Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Confess it to those gentlemen.” It was San Giacinto who spoke.

  “The prince made me do it,” answered Meschini in low tones. “He promised me twenty thousand scudi for the work.”

  “To be paid — when? Tell all.”

  “To be paid in cash the day the verdict was given.”

  “You came to get your money here?”

  “I came here. He denied having promised anything definite. I grew angry. I killed him.” A violent shudder shook his frame from head to foot.

  “You strangled him with a pocket handkerchief?”

  “It was Donna Faustina’s?”

  “The prince threw it on the ground after he had struck her. I saw the quarrel. I was waiting for my money. I watched them through the door.”

  “You know that you are to die. Where are the deeds you stole when you forged the others?”

  “I told you — in the cupboard in my room. Here is the key. Only — for

  God’s sake—”

  He was beginning to break down again. Perhaps, by the habit of the past days he felt the need for drink even in that supreme moment, for his hand sought his pocket as he sat. Instead of the bottle he felt the cold steel barrel of the revolver, which he had forgotten. San Giacinto looked towards the notary.

  “Is this a full confession, sufficient to commit this man to trial?” he asked. But before the notary could answer, Meschini’s voice sounded through the room, not weak and broken, but loud and clear.

  “It is! It is!” he cried in sudden and wild excitement. “I have told all. The deeds will speak for themselves. Ah! you would have done better to leave me amongst my books!” He turned to San Giacinto. “You will never be Prince Saracinesca. But I shall escape you. You shall not give me a slow death — you shall not, I say—”

  San Giacinto made a step towards him. The proximity of the man who had inspired him with such abject terror put an end to his hesitation.

  “You shall not!” he almost screamed. “But my blood is on your head — Ah!”

  Three deafening reports shook the air in rapid succession, and all that was left of Arnoldo Meschini lay in a shapeless heap upon the floor. While a man might have counted a score there was silence in the room. Then San Giacinto came forward and bent over the body, while the notaries and their clerks cowered in a corner. Saracinesca and Giovanni stood together, grave and silent, as brave men are when they have seen a horrible sight and can do nothing. Meschini was quite dead. When San Giacinto had assured himself of the fact, he looked up. All the fierce rage had vanished from his face.

  “He is dead,” he said quietly. “You all saw it. You will have to give your evidence in half an hour when the police come. Be good enough to open the door.”

  He took up the body in his arms carefully, but with an ease that amazed those who watched him. Giovanni held the door open, and San Giacinto deposited his burden gently upon the pavement of the corridor. Then he turned back and re-entered the room. The door of the study closed for ever on Arnoldo Meschini.

  In the dead silence that followed, San Giacinto approached the table upon which the deed lay, still waiting to be witnessed. He took it in his hand and turned to Saracinesca. There was no need for him to exculpate himself from any charge of complicity in the abominable fraud which Montevarchi had prepared before he died. Not one of the men present even thought of suspecting him. Even if they had, it was clear that he would not have brought Meschini to confess before them a robbery in which he had taken part. But there was that in his brave eyes that told his innocence better than any evidence or argument could have proclaimed it. He held out the document to Saracinesca.

  “Would you like to keep it as a memento?” he asked. “Or shall I destroy it before you?”

  His voice never quavered, his face was not discomposed. Giovanni, the noble-hearted gentleman, wondered whether he himself could have borne such a blow so bravely as this innkeeper cousin of his. Hopes, such as few men can even aspire to entertain, had been suddenly extinguished. A future of power and wealth and honour, the highest almost that his country could give any man, had been in a moment dashed to pieces before his eyes. Dreams, in which the most indifferent would see the prospect of enormous satisfaction, had vanished into nothing during the last ten minutes, almost at the instant when they were to be realised. And yet the man who had hoped such hopes, who had looked forward to such a future, whose mind must have revelled many a time in the visions that were already becoming realities — that man stood before them all, outwardly unmoved, and proposing to his cousin that he should keep as a remembrance the words that told of his own terrible disappointment. He was indeed the calmest of those present.

