“I think I knew your mother, and my daughter has told me about you,” she said. “I am glad to see you.”
“You are very kind,” Malipieri answered, raising her hand to his lips, which encountered a large, cool sapphire. “I have had the pleasure of meeting Donna Sabina several times.”
“Yes, I know.” The Princess laughed. “Sit down here beside me, and tell me all about your strange adventure. You are really the man I mean, are you not?” she asked, still smiling. “Your mother was a Gradenigo?”
“Yes. My father is alive. You may have met him, though he rarely leaves Venice.”
“I think I have, years ago, but I am not sure. Does he never come to Rome?”
“He is an invalid now,” Malipieri explained gravely. “He cannot leave the house.”
“Indeed? I am very sorry. It must be dreadful to be an invalid. I was never ill in my life. But now that we have made acquaintance, do tell me all about last night I Were you really in danger, as Sabina thinks, or is she exaggerating?”
“There was certainly no exaggeration in saying that we were in great danger, as matters have turned out,” Malipieri answered. “Of the two men who knew that we were in the vault, one is lying insensible, with a fractured skull, in the hospital of the Consolazione, and the other has been arrested by a mistake and is in prison. Besides, both of them would have had every reason to suppose that we had got out.”
“Sabina did not tell me that. How awful! I must know all the details, please!”
Malipieri told the whole story, from the time when Volterra had first invited him to come and make a search. The Princess nodded her energetic approval of his view that Sabina had a right to a large share in anything that was found. The poor girl’s dowry, she said, had been eaten up by her father’s absurd charities and by the bad administration of the estates which had ruined the whole family. Malipieri paid no attention to this statement, for he knew the truth, and he went on to the end, telling everything, up to the moment when Volterra had at last quitted the palace that morning and had left him free.
“Poor Sassi!” exclaimed the Princess, when he had finished. “He was a foolish old man, but he always seemed very willing. Is that all?”
“Yes. That is all. I think I have forgotten nothing.”
The Princess looked at him and smiled encouragingly, expecting him to say something more, but he was grave and silent. Gradually, the smile faded from her face, till she looked away, and took a cigarette from the table at her elbow. Still he said nothing. She lit the cigarette and puffed at it two or three times, slowly and thoughtfully.
“I hope that Donna Sabina is none the worse for the fatigue,” Malipieri said at last. “She seemed quite well this morning. I wondered that she had not caught cold.”
“She never caught cold easily, even as a child,” answered the Princess indifferently. “This affair may have much more serious consequences than a cold in the head,” she added, after a long pause.
“I think the Volterra couple will be discreet, for their own sakes,” Malipieri answered.
“Their servants must know that Sabina was out all night.”
“They do not know that poor Sassi did not bring her to you here, and the Baroness will be careful to let them understand that she is here now, and with you. Those people dread nothing like a scandal. The secret is between them and us. I do not see how any one else can possibly know it, or guess it.”
“The fact remains,” said the Princess, speaking out, “that my daughter spent last night in your rooms, and slept there, as if she had been in her own home. If it is ever known she will be ruined.”
“It will never be known, I am quite sure.”
“I am not, and it is a possibility I cannot really afford to contemplate.” She looked fixedly at him.
Malipieri was silent, and his face showed that he was trying to find some way out of the imaginary difficulty, or at least some argument which might quiet the Princess’s fears.
She did not understand his silence. If he was a man of honour, it was manifestly his duty at least to offer the reparation that lay in his power; but he showed no inclination to do so. It was incomprehensible.
“I cannot see what is to be done,” he said at last.
“Is it possible that I must tell you, Signer Malipieri?” asked the Princess, and her splendid eyes flashed angrily.
Malipieri’s met them without flinching.
“You mean, of course, that I should offer to marry Donna Sabina,” he said.
“What else could an honourable man do, in your position?”
“I wish I knew.” Malipieri passed his hand over his eyes in evident distress.
“Do you mean to say that you refuse?” the Princess asked, between scorn and anger. “Are you so little one of us that you suppose this to be a question of inclination?”
Malipieri looked up again.
“I wish it were. I love your daughter with all my heart and soul. I did, before I saved her life last night.”
The Princess’s anger gave way to stupefaction.
“Well — but then? I do not understand. There is something else?”
“Yes, there is something else. I have kept the secret a long time, and it is not all my own.”
“I have a right to know it,” the Princess answered firmly, and bending her brows.
“I never expected to tell it to any one,” Malipieri said, in a low voice, and evidently struggling with himself. “I see that I shall have to trust you.”
“You must,” insisted the Princess. “My daughter has a right to know, as well as I; and you say that you love her.”
“I am married.”
“Good heavens!”
She sank back in her chair, overwhelmed with surprise at the simple statement, which, after all, need not have astonished her so much, as she reflected a moment later. She had never heard of Malipieri until that day, and since he had never told any one of his marriage, it was impossible that her daughter should have known of it. She was tolerably sure that the latter’s adventure would not be known, but she had formed the determination to take advantage of it in order to secure Malipieri for Sabina, and had been so perfectly sure of the result that she fell from the clouds on learning that he had a wife already.
