During nearly a year a large number of persons had been acquainted with
the story of Adele's written confession, but, as has been shown, the
matter was considered so serious as to deserve secrecy--the highest
social honour which can be conferred on truth. It had never reached the
ears of any member of the Savelli or of the Gerano families, and but for
Maddalena dell' Armi, Ghisleri himself would never have heard it.
Although Adele was suffering the dire results of her evil deeds in the
shape of almost incurable morphinism, the principal cause of her first
fears and consequent illness no longer troubled her as it had once done.
She now believed that the confession had, after all, caught upon some
projection or in some crevice of the masonry in the shaft of the
oubliette at Gerano, and that it would never be heard of again. It was
incredible, she thought, that if any person had found it and read it, he
or she should not attempt to extort a large sum of money for it. But no
one appeared to demand anything. That was sufficient proof that no one
possessed the document, and it must therefore have remained safely where
it had fallen. Her one and only fear was lest something should happen to
that part of the castle which might make repairs necessary, and possibly
lead to the discovery of the letter. But that was improbable in the
extreme. The massive walls had stood as they were during nearly four
centuries, and did not show any signs of weakness. As for Lucia, if she
ever betrayed the secret, or hinted to her present mistress that there
was a secret to betray, and if any story got afloat by her agency, Adele
could deny it, and her position was strong enough in the world to force
most people to accept her denial. She almost laughed at the idea. The
principal statement contained in the confession would seem almost
grotesque in its improbability. She knew very well that if she ever
heard such an action imputed to her worst enemy she would not believe
it; she would not even take the trouble to repeat it, because nothing
was more foolish than to get the reputation of telling incredible tales.
She was quite sure of this, for when she mentally tried the position she
found that she could not have given credence to such a legend even if
any one had accused Laura Arden of having done the deed. And as she
hated Laura with a whole-hearted hatred that did not hesitate at
trifles, she considered the argument to be conclusive.
Her hatred grew as the fatal effects of the morphia began to unsettle
her brain and disturb the strong power of self-control which had borne
her through so many dangers. The necessity for keeping up an outward
show of good relations with her step-sister on pain of the severest
financial punishment if she angered her father, irritated her extremely.
She was well aware that, in spite of the reconciliation and of her own
behaviour, the world still chose to believe most of the things she had
formerly said of Laura, and that the latter's position was anything but
enviable. Nevertheless, Laura seemed to survive very well, and in
Adele's opinion had obtained far more than her share of good things.
That she had really suffered terribly, in her own way, by the death of
her husband, none knew better than Adele, and that, at least, was a
satisfaction. But in other ways she was singularly fortunate. Her little
boy was as sturdy and strong and sound as any mother could have wished;
for deformity which is the result of accident is not inherited.
Moreover, there seemed to be little doubt but that the uncle from whom
Arden had expected a large fortune would now leave his money to little
Herbert. Laura was, of course, decidedly poor at present, judging from
Adele's point of view, but in the life she led she needed very little
money, and what she had sufficed for her wants. She was evidently quite
contented. Then, as though the rest were not enough, she had what Adele
called a monopoly of Pietro Ghisleri, who acted as though he intended
to marry her, and whom she received as though she meant to accept him.
As Laura Arden, society could treat her as it pleased, but as Ghisleri's
wife, society would not only open its arms to her, but would in all
likelihood espouse her cause in any future difference or difficulty.
Ghisleri would know how to assure her position, and would have no
difficulty in making her respected, for he was a most particularly
unpleasant person to quarrel with and it was not every one who had
Campodonico's luck. Of course, there might yet be time to prevent the
marriage, and Adele rashly resolved that if that were possible she would
accomplish it.
Of late she had begun to include Ghisleri in her hatred of Laura, having
finally given up the attempt to attract him into her immediate circle.
He was always the same with her, and never, in the course of years, had
seemed willing to advance beyond the limits of ordinary and friendly
acquaintance, though she had often tried to draw him further. The
ordinary methods failed with him. He could not be tempted into making
confidences, which step is one of the first and perhaps the most
important in the ordinary, business-like flirtation. He was apparently
indifferent to praise as he was to blame, except from one or two
persons. He never had an enemy, to ruin whom he needed a woman's help--a
short method of reaching intimacy which is not to be despised in dealing
with refined bad people. Least of all, was he a man who could be led to
compromise himself in a woman's eyes in such a way as to consider it his
duty to make love to her. Adele had tried all these approved ways of
beginning a serious flirtation with Pietro, but had failed each time,
and it enraged her to see that Laura could keep him without any
stratagem at all, by sheer force of attraction. For she had no belief at
all in their platonic friendship. One or the other, or both, must be in
love, for the very simple and well-known reason that a permanent close
friendship between man and woman within certain limits of age was an
utter impossibility. Laura was perhaps too foolish to realise the fact,
but Ghisleri was certainly not the man to forget it. She disliked him
because she had not been able to attract him herself, and she hated him
for being attracted by Laura.
