As Ghisleri had anticipated, Adele kept up a lively correspondence with
him for some time. All her letters were duly filed by Ubaldini, who took
certified copies of Pietro's replies, but did not mention what he
himself had done in the matter. Adele bargained sharply until Ghisleri
wrote to her as plainly as he well could that the manuscript was not to
be had for less than the sum he had repeatedly named, and that he could
do nothing more for her. Thereupon she answered that she would consider
the matter, and did not write again. Pietro, after waiting several days,
left Rome again, and returned to Torre de' Ghisleri, glad to be relieved
at last from the irksome and dangerous task of writing concise and
lawyer-like communications about a subject which did not interest him at
all.
Meanwhile Adele had been through a series of emotions of which Pietro
knew nothing, and which very nearly drove her to increasing her daily
doses of morphia again. On receiving Ubaldini's very respectful and
straightforward letter, she had felt that she was saved at last, though
it definitely destroyed the illusion by which she had so long persuaded
herself that the confession was still in the oubliette at Gerano.
Without much hesitation she wrote to Ubaldini, and laid a bank-note for
five hundred francs in the folded sheet. She begged him to send a
special messenger with the sealed packet to Castel Savello, and
requested him, in spite of his protest, to accept the enclosed sum to
cover expenses.
During forty-eight hours she enjoyed to the full the anticipation of at
last getting back the letter which had cost her such terrible anxiety at
various times during the past two years and a half. Then came Ubaldini's
answer, though when she opened it she had no idea that it was from him.
He had made his clerk both write and sign the fair copy of the first
letter, which had been written on paper not stamped with an address. He
now wrote with his own hand upon the paper he kept for business
correspondence upon which, of course, the address was printed. There was
consequently not the slightest resemblance between the two letters. But
Adele was not prepared for the contents. The first thing she noticed was
her bank-note, carefully pinned inside the sheet. Even the form of
addressing her was not the same, and the one now employed was the
correct one, the Savelli being one of the families in which the title of
Prince and Princess belongs indiscriminately to all the children, and
consequently to the wives of all the sons. The letter was as follows:
"SIGNORA PRINCIPESSA:--I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt
of a communication from your Excellency, in which you request me to
send a certain sealed packet to Castel Savello by a special
messenger, and enclosing a bank note for five hundred francs (Banca
Romana S. 32/0945) which I return herewith. I take the occasion to
say that I know nothing whatever of the sealed packet referred to,
and I beg to suggest that your Excellency may have accidentally
addressed the letter to me instead of to some other person, perhaps
in using a directory. If, however, it was written in answer to one
supposed to have been indited to you by me, the letter must have
been composed and sent by some designing person in the hope of
intercepting the reply and gaining possession of the money, which I
am glad to be able to send back to its original owner. Believe me,
Signora Principessa,
"Your Excellency's most obedient,
"RINALDO UBALDINI."
The shock was almost more than Adele could bear, and the room reeled
with her as she comprehended what had happened, so far as she was able
to understand it all. The truth did not strike her, however. What she
believed was what the lawyer suggested, that some person had played a
trick on her, and had made use of Ubaldini's name and address in the
hope of getting the money he or she naturally expected that she would
send as compensation for such an important service. The hardest to
endure was the disappointment of finding that she was not to have the
confession after all. The point proved was that, whether it were still
in the oubliette or had been found and carried off, there was in either
case at least one person at large who knew it existed, and who knew that
the contents would be greatly to her disadvantage if known. And if one
person knew it, she argued, all Rome might be acquainted with the story,
and probably was. But the comforting conviction that the letter was
still safe at Gerano did not return. There was a tone about the first
communication disclaimed by Ubaldini, which forced upon her the belief
that the writer knew everything, and could ruin her at a moment's
notice.
What Ubaldini gained was the certainty that the story which Ghisleri
described as current gossip was a fact, and a very serious one. He had
played detective instead of lawyer, and he had been very successful. He
knew also, that, as he had acted altogether in the interests of his
client, Ghisleri, and had returned Adele's money, no objection could,
strictly speaking, be made to the stratagem, however it might be looked
upon by gentlemen and men of the world, like Ghisleri himself. But
Ubaldini was a lawyer, and it was not his business to consider what the
fine world would think of his doings. He filed Adele's letter with the
copies of his own.
