Maria’s hand had closed upon the precious packet while he spoke.
‘You?’ she cried at last. She was almost speechless with amazement. ‘You took them?’
‘Yes, Signora Contessa, and I give them back and implore your pardon.’
‘Why did you take them if it was not to extract money from me?’ Maria asked, recovering her presence of mind quickly.
In the storm of her distress she felt as if a wave had lifted her up and had set her high on the shore, and at the first moment she was more amazed at the man’s audacity than angry at what he had done.
‘Signora Contessa,’ he said, ‘the story the Count told you is true; since he forgave me, there is nothing I will not do for him, his interest, and his honour. I did your Excellency the great injustice of suspecting that you still corresponded with the Signor Conte del Castiglione. I have read the letters and I have observed the dates. I was wrong. If you think it wise to disturb my master’s peace by telling him what I have done, I must submit and bear his displeasure. He will turn me out for having dared to play detective and spy upon the Signora Contessa in his own house, for his confidence in you is absolute. Will your Excellency verify the contents of the package? I will hold the taper, if you will allow me.’
Maria felt as if she were in a dream, half good, half evil. She opened the packet while Schmidt held the light, and she quickly made sure that none of the letters were missing and that each was complete; that was soon done, for Castiglione had rarely filled more than one sheet in writing to her.
She laid them all together again and took the taper-stand from the steward without a word. It was all a dream. If he had been a villain, he might have had her fortune for what he was freely giving back to her; but he had nothing. He had not even begged her not to tell her husband what had happened. It was incomprehensible beyond all explanation; but one fact remained: she had recovered the letters of which the loss had nearly driven her mad, within an hour of finding that they had been stolen. That was the main thing, and nothing else mattered much for a while.
‘You have a singular way of serving your master,’ she said, as she reached the door of the passage; ‘but since you have appealed to my generosity, I shall say nothing to the Count.’
‘I am most grateful to your Excellency.’
He opened the door and held it back while she passed in, and when he had shut it after her he heard the bolt pushed into its slot. Then at last he smiled, for though a bolt is generally considered to be a solid fastening for the inside of a door, this one could easily be moved from without by an unobtrusive little brass button, no bigger than a pea, that moved along a slit narrow enough to pass unnoticed.
Schmidt waited in the chapel two hours. When he knew that the family was at dinner, he opened the passage door noiselessly and twisted together the ends of the wire he had cut. He had been badly frightened, but things had ended well enough; better for him than for the Countess, he thought.
CHAPTER XVII
NOTHING HAPPENED DURING the next week; nothing, that is to say, which can be chronicled as an event. But the determination which Maria had formed after her chance meeting with Castiglione gained strength continually. She went to confession at last, and it was a bitter satisfaction to be told that she was in mortal sin because she had whispered those few loving words in the weakness of an instant; she was reminded that if the mere wish to kill was almost as bad as the intention, and that the intention was murder and nothing else, it followed that the most passing wish to be united with any man but her husband was a betrayal of her marriage vow only a little less grave than the worst. She replied that she knew it was. She was warned that she must uproot from her heart every memory of the man she had loved, if she hoped to be forgiven. She bowed her head and answered that she wished with all her soul to do so, and was trying with all her might to succeed.
She had gone once more to the terrible old Capuchin, because she knew what he would say, and wished to hear him say it. Though the name of Padre Bonaventura was known to her and to many, he did not know her and had never seen her face; it was before God that she accused herself and abased herself, and promised to do better, and most earnestly prayed for help. The monk remembered her without knowing who she was, and before he pronounced the absolution she implored, he said what he believed it his duty to say. It was a short, harsh homily on the abominable wickedness of the rich and great, who were so much better taught and so much more carefully brought up than the poor and the ignorant, and therefore so much the more responsible for their thoughts and actions. The sin of the noble lady was a thousand times greater than the fault of the unlettered hill-woman. Why should a lady of Rome expect to be forgiven more easily than a peasant?
To this also Maria bent her head, and said she came to confession as a sinful woman, with no thought of her own station in life; and at last the Capuchin was satisfied. While she was kneeling in the quiet church just afterwards, he came out of his box and went away, and she watched him, remembering how he had stalked away, in righteous indignation, with his grim old head in the air, after she had come to him the first time. But now he walked quietly and slowly, looking down; and before he disappeared he knelt before the altar a few moments. She knew that he was praying for her, as a good confessor does for each penitent, and she was humbly grateful. Even in her inmost consciousness she did not think critically of what he had said, nor find fault with his scant knowledge of great ladies’ hearts.
She did not think she had ‘risen higher’ now. Her attempt to rise by the purification of her earthly love had been a wretched failure. Henceforth she would dream no dreams of that sort: not once, in years to come, would she willingly dwell on thoughts of Baldassare del Castiglione.
