Chapter 36

Americo answered her ring, bowing politely, but one who knew the ruddy brown face would have seen that he was not himself. In some stress of emotion the man in him had got the better of the servant. His eyes were round as an owl's as he informed the stranger that Miss Grant was no longer at the villa. He even forgot to speak English, a sign with him of deep mental disturbance.

"Where has Miss Grant gone?" Peter inquired, thinking the fellow an idiot.

"I do not know, Mademoiselle."

"Then go and inquire, please."

"I regret, it is useless. No one in this house can tell where Mees Grant is."

"You must be mistaken. I'll send my name to the Princess and ask her to see a friend of Miss Grant's."

Americo's face quivered, and his eyes bulged. "Mademoiselle," he said, "I do not think her Highness can see any one this morning. There is--family trouble."

Peter still hesitated, determined somehow to get news of Mary. Could it be that the engagement had been broken off? she asked herself. As she stood wondering what to do, a tall young man flashed from an inner room into the vestibule, seized a hat from a table, and without appearing to see the butler, pushed past the distressed Americo. He would have passed Peter also like a whirlwind, unconscious of her existence, had she not called out sharply, "Is it Prince Giovanni Della Robbia?"

He wheeled abruptly as a soldier on drill, and stared sombrely from under frowning brows. His pallor and stifled fury of impatience made him formidable, almost startling. Peter thought of a wounded stag at bay.

"I beg your pardon," she stammered, losing the gay self-confidence of the spoilt and pretty American girl. "I'm a great friend of Mary Grant's. I must know where she is."

The man's faced changed instantly. Fierce impatience became fiery eagerness. For a second or two he looked at Peter without speaking, his interest too intense to find expression in words. Then, as she also was silent, he said:

"There is no one I would rather see than a friend of Mary's, except Mary herself. Tell me where you knew her."

"At the convent in Scotland," Peter answered promptly. "I suppose she's told you about it. Did she mention her friend Molly Maxwell?"

"She said she had two friends named Mary. We had little time to talk together--not many days in all. When did you see her last?"

"In November, just before she left the convent. She went and stayed with an aunt a few weeks in London, and then came here. She wrote me about you, and I recognized you from her description. That's why I----"

"Forgive me. I believe you can be of the greatest service to Mary, and to me." He glanced at Americo, who held the door open. "Let us walk in the woods, if you aren't afraid of damp. I've something important to say."

They went down the steps and out of the gate together, like old acquaintances. Peter had no longer any doubt that the "family trouble" concerned Mary; but it was easy to see that whatever it might be, Prince Vanno was on her side. Peter admired him, and burned to serve her friend.

"There has been an abominable lie told," Vanno began, as soon as they were outside his brother's gate. "I must explain to you quickly what's happened, if you're to understand. I went to Rome to tell my father of our engagement. I left Mary with my brother and sister-in-law. I had two happy letters from her. This morning I arrived here in the Rome express. I came straight to Cap Martin, expecting to find Mary. Instead I found my brother and his wife alone. My sister-in-law, I must say in justice, seemed terribly grieved at what had happened. She could or would tell me nothing. But Angelo--my brother--began some rigmarole about Mary having run away from her convent-school years ago with a man, and--but I won't repeat the story. I refused to listen. I can never forgive my brother."

"Good for you!" exclaimed the American girl. "But I see the whole thing, and you needn't even try to repeat the story. I know it without your telling. It happened to another girl with a name almost exactly like Mary's. That's how the mistake must have come about. The girl who ran away disappeared about four years ago. _My_ Mary was at the convent till last fall. I can prove everything I say."

"Will you see my brother and his wife now, and tell them what you know?"

"With the greatest pleasure."

"Thank God you came! In another minute I should have been gone. And I don't know where to look for Mary."

"You don't know? Didn't she write? Or did she expect you to believe things against her?"

"I could hardly have blamed her if she had expected it, for--I failed her once. But that was before I knew her. Nothing could make me doubt her now. She did write to me. I found a letter waiting at the villa this morning--a letter postmarked Monte Carlo, to say I mustn't look for her--that all is over for ever and ever."