On his part, he was not thinking of what was passing in her mind, but of what he should have thought of himself, had he, with his character, been in her position. The bald statement that he was married and his confession of his love for Sabina looked badly side by side, in the clear light of his own honour; all the more, because he knew that, without positively or directly speaking out his heart to the girl, he had let her guess that he was falling in love with her. He had said so, though in jest, on that night when he had been alone with her in Volterra’s house; his going there, on the mere chance of seeing her alone, and the interest he had shown in her from their first meeting, must have made her think that he was in love. Moreover, he really was, and like most people who are consciously in love where they ought not to be, he felt as if everybody knew it; and yet he was a married man.
“I am legally married under Italian law,” he said, after a pause. “But that is all. My wife bears my name, and lives honourably under it, but that is all there has ever been of marriage in my life. I can honestly say that not even a word of affection ever passed between us.”
“How strange!” The Princess listened with interest, wondering what was coming next.
“I never saw her but once,” Malipieri continued. “We met in the morning, we were married at noon, at the municipality, we parted at the railway station twenty minutes later, and have never met again.”
“But you are not married at all!” cried the Princess. “The Church would annul such a marriage without making the least trouble.”
“We were not even married in church,” said Malipieri. “We were married at the municipality only.”
“It is not a marriage at all, then.”
“Excuse me. It is perfectly valid
in law, and my wife has a certified copy of the register to prove that she has a right to my name.”
“Were you mad? What made you do it? It is utterly incomprehensible — to bind yourself for life to a woman you had never seen! What possible motive—”
“I will tell you,” said Malipieri. “It all happened long ago, when I was little more than twenty-one. It is not a very long story, but I beg you not to tell it. You do not suppose me capable of keeping it a secret in order to make another marriage, not really legal do you?”
“Certainly not,” answered the Princess. “I believe you to be an honourable man. I will not tell your story to any one.”
“You may tell Donna Sabina as much of it as you think she need hear. This is what happened. I served my time in a cavalry regiment — no matter where, and I had an intimate friend, nearly of my own age, and a Venetian. He was very much in love with a young girl of a respectable family, but not of his own station. Of course his family would not hear of a marriage, but she loved him, and he promised that he would marry her as soon as he had finished his military service, in spite of his own people. He would have been of age by that time, for he was only a few months younger than I, and he was willing to sacrifice most of his inheritance for love of the girl. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“He and I were devotedly attached to each other, said I sympathized with him, of course, and promised to help him if he made a runaway match. He used to get leave for a couple of days, to go and see her, for she lived with her parents in a small city within two hours of our garrison town. You guess what happened. — They were young, they were foolish, and they were madly in love.”
The Princess nodded, and Malipieri continued.
“Not long afterwards, my friend was killed by a fall. His horse crushed him. It was a horrible accident, and he lived twelve hours after it, in great pain. He would not let the doctors give him morphia. He said he would die like a man, and he did, with all his senses about him. While he lay dying, I was with him, and then he told me all the truth. The girl would not be able to conceal it much longer. There was no time to bring her to his bedside and marry her while he still breathed. He could not even leave her money, for he was a minor. He could do nothing for her and her parents would turn her into the street; in any case she was ruined. He was in frightful agony of mind for her sake, he was dying before my eyes, powerless to help her and taking his suffering and his fault with him to the next world, and he was my friend. I did what I could. I gave him my word of honour that I would marry her legally, give her and her child my name, and provide for them as well as I could. He thanked me — I shall never forget how he looked — and he died quietly, half an hour afterwards. You know now. I kept my word. That is all.”
The Princess looked at his quiet face a moment in silence, and all that was best in her rose up through all that was artificial and worldly, and untruthful and vain.
“I did not know that there were such men,” she said simply.
CHAPTER XX
“SO HE GOT out,” said Gigi to Toto, filling the latter’s glass to the brim.
“May he die assassinated!” answered Toto. “I will burn a candle to the Madonna every day, in order that an apoplexy may seize him. He is the devil in person, this cursed engineer. Even the earth and the water will not have him. They spit him out, like that.”
Toto illustrated the simile with force and noise before drinking. Gigi’s cunning face was wreathed in smiles.
“You know nothing,” he observed.
“What is it?” asked Toto, with his glass in his hand and between two sips.
“There was old Sassi, who was hurt, and the engineer’s gaol-bird mason-servant. They were with him. It was all in the Messaggero this morning.”
“I know that without the newspaper, you imbecile. It was I that told you, for I saw all three pass under the window while I was locked in. Is there anything else you know?”
“Oh, yes! There was another person with them.”
“I daresay,” Toto answered, pretending blank indifference. “He must have been close to the wall as they went by. What difference does it make since that pig of an engineer got out?”