  “Shall I tear it to pieces?” he asked again, holding the document between his fingers. Then the old prince spoke.

  “Do what you will with it,” he answered. “But give me your hand. You are a braver man than I.”

  The two men looked into each other’s eyes as their hands met.

  “It shall not be the last deed between us,” said Saracinesca. “There shall be another. Whatever may be the truth about that villain’s work you shall have your share—”

  “A few hours ago, you would not take yours,” answered San Giacinto quietly. “Must I repeat your own words?”

  “Well, well — we will talk of that. This has been a terrible morning’s work, and we must do other things before we go to business again. That poor man’s body is outside the door. We had better attend to that matter first, and send for the police. Giovanni, my boy, will you tell Corona? I believe she is still in the house.”

  Giovanni needed no urging to go upon his errand. He entered the drawing-room where Corona was still sitting beside Faustina upon the sofa. His face must have been pale, for Corona looked at him with a startled expression.

  “Is anything the matter?” she asked.

  “Something very unpleasant has occurred,” he answered, looking at Faustina. “Meschini, the librarian, has just died very suddenly in the study where we were.”

  “Meschini?” cried Faustina in surprise and with some anxiety.

  “Yes. Are you nervous, Donna Faustina? May I tell you something very startling?” It was a man’s question.

  “Yes — what is it?” she asked quickly.

  “Meschini confessed before us all that it was he who was the cause — in fact that he had murdered your father. Before any one could stop him, he had shot himself. It is very dreadful.”

  With a low cry that was more expressive of amazement than of horror, Faustina sank into a chair. In his anxiety to tell his wife the whole truth Giovanni forgot her at once. As soon as he began to speak, however, Corona led him away to the window where they had stood together a few hours earlier.

  “Corona — what I told her is not all. There is something else. Meschini had forged the papers which gave the property to San Giacinto. Montevarchi had promised him twenty thousand scudi for the job. It was because he would not pay the money that Meschini killed him. Do you understand?”

  “You will have everything after all?”

  “Everything — but we must give San Giacinto a share. He has behaved like a hero. He found it all out and made Meschini confess. When he knew the truth he did not move a muscle of his face, but offered my father the deed he had just signed as a memento of the occasion.”

  “Then he will not take anything, any more than you would, or your father. Is it quite sure, Giovanni? Is there no possible mistake?”

  “No. It is absolutely certain. The original documents are in this house.”

  “I am glad then, for you, dear,” answered Corona. “It would have been very hard for you to bear—”

  “After this morning? After the other day in Holy Office?” asked Giovanni, looking deep into her splendid eyes. “Can anything be hard to bear if you love me, darling?”

  “Oh my beloved! I wanted to hear you say it!” Her head sank upon his shoulder, as though she had found that perfect rest for which she had once so longe
d.

  Here ends the second act in the history of the Saracinesca. To trace their story further would be to enter upon an entirely different series of events, less unusual perhaps in themselves, but possibly worthy of description as embracing that period during which Rome and the Romans began to be transformed and modernised. In the occurrences that followed, both political and social, the Saracinesca bore a part, in that blaze of gaiety which for many reasons developed during the winter of the Oecumenical Council, in the fall of the temporal power, in the social confusion that succeeded that long-expected catastrophe, and which led by rapid degrees to the present state of things. If there are any left who still feel an interest in Giovanni and Corona, the historian may once more resume his task and set forth in succession the circumstances through which they have passed since that memorable morning they spent at the Palazzo Montevarchi. They themselves are facts, and, as such, are a part of the century in which we live; whether they are interesting facts or not, is for others to judge, and if the verdict denounces them as flat, unprofitable and altogether dull, it is not their fault; the blame must be imputed to him who, knowing them well, has failed in an honest attempt to show them as they are.

