Chapter 31

"Do you want a love affair between Sylvie Hermenstein and that fellow Leigh?" he enquired, "If so, it is probable that your desire will be gratified!"

Angela raised her delicate eyebrows in a little surprise.

"I have no wish at all in the matter," she answered, "except to see Sylvie quite happy."

"How very romantic is the friendship between you two women!" said Varillo somewhat sarcastically, "You wish to see Sylvie happy,--and the other day she told me she would form her judgment of me by YOUR happiness! Really, it is most admirable and touching!"

Angela began to feel somewhat puzzled. Petulance and temper were not in her character, and she was annoyed to see any touch of them in her lover.

"Are you cross, Florian?" she asked gently, "Has something worried you to-day?"

"Oh, I am often worried!" he replied;--and had he spoken the exact truth he would have confessed that he was always seriously put out when he was not the centre of attraction and the cynosure of women's eyes--"But what does it matter! Do not think at all about me, cara mia! Tell me of yourself. How goes the picture?"

"It is nearly finished now," she replied, her beautiful violet eyes dilating and brightening with the fervour that inspired her whenever she thought of her work, "I rise very early, and begin to paint with the first gleam of daylight. I think I shall have it ready sooner than I expected. The Queen has promised to come and see it here before it is exhibited to the public."

"Margherita di Savoja is very amiable!" said Florian, with a tinge of envy he could not wholly conceal, "She is always useful as a patron."

A quick flush of pride rose to Angela's cheeks.

"I do not need any patronage, Florian," she said simply yet with a little coldness, "You know that I should resent it were it offered to me. If my work is not good in itself, no 'royal' approval can make it so. Queen Margherita visits me as a friend--not as a patron."

"There now! I have vexed you!" And Florian took her hand and kissed it. "Forgive me, sweetest!--Look at me--give me a smile!--Ah! That is kind!" and he conveyed an expression of warm tenderness into his eyes as Angela turned her charming face upon him, softened and radiant with the quick affection which always moved her at his voice and caress. "I spoke foolishly! Of course my Angela could not be patronised--she is too independent and gifted. I am very glad the Queen is coming!"

"The Queen is coming?" echoed Gherardi, who just then advanced. "Here? To see Donna Sovrani's picture? Ah, that will be an excellent advertisement! But it would have been far better, my dear young lady, had you arranged with me, or with some other one of my confreres, to have the picture sent to the Vatican for the inspection of His Holiness. The Popes, as you know, have from time immemorial been the best patrons of art!"

"My picture would not please the Pope," said Angela quietly, "It would more probably win his denunciation than his patronage."

Gherardi smiled. The idea of a woman--a mere woman imagining that anything which she could do was powerful enough to bring down Papal denunciation! The strange conceit of these feminine geniuses! He could almost have laughed aloud. But he merely looked her over blandly and forbearingly.

"I am sorry," he said, "very sorry you should consider such a thing as possible of your work. But no doubt you speak on impulse. Your distinguished uncle, the Cardinal Bonpre, would be sadly distressed if your picture should contain anything of a nature to bring you any condemnation from the Vatican,--and your father . . ."

"Leave me out of it, if you please!" interrupted Prince Pietro, "I have nothing whatever to do with it! Angela works with a free hand; none of us have seen what she is doing."

"Not even you, Signor Varillo?" enquired Gherardi affably.

"Oh, I?" laughed Florian carelessly, "No indeed! I have not the least idea of the subject or the treatment!"

"A mystery then?" said Gherardi, still preserving his bland suavity of demeanour, "But permit me, Donna Sovrani, to express the hope that when the veil is lifted a crown of laurels may be disclosed for you!"

Angela thanked him by a silent inclination of her head, and in a few minutes the stately Vatican spy had taken his leave. As he disappeared the Cardinal rose from his chair and moving somewhat feebly, prepared to return to his own apartments.

"Dearest uncle, will you not stay with us to-night? Or are you too tired?" asked Angela as she came to his side.

He raised her sweet face between his two wrinkled hands and looked at her long and earnestly. "Dear child!" he said, "Dear brave little child! For you must always be nothing more than a child to me,--tell me, are you sure you are moved by the right spirit in the painting of your picture?"