In the course of a few days, Adele, who was all the time carrying on her
correspondence with Pietro, gathered some hope from the latter's
answers. She had a suspicion that he might keep all the notes he
received from her, and after the first she was as careful never to
mention the manuscript except as "the confession," as he, on his part,
was always to write out its title in full. It struck her, however, that
a man playing such a part as she wished to have it thought that he was
playing, would naturally use some such means for making his letters seem
commonplace if they should fall into the wrong hands, and it would be
easy to persuade her friends that the autobiographic writings of
Isabella Montevarchi meant Adele Savelli's confession, by common
consent, though she herself had not taken the trouble to use such a long
title more than once. The thought elated her, and comforted her in a
measure for the disappointment she had suffered, and which had shaken
her nerves severely.
She now spent much time in going over the correspondence, weighing each
word in the attempt to establish its exact value if regarded from the
point of view of a systematic attempt to extort money. With a relative
coolness which would not have disgraced a strong man, and which showed
how far she had recovered control of herself by diminishing the doses of
morphia, she set to work to put her case together on the supposition
that she meant to lay it before her husband, for instance, or any other
intelligent person, with a request for advice. And the case, as she put
it, was better than might have been expected, though it depended
ultimately, for its solidity, on the supposition that the confession
could never be found.
In the first place, she intended to admit that she had been jealous of
Laura for years, and to own frankly that she had often said cruel and
spiteful things of her, and of Arden, just as everybody she knew said
spiteful things of somebody. She would even admit that she had first set
afloat the rumour that Lord Herbert was intemperate, and that Laura had
the evil eye. She could then point out that her conduct had suddenly
changed in deference to her father's wishes, that there had been an open
reconciliation, not very heartfelt on her part at first, but made
sincere by the remorse she felt after Arden's death. For she meant to go
even so far as to confess that Arden might have caught the scarlet fever
in her house, seeing that her maid was only just recovering from it at
the time. The woman's illness had been kept strictly secret, and she had
been, from the first, taken to a distant part of the palace, so that
Adele had not believed there could be any danger. Even her husband had
not known what the maid's illness was, and poor Lucia had pleaded so
hard not to be sent to the hospital that Adele had yielded. But to
prove, she would say, how little fear of contagion she had, her own
children had not been sent into the country. The Palazzo Savelli was big
enough to have had a whole infirmary in one part of it, completely
isolated from all the rest. Nevertheless, she had always felt that there
was a possibility of Arden's last illness having been taken at that
dinner-party, and her secret remorse had caused her the greatest
suffering. Between that and a nervous disorder from which she had little
hope of ever recovering, she had fallen very ill, and had gone to
Gerano. While there, her conscience had so pricked her in the matter of
her past unkindness to her step-sister and to Arden, that although she
had been to confession at Easter, she wrote a long letter to her
confessor in Rome, going again over the full details of the past winter.
From that point she could tell the truth, without even sparing Lucia,
until she came to the discovery that it was Ghisleri himself who had
picked up the letter, or confession, under the shaft of the oubliette.
And here she would lay great stress on Ghisleri's attachment to Laura,
and consequent dislike of herself. The well-known fact that Pietro had
fought a desperate duel merely because Campodonico said that Lady
Herbert Arden might have the evil eye, sufficiently showed to what
lengths he would go in her defence. Nothing more would really be needed.
