IN THE BLUE CHAMBER.
Eve had learnt Madame Vivanti’s address from Lady Hartley the day after
the singer’s appearance in Hill Street. So her letter to her husband
written, and her mind made up, she had only to drive to Don Saltero’s
Mansion, and to make her way to that upper floor in which the singer
had her bower. The door was opened by Fiordelisa herself, who gave
a little look of surprise at seeing her visitor, and then stood in
mute wonder, waiting for Eve to speak, smiling faintly, and evidently
embarrassed.
She wore her accustomed black stuff gown, with a yellow silk
handkerchief knotted carelessly on her breast. The boy was hanging on
to her gown, and peeping shyly at the strange lady, so pure and fresh
looking in her soft grey silk, and dainty grey hat with pale pink
roses. Lisa noted her rival’s toilette in all its details, the long
loose grey gloves, the grey parasol.
For a minute or so the two women stood thus, looking at each other in
silence. Then, with an effort, Eve spoke.
“Are you alone, Madame Vivanti?”
“Alone, all but Paolo, and I don’t suppose you count him anybody,
Eccellenza. La Zia has gone to London.”
“I have come to talk to you--about my husband.”
Lisa flushed crimson.
“Please take the trouble to sit down, Eccellenza,” she said politely,
placing her prettiest armchair in front of the open window.
There were flowers in the balcony, a bed of marigolds, a flower which
la Zia had discovered to be decorative and cheap. For perfume there
were stocks and mignonette. The balcony was wide enough to hold plenty
of flowers, and a couple of basket chairs in which Lisa and her aunt
sat for many idle hours in fine weather, breathing the cool breezes
from the river, and submitting to the blacks. They thought of their
attic window in the Campo, and the life and movement in the paved
square below, the passing and repassing of the light-hearted crowd
to and fro on the Rialto, the twanging of a guitar now and then, the
tinkling of wiry mandolines, the nasal tones of a street-singer. Here
they had a wider horizon, but a murkier sky, and not that concentration
of gaiety which makes every campo in Venice a busy little world,
self-contained and self-sufficing. Eve looked round the room, noting
the pretty furniture, obviously chosen by a person of taste; the open
piano; the glimpse of a somewhat untidy bedroom through a door ajar.
Her husband had chosen the furniture, Eve told herself. He had built
this nest for his singing-bird.
“I am looking at your rooms,” she said, with pale lips; “the rooms my
husband furnished for you.”
Lisa had not even the grace to attempt a denial.
“He was very good, very generous,” she faltered, her eyes suffused with
tears, those tears which came so readily to Lisa’s eyes, on the stage
or off. “There never was any one so good as he.”
“He owed you at least as much as that,” said Eve, sternly. “It was the
least he could do.”
“Ah, he has told you then,” cried Lisa, eagerly; “he has told you his
secret.”
“No, he has not told me. He was too much ashamed to tell me of anything
so infamous. He is not shameless like you,” said Eve, trembling with
indignant feeling.
It was all true then, all that Sefton had told her sister; all that
her own jealous fears had suggested. This woman stood before her,
unabashed, ready to expatiate upon her sin.
“He has told me nothing,” she said, “or if he has spoken of you it has
only been to deceive me. But there are some things that are easy to
guess, when a woman has lived in the world as I have, and has heard
other women talk. Two years ago perhaps I might have been fooled by his
falsehoods; but I am wiser now. I knew from the first that you had been
his mistress; that he was the father of that boy.”
She pointed to the unconscious Paolo, sprawling on the floor, turning
the leaves of a picture-book, and doing his utmost to destroy an
indestructible “Jack the Giant Killer,” printed on stout linen.
“You knew what was not true, then,” said Lisa, drawing herself up,
with crimson cheeks and flaming eyes. “You pretend to know that which
is false, false, _una bugia indegna_. He was never anything to me but
a friend, my generous and noble friend. He hired this apartment for
us, for la Zia and me, and he furnished these rooms, and he bought me
that piano, and he paid the good Zinco to teach me to sing. _E vero!_ I
owe him my fortune, and all I have in the world. I would walk barefoot
all over this earth if I could make him happier by my toil. There is
nothing in this world I would not do for him.”
“And you ask me to believe that he did all this for friendship--mere
friendship--he, an English gentleman, for an Italian peasant?”
“I don’t ask you to believe anything, and I don’t care what you
believe. He is all the world to me. You are nothing--less than
nothing!” cried Lisa, passionately. “I hate you. If it had not been for
you he would have married me, perhaps. Who knows?”