She now made up her mind that unless she could ruin him in Laura's
estimation, the marriage could not be prevented, and she began to
revolve the chances for accomplishing her purpose. Her intelligence was
not what it had been, for it was subject now to fits of abnormal
activity and to a subsequent reaction, in which she was not always
perfectly well aware of what was going on around her. In the one state
she was rash, over-excited, nervous; in the other she was dull and
apathetic, and lost herself in hazy dreams of a rather disconnected
character. The consequence was that she found it very hard to hit upon
any consecutive plan which presented even the faintest hope of success.
Several times she was on the point of doing something very foolish, when
she had almost lost control of herself, and she was only saved by the
long habit of worldly tact which would probably survive all her other
faculties if they were wrecked by the habit which was killing her. But
she grew distrustful of herself and of her powers, and a new suffering
was added to the many she already had to bear, as she gradually became
conscious of the terrible change in herself. She tried to find out all
she could about Pietro Ghisleri. At that time all Rome was going mad
about making money by speculation, and all sorts of dishonest
transactions necessarily went on under cover of greater ones honest in
themselves. Adele did her best to ascertain whether Ghisleri were
connected with any of them, or with any affair whatever of a nature
which could be criticised. But she failed altogether. He looked on at
the general rush for money with perfect indifference, and was quite
content with the little he already possessed. It struck Adele that a
card scandal would do him as much harm as anything, and she made
inquiries as to his fondness for play, but was informed that he rarely
played at all, and generally lost a little if he did.
He was hard to catch. So far as she could learn, he had changed his mode
of life very considerably during the past two years. It was quite
certain that he had definitely broken with Maddalena dell' Armi, though
no one was really sure of the exact date at which the rupture had taken
place. They were both clever people who kept their secrets to themselves
on the simple plan that, if a thing is not to be known, it should not be
told. Laura was the only other woman whom he visited regularly, and his
doings were far too well known to make it possible to float a scandal
about him in connexion with some one else, which should reach Laura's
ears. Besides, Laura would not care. She was quite capable of not taking
the slightest notice, just as in former times she had not cared whether
he saw Maddalena every day or not. All she wanted, thought Adele, was
that Ghisleri should be at her feet--and there he was.
At last she hit upon the rather wild plan of asking Ghisleri himself
what she had better do. There was something diabolical in the idea of
taking his own advice in order to ruin him, which appealed to her in the
present state of her brain and nerves. They often met in society, and
she caught sight of him that very night at a Lenten party in Casa
Montevarchi--one of the last ever given in that house, by the by, for
the family was ruined soon afterwards. She followed him in the crowd and
touched his shoulder with her fan.
"Will you give me your arm?" she asked. "Thanks. I want to sit down
somewhere. There is a sofa over there."
"You still come to these talking matches, I see," said Ghisleri, as they
sat down. "It must be for the sake of saying something interesting, for
it can certainly not be in the hope of hearing anything of the kind."
"You can still make sharp speeches," laughed Adele. "I thought my
step-sister had converted you, and that you were turning into a sort of
Saint Propriety."
"Oh, you thought so," said Pietro, coolly. "Well, you see you were
mistaken. There is as little of propriety about me as usual, or of
saintship either."
He looked at the worn and dilapidated features of the woman beside him,
at her hollow cheeks and lustreless eyes, and he almost pitied her. He
wondered how she had the courage to keep up the comedy and to face the
world as she did, night after night, old before her youth was half over,
ugly when she had been pretty but two years earlier, weary always, and
haunted by the shadow of the poison to which she was a slave.
"You need not be angry," she answered. "I did not mean anything
disagreeable. I wish you would say more sharp things, it is refreshing
to hear a man talk after listening to a pack of little boys."
"Why do you listen to them?"
"They amuse me for five minutes, and when I have tolerated them as long
as that I cannot get rid of them. Then I begin to long for a little
serious talk with a man like you--a man one can ask a question of with
the hope of getting a reasonable answer."
"You are very good to put it in that way," said Ghisleri. "Have you any
particular question to ask me now? I will be as intensely reasonable as
I can in my reply, on condition that it is a thing of which I know
nothing whatever."
