At this time Count Spicca received a letter from Maria Consuelo, written
from Nice and bearing a postmark more recent than the date which headed
the page, a fact which proved that the writer had either taken an
unusually long time in the composition or had withheld the missive
several days before finally despatching it.
"My father--I write to inform you of certain things which have recently
taken place and which it is important that you should know, and of which
I should have the right to require an explanation if I chose to ask it.
Having been the author of my life, you have made yourself also the
author of all my unhappiness and of all my trouble. I have never
understood the cause of your intense hatred for me, but I have felt its
consequences, even at a great distance from you, and you know well
enough that I return it with all my heart. Moreover I have made up my
mind that I will not be made to suffer by you any longer. I tell you so
quite frankly. This is a declaration of war, and I will act upon it
immediately.
"You are no doubt aware that Don Orsino Saracinesca has for a long time
been among my intimate friends. I will not discuss the question, whether
I did well to admit him to my intimacy or not. That, at least, does not
concern you. Even admitting your power to exercise the most complete
tyranny over me in other ways, I am and have always been free to choose
my own acquaintances, and I am able to defend myself better than most
women, and as well as any. I will be just, too. I do not mean to
reproach you with the consequences of what I do. But I will not spare
you where the results of your action towards me are concerned.
"Don Orsino made love to me last spring. I loved him from the first. I
can hear your cruel laugh and see your contemptuous face as I write. But
the information is necessary, and I can bear your scorn because this is
the last opportunity for such diversion which I shall afford you, and
because I mean that you shall pay dearly for it. I loved Don Orsino, and
I love him still. You, of course, have never loved. You have hated,
however, and perhaps one passion may be the measure of another. It is in
my case, I can assure you, for the better I love, the better I learn to
hate you.
"Last Thursday Don Orsino asked me to be his wife. I had known for some
time that he loved me and I knew that he would speak of it before long.
The day was sultry at first and then there was a thunderstorm. My nerves
were unstrung and I lost my head. I told him that I loved him. That does
not concern you. I told him, also, however, that I had given a solemn
promise to my dying husband, and I had still the strength to say that I
would not marry again. I meant to gain time, I longed to be alone, I
knew that I should yield, but I would not yield blindly. Thank God, I
was strong. I am like you in that, though happily not in any other way.
You ask me why I should even think of yielding. I answer that I love Don
Orsino better than I loved the man you murdered. There is nothing
humiliating in that, and I make the confession without reserve. I love
him better, and therefore, being human, I would have broken my promise
and married him, had marriage been possible. But it is not, as you know.
It is one thing to turn to the priest as he stands by a dying man and to
say, Pronounce us man and wife, and give us a blessing, for the sake of
this man's rest. The priest knew that we were both free, and took the
responsibility upon himself, knowing also that the act could have no
consequences in fact, whatever it might prove to be in theory. It is
quite another matter to be legally married to Don Orsino Saracinesca, in
the face of a strong opposition. But I went home that evening, believing
that it could be done and that the opposition would vanish. I believed
because I loved. I love still, but what I learned that night has killed
my belief in an impossible happiness.
"I need not tell you all that passed between me and Lucrezia Ferris. How
she knew of what had happened I cannot tell. She must have followed us
to the apartment I was furnishing, and she must have overheard what we
said, or seen enough to convince her. She is a spy. I suppose that is
the reason why she is imposed upon me, and always has been, since I can
remember--since I was born, she says. I found her waiting to dress me as
usual, and as usual I did not speak to her. She spoke first. 'You will
not marry Don Orsino Saracinesca,' she said, facing me with her bad
eyes. I could have struck her, but I would not. I asked her what she
meant. She told me that she knew what I was doing, and asked me whether
I was aware that I needed documents in order to be married to a beggar
in Rome, and whether I supposed that the Saracinesca would be inclined
to overlook the absence of such papers, or could pass a law of their own
abolishing the necessity for them, or, finally, whether they would
accept such certificates of my origin as she could produce. She showed
me a package. She had nothing better to offer me, she said, but such as
she had, she heartily placed at my disposal. I took the papers. I was
prepared for a shock, but not for the blow I received.
"You know what I read. The certificate of my birth as the daughter of
Lucrezia Ferris, unmarried, by Count Spicca who acknowledged the child
as his--and the certificate of your marriage with Lucrezia Ferris,
dated--strangely enough a fortnight after my birth--and further a
document legitimizing me as the lawful daughter of you two. All these
documents are from Monte Carlo. You will understand why I am in Nice.
