Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Precisely. She has also written to me, informing me that I am Satan. There is a directness in the statement and a general disregard of probability which is not without charm. Nevertheless, I am Spicca, and not Beelzebub, her assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. You see how views may differ. You know much of her life, but you know nothing of mine, nor is it my intention to tell you anything about myself. But I will tell you this much. If I could do anything to mend matters, I would. If I could make it possible for you to marry Madame d’Aranjuez — being what you are, and fenced in as you are, I would. If I could tell you all the rest of the truth, which she does not know, nor dream of, I would. I am bound by a very solemn promise of secrecy — by something more than a promise in fact. Yet, if I could do good to her by breaking oaths, betraying confidence and trampling on the deepest obligations which can bind a man, I would. But that good cannot be done any more. That is all I can tell you.”

  “It is little enough. You could, and you can, tell the whole truth, as you call it, to Madame d’Aranjuez. I would advise you to do so, instead of embittering her life at every turn.”

  “I have not asked for your advice, Orsino. That she is unhappy, I know. That she hates me, is clear. She would not be the happier for hating me less, since nothing else would be changed. She need not think of me, if the subject is disagreeable. In all other respects she is perfectly free. She is young, rich, and at liberty to go where she pleases and to do what she likes. So long as I am alive, I shall watch over her—”

  “And destroy every chance of happiness which presents itself,” interrupted Orsino.

  “I gave you some idea, the other night, of the happiness she might have enjoyed with the deceased Aranjuez. If I made a mistake in regard to what I saw him do — I admit the possibility of an error — I was nevertheless quite right in ridding her of the man. I have atoned for the mistake, if we call it so, in a way of which you do not dream, nor she either. The good remains, for Aranjuez is buried.”

  “You speak of secret atonement — I was not aware that you ever suffered from remorse.”

  “Nor I,” answered Spicca drily.

  “Then what do you mean?”

  “You are questioning me, and I have warned you that I will tell you nothing about myself. You will confer a great favour upon me by not insisting.”

  “Are you threatening me again?”

  “I am not doing anything of the kind. I never threaten any one. I could kill you as easily as I killed Aranjuez, old and decrepit as I look, and I should be perfectly indifferent to the opprobrium of killing so young a man — though I think that, looking at us two, many people might suppose the advantage to be on your side rather than on mine. But young men nowadays do not learn to handle arms. Short of laying violent hands upon me, you will find it quite impossible to provoke me. I am almost old enough to be your grandfather, and I understand you very well. You love Madame d’Aranjuez. She knows that to marry you would be to bring about such a quarrel with your family as might ruin half your life, and she has the rare courage to tell you so and to refuse your offer. You think that I can do something to help you and you are incensed because I am powerless, and furious because I object to your leaving Rome in the same train with her, against her will. You are more furious still to-day because you have adopted her belief that I am a monster of iniquity. Observe — that, apart from hindering you from a great piece of folly the other day, I have never interfered. I do not interfere now. As I said then, follow her if you please, persuade her to marry you if you can, quarrel with all your family if you like. It is nothing to me. Publish the banns of your marriage on the doors of the Capitol and declare to the whole world that Madame d’Aranjuez, the future Princess Saracinesca, is the daughter of Count Spicca and Lucrezia Ferris, his lawful wife. There will be a little talk, but it will not hurt me. People have kept their marriages a secret for a whole lifetime before now. I do not care what you do, nor what the whole tribe of the Saracinesca may do, provided that none of you do harm to Maria Consuelo, nor bring useless suffering upon her. If any of you do that, I will kill you. That at least is a threat, if you like. Good-night.”

  Thereupon Spicca rose suddenly from his seat, leaving his dinner unfinished, and went out.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  ORSINO DID NOT leave Rome after all. He was not in reality prevented from doing so by the necessity of attending to his business, for he might assuredly have absented himself for a week or two at almost any time before the new year, without incurring any especial danger. From time to time, at ever increasing intervals, he felt strongly impelled to rejoin Maria Consuelo in Paris where she had ultimately determined to spend the autumn and winter, but the impulse always lacked just the measure of strength which would have made it a resolution. When he thought of his many hesitations he did not understand himself and he fell in his own estimation, so that he became by degrees more silent and melancholy of disposition than had originally been natural with him.

  He had much time for reflection and he constantly brooded over the situation in which he found himself. The question seemed to be, whether he loved Maria Consuelo or not, since he was able to display such apparent indifference to her absence. In reality he also doubted whether he was loved by her, and the one uncertainty was fully as great as the other.

  He went over all that had passed. The position had never been an easy one, and the letter which Maria Consuelo had written to him after her departure had not made it easier. It had contained the revelations concerning her birth, together with many references to Spicca’s continued cruelty, plentifully supported by statements of facts. She had then distinctly told Orsino that she would never marry him, under any circumstances whatever, declaring that if he followed her she would not even see him. She would not ruin his life and plunge him into a life long quarrel with his family, she said, and she added that she would certainly not expose herself to such treatment as she would undoubtedly receive at the hands of the Saracinesca if she married Orsino without his parents’ consent.

