As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up at
its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above
the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the
passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning.
But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor
Lombard’s house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her
father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did not
look like a person capable of a disinterested passion for the arts; and
there had been moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture.
The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent yellow
light, and the young man turned his steps toward the church of San
Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering brightness on Sodoma’s
St. Catherine.
The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had to
grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the
sunset, the saint’s figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and
the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to
glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the
accidental collaboration of light and color.
Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the ground
at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet of note-paper,
folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter, and bearing the
superscription:--
To the Count Ottaviano Celsi.
Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come from? He was
distinctly conscious of having seen it fall through the air, close
to his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of the chapel; then he
turned and looked about the church. There was only one figure in it,
that of a man who knelt near the high altar.
Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard’s maid-servant.
Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been unconsciously
carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who was Count Ottaviano
Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen to act as that nobleman’s
ambulant letter-box?
Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to explore
his pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some clue to the
mystery; but they held nothing which he had not himself put there, and
he was reduced to wondering how the letter, supposing some unknown hand
to have bestowed it on him, had happened to fall out while he stood
motionless before the picture.
At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the aisle, and
turning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the table d’hote.
The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand.
“I do not intrude?” he inquired suavely.
Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel,
glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller.
“I see,” he remarked with a smile, “that you know the hour at which our
saint should be visited.”
Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous.
The stranger stood beamingly before the picture.
“What grace! What poetry!” he murmured, apostrophizing the St.
Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel as he
spoke.
Wyant, detecting the manoeuvre, murmured a brief assent.
“But it is cold here--mortally cold; you do not find it so?” The
intruder put on his hat. “It is permitted at this hour--when the church
is empty. And you, my dear sir--do you not feel the dampness? You are
an artist, are you not? And to artists it is permitted to cover the head
when they are engaged in the study of the paintings.”
He darted suddenly toward the steps and bent over Wyant’s hat.
“Permit me--cover yourself!” he said a moment later, holding out the hat
with an ingratiating gesture.
A light flashed on Wyant.
“Perhaps,” he said, looking straight at the young man, “you will tell me
your name. My own is Wyant.”
The stranger, surprised, but not disconcerted, drew forth a coroneted
card, which he offered with a low bow. On the card was engraved:--
Il Conte Ottaviano Celsi.
“I am much obliged to you,” said Wyant; “and I may as well tell you that
the letter which you apparently expected to find in the lining of my hat
is not there, but in my pocket.”
He drew it out and handed it to its owner, who had grown very pale.
“And now,” Wyant continued, “you will perhaps be good enough to tell me
what all this means.”
There was no mistaking the effect produced on Count Ottaviano by this
request. His lips moved, but he achieved only an ineffectual smile.
“I suppose you know,” Wyant went on, his anger rising at the sight of
the other’s discomfiture, “that you have taken an unwarrantable liberty.
I don’t yet understand what part I have been made to play, but it’s
evident that you have made use of me to serve some purpose of your own,
and I propose to know the reason why.”
Count Ottaviano advanced with an imploring gesture.
“Sir,” he pleaded, “you permit me to speak?”
“I expect you to,” cried Wyant. “But not here,” he added, hearing the
clank of the verger’s keys. “It is growing dark, and we shall be turned
out in a few minutes.”
He walked across the church, and Count Ottaviano followed him out into
the deserted square.
“Now,” said Wyant, pausing on the steps.
The Count, who had regained some measure of self-possession, began to
speak in a high key, with an accompaniment of conciliatory gesture.
“My dear sir--my dear Mr. Wyant--you find me in an abominable
position--that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I have
taken advantage of you--yes! I have counted on your amiability, your
chivalry--too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I do? It was to
oblige a lady”--he laid a hand on his heart--“a lady whom I would die
to serve!” He went on with increasing volubility, his deliberate English
swept away by a torrent of Italian, through which Wyant, with some
difficulty, struggled to a comprehension of the case.