  THE END

  A Cigarette-Maker’s Romance

  First published by Macmillan & Co in October 1890, A Cigarette-Maker’s Romance was released in two volumes and there were 2,000 first edition sets printed in July in London. The one-volume edition sold in America in October was actually the same as the second British edition, but it was printed in New York. Crawford wrote the novel in the spring of 1890 in the middle of a period of ill health, which started in the previous spring. During the onset of the illness, which included episodes of losing consciousness, Crawford was so unwell that he believed he might have to end his literary career. However, his health had improved enough by the summer for him to continue to write, though still suffering from bouts of severe illness over the next two years.

  A Cigarette-Maker’s Romance is set in Munich, a city Crawford had resided in for nine months between the autumn of 1889 and the summer of 1890. The novel centres on the unusual setting of a tobacco shop in the city. The owner, Christian Fischelowitz, has a warm working relationship with his employees, in particular an exiled Russian Count and a poor young Polish woman, Vjera. The Count and Vjera declare their love for each other as the former spends his time hoping and believing that he will soon hear the news that his father and brother have died and that his fortune has been restored. However, he owes Fischelowitz fifty marks, which he promises to repay within 24 hours on point of honour. He, Vjera and their friends desperately strive to find the money in time, while Fischelowitz’s spiteful and vicious wife, Akulina, attempts to undermine their efforts and destroy the Count’s reputation.

  Title page of the first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  The first edition

  CHAPTER I.

  THE INNER ROOM of a tobacconist’s shop is not perhaps the spot which a writer of fiction would naturally choose as the theatre of his play, nor does the inventor of pleasant romances, of stirring incident, or moving love-tales feel himself instinctively inclined to turn to Munich as to the city of his dreams. On the other hand, it is by no means certain that, if the choice of a stage for our performance were offered to the most contented among us, we should be satisfied to speak our parts and go through our actor’s business upon the boards of this world. Some would prefer to take their properties, their player’s crowns and robes, their aspiring expressions and their finely expressed aspirations before the audience of a larger planet; others, perhaps the majority, would choose, with more humility as well as with more common sense, the shadowy scenery, the softer footlights and the less exigent public of a modest asteroid, beyond the reach of our earthly haste, of our noisy and unclean high-roads to honour, of our furious chariot races round the goals of fame, and, especially, beyond the reach of competition. But we have no choice. We are in the world and, before we know where we are, we are on one of the paths which we must traverse in our few score years between birth and death. Moreover, each man’s path leads up to the theatre on the one side and down from it on the other. The inexorable manager, Fate, requires that each should go through with his comedy or his drama, if he be judged worthy of a leading part, with his scene or his act in another man’s piece, if he be fit only to play the walking gentleman, the dumb footman, or the mechanically trained supernumerary who does duty by turns as soldier, sailor, courtier, husbandman, conspirator or red-capped patriot. A few play well, many play badly, all must appear and the majority are feebly applauded and loudly hissed. He counts himself great who is received with such an uproar of clapping and shout of approval as may drown the voice of the discontented; he is called fortunate who, having missed his cue and broken down in his words, makes his exit in the triumphant train of the greater actor upon whom all eyes are turned; he is deemed happy who, having offended no man, is allowed to depart in peace upon his downward road. Yet none of these players need pride themselves much upon their success nor take to heart their failure. Long before most of them have slipped into the grave which waits at the foot of the hill, and have been wrapped comfortably in the pleasant earth, their names are forgotten by those who screamed with pleasure or hooted in disgust at their performance, their faces are no longer remembered, their great drama is become an old-fashioned mummery of the past. Why should they care? Their work is done, they have been rewarded or punished, paid with praise and gold or mulcted in the sum of their reputation and estate. Famous or infamous, in honour or in disrepute, in riches or in poverty, they have reached the end of their time, they are worn out, the world will have no more of them, they are worthless in the price-scale of men, they must be buried out of sight and they will be forgotten out of mind. The beginning is the same for all, and the end also, and as for the future, who shall tell us upon what basis of higher intelligence our brief passage across the stage is to be judged? Why then should the present trouble our vanity so greatly? And if our play is of so little importance, why should we care whether the scenery is romantic instead of commonplace, or why should we make furious efforts to shift a Gothic castle, a drawbridge, a moat and a waterfall into the slides occupied by the four walls of a Munich tobacconist’s shop?

