CHAPTER I_The dangerous inheritance

THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE

THE DANGEROUS

INHERITANCE

The Mystery of the Tittani Rubies

IZOLA FORRESTER

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1920

THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

The town studio of Signor Jacobelli faced the west. It was situated on

the top floor of an old eight-storied building in the West Fifties.

Thirty years ago this had been given over entirely to studios, but

now it was broken up into a more profitable mêlée of semi-commercial

establishments and light-housekeeping apartments.

The signor, having no doubt the Old-World propensity for permanency,

had maintained his studio here for over twenty years, without

regard for the changing conditions around him, if indeed he were

even conscious of them. His own immediate outlook and environment

had remained the same. The view to the west and south from the

deep, double-sized windows had varied little, and held a perpetual

fascination for him. Thin red chimneys in neighborly groupings on

adjacent roofs assumed delicate color values of amethyst and quivering

saffrons from Jersey sunsets that turned even the old buildings

down towards the riverfront into mystical genii palaces in the early

twilight.

Dust lay unnoted upon bookshelves and music-racks about the large,

friendly room. The Turkish rug that covered its floor had long since

lost all outline of pattern and was as exquisite a blur as the

rose-flushed sea mist that hung over the lower end of the island city.

Carlota stood in a window recess, her back to the signor and his

unexpected guest, her fingers tying and untying the faded purple silk

cord of the shade. From where he sat in the old winged armchair by the

piano, Ward caught a perfect silhouette of her profile against the glow

of western light. Listening to Jacobelli’s fiery protest in his usual

silent way, his mind dwelt upon the blossoming of this foreign flower

of girlhood who had so strangely attracted him from the first time he

had ever looked into her eyes.

The Marchese Veracci had called him up from the Italian Club two years

before, and had besought his good offices for the granddaughter of

Margherita Paoli. The following evening they had called on him by

appointment. He half closed his eyes, recalling the picture of the girl

as he had first seen her. They awaited him in the Florentine room.

Even then she had not thought of him, but had stood before a painting

of Sorrento, a view through the ravine looking seaward, one hand laid

on her breast, her eyes filled with the yearning of youth’s loneliness.

She had met him silently, her hand cold as it rested an instant in his

palm.

And the old Marchese had pleaded her cause with fervent eloquence.

“I have Jacobelli’s word on her voice,” he said. “What more would you?

If you but speak Guido Jacobelli’s name to any European director, he

bows to the old maestro’s dictum.”

“He has retired,” Ward returned.

“Retired, yes, from the money mart.” The Marchese had beamed upon the

great international banker almost tolerantly. “You cannot comprehend

his attitude. No amount of money could tempt him to teach the tyro, the

climber, but he has heard Carlota. He knew Paoli well in Italy. It was

her influence and friendship which first brought him fame and power.

Now he has said that her voice lives again in the child, but there must

be at least four years of incessant application and training. To keep

her voice divine, she must never be troubled by material cares. She

must have an abundance of everything that she needs that her whole

nature may relax and expand to give her the freedom to devote her whole

life to her career.”

Ward had understood. He knew Guido Jacobelli. While the old maestro was

a high priest of art, his price for teaching genius was in proportion

to his faith. It had been Carlota’s own attitude of indifference

which had dominated his decision. While the Marchese had argued and

pleaded for her future, and Maria Roma, her guardian, had hung upon the

final word from Ward’s lips, she had listened gravely, her attention

wandering constantly to the rare art treasures of the room. Once she

had met his eyes as he asked her a direct question.

“You are very young to study seriously. Do you realize the sacrifices

you must make?”

“I have always studied to be a singer, signor,” Carlota had told him,

her eyes even then disconcerting in their wide intensity. “There are no

sacrifices when you love your vocation.”

Ward had smiled back at the Marchese, quoting lightly,

“I did renounce the world, its pride and greed

... at eight years old.”

“My dear,” he added, “one of your own countrymen has spoken so,

Fra Lippo Lippi. No parallel, though, eh, Veracci? Here we have the

consecration of genius. I will advance fifty thousand. Is it enough?”

Carlota had met his appraising eyes with the aloof resentment of an

influence that disturbed her.