But there was plenty more. All Rome knew that he had broken with
Maddalena dell' Armi for Laura's sake, and that he had exhibited the
most untiring devotion ever afterwards. Never, since the death of the
Princess Corleone, Adele would boldly assert, had he been faithful to
any one woman for such a length of time. That was a strong point. The
Princess of Gerano herself could testify to her own anxiety about Laura
since Ghisleri had been so much with her. Laura herself had behaved in
the most admirable manner ever since the reconciliation, but Ghisleri,
in constituting himself her champion, had become, so to say, more
royalist than the king, and more catholic than the pope. His dislike, if
not his positive hatred, for Adele was apparent at every step in the
story. He did not, it is true, speak of it to any one, but his reticence
was a well-known peculiarity of his character. It was when he was alone
in conversation with Adele that he showed what he felt. But his manner
was always courteous and rather formal. It was by sarcastic hints that
he conveyed his meaning. Nevertheless, Adele had maintained the outward
forms of friendly acquaintance, and once, some six months after Arden's
death, when matters had not been so bad as they now were, she had asked
him to stay a few days at Gerano. Lucia could testify that he was there
at the time when the confession disappeared, and Lucia, who had
attempted to extort money for it, and would have succeeded if the
document had been forthcoming, had naturally been as interested as any
one to find it. Not until some time later had Adele suspected that it
had been picked up by Ghisleri. The thing, of course, had not any very
great value, but what woman, Adele would ask, could bear to think that
the most private outpourings of her soul to her spiritual director were
in the hands of a man who hated her, and who could, if he pleased,
circulate them and make them the talk of the town? When Ghisleri, in the
following winter, had begun to torment her systematically by quoting
little phrases and expressions which she remembered to have written in
the letter, she had at last boldly taxed him with having it in his
possession, and he, with the unparalleled cynicism for which he was
famous, had laughed at her and owned the truth. Every one would allow
that this was very like him. She had threatened to complain to her
husband, and he had expressed the utmost indifference. He was a known
duelist and a dangerous adversary, and for her husband's sake she had
held her tongue, while Ghisleri continued to make her life miserable
with his witticisms. Then she had once asked him what he would consider
an equivalent for the letter. He had laughed again, and had said that he
would take a large sum of money in exchange for it, which, he added, he
would devote to building a small hospital in the village of Torre de'
Ghisleri, saying that it would be for the good of her soul to found a
charity of that kind. She would not undertake to say whether he would
have employed the money for that purpose or not, if she had given it to
him. Possibly he would. But she had not been able to dispose of any such
sum as he had then named. Under her marriage contract she controlled
only her pin-money, and her father allowed her nothing out of the great
fortune which would some day be hers. She and Ghisleri had corresponded
about the matter in town, by notes sent backwards and forwards. She, on
her part, had at that time thought she was doing wisely in burning his,
but he had been less careful. He had, in fact, been so grossly negligent
as to leave five of them at one time in the pocket of one of his coats.
It was through his tailor to whom the coat had been sent for some
alteration or repair that two of these notes had come back to Adele. A
woman, apparently a seamstress, had come to her with them one day, and
had offered them to her for sale, together with a card of Lady Herbert
Arden's enclosed in an envelope addressed to "Maria B." at the general
post-office. On the card were written the words: "For Maria B., with
best thanks." The woman confessed that she was in great distress, that
she had found the letters in a coat upon which she was working, had
easily ascertained who Ghisleri was, and what his relations towards Lady
Herbert were, and had appealed to the latter for help, offering the
letters in exchange for any charity, and actually sending three of them
when she had only received five francs. Lady Herbert had then sent her
fifty francs more with the card in question, but the poor woman thought
that very little. She bitterly repented not having brought them all at
once to Donna Adele. Of course they belonged to her, and Donna Adele
had a right to them all, without payment. But the woman was very poor.
Adele had unhesitatingly given her a hundred francs and had kept the two
notes and the card, which proved at least that even at that time she had
been corresponding with Ghisleri and protesting her inability to pay the
sum he demanded, and that Laura Arden was aware of the correspondence,
and had been willing for Ghisleri's sake to pay money to obtain it. For
a long time after this Adele had made no further attempt, but had
avoided finding herself alone in conversation with Pietro, as many
people had indeed noticed, because she could not bear to be perpetually
annoyed by his reference to his power over her. Yet, out of fear lest
some harm should befall her husband, she had still held her peace. Early
in the preceding summer, shortly before leaving for her annual visit to
Gerano, Ghisleri had managed to be alone with her, and had not lost the
opportunity of inflicting another wound, which had revived all her old
desire to obtain possession of the lost letter. He had, indeed, almost
admitted that unless she would reconsider the matter he would send it to
one of her friends to read. The Montevarchi library was then about to be
sold, and many persons were talking of the famous confession of Isabella
Montevarchi. By way of safety, Adele, in agreeing to think the whole
thing over once more, had told him that when writing she should speak of
her own letter as though it were this well-known manuscript. She had
already some experience of his carelessness in regard to notes. Against
his own statement, and against her own secret positive conviction, yet
to give him one chance, as it were, she had made one desperate effort to
have the oubliette opened and searched. Her father would remember how
angry she had been, and, indeed, she had lost her temper, being always
ill and nervous. He had positively refused. Then, in despair, she had
reopened negotiations with Ghisleri, whose demands, though not so high
as formerly, were still quite beyond her means. As a matter of fact,
the dealer had asked an exorbitant price for the manuscript, being well
aware of its historical importance, which was little less than that
attaching to the famous manuscript account of the Cenci trial. Adele was
in despair. She had no means of raising such a sum as Ghisleri required,
except by selling her jewels, which she could not possibly do without
exciting her husband's suspicions. She was powerless. Had any woman ever
been placed in such a situation? Ghisleri's last letter distinctly
stated that he could do nothing more for her if she refused to buy the
confession of Isabella Montevarchi at the price he had last named. Those
were his very words. They meant that unless she paid, he would make use
of the letter he had. He even added, that in that case the manuscript
would probably before long be disposed of elsewhere, as though to make
his meaning clearer.