  A man does not easily believe that he is deprived of what he most desires exclusively for his own good and welfare, and the last sentence quoted wounded Orsino deeply. He believed himself ready to incur the displeasure of all his people for Maria Consuelo’s sake, and he said in his heart that if she loved him she should be ready to bear as much as he. The language in which she expressed herself, too, was cold and almost incisive.

  Unlike Spicca Orsino answered this letter, writing in an argumentative strain, bringing the best reasons he could find to bear against those she alleged, and at last reproaching her with not being willing to suffer for his sake a tenth part of what he would endure for her. But he announced his intention of joining her before long, and expressed the certainty that she would receive him.

  To this Maria Consuelo made no reply for some time. When she wrote at last, it was to say that she had carefully considered her decision and saw no good cause for changing it. To Orsino her tone seemed colder and more distant than ever. The fact that the pages were blotted here and there and that the handwriting was unsteady, was probably to be referred to her carelessness. He brooded over his misfortune, thought more than once of making a desperate effort to win back her love, and remained in Rome. After a long interval he wrote to her again. This time he produced an epistle which, under the circumstances, might have seemed almost ridiculous. It was full of indifferent gossip about society, it contained a few sarcastic remarks about his own approaching failure, with some rather youthfully cynical observations on the instability of things in general and the hollowness of all aspirations whatsoever.

  He received no answer, and duly repented the flippant tone he had taken. He would have been greatly surprised could he have learned that this last letter was destined to produce a greater effect upon his life than all he had written before it.

  In the meanwhile his father, who had heard of the increasing troubles in the world of business, wrote him in a constant strain of warning, to which he
paid little attention. His mother’s letters, too, betrayed her anxiety, but expressed what his father’s did not, to wit the most boundless confidence in his power to extricate himself honourably from all difficulties, together with the assurance that if worst came to worst she was always ready to help him.

  Suddenly and without warning old Saracinesca returned from his wanderings. He had taken the trouble to keep the family informed of his movements by his secretary during two or three months and had then temporarily allowed them to lose sight of him, thereby causing them considerable anxiety, though an occasional paragraph in a newspaper reassured them from time to time. Then, on a certain afternoon in November, he appeared, alone and in a cab, as though he had been out for a stroll.

  “Well, my boy, are you ruined yet?” he inquired, entering Orsino’s room without ceremony.

  The young man started from his seat and took the old gentleman’s rough hand, with an exclamation of surprise.

  “Yes — you may well look at me,” laughed the Prince. “I have grown ten years younger. And you?” He pushed his grandson into the light and scrutinised his face fiercely. “And you are ten years older,” he concluded, in a discontented tone.

  “I did not know it,” answered Orsino with an attempt at a laugh.

  “You have been at some mischief. I know it. I can see it.”

  He dropped the young fellow’s arm, shook his head and began to move about the room. Then he came back all at once and looked up into Orsino’s face from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

  “Out with it, I mean to know!” he said, roughly but not unkindly. “Have you lost money? Are you ill? Are you in love?”

  Orsino would certainly have resented the first and the last questions, if not all three, had they been put to him by his father. There was something in the old Prince’s nature, something warmer and more human, which appealed to his own. Sant’ Ilario was, and always had been, outwardly cold, somewhat measured in his speech, undemonstrative, a man not easily moved to much expression or to real sympathy except by love, but capable, under that influence, of going to great lengths. And Orsino, though in some respects resembling his mother rather than his father, was not unlike the latter, with a larger measure of ambition and less real pride. It was probably the latter characteristic which made him feel the need of sympathy in a way his father had never felt it and could never understand it, and he was thereby drawn more closely to his mother and to his grandfather than to Sant’ Ilario.

  Old Saracinesca evidently meant to be answered, as he stood there gazing into Orsino’s eyes.

  “A great deal has happened since you went away,” said Orsino, half wishing that he could tell everything. “In the first place, business is in a very bad state, and I am anxious.”

  “Dirty work, business,” grumbled Saracinesca. “I always told you so. Then you have lost money, you young idiot! I thought so. Did you think you were any better than Montevarchi? I hope you have kept your name out of the market, at all events. What in the name of heaven made you put your hand to such filth! Come — how much do you want? We will whitewash you and you shall start to-morrow and go round the world.”

  “But I am not in actual need of money at all—”

  “Then what the devil are you in need of?”

  “An improvement in business, and the assurance that I shall not ultimately be bankrupt.”

  “If money is not an assurance that you will not be bankrupt, I would like to learn what is. All this is nonsense. Tell me the truth, my boy — you are in love. That is the trouble.”

  Orsino shrugged his shoulders.

  “I have been in love some time,” he answered.

  “Young? Old? Marriageable? Married? Out with it, I say!”

  “I would rather talk about business. I think it is all over now.”

  “Just like your father — always full of secrets! As if I did not know all about it. You are in love with that Madame d’Aranjuez.”

  Orsino turned a little pale.

  “Please do not call her ‘that’ Madame d’Aranjuez,” he said, gravely.

