Chapter 31

"It must be a coincidence about the convent," Mary told herself. Why should Miss Bland wish to torture Angelo's wife, even if she knew anything? And she could not know. It was impossible that she should know. But suddenly the girl remembered Marie's hints about a long-ago flirtation between the cousins. And Idina's manner had been odd when she begged Angelo to smoke because of old times. A dreadful idea opened a door in Mary's mind and leered at her, with the wicked eyes of a face seen in a nightmare, vague, yet growing larger and drawing inevitably near. She felt helpless and frozen as in a nightmare too; for she could do nothing to rescue Marie, if need arose. To stop Idina somehow might be possible, yet surely that would do more harm than good. To show fear would be to acknowledge cause for fear. Yet at this moment of suspense Mary would have given her right hand to be cut off, if that could have saved her friend.

"Our heroine is the last person who ought to be put into a convent-school," Idina went on, "for she cares more about flirting and fun and intrigue than anything else. Being shut up with a lot of girls and religious women bores her dreadfully, and after she's been there for a while she looks round for a little amusement. The pupils are allowed to go out sometimes, and she meets a man who's staying in a big country-house near by. He looks at her, and she looks back at him. That settles everything. He contrives to find out her name. Men are clever about such things. Then he begins smuggling letters for the girl into the convent. She consents to see him in the garden at night, if he can climb over the wall, or manage to get in somehow. He does manage it. All this appeals to her vanity and love of intrigue. She has a new interest in life--and a secret. They have these night meetings often. By and by the man begs the girl to run away with him. He says he will marry her at once, of course. He's good-looking and seems to be rich; and he's staying in the house of a Lord Somebody or Other, so she thinks he must be of importance in the world. She herself is--just nobody, with hardly a penny of her own, and only distant relatives who've put her in the convent to get rid of the bother she made them. But when our heroine has escaped in the most romantic fashion with her lover, she soon discovers that he can't marry her, even if he wished, for he has a wife already. And it's the wife who owns all the money. They don't live together, but they are quite good friends, he and his wife, who's a common sort of person, a beer-heiress or something like that. What do you think of our story so far, Angelo? Isn't it a good plot?"

Angelo had been smoking continuously as his cousin talked, sending out little quick puffs of smoke which, to those who knew him, betrayed annoyance. And Idina knew him well.

"Do you want me to say what I really think, or to pay you compliments?" he asked.

"What you really think, of course."

"Then, there's nothing new or original in your plot, to excuse its--unpleasantness."

"But if it happens to be true?"

"Many unpleasant things are true, but why rake them up unless there's something great in the theme that makes them worth retelling?"

"It's too soon to judge yet. You haven't heard the best part. What do you think of the story, Princess?"

Marie, who had not ceased caressing the dog, listening with her cheek pillowed on his silken forehead, lifted her face and returned Idina's look. As she raised her head, Mary's heart gave a bound which took her breath away. But it was she whose eyes were dilated, whose face was feverishly flushed, whose breast rose and fell as if a hammer were pounding within. The Princess was white, but scarcely whiter than usual. Her lips were pale, and rather dry, as if she had been motoring in a chilly wind. She was smiling; and if the smile were slightly strained and photographic, perhaps only one who watched her in the anxiety of love would have felt the subtle difference.

"I'm afraid Angelo's right," she said. "It's not a particularly original plot. And--forgive me--your heroine isn't of a very interesting type, is she? Intriguing, cold, ambitious, catty. One reads of women who give themselves to men without love, but--they don't seem natural, at least to me. I believe you must be mistaken in thinking your plot is a true story."

"I can prove its truth," said Idina, quietly. "At least Miss Jewett can. She has been getting the materials. That's her business. She's celebrated for it in America."