Yes--they are all genuine, every one of them, as I have had no
difficulty in ascertaining. So I am the daughter of Lucrezia Ferris,
born out of wedlock and subsequently whitewashed into a sort of
legitimacy. And Lucrezia Ferris is lawfully the Countess Spicca.
Lucrezia Ferris, the cowardly spy-woman who more than half controls my
life, the lying, thieving servant--she robs me at every turn--the
common, half educated Italian creature,--she is my mother, she is that
radiant being of whom you sometimes speak with tears in your eyes, she
is that angel of whom I remind you, she is that sweet influence that
softened and brightened your lonely life for a brief space some three
and twenty years ago! She has changed since then.
"And this is the mystery of my birth which you have concealed from me,
and which it was at any moment in the power of my vile mother to reveal.
You cannot deny the fact, I suppose, especially since I have taken the
trouble to search the registers and verify each separate document.
"I gave them all back to her, for I shall never need them. The woman--I
mean my mother--was quite right. I shall not marry Don Orsino
Saracinesca. You have lied to me throughout my life. You have always
told me that my mother was dead, and that I need not be ashamed of my
birth, though you wished it kept a secret. So far, I have obeyed you. In
that respect, and only in that, I will continue to act according to your
wishes. I am not called upon to proclaim to the world and my
acquaintance that I am the daughter of my own servant, and that you were
kind enough to marry your estimable mistress after my birth in order to
confer upon me what you dignify by the name of legitimacy. No. That is
not necessary. If it could hurt you to proclaim it I would do so in the
most public way I could find. But it is folly to suppose that you could
be made to suffer by so simple a process.
"Are you aware, my father, that you have ruined all my life from the
first? Being so bad, you must be intelligent and you must realise what
you have done, even if you have done it out of pure love of evil. You
pretended to be kind to me, until I was old enough to feel all the pain
you had in store for me. But even then, after you had taken the trouble
to marry my mother, why did you give me another name? Was that
necessary? I suppose it was. I did not understand then why my older
companions looked askance at me in the convent, nor why the nuns
sometimes whispered together and looked at me. They knew perhaps that no
such name as mine existed. Since I was your daughter why did I not bear
your name when I was a little girl? You were ashamed to let it be known
that you were married, seeing what sort of wife you had taken, and you
found yourself in a dilemma. If you had acknowledged me as your daughter
in Austria, your friends in Rome would soon have found out my
existence--and the existence of your wife. You were very cautious in
those days, but you seem to have grown careless of late, or you would
not have left those papers in the care of the Countess Spicca, my
maid--and my mother. I have heard that very bad men soon reach their
second childhood and act foolishly. It is quite true.
"Then, later, when you saw that I loved, and was loved, and was to be
happy, you came between my love and me. You appeared in your own
character as a liar, a slanderer and a traitor. I loved a man who was
brave, honourable, faithful--reckless, perhaps, and wild as such men
are--but devoted and true. You came between us. You told me that he was
false, cowardly, an adventurer of the worst kind. Because I would not
believe you, and would have married him in spite of you, you killed him.
Was it cowardly of him to face the first swordsman in Europe? They told
me that he was not afraid of you, the men who saw it, and that he fought
you like a lion, as he was. And the provocation, too! He never struck
me. He was showing me what he meant by a term in fencing--the silver
knife he held grazed my cheek because I was startled and moved. But you
meant to kill him, and you chose to say that he had struck me. Did you
ever hear a harsh word from his lips during those months of waiting?
When you had done your work you fled--like the murderer you were and
are. But I escaped from the woman who says she is my mother--and is--and
I went to him and found him living and married him. You used to tell me
that he was an adventurer and little better than a beggar. Yet he left
me a large fortune. It is as well that he provided for me, since you
have succeeded in losing most of your own money at play--doubtless to
insure my not profiting by it at your death. Not that you will die--men
of your kind outlive their victims, because they kill them.
"And now, when you saw--for you did see it--when you saw and knew that
Orsino Saracinesca and I loved each other, you have broken my life a
second time. You might so easily have gone to him, or have come to me,
at the first, with the truth. You know that I should never forgive you
for what you had done already. A little more could have made matters no
worse then. You knew that Don Orsino would have thanked you as a friend
for the warning. Instead--I refuse to believe you in your dotage after
all--you make that woman spy upon me until the great moment is come, you
give her the weapons and you bid her strike when the blow will be most
excruciating. You are not a man. You are Satan. I parted twice from the
man I love. He would not let me go, and he came back and tried to keep
me--I do not know how I escaped. God helped me. He is so brave and noble
that if he had held those accursed papers in his hands and known all the
truth he would not have given me up. He would have brought a stain on
his great name, and shame upon his great house for my sake. He is not
like you. I parted from him twice, I know all that I can suffer, and I
hate you for each individual suffering, great and small.
