Part 14

"I do not understand," muttered Silvio, in bewilderment.

Don Agostino took the case from him. "She was Bianca Negroni then," he repeated, in a low voice, as though speaking to himself. "She should have been Bianca Lelli--my wife. We were engaged. Afterwards she was called Bianca Acorari, Principessa di Montefiano."

Silvio looked at him in silence. He understood now.

"We were engaged," continued Don Agostino, "as you and her child are engaged, without the consent of her family. They forced her to marry Prince Montefiano. It was an unhappy marriage, as, perhaps, you have heard."

Then he turned away, and gently, reverently, as though replacing some holy relic in its shrine, put the miniature back into the drawer of the cabinet.

"You can understand now," he said, quietly, "why I wished to know what her child is like. As for you, Silvio--" he paused, and looked at Silvio Rossano earnestly. "Well," he continued, "I have had one intuition to-day which did not mislead me, and I think my second intuition will prove equally true. I believe that you would make any woman a good husband--that your character does not belie your face."

Silvio looked at him with a quick smile.

"I will make her a good husband," he said, simply. The words were few, but they appealed to Don Agostino more than any lover's protestations would have appealed to him.

"And she?" asked Don Agostino, suddenly. "You are sure that she would make you a good wife? If her nature is like her mother's she will be faithful to you in her heart. I am sure of that. But she is her father's daughter as well, and--well, he is dead, so I say no more. And no doubt the knowledge that he had married a woman whose love was given elsewhere accounted for much of his conduct after his marriage. We will not speak of him, Silvio. But you are sure that you have chosen wisely?"

"Oh, very sure!" exclaimed Silvio.

Don Agostino smiled--a somewhat pathetic smile. "I am very sure, also," he said. "It is strange," he added, thoughtfully, "that your story should be an exact repetition of my own. Almost one would think that she"--and he glanced towards the cabinet--"had sent me here to Montefiano to help her child; that everything during these years had been foreordained. I wondered, when they sent me to Montefiano, whether it were not for some purpose that would one day be made clear to me; for at Montefiano her child was born, and at Montefiano she died, neglected, and practically alone."

Don Agostino sat down at his writing-table. He covered his eyes with his hands for a moment or two, and above him the ivory Christ gleamed white in the sunlight which filtered through the closed Venetian blinds.

"It is strange--yes," said Silvio, in a low voice; "and I, too," he added--"I have felt some power urging me to tell you my story, and my true reason for being here. But," he continued, "our case--Bianca's and mine--is different from yours in one particular, Don Agostino."

Don Agostino looked up. "Yes," he replied; "Donna Bianca Acorari's mother, though she had money, was not the heiress to estates and titles."

"I did not mean that," returned Silvio. "I forgot it," he added. "I am always forgetting it. Perhaps you do not believe me, but when I do remember it I wish that Bianca Acorari were penniless and not noble. There would be nothing then to keep us apart. No; I mean that, in her case, there can be no forcing of another marriage upon her, because I am very sure that Bianca would never submit."

Don Agostino glanced at him. "Are you so sure?" he asked. "That is well. But, Silvio, we can hardly realize the pressure that may be placed upon a young girl by her family."

"She has no family," observed Silvio, tranquilly. "It is true," he continued, "that there is her step-mother, who is her guardian until she is of age. But Bianca is not a child, _reverendo_. She will not allow herself to be coerced."

Don Agostino looked at him for a moment and appeared to be considering something in his mind.

"How come you to know her character so well?" he asked, presently. "How can you know it? You guess at it, that is all."

Silvio shook his head. "Her character is written on her face," he said. "Besides, when one loves, one knows those things."

Don Agostino smiled. "Yes," he observed, "or one thinks one knows them, which does quite as well, so long as one is never undeceived. So," he continued, "you think that the girl has sufficient strength of will to resist any pressure that might be brought to compel her to marry somebody else. That is well; for, unless I am mistaken, she has been brought to Montefiano for no other purpose than to be exposed to pressure of the kind."