"What an extraordinary restriction!" exclaimed Adele.
"Not at all. If I should know anything about the matter in hand it would
be sure to be so little that it would confuse me and hamper the free
working of my imagination, which might otherwise produce interesting and
even startling effects. You may have heard that a little knowledge is
dangerous. That is the meaning of the proverb."
"I knew I should get something original from you. You always say
something which no one else would."
"And you always discover in me some new and beautiful quality which had
escaped my notice," answered Ghisleri. "Is it with a view to getting
some particular sort of answer to the question you meditate, that you
flatter me so nicely before asking it?"
"Of course," laughed Adele. "What did you expect? But I do not think you
would answer the question at all. You would give me a dissertation on
something else and then go away and leave me to be torn to pieces by the
little boys again."
"What an awful death!" laughed Ghisleri. "I will not leave you. I will
protect you against whole legions of little boys."
"You look as if you could. You are quite as strong as ever now, are you
not? You never feel any pain from your wound?"
"Never," answered Pietro, indifferently. "Was that the grave question to
which you wanted a serious and well-considered reply?"
"Do not be absurd!" cried Adele, with a laugh. "One has to make civil
inquiries of that kind sometimes. It is a social duty. Even if I hated
you I should ask if you were well."
"Of course. The old-fashioned poisoners in the middle ages did that. It
was of no use to waste expensive poison on a man who was ill and might
die without it. They practised economy."
"What a horrible idea!" exclaimed Adele, shuddering.
"Horrible ideas were the fashion then," pursued Ghisleri. "I have
thought a great deal about those times since you showed me those
interesting places at Gerano, nearly two years ago. The modern publisher
of primers would have made his fortune under the Borgia domination.
Fancy the titles: 'Every man his own executioner, a practical guide for
headsmen, torturers and poisoners, by a member of the profession
(diploma) with notes, diagrams, and a special table of measurements and
instructions for using the patent German rack, etc.' Does not that sound
wildly interesting? They would have had it on the drawing-room table in
every castle. It would have been a splendid book for hawkers. Gerano
made me think of it."
Adele laughed in rather a forced way, and her eyes moved uneasily,
glancing quickly in one direction and another.
"You would have been a dreadful person in those times, I am quite sure,"
she said. "You would have been a monster of cruelty."
"Of course I should. So should we all. But we manage those little things
so easily now, and so much more tastefully."
"Exactly," said Adele, who saw her chance and an opportunity of turning
the conversation at the same time. "I would like your views upon modern
social warfare. If you wished to ruin your enemy, how would you go about
it?"
"A man or a woman?" asked Ghisleri, calmly.
"Oh, both. A man first. It is always harder to injure a man than a
woman, is it not?"
"So they say. Do you wish to kill the man or to ruin him altogether, or
only to injure him in the eyes of the world?"
"Take the three in the other order," suggested Adele. "A mere injury
first--and the rest afterwards."
"Very well. I have something very neat in the killing line--to use the
shopkeeper style. I will keep it to the end. Let me see. You wish to do
a man a great injury--enough, say, to make a woman who loves him turn
upon him. Is that it?"
"Yes, that would do very well," said Adele, as though she were
discussing the fashion of a new frock.
"If you happen to be a good hand at forgery," answered Ghisleri, with
perfect equanimity, "write a number of letters purporting to be from him
to another woman. Put anything you like into them, take them to the
woman who loves him, and ask a large sum for them. She will probably pay
it and leave him. You will accomplish your object and earn money at the
same time. If you cannot forge his handwriting, forge that of an
imaginary woman--that is easy enough--and follow the same course as
before. It is almost sure to succeed."
"What a surpassingly diabolical scheme!" exclaimed Adele, with a laugh.
"Yes, I flatter myself it is not bad. Of course you can make the matter
public if only you are sure of the forgery being good, or of an
imaginary woman being forthcoming at the right moment. But, on the
whole, the finest way of ruining a man before the world is to steal his
money. No reputation can stand poverty and slander at the same time."
"But it is not always easy to steal a man's money," objected Adele.
"Oh, yes, unless a man is very rich. Bring a suit against his title, and
if he fights it, the lawyers will eat up all he has. Then you can play
the magnanimous part and say that you give up the suit out of pity for
him. That is very pretty, too. But the prettiest of all is the new way
of killing people, because nobody can possibly find you out."
"What do you make them die of?" asked Adele nervously.
"Cholera--typhus--fever, almost anything you please. It is a convenient
way because the epidemic of the day is generally the most ready to hand.
