Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
THE FATAL THREE
A Novel
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “VIXEN,”
“ISHMAEL,” “MOHAWKS,”
ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
LONDON
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.
STATIONERS’ HALL COURT
[_All rights reserved_]
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
Book the Third.
ATROPOS; OR THAT WHICH MUST BE.
CHAP. PAGE
I. A WRECKED LIFE 3
II. IN THE MORNING OF LIFE 20
III. THE RIFT IN THE LUTE 44
IV. DARKNESS 62
V. THE GRAVE ON THE HILL 82
VI. PAMELA CHANGES HER MIND 95
VII. AS THE SANDS RUN DOWN 117
VIII. “HOW SHOULD I GREET THEE?” 152
IX. LITERA SCRIPTA MANET 188
X. MARKED BY FATE 217
XI. LIKE A TALE THAT IS TOLD 232
BOOK THE THIRD.
ATROPOS; OR THAT WHICH MUST BE.
CHAPTER I.
A WRECKED LIFE.
Monsieur Leroy was interested in his visitor, and in nowise hastened
her departure. He led her through the garden of the asylum, anxious
that she should see that sad life of the shattered mind in its milder
aspect. The quieter patients were allowed to amuse themselves at
liberty in the garden, and here Mildred saw the woman who fancied
herself the Blessed Virgin, and who sat apart from the rest, with a
crown of withered anemones upon her iron-gray locks.
The doctor stopped to talk to her in the Niçois language, describing
her hallucination to Mildred in his broken English between whiles.
“She is one of my oldest cases, and mild as a lamb,” he said. “She is
what superstition had made her. She might have been a happy wife as a
mother but for that fatal influence. Ah, here comes a lady of a very
different temper, and not half so easy a subject!”
A woman of about sixty advanced towards them along the dusty gravel
path between the trampled grass and the dust-whitened orange-trees, a
woman who carried her head and shoulders with the pride of an empress,
and who looked about her with defiant eyes, fanning herself with a
large Japanese paper fan as she came along, a fan of vivid scarlet and
cheap gilt paper, which seemed to intensify the brightness of her great
black eyes, as she waved it to and fro before her haggard face: a woman
who must once have been beautiful.
“Would you believe that lady was prima donna at La Scala nearly forty
years ago?” asked the doctor, as he and Mildred stood beside the path,
watching that strange figure, with its theatrical dignity.
The massive plaits of grizzled black hair were wound, coronet-wise,
about the woman’s head. Her rusty black velvet gown trailed in the
dust, threadbare long ago, almost in tatters to-day: a gown of a
strange fashion, which had been worn upon the stage—Leonora’s or
Lucrezia’s gown, perhaps, once upon a time.
At sight of the physician she stopped suddenly, and made him a sweeping
curtsy, with all the exaggerated grace of the theatre.
“Do you know if they open this month at the Scala?” she asked, in
Italian.
“Indeed, my dear, I have heard nothing of their doings.”
“They might have begun their season with the new year,” she said, with
a dictatorial air. “They always did in my time. Of course you know that
they have tried to engage me again. They wanted me for Amina, but I had
to remind them that I am not a light soprano. When I reappear it shall
be as Lucrezia Borgia. There I stand on my own ground. No one can touch
me there.”
She sang the opening bars of Lucrezia’s first scena. The once glorious
voice was rough and discordant, but there was power in the tones even
yet, and real dramatic fire in the midst of exaggeration. Suddenly
while she was singing she caught the expression of Mildred’s face
watching her, and she stopped at a breath, and grasped the stranger by
both hands with an excited air.
“That moves you, does it not?” she exclaimed. “You have a soul for
music. I can see that in your face. I should like to know more of you.
Come and see me whenever you like, and I will sing to you. The doctor
lets me use his piano sometimes, when he is in a good humour.”
“Say rather when you are reasonable, my good Maria,” said Monsieur
Leroy, laying a fatherly hand upon her shoulder; “there are days when
you are not to be trusted.”
“I am to be trusted to-day. Let me come to your room and sing to her,”
pointing to Mildred with her fan. “I like her face. She has the eyes
and lips that console. Her husband is lucky to have such a wife. Let me
sing to her. I want her to understand what kind of woman I am.”
“Would it bore you too much to indulge her, madame?” asked the doctor
in an undertone. “She is a strange creature, and it will wound her
if you refuse. She does not often take a fancy to any one; but she
frequently takes dislikes, and those are violent.”
“I shall be very happy to hear her,” answered Mildred. “I am in no
hurry to return to Nice.”
The doctor led the way back to his house, the singer talking to Mildred
with an excited air as they went, talking of the day when she was first
soprano at Milan.
“Everybody envied me my success,” she said. “There were those who
said I owed everything to _him_, that he made my voice and my
style. Lies, madame, black and bitter lies. I won all the prizes
at the Conservatoire. He was one master among many. I owed him
nothing—nothing—nothing!”
She reiterated the word with acrid emphasis, and an angry furl of her
fan.