“You think he would have married you! And yet he was only your friend,
you say.”
“He was only my friend.”
“He brought you and your aunt from Italy and set you up in London; and
yet he was only your friend.”
“He did not bring us from Italy. We came to London of our own accord.
He was only my friend. He was never any more than my friend. If he had
been I would not disown him. I love him too well to be ashamed.”
“You own that you love him?”
“Yes, I am not ashamed of my love. There are people somewhere who
worship the sun. I am no more ashamed than they are. I told him of my
love on my knees in this room, where you are sitting. I knelt at his
feet and asked him to give me heart for heart. I thought then that he
would hardly have been so kind unless he loved me. But he told me that
he loved an English girl, and that she was to be his wife. There was no
hope for me. I wanted to kill myself, but he stopped me with his strong
arms. Yes, for just one moment I was in his arms! Only one moment, and
then he flung me from him as if I were dirt.”
“He must have been very chivalrous to do so much for friendship,” said
Eve, shaken, but not convinced.
The woman spoke with the accents of truth; but Eve remembered that she
was an actress, trained in the art of simulated passion. No doubt it
was easy for an actress to lie like truth.
“He wanted to help us,” protested Lisa; “he blamed himself so much
for----”
She stopped, coloured, and then grew pale. It was evident to her now
that Vansittart’s wife had been told nothing, and she, Lisa, had been
on the point of betraying him.
“For what? Why did he blame himself?”
“Did I say ‘blame’? I use wrong words sometimes,” she said, quick to
recover herself. “I hardly know your language. He pitied us: that is
what I meant to say. He pitied us because we were alone and poor--two
helpless women.”
“And the father of your child, where was he?” Eve asked sternly, only
half convinced. “Why did not he help you?”
Paolo had grown tired of his book, and had gone back to his mother’s
knee. He stood half hidden in Lisa’s gown, looking earnestly at the
stranger, his infantile mind puzzled at the tone and manner of the
two women, feeling dimly that there was a tempest in the atmosphere,
feeling it as the birds feel when they twitter apprehensively before
the coming of the thunder. Inquisitive as well as alarmed, and bold in
his wonder, he went over to Eve, and took hold of her gown, and looked
up in her face.
She looked down at him, and it was her turn to wonder.
Of whom did the face remind her? He was like his mother; but it was
not her face he recalled to Eve. Nor was it Vansittart’s face, though
she tried, shrinkingly, to trace a resemblance there, looking for
something she hoped not to see. No, the face recalled some other face,
and the likeness, faint and indefinable as it was, thrilled her with a
tremulous awe, as if she had seen a ghost.
“You had a claim upon this child’s father,” said Eve, her hand lightly
touching the boy’s head, and then shrinking away as from pollution;
“the strongest possible claim, for he ought to have been your husband.
Why did not he help you?”
“Because he was in his grave,” said Lisa; and again the ready tears
gushed out.
There was a pause, and then Eve spoke in a gentler tone.
“That was hard for you,” she said, with a touch of pity.
“Yes, it was hard. He had promised to marry me. I think he would
have married me, for Paolo’s sake. My baby was not born till
afterwards--after his father’s death.”
“Poor creature! All that was very sad. Was my husband--was Mr.
Vansittart a friend of the man who died? Was it for his friend’s sake
he was so kind to you?”
“No, he was not a friend. It was for my sake, and la Zia’s, that he was
kind. I tell you again, he pitied us.”
Eve sank into a chair, drooping, miserable. Even yet she could not
believe in this story of Vansittart’s chivalrous kindness to two
foreign waifs who had no claim upon his friendship, not even the
claim of country. She knew him to be benevolent, generous, full of
compassion for all suffering of man or beast; but there was nothing
Quixotic in his benevolence. That which he had done for Lisa was too
much to be expected of any man who was not a millionaire or a musical
fanatic. He could not have done so much without a strong motive. And
then once again she reminded herself that Lisa was an actress, to whom
all falsehoods and simulations must be easy. She started to her feet;
indignant with this woman for deceiving her; angry with herself for
being so easily duped.
“I don’t believe a word you have told me,” she cried. “I believe that
Mr. Vansittart was your lover; my husband, John Vansittart, and no
other; and when he came here the other day you had lured him back to
your net.”
