THE BREAK OF DAWN.
It was with difficulty Gilardoni could curb his impatient desire for
his master’s return. Could he by any possibility have imagined in which
direction to seek for him, he would have started off in quest before
the storm was well exhausted. But he was absolutely a stranger in this
part of the world, and for aught he could tell, his master might be the
same.
He was perforce obliged to remain in Captain Desfrayne’s rooms in
absolute inaction, listening with keenly strained watchfulness to every
sound, every footfall of man or beast.
Unfortunately, the rooms did not overlook the yard through which the
young officer must enter the barracks, so Gilardoni did not enjoy the
half-irritating consolation of watching the gate by which he would come.
It was very late before there was the slightest sign of Captain
Desfrayne’s coming.
In fact, Gilardoni at length, somehow, lost count, and was only
recalled to his eager watch by a gentle touch upon his shoulder. He
sprang to his feet, unaware that he had fallen asleep.
Captain Desfrayne had come into the room quietly. At first he had
thought of letting the poor tired fellow have his sleep to the end in
peace; but, finding he needed his services, he had aroused him.
“No matter, my good Gilardoni,” he said, with that pleasant, winning,
yet sad, smile that had become habitual to him. “I have no doubt you
are tired waiting for me. I am dog-tired myself. This afternoon, I was
caught in the storm, and had the good luck”--there was an imperceptible
shade of irony in his tone--“to find shelter in a friend’s house, so
was delayed. Will you----”
The words died on his lips. Gilardoni had placed the tiny packet in the
silver tissue-paper on the table, just within the rays of the lamp,
and Paul Desfrayne’s glance happened to light on it as he spoke.
With a hasty movement, he put out his hand to take it up, but the
Italian was more swift, and with the rapidity of lightning covered the
packet with the palm of his hand, but without removing it from the
table.
The two young men looked into each other’s face for some moments. Not
a sound was heard beyond the monotonous tick-tick of the clock on the
chimneypiece.
“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Captain Desfrayne.
He recollected the night when he engaged this man as his servant--it
seemed months ago--when he had seen him clench his fist at the pictured
resemblance to Lucia Guiscardini.
Gilardoni took up the tiny gold cross in its filmy covering, and kept
it in his hand.
“Sir,” he said, “this morning you dropped this--as I supposed. I picked
it up----”
“Both self-evident facts. As it happens to belong to _me_, and you
acknowledge my proprietorship, why do you not restore it to me?” said
Captain Desfrayne. “Do you know what it is?”
Gilardoni laughed bitterly.
“I naturally opened the packet, in order to ascertain what the contents
might be,” he responded, “for I was not certain until now that it had
really been dropped by you, sir. It is----”
“What is it? A gold cross, a pendant for a watch-chain.”
“More than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sir, may I ask you a question?”
“A thousand, if you will let me have my own property, and be brief
enough to let me get to bed within half an hour, for I sorely need
rest.”
“Sir--my good master, to whom I owe so much kindness and charity--I am
not going to ask this question out of impertinent curiosity, but--but
from a sufficiently reasonable and strong motive.”
“Come, let us have the question without further preamble.”
“I will ask you two questions. Did you buy this cross, or was it given
to you?”
Captain Desfrayne hesitated before replying, as a man in the
witness-box might do for fear of criminating himself.
“It was given to me,” he at length replied.
“By a woman?”
Captain Desfrayne looked keenly at his questioner. The idea that he was
a former lover of the beautiful Italian prima donna’s, again occurred
to him.
“If it will afford you any gratification to know, I do not object to
admitting that it was given to me by a woman,” he said.
“By an Italian?”
“By an Italian? Yes.”
“It was a love-gift?”
An exclamation of anger escaped Gilardoni’s master, and he impatiently
stretched out his hand.
“Enough of this nonsense!” he exclaimed, with displeasure. “Give me
that packet, and get you to bed. Your wits are addled by the nap you
were betrayed into.”
Gilardoni moved a step nearer to Captain Desfrayne, and, gripping him
tightly by the wrist, looked with intent, searching earnestness into
his face, as if he would read his soul. There was nothing sinister or
menacing in his attitude, gestures, or expression. He had simply the
appearance of a man carried away by some self-absorbing desire to learn
a fact of paramount interest to himself.
“This cross,” he said, “was given to you by Lucia Guiscardini.”
“I do not understand why the fact should interest you,” answered
Paul Desfrayne. “It certainly did come from her hand. What was Lucia
Guiscardini to you, or you to Lucia Guiscardini, that the sight of her
gifts to another should cause you so much emotion?”
“Did she tell you where she had obtained this toy?” asked Gilardoni.
“I did not think of inquiring. She linked it on my watch-chain one
day, and there was an end of the affair.”
“I knew this as well as if I had been present,” muttered the Italian.
“Oh! false, wicked, traitorous serpent!”
These latter words he spoke so rapidly in his native language that his
master did not catch their import.
“If you knew, why the deuce have you put yourself to the trouble of
asking so many questions? I should be glad to know what you mean by
cross-examining me in this ridiculous manner. You apparently consider
you have no very good reason to like this same Lucia Guiscardini. Has
she done you any harm?”
“She has ruined my happiness--blighted my life--that is all. No, I have
no great reason to remember her with feelings of good-will.”