"I think so!" answered Angela gently, "Indeed, indeed, I think so! I know that according to the teaching of our Master Christ, it is a TRUE spirit!"

Slowly the Cardinal released her, and slowly and with impressive earnestness traced the Cross on her fair brows.

"God bless you!" he said, "And God help you too! For if you work by 'the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter', remember it is the same Spirit which our Lord tells us 'the world cannot receive because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.' And to testify of a Spirit which the world cannot receive makes the world very hard to you!"

And with these words he gently leaned on the arm she proffered and left the studio with her, the rich glow and voluminous folds of his scarlet robes contrasting vividly with the simple black gown which Angela wore without other adornment than a Niphetos rose to relieve its sombreness. As she went with her uncle she looked over her shoulder and smiled an adieu to Florian,--he, in his turn lightly kissed his hand to her, and then addressed Prince Pietro, who, with the care of a man to whom expense is a consideration, was putting out some of the tall lamps that had illumined the dusk of the late afternoon.

"The good Cardinal is surely breaking up," he said carelessly, "He looks extremely frail!"

"Young men sometimes break up before old ones!" returned the Prince drily, "Felix is strong enough yet. You dine with us to-night?"

"If you permit--" said Varillo, with a graceful salutation.

"Oh, my permission does not matter'" said Sovrani eyeing him narrowly, "Whatever gives pleasure to Angela must needs please me. She is all that is left to me now in an exceedingly dull world. A riverderci! At eight we dine."

Flonan nodded,--and took his departure, and the Prince for a moment stood hesitating, looking at the great white covering on the wall which concealed his daughter's mysterious work. His tall upright figure stiff and sombre, looked as if cast in bronze in the half light shed by the wood fire,--one lamp was still burning, and after a pause he moved from his rigid attitude of gloomy consideration, and extinguished it, then glancing round to see that all was in order, he left the studio, closing its great oaken door behind him. Five minutes after he had gone a soft step trod the polished floor, and the young Manuel, holding a lighted taper, entered all alone. The flame of the little torch he carried cast a soft golden glow about him as he walked noiselessly through the great empty room, his blue eyes lifted to the marble heads of gods and heroes which occupied their different positions on the gilded and oaken brackets set against the tapestried walls,--and presently he paused in front of Angela's hidden work. It was but a moment's pause, and then, still with the same light step, and the same bright glow reflected from the flame that glittered in his hand, he passed through the room, lifted the velvet portiere at the other end where there was another door leading to the corridor connected with the Cardinal's apartments, and so unnoticed, disappeared.

XXIII.

Meanwhile, the Marquis Fontenelle had been nearly a fortnight in Rome, living a sufficiently curious sort of life, and passing his time in a constant endeavour to avoid being discovered and recognised by any of his numerous acquaintances who were arriving there for the winter. His chief occupation was of course to watch the Comtesse Sylvie,--and he was rewarded for his untiring pains by constant and bewitching glimpses of her. Sometimes he would see her driving, wrapped in furs, her tiny Japanese dog curled up in a fold of her sables, and on her lap a knot of violets, the fresh scent of which came to him like a sweet breath on the air as she passed. Once he almost met her, face to face in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, walking all alone, and reading a book in which she seemed to be deeply interested. He made a few cautious enquiries about her, and learnt that she lived very quietly,--that she received certain "great" people,--especially Cardinals and Monsignori, notably Monsignor Gherardi, who was a constant visitor. But of any closer admirer he never gathered the slightest rumour, till one afternoon, just when the sun was sinking in full crimson glory behind the dome of St. Peter's, he saw her carriage come to a sudden halt on the Pincio and she herself leaned out of it to shake hands with, and talk to a tall fair man, who seemed to be on exceptionally friendly terms with her. It is true she was accompanied in the carriage by the famous Sovrani,--but that fact did not quell the sudden flame of jealousy which sprang up in Fontenelle's mind--for both ladies appeared equally charmed with the fair man, and their countenances were radiant with pleasure and animation all the time they were in conversation with him. When the carriage resumed its round again, the Marquis sauntered by a side path where he could take quiet observation of his apparent rival, who walked past him with a firm light step, looking handsome, happy, and amazingly confident. There was an old man raking the path, and of him Fontenelle asked carelessly,

"Do you know who that gentleman is?"