"I have dismissed my mother from my service. How that would sound in
Rome! I have given her as much money as she can expect and I have got
rid of her. She said that she would not go, that she would write to you,
and many other things. I told her that if she attempted to stay I would
go to the authorities, prove that she was my mother, provide for her, if
the law required it and have her forcibly turned out of my house by the
aid of the same law. I am of age, married, independent, and I cannot be
obliged to entertain my mother either in the character of a servant, or
as a visitor. I suppose she has a right to a lodging under your roof. I
hope she will take advantage of it, as I advised her. She took the money
and went away, cursing me. I think that if she had ever, in all my life,
shown the smallest affection for me--even at the last, when she declared
herself my mother, if she had shown a spark of motherly feeling, of
tenderness, of anything human, I could have accepted her and tolerated
her, half peasant woman as she is, spy as she has been, and cheat and
thief. But she stood before me with the most perfect indifference,
watching my surprise with those bad eyes of hers. I wonder why I have
borne her presence so long. I suppose it had never struck me that I
could get rid of her, in spite of you, if I chose. By the bye, I sent
for a notary when I paid her, and I got a legal receipt signed with her
legal name, Lucrezia Spicca, _ta Ferris_. The document formally
releases me from all further claims. I hope you will understand that you
have no power whatsoever to impose her upon me again, though I confess
that I am expecting your next move with interest. I suppose that you
have not done with me yet, and have some new means of torment in
reserve. Satan is rarely idle long.
"And now I have done. If you were not the villain you are, I should
expect you to go to the man whose happiness I have endangered, if not
destroyed. I should expect you to tell Don Orsino Saracinesca enough of
the truth to make him understand my action. But I know you far too well
to imagine that you would willingly take from my life one thorn of the
many you have planted in it. I will write to Don Orsino myself. I think
you need not fear him--I am sorry that you need not. But I shall not
tell him more than is necessary. You will remember, I hope, that such
discretion as I may show, is not shown out of consideration for you, but
out of forethought for my own welfare. I have unfortunately no means of
preventing you from writing to me, but you may be sure that your letters
will never be read, so that you will do as well to spare yourself the
trouble of composing them.
"MARIA CONSUELO D'ARANJUEZ."
Spicca received this letter early in the morning, and at mid-day he
still sat in his chair, holding it in his hand. His face was very white,
his head hung forward upon his breast, his thin fingers were stiffened
upon the thin paper. Only the hardly perceptible rise and fall of the
chest showed that he still breathed.
The clocks had already struck twelve when his old servant entered the
room, a being thin, wizened, grey and noiseless as the ghost of a
greyhound. He stood still a moment before his master, expecting that he
would look up, then bent anxiously over him and felt his hands.
Spicca slowly raised his sunken eyes.
"It will pass, Santi--it will pass," he said feebly.
Then he began to fold up the sheets slowly and with difficulty, but very
neatly, as men of extraordinary skill with their hands do everything.
Santi looked at him doubtfully and then got a glass and a bottle of
cordial from a small carved press in the corner. Spicca drank the
liqueur slowly and set the glass steadily upon the table.
"Bad news, Signor Conte?" asked the servant anxiously, and in a way
which betrayed at once the kindly relations existing between the two.
"Very bad news," Spicca answered sadly and shaking his head.
Santi sighed, restored the cordial to the press and took up the glass,
as though he were about to leave the room. But he still lingered near
the table, glancing uneasily at his master as though he had something to
say, but was hesitating to begin.
"What is it, Santi?" asked the count.
"I beg your pardon, Signor Conte--you have had bad news--if you will
allow me to speak, there are several small economies which could still
be managed without too much inconveniencing you. Pardon the liberty,
Signor Conte."
"I know, I know. But it is not money this time. I wish it were."
Santi's expression immediately lost much of its anxiety. He had shared
his master's fallen fortunes and knew better than he what he meant by a
few more small economies, as he called them.
"God be praised, Signor Conte," he said solemnly. "May I serve the
breakfast?"
"I have no appetite, Santi. Go and eat yourself."
"A little something?" Santi spoke in a coaxing way. "I have prepared a
little mixed fry, with toast, as you like it, Signor Conte, and the
salad is good to-day--ham and figs are also in the house. Let me lay the
cloth--when you see, you will eat--and just one egg beaten up with a
glass of red wine to begin--that will dispose the stomach."