It was half-past five o’clock when she reached her home again, and on the way another resolution had formed itself, on which she acted at once. She determined to tell her husband everything that had happened before he had come back. Her reason was a practical one, strong enough to warrant the risk she was about to take; for she now distrusted the man Schmidt, who might at any moment turn against her and use the knowledge he had obtained, and ruin Montalto’s life by placing her in an utterly false light. It was only natural that the steward should hate her, since she had caught him in the chapel, and before long he would try to get rid of her. Yet she was thinking less of herself now than of Montalto.
She sent for her husband’s valet, and told him to beg the Count to come to her as soon as he returned.
An hour later he entered the boudoir, looking rather pale and tired, as she thought. Her resolution wavered for a moment, but soon returned when she remembered the man who had stolen her secret, and who might so terribly misrepresent it. That thought had hindered her from burning the letters as soon as they were again in her possession, and she had put them away in her jewel-case.
She made Montalto sit down near the small fire, and, to his surprise, she locked the door that led into the ball-room before she seated herself beside him.
‘We might be interrupted,’ she said, in explanation.
‘What is the matter, my dear?’ her husband asked.
‘I have something to tell you,’ she answered. ‘You must be patient with me, Diego. You must try to understand, though it will be hard. I thought I was doing right, but after a long time I am quite sure that it was wrong.’
‘My dear Maria,’ Montalto said, ‘if your intention was good, you did nothing wrong. You only made a mistake.’
‘Thank you.’ She was grateful for the trite words, because she knew that he meant them. ‘When you came home,’ she continued after a short time, ‘I told you that I had seen Baldassare, and that we had parted for ever. You said we need not speak of him again.’
‘Yes.’ Montalto’s face became very grave as he nodded and looked at the fire.
‘What I told you was true,’ she went on. ‘The last time we met, we agreed never to see each other again if we could avoid it. That was quite true. But it gave you a wrong im
pression. You may have thought that after you had gone away to live in Spain we had only met that once.’
Montalto looked at her with a startled expression, but she met his eyes quietly and honestly.
‘No, Diego,’ she said at once, ‘I did nothing that I thought wrong or felt ashamed of.’
He turned to the fire with a sigh of relief, but did not speak.
‘He came to Rome a month or more before your mother died,’ she continued. ‘I had not seen him since — since that time — you know — long before you first went to your mother. We met by accident. They had persuaded me to take one of the booths at Kermess in the Villa, and he appeared quite unexpectedly. You believe me, don’t you, Diego?’
Montalto turned to her and spoke very slowly.
‘I shall believe every word you tell me. You never told me an untruth in your life.’
‘No, never. But I thank you for trusting me now. It is not every man that would. After he came back’ — she was careful not to mention Castiglione’s name after the first time— ‘I saw him again and again; I thought I hated him, Diego, but I loved him still.’
It was hard to say, but perhaps it was harder to hear. Yet her husband had never known how she had deceived herself into believing that she hated Castiglione, and he did not turn upon her as she had expected. His head sank a little, but he was still watching the burning logs.
‘Do you love him now?’ he asked with an effort.
‘I have promised on my knees and before God to tear every thought of him from my heart.’
There was no mistaking her tone.
‘That is enough,’ he answered. ‘No one can ask more than that of you.’
A short silence followed.
‘Is that all, my dear?’ he asked presently in a kind tone.
‘No. There is more, and it will be harder to understand, perhaps, though it will be easier to say. I found him greatly changed after all those years; changed for the better, I mean. Then I let myself believe that we could love each other innocently for the rest of our lives, and do no wrong, not even to you.’
‘Not even to me.’ There was a sudden bitterness in Montalto’s voice as he repeated the words.
‘I did not think you loved me still, Diego. You had not forgiven me then. I felt that my only duty to you was to bear your name without more reproach, and I did that. There was not a word breathed against me in those years. You know how I lived, and I had no secret; what the world knew was all there was to be known. But when he came back I began to dream of something innocent — that seemed possible.’
The last sentence choked her a little. Montalto turned to her.
‘Do you regret your dream now? Do you wish it back?’ he asked sorrowfully.
‘No!’ she said with sudden vehemence. ‘It was not right, it was wrong! It was not innocent, it was a temptation! It is gone. I will never think of it again, nor of him, if God will help me to forget.’
‘I am trying to help you, too, Maria.’
The words cut her to the quick. He meant them so truly, he spoke them so humbly, he loved her so dearly; yet she felt her flesh creep at his touch and shrank under his least caress, do what she could.
‘I know you are, Diego,’ she managed to say, and then she collected her strength to tell what was left. ‘It lasted a month or six weeks altogether,’ she said, going on quickly. ‘He had exchanged into another regiment in order not to be quartered in Rome. He was in Milan then, and he was here on a short leave. He applied to be allowed to come back to the Piedmont Lancers. While he was in Milan we wrote to each other. We promised to be faithful and innocent; we told each other that we would love as spirits love, and meet in heaven. Then your mother died, and you wrote me that first long letter, and I answered it; and on the same day I wrote to him and told him he must not come to Rome, that we must never see each other again because you were going to take me back. But it was too late, the matter had been settled already, and he had to come.’