The gardener looked up and smiled.

"Ah, si, si! Il Signor Inglese! Molto generoso! Il Signor Aubri Lee!"

Aubrey Leigh! A "celebrity" then,--an English author;--not that all English authors are considered "celebrities" in Rome. Italian society makes very short work of spurious art, and closes its doors ruthlessly against mere English "Grub Street". But Aubrey Leigh was more than an author,--he was an influential power in the world, as the Marquis well knew.

"A great religious reformer! And yet a victim to the little Sylvie!" he mused, "Well! The two things will not work together. Though truly Sylvie would captivate a John Knox or a Cromwell. I really think,--I really do begin to think, that rather than lose her altogether, I must marry her!"

And he went back to the obscure hotel where he had chosen temporarily to reside in a meditative mood, and as he entered, was singularly annoyed to see a flaring poster outside, announcing the arrival of Miraudin and his whole French Company in Rome for a few nights only. The name "MIRAUDIN" glared at him in big, fat, red letters on a bright yellow ground; and involuntarily he muttered,

"D--n the fellow! Can I go nowhere in the world without coming across him!"

Irritated, and yet knowing his irritation to be foolish,--for after all, what was the famous actor to him?--what was there in his personality to annoy him beyond the trivial fact of a curious personal resemblance?--he retired to his room in no pleasant humour, and sitting down began to write a letter to Sylvie asking her to be his wife. Yet somehow the power of expression seemed lacking, and once or twice he laid down his pen in a fit of abstraction, wondering why, when he had sought Sylvie as a lover only, he had been able to write the most passionate love phrases, full of ardour and poetry, and now, when he was about to make her the offer of his whole life, his sentences were commonplace and almost cold. And presently he tore up what he had been writing, and paced the room impatiently.

"The fact is I shall make a bad husband, and I know it!" he said candidly to himself, "And Sylvie will make a great mistake if she accepts me!"

He walked to the window and looked out. His hotel was not in a fashionable or frequented quarter of Rome, and the opposite view of the street was anything but enlivening. Dirty, frowsy women,--idle men, lounging along with the slouching gait which is common to the 'unemployed' Italian,--half-naked children, running hither and thither in the mud, and screaming like tortured wild animals,--this kind of shiftless, thriftless humanity, pictured against the background of ugly modern houses, such as one might find in a London back slum, made up a cheerless prospect, particularly as the blue sky was clouded and it was beginning to rain. One touch of colour brightened the scene for a moment, when a girl with a yellow handkerchief tied round her head passed along, carrying a huge flat basket overflowing with bunches of purple violets, and as Fontenelle caught the hue, and imagined the fragrance of the flowers, he was surprised to feel his eyes smart with a sudden sting of tears. The picture of Sylvie Hermenstein, with her child-like head, fair hair, and deep blue eyes, floated before him,--she was fond of violets, and whenever she wore them, their odour seemed to be the natural exhalation of her sweet and spirituelle personality.

"She is much too good for me!" he said half aloud, "To be perfectly honest with myself, I know I have no stability of character, and I cannot imagine myself remaining constant to any woman for more than six months. And the best way is to be perfectly straight-forward about it."

He sat down again, and without taking any more thought wrote straight from the heart of his present humour, addressing her by the name he had once playfully bestowed upon her.

"Enchanteresse! I am here in Rome, and this brief letter is to ask, without preamble or apology, whether you will do me the infinite honour to become my wife. I confess to you honestly that I am not worth this consideration on your part, for I am not to be relied upon. I repose no confidence in myself, therefore I will leave it to you to measure my audacity in making the suggestion that you should place a lifetime's confidence in me. But with all my heart, (as much as I know of it at the present), I desire to show you what respect so poor a life as mine can give to one who deserves all tenderness, as well as trust. If I may hope that you will pardon my past follies and libertinage with regard to you,--if you can love me well enough to wear my not too exalted name, and preserve my remaining stock of honour, summon me to your presence, and I will endeavour, by such devotion and fidelity as in me lies, to atone for whatsoever offence I may have given you previously by my too passionate pursuit of your beauty. Yours, unless you decide my fate otherwise,

"GUY BEAUSIRE DE FONTENELLE."