  There is not even anything especial in the appearance of the place to recommend it to the ready pen of the word-painter. It is an establishment of very modest pretensions situated in one of the side streets leading to a great thoroughfare. As we are in Munich, however, the side street is broad and clean, the pavement is well swept and the adjoining houses have an air of solid respectability and wealth. At the point where the street widens to an irregular shape on the downward slope there is a neat little iron kiosque completely covered with brilliant advertisements, printed in black Gothic letters upon red and yellow paper. The point of vivid colour is not disagreeable, for it relieves the neutral tints of brick and brown stone, and arrests the eye, long wearied with the respectable parade of buildings. The tobacconist’s shop is, indeed, the most shabby, or, to speak more correctly, the least smartly new among its fellow-shops, wherein dwell, in consecutive order, a barber, a watchmaker, a pastry-cook, a shoemaker and a colour-man. In spite of its unattractive exterior, however, the establishment of “Christian Fischelowitz, from South Russia,” enjoys a very considerable reputation. Within the high, narrow shop there is good store of rare tobaccos, from the mild Kir to the Imperial Samson, the aromatic Dubec and the pungent Swary. The dusty window beside the narrow door exhibits, it is true, only a couple of tall, dried tobacco plants set in flower-pots, a carelessly arranged collection of cedar and pasteboard boxes for
cigars and cigarettes, and a fantastically constructed Swiss cottage, built entirely of cigarettes and fine cut yellow leaf, with little pieces of glass set in for windows. This effort of architecture is in a decidedly ruinous condition, the little stuffed paper cylinders are ragged and torn, some of them show signs of detaching themselves from the cardboard frame upon which they are pasted, and the dust of years has accumulated upon the bit of painted board which serves as a foundation for the chalet. In one corner of the window an object more gaudy but not more useful attracts the eye. It is the popular doll figure commonly known in Germany as the “Wiener Gigerl” or “Vienna fop.” It is doubtful whether any person could appear in the public places of Vienna in such a costume without being stoned or otherwise painfully put to a shameful death. The doll is arrayed in black shorts and silk stockings, a wide white waistcoat, a scarlet evening coat, an enormous collar and a white tall hat with a broad brim. He stands upon one foot, raising the other as though in the act of beginning a minuet; he holds in one hand a stick and in the other a cigarette, a relatively monstrous eye-glass magnifies one of his painted eyes and upon his face is such an expression of combined insolence, vulgarity, dishonesty and conceit as would insure his being shot at sight in any Western American village making the least pretence to self-respect. On high days and holidays Christian Fischelowitz inserts a key into the square black pedestal whereon the doll has its being, and the thing lives and moves, turns about and cocks its impertinent head at the passers-by, while a feeble tune of uncertain rhythm is heard grating itself out upon the teeth of the metal comb in the concealed mechanism. Fischelowitz delights in this monstrosity, and is never weary of watching its detestable antics. It is doubtful whether in the simplicity of his good-natured heart he does not really believe that the Wiener Gigerl may attract a stray customer to his counter and, in the long-run, pay for itself. For it cost him money, and in itself, as a thing of beauty, it hardly covers the bad debt contracted with him by a poor fellow-countryman to whom he kindly lent fifty marks last year. He accepted the doll without a murmur, however, in full discharge of the obligation, and with an odd philosophy peculiar to himself, he does his best to get what amusement he can out of the little red-coated figure without complaining and without bitterness.