THE PRIMA DONNA’S HATE.
Lucia Guiscardini clutched at the iron bar against which she was
half-leaning, and glared into the face of her husband, as if she would
read his innermost soul.
“What does he know?” she whispered to herself. “How much does he know?”
There was a dead silence for a few seconds. The signs of emotion caused
by the name of the friendless wretch who had sought his help were not
lost upon Captain Desfrayne.
Madam Guiscardini was trying to rally her forces, and she could not
reply in words. Paul Desfrayne repeated his inquiry in another form:
“You do know him?”
The half-terrified woman looked straight into his eyes--those honest
eyes, so full of natural kindness and honor.
Fear had blanched her cheeks and lips; shame, perhaps, now drove the
roseate hues in a flood back again, as she answered, in a tolerably
steady voice:
“I do not. I have never heard of him.”
“Ah! I don’t suppose my domestic affairs can possess any interest for
you, madam. It is merely a piece of egotistical gossip to inform you
that I have taken Leonardo Gilardoni into my service.”
“Into your service?”
The words were pronounced slowly, with obvious difficulty, and in a
husky voice.
Paul Desfrayne did not evidence, by the slightest sign, any triumph at
the effect his unexpected shot had produced, but silently watched her
face.
“Why--why have you done so? I mean, why do you tell me of it?”
“I cannot help having an idea that you knew something of the poor
fellow at one time, though he has slipped from your memory,” Captain
Desfrayne said, very calmly, shrugging his shoulders.
“Has he said--has he said----”
She could not continue; the effort at control was too great.
It was impossible to tell how much this quiet, now half-smiling, man
before her might know of the terror that haunted her day and night.
“Has he said _what_?” demanded Paul Desfrayne, looking her steadily in
the face.
“Said he knew me?” Madam Guiscardini coolly replied.
But as she spoke, her fingers so convulsively twitched, as if she were
trying her utmost to curb the secret emotions of her mind, that they
snapped the delicate, carved ivory handle of her parasol.
Paul Desfrayne, who had not once removed his eyes from her face,
laughed cynically, bitterly. His laughter had in it more of menace than
an uncontrollable outburst of violent anger.
He thought: “What can be the secret between them?” But aloud he said,
affecting to ignore the accidental betrayal so direful as well as the
agitation of his wife:
“He has barely mentioned your name, and then simply in a passing way.”
“May I ask your reason for supposing I was acquainted with him?”
“I had more reasons than one. But a chief reason was that I knew
he came from your part of Italy; and in a village everybody knows
everybody else. Had he been an old friend of yours--don’t curl your
lip: you were once as lowly placed as he, perhaps more so--you might
perchance have cared to hear something of him. The poor wretch has
been in grievous adversity, it seems: without a friend, often without
a shelter, without money; so it is probably a fortunate thing for him
that he has found a friend in me.”
“I hope he will serve you well,” said Madam Guiscardini, in an ice-cold
tone. “It shows good taste on the part of Captain Desfrayne to
recall the fact that the Guiscardini was once a poor cottage girl in
poverty--in----”
Her eyes flashed, and she stopped, as if afraid of rousing her
indomitable temper did she proceed. One sentence might ruin her. She
abruptly curbed herself, and swept another curtsy.
“I have the honor to wish Captain Desfrayne good morning, and shall be
ready to receive his promised--his threatened visit----”
“On Monday afternoon,” Paul Desfrayne said sharply, as if in positive
pain. “I can endure this slavery--this horrible bondage--no longer in
silence.”
“On Monday afternoon be it. You know where to find me?”
“No, I do not.”
Madam Guiscardini looked with intent suspicion at him. She hated
this handsome young man with concentrated hate, but she respected
him profoundly, and she knew he would not utter a falsehood to gain
a kingdom. Therefore she was obliged to believe him, though she had
previously imagined that his presence in Porchester Square had been due
to some plot of which she was the object.
She carefully watched him as she gave her address. It was like a duel
to the death, each adversary narrowly eying the movements of the other.
To her further mystification, Paul Desfrayne almost sprang back in his
amazement when he heard her name the exact place where she lived.
“Where?” he demanded, as if unable to credit his ears.
She coldly repeated the name of the square and the number of the house.
“Why does he seem so astonished?” she said to herself, eying him with
a glance akin to that in the yellow orbs of the leopardess a few steps
from her. “What is the matter now?”
“On Monday afternoon, then, we will have a further explanation, Madam
Guiscardini,” Paul Desfrayne said, mastering his surprise, and raising
his hat with the ceremony he would have used to a total stranger.
He left her.
“Separated from my mother by a few layers of bricks and mortar,” he
thought. “I have appointed an interview, but what good can come of it?
None. I have made my bed--made it of thorns and briers, and must sleep
therein with what comfort I may.”
