemed to madden him.
"Out of my way!" he cried, grasping his sword firmly. "Lord St. Maurice, are you not weary of skulking behind a woman's petticoats? On guard! I say. On guard!"
She suddenly flung her hands above her head, and there was what seemed to be a miraculous increase in the little group. Three men in plain, dark clothes sprang from behind a gigantic bowlder, and, in an instant, the Sicilian was seized from behind.
He looked around at his captors, pale and furious. They were strangers to him. As yet, he did not realize what had happened.
"What does this mean?" he cried furiously. "Who dares to lay hands upon me? We are on free ground!"
She shook her head.
"Leonardo, you have brought this upon yourself," she said, firmly but compassionately. "You plotted to murder the man I love. I warned you that, to protect him, there was nothing which I would not dare. Only a moment ago I gave you another chance. One word from you and I would have thrown these papers into the sea," producing a packet from her bosom, "rather than have placed them where I do now!"
A fourth man had strolled out of the aloe grove, smoking a long cigarette. Into his hands Adrienne had placed the little packet of letters, which he accepted with a low bow.
Even now the Sicilian felt bewildered; but as his eyes fell upon the fourth man he started and trembled violently, gazing at him as though fascinated.
"I do not understand!" he faltered.
The fourth man removed his cigarette from his teeth and produced a paper.
"Permit me to explain," he said politely. "I have here a warrant for your arrest, Count di Marioni, alias Leonardo di Cortegi, on two counts: first, that you, being an exile, have returned to Italian soil; and secondly, on a further and separate charge of conspiracy against the Italian Government, in collusion with a secret society, calling themselves 'Members of the Order of the White Hyacinth.' The proofs of the latter conspiracy, which were wanting at your first trial, have now been furnished."
He touched the little roll of papers which he had just received, and, with a low bow, fell back. There was an ominous silence.
At the mention of his first name a deathlike pallor had swept in upon the Sicilian's face. His manner suddenly became quite quiet and free from excitement. But there was a look in his dark eyes more awful than had been his previous fury.
"You have done a brave thing indeed, Adrienne!" he said slowly. "You have saved your lover. You have betrayed the man who would have given his life to serve you. Listen to me! As I loved you before so do I hate you now! As my love for you in the past has governed my life, and brought me always to your side, so in the days to come shall my undying hate for you and for that man shape my actions and mold my life, and bring me over sea and land to the farthest corners of the earth to wreak my vengeance upon you. Be it ten, or twenty, or thirty years, they keep me rotting in their prisons, the time will come when I shall be free again; and then, beware! Search your memory for the legends of our race! Was ever a hate forgotten, or an oath broken? Hear me swear," he cried, raising his clasped hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture, "by the sun, and the sky, and the sea, and the earth, I swear that, as they continue unchanged and unchanging, so shall my hate for you remain! Ah! you can take your lover's hand, traitress, and think to find protection there. But in your heart I read your fear. The day shall come when you shall kneel at my feet for mercy, and there shall be no mercy. Gentlemen, my sword. I am at your service."
A man in a fur-lined overcoat—thin, shrunken, and worn—stood on the pavement in a little street in Camberwell, looking about him in evident disgust. Before him stretched a long row of six-roomed houses, smoke-begrimed, hideously similar, hideously commonplace. The street was empty save for the four-wheeled cab from which he had just alighted, and which was now vanishing in a slight fog, a milkman and a greengrocer's boy in amicable converse, and a few dirty children playing in the gutter. Nothing could be more depressing, or more calculated to unfavorably impress a stranger from a southern land visiting the great city for the first time. It was a picture of suburban desolation, the home of poverty-stricken philistinism, uncaring and uncared for. In Swinburne's words, though with a different meaning, one saw there, without the necessity of further travel, "a land that was lonelier than ruin."
The little old man who had alighted from the cab, stood for a moment or two looking helplessly around, half surprised at what he saw, half disgusted. Such monotonous and undeviating ugliness was a thing which he had never dreamed of—certainly he had never encountered anything like it. Was it possible that he had made a mistake in the address? He drew a scrap of paper from his pocket and consulted it again. The address was written there plainly enough—85, Eden Street, Camberwell. He was certainly in Eden Street, Camberwell, and the figures on the gate-post opposite him, worn and black with dirt, were unmistakably an eight and a five. With a little shudder he pushed open the gate, and walked through the narrow strip of untidy garden to the front door. The bell he found broken and useless, so he knocked softly at first, and then louder against the worn panels.