Silvio started. "What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "I thought you said you knew nothing of the princess and Donna Bianca--that nobody went inside the castle. Do you mean to say that they are already trying to coerce her in some way? But not by forcing her into another marriage. Giacinta declares they do not want her to marry, and she knows."

"Giacinta?" said Don Agostino, inquiringly.

"My sister. Ah, I forgot; I have not spoken to you about her. She is sure that a priest whom the princess confides in does not wish Bianca to marry at all, for some reason--"

"Yes," interrupted Don Agostino; "the Abbe Roux--a Belgian."

"You know him?" asked Silvio, surprised.

"Oh yes, I know him," replied Don Agostino, dryly.

"Therefore," Silvio continued, "you see that I have not to fear anything of that kind, as--as you had."

Don Agostino was silent.

Silvio looked at him inquiringly. "You think that I have?" he asked, hastily.

"It is possible," returned Don Agostino. "I do not know for certain. I have no means of knowing for certain," he added, "but I hear rumors--suppositions. Perhaps they are purely imaginary suppositions. In a small place like Montefiano people like to gossip, especially about what they do not understand. Apparently the princess and her daughter are not alone in the castle. A brother of the princess, Baron d'Antin, is staying with them, and also the Abbe Roux, who says mass in the chapel every morning. So, you see, my services are not required."

"Her brother!" said Silvio. "I did not know the Princess Montefiano had a brother."

Don Agostino nodded. "Yes," he returned, "and--well, it is precisely about this brother that people talk."

Silvio looked at him with amazement.

"About him!" he exclaimed. "What could there be to say about him and Bianca? It is too ridiculous--"

Don Agostino interrupted him. "I should not call it ridiculous," he said, "if the suppositions I have heard are true. I should rather call it revolting."

"But it would be an unheard-of thing--an impossibility!" said Silvio, angrily, and his eyes flashed ominously.

"No," Don Agostino observed, quietly, "it would be neither the one nor the other, Silvio. Such alliances have been made before now--in Rome, too. There is no consanguinity, you must remember. No dispensation even would be required. But if it is true that such a crime is in contemplation, the child must be saved from it--ah, yes, she must be saved from it at all costs!"

Silvio suddenly grasped the priest's hand. "You will help me to save her, Don Agostino!" he exclaimed. "For her own sake and for her mother's sake--who, as you said a few minutes ago, perhaps sent you here to protect her--you will help me to save her!"

Don Agostino, still holding Silvio's hand in his own, looked into his eyes for a moment without speaking.

"I have seen you to-day," he said, at length, "for the first time, but I trust you for your father's sake and also for your own. Yes, I will help you, if I can help you, to save Bianca Acorari from being sacrificed, for the sake of her mother, _anima benedetta_. But we must act prudently, and, first of all, I have a condition to make."

"Make any condition you please," said Silvio, eagerly, "so long as you do what I ask of you."

"Is your father aware that you are here--I mean, that you are in the neighborhood of Montefiano?" asked Don Agostino.

Silvio shrugged his shoulders. "I cannot tell you," he replied. "My sister, Giacinta, knows it, and she may have told him. My father, Don Agostino, told me that he had done all he could in asking the consent of the princess to an engagement between his son and her step-daughter, and that, as this consent had been unconditionally refused, I must in future manage my own affairs in my own way. This is what I am doing to the best of my ability."

Don Agostino smiled slightly. "I understand," he said. "Well, Silvio, my condition is that I should see your father and discuss the matter with him before doing anything here. He will give you a good character, I have no doubt, and will assure me that you would make Bianca Acorari a good husband. I owe it to--well, you know now to whom, to make this condition."

Silvio smiled. "Is that all, _reverendo_?" he asked. "It is a condition very easily carried out," he added.

"We will go to Rome, you and I, to-morrow," said Don Agostino, "and for to-night you will stop with me here. In the evening, when it is cooler, we will go to Civitacastellana, and we will bring your things back with us. No; I am doing you no kindness--I am doing a kindness to myself. As I told you before, it is not often that I have a friend to talk to at Montefiano, and in this case, well--"

Don Agostino did not complete his sentence. His gaze fixed itself upon the cabinet before him, and Silvio understood all that he had left unsaid.