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“What is to be done? It would be the best and wisest course to
immediately inform my mother of the exact state of affairs. I wish I
had done so at first. I am like those very immoral little boys in the
story-books of one’s youth, who don’t tell in time, and so the agony
goes on piling up until the culprit is next to smothered. What is to be
done with this Gordian knot? I have not the courage to cut it. I wonder
they didn’t include moral cowardice among the deadly sins. I wonder
what would be the consequences if I did summon up sufficient nerve to
inform my mother of my culpable behavior three years ago? Come, Paul
Desfrayne, it must be done. Better be brave at once, and march up to
the cannon’s mouth, than be found out ignominiously some day sooner or
later. Shall it be done to-day--this evening?”
His reverie was broken by a light, caressing touch upon his arm.
Turning round suddenly, with a strange sensation of nervous alarm, he
found his mother by his side.
Smiling, pleasant, unsuspicious, her sunny brow unclouded by a shadow
that might possibly produce a future wrinkle, she looked deliciously
happy, and perfectly confident, to all appearance, of his trust and
affection.
She started as he turned his face full upon her.
“You are pale, my dear. Are you not well?” she anxiously inquired.
“Not very well, mother. The heat--the crowd--it is such a bore
altogether, that I am weary, and I should be glad to escape.”
“My dear Paul, I have seen so little of you lately, that I grudge to
lose you when I have fairly secured a chance of your company. But”--she
glanced round at the gay, ever-moving crowd, with its lively colors,
at the faces, dotted here and there, with which she was familiar, and
a faint smile dimpled the corners of her lips--“if you will, let us go
somewhere else. Where would you like to go?”
“Anywhere. I want a little talk with you--one of our own old gossips,
mother. It is impossible to obtain the least chance of an uninterrupted
talk here.”
Yet as he spoke, his heart sank within him. It seemed as if his
confession would be more difficult to-day than ever. To make his path
more thorny, that beloved face looked so confiding, so sure that there
could not be the shadow of a secret, that it would have been a thousand
times easier to walk up to the cannon’s mouth, than to speak the few
words that must break forever the steady bond linking them together.
But for all Mrs. Desfrayne’s calm, suave looks, she was keenly watching
her son. His absence alone had hindered her from finding out long ago
that some shadow lay between them. Her practised, maternal eyes could
read him through.
“What has happened, and why is he afraid to tell me?” she meditated,
while to outward seeming engaged in regarding the pleasant scene about
her with half-childish interest.
Her brain ran swiftly over every imaginable train of events, possible
or impossible, that might have happened, seeking some clue to the
evident mystery.
Not for a moment did her mind revert to what, after all, was the most
simple and obvious explanation.
They moved to quit the gardens.
“Is not that the Guiscardini?” she asked of Paul.
“I believe so.”
Mrs. Desfrayne had put up her glass, so the look and tone with which
her inquiry was answered escaped her.
“I don’t know why,” she continued; “but I have taken an inveterate
dislike to that woman. She reminds me of a magnificent cobra. You know,
Paul, I have a foolish way of taking likes and dislikes.”
At the next step she encountered Miss Turquand.
In spite of her resolve to cultivate the young girl’s friendship, a
cold inclination of the head was all that passed between them.
A warmer salutation to Lady Quaintree followed, but Mrs. Desfrayne was
too impatient to hear what her son had to say, to be able to stop just
then for a little idle, sunshiny gossip.
Paul handed her into the brougham that was in waiting.
It was a hired one, as Mrs. Desfrayne always remembered as she was
about to enter it. She had longed for the days when either by some
brilliant matrimonial stroke on her own part, or that of her son, she
should be the happy possessor of such carriages and horses as might
please her fancy. Yet now she was secretly determined to hinder, if
possible, her son’s acceptance of a fortune that far exceeded her most
sanguine dreams.
With anxiety she regarded Paul’s face as he seated himself beside her.
He was ashy pale, and his eyes were bright with the brightness of fever.
“Home,” she said to the coachman.
Too wary to hasten the unwilling confession by ill-timed or injudicious
questions, Mrs. Desfrayne nestled back in her cozy corner, and began to
flirt her garden-fan, waiting patiently.
It is always the first step that forms the difficulty, and even yet
Paul could not resolve on precipitating himself into those cold waters
he so dreaded. Even did he take the plunge, how could he introduce the
subject?
The drive passed, therefore, in constrained silence.
It was not until they were seated in the cool, pleasant room, called by
Mrs. Desfrayne her own special retreat, that Paul could break the ice.
Mrs. Desfrayne gazed with wonderment at the handsome face of her boy,
as he sat on a low chair before her, his eyes cast down, his hands
nervously playing with the silken fringe on her dress, so unlike what
she had ever known him before.
“Paul,” she said softly, leaning toward him, “you look like a criminal.
What is the matter with you?”
The tone was mellow and tender, and yet with a tinge of gentle gaiety.
Paul raised his eyes.
“Like a criminal?” he repeated slowly. “I look like what I am. Oh! my
mother--my mother!”
He slipped from the low chair, on his knees, and bowed his face on his
mother’s hands. She felt hot tears wet her fingers, and a great terror
seized her heart, for she adored her boy.
“Paul,” she whispered, “tell me what has happened!”