  “Eh? What? Are you so sensitive about her?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are? Very well — I like that. What about her?”

  “What a question!”

  “I mean — is she indifferent, cold, in love with some one else?”

  “Not that I am aware. She has refused to marry me and has left Rome, that is all.”

  “Refused to marry you!” cried old Saracinesca in boundless astonishment. “My dear boy, you must be out of your mind! The thing is impossible. You are the best match in Rome. Madame d’Aranjuez refuse you — absolutely incredible, not to be believed for a moment. You are dreaming. A widow — without much fortune — the relict of some curious adventurer — a woman looking for a fortune, a woman—”

  “Stop!” cried Orsino, savagely.

  “Oh yes — I forgot. You are sensitive. Well, well, I meant nothing against her, except that she must be insane if what you tell me is true. But I am glad of it, my boy, very glad. She is no match for you, Orsino. I confess, I wish you would marry at once. I would like to see my great grandchildren — but not Madame d’Aranjuez. A widow, too.”

  “My father married a widow.”

  “When you find a widow like your mother, and ten years younger than yourself, marry her if you can. But not Madame d’Aranjuez — older than you by several years.”

  “A few years.”

  “Is that all? It is too much, though. And who is Madame d’Aranjuez? Everybody was asking the question last winter. I suppose she had a name before she married, and since you have been trying to make her your wife, you must know all about her. Who was she?”

  Orsino hesitated.

  “You see!” cried, the old Prince. “It is not all right. There is a secret — there is something wrong about her family, or about her entrance into the world. She knows perfectly well that we would never receive her and has concealed it all from you—”

  “She has not concealed it. She has told me the exact truth. But I shall not repeat it to you.”

  “All the stronger proof that everything is not right. You are well out of it, my boy, exceedingly well out of it. I congratulate you.”

  “I would rather not be congratulated.”

  “As you please. I am sorry for you, if you are unhappy. Try and forget all about it. How is your mother?”

  At any other time Orsino would have laughed at the characteristic abruptness.

  “Perfectly well, I believe. I have not seen her all summer,” he answered gravely.

  “Not been to Saracinesca all summer! No wonder you look ill. Telegraph to them that I have come back and let us get the family together as soon as possible. Do you think I mean to spend six months alone in your company, especially when you are away all day at that wretched office of yours? Be quick about it — telegraph at once.”

  “Very well. But please do not repeat anything of what I have told you to my father or my mother. That is the only thing I have to ask.”

  “Am I a parrot? I never talk to them of your affairs.”

  “Thanks. I am grateful.”

  “To heaven because your grandfather is not a parakeet! No doubt. You have good cause. And look here, Orsino—”

  The old man took Orsino’s arm and held it firmly, speaking in a lower tone.

  “Do not make an ass of yourself, my boy — especially in business. But if you do — and you probably will, you know — just come to me, without speaking to any one else. I will see what can be done without noise. There — take that, and forget all about your troubles and get a little more colour into your face.”

  “You are too good to me,” said Orsino, grasping the old Prince’s hand. For once, he was really moved.

  “Nonsense — go and send that telegram at once. I do not want to be kept waiting a week for a sight of my family.”

  With a deep, good humoured laugh he pushed Orsino out of the door in front of him and went off to h
is own quarters.

  In due time the family returned from Saracinesca and the gloomy old palace waked to life again. Corona and her husband were both struck by the change in Orsino’s appearance, which indeed contrasted strongly with their own, refreshed and strengthened as they were by the keen mountain air, the endless out-of-door life, the manifold occupations of people deeply interested in the welfare of those around them and supremely conscious of their own power to produce good results in their own way. When they all came back, Orsino himself felt how jaded and worn he was as compared with them.

  Before twelve hours had gone by, he found himself alone with his mother. Strange to say he had not looked forward to the interview with pleasure. The bond of sympathy which had so closely united the two during the spring seemed weakened, and Orsino would, if possible, have put off the renewal of intimate converse which he knew to be inevitable. But that could not be done.

  It would not be hard to find reasons for his wishing to avoid his mother. Formerly his daily tale had been one of success, of hope, of ever increasing confidence. Now he had nothing to tell of but danger and anxiety for the future, and he was not without a suspicion that she would strongly disapprove of his allowing himself to be kept afloat by Del Ferice’s personal influence, and perhaps by his personal aid. It was hard to begin daily intercourse on a basis of things so different from that which had seemed solid and safe when they had last talked together. He had learned to bear his own troubles bravely, too, and there was something which he associated with weakness in the idea of asking sympathy for them now. He would rather have been left alone.

  Deep down, too, was the consciousness of all that had happened between himself and Maria Consuelo since his mother’s departure. Another suffering, another and distinctly different misfortune, to be borne better in silence than under question even of the most affectionate kind. His grandfather had indeed guessed at both truths and had taxed him with them at once, but that was quite another matter. He knew that the old gentleman would never refer again to what he had learned, and he appreciated the generous offer of help, of which he would never avail himself, in a way in which he could not appreciate an assistance even more lovingly proffered, perhaps, but which must be asked for by a confession of his own failure.