What did you say? I beg your pardon, I thought you spoke. Yes, it is
delightful, and in most cases I believe it is almost sure to succeed. I
dined with Gouache last night, and Professor Wüsterschinder, the great
German authority on cutting up live rabbits, you know, was there. A
charming man--speaks French like a human being, and understands Italian
well. I liked him very much. The conversation turned upon murder. You
know Gouache has a taste for horrors, being the gentlest and kindest of
men. The professor told a long story of a doctor who murdered the
father, mother, and aunt of a girl whom none of the three would let him
marry. He did it in the course of medical treatment, with three
different vegetable poisons--masterly, the professor said. There was an
inquiry and they dug everybody up again, and all that sort of thing, but
no one could positively prove anything and the doctor married the girl
after all."
"You seem full of horrors this evening," said Adele, moving one shoulder
in a restless, jerking way which was becoming a habit.
"I always am," answered Ghisleri, turning his cold blue eyes on her. "I
know the most horrible things and am always just on the point of saying
them."
"Please do not!" exclaimed Adele, shrinking away from him into the
corner of the sofa, almost in physical fear of him now.
"I was telling you about the cholera trick, or I was going to tell you.
The other story was only the prelude. After giving it to us with a
number of details I have forgotten, Professor Wüsterschinder launched
out about the wonders of science, as those men always do, and positively
made me uncomfortable with the numbers of unfortunate rabbits and
puppies he cut to shreds in his conversation. Then he came to the point
and began to explain how easy it is to murder people by natural means
like typhus. It is done by taking the--good Heavens, Donna Adele, what
is the matter!"
Adele had uttered a short, low cry, and her face had turned very white.
Her lips were contorted in an expression of anguish such as Pietro had
never seen, and her fingers were twisting together as though they would
break.
"Can I do anything?" he asked, anxiously. He feared she was going to be
seized by some kind of convulsion, but the woman's strong will helped
her even then.
"Hold my fan before my arm," she managed to say, and she felt for
something in her pocket with her right hand.
In a moment she produced a tiny syringe with a point like a needle, and
a little bottle. With incredible quickness and skill she filled the
syringe, pricked the skin on her left arm, and ran the point into it,
and then pressed the tiny piston slowly till it would go no further. In
little more than one minute she had put everything into her pocket
again, and taking her fan from Ghisleri's hand, leaned back in the
corner of the sofa, with a sigh of relief.
"I am afraid I made you nervous," he said, in a tone of apology.
"Not at all," she answered. "I had forgotten to take my morphia before
coming--that was all. I suffer terribly with pains in my head when I do
not take it."
"And is the pain gone already?" asked Ghisleri, in some surprise, and
wondering how she would answer.
"Oh, no! But it will be gone very soon. I am quieter when I know I have
taken the morphia. Of course," she said, with a forced laugh, "you must
not suppose that I take it often, not even every day. I believe it is
very bad in large quantities."
"Of course." Ghisleri could hardly help smiling at the poor attempt to
disclaim any slavery to the fatal drug, contradicting, as it did, what
she had said but a moment before.
For the third time since Arden's death the conviction came upon him that
Adele had been the responsible cause of it, and this time it was
destined to be permanent. The theory of coincidence was exhausted, and
he abandoned it. The stories he had told her about Professor
Wüsterschinder, the great German authority, were quite true, and
Ghisleri's eyes had been opened on the previous evening to the
possibilities of evil disclosed by modern science. He was not yet sure
of what Adele had done, but he was convinced that the general nature of
the process she had employed to communicate the fever to Arden was
similar to those which the professor had described, and that she must,
in all probability, have got the necessary information from a scientific
book or article on the subject, which she had either procured
expressly, or which had perhaps fallen under her eyes by chance.
She, on her part, had been desperately frightened, as she had good cause
to be, for it was almost inconceivable to her that he could have
accidentally gone so near the mark as he was going when her cry had
stopped him. She felt that if he had pronounced the next half a dozen
words, she must have gone mad there and then in the drawing-room where
she sat, and she had instinctively prevented him proceeding any further.