Her position was very strong, Adele thought, as she reached the end of
her statement as she first drew it up in her own mind. A clever lawyer
could doubtless make it even stronger, for he would know how to take
advantage of every point, and how to call attention to the strongest and
pass smoothly over the weaker links in the chain. The real danger, and
the only real danger, lay in the possibility that the confession itself
might be found and might be produced, with all which she said it
contained, and with the one central black statement of which she made no
mention in working up the case. But who could produce it? If any one had
it, that man was Ghisleri, who had more than once gone very near the
truth in the hints he had thrown out. Say that he had it--suppose the
hypothesis a fact. Its being in his possession would be the most ruining
evidence of all. He would not dare to show it, for though it might ruin
her, it would be far worse ruin to him, for it would of itself suffice
to prove the truth of every word of her story, and he would not only
incur the full penalty of the law for a most abominable attempt at
levying blackmail, but his very memory would be blasted for ever as
that of the most dastardly and cowardly villain ever sent to penal
servitude. As for herself, she felt that she had not long to live, and
if worse came to worst, a little over-dose of morphia would end it all.
She would have had her triumph, and she would have seen Laura's face by
that time.
It did not occur to her to ask herself any question about the origin of
a hatred so implacable as to make the sacrifice of life itself seem easy
in the accomplishment of its end. She was not able to trace the history
of her jealousy backwards by a firm concentration of memory, as she was
able by the force of vivid imagination to construct the vengeance she
anticipated in the future. That the most dire revenge should be
contemplated, pursued, and ultimately executed for the sake of a wrong
wholly imaginary in the first instance is not altogether novel in the
history of humanity. There are minds which under certain conditions
cannot judge of the past as they can of events present and to come.
Adele's hatred of Laura Arden amounted almost to a fixed idea. It had
begun in very small things. Its origin lay, perhaps, in the simple fact
that Laura was beautiful whereas Adele had been barely pretty at her
best, and its first great development had been the consequence of
Francesco Savelli's undisguised preference for the step-sister of his
future wife. All the young girl's jealousy and vain nature had been
roused and wounded by the slight, and as years had gone by and Savelli
showed no signs of forgetting his early attachment to Laura, the wound
had grown more sore and more angry until it had poisoned Adele's
character and heart to the very core. The worst deed she ever did had
not perhaps been the worst in intention. She had not been at all sure
that Arden would take the fever, and she had assuredly not meant nor
ever expected that he should die. Chance had put the information into
her hands at a moment when, through Laura, as it seemed to her, she was
suffering the most cruel humiliation she had ever known. On that
memorable evening when her father had forced her to submit to his will,
and when she was looking forward with bitter loathing to what was very
like a public reconciliation, she had been left alone. In attempting to
control herself and to regain some outward calm, she had taken up a
review and had forced herself to read the first article upon which she
opened, and which happened to be a very dull one on the bacilli of
various diseases. But one passage had struck her forcibly--the plain
account of a case which had recently been observed, in which few medical
terms occurred, and which a child could have understood. The extreme
simplicity of the facts had startled her, and she had suddenly resolved
that Laura and Arden should have cause to remember the reconciliation
which would cost her vanity so dear. But she had no intention of doing
murder. In her heart she had hardly believed that any result would
follow, and remorse had taken hold of her almost at once, simultaneously
with the horrible fear of discovery which has more than once driven men
and women mad. But remorse is by no means repentance. With it comes
often what has been called the impossibility of pardoning the person one
has injured, and the insane desire to wreak vengeance upon that person
for the acute sufferings endured in one's own conscience. Given the
existence of this desire in a very violent degree, and admitting the
inevitable disturbance of the faculties ensuing upon the long and
vicious abuse of such a poison as morphia, Adele's ultimate state
becomes comprehensible. She was, indeed, as Ghisleri had said to Laura,
hardly sane, and her incipient madness having originally resulted from
jealousy, the latter naturally remained the ruling influence in her
unsettled brain, and attained proportions hardly credible to those who
have not followed the steps by which the human intelligence passes from
sanity to madness.