“Ah, now you are beginning the old strain!” said the doctor, with a
good-humoured shrug of his shoulders. “If this goes on there shall be
no piano for you to-day. I will have no grievances; grievances are the
bane of social intercourse. If you come to my _salon_ it must be to
sing, not to reopen old sores. We all have our wounds as well as you,
signorina, but we keep them covered up.”
“I am dumb,” said the singer meekly.
They went into the doctor’s private sitting-room. Three sides of the
room were lined with books, chiefly of a professional or scientific
character. A cottage piano stood in a recess by the fireplace. The
woman flew to the instrument with a rapturous eagerness, and began to
play. Her hands were faintly tremulous with excitement, but her touch
was that of a master as she played the symphony to the finale of “La
Cenerentola.”
“Has she no piano in her own room?” asked Mildred in a whisper.
“No, poor soul. She is one of our pauper patients. The State provides
for her, but it does not give her a private room or a piano. I let her
come here two or three times a week for an hour or so, when she is
reasonable.”
Mildred wondered if it would be possible for her, as a stranger, to
provide a room and a piano for this friendless enthusiast. She would
have been glad out of her abundance to have lightened a suffering
sister’s fate, and she determined to make the proposition to the doctor.
The singer played snatches of familiar music—Rossini, Donizetti,
Bellini—operatic airs which Mildred knew by heart. She wandered from
one scena to another, and her voice, though it had lost its sweetness
and sustaining power, was still brilliantly flexible. She sang with
a rapturous unconsciousness of her audience, Mildred and the doctor
sitting quietly at each side of the hearth, where a single pine log
smouldered on the iron dogs above a heap of white ashes.
Presently the music changed to a gayer, lighter strain, and she began
an airy cavatina, all coquetry and grace. That joyous melody was
curiously familiar to Mildred’s ear.
“Where did I hear that music?” she said aloud. “It seems as if it were
only the other day, and yet it is nearly two years since I was at the
opera.”
The singer left the cavatina unfinished, and wandered into another
melody.
“Ah, I know now!” exclaimed Mildred; “that is Paolo Castellani’s
music!”
The woman started up from the piano as if the name had wounded her.
“Paolo Castellani!” she cried. “What do you know of Paolo Castellani?”
Dr. Leroy went over to her, and laid his hand upon her shoulder heavily.
“Now we are in for a scene,” he muttered to Mildred. “You have
mentioned a most unlucky name.”
“What has she to do with Signor Castellani?”
“He was her cousin. He trained her for the stage, and she was the
original in several of his operas. She was his slave, his creature, and
lived only to please him. I suppose she expected him to marry her, poor
soul; but he knew better than that. He contrived to fascinate a French
girl, a consumptive, who was travelling in Italy for her health, with a
wealthy father. He married the Frenchwoman; and I believe that marriage
broke Maria’s heart.”
The singer had seated herself at the piano again, and was playing
with rapid and brilliant finger, running up and down the keys in wild
excitement. Mildred and the physician were standing by the window,
talking in lowered voices, unheeded by Maria Castellani.
“Was it that event which wrecked her mind?” asked Mildred, deeply
interested.
“No, it was some years afterwards that her brain gave way. She had a
brilliant career before her at the time of Castellani’s desertion;
and she bore the blow with the courage of a Roman. So long as her
voice lasted, and the public were constant to her, she contrived
to bear up against that burning sense of wrong which has been the
distinguishing note of her mind ever since she came here. But the
first breath of failure froze her. She felt her voice decaying while
she was comparatively a young woman. Her glass told her that she was
losing her beauty, that she was beginning to look old and haggard.
Her managers told her more. They gave her the cold shoulder, and put
newer singers above her head. Then despair took hold of her; she became
gloomy and irritable, difficult and capricious in her dealings with her
fellow-artists; and then came the end, and she was brought here. She
had saved no money. She had been reckless even beyond the habits of
her profession. She was friendless. There was nobody interested in her
fate—”
“Not even Signor Castellani?”
“Castellani—Paolo Castellani? _Pas si bête._ The man was a compound of
selfishness and treachery. She was not likely to get pity from him. The
very fact that he had used her badly made her loathsome to him. I doubt
if he ever inquired what became of her. If any one had asked him about
her, he would have said that she had dropped through—a worn-out voice,
a faded beauty—_que voulez-vous_?”
“She had no other friends—no ties?”
“None. She was an orphan at twelve years old, without a son. Castellani
paid for her education, and traded upon her talent. He trained her to
sing in his own operas, and in that light, fanciful music she was at
her best; though it is her delusion now that she excelled in the grand
style. I believe he absorbed the greater part of her earnings, until
they quarrelled. Some time after his marriage there was a kind of
reconciliation between them. She appeared in a new opera—his last and
worst. Her voice was going, his talent had began to fail. It was the
beginning of the end.”
“Has Signor Castellani’s son shown no interest in this poor creature’s
fate?”
“No; the son lives in England, I believe, for the most part. I doubt if
he knows anything about Maria.”
The singer had reverted to that familiar music. She sang the first
part of an aria, a melody disguised with over-much fioritura, light,
graceful, unmeaning.
