Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “But everything is in such a flourishing state—”

  “No doubt it is — to-day. But no one can tell what state business will be in next week, nor even to-morrow.”

  “There is Del Ferice—”

  “No doubt, and a score like him,” answered San Giacinto, looking quietly at Orsino. “Del Ferice is a banker, and I am a speculator, as you wish to be. His position is different from ours. It is better to leave him out of the question. Let us look at the matter logically. You wish to speculate—”

  “Excuse me,” said Orsino, interrupting him. “I want to try what I can do in business.”

  “You wish to risk money, in one way or another. You therefore wish one or more of three things — money for its own sake, excitement or occupation. I can hardly suppose that you want money. Eliminate that. Excitement is not a legitimate aim, and you can get it more safely in other ways. Therefore you want occupation.”

  “That is precisely what I said at the beginning,” observed Orsino with a shade of irritation.

  “Yes. But I like to reach my conclusions in my own way. You are then a young man in search of an occupation. Speculation, and what you propose is nothing else, is no more an occupation than playing at the public lottery and much less one than playing at baccarat. There at least you are responsible for your own mistakes and in decent society you are safe from the machinations of dishonest people. That would matter less if the chances were in your favour, as they might have been a year ago and as they were in mine from the beginning. They are against you now, because it is too late, and they are against me. I would as soon buy a piece of land on credit at the present moment, as give the whole sum in cash to the first man I met in the street.”

  “Yet there is Montevarchi who still buys—”

  “Montevarchi is not worth the paper on which he signs his name,” said San Giacinto calmly.

  Orsino uttered an exclamation of surprise and incredulity.

  “You may tell him so, if you please,” answered the giant with perfect indifference. “If you tell any one what I have said, please to tell him first, that is all. He will not believe you. But in six months he will know it, I fancy, as well as I know it now. He might have doubled his fortune, but he was and is totally ignorant of business. He thought it enough to invest all he could lay hands on and that the returns would be sure. He has invested forty millions and owns property which he believes to be worth sixty, but which will not bring ten in six months, and those remaining ten millions he owes on all manner of paper, on mortgages on his original property, in a dozen ways which he has forgotten himself.”

  “I do not see how that is possible!” exclaimed Orsino.

  “I am a plain man, Orsino, and I am your cousin. You may take it for granted that I am right. Do not forget that I was brought up in a hand-to-hand struggle for fortune such as you cannot dream of. When I was your age I was a practical man of business, and I had taught myself, and it was all on such a small scale that a mistake of a hundred francs made the difference between profit and loss. I dislike details, but I have been a man of detail all my life, by force of circumstances. Successful business implies the comprehension of details. It is tedious work, and if you mean to try it you must begin at the beginning. You ought to do so. There is an enormous business before you, with considerable capabilities in it. If I were in your place, I would take what fell naturally to my lot.”

  “What is that?”

  “Farming. They call it agriculture in parliament, because they do not know what farming means. The men who think that Italy can live without farmers are fools. We are not a manufacturing people any more than we are a business people. The best dictator for us would be a practical farmer, a ploughman like Cincinnatus. Nobody who has not tried to raise wheat on an Italian mountain-side knows the great difficulties or the great possibilities of our country. Do you know that bad as our farming is, and absurd as is our system of land taxation, we are food exporters, to a small extent? The beginning is there. Take my advice, be a farmer. Manage one of the big estates you have amongst you for five or six years. You will not do much good to the land in that time, but you will learn what land really means. Then go into parliament and tell people facts. That is an occupation and a career as well, which cannot be said of speculation in building lots, large or small. If you have any ready money keep it in government bonds until you have a chance of buying something worth keeping.”

  Orsino went away disappointed and annoyed. San Giacinto’s talk about farming seemed very dull to him. To bury himself for half a dozen years in the country in order to learn the rotation of crops and the principles of land draining did not present itself as an attractive career. If San Giacinto thought farming the great profession of the future, why did he not try it himself? Orsino dismissed the idea rather indignantly, and his determination to try his luck became stronger by the opposition it met. Moreover he had expected very different language from San Giacinto, whose sober view jarred on Orsino’s enthusiastic impulse.

  But he now found himself in considerable difficulty. He was ignorant even of the first steps to be taken, and knew no one to whom he could apply for information. There was Prince Montevarchi indeed, who though he was San Giacinto’s brother-in-law, seemed by the latter’s account to have got into trouble. He did not understand how San Giacinto could allow his wife’s brother to ruin himself without lending him a helping hand, but San Giacinto was not the kind of man of whom people ask indiscreet questions, and Orsino had heard that the two men were not on the best of terms. Possibly good advice had been offered and refused. Such affairs generally end in a breach of friendship. However that might be, Orsino would not go to Montevarchi.

  He wandered aimlessly about the streets, and the money seemed to burn in his pocket, though he had carefully deposited it in a place of safety at home. Again and again Del Ferice’s story of the carpenter and his two companions recurred to his mind. He wondered how they had set about beginning, and he wished he could ask Del Ferice himself. He could not go to the man’s house, but he might possibly meet him at Maria Consuelo’s. He was surprised to find that he had almost forgotten her in his anxiety to become a man of business. It was too early to call yet, and in order to kill the time he went home, got a horse from the stables and rode out into the country for a couple of hours.

