Pietro Ghisleri

CHAPTER XIX.

Pietro Ghisleri slept soundly that night. Of late, indeed, he had become less restless than he had formerly been, and he attributed the change to the weakness which was the consequence of his wound. There were probably other causes at work at that time of which he was hardly conscious himself, but which ultimately produced a change in him, and in his way of looking at the world.

He stood at his open window early in the morning, and gazed out at the fresh, bright country. The delicate hand of spring had already touched the world with colour, and the breath of the coming warmth had waked the life in all those things which die yearly, and are yearly raised again.

Ghisleri felt the morning sun upon his thin, pale face, and he realised that he also had been very near to death during the dark months, and he remembered how he had wished that he might be not near only to dying, but dead altogether, never to take up again the play that had grown so wearisome and empty in his eyes.

But now a change had come. For the first time in years, he knew that if the choice were suddenly offered him at the present moment he would choose to live out all the days allotted to him, and would wish that they might be many rather than few. There was, indeed, a dark spot on the page last turned, of which he could never efface the memory, nor, in his own estimation, outlive the shame. In his day-dreams Maddalena dell"

Armi"s coldly perfect face was often before him with an expression upon it which he feared to see, knowing too well why it was there--and out of a deeper depth of memory dead Bianca Corleone"s eyes looked at him with reproach and sometimes with scorn. There was much pain in store for him yet, of the kind at which the world never guessed, nor ever could. But he would not try to escape from it. He would not again so act or think as to call himself coward in his own heart"s tribunal.

He looked out at the distant hills, and down at the broad battlements and ma.s.sive outworks of the ancient fortress, and fell to thinking rather idly about the people who had lived, and fought, and quarrelled, and slain each other, within and around those enormous walls, and then he thought all at once of Adele Savelli, and of his suspicions regarding her. He was in a particularly charitable frame of mind on that morning, and he suddenly felt that what he had almost believed on the previous night was utterly beyond the bounds of probability. It seemed to him that he had no manner of right to accuse any one of the crime he had imputed to her, on the most shadowy grounds, and absolutely without proof, unless the coincidence of her uneasy behaviour, with certain vague remarks of his own, could be taken as evidence. He sat down to think it all over, drinking his coffee by the open window, and enjoying the sunshine and the sweet morning air. The whole world looked so good and innocent and fresh as he gazed out upon it, that the possibilities of evil seemed to shrink away into nothing.

But as he systematically reviewed the events of the past months, his suspicion returned almost with the force of conviction. The coincidences were too numerous to be attributed to chance alone. Adele"s distress of mind was too evident to be denied. Altogether there was no escaping from the conclusion that willingly or unwillingly she had been consciously instrumental in bringing about Arden"s illness and death. Her questions about the wisest course to pursue in cases of blackmail, pointed to the probability if not the certainty that some third person was acquainted with what had happened, and this person was in all likelihood the maid Lucia. So far his reasoning took him quickly and plausibly enough, but no further. How the scarlet fever had been communicated from Lucia to Herbert Arden was more than Ghisleri could guess, but if Adele was really in the serving woman"s power, it must have been done in such a way as to make what had happened quite clear to the latter. After thinking over all the possibilities, and vainly attempting to solve the hard problem, Ghisleri found himself as much at sea as ever, and was driven to acknowledge that he must trust to chance for obtaining any further evidence in the matter.

Meanwhile Adele had determined to follow his advice. Her anxiety was becoming unbearable, and she felt that she could not endure such suspense much longer. To accuse Lucia directly of having opened the letter and committed the theft would be rash and dangerous. There was a bare possibility that some one else might have done the deed. She must in any case be cautious.

"Lucia," she said that morning, while the woman was doing her hair, "do you remember that some days ago I gave you a letter to be registered, and that you brought back the receipt for it from the post-office?"

"Yes, Excellency, I remember very well." Lucia had been expecting for a long time that her mistress would question her and she was quite prepared. She had good nerves, and the certainty that the great lady was altogether in her power made her cool and collected.

"A very extraordinary thing happened to that letter," said Adele, looking up at her own face in the gla.s.s, to give herself courage. "It was rather important. I had written to Padre Bonaventura, asking spiritual guidance, and I particularly desired an answer. But he wrote to me by return of post, saying that when he opened the envelope he found only four sheets of blank paper without a word written on them.