Spicca shook his head again, but Santi paid no attention to the refusal
and went about preparing the meal. When it was ready the old man
suffered himself to be persuaded and ate a little. He was in reality
stronger than he looked, and an extraordinary nervous energy still
lurked beneath the appearance of a feebleness almost amounting to
decrepitude. The little nourishment he took sufficed to restore the
balance, and when he rose from the table, he was outwardly almost
himself again. When a man has suffered great moral pain for years, he
bears a new shock, even the worst, better than one who is hard hit in
the midst of a placid and long habitual happiness. The soul can be
taught to bear trouble as the great self mortifiers of an earlier time
taught their bodies to bear scourging. The process is painful but
hardening.
"I feel better, Santi," said Spicca. "Your breakfast has done me good.
You are an excellent doctor."
He turned away and took out his pocket-book--not over well garnished. He
found a ten franc note. Then he looked round and spoke in a gentle,
kindly tone.
"Santi--this trouble has nothing to do with money. You need a new pair
of shoes, I am sure. Do you think that ten francs is enough?"
Santi bowed respectfully and took the money.
"A thousand thanks, Signor Conte," he said.
Santi was a strange man, from the heart of the Abruzzi. He pocketed the
note, but that night, when he had undressed his master and was arranging
the things on the dressing table, the ten francs found their way back
into the black pocket-book. Spicca never counted, and never knew.
He did not write to Maria Consuelo, for he was well aware that in her
present state of mind she would undoubtedly burn his letter unopened, as
she had said she would. Late in the day he went out, walked for an hour,
entered the club and read the papers, and at last betook himself to the
restaurant where Orsino dined when his people were out of town.
In due time, Orsino appeared, looking pale and ill tempered. He caught
sight of Spicca and went at once to the table where he sat.
"I have had a letter," said the young man. "I must speak to you. If you
do not object, we will dine together."
"By all means. There is nothing like a thoroughly bad dinner to promote
ill-feeling."
Orsino glanced at the old man in momentary surprise. But he knew his
ways tolerably well, and was familiar with the chronic acidity of his
speech.
"You probably guess who has written to me," Orsino resumed. "It was
natural, perhaps, that she should have something to say, but what she
actually says, is more than I was prepared to hear."
Spicca's eyes grew less dull and he turned an inquiring glance on his
companion.
"When I tell you that in this letter, Madame d'Aranjuez has confided to
me the true story of her origin, I have probably said enough," continued
the young man.
"You have said too much or too little," Spicca answered in an almost
indifferent tone.
"How so?"
"Unless you tell me just what she has told you, or show me the letter, I
cannot possibly judge of the truth of the tale."
Orsino raised his head angrily.
"Do you mean me to doubt that Madame d'Aranjuez speaks the truth?" he
asked.
"Calm yourself. Whatever Madame d'Aranjuez has written to you, she
believes to be true. But she may have been herself deceived."
"In spite of documents--public registers--"
"Ah! Then she has told you about those certificates?"
"That--and a great deal more which concerns you."
"Precisely. A great deal more. I know all about the registers, as you
may easily suppose, seeing that they concern two somewhat important acts
in my own life and that I was very careful to have those acts properly
recorded, beyond the possibility of denial--beyond the possibility of
denial," he repeated very slowly and emphatically. "Do you understand
that?"
"It would not enter the mind of a sane person to doubt such evidence,"
answered Orsino rather scornfully.
"No, I suppose not. As you do not therefore come to me for confirmation
of what is already undeniable, I cannot understand why you come to me at
all in this matter, unless you do so on account of other things which
Madame d'Aranjuez has written you, and of which you have so far kept me
in ignorance."
Spicca spoke with a formal manner and in cold tones, drawing up his bent
figure a little. A waiter came to the table and both men ordered their
dinner. The interruption rather favoured the development of a hostile
feeling between them, than otherwise.
"I will explain my reasons for coming to find you here," said Orsino
when they were again alone.
"So far as I am concerned, no explanation is necessary. I am content not
to understand. Moreover, this is a public place, in which we have
accidentally met and dined together before."
"I did not come here by accident," answered Orsino. "And I did not come
in order to give explanations but to ask for one."
"Ah?" Spicca eyed him coolly.
"Yes. I wish to know why you have hated your daughter all her life, why
you persecute her in every way, why you--"
"Will you kindly stop?"
The old man's voice grew suddenly clear and incisive, and Orsino broke
off in the middle of his sentence. A moment's pause followed.