Thrusting this note into an envelope he hastily sealed it, but decided not to post it till late at night, in order that Sylvie might only receive it with the early morning, when her mind was fresh, and unswayed by any opinions or events of a long day. And to pass the time he strolled out to one of the many "osterie," or wine-houses which abound in Rome,--a somewhat famous example of its kind in the Via Quattro Fontane. Choosing a table where he could sit with his back turned towards the door, so as to avoid being seen by either strangers or possible friends, he took up the Giornale Romano, and ordered a "mezzo-litro" of the "Genzano" wine, for which that particular house has long been celebrated. He sat there about half an hour thus quietly reading,--scarcely hearing the loud voices and louder laughter of the men who came and went around him, when suddenly the name "Sylvie Hermenstein" caught his ear. It was spoken carelessly and accompanied with a laugh. Quietly laying down his newspaper, he sat very still in his chair, keeping his back turned to the groups of wine drinkers who were gathering in large numbers as the evening advanced, and listened.

"The most delicious little bonbon in the whole box! Jolie a craquer!" said a man's voice.

"Chocolat fondant! Garantie tres pure!" cried another, his words being followed by a shout of laughter.

Fontenelle gripped the arm of his chair, and held himself rigid, but ready to spring.

"The Church always knows where to find the prettiest women," said the first man who had spoken, "from the Santissima Madonna downwards! What would become of the Pope if it were not for the women!"

"Bah! The Pope is only one man, but what would become of all the Monsignori?" asked a voice different to the rest in mellowness and deep quality, but with a touch of insolent mockery in its tone.

Another burst of laughter answered him.

Fontenelle turned in his chair and looked at the last speaker, and to his amazement saw the actor, Miraudin. He was leaning carelessly against the wine counter, a half-emptied "fiaschetto" in front of him, and a full glass of wine in his hand.

"The Monsignori would be all desolate bachelors!" he went on, lazily, "And the greatest rascal in the Vatican, Domenico Gherardi, would no longer be the fortunate possessor of the wealth, the influence, and the dear embraces of the fascinating Hermenstein!"

Scarcely had he spoken when the glass he held was dashed out of his hand, and Fontenelle, white with fury, struck him smartly and full across the face. A scene of the wildest confusion and uproar ensued. All the men in the wine-shop crowded around them, and for a moment Miraudin, blinded by the blow, and the wine that had splashed up against his eyes, did not see who had struck him, but as he recovered from the sudden shock and stared at his opponent, he broke into a wild laugh.

"Diantre! Ban soir, Monsieur le Marquis! Upon my life, there is something very strange in this! Fate or the devil, or both! Well! What now!"

"You are a liar and a blackguard!" said Fontenelle fiercely, "And unless you apologise for your insult to the lady whose name you have presumed to utter with your mountebank tongue--"

"Apologise! I! Moi!--genie de France! Never!" retorted Miraudin with an air of swaggering audacity, "All women are alike! I speak from experience!"

White to the lips, the Marquis Fontenelle looked around.

"Are there any MEN here?" he asked, eying the crowd about him with ineffable hauteur.

A young fellow stepped forward. "At your command, Marquis! You served me once--I shall be happy to serve you now!"

Quickly Fontenelle shook hands with this timely friend. He recognised in him a young Italian officer, named Ruspardi, an acquaintance of some years back, to whom he had chanced to be useful in a pressing moment of need.

"Thanks! Arrange everything for me, will you, Ruspardi? And as quickly as possible!"

"It is nearly midnight now," said Ruspardi in a low tone, "Shall we say five or six in the morning?"

"Yes--anything you like--but quickly!"

Then raising his head haughtily, he addressed Miraudin in distinct tones.