You see somebody must have thought there was money in the letter."

"They are such thieves at the post-office!" exclaimed Lucia. "But this is a terrible affair, Excellency! What is to be done? The post-master must be sent to the galleys immediately!"

In Lucia"s conception of the law such a summary course seemed quite practicable.

"I am afraid that would be very unjust, and could do no good at all,"

said Adele. "I am quite sure that the post-master would not have dared to open a letter already registered, and for which he had given a receipt. As for any one in the house having done it, I cannot believe it either. I gave it into your hands myself and you brought me back the stamped bit of paper--it is there in my jewel case. I only wish you to find out for me, very quietly and without exciting suspicion, who took that letter to the post. If I could get it back I would give the person who brought it to me a handsome reward. You understand, Lucia, how disagreeable it is to feel that a letter concerning one"s most sacred feelings is lost, and has perhaps been read by more than one person."

"I cannot imagine anything more dreadful! But be easy, Excellency. I will do all I can, and none of the servants shall suspect that I am questioning them."

"I shall be very much obliged to you, Lucia," said Adele. "Very much obliged," she repeated, with some emphasis.

"It is only my duty to serve your Excellency, who has always been so good to me," answered Lucia, humbly.

Adele knew that there was nothing more to be said for the present, and she congratulated herself on having been diplomatic in her way of offering the bribe. Lucia would now in all likelihood take some time to decide, but for the present she would certainly not part with the precious doc.u.ment. Adele felt sure that it had neither been destroyed nor sent out of the castle. Lucia probably kept it concealed in a safe corner of her own room, under lock and key, and to attempt to get possession of it by force would be out of the question. As in most Italian houses, the servants all locked their own rooms and carried the keys about with them. Lucia, of course, did like the rest.

But Lucia, on her side, distrusted her mistress. Knowing what she now knew of Adele, she believed her capable of almost anything, including the picking of a lock and the skilful abstraction of the letter from its secret hiding-place. As soon as she was at liberty she went and got the paper and concealed it in her bosom, intending to keep it there until she could select some safe spot in a remote part of the castle, where she might put it away in greater safety. To carry it about with her until Adele took her back to Rome would be rash, she thought. Adele might suspect where it was at any moment, and force her to give it up.

Or it might be lost, which would be even worse.

Adele herself felt singularly relieved. She had very little doubt but that Lucia would come to terms. She might, indeed, ask a very large sum, and it might be very inconvenient to be obliged to find it at short notice. But the sole heiress to an enormous estate would certainly be able to get money in some way or other. In the meantime Lucia would not offer it to any one else, since of all people her mistress would be willing to make the greatest sacrifice to obtain possession of it. On the whole, therefore, Adele"s anxiety diminished on that day, and she seemed better when she met her husband and Ghisleri in the great court-yard where they were sunning themselves and continuing their talk about politics.

"I promised that I would show you the castle," she said to Pietro.

"Would it amuse you to go with me now? Francesco does not care to come, of course, and he always has his business with the steward to attend to before breakfast."

Pietro expressed his readiness to follow her from the deepest dungeon to the topmost turret of the castle.

"Have you slept well?" he asked, as they moved away together. "You are looking much better this morning."

"Yes. I feel better," she answered. "Do you know I think your coming has had something to do with it. You have cheered us with your talk and your news. We were fast falling into the vegetable stage, Francesco and I."

Ghisleri smiled, partly out of politeness and partly at his own thoughts.

"I am glad to have been of any use," he said. "I will do my best to be amusing as long as you will have me."

"You need not take it as such an enormous compliment," Adele laughed.

"Of course, you are very agreeable,--at least, you can be when you choose,--but the great thing is to have somebody, anybody one knows and likes a little, in this dreary place. Shall we begin at the top or the bottom? The prisons or the towers? Which shall it be?"

"If there is a choice, let us begin in the lower regions," answered Ghisleri. "Do you like me a little, Donna Adele?" he asked, as she led the way along the curved and smoothly paved descent which led downwards to the subterranean part of the fortress.