"Then I daresay you can work this up into something worth reading, for a certain sort of book," Marie answered. "But--just in the telling it isn't quite--quite--well, Angelo and I can stand it of course, but Mary--I must think of her, you know. And I don't see how our opinion can be of much use to you and Miss Jewett. So what is the use----"

"Of going on?" Idina caught her up, in a voice of iron or steel. "But I particularly want Angelo's opinion as to what the end of the story should be. It's for a man to judge. If it bores you to listen, and you don't think it's proper for Miss Grant----" She paused significantly, and her look flung venom. But she had not fully counted on her cousin's loyalty to his wife, his indifference, almost amounting to dislike at last, for herself.

"Don't you feel, Idina," he interposed with a deadly quietness she knew to be a danger-signal, "that any story which--er--bores my wife had better be left untold in her house? If you really wish to have my opinion on this plot of which you think so much, write the rest out for me, and I'll let you have my verdict."

With a swift movement Idina stood up. For once the statue-white face was flushed with a dull, disagreeable red which made her almost ugly. She looked tall and forbidding. "Write!" she repeated in a tone of suppressed fury, deep as a man's. "Do you think my letter would ever come to your eyes? _She_ would destroy it before it could get to you--cunning cat that she is. You fool, it's her story I've been telling you--your wife's. She lived with that man--went to Russia with him----"

"Be silent!"

The two words cut short the torrent pouring from Idina's lips, as a block of ice might dam a rushing stream. But it was the look in Angelo's eyes, even more than his command, which shocked Idina into silence. She knew then that as much as he loved his wife, he hated her, Idina, and that nothing on earth could ever change his hate back into indifference. She knew that if she were a man he would by this time have killed her. The knowledge was anguish almost beyond bearing, yet the irrevocability of what she had done spurred her on after the first instant.

"I'll _not_ be silent!" she panted. "For your father's sake. You've disgraced him in marrying this woman----"

"Go," Angelo said, "unless you wish to be turned out by my servants, you and your friend whom you brought here on false pretences."

"I didn't know how she was going to work this thing," Miss Jewett protested hastily. "If I had, I wouldn't----"

"It does not matter," Angelo said.

"But it does matter. Everything matters," Marie broke in, her quiet, alert, almost businesslike tone a surprise to her friend. "Don't send them away yet, Angelo--in justice to me. I know you don't believe things against me--of course not. Perhaps you would not believe, even if they could seem to prove anything, which they couldn't do. Things that aren't true can't be proved really, by the most cruel and malicious people. But maybe if you sent Miss Bland and her detective friend out of the house now, you might sometimes think of what you've heard, in spite of yourself--in the night, when dreadful thoughts seem almost true--and that would kill me. Besides, these women might spread tales. And that would distress your father. I must justify myself--not in your eyes; that isn't needed; but in theirs. I must do it--even at the awful expense of sacrificing another. Two names very much alike have made this mischief. Angelo, it was Mary Grant who was at that convent-school in Scotland, where Miss Jewett must have been spying for your cousin. I'd have saved poor Mary if I could. But you come first with me--first, before everything and every one. Ask her if what I say of her is not the truth."

Mary turned and looked at her friend. She was very still. Her heart, which had pounded in her bosom, moving the laces of her blouse, might almost have ceased beating. She appeared hardly to breathe. But through her large, soft eyes her soul seemed to pour itself out in a crystalline ray, piercing to the soul of Marie. And to the woman who had used the heart of her friend for a shield came a sudden and terrible thought. She remembered a passage in the Gospels where Judas led the Roman soldiers by night to the garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus, speaking no word, turned and looked at the betrayer. It was as if she saw a picture of this betrayal, beside the picture of herself leaning forward in the red hammock, with Angelo beside her and Mary's clear eyes questioning hers. She could have cried out aloud, and falling on her knees have confessed everything, begging God's forgiveness and Angelo's and Mary's. But instead, because she clung to this one desperate hope of keeping Angelo, she sat erect and firm, her ice-cold hands tightly grasping the edge of the hammock, one on either side of her body. If she had let go or tried to stand up, she knew that she must have collapsed. Grasping the edge of the hammock seemed to lend strength and power of endurance not only to her body but to her spirit as well. She gave back Mary's gaze steadily, and was hardly aware of turning her eyes for an instant from the still, pure face which had never looked so gentle or so sweet; yet she must have glanced away, for she warmed slowly with the consciousness that Idina Bland was confused, and that Miss Jewett too was under the influence of some new emotion which made her appear less hard, less dry, more like a human being. Hope ran through the veins of Marie in a vital tide. The desperate instinct of self-preservation had put the right weapon in her hand. She must go on and use it mercilessly, for she had touched the weak spot in her enemy's armour. Those two women did not know everything, after all. Idina had somehow overreached herself. It was certain that the allies were pausing to recover strength.