"But you're going to look for her all the same?"

"And to find her. I won't rest till I've got her back."

"You're the right sort of man, though you aren't an American."

"My mother was one."

"So much the better. Let's go into the house, and I'll soon make your people swallow any words they've said against Mary."

Americo was still at the door, or had returned there. "Highness," he said, "the Princess wishes me to make you come in. She has to talk. She send me in woods, but I not go, because of young lady with you. I wait here. Princess in yellow saloon, by her lone."

"Come," Vanno said to Peter. "We'll speak to her, and find out what she wants. Then my brother shall come and hear your story."

"Go first and explain me, please," Peter said.

Vanno would have obeyed, but Princess Della Robbia gave him no time. She was wandering restlessly about the room, too impatient to sit down. When she saw Vanno at the door, she went to him swiftly. "I'm so glad Americo found you," she cried. "I need to have a word with you alone. Angelo is so hard! He wouldn't let me see Mary before she went, or even write her a line of love and sympathy. I've hardly eaten or slept since that awful afternoon. If you could know how ill I am, you wouldn't blame me so much! I love Mary. My heart's breaking for her trouble. But I can do nothing, except send a letter for you to give, in case you find her. Please take it--I've written it already, in case--and don't tell Angelo."

"I've brought a friend of Mary's who can prove to you both that she isn't the heroine of that story you and my brother were so quick to believe," Vanno broke in, lacking patience to hear her through.

With a faint "Oh!" Marie shrank back, looking suddenly smaller and older. The pretty hand which had pressed Vanno's sleeve dropped heavily as if its many rings weighed the fingers down. Sickly pale, she fixed her eyes upon him, unable to speak, though her lips fell apart, seeming to form the word "Who?"

Vanno waited for no further explaining, but called Peter, who hovered outside the open door. "Miss Maxwell, will you come?"

Peter appeared instantly, but seeing the Princess, stopped on the threshold, with the face of one who meets a ghost. "Marie Grant!" she exclaimed, the two short words explosive as revolver shots.

The figure in white collapsed like a tossed bundle, into a chair. It seemed that the woman ceased to breathe. In a second the peculiar freshness of her beauty had shrivelled as if scorched by a rushing flame. Only her eyes were alive. They moved wistfully from Peter to Vanno, and from Vanno to the half-open door, as if seeking mercy or escape. She looked agonized, broken, like a fawn caught in a trap.

Peter turned to Vanno. "This is the girl who ran away from our convent with a man," she said crudely. "As she's here in the house, how did Mary come to be suspected?"

"That is my sister-in-law, Princess Della Robbia," Vanno answered. As he spoke his forehead flamed, and his eyes grew keen as swords. His look stripped Marie's soul bare of lies.

She held out her hands, but there was no mercy for her then in either heart. In a moment the two had judged her, with the unhesitating cruelty of youth. Peter's eyes narrowed in disgust, as if the white thing cowering in the chair were a noxious animal, a creature to be exterminated.

"I understand too, very well," she said slowly. "Horrible, wicked woman! You put the blame of your own sins on my Mary, to save yourself, and like the saint she is, she let you do it. But I won't. God sent me here, I see now. You've got to confess, and right my girl."

Tears fell from Marie's eyes. Her face quivered, then crinkled up piteously as a child's face crinkles in a storm of weeping. "Shut the door," she stammered between sobs. "For God's sake, shut the door! If Angelo should come!"

Neither Vanno nor Peter moved. They wished Angelo to come. Seeing them stand there, rigid, relentless, Marie realized as she had not fully realized before that they were her enemies, that no softness or prettiness, no agony of tears could turn their hearts. She sprang up with a choking cry, and stumbled toward the door. Vanno, thinking she meant to run away, took two long steps and placed himself before her.

"Angel with the flaming sword!" were the words that spoke themselves in Peter's mind. But she had no pity yet for Marie.

"I--I only want to shut the door--that's all--because you wouldn't," the Princess faltered. "Just for a few minutes. It's all I ask. Give me a little time."

