TREVANION FINDS AN ALLY
Trevanion, the drunkenness slipped from his face and the irksome limp
discarded, came from the osteria door. His audience dwindled, he was
minded for fresh air and a stroll. Behind the red glow of his segar his
dark face wore a smile.
Just at the fringe of the foliage two stolid figures in servant’s
livery stepped before him. Startled, he drew back. Two others stood
behind him. He looked from side to side, pale with sudden anticipation,
his lips drawn back like a lynx at bay. He was weaponless.
A fifth figure joined the circle that hemmed him--Paolo, suave,
smiling, Corsican.
“Magnificence!” he said, in respectful Italian, “I bear the salutations
of a gentleman of Ravenna who begs your presence at his house
to-night.” Without waiting answer, he called softly, and a coach with
six white horses drew slowly from the shadow.
For an instant Trevanion smiled in grim humor, half deceived. A
simultaneous movement of the four in livery, however, recalled his
distrust.
“Are these his _bravos_?” he inquired in surly defiance.
“His servants, Magnificence!”
“Carry my excuses then--and bid him mend the manner of his invitations.”
“I should regret to have to convey such a message from the milord.”
Paolo opened the coach door as he spoke. The inference was obvious.
Trevanion glanced swiftly over his shoulder toward the still hostelry.
His first sound of alarm might easily be throttled. At any rate,
he reflected, these were not the middle ages. To the owner of this
equipage he was an English lord, and lords were not kidnapped and
stilettoed, even in Italy. Some wealthy Ravennese, perhaps, not openly
to flout public disapproval, chose thus to gratify his curiosity.
Anticipating refusal, he had taken this method of urbane constraint.
Well, perforce, he would see the adventure through! He shrugged his
shoulders and entered the coach.
Paolo seated himself, and the horses started at a swinging trot.
Through the windows Trevanion could discern the forms of the
men-servants running alongside. He sat silent, his companion
vouchsafing no remark, till the carriage stopped and they alighted at
the open portal of a massive structure fronting the paved street. It
was Casa Guiccioli.
The Corsican led the way in and the servants disappeared. With a word,
Paolo also vanished, and the man so strangely introduced gazed about
him.
The hall was walled with an arras tapestry of faded antique richness,
hung with uncouth weapons. Opposite ascended a broad, dimly lighted
stairway holding niches of tarnished armor. Wealth with penuriousness
showed everywhere. Could this whimsical duress be the audacity of some
self-willed dama, weary of her _cavaliere servente_ and scheming thus
to gain a romantic _tête-à-tête_ with the famed and defamed personage
he had caricatured that day? Trevanion stole softly to the arras,
wrenched a Malay kriss from a clump of arms, and slipped it under his
coat.
A moment later his guide reappeared. Up the stair, along a tiled and
gilded hall, he followed him to a wide _stanza_. A door led from this
at which Paolo knocked.
As it opened, the compelled guest caught a glimpse of the interior,
set with mirrors and carven furniture, panelled and ornate with the
delicate traceries of brush and chisel. In the room stood two figures:
a man bent from age, his face blazing with the watch-fires of an
unbalanced purpose, and a woman, young, lovely, distraught. She wore a
dressing-gown, and her gold hair fell uncaught about her shoulders, as
though she had been summoned in haste to a painful audience. Her eyes,
on the man, were fixed in an expression of fearful wonder. One hand was
pressed hard against her heart. Trevanion had never seen either before;
what did they want with him?
“Your guest,” announced Paolo on the threshold.
“What do you mean to do?” cried the girl in frantic fear. “He is a
noble of England! You dare not harm him!”
“I am a noble of Romagna!” grated the old man.
It was the _real_ George Gordon they expected--not he! Trevanion was
smiling as Paolo spoke to him. With a hand on the blade he concealed he
strode forward, past him, into the room.
“Your servant, Signore,” said he, as the door closed behind him.
There was a second of silence, broken by a snarl from the old count
and a cry from Teresa--a sob of relief. She leaned against the wall,
in the reaction suddenly faint. Her husband’s summons had filled her
with apprehension--for she recalled the sound in the shrubbery--and
his announcement, full of menace to Gordon, had shaken her mettle of
resistance. She remembered an old story of a hired assassin whispered
of him when she was a child. At the insane triumph and excitement in
his manner she had been convinced and frightened. Terror had seized her
anew--the shivering terror of him that had come to her on the monastery
path and that her after-resentment had allayed.