It was some time before an answer came. Several of the neighbors appeared upon their doorsteps, and took bold and somewhat ribald stock of the visitor. A young person of eighty-one, who was considered the wit of the neighborhood, made several very audible remarks, which produced a chorus of gigglings, on the subject of his clothes and foreign appearance. But he stood there as though he had been deaf, his hands thrust down into the loose pockets of his overcoat and his deep-sunken eyes fixed wistfully but not impatiently upon the closed door. He was a mute picture of resignation.
At last, after his third summons, the door was slowly and cautiously opened, and the astonished visitor beheld, for the first time in his life, a London maid-of-all-work. The astonishment seemed perfectly mutual. He, with his parchment dried face, white hair and eyebrows, and piercing black eyes only a little dimmed by time, muffled up to the throat in furs, and unmistakably a foreigner, was as strange to her as her appearance was to him. He looked at her black hands, her face besmeared with dirt, and with her uncombed hair hanging loose around it, at the tattered and soiled print gown looped up on one side and held together on the other by pins, and at the white-stockinged feet showing through the holes in her boots. What an object it was! It was fortunate for him that the twilight and fog concealed, partially at any rate, the disgust in his face.
"Is—Mr. Bartlezzi in?" he inquired, as soon as he could find words to speak at all.
"Lawk-a-mussy! I dunno," the girl answered in blank bewilderment. "He don't have no visitors, he don't. You ain't taxes, are you?"
"No!" he answered, somewhat at a venture, for he did not catch her meaning.
"Nor water rate? No, you ain't the water rate," she continued, meditatively. "I knows him. He wears a brown billycock and glasses, 'e does, and I see him walking with Mary Ann Stubbins on a Sunday."
He admitted doubtfully that she was correct He was not the water rate.
It began to dawn upon her that it would be safe to admit him into the house.
"Just yer come hinside, will yer," she said. "I dunno who yer are, but I guess you ain't nothink to be afraid of. Come hinside."
She opened the door and admitted him into a dark, narrow passage. He had to squeeze himself against the wall to allow her to pass him. Then she surveyed him critically again, with her arms akimbo and her head a little on one side.
"I reckon you've got a name," she surmised. "What is it?"
"You can tell Mr. Bartlezzi that a gentleman from abroad desires to speak with him," he answered. "My name is immaterial. Will you accept this?" he added, holding out a half-crown timidly toward her.
She grabbed it from him, and turned it over incredulously in the semi-darkness. There was no deception about it; it was indeed a half-crown—the first she had ever been given in her life.
She dropped a rude sort of curtsey, and, opening the door of a room, half ushered, half pushed him in. Then she went to the foot of the stairs, the coin tightly clinched in her hand, and he heard her call out——
"Master! There's a gent here from furrin parts has wants you, which 'is name his immaterial. 'E's in the parlor."
There was a growl in reply, and then silence. The handmaiden, her duty discharged, shuffled off to the lower regions. The visitor was left alone.
He looked around him in deep and increasing disgust. The walls of the little room into which he had been shown were bare, save for a few cheap chromos and glaring oleographs of the sort distributed by grocers and petty tradespeople at Christmas. A cracked looking-glass, with a dirty gilt frame, tottered upon the mantelpiece. The furniture was scanty, and of the public-house pattern, and there was a strong nauseous odor of stale tobacco smoke and beer. A small piano stood in one corner, the cheapest of its kind, and maintaining an upright position only by means of numerous props. One leg tilted in the air was supported by two old and coverless volumes of a novel, and another was casterless. The carpet was worn into shreds, and there was no attempt to conceal or mend the huge ravages which time had made in it. The ceiling was cracked and black with smoke, and the faded paper was hanging down from the top of the wall. There was not a single article or spot in the room on which the eye could rest with pleasure. It was an interior which matched the exterior. Nothing worse could be said about it.
The visitor took it all in, and raising his hand to his head closed his eyes. Ah! what a relief it was to blot it all out of sight, if only for a moment. He had known evil times, but at their worst, such surroundings as these he had never met with. A strange nervousness was creeping slowly over him, the presage of disappointment. He dropped his hands, and walked restlessly up and down, striving to banish his fears. Might not all this be necessary—a form of disguise—a clever mode of concealment? Poverty alone could not have brought things to this strait. Poverty! There had been no poverty in his day. Yet he was full of forebodings. He remembered the wonder, the evasions, almost the pity with which his first inquiries in Rome had been met. He could not expect to find things exactly the same. Twenty years is a long time, and there must be many changes. Why had he not stayed in Rome a little longer, and learned more. He could easily have obtained the knowledge which he desired there. It would have been wiser, surely it would have been wiser.