Vanno closed the door without noise, and stood in front of it like a sentinel. "You may have a few minutes," he said. "Then I shall call Angelo to hear the truth from you or from me. It's for you to choose which."

"Haven't you any mercy in your heart?" she wailed. "I'm only a woman. I'm your brother's wife. He loves me."

"I love Mary," Vanno said.

"It was Mary who spared me. She saw it was worse for me than for her, because I'm married to Angelo. My whole life's at stake. That's why she sacrificed herself. I----"

"The more you say, the worse you make us hate you," Peter cut her short. "You were always selfish. Even when I liked you, I used to think you just like a white Persian cat. When you were petted, you purred. When things went wrong, you scratched. You don't deserve the name of woman. What you've done is as bad as murder."

"I did it for Angelo," Marie pleaded. "I love him so! I couldn't lose his love."

"So you flung Mary to the wolves!" Vanno said. He had not believed that he could see a woman cry without pitying and wishing to help her. But his heart felt hard as stone as he watched Marie's streaming tears. All the brutality of his fierce ancestors had rushed to arms in his nature. The fancy came to his mind that he would still be hard and cold if he had to see her flogged. Then at the suggested picture, something in him writhed and revolted. He was not so hard as he had thought. He had to steel himself against her by thinking of what she had done to Mary.

"You deserve to die!" said Peter.

"I want to die," Marie answered pitifully. She stood supporting herself with an arm that clung to the high straight back of a Florentine chair. "If you will only not tell Angelo till I am dead, that's all I'll ask. Please wait--a little while. I couldn't live and look him in the face if he knew, so I would have to kill myself before you told. I'm too unhappy to be afraid of dying--for my own sake. I've suffered such agonies of fear, nothing could be worse. But there's a reason why it would be wicked to die just now--of my own accord. There's a child coming--in a few months. Afterward, I'll swear to you to kill myself, and then you can tell Angelo everything. Won't you wait till then--only till the end of the summer? Mary would say yes, if she were here."

The one weapon by which she could defend herself against their justice, she had drawn, and stood weakly on guard, her strength spent.

Vanno and Peter looked at one another in silence, in the eyes of each the same question. "Is this the truth?"

Marie read their faces. "Angelo knows that there will be a baby," she whispered. "Indeed it's true. As soon as my child is born, I'm ready to die."

"No one wants you to die!" Peter said sharply.

"Except myself. I must die if you're going to tell. If you won't wait, it will have to be now, at any cost."

"You know that you force us to wait," Vanno answered. "Trust weak woman to conquer! We cannot wish for your death. But I'll find Mary and marry her, in spite of herself. As for my brother, never will I forgive him. And I hope that I may never see you or Angelo again. Let your own soul punish you, while you live."

"Are we to go?" asked Peter.

"Yes," Vanno said.

They went out together, and left Marie staring after them.

For a little while she was safe.

XXXIX

All this time Jim Schuyler's motor had been waiting. It was strange to go out into the sunshine and see the smart chauffeur in his place, placidly reading a newspaper.

"Won't you come with me to Monte Carlo?" Peter asked. "We may find Mary at a hotel."

"I will come," Vanno said. "Her letter was posted there, yet I feel she has gone. She used to talk about Italy, but I don't think she would go to the house Hannaford left her. She couldn't bear the idea of living in his place."

"Let's go straight to Mrs. Winter's and ask her advice," Peter suggested. "She told me all about the Château Lontana last night."

They sat silent as the motor carried them swiftly along the white road. Peter longed to talk, but all the things she most wished to say were impossible to put into words. How Marie had checkmated them! It was like her, Peter thought; but she did not doubt the truth of that thing the Princess had said. There are some looks, some tones, which cannot lie.