“That is in his last opera,” she said, rising from the piano, with a
more rational air. “The opera was almost a failure; but I was applauded
to the echo. His genius had forsaken him. Follies, follies, falsehoods,
crimes. He could not be true to any one or anything. He was as false
to his wife as he had been false to me, and to his proud young English
signorina; ah, well! who can doubt that he lied to _her_?”
She fell into a meditative mood, standing by the piano, touching a note
now and then.
“Young and handsome and rich. Would she have accepted degradation with
open eyes? No, no, no. He lied to her as he had lied to me. He was made
up of lies.”
Her eyes grew troubled, and her lips worked convulsively. Again the
doctor laid his strong broad hand upon her shoulder.
“Come, Maria,” he said in Italian; “enough for to-day. Madame has been
pleased with your singing.”
“Yes, indeed, signora. You have a noble voice. I should be very glad if
I could do anything to be of use to you; if I could contribute to your
comfort in any way.”
“O, Maria is happy enough with us, I hope,” said the doctor cheerily.
“We are all fond of her when she is reasonable. But it is time she went
to her dinner. _A rivederci, signora._”
Maria accepted her dismissal with a good grace, saluted Mildred and
the doctor with her stage curtsy, and withdrew. One side of Monsieur
Leroy’s house opened into the garden, the other into a courtyard
adjoining the high-road.
“Poor soul! I should be so glad to pay for a piano and a private
sitting-room for her, if I might be allowed to do so,” said Mildred,
when the singer was gone.
“You are too generous, madame; but I doubt if it would be good for
her to accept your bounty. She enjoys the occasional use of my piano
intensely. If she had one always at her command, she would give up
her life to music, which exercises too strong an influence upon her
disordered brain to be indulged in _ad libitum_. Nor would a private
apartment be an advantage in her case. She is too much given to
brooding over past griefs; and the society of her fellow-sufferers, the
friction and movement of the public life, are good for her.”
“What did she mean by her talk of an English girl—some story of
wrong-doing? Was it all imaginary?”
“I believe there was some scandal at Milan; some flirtation, or
possibly an intrigue, between Castellani and one of his English pupils;
but I never heard the details. Maria’s jealousy would be likely to
exaggerate the circumstances; for I believe she adored her cousin to
the last, long after she knew that he had never cared for her, except
as an element in his success.”
Mildred took leave of the doctor, after thanking him for his
politeness. She left a handful of gold for the benefit of the poor
patients, and left Dr. Leroy under the impression that she was one of
the sweetest women he had ever met. Her pensive beauty, her low and
musical voice, the clear and resolute purpose of every word and look,
were in his mind indications of the perfection of womanhood.
“It is not often that Nature achieves such excellence,” mused the
doctor. “It is a pity that perfection should be short-lived; yet I
cannot prognosticate length of years for this lady.”
* * * * *
Pamela’s spirits were decidedly improving. She talked all dinner-time,
and gave a graphic description of her afternoon in the tennis-court
behind the Cercle de la Méditerranée.
“I am to see the club-house some morning before the members begin
to arrive,” she said. “It is a perfectly charming club. There is a
theatre, which serves as a ballroom on grand occasions. There is to be
a dance next week; and Lady Lochinvar will chaperon me, if you don’t
mind.”
“I shall be most grateful to Lady Lochinvar, dear. Believe me, if I am
a hermit, I don’t want to keep you in melancholy seclusion. I am very
glad for you to have pleasant friends.”
“Mrs. Murray is delightful. She begged me to call her Jessie. She is
going to take me for a drive before lunch to-morrow, and we are to do
some shopping in the afternoon. The shops here are simply lovely.”
“Almost as nice as Brighton?”
“Better. They have more _chic_; and I am told they are twice as dear.”
“Was Mr. Stuart at the tennis-court?”
“Yes, he plays there every afternoon when he is not at Monte Carlo.”
“That does not sound like a very useful existence.”
“Perhaps you will say _he_ is an adventurer,” exclaimed Pamela, with
a flash of temper; and then repenting in a moment, she added: “I beg
your pardon, aunt; but you are really wrong about Mr. Stuart. He looks
after Lady Lochinvar’s estate. He is invaluable to her.”
“But he cannot do much for the estate when he is playing tennis here or
gambling at Monte Carlo.”
“O, but he does. He answers no end of letters every morning. Lady
Lochinvar says he is a most wonderful young man. He attends to her
house accounts here. I am afraid she would be very extravagant if she
were not well looked after. She has no idea of business. Mr. Stuart has
even to manage her dressmakers.”
“Then one may suppose he is really useful—even at Nice. Has he any
means of his own, or is he entirely dependent on his aunt?”
“O, he has an income of his own—a modest income, Mrs. Murray says,
hardly enough for him to get along easily in a cavalry regiment,
but quite enough for him as a civilian; and his aunt will leave him
everything. His expectations are splendid.”
“Well, Pamela, I will not call _him_ an adventurer, and I shall be
pleased to make his acquaintance, if he will call upon me.”
“He is dying to know you. May Mrs. Murray bring him to tea to-morrow
afternoon?”
“With pleasure.”