"Are you the woman to whom my cousin refers, Miss Grant?" Angelo asked; and his voice was the voice of the judge, not the protector.

Mary thought of Vanno. The very likeness between this cold voice and the dear, warm voice of the absent one made the thought a pang. Her eyes filled with tears. Still she was silent.

"Am I to take your silence as assent?" Angelo asked again, when he had waited in vain for her to speak, and the waiting had seemed long to both.

Mary was sitting almost opposite the hammock, in a chair turned slightly away from it, so that she faced Angelo more fully than she faced Marie, unless she moved her head purposely, as she had moved it when her eyes questioned the eyes of her friend. Her hands were loosely clasped in her lap; and without answering she slowly bowed her head over them. As she did so, her eyes fell upon the ring Vanno had slipped on her finger with a kiss that was a pledge, the ring with "Remember eternal" written inside. The sight of it was a knock at her heart, like the knock of a rescuer on the door of a beleaguered castle. She did not speak, in her own defence, for silence was defence of Marie. And little knowing how she would be tried, she had sworn to defend her friend, sworn by Vanno's love and her own love for Vanno. It was a vow she would not break if she could, lest a curse fall in punishment and kill the love which was her dearest treasure. Yet through all the echoing confusion in her mind one note rang clear: she must in the end right herself with Vanno.

It was almost as much for his sake as Marie's, she felt dimly, that she must keep her promise now and endure this shame, this martyrdom; for Marie was Angelo's wife, and Angelo was Vanno's beloved brother whose sorrow would be Vanno's sorrow, whose dishonour would be the family's dishonour. But as she looked at his ring, through the thick mist of her tears, Mary comforted herself by saying: "Somehow it must come right. I can sacrifice myself now, but not for always. In some way I will let Vanno know."

She thought vaguely, stumblingly, her ideas astray and groping like blind men in an earthquake, knowing not where to turn for safety. And as she thought, Miss Jewett was speaking. Mary heard what the American woman said only as an undertone to the clamour in her own brain; but at last the sense of the words and what they might mean for herself sprang out of darkness like the white arm of a searchlight.

"In justice to Princess Della Robbia and to me--though maybe you won't care much about that--you must hear what I've got to tell you," Miss Jewett said imperatively to Angelo. "It's true I'm a detective. I'm not ashamed of it. I've made a reputation that way. But I'm human. I didn't come here to be a beast. I'd no idea what Miss Bland was up to. I thought she wanted me to look at the Princess, and know whether I'd seen her picture at the Convent of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake, in Scotland. I went there on Miss Bland's business, while she waited here, near your house, so as to be on the spot when I came along with news. It was in America she first engaged me to do the work. She said her cousin the Duke di Rienzi wasn't satisfied with his son's marriage, and wanted to find out something about the lady. It was all one to me, so long as I was paid. And I have been paid. But if she offered me twice as much I wouldn't do the thing over again; and I won't raise a finger for her if she wants any more done. She can do her own dirty work. She said her cousin the Duke told her his new daughter-in-law was an artist in Dresden, and she sent me there. I got off the track a bit, but some things I heard sent me on to St. Petersburg. There had been a Mary Gaunt or Grant stopping there once in a hotel, with a man she wasn't married to; that's certain--and she came with him from Paris. From Paris I traced her--that is, I traced a Mary Grant--back to Scotland and a convent-school. The last place I went--while Miss Bland waited here keeping her eye on you all from a distance, and maybe spying out things on her own account--was that convent. I raked up old gossip outside, and I got in easily enough, for the Mother Superior and the nuns are nice to visitors who seem interested. But the minute I began to ask questions about a pupil in the school who'd run away, the good ladies shut up like oysters. I had to leave defeated as far as the last part of my job was concerned, though I'm not used to fail. One thing I did accomplish, though: I looked hard at a picture in the reception room, with a lot of girls in it, pupils of the school, and I memorized every face. _The Princess was not there_; but this young lady was; and her name I find now is Mary Grant. Unfortunately she's been a good deal talked about in Monte Carlo, it seems. Miss Bland knows that. I saw her in the woods but couldn't be certain at a distance, so I said nothing then to Miss Bland. Since then she hasn't given me time. And now whatever happens, I wash my hands of the whole business."

