The Guests Of Hercules Part 45

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 employe.

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.

x.x.xIII

In a moment Angelo had softly closed the gla.s.s 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 t.i.tanic.

"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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sionately. "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.