“Speak, cara mia,” Maria Roma had cried, tears streaming down her plump

cheeks, as she clasped her arms enthusiastically around her charge.

“Have you no word of thanks?”

And Ward had never forgotten the flash of challenge in the girl’s dark

eyes as she had given him her hand.

“I will succeed and pay you back, signor,” she had said. He might have

been merely a money-lender to a princess of the de’ Medici.

He had made only one stipulation and that half in jest, though Maria

and the Marchese had agreed most earnestly. She was not to marry nor

become entangled in love affairs during the period of her tuition. The

concession had completely escaped Carlota’s attention. She had wandered

by them out into the wide corridor, stifled by the somber silence of

the great closed rooms. Not a single fountain falling in the distance,

not a living flower anywhere, nothing but age-old treasures in a

palatial, modern museum. He had not spoken to her again, only she had

heard his last words to Jacobelli.

“May the fruit fulfill the promise. I will come to see you now and

then.”

Through the two years of study he had kept his word. Every few months,

unawares, he would come to the old studio and sit for a while,

listening to Jacobelli and watching his pupil. Even while he never

spoke a word of direct intent to her, Carlota felt a vague uneasiness

in his presence, under the steady power of his gaze. He carried with

him the impression of a compelling, dominant masterfulness, all the

more irresistible through its silence and tireless patience. He was

in the late thirties at this time, tall and heavy-set, his head, with

its thick, close-cut blond hair, thrust forward from a habit of silent

intentness. There was the strongest suggestion of the leonine about

him. Once, when she was a child, Carlota remembered being taken to see

a captive Algerian lion that had just been brought across for the royal

zoo. With a city mob surging forward to stare at him, the lion had lain

with an imperial languor and indifference, gazing with unblinking eyes

beyond the crowd and the city, seeing only the desert that held his

whole life’s desire. Sometimes, in the studio, during one of Ward’s

visits, she would catch his eyes fixed upon her, while Jacobelli

flamed out into some argument or dissertation, and she would shrink

from the purpose that lay behind their patience.

To-day the voice of Jacobelli filled the studio, and Carlota’s delicate

dark brows contracted sharply as she listened.

“What more can I do? I have given her all that I know of technique and

harmony, and still her voice lacks that emotional quality which the

greatest alone possess. The divine voice must have dramatic feeling,

intensity. It must lose itself in the grandest passion of emotion. The

child tries, but what would you? She does not understand the lack in

her own nature. Her woman soul yet slumbers.”

Ward glanced at him with amused, quizzical eyes.

“Let it sleep, Jacobelli. Remember Paoli when she let love conquer her.”

For the moment the old maestro forgot the figure behind the window

curtain. With arms thrown upward he turned on the banker.

“You know not anything about Paoli! I, Jacobelli, tell you that! You

cannot speak of her with any understanding. She was a law to herself

in her own generation. Few women can be that. But I, who know what lay

behind the wall of Tittani, say to you I would rather this child lay

dead now, with no fulfillment in her life, than that she should know

the agony and failure as an artiste that her grandmother did when she

sacrificed her whole womanhood--for what? Love, pouf!”

“Can a woman’s nature reach its ripest fulfillment without love?”

Ward’s tone was lowered. “History proves that the greatest geniuses

have been those who suffered most.”

“But not the singer, signor.” Jacobelli paused in his march up and down

the studio. “The singer is something different. It is instinctive. I

have heard the most marvelous impassioned voices pour from the most

commonplace peasant types. I have heard the greatest tenor of all

times tear the emotions of thousands to pieces, and step into his

dressing-room to rail at his wife for not providing his favorite dish

for him after the opera, ravioli and lampreys. The most superb lyric

voice of to-day comes from a little, stout contadina who picked up

centimes around the flower-market in Naples when I was young. Do you

think she acquired divinity of soul and utterance from some supreme

emotion? Ridiculous. She is a gourmand, a virago, absolutely bourgeois,

yet she sings like a seraph. Why, then, is it not in Carlota’s voice?”

Ward rose leisurely. The old silken curtains hung motionless. The

shadows were heavy in the corners of the studio.

“She is a higher type,” he said in a low voice. “When you agree with

me, bring her to me.”