She laughed lightly, and glanced at him. She had always wished to make a conquest of Pietro Ghisleri, but she had found few opportunities of being alone with him, for he had never been among the a.s.siduous at her shrine. She knew also how much he admired Laura Arden, and she suspected him of being incipiently in love. It would be delightful to detach him from that allegiance.

"Yes," she said, "I like you a little. Did you expect me to like you very much? You have never done anything to deserve it."

"I wish I could," answered Ghisleri, with complete insincerity. "But I am afraid I should never get so far as that."

"Why not?"

"When a woman loves her husband--" He did not finish the sentence, for it seemed unnecessary.

"I do not want you to make love to me," Adele answered, "though I believe you know how to do it to perfection. It is often a very long way from liking very much to loving a very little. This is the place where old Gianluca kept his brother Paolo in prison for eighteen years. Then Gianluca died suddenly one fine morning, and Paolo was let out by the soldiers and immediately threw Gianluca"s wife out of the window of the east tower, and cut off the heads of his two sons on the same afternoon.

I will show you where that was done when we go up stairs. Paolo was an extremely energetic person."

"Decidedly so, I should say," a.s.sented Ghisleri. "You are all descended from him, I suppose."

"Yes, he took care that we should be, by killing all the other branches of the family. Those hollows in the stone are supposed to have been made by his footsteps. Think what a walk! It lasted eighteen years. But it is an airy place and not damp. Those windows were there then, they say. Do you see that deep channel in the wall? It leads straight up through the castle to the floor of the little pa.s.sage between the old guard-room and one of the towers. There used to be a trap-door--it was still there when I was a little girl, but my father has had a slab of stone put down instead. They used to entice their dearest and most familiar enemies up there, and just as the man set foot on the board a soldier in the tower pulled a bolt in the wall and the trap-door fell. It is two hundred feet, they say. It was so cleverly managed! They say that the last person who came to grief there was a Monsignor Boccapaduli in the year sixteen hundred and something, but no one ever knew what had become of him until the next generation."

Familiar from her childhood with every corner of the vast building, she led Ghisleri through one portion after another, telling such of the tales of horror as she remembered. Little by little they worked their way to the upper regions. In the guard-room, a vast hall which would have made a good-sized church, she showed him the great slab of stone the Prince had subst.i.tuted for the wooden trap-door of former days, and which had merely been placed over the yawning chasm without plaster or cement, its own weight being enough to keep it in position. They pa.s.sed over it and ascended the stairs in the tower, emerging at last into the bright sunshine upon one of the highest battlements. They sat down side by side on a stone bench.

"It is pleasanter here," said Adele. "There is a sort of attraction about those dreadful old places down below, because one never quite realises all the things that happened there, and it is rather like an old-fashioned novel, all full of murder and sudden death. But the sunshine is much nicer, is it not? Shall we stay up here till it is time for breakfast?"

"By all means. It is a delightful place for a good talk." Ghisleri was tired, and glad to sit down.

"Then you must talk to me," continued his companion. "Between the stairs and playing guide, I have no voice left. What will you talk about? Tell me all about your own castle. They say it is very interesting. I wish I could see it!"

"After Gerano it would seem very tame to you. It is mostly in ruins, and what there is left of it is very much the worse for wear. I would not advise you to take the trouble to stop, even if you should ever pa.s.s near it."

"That is a way you have of depreciating everything connected with yourself," said Adele. "Why do you do it?"

"Do I?" asked Ghisleri, carelessly. "I suppose I have the idea that it is better to let people be agreeably surprised, if there is to be any surprise at all. When you have heard that a man is insufferable, if he turns out barely tolerable you think him nice."

"Then it is mere pose on your part, with the deliberate intention of producing an effect?"

"Probably--mere pose." Ghisleri laughed; he looked at the woman at his side and wondered whether he could ever find out the truth about Arden"s death, and the connexion with it which, as he believed, she must have had.

She, on her part, did not even guess that he suspected her. The thought had crossed her mind on the previous afternoon, but she had very soon dismissed it. She found relief and change from the monotonous suffering of the past days in talking to him, and she tried to enjoy what she could without allowing her mind to wander back to its chief preoccupation. Ghisleri was very careful not to rouse her suspicion by any accidental reference to what filled his thoughts as much as it did her own, and they spent more than half an hour in aimless and more or less amusing conversation.