Angelo had listened quietly, after realizing that Miss Jewett's object was to justify his wife, not to incriminate her. And though Marie needed no justification in his eyes, it was well that Idina should hear it from the lips of her own paid employé.

When the self-confessed detective had finished, he turned upon his cousin eyes of implacable coldness.

"You are punished for your malevolence," he said, "though to my mind no punishment could be severe enough. Go, with your humiliation, the knowledge of your failure and my contempt for you. If possible, you have made me love my wife better than ever. But before you go, understand this: if you attempt to attack her again--if I hear of any malicious gossip, as I shall hear, provided you utter it--I shall pursue you with the law. Without any fear of exposure, since there is nothing to expose, I will prosecute you for slander, and you will go to prison. This is no empty threat. It is a warning. And it is all I have to say."

He walked swiftly to the end of the loggia and touched an electric bell on the house-wall. While Idina Bland and Miss Jewett stood in silence Americo came, smiling as usual, to the door-window.

"These ladies are going," announced the Prince. "Show them out."

* * * * * * *

When they had gone, he went at once to Marie, and taking her hand, kissed it tenderly. "My darling, this has been very trying for you," he said. "You are not strong. Now it is my wish that you go to your room and lie down. Soon I will come to you, but first I must talk for a little while with Miss Grant."

Until an hour ago he had called her Mary.

With an arm round her waist, Angelo lifted Marie from the hammock, and began to lead her toward the door, but she resisted feebly. "Angelo, I can't go!" she stammered. "I can't leave Mary with you--like this. I must stay. I----"

"Dear one, I wish you to go," Angelo insisted gently. "It is right for you to go. Trust me to be neither cruel nor unkind to Miss Grant."

"But----"

"There is no 'but.'" Angelo had her at the door; and resigning herself, with one backward look at Mary imploring pardon and mercy, the Princess went out.

Mary saw, though she scarcely troubled to read the look. She pitied Marie, but pitied her as a coward. The girl meant to be loyal, yet somehow, in the end, to save her own happiness. But she could not plan for the future. She felt dazed, broken, as if she had been on the rack and was now to be tortured again.

XXXIII

In a moment Angelo had softly closed the glass door after Marie, and had come back. He stood before Mary, looking down at her. At first she did not raise her eyes, but his drew hers to them. They gazed at her with a cold anger that was like fire burning behind a screen of ice. And the ice made the fire more terrible.

His look bade her rise and stand before him, a culprit, but she would not. She sat still, in the same chair where she had sat happily writing to Vanno a few hours before. Though she trembled, she faced the Prince without shrinking outwardly. Perhaps to Angelo's eyes she appeared defiant.

"Does my brother know?" he asked.

"He knows--that I was at a convent-school." In spite of herself Mary choked in the words. She stammered slightly, and a wave of giddiness swept over her. With a supreme effort she controlled herself, looking up at Angelo's tall figure, which to her loomed Titanic.

"I mean does he know the rest?"

"There is nothing else to know. I did not do any of those things Miss Bland talked about."

"Very well. But you must see that you will have to prove that, before you can show yourself worthy to be my brother's wife."