“You don’t believe--you don’t believe in Paolo’s dead father? Don’t
cry, Carissimo; she is a cruel woman, but she shan’t hurt you.” The
boy had begun to whimper, scared by the angry voices. “I will make you
believe. I will show you his likeness--the likeness I have never shown
to any one else. It is a bad one; it does not make him half handsome
enough. He was handsome; he had hair as light as yours, only redder,
and he was very fair--a true Englishman. He was not as handsome as your
husband--no, there is no one else like _him_. Shall I show you his
picture? Will you believe me then?”
She did not wait for an answer, but ran into the adjoining room, pulled
a heavy, iron-clamped box from under the bed--the box which contained
her jewels--unlocked it, and came running back with a photograph in her
hand.
“Ecco, Signora. It was taken at Burano, by a man who came from Venice
one summer morning, and photographed the church, and the street, and
the bridge, and as many of the people as would pay him a few soldi for
a likeness. I have kept it hidden away since he died. It hurt me to
look at it, remembering his end. But there!”--pushing the photograph
in front of Eve’s gloomy, distrustful countenance--“look at it to your
heart’s content, Signora. That man was the father of my child! Believe,
or not believe, as you please.”
Eve glanced with a careless contempt at the faded sun-picture--a bad
photograph, which time had made worse--the blurred image of a face
which, as her widening gaze fastened upon it, flashed back all the
picture of her childhood upon the mirror of her memory.
“Oh, God!” she cried. “My brother Harold!”
The door opened as she spoke, and looking up she saw her husband
standing on the threshold.
She appealed to him hopelessly in her bewilderment.
“Did you know?” she asked. “Was it for my sake you were kind to her?
Was that the link between you?”
“No, Fatima,” he answered sternly. “My Blue Chamber holds a ghastlier
secret than that. I was kind to her because I killed her lover. Are you
satisfied now? You wanted to know the worst. You would not be content.
We were united, happy, adoring each other; the happiest husband
and wife in all London, perhaps; but you would not be satisfied. I
entreated you to trust me. I assured you, with every asseveration a man
could make, that I was true to you. But you would not believe. You were
like your first namesake; you lent your ear to the hiss of the snake.
You were jealous by a woman’s instinct, and you let Sefton feed your
jealousy. Well, you are content now, perhaps. You have his picture in
your hand--the picture of the man I killed.”
“You killed him? You?”
“It sounds like madness, doesn’t it, but it’s true all the same. A
vulgar incident enough--nothing romantic about the story. The man whose
likeness you hold, and whom you recognize as your brother--that man
and I met as strangers in a Venetian caffè, in Carnival time. This
young woman here and her aunt were with me--the chance acquaintance
of the afternoon. We had known each other only a few hours, had we,
Fiordelisa? You did not even know my name.”
“Only a few hours,” nodded Lisa.
“He had been on a journey, and had been drinking. He came on us
unawares; and he chose to take offence because Lisa and her aunt and I
were sitting at the same table. He was easily jealous--as you are. It
runs in the family, perhaps. He assaulted me brutally, and I fought him
almost as brutally. It would have all ended harmlessly enough with a
rough mauling of each other--perhaps a black eye, or a broken nose--but
as Fate would have it I had a dagger ready to my hand--and exasperated
at a little extra brutality on his part I stabbed him. Luck was against
us both. That casual thrust of a dagger might have resulted in a
slight flesh wound. It killed him.”
“And you let me love you--you let me be your wife--knowing that you had
murdered my brother,” said Eve, trembling in every limb, white as death.
“No, Eve. It was not murder. It is the intention that makes the crime.
He was unarmed, drunk. I ought to have spared him, I suppose--but he
fell upon me like a tiger. It was brute force against brute force. The
knife was an unlucky accident.”
“He had just bought it in the Procuratie,” explained Lisa; “he had no
thought of killing him. You do not know how violent the Englishman
could be. He was cruel to me sometimes--he struck me many times when he
was angry.”
“You take the part of the murderer against the murdered--though this
man would have married you, would have made you an honest woman.”
“He had promised,” said Lisa, doubtfully.
Eve put the photograph to her white lips and kissed it passionately,
again, and again, and again.
“Oh, Harold,” she said, “to have hoped so long for your return, to have
prayed so many useless prayers! You were dead--dead before that child
was born.”
She looked at the boy, reckoning the years by the child’s growth. Four
years, at least, she told herself.
“And you dared to make me your wife, to let me love you with a love
that was almost idolatry,” she cried, turning upon Vansittart with
dilated eyes, “knowing that you had killed my brother. You heard me
talk of him--you pretended to sympathize with me--and you knew that you
had killed him.”