  At half-past five o’clock he entered the familiar little sitting-room in the hotel. Madame d’Aranjuez was alone, cutting a new book with the jewelled knife which continued to be the only object of the kind visible in the room. She smiled as Orsino entered, and she laid aside the volume as he sat down in his accustomed place.

  “I thought you were not coming,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “You always come at five. It is half-past to-day.” Orsino looked at his watch.

  “Do you notice whether I come or not?” he asked.

  Maria Consuelo glanced at his face, and laughed.

  “What have you been doing to-day?” she asked. “That is much more interesting.”

  “Is it? I am afraid not. I have been listening to those disagreeable things which are called truths by the people who say them. I have listened to two lectures delivered by two very intelligent men for my especial benefit. It seems to me that as soon as I make a good resolution it becomes the duty of sensible people to demonstrate that I am a fool.”

  “You are not in a good humour. Tell me all about it.”

  “And weary you with my grievances? No. Is Del Ferice coming this afternoon?”

  “How can I tell? He does not come often.”

  “I thought he came almost every day,” said Orsino gloomily.

  He was disappointed, but Maria Consuelo did not understand what was the matter. She leaned forward in her low seat, her chin resting upon one hand, and her tawny eyes fixed on Orsino’s.

  “Tell me, my friend — are you unhappy? Can I do anything? Will you tell me?”

  It was not easy to resist the appeal. Though the two had grown intima
te of late, there had hitherto always been something cold and reserved behind her outwardly friendly manner. To-day she seemed suddenly willing to be different. Her easy, graceful attitude, her soft voice full of promised sympathy, above all the look in her strange eyes revealed a side of her character which Orsino had not suspected and which affected him in a way he could not have described.

  Without hesitation he told her his story, from beginning to end, simply, without comment and without any of the cutting phrases which came so readily to his tongue on most occasions. She listened very thoughtfully to the end.

  “Those things are not misfortunes,” she said. “But they may be the beginnings of unhappiness. To be unhappy is worse than any misfortune. What right has your father to laugh at you? Because he never needed to do anything for himself, he thinks it absurd that his son should dislike the lazy life that is prepared for him. It is not reasonable — it is not kind!”

  “Yet he means to be both, I suppose,” said Orsino bitterly.

  “Oh, of course! People always mean to be the soul of logic and the paragon of charity! Especially where their own children are concerned.”

  Maria Consuelo added the last words with more feeling than seemed justified by her sympathy for Orsino’s woes. The moment was perhaps favourable for asking a leading question about herself, and her answer might have thrown light on her problematic past. But Orsino was too busy with his own troubles to think of that, and the opportunity slipped by and was lost.

  “You know now why I want to see Del Ferice,” he said. “I cannot go to his house. My only chance of talking to him lies here.”

  “And that is what brings you? You are very flattering!”

  “Do not be unjust! We all look forward to meeting our friends in heaven.”

  “Very pretty. I forgive you. But I am afraid that you will not meet Del Ferice. I do not think he has left the Chambers yet. There was to be a debate this afternoon in which he had to speak.”

  “Does he make speeches?”

  “Very good ones. I have heard him.”

  “I have never been inside the Chambers,” observed Orsino.

  “You are not very patriotic. You might go there and ask for Del Ferice. You could see him without going to his house — without compromising your dignity.”

  “Why do you laugh?”

  “Because it all seems to me so absurd. You know that you are perfectly free to go and see him when and where you will. There is nothing to prevent you. He is the one man of all others whose advice you need. He has an unexceptional position in the world — no doubt he has done strange things, but so have dozens of people whom you know — his present reputation is excellent, I say. And yet, because some twenty years ago, when you were a child, he held one opinion and your father held another, you are interdicted from crossing his threshold! If you can shake hands with him here, you can take his hand in his own house. Is not that true?”

  “Theoretically, I daresay, but not in practice. You see it yourself. You have chosen one side from the first, and all the people on the other side know it. As a foreigner, you are not bound to either, and you can know everybody in time, if you please. Society is not so prejudiced as to object to that. But because you begin with the Del Ferice in a very uncompromising way, it would take a long time for you to know the Montevarchi, for instance.”

  “Who told you that I was a foreigner?” asked Maria Consuelo, rather abruptly.

  “You yourself—”

  “That is good authority!” She laughed. “I do not remember — ah! because I do not speak Italian? You mean that? One may forget one’s own language, or for that matter one may never have learned it.”

  “Are you Italian, then, Madame?” asked Orsino, surprised that she should lead the conversation so directly to a point which he had supposed must be reached by a series of tactful approaches.

  “Who knows? I am sure I do not. My father was Italian. Does that constitute nationality?”

  “Yes. But the woman takes the nationality of her husband, I believe,” said Orsino, anxious to hear more.