It was on Mary's lips to exclaim: "I can prove it easily!" But just in time she remembered that, to prove her own innocence--as indeed she very easily could--she would have to prove Marie's guilt. This could not be avoided. The guilty one in throwing the blame upon another had been as one who jumps into the sea to avoid fire. Mary could save her friend from the waves only by giving up her own boat; for in that boat there was not room for two.

Fear brushed the girl's spirit like the wing of a bat in the dark. Safety for her with Vanno began to seem far off and more difficult to attain than she had dreamed when, by silence, she kept her promise to Marie. And what she had done was largely for Vanno's sake, she repeated to herself once again. The Princess was his sister-in-law. Her honour was the Della Robbia's honour.

A way must open. Light must come.

"I think," Mary said, trying not to let the words falter on her lips, "Vanno won't want proof." But as she spoke, even before she finished, she recalled how Vanno had at first believed appearances and gossip against her. Of course it would be different now that he knew her heart and soul. Still, the bat's wings flapped in the night of her darkening fear. And Marie's words of the other day echoed in her memory. "The brothers are alike... they adore purity... and they have a pitying horror of women who aren't innocent." Could Vanno believe her not innocent--now? Could his eyes--"stars of love," Marie had called his and Angelo's--could his eyes that had adored, look at her with the dreadful coldness of Angelo's at this moment, the coldness which would be death for Marie?

As something far down within herself asked the question, another thought stood out clear and sharp-cut. She had promised Marie not to tell Vanno, not even to "tell a priest in confession." Yet she must tell, for after all that had happened she could not bear to let Vanno take her on faith alone.

Angelo's answer came like a confirmation of her resolve.

"It's not only a question of what Vanno may want," he said, with a very evident effort not to be harsh to a woman, defenceless if guilty. "You don't seem to realize, Miss Grant, that--both he and I owe something to our father--to our forefathers. The men of our family have done things they ought not to do. History tells of them. But history tells also that they have never taken wives unworthy to be the mothers of noble sons."

Then at last Mary rose swiftly, bidden to her feet not by Angelo's haughty eyes but by her own pride of womanhood, and resentment of the whip with which he had dared to lash her.

"If Vanno were here he would kill you!" the strange something that was not herself cried out in a voice that was not hers.

Angelo's face hardened as he looked down at her with a bitter contempt.

"So you would rejoice in bringing strife between brothers!" he said. "I had not yet thought so badly of you as that. But there are such women. It was almost incredible to me at first that you--in face a sweet young girl--could have accepted Vanno's love without telling him about--your past, and at least giving him the chance to choose. Now I begin to see you in a different light."

"You see me in a false light," Mary said passionately. "You tortured that out of me--about Vanno. I didn't mean it. I'd rather die this moment than bring strife between you. I know he loves you dearly. But if you loved him as well, you couldn't have spoken as you did to me. I too am dear to him."

"It is because I love Vanno that I had to speak so," Angelo persisted, not softening at all. "I am his elder brother. Soon, I fear, I shall be the head of our house. It is my duty to protect him."

"Against me?"

"Against you--if you make it necessary."

"I told you and I tell you again," Mary cried in exasperation, "that I have done nothing wrong. There's nothing in my 'past' to confess. If I haven't talked much to Vanno about it, that's because there was so much else to say."

"How old are you, Miss Grant?" Angelo put the question abruptly.

"Twenty-five," she replied without hesitation, though puzzled at the seeming irrelevance.

"Ah! I happen to know that Vanno believes you to be under twenty."

"I never said so. I would have told him my age if I had thought of it."

"He spoke of you to me, before we met, as a 'child not yet past her teens, and just out of a convent-school.' How long do you say it is since you were a pupil at that convent, where I believe you admit having been--St. Ursula-of-the-Lake, in Scotland?"

"It's almost four years since I was a pupil, but----" She checked herself in haste. In another instant she would have said a thing which might have opened the eyes of Marie's husband on some dim vision of the truth.