Then in the convulsion of terror she felt, she had resorted to her sole
comforter, the morphia, and it had not played her false. In a short time
its influence was at work and indeed the mere act of taking it was in
itself soothing in the extreme. She felt herself growing calm again and
more able to face the new difficulties and terrors that had arisen in
her path. And they were many. She had no doubt now that Ghisleri had
either read the lost confession or had spoken with some one who had. It
was appalling to think that in that very room there might be a score of
persons who knew what that letter contained as well as he. The morphia
helped her wonderfully. But it was clear that Ghisleri had her in his
power. An idea flashed across her mind. It was so simple that she
wondered how she had not thought of it before. The letter had really
fallen to the bottom of the shaft. Ghisleri, interested perhaps in the
story of Paolo Braccio, had strolled down to the dungeon again by
himself and had seen the paper lying there. In that case he alone knew
of its existence or of its contents, besides herself and Lucia. The
thought was so agreeable, compared with the alternative of supposing
that all society knew the details of her evil deeds, that she clung to
it. Then she looked at the man who, as she supposed, had power to
dispose of her existence at his pleasure, and she wondered whether he
had a price. All men had, she had heard. But as it seemed to her now,
this particular man would not be like the generality, or else the price
he would set on her letter would be of the kind which she could not
possibly pay, because she would never be able to obtain for him what he
might want. The feeling she had known in the first months of her torment
returned upon her now, and very strongly--the awful feeling of
degradation compared even with the worst of the people she knew. In her
eyes, Ghisleri, with all his misdeeds, seemed a being of superior purity
and goodness. He had never done what she had done, nor anything
approaching to it in the most distant way. He had faced men in fair
fight, and hurt them, and been almost mortally hurt himself, but he had
never stabbed an enemy in the back nor dealt a blow in the dark. He had
loved more than one woman, and had been loved in return, but no one had
ever hinted that a woman's confidence had passed his lips, nor that he
had ever spoken lightly of any woman's good name. If he had done evil,
he had done it fairly, defiantly, above board, and in the light of day.
Adele envied him with all her heart as he sat there beside her,
confident in his own honourable reputation--as honour is reckoned in the
world--and free to go and to come and to do what seemed good in his own
eyes without a second thought of the consequences or the least fear of
betraying himself. There was not at that moment one person in the room
with whom she would not have been only too glad to exchange places,
station, fortune, name, reputation--everything. And she fancied Ghisleri
knew it, as indeed he almost did, and she feared to meet his eyes.
The silence had lasted so long that it was fast becoming awkward. It was
rarely indeed that Ghisleri forgot the social duty of destroying silence
ruthlessly the moment it appears, with any weapon which comes to hand,
from a feather to a bombshell. But on the present occasion his thoughts
were so many and so complex as to fill his mind completely for a few
minutes, so that all outward considerations sank into insignificance.
The effort was made at last by Adele, the one of the two who had by far
the most at stake in playing her part.
"Are you aware," she began, with an attempt at playfulness which was
almost weird, "that you have not spoken a single word during the last
quarter of an hour? Have you quite forgotten my existence? My dear
friend, you are growing almost rude in your old age!"
"Good manners were never anything but an affectation with me," answered
Ghisleri. "But you are quite right. There are little conventions of that
sort which must be respected if society is to keep together and hold up
its head--though why it should not lay down that same head and let
itself go to pieces is beyond my comprehension. Present company is
always excepted, you know--so you and I would survive as glorious and
immortal relics of a by-gone civilisation."
He hardly knew what he was saying, but he let the words run on with the
easy habit of talking and saying nothing which sometimes saves critical
situations for those who possess it and which can be acquired by almost
any one who is not shy. The first step in studying that useful
accomplishment is to talk when everybody else is talking, and not to pay
the slightest attention to the sounds which pass one's lips. Any noise
will do, bad or good--as the bearer of the good news to Aix put
it--only, if possible, from the first let the noise take the shape of
words. As every one else is talking, no one will hear you. Some of
Mother Goose's rhymes are excellent for such practice, but those who
prefer to recite the Eton grammar will obtain a result quite as
satisfactory in the end. No one listens, and it makes no difference. You
will then get a reputation for joining cheerfully in the talk of the
day. But if you sit looking at your plate because you have nothing to
say, the givers of dinner parties will curse you in their hearts, and
will rarely ask you to eat their food, which treatment, though it will
ultimately prolong your life, will not contribute to your social
success. Gradually, if you practise the system assiduously, you will be
able to walk alone, so to say. By attraction, your unconscious phrases
will become exactly like those of your neighbours. You will then only
need to open your mouth, stretch the vocal chords, and supply the
necessary breath, and admirably constructed inanities will roll out,
even when everybody is listening, and while you are gaining time to
select in your mind a sufficiently cutting epithet with which to adorn
your friend Smith Tompkins's name when it is mentioned, or while you are
nicely calculating the exact amount of money you can ask the said Smith
Tompkins to lend you the next time you have lost at baccarat.