"I requested you to stop speaking," Spicca resumed, "because you were
unconsciously making statements which have no foundation whatever in
fact. Observe that I say, unconsciously. You are completely mistaken. I
do not hate Madame d'Aranjuez. I love her with all my heart and soul. I
do not persecute her in every way, nor in any way. On the contrary, her
happiness is the only object of such life as I still have to live, and I
have little but that life left to give her. I am in earnest, Orsino."
"I see you are. That makes what you say all the more surprising."
"No doubt it does. Madame d'Aranjuez has just written to you, and you
have her letter in your pocket. She has told you in that letter a number
of facts in her own life, as she sees them, and you look at them as she
does. It is natural. To her and to you, I appear to be a monster of
evil, a hideous incarnation of cruelty, a devil in short. Did she call
me a devil in her letter?"
"She did."
"Precisely. She has also written to me, informing me that I am Satan.
There is a directness in the statement and a general disregard of
probability which is not without charm. Nevertheless, I am Spicca, and
not Beelzebub, her assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. You see
how views may differ. You know much of her life, but you know nothing of
mine, nor is it my intention to tell you anything about myself. But I
will tell you this much. If I could do anything to mend matters, I
would. If I could make it possible for you to marry Madame
d'Aranjuez--being what you are, and fenced in as you are, I would. If I
could tell you all the rest of the truth, which she does not know, nor
dream of, I would. I am bound by a very solemn promise of secrecy--by
something more than a promise in fact. Yet, if I could do good to her by
breaking oaths, betraying confidence and trampling on the deepest
obligations which can bind a man, I would. But that good cannot be done
any more. That is all I can tell you."
"It is little enough. You could, and you can, tell the whole truth, as
you call it, to Madame d'Aranjuez. I would advise you to do so, instead
of embittering her life at every turn."
"I have not asked for your advice, Orsino. That she is unhappy, I know.
That she hates me, is clear. She would not be the happier for hating me
less, since nothing else would be changed. She need not think of me, if
the subject is disagreeable. In all other respects she is perfectly
free. She is young, rich, and at liberty to go where she pleases and to
do what she likes. So long as I am alive, I shall watch over her--"
"And destroy every chance of happiness which presents itself,"
interrupted Orsino.
"I gave you some idea, the other night, of the happiness she might have
enjoyed with the deceased Aranjuez. If I made a mistake in regard to
what I saw him do--I admit the possibility of an error--I was
nevertheless quite right in ridding her of the man. I have atoned for
the mistake, if we call it so, in a way of which you do not dream, nor
she either. The good remains, for Aranjuez is buried."
"You speak of secret atonement--I was not aware that you ever suffered
from remorse."
"Nor I," answered Spicca drily.
"Then what do you mean?"
"You are questioning me, and I have warned you that I will tell you
nothing about myself. You will confer a great favour upon me by not
insisting."
"Are you threatening me again?"
"I am not doing anything of the kind. I never threaten any one. I could
kill you as easily as I killed Aranjuez, old and decrepit as I look, and
I should be perfectly indifferent to the opprobrium of killing so young
a man--though I think that, looking at us two, many people might suppose
the advantage to be on your side rather than on mine. But young men
nowadays do not learn to handle arms. Short of laying violent hands upon
me, you will find it quite impossible to provoke me. I am almost old
enough to be your grandfather, and I understand you very well. You love
Madame d'Aranjuez. She knows that to marry you would be to bring about
such a quarrel with your family as might ruin half your life, and she
has the rare courage to tell you so and to refuse your offer. You think
that I can do something to help you and you are incensed because I am
powerless, and furious because I object to your leaving Rome in the same
train with her, against her will. You are more furious still to-day
because you have adopted her belief that I am a monster of iniquity.
Observe--that, apart from hindering you from a great piece of folly the
other day, I have never interfered. I do not interfere now. As I said
then, follow her if you please, persuade her to marry you if you can,
quarrel with all your family if you like. It is nothing to me. Publish
the banns of your marriage on the doors of the Capitol and declare to
the whole world that Madame d'Aranjuez, the future Princess Saracinesca,
is the daughter of Count Spicca and Lucrezia Ferris, his lawful wife.
There will be a little talk, but it will not hurt me. People have kept
their marriages a secret for a whole lifetime before now. I do not care
what you do, nor what the whole tribe of the Saracinesca may do,
provided that none of you do harm to Maria Consuelo, nor bring useless
suffering upon her. If any of you do that, I will kill you. That at
least is a threat, if you like. Good-night."
Thereupon Spicca rose suddenly from his seat, leaving his dinner
unfinished, and went out.