“The other person was caught with him when the water rose,” said Gigi, who meant to give his information by inches.
“Curse him, whoever he was! He helped the engineer and that is why they got out. No man alone could have broken through that wall in a night, except one of us.”
“The other person was only a woman, after all,” answered Gigi. “But you do not care, I suppose.”
“Speak, animal of a Jesuit that you are!” cried Toto. “Do not make me lose my soul!”
Gigi smiled and drank some of his wine.
“There are people who would pay to know,” he said, “and you would never tell me whether the sluice gate of the ‘lost water’ is under number thirteen or not.”
“It is under number thirteen, Master Judas. Speak!”
“It was the little fair girl of Casa Conti who was caught with the engineer in the vaults.”
Even Toto was surprised, and opened his eyes and his mouth at the same time.
“The little Princess Sabina?” he asked in a low voice.
Gigi shrugged his shoulders with a pitying air and grinned.
“I told you that you knew nothing,” he observed in triumph. “They were together all night, and she slept in his room, and the Senator’s wife came to get her in the morning. The engineer took the porter off to the cellars before they came down, so that he should not see her pass; but he forgot me, the old carpenter of the house, and I opened the postern for the two ladies to go out. The little Princess’s skirt had been torn. I saw the pins with these eyes. It was also spotted with mud which had been brushed off. But thanks be to heaven I have still my sight. I see, and am not blind.”
“Are you sure it was she?” asked Toto, forgetting to curse anybody.
“I saw her as I see you. Have I not seen her grow up, since she used to be wheeled about in a baby carriage in Piazza Navona, like a flower in a basket? Her nurse made love with the ‘woodpecker’ who was always on duty there.”
The Romans call the municipal watchmen “woodpeckers,” because they wear little pointed cocked hats with a bunch of feathers. They have nothing to do with police soldiers, nor with the carabineers.
Toto made Gigi tell him everything he knew. At the porter’s suggestion Volterra had sent for the mason, as the only man who knew anything about the “lost water,” and Toto had agreed, with apparent reluctance, to do what he could at once, as soon as he had satisfied himself that Malipieri had really made another opening by which the statues could be reached. Toto laid down conditions, however. He pretended that he must expose himself to great danger, and insisted upon being paid fifty francs for the job. Furthermore, he obtained from Volterra, in the presence of the porter as witness, a formal promise that his grandfather’s bones should have Christian burial, with a fine hearse and feathers, and a permanent grave in the cemetery of Saint Lawrence, which latter is rather an expensive luxury, beyond the means of the working people. But the Baron made no objection. The story would look very well in a newspaper paragraph, as a fine illustration of the Senator’s liberality as well as of his desire to maintain the forms of religion. It would please everybody, and what will do that is cheap at any price, in politics.
The result of these negotiations had of course been that the water had subsided in the vaults within a few hours, and Toto even found a way of draining the outer cellars, which had been flooded to the depth of a couple of feet, because the first breach made by Malipieri had turned out to be an inch or two lower than the level of the overflow shaft.
When the two workmen had exchanged confidences, they ordered another half litre of wine, and sat in silence till the grimy host had set it down between them on the blackened table, and had retired to his den. Then they looked at each other.
“There is an affair here,” observed
Gigi presently.
“I suppose you mean the newspapers,” said Toto nodding gravely. “They pay for such stories.”
“Newspapers!” Gigi made a face. “All journalists are pigs who are dying of hunger.”
Toto seemed inclined to agree with this somewhat extreme statement, on the whole, but he distinguished. There were papers, he said, which would pay as much as a hundred francs for a scandalous story about the Roman princes. A hundred francs was not a gold mine, it was not Peru. But it was a hundred francs. What did Gigi expect? The treasure of Saint Peter’s? A story was a story, after all, and anybody could deny it.
“It is worth more than a hundred francs,” Gigi answered, with his weasel smile, “but not to the newspapers. The honour of a Roman princess is worth a hundred thousand.”
Toto whistled, and then looked incredulous, but it began to dawn upon him that the “affair” was of more importance than he had supposed. Gigi was much cleverer than he; that was why he always called Gigi an imbecile.
The carpenter unfolded his plan. He knew as well as any one that the Conti were ruined and could not raise any such sum as he proposed to demand, even to save Sabina’s good name. It would apparently be necessary to extract the blackmail from Volterra by some means to be discovered. On the other hand, Volterra was not only rich, he also possessed much power, and it would be somewhat dangerous to incur his displeasure.
Toto, though dull, had a certain rough common sense and pointed this out. He said that the Princess must have jewels which she could sell to save her daughter from disgrace. She and Donna Sabina were at the Russian Embassy, for the Messaggero said so. Gigi, who could write, might send her a letter there.
“No doubt,” assented the carpenter with a superior air. “I have some instruction, and can write a letter. But the jewels are paste. Half the Roman princesses wear sham jewellery nowadays. Do you suppose the Conti have not sold everything long ago? They had to live.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1068