The door opened in the midst of his meditations, and he looked eagerly up. Again his heart fell. It was not such a man as this that he had expected to see. Ah! what a day of disappointments it was!
The figure which, after a moment's pause in the doorway, now advanced somewhat hesitatingly toward him, was that of a man a little past middle age. He was of medium height, but stout even to corpulency, and his cheeks were fat and puffy. His hair was gray, and his thick, stubbly mustaches, which had evidently once been black, were also changing color. His dark, shiny coat was ridiculously short for him, and his trousers terminated above his ankles. He wore no necktie, and his collar was ragged and soiled. In short, his whole appearance was not only untidy but dirty. His gait, too, was slouching and undignified.
"You wished to speak to me," he said in a thick tone and with a foreign accent. "My name is Bartlezzi—Signor Alfonso Bartlezzi."
"Yes, I wished to speak with you."
Signor Bartlezzi began to feel uncomfortable under his visitor's fixed gaze. Why should he look at him so intently? He had never set eyes upon him before—and what an odd, shrunken little figure it was. He coughed and shifted his position.
"Ah! yes. I am ready, as you see. Is it anything to do with my profession?"
"I do not know what your profession is."
Signor Bartlezzi made an effort to draw himself up, and assumed a military air.
"I am a master of fencing," he announced, "also a professor of Italian—Professor Alfonso Bartlezzi, at your service. I am fairly well-known in this neighborhood. If you have pupils to recommend, sir, or if you are thinking of taking lessons yourself, I should be most happy. My services are sometimes made use of as interpreter, both in the police court and privately. I should be happy to serve you in that capacity, sir."
Signor Bartlezzi, having declared himself, folded his arms and waited. He felt certain that his visitor must now divulge his name and mission. That, however, he seemed in no hurry to do.
"You are an Italian?" he asked presently.
"Certainly, sir."
"May I ask, have you still correspondents or friends in that country?"
The Professor was a little uneasy. He looked steadfastly at his visitor for a moment, however, and seemed to regain his composure.
"I have neither," he answered sorrowfully. "The friends of former days are silent; they have forgotten me."
"You have lived in England for long, then?"
"Since I was a boy, sir."
"And you are content?"
The Professor shrugged his shoulders and looked round. The gesture was significant.
"Scarcely so," he answered. "But what would you have? May I now ask you a question, sir?" he continued.
"Yes."
"Your name?"
His visitor looked around him mournfully.
"The day for secrecy is past, I suppose," he said sadly. "I am the Count Leonardo di Marioni."
"What!" shrieked the Professor.
"Count Leonardo di Marioni—that is my name. I am better known as Signor di Cortegi, perhaps, in the history of our society."
"My God!"
If a thunderbolt had burst through the ceiling of the little sitting room, the Professor could not have been more agitated. He had sunk down upon a chair, pale and shaking all over with the effect of the surprise.
"He was a young man?" he faltered.
His visitor sighed.
"It was five-and-twenty years ago," he answered slowly. "Five-and-twenty years rotting in a Roman prison. That has been my fate. I was a young man then. You see me now."
He held up his arms, and let them drop again heavily to his side. It was a gesture full of sad dramatic pathos, but in that little room there was no one to observe it, no one to pity him for those white hairs and deep-drawn lines. But that was nothing. It was not pity that he wanted.
There was silence. Both men were absorbed in their own thoughts. Signor Bartlezzi was thunderstruck and completely unnerved. The perspiration stood out upon his forehead, and he could feel his hands and legs shaking. This was a terrible and altogether unexpected blow to him. It was not the thought of that twenty-five years' lonely captivity which was oppressing him, so much as the fact that it was over—that the day of release had come, and that it was indeed Count Marioni who stood before him, alive and a free man. That was the serious part of it. Had it not been proclaimed that the imprisonment was for life? That had certainly been the sentence. A gleam of hope flashed in upon him. Perhaps he had escaped from prison. If so, the sooner he was back there the better.
"Was not the sentence for life?" he gasped.
The Count assented, shaking his head slowly.
"Yes, for life," he answered bitterly. "That was the sentence, imprisonment for life."
"Then you have escaped?"
The same slow shake of the head. The Professor was bitterly disappointed.
"No. At five-and-twenty years a prisoner with a good-conduct sheet is restored to liberty. My time came at last. It was a weary while."