“As you have asked me some questions, I may be allowed the privilege of
retaliating. May I ask if she jilted you?”
“No. Oh! no. Would to Heaven she had done so, and saved me these years
of bitter hate and regret!”
“Is she your sister?” demanded Paul Desfrayne, startled by the
overthrow of the supposition he had so readily built up.
“No. She is the only woman I have ever loved, or can ever love again.”
“Do you still love her, or do you hate her for being so far beyond you?”
Gilardoni regarded his master with a strange, inexplicable look, and
then broke into a low, savagely bitter laugh.
“May I ask, sir,” he said, “if she jilted _you_? She was quite capable
of playing the coquette to amuse herself, and then laughing in your
face, for her soul was really steeped in ambitious desires.”
“I believe, my good fellow, ambition was her besetting sin--is still,
if what folks say be true. No, she did not jilt me. But you have not
answered my question. Be frank with me. Tell me why you hate this
woman. Why do you hate her--and yet, why do you feel anger at finding
her gifts in the possession of another?”
“This cross,” said Gilardoni, tearing it from its wrapper, and holding
it out at arm’s length, with a strange, vindictive smile, “was my gift
to her--given the day I told her I loved her, and asked her----”
“What?”
“She pretended she returned my love. Bah! Her heart was as cold as
ice. She cares for no one but herself. She was born a peasant girl,
yet never was princess of blood royal more proud, more insolent, more
resolved to stand above the common herd. I adored her. I was like one
bereft of his senses when she was near me. She had but to will, and I
obeyed like the basest slave. Bah! I made an idol and tricked it out
with all the graces of my love-smitten imagination, and fell down and
worshiped it. I believed that she was exactly what my weak, foolish
heart pictured her to be. I would have raised her from her ignoble
station, but not to the height she desired to climb. To be a Russian
princess, or the lady of some great English milord, was her dream.”
“I know it,” said Paul Desfrayne, very quietly, yet he felt that some
great revelation was at hand. That the revelation was to be to his
advantage he did not hope.
“But not at the time when I linked about her neck the chain that held
this poor little gewgaw,” cried Gilardoni excitedly. “No, no. At that
time she was barely conscious of her power to charm--just waking to
the consciousness of her dangerous charm of beauty. I was her first
victim, her first triumph. She was a girl of sixteen then; I was about
six or seven years her senior. We had been neighbors and friends
from childhood. I taught her such songs and snatches of music as I
occasionally picked up, and she loved to warble the chants and psalms
she heard at chapel. She had not discovered that she had a fortune
in her throat. If she had not found out _that_, we might have been a
happy, contented couple at this day.”
Paul Desfrayne looked at the excited face of Gilardoni in a strange,
contemplative silence for a moment or two, as the Italian paused. The
dark, foreign face was lividly pale from passion; the dark, gleaming
eyes were burning with inward fire.
“I thought you assured me just this moment,” observed the young
officer, “that Lucia Guiscardini had not jilted you. If you loved her,
and she declared she reciprocated your affection, why, it is to be
imagined that the course of true love must have run tolerably smooth.
A little hypocrisy, I believe, is supposed to be pardonable with the
feminine part of our common humanity. If she said she loved you, her
affection was next best to reality.”
“She declared she loved me. I believed her,” said Gilardoni fiercely.
“I believed her because--I supposed because I wished it to be true. I
fancied no man was ever so happy as I. For a while I walked no longer
on earth, but on roseate clouds of happiness. I despise myself when
I look back on that time. Perhaps I am not the first who has been
betrayed into folly by the arts and wiles of a beautiful, treacherous
girl,” the Italian added, shrugging his shoulders.
“You have not yet given me the slightest idea of the reason why
you so cordially dislike Madam Guiscardini, if that be her correct
designation,” said Captain Desfrayne. “You indulge in the most vehement
invectives against her, yet state no specific charge. You say you made
a fool of yourself about her, and that she laughed in her sleeve at
your declarations of affection. Certainly, very shabby on her part,
but, then, it is a thing beautiful, vain, silly women do every day. Why
should you cherish such rancor against her? I suppose she found she
could make a better market of her beauty and wonderful talents than by
disposing of them to a man who could never hope to raise her beyond the
level of, say, a wealthy farmer’s wife. Do not be too severe upon her.”
“If she had laughed at me, and left me,” cried Gilardoni, throwing out
his hands with impetuosity, “I could have forgiven her; I might have
forgotten her. It could not have been that I could ever have loved
again; but what of that? I do not believe in love _now_. But no. She
left the poison of her treacherous touch upon my life. I could kill
her, if she were within my reach.”
“Such hate must be justified by very serious provocation,” said Paul
Desfrayne. “May I ask how your love was turned to such bitter gall,
since your suit prospered in the first instance?”
“By deeds of the blackest treachery.”
“In a word, may I ask--since we are playing at the game of question
and answer--may I once more ask, why do you hate the beautiful Lucia
Guiscardini? She did not jilt you, you say--then what relationship does
she hold toward you?”
Gilardoni turned his great dark eyes upon his master, as if in
surprise, forgetting at the moment that he had not told him of the
completing point of his story. Then he said, with a vindictive
bitterness terrible to hear, because it revealed the smoldering fire
beneath:
“She is my wife!”