*XIX*

Although Rome is supposed to be abandoned during the months of August and September by all who can afford the time and the money to leave it, there is always a certain number of people who from choice remain within its walls throughout the summer, declaring, not without reason, that the heat is felt far less in the vast, thick-walled palaces than in country villas and jerry-built hotels.

Among this number was the Senator Rossano. He had fitted up for himself a library in Palazzo Acorari, a long, high room looking to the north, which, if difficult to keep heated in winter, was always deliciously cool even on the hottest of summer days. Here he did the greater part of his writing, and passed the weeks when Rome is deserted, both pleasantly and profitably. Usually he was quite alone during these weeks, for Giacinta as a rule went with friends to one or another of the summer resorts in the Apennines or the north of Italy, or perhaps southward to the fresh sea-breezes of Sorrento.

This year, however, she had delayed her _villeggiatura_ later than usual, and was still in Rome. The professor was engaged upon a new scientific work, dealing with no less complicated a theme than the moral responsibility of criminals for the crimes they happened to have committed. Giacinta had been busily engaged in making a clear copy of her father's manuscript. The wealth of detail and example which the professor had brought to bear in order to support certain of his theories did not, it must be owned, always form suitable reading for even the comparatively young, and certainly not for an unmarried woman of Giacinta's age.

But Professor Rossano did not trouble himself about such a trifle as this. He regarded his illustrations as illustrations, mere accidents necessary to his arguments; and it would never have entered into his head that his daughter might not look at them from the same detached point of view. As a matter of fact, Giacinta did so look at them; consequently, no harm was done.

She was sitting with her father in his library, engaged in sorting some papers. It was nearly five o'clock and the great heat of the day was nearly over; in another hour or so she would insist on dragging the professor away from his work, and making him accompany her in a drive outside one of the gates of the city. She was contemplating some suggestion of the kind when her father suddenly looked up from his writing.

"I tell you what we will do this evening, Giacinta," he observed. "We will go and dine at the Castello di Costantino. I have not been there yet this summer. Perhaps we shall find some friends there. The Countess Vitali--she often dines there at this time of year, and nobody can be more amusing when she is in the vein. Her dry humor is most refreshing; it is like something that has been sealed up in an Etruscan tomb and suddenly brought to light with all the colors fresh upon it. Yes, we will go to the Castello di Costantino, and you can tell the servants we shall not eat here."

Giacinta was more than ready to fall in with the idea. She was about to ring the bell in order to tell the servants not to prepare dinner, when the door opened and Silvio walked into the room.

The professor gazed at him placidly.

"I thought that you were at Terni," he said.

"So I was," replied Silvio, smiling, "a fortnight ago. But I completed my business there, and placed the order for the steel girders. Since then I have been in the Sabina. I came from Montefiano this morning."

Giacinta started. "From Montefiano?" she exclaimed.

"From Montefiano--yes," repeated Silvio. "I have not been staying at the castle there," he added, dryly.

"You have been committing some folly, I suppose," remarked the professor, "and I do not wish to hear about it. You will have the goodness, Silvio, not to mention the subject."

"I have been staying with a friend of yours, Babbo," Silvio replied, laughing. "Don Agostino--"

"Don Agostino?" repeated his father. "The devil take your Don Agostino! I do not know whom you mean."

"Monsignor Lelli, then," returned Silvio. "He has come to Rome with me, and he is here--in the house. I left him in the drawing-room. I suppose you will go there to see him; or shall I tell him that you hope the devil may take him?"

The professor burst out laughing. "Lelli! Here?" he exclaimed. "Certainly I will go. I have not seen him for years. I remember now, of course--they sent him to Montefiano--those _imbroglioni_ at the Vatican! And so you have been staying with Lelli? Well, at least you have been in good company. I hope he has succeeded in putting a little common-sense into your head."