"Monsieur Miraudin, you have greatly insulted and falsely slandered a lady whom I have the honour to know. I have struck you for your lie; and consider you worthy of no further treatment save a horsewhipping in public. Gentlemen do not as a rule condescend to meet their paid servants--actors and the like,--in single combat--but I will do you that honour!"

And with these words he bowed haughtily to all present, and left the scene of noisy disorder.

Out in the streets the moonlight lay in broad silver bands, like white glistening ribbon spread in shining strips across the blackness, and there was a moisture in the air which,--dropped as it were fresh, from the surrounding hills,--cooled Fontenelle's flushed face and burning brows. He walked rapidly,--he had a vague, unformed desire in his mind to see Sylvie again if possible. He knew where she lived, and he soon turned down the street where the quaint old central balcony of the Casa D'Angeli thrust itself forward into the moon-rays among the sculptured angels' wings,--and he saw that the windows were open. Pausing underneath he waited, hesitating--full of strange thoughts and stranger regrets. How poor and valueless seemed his life as he regarded it now!--now when he had voluntarily placed it in jeopardy! What had he done with his days of youth and prime? Frittered away every valuable moment,--thrown to the winds every costly opportunity,--spent his substance on light women who had kissed and clung to him one day, and repulsed him the next. Well--and after? His heart beat thickly,--if he could only see Sylvie for a moment! Hush! There was a murmur--a voice--a ripple of sweet laughter; and moving cautiously back into the shadows, he looked up--yes!--there she was--clad in some soft silvery stuff that gathered a thousand sparkles from the light of the moon,--her fair hair caught up in a narrow circlet of diamonds, and her sweet face purely outlined against the dark worn stone of one of the great carved angel-wings. But someone was with her,--someone whom Fontenelle recognised at once by the classic shape of his head and bright curly hair,--the man whom he had seen that very day on the Pincio,--Aubrey Leigh. With a jealous tightening at his heart, Fontenelle saw that Leigh held the soft plume of downy feathers which served Sylvie for a fan, and that he was lightly waving it to and fro as he talked to her in the musical, all-potent voice which had charmed thousands, and would surely not be without its fascination for the sensitive ears of a woman. Moving a little closer he tried to hear what was being said,--but Leigh spoke very softly, and Sylvie answered with equal softness, so that he could catch no distinct word. Yet the mere tone of these two voices melted into a harmony more dulcet and perfect than could be endured by Fontenelle with composure, and uttering an impatient exclamation at his own folly he hastily left his retreat, and with one parting glance up at the picture of fair loveliness above him walked swiftly away. Returning to his hotel he saw the letter that he had written to Sylvie lying on the table, and he at once posted it. Then he began to prepare for his encounter with Miraudin. He dressed quickly,--wrote a few business letters,--and was about to lie down for a rest of an hour or so when the swift and furious galloping of a horse's hoofs awoke the echoes of the quiet street, and almost before he had time to realise what had happened, his friend Ruspardi stood before him, breathless and wild with excitement.

"Marquis, you are tricked!" he cried, "Everything is prepared--seconds,--pistols,--all! But your man--your man has gone!"

"Gone!" exclaimed Fontenelle furiously, "Where?"

"Out of Rome! In a common fiacre--taking his latest mistress, one of the stage-women with him. They were seen driving by the Porta Pia towards the Campagna half an hour ago! He dare not face fire--bully and coward that he is!"

"I will go after him!" said Fontenelle promptly, "Half an hour ahead, you say! Good!--I will catch him up. Can I get a horse anywhere?"

"Take mine," said Ruspardi eagerly, "he is perfectly fresh--just out of the stable. Have you weapons?"

"Yes," and the Marquis unlocked a case, and loading two, placed them in a travelling holder. Then, turning to Ruspardi he shook hands.

"Thanks, a thousand times! There are a few letters here--see to them if I should not come back."

"What are you going to do?" asked Ruspardi, his excitement beginning to cool a little, now that he saw the possible danger into which Fontenelle was voluntarily rushing.

"Persuade the worthy mountebank either to come back or fight at once on whatever ground I find him, and assume to be a gentleman--for once!" said Fontenelle, carelessly. "Addio!"