Peter did not see what other course they could have taken, instead of that which they had chosen quickly, without discussion, accepting the inevitable. She believed, and she thought Vanno believed, that Marie would have kept her word and killed herself if they had persisted in telling Angelo what she was and had done. She had begged them to "wait a little while," but it was not only a question of waiting. Marie, as usual, had done well for herself. Vanno could not in cold blood, after months had passed and Marie was the mother of his brother's child, tell Angelo the story. At least, Peter was sure he would not bring himself to do that. Even she, who detested Marie now with an almost tigerish hatred, could not imagine herself pouring out such a tale when the first fire of rage had died--no, not even in defence of Mary; for Mary would be the one of all others to say, "Do not speak." Yet it filled Peter with fury to think that now no one could fight for Mary--sweet Mary, who was not by nature one to fight for herself. The great wrong had been done. Vanno could not forgive his brother's injustice. The two would be separated in heart and life while Marie lived. All this through Marie's sin and cowardice in covering it. Yet even those she had injured could not urge her on to death.

Suddenly, just as the motor slowed down near the Monaco frontier, Peter cried out, "There's Mrs. Winter, walking!"

She touched an electric bell, and the chauffeur stopped his car.

Rose was taking her morning exercise. She looked up, smiling at sight of Peter and Vanno getting out of the automobile to meet her.

"Where's Mary?" she asked, then checked herself quickly. She saw by the two faces that something was wrong. "Mary's not ill, I hope?" she amended her question.

Peter left the explanation to Vanno. It concerned his family, and how much he might choose to tell she did not know.

"There's been a misunderstanding," he said. "I came back this morning to find Mary gone. I'm afraid my brother and sister-in-law were not kind to her, and nothing can ever be the same between us again because of that. But the one important thing is to find Mary. She has--thrown me over, in a letter, and it does not tell me where she is. Do you think she can be in Monte Carlo?"

"No, I don't," Rose replied with her usual promptness. "What a shame I was out when she called the other night. Perhaps she would have confided in me. Now I see why she took her jewellery. Maybe she needed money. If we'd been at home, we'd have made her stay with us. Do you know, I shouldn't wonder if she'd gone to the Château Lontana?"

"I thought of that," Vanno said, "but she didn't want to live in Hannaford's house."

"With you! But now she's alone and sad, poor child. If we could only be sure, you could telegraph, not to waste time. I'll tell you what! If she went there, she probably drove instead of taking a train. Wait a minute, while I ask the hunchbacked beggar if he saw her. They were great chums; and it was talking to him I came across her first."

Rose began running to the bridge, where the dwarf, in his shady hat and comfortable cloak, was engaged in eating his luncheon on a newspaper, kept down on the parapet with stones. Vanno and Peter followed quickly, but before they arrived Rose had extracted the desired information. "He did see Mary three nights ago, in a carriage, driving in the direction of Italy," she announced in triumph. "He was just starting for home. What a good thing he hadn't gone!"

"There was another lady in the carriage with my Mademoiselle," added the beggar in bad French, his mouth full of bread and cheese.

"Another lady!" Rose echoed. "Who could it have been?"

"A dark lady, young but not a girl," the hunchback cheerfully went on. "She looked out at me, then threw herself back as if she did not want me to see who she was. Perhaps because she did not wish to spare me a penny, and was ashamed. Some people are stingy."

"Did you know the lady's face?"

"No, I never saw it before that I can remember. It was not a sweet face like Mademoiselle's. That lady would laugh while a beggar starved. I always know at the first look. I have trained myself to judge. It is my métier."

He spoke with pride, but no one was listening.

"A dark woman," Vanno repeated. "What has become of the Dauntreys? Do you know, Mrs. Winter?"

"I heard yesterday that they'd disappeared, owing every one money."

"Miss Maxwell, will you let me go now at once to Italy in your car?" Vanno asked.

"Yes," Peter said. "It's not my car, but it belongs to my best friend. He and I will both be glad, but you must take me with you."

Rose looked wistful, but she did not ask to go. The others were not thinking of her.

"Do you know the Château Lontana?" she inquired of Schuyler's chauffeur. "And have you got your papers for Italy?"

The man, who was English, touched his cap. "Yes, Madam, I know where the place is. And everything is in order."