“I did not know. There was no such thing as certainty. When I asked
you to be my wife I knew nothing of your brother’s fate. Afterwards,
when we were engaged, the idea was suggested to me by your officious
friend Sefton--who wanted to put a stumbling-block in the way of our
marriage. He succeeded in tracing your brother to Venice, and he read
the story after his own lights. He thought Harold Marchant was the man
who struck the fatal blow. He did not take him for the victim. But the
links in his chain of evidence were not over strong--and I had ample
justification for not accepting his assertions as certainties. And you
loved me, did you not; and our marriage was likely to make your life
fairer and brighter, was it not?”
“What of that? Do you think I should have weighed my own love or my own
happiness against my brother’s life? Do you think I would have married
you if I had known the truth?”
“You would not, perhaps; and two lives would have been spoilt by your
loyalty to the dead--who would sleep none the more peacefully because
you and I were miserable. Did you owe him so much, this wandering
brother of yours? What kindness had he ever shown you? What care had he
ever taken of you?”
“He was my brother, and I loved him dearly.”
“And did not I love you, and had not I some claim upon you?” asked
Vansittart, indignantly. “Could you have let me go without a tear?”
“No, no, no. I adored you from the first--yes, that first night on the
snowy road, and at the ball, when you were so kind. I began to love you
almost at once, foolishly, ridiculously, without a hope of being loved
again. But, let my love be what it would, the love of a lifetime, it
would have made no difference. Nothing would have induced me to marry
the man who killed my brother. Oh, God,” she cried hysterically, “the
hands that I have kissed so often--stained with Harold’s life-blood!”
“I thought as much,” said Vansittart, doggedly. “I told myself that
you would not marry me if you knew my secret. I told myself that two
lives would be spoilt--it was a question, perhaps, of half a century
of happiness for two people, to be sacrificed because of the angry
passions of one night--of one minute. The deed was done in less time
than the bronze giants of the clock-tower would have taken to strike
the hour. Because once in my life, for one instant, under grossest
provocation, I let my temper master me--because of that one savage
impulse two hearts were to be broken. I spent a night of agony
deliberating this question, Eve. Mark you, it was within a few weeks of
our wedding-day that your kindred with the dead man was first suggested
to me.”
“You knew that you had killed a fellow-creature?”
“Yes, I knew, and I had suffered all the bitterness of a long remorse;
and I had given myself absolution. And when I knew the worst, knew at
least the probability that I had killed your brother, even then, after
most earnest questioning, I told myself that it was best for both of
us that we should marry. Our lives were our own. Neither of us was
responsible to that dead man in his grave. But now, now that I see how
dear he was to you, now that I know which way your heart turns, I wish
to God that he had killed me, and that I were lying where he lies,
among that quiet company by the lagune.”
They were alone together, Lisa having slipped away, taking the boy with
her, when she found the revelation inevitable. Let them fight it out,
these two; and if this Englishwoman loved her dead brother better than
her living husband, and chose to desert that noble husband, and thus
show of what poor stuff she was made, there was Lisa who adored him,
who would follow him through the world, if he would let her, with
fidelity that neither time nor trouble could change.
Eve stood for a few moments mutely looking at the blurred photograph,
the wretched production of an itinerant photographer’s camera, in which
one hand was out of focus, jointless, fingerless, monstrous. Poor as
the image was, it brought back the days of her childhood as vividly as
if it had been the finest work of art that Venice, in her golden age
of Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, could have produced. How well she
remembered him! How dearly she had loved him! His holidays had been a
season of boisterous gladness, his return to school or university a
time of mourning. He had given interest and delight to all her childish
amusements. He had taught her to ride. He had taught her to shoot with
an air-gun, which was one of his choicest possessions. He had taught
her to serve at tennis, to play billiards on the worn-out table, where
the balls rattled against the cushions as on cast iron. He had done
all these things in a casual way, never sacrificing any inclination or
engagement of his own to her pleasure--but in after days, when he had
vanished out of her life, she knew not whither, it seemed to her that
he had been the kindest and most unselfish of brothers. And he was
dead, had been dead for years, cut off in the prime of his manhood by
a remorseless hand. He was dead, and the man who had slain him stood
before her, undaunted, impenitent--her husband.
And the boy whose treble voice sounded now and again from the next
room--the child from whose lightest contact she had shrank with jealous
abhorrence--that child was of her kindred, no matter how basely born.
He was all that was left to her of the brother she had loved, and it
was not for her to shrink from him.