Count Ottaviano, according to his own statement, had come to Siena some
months previously, on business connected with his mother’s property; the
paternal estate being near Orvieto, of which ancient city his father
was syndic. Soon after his arrival in Siena the young Count had met the
incomparable daughter of Doctor Lombard, and falling deeply in love with
her, had prevailed on his parents to ask her hand in marriage. Doctor
Lombard had not opposed his suit, but when the question of settlements
arose it became known that Miss Lombard, who was possessed of a small
property in her own right, had a short time before invested the
whole amount in the purchase of the Bergamo Leonardo. Thereupon Count
Ottaviano’s parents had politely suggested that she should sell the
picture and thus recover her independence; and this proposal being met
by a curt refusal from Doctor Lombard, they had withdrawn their consent
to their son’s marriage. The young lady’s attitude had hitherto been one
of passive submission; she was horribly afraid of her father, and would
never venture openly to oppose him; but she had made known to Ottaviano
her intention of not giving him up, of waiting patiently till events
should take a more favorable turn. She seemed hardly aware, the Count
said with a sigh, that the means of escape lay in her own hands; that
she was of age, and had a right to sell the picture, and to marry
without asking her father’s consent. Meanwhile her suitor spared no
pains to keep himself before her, to remind her that he, too, was
waiting and would never give her up.
Doctor Lombard, who suspected the young man of trying to persuade
Sybilla to sell the picture, had forbidden the lovers to meet or to
correspond; they were thus driven to clandestine communication, and had
several times, the Count ingenuously avowed, made use of the doctor’s
visitors as a means of exchanging letters.
“And you told the visitors to ring twice?” Wyant interposed.
The young man extended his hands in a deprecating gesture. Could Mr.
Wyant blame him? He was young, he was ardent, he was enamored! The
young lady had done him the supreme honor of avowing her attachment, of
pledging her unalterable fidelity; should he suffer his devotion to be
outdone? But his purpose in writing to her, he admitted, was not merely
to reiterate his fidelity; he was trying by every means in his power to
induce her to sell the picture. He had organized a plan of action; every
detail was complete; if she would but have the courage to carry out
his instructions he would answer for the result. His idea was that she
should secretly retire to a convent of which his aunt was the Mother
Superior, and from that stronghold should transact the sale of the
Leonardo. He had a purchaser ready, who was willing to pay a large sum;
a sum, Count Ottaviano whispered, considerably in excess of the young
lady’s original inheritance; once the picture sold, it could, if
necessary, be removed by force from Doctor Lombard’s house, and his
daughter, being safely in the convent, would be spared the painful
scenes incidental to the removal. Finally, if Doctor Lombard were
vindictive enough to refuse his consent to her marriage, she had only to
make a SOMMATION RESPECTUEUSE, and at the end of the prescribed delay no
power on earth could prevent her becoming the wife of Count Ottaviano.
Wyant’s anger had fallen at the recital of this simple romance. It was
absurd to be angry with a young man who confided his secrets to the
first stranger he met in the streets, and placed his hand on his heart
whenever he mentioned the name of his betrothed. The easiest way out of
the business was to take it as a joke. Wyant had played the wall to this
new Pyramus and Thisbe, and was philosophic enough to laugh at the part
he had unwittingly performed.
He held out his hand with a smile to Count Ottaviano.
“I won’t deprive you any longer,” he said, “of the pleasure of reading
your letter.”
“Oh, sir, a thousand thanks! And when you return to the casa Lombard,
you will take a message from me--the letter she expected this
afternoon?”
“The letter she expected?” Wyant paused. “No, thank you. I thought
you understood that where I come from we don’t do that kind of
thing--knowingly.”
“But, sir, to serve a young lady!”
“I’m sorry for the young lady, if what you tell me is true”--the Count’s
expressive hands resented the doubt--“but remember that if I am under
obligations to any one in this matter, it is to her father, who has
admitted me to his house and has allowed me to see his picture.”
“HIS picture? Hers!”
“Well, the house is his, at all events.”
“Unhappily--since to her it is a dungeon!”
“Why doesn’t she leave it, then?” exclaimed Wyant impatiently.
The Count clasped his hands. “Ah, how you say that--with what force,
with what virility! If you would but say it to HER in that tone--you,
her countryman! She has no one to advise her; the mother is an idiot;
the father is terrible; she is in his power; it is my belief that he
would kill her if she resisted him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her life
while she remains in that house!”
“Oh, come,” said Wyant lightly, “they seem to understand each other well
enough. But in any case, you must see that I can’t interfere--at
least you would if you were an Englishman,” he added with an escape of
contempt.