He hurried out of the room to greet his old friend, leaving Silvio and Giacinta alone together.

"I suppose," said the latter, "that you have seen Donna Bianca again--otherwise I cannot imagine what you have found to do at Civitacastellana for nearly a fortnight? I am told there is nothing to see there."

"It is very picturesque," observed Silvio. "The river, and the situation--"

"No doubt; but I never supposed you went there to look at the river. When I heard it was only four or five miles from Montefiano, then I understood! But who is this Monsignor Lelli, Silvio? I think I have heard Babbo tell some story about him, but I have forgotten what it was."

"He is the _parroco_ of Montefiano," replied Silvio, "and he used to be at the Vatican some years ago. I do not know the story--he would not tell it me; but Babbo knows it well, and we will ask him--the history of his earlier life--that he did tell me. Imagine, Giacinta, he was engaged to Bianca Acorari's mother. They forced her to marry the Principe di Montefiano, and then he became a priest. But he never ceased to love her, although he did become a priest; that I know."

Giacinta looked at him.

"And now?" she asked.

"Now he has come to ask Babbo for my character," answered Silvio, smiling. "If he gets a good one, he will help me to marry Bianca. Do you know, Giacinta, that they want to marry her to a brother of the princess--a Baron d'Antin? Did you ever hear of anything so outrageous? As Don Agostino--he will not be called _monsignore_--says, such a thing must be prevented, and, of course, I am the proper person to prevent it."

"Of course!"

"You must admit that it is strange, Giacinta, that Don Agostino should have been engaged to Bianca's mother--and her name was Bianca also--just as I am engaged to the daughter, and that he should be at Montefiano. It seems like a destiny. As for this Baron d'Antin--"

"I have seen him several times," observed Giacinta. "He always stares very hard. I asked the porter who he was. He is not so very old, Silvio; he looks younger than the princess."

"You had better marry him," returned Silvio; "then you will become my step-aunt by marriage as well as being my sister."

Giacinta laughed. "Don't talk nonsense," she said; "but tell me what you and Monsignor Lelli propose to do. I never expected that you would confide your love affairs to a priest. First of all a French governess, and now a _monsignore_. You are certainly an original person, Silvio."

"Ah, but Don Agostino is not like most priests--"

"Because he has been in love himself?" interrupted Giacinta, laughing.

"Oh, not at all! There would be nothing unusual in that," answered Silvio, dryly. "Priests are no different from other people, I suppose, although they may profess to be so. No; Don Agostino is not like the majority of his brethren, because he has the honesty to be a man first and a priest afterwards. He does not forget the priest, but one hears and feels the man all the time he is talking to one.

"As to what I am going to do, Giacinta," Silvio continued, tranquilly, "I am going to marry Bianca Acorari, as I have told you before--"

"Very often," added Giacinta.

"But how I am going to do it, is certainly not quite clear at present. I would have waited, and so would she; but how can we wait now that they are trying to force her to marry this old baron in order to prevent her from marrying me?"

"It is very strange," said Giacinta, thoughtfully. "I certainly believed they did not intend her to marry at all--at any rate, for some years."

"Ah, but that was before I appeared on the scene," observed Silvio. "Now they are afraid of her marrying me, and so would marry her to anybody who happened to be noble."

Giacinta shook her head. "There is some other reason than that," she replied. "The princess could find scores of husbands for the girl without being obliged to fall back on her own brother, who must be nearly thirty years older than Donna Bianca. A marriage between those two would be a marriage only in name."

Silvio stared at her. "What in the world do you mean, Giacinta?" he exclaimed.

"Oh," she returned, hurriedly, "I don't mean--well, what you think I mean! I meant to say that, supposing Bianca Acorari were married to this old baron, everything would go on as before in Casa Acorari. It would be, so to speak, merely a family arrangement, which would, perhaps, be very convenient."