And now that she had worked up her case against Ghisleri, as a lawyer
would express it, and had convinced herself that she could tell a long
and connected story in which almost every detail should give colour to
her principal assertion, she hesitated as to the course she should
pursue. It was not in her power to send for a lawyer and to bring an
action at law against Pietro, without her husband's consent, and she
knew how hard that would be to obtain. Francesco Savelli was by no means
a cowardly man, and would, if necessary, have exposed his life in a duel
with Ghisleri, not for his wife's sake, but for the sake of the family
honour. But he had the true Roman's abhorrence of publicity and scandal,
and would make great sacrifices to avoid anything of the kind. Her own
father might be willing to take the matter up, but it was extremely hard
to deceive him. She knew, however, that if he were once persuaded of the
justice of her cause, he would go to any length in her defence and would
prove an implacable enemy to the man who, as he would suppose, had
injured her. The great difficulty lay in persuading him at the outset.
But for the unfortunate fact that he had already once detected her in
falsehood, the matter would have been far easier. It was true that she
meant to admit all he had then forced her to own, and much more besides,
in order to show how high a value Ghisleri set upon the confession which
contained a concise account of her doings. But he would, in any case, be
prejudiced against her from the first. One thing was in her favour, she
thought. The Princess of Gerano did not like Ghisleri, and would in all
likelihood be ready to believe evil of him, and to influence her
husband, good and just woman though she was. There was one other person
to whom Adele could apply--Prince Savelli himself. She thought of him
last and wondered why she had not remembered him first. He was a man of
singular energy, courage, and coolness, whose chief fault was a tendency
to overestimate beyond all limits the importance of his family and the
glory of his ancient name. She knew that he was abnormally sensitive on
these points and that if she could rouse his ever ready pride, he would
hesitate at nothing in order to bring retribution upon any one rash
enough to insult or injure any member of his family. And he lived a life
of his own and cared little for the world. His passion, strangely
enough, was of a scientific kind. He was an astronomer, had built
himself an observatory on the top of the massive old palace, and spent
the greater part of his time there. Such existences, in the very heart
of society, are not unknown in Rome. Prince Savelli had remained what he
was by nature, a true student, and was perfectly happy in his own way,
caring very little for the world and hardly ever showing himself in it.
The Princess was a placid person, extremely devout, but also extremely
selfish. It was from her that Francesco inherited his disposition and
his yellow hair.
It struck Adele that if she could win her father-in-law's sympathy and
rouse him to action in her behalf, it would be far easier to persuade
her own father that she was in the right. Gerano had a boundless respect
for the elder Savelli's opinion, though if he had known him better, he
would have discovered that his judgment was far too easily influenced
where his exaggerated family pride was concerned.
A long time passed before Adele finally made up her mind to the great
attempt. Ghisleri had already returned to Rome and Laura Arden was
expected in two or three weeks, according to news received by her
mother.
An incident, trivial in itself, at last decided her to act at once. She
and Francesco were dining with the Prince and Princess of Gerano as they
did regularly once a week. As a rule nobody was invited to these family
meetings, but on that particular evening Gianforte Campodonico and Donna
Christina had been asked. It was convenient to have them when Laura was
not there, and they were much liked in Casa Gerano where, as has been
said, Ghisleri was not a favourite. There was, moreover, a distant
relationship between the families of Braccio and Campodonico of which,
as they liked one another, both were fond of speaking.
Adele looked very ill. By this time her complexion was of a pale
yellow, and she was thin to absolute emaciation. In spite of her
determined efforts to break the habit that was killing her, or perhaps
as a first consequence of them, she was liable to moments of nervousness
in which she could hardly control herself and in which she did not seem
to remember what had happened a few minutes earlier. Her sufferings at
such times were painful to see. She could hardly keep her hands from
moving about in a helpless fashion, and her face was often slightly
contorted. Very rarely, on fine days when she had been driving, a little
colour came into her ghastly cheeks. It was easy to see that only her
strong will supported her continually, and that women more weakly
organized would long ago have succumbed to the effects of the poison.
When she felt that she was liable to a crisis of the nerves she was
careful to stay at home, but occasionally she was attacked unawares,
more or less violently, when she had believed herself well enough to go
out. When this happened she sat in silence while the suffering lasted,
and did her best to keep her unruly hands clasped together. By a strong
effort she sometimes succeeded in concealing from others what she felt,
but the exertion of her will made her irritable to the last degree, if
she was called upon to speak or forced to try and join in the
conversation.