‘Of course,’ said Montalto, in a dull tone, when she paused.
‘I sent for him then. That was the last time, the time I told you of. He came, and we said good-bye.’
A long pause followed, and Montalto did not move.
‘Is that all you wished to tell me?’ he asked at length.
‘I let him kiss my cheek twice,’ Maria said, very low.
This time her husband turned towards her quickly, and she saw how very pale he was.
‘Was that when you parted?’
‘No! Oh, no! It was in those first few days when he was here on leave.’
Montalto seemed relieved, and his face softened; he was still looking at her, but he did not speak.
‘Can you forgive me that?’ she asked.
‘You meant no harm,’ he said. ‘You were not thinking of doing any wrong, you were only dreaming of an impossible good. There is nothing to forgive.’
‘Ah, how good you are to me! How very, very good!’
‘It is only justice, and I love you. How can I be unjust to you when I see how hard you are trying to do right?’
‘You are one of the best men that ever lived,’ said Maria, and for a few seconds she covered her face with her hands. ‘Only tell me,’ she continued presently, looking up, ‘you know all my story now — have I hurt you very much?’
‘A little, my dear, but it is over already. Think of what I should have felt if you had not told me these things, and if some enemy, who knew, had told them as an enemy might!’
He, who was often so dull, seemed to have divined her inmost intention. She rose from her seat.
‘What is it?’ he asked, moving to stand up.
‘Wait a moment!’
She went into her dressing-room and returned almost instantly, bringing a large envelope. He was seated again and she stood between him and the fireplace, facing him.
‘He wrote me seven letters,’ she said. ‘Here they are. I give them into your hands. Read them, and you will understand better.’
He took the envelope and held it a moment, looking up to her face with a gentle smile.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said. ‘I do not need any proofs in order to believe you.’
He rose then and tried to pass her, to reach the fire, evidently meaning to burn the letters at once.
The tears came suddenly to her eyes without overflowing, as they did sometimes when she was much moved by a generous word or deed, but she caught at his arm as he was in the act of tossing the letters into the flames. The envelope left his hand but fell short and lay on the polished tiles of the hearth. Maria stooped and picked it up.
‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘you must not burn them yet. I know you trust me now, but there is that other possibility. Some enemy of yours or mine may say that we wrote to each other. You must be able to answer that you have the real letters in your keeping.’
‘That is true,’ said Montalto, and he took the envelope back from her. ‘I will seal it and put it away.’
He went to her writing-table, and she followed him to light the little taper in its silver stand and to place the sealing wax before him when he had sat down. He melted it slowly and spread a broad patch upon the overlapping point of the envelope, working the wax neatly round and round till it stiffened, and then putting on more with a little flame, and working it over till the patch softened again.
‘Your seal is not ready,’ said Maria, glancing at the ring on his finger. ‘The wax will get cold.’
He said nothing, but when he was ready he took her own seal, which lay beside the taper-stand, and pressed it upon the wax. When he lifted it, there was a clear impression of Maria’s simple monogram, the doubled letter that began both her names, encircled by a little belt, on which were engraved the words ‘Risurgi e Vinci’ — meaning ‘Rise again and overcome.’ They are from the Paradiso of Dante.
Once more her eyes grew dim with gratitude, for she knew what he meant by using her seal; there was not to be even the possibility of a doubt in her mind t
hat he might ever open the packet.
He took her pen and wrote on the back, in his stiff and formal handwriting.
‘In case of my death, to be given to my wife at once.’
‘Then you will burn it, my dear,’ he said, showing her what he had written.
As she stood beside him her hand pressed hard upon his thin shoulder, for she was very much touched. He looked up, smiling, slipped the sealed envelope into his pocket and rose.
‘That is done,’ he said, ‘and we need never think of it again.’
‘You know what I feel,’ she answered softly. ‘I cannot say it.’
They went back to the fireplace and stood side by side gazing at the flames. He linked his arm through hers without looking at her, and she did not shrink from his touch, for she was thinking only of his kindness then. He pressed her arm to his side and then withdrew his own and looked at his watch.
‘I must be going,’ he said.
‘Stay a little longer,’ said she, and it was the first time she had ever made such a request.
‘I wish I could. But there is a lawyer waiting for me, and I must see him before dinner.’
‘A lawyer? Is anything wrong? You looked a little tired when you came in. Has anything happened?’
‘Yes, my dear, and I wish your judgment were as good as your heart!’ He smiled.
‘My judgment? What do you mean?’
‘Schmidt disappeared four days ago, and we cannot find any trace of him.’
Maria was profoundly surprised.
‘Has he taken money?’ she asked after a moment.
‘That is the question. So far we cannot find anything wrong with his books nor at the bank. But then he is so very “intelligent,” you know!’
He laughed a little as he reminded his wife of their conversation at Montalto. It was evident that he did not anticipate any heavy loss.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1151