"_Perbacco_!" exclaimed Silvio, "but you have your head upon your shoulders, Giacinta! I never thought of that. I thought it was simply a scheme to marry Bianca as soon as possible, in order to get her away from me. But very likely you are quite right. There is probably some intrigue behind it all. We will hear what Don Agostino thinks of your supposition--ah, here they come!" he broke off suddenly as his father and Don Agostino entered the library together.

Silvio made the priest acquainted with his sister, and then turned to the professor.

"I hope, Babbo," he said, "that you have given me a fairly good character."

"I have explained that you are as obstinate as a mule," replied his father.

Don Agostino laughed. "I have heard a few other things about you also," he said, laying his hand on Silvio's shoulder. "After all," he added, "they were only things I expected to hear, so I might quite as well have stopped at Montefiano instead of coming to Rome--except for the pleasure of seeing an old friend again."

"Don Agostino will spend the evening with us," said Silvio to his father, "and early to-morrow morning I am going back with him to Montefiano."

Giacinta looked somewhat perplexed. "Do you know," she said, "we had settled to dine at the Castello di Costantino this evening? You see, Silvio, I had no idea you were coming back, and still less that we should have a visitor--"

"But we will all go and dine at the Costantino," interposed the professor, jovially. "Why not? We shall be a party of four--and four is a very good number to sit at table, but not to drive in a _botte_--so we will have two _botti_, and then nobody need sit on the back seat. You will go with Silvio, Giacinta, and _monsignore_ and I will go together."

Don Agostino hesitated for a moment. "It is a place where one may meet people," he said, "and nobody knows that I am in Rome--"

"No, no," returned the professor, hastily, "you are not likely to meet any one you know at the Costantino, unless it be Countess Locatelli--and you certainly would not mind meeting her?"

"On the contrary," said Don Agostino. "It is always a pleasure to meet her--and to talk to her. Doubly so," he added, "after so long an exile at Montefiano. I do not find the female society of Montefiano very--what shall I say? sharpening to the intellect. My house-keeper is occasionally amusing--but limited as to her subjects."

Silvio and his father both laughed. "At any rate, she gives you a better dinner than you will get to-night," said the former.

A quarter of an hour's drive brought them to the Aventine, the most unspoiled and picturesque of the seven hills of Rome, with its secluded convent-gardens and ancient churches, its wealth of tradition and legend. In no other quarter of Rome--not even in the Forum, nor among the imperial ruins of the Palatine--does the spirit of the past seem to accompany one's every step as on the almost deserted Aventine. Especially as evening draws on, and the shadows begin to creep over the vineyards and fruit-gardens beyond the city walls; as the scattered ruins that have glowed rose-red in the rays of the setting sun now stand out--purple masses against the green background of the _campagna_, and Tiber reflects the orange and saffron tints of the sky, the dead present seems to be enwrapped by the living past in these groves and gardens hidden away on the Aventine and far removed from the turmoil and vulgarity of modern Rome.

In those years the so-called Castello di Costantino was not the well-known resort that it has recently become. It was, indeed, little more than a somewhat superior _trattoria_, where one ate a bad Roman dinner and drank good Roman wine on a terrace commanding one of the most picturesque, as it is assuredly one of the most interesting, views in the world. In those days it was not the scene of pompous gatherings in honor of foreign or home celebrities, followed by wearisome speeches breathing mutual admiration in hackneyed phrases. A few artists, a few secretaries of embassies left to conduct international affairs while their chiefs were in cooler climates; a few ladies of the Roman world who happened to be still left in the city, these, and a family party or two of the Roman _mezzo-ceto_, were its occasional visitors in the hot summer evenings when it is pleasant to get away from the baked pavements and streets of the town, and to breathe the fresh, sweet air stealing in from the open country and the sea.

The terrace behind the restaurant was almost deserted, and Professor Rossano selected a table at one corner of it, whence an uninterrupted view could be obtained over a part of the city, and across the _campagna_ to the Sabine mountains in the nearer background; while between these and the Alban Hills the higher summits of the Leonessa range glowed red against the far horizon as they caught the last rays of the setting sun.