As a last thought, Vanno went to the beggar and put two gold pieces into his knotted hand. The little man's red-rimmed eyes glittered with joyful astonishment. He bit first one coin, then the other.

* * * * * * *

Peter had expected Jim in the afternoon, but Rose promised to telephone.

Neither the girl nor Vanno thought of lunching. They went on without a pause except for the formalities at the Italian frontier, and it was early in the afternoon when the car slowed down before the closed gates of the Château Lontana. The chauffeur got out and tried to open them, but they were locked. He turned to the Prince for instructions. "What are we to do, sir? There is no bell." His tone was plaintive, for he was hungry and consequently irritable.

Vanno jumped out and tried the gates in vain. The chauffeur looked at the ground to hide his pleasure in the gentleman's failure. Peter peered from the car anxiously. "Perhaps Mary didn't come here after all, or else she's gone away," the girl suggested. "It would have meant a horrid delay, trying to find the cabman who drove her from Monte Carlo, but after all it might have been better."

Vanno was ungallant enough not to answer. He was hardly conscious that Peter was speaking. The iron gates, set between tall stone posts, were very high. On the other side an ill-kept road overgrown with bunches of rough grass wound up the cypress and olive clad hill. At the very top stood the house which somewhat pretentiously named itself a château. It was built of the beautiful mottled stone of the country, brown and gray, veined and splashed with green, purple, yellow, and rose pink. There were two square towers and several large balconies and terraces with windows looking out upon them; but the windows in sight were closed and shuttered. The thick flowering creepers which almost covered the walls as high as the windows of the second story--roses, bougainvillea, plumbago, and convolvulus--were tangled and matted together, great branches trailing over the shut eyes of the windows. Cypresses and olives were untrimmed, and there was a straggling wilderness of orange trees. The place had a sad yet poetic look of having been forgotten by the world.

Vanno knew little of its history, except that an elderly French woman, a great actress long before his time, had bought and lived in the house for many years, letting the whole property fall into decay while her money was given to the Casino.

It seemed impossible that Mary could be there behind those shuttered windows, but he was determined not to go away without being sure. Rose Winter had said half jestingly that Lady Dauntrey was a woman who might "look on her neighbour's jewels when it was dark." And Vanno had taken a dislike to the hostess at the Villa Bella Vista. He had been glad to take Mary out of her hands, to put her in charge of Rose Winter. As he stood and stared at the high, locked gates he remembered what the beggar had said about the dark woman who threw herself back in the carriage as if she did not wish to be seen.

"Shall I blow my horn and try to make some one come?" asked Schuyler's chauffeur.

"No, I think not," Vanno said on reflection. "I have an idea that if people are there, they won't come down for that. I can get over all right if you'll back the car close to the gates."

The chauffeur's expression withdrew itself like a snail within its shell, but suddenly he became interested enough to forget his hunger. He had supposed that the young lady wished to pay a mere call at a time of day inconvenient to him: but evidently there was something under the surface of this excursion. He had not stopped the engine, and turning the motor with the bonnet toward France, he carefully backed against the iron grating. In a moment Vanno had climbed on to the top of the car, had swung himself over the gate, and dropped down on the other side. The chauffeur, who, like most of his countrymen, hated to be made conspicuous, rejoiced that this was accomplished when the road was empty. He would not have enjoyed being stared at even by a peasant in a cart.

Peter was out in the road, watching Vanno's manoeuvres. "I wish I could do that!" she exclaimed.

"I'll let you in, or send some one to unlock the gates if possible," he promised. Then as he walked swiftly up the avenue his thoughts rushed far ahead, and he forgot Peter.

The motor moved a little away from the gates, and waited. It waited a long time and no sign of life showed on the blank face of the house. For many minutes Peter stood in the road, looking up, hoping to see Vanno, or a servant coming with a key. But nothing happened, and when she had grown very tired of standing, she reluctantly went back to the car. She sat leaning forward, her face at the window, gazing at the house; and at last she began to be angry with Vanno. Surely he might come or send, knowing how anxious she must be to hear of Mary. It was too inconsiderate to leave her there in suspense!