Now, however, her fear calmed, indignation at what she deemed a ruse
to compel an admission of concern that had but added to her husband’s
fury, sent the blood back to her cheeks. All the repressed feeling that
his cumulative humiliations had aroused burst their bonds. She turned
on him with quivering speech:
“_Evviva, Signore!_” she said bitterly. “Are you not proud to have
frightened a woman by this valorous trick? Have you other comedies to
garnish the evening? _Non importa_--I leave them for your guest.”
Trevanion’s face wore a smile of relish as she swept from the room. He
was certain now of two things. The old man hated George Gordon; the
girl--was she daughter or wife?--did not. Had he unwittingly stumbled
upon a chapter in the life of the man he trailed which he had not
known? He seated himself with coolness, his inherent dare-deviltry
flaunting to the surface.
Through the inflamed brain of the master of the casa, as he stared at
him with his hawk eyes, were crowding suspicions. Paolo’s description
had made him certain of the identity of the man in the garden. But his
command to his secretary had named only the milord at the osteria. That
the two were one and the same, Paolo could not have known--otherwise
he would not have brought another. But how had he been deceived? How,
unless the man before him was a confederate--had played the other’s
part at the inn? It was a decoy, so the lover of his wife, with less
risk in the amour, might laugh in his sleeve at him, the hoodwinked
husband, the richest noble in Romagna! His lean fingers twitched.
“May I ask,” he queried, wetting his lips, “what the _real_ milord--who
is also in town to-day--pays you for filling his place to-night?”
Possessed as he was, his host could not mistake the other’s unaffected
surprise. Before the start he gave, suspicion of collusion shredded
thin.
“He is in Venice,” said Trevanion.
“He came to Ravenna this afternoon.”
His enemy there? Trevanion remembered the laugh of the woman in the
wagonette. Jane Clermont had mocked him! She lied! She had come there
to meet Gordon. Vicious passion gathered on his brow, signs readily
translatable, that glozed the old man’s anger with dawning calculation.
“You have acted another’s _rôle_ to-night,” Count Guiccioli said,
leaning across the table, “and done it well, I judge, for my secretary
is no fool. I confess to a curiosity to know why you chose to appear as
the milord for whom I waited.”
Trevanion’s malevolence leaped in his answer: “Because I hate him! And
hate him more than you! In Italy I can add to the reputation he owns
already in England! I want his name to blacken and blister wherever it
is spoken! That’s why!”
The count made an exclamation, as through his fevered blood the idea of
the truth raced swiftly. The town loungers had gaped at the osteria to
see the carousal of the milord--so Paolo had said. Why, it was as good
as a play! He smiled--and thought further:
The Englishman had been in Ravenna and had eluded his grasp. Here
before him was youth, clever and unscrupulous; if less cunning, yet
bolder--a hatred antedating his own--a ready tool. Who could tell to
what use such an ally might be put? The suggestion fascinated him.
He laughed a splintered treble as he rang the bell sharply for his
secretary.
“A bottle of Amontillado!” he commanded. “My good Paolo, we drink a
health to the guest of the casa.”
As the secretary disappeared Trevanion drew the kriss from beneath his
coat and handed it to its owner. “A pretty trifle,” he said coolly; “I
took the liberty of admiring it as I waited. I quite forgot to replace
it.”
“My dear friend!” protested the count, pushing it back across the
table, “I rejoice that you should fancy one of my poor possessions!
I pray you accept it. Who knows? You may one day find a use for the
play-thing!”
* * * * *
They sat late over the wine. They were still conversing when a window
in the casa overlooking the garden opened and Teresa’s face looked out.
Her straining emotions had left her trembling. Who was the swarthy,
fierce-eyed man? At the first sight of him she had felt an instinctive
recoil.
But her puzzle fell away as she gazed out into the soft night with
its peace and somnolent incense. From the garden below, where she
and Gordon had sat, came the beat of a night-bird bending the
poppies. Overhead tiny pale clouds drifted like cherry-blossoms in
the breeze. Far off the moon dropped closer to the velvet clasp of
the legend-haunted hills. To-night, foreboding seemed treason while
her heart held that one meeting, as the sky the stars, inalienable,
eternal. Gordon was safe, on his way to Venice, and with him was her
letter--on which hung her hope for a papal separation,--all that was
possible under the seneschalship of Rome.
At length she closed the shutter, knelt at the ivory crucifix that hung
in a corner of the raftered chamber, and crept into bed.
She fell asleep with a curl--the one he had kissed--drawn across her
lips.