  “Ah yes — poor Aranjuez!” Maria Consuelo’s voice suddenly took that sleepy tone which Orsino had heard more than once. Her eyelids drooped a little and she lazily opened and shut her hand, and spread out the fingers and looked at them.

  But Orsino was not satisfied to let the conversation drop at this point, and after a moment’s pause he put a decisive question.

  “And was Monsieur d’Aranjuez also Italian?” he asked.

  “What does it matter?” she asked in the same indolent tone. “Yes, since you ask me, he was Italian, poor man.”

  Orsino was more and more puzzled. That the name did not exist in Italy he was almost convinced. He thought of the story of the Signor Aragno, who had fallen overboard in the south seas, and then he was suddenly aware that he could not believe in anything of the sort. Maria Consuelo did not betray a shade of emotion, either, at the mention of her deceased husband. She seemed absorbed in the contemplation of her hands. Orsino had not been rebuked for his curiosity and would have asked another question if he had known how to frame it. An awkward silence followed. Maria Consuelo raised her eyes slowly and looked thoughtfully into Orsino’s face.

  “I see,” she said at last. “You are curious. I do not know whether you have any right to be — have you?”

  “I wish I had!” exclaimed Orsino thoughtlessly.

  Again she looked at him in silence for some moments.

  “I have not known you long enough,” she said. “And if I had known you longer, perhaps it would not be different. Are other people curious, too? Do they talk about me?”

  “The people I know do — but they do not know you. They see your name in the papers, as a beautiful Spanish princess. Yet everybody is aware that there is no Spanish nobleman of your name. Of course they are curious. They invent stories about you, which I deny. If I knew more, it would be easier.”

  “Why do you take the trouble to deny such things?”

  She asked the question with a change of manner. Once more she leaned forward and her face softened wonderfully as she looked at him.

  “Can you not guess?” he asked.

  He was conscious of a very unusual emotion, not at all in harmony with the imaginary character he had chosen for himself, and which he generally maintained with considerable success. Maria Consuelo was one person when she leaned back in her chair, laughing or idly listening to his talk, or repulsing the insignificant declarations of devotion which were not even meant to be taken altogether in earnest. She was pretty then, attractive, graceful, feminine, a little artificial, perhaps, and Orsino felt that he was free to like her or not, as he pleased, but that he pleased to like her for the present. She was quite another woman to-day, as she bent forward, her tawny eyes growing darker and more mysterious every moment, her auburn hair casting wonderful shadows upon her broad pale forehead, her lips not closed as usual, but slightly parted, her fragrant breath just stirring the quiet air Orsino breathed. Her features might be irregular. It did not matter. She was beautiful for the moment with a kind of beauty Orsino had never seen, and which produced a sudden and overwhelming effect upon him.

  “Do you not know?” he asked again, and his voice trembled unexpectedly.

  “Thank you,” she said softly and she touched his hand almost caressingly.

  But when he would have taken it, she drew back instantly and was once more the woman whom he saw every day, careless, indifferent, pretty.

  “Why do you change so quickly?” he asked in a low voice, bending towards her. “Why do you snatch your hand away? Are you afraid of me?”

  “Why should I be afraid? Are you dangerous?”

  “You are. You may be fatal, for all I know.”

  “How foolish!” she exclaimed, with a quick glance.

  “You are Madame d’Aranjuez, now,” he answered. “We had better change the subject.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A moment ago you were
Consuelo,” he said boldly.

  “Have I given you any right to say that?”

  “A little.”

  “I am sorry. I will be more careful. I am sure I cannot imagine why you should think of me at all, unless when you are talking to me, and then I do not wish to be called by my Christian name. I assure you, you are never anything in my thoughts but His Excellency Prince Orsino Saracinesca — with as many titles after that as may belong to you.”

  “I have none,” said Orsino.

  Her speech irritated him strongly, and the illusion which had been so powerful a few moments earlier all but disappeared.

  “Then you advise me to go and find Del Ferice at Monte Citorio,” he observed.

  “If you like.” She laughed. “There is no mistaking your intention when you mean to change the subject,” she added.

  “You made it sufficiently clear that the other was disagreeable to you.”

  “I did not mean to do so.”

  “Then in heaven’s name, what do you mean, Madame?” he asked, suddenly losing his head in his extreme annoyance.

  Maria Consuelo raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  “Why are you so angry?” she asked. “Do you know that it is very rude to speak like that?”

  “I cannot help it. What have I done to-day that you should torment me as you do?”

  “I? I torment you? My dear friend, you are quite mad.”

  “I know I am. You make me so.”

  “Will you tell me how? What have I done? What have I said? You Romans are certainly the most extraordinary people. It is impossible to please you. If one laughs, you become tragic. If one is serious, you grow gay! I wish I understood you better.”

  “You will end by making it impossible for me to understand myself,” said Orsino. “You say that I am changeable. Then what are you?”

  “Very much the same to-day as yesterday,” said Maria Consuelo calmly. “And I do not suppose that I shall be very different to-morrow.”

  “At least I will take my chance of finding that you are mistaken,” said Orsino, rising suddenly, and standing before her.