child — or rather, her grandchild — and besides, the life suits me
very well. I am, really, perfectly independent, and yet I am
perfectly protected. I shall not repeat the experiment of living
alone for three years, until I am much older.
“It is a rather strange friendship. My Princess knows all about
me — all that you know. I told her one day and she did not seem at
all surprised. I thought I owed her the truth about myself, since I
was to live with her, and since she had always been so kind to me.
She says I remind her of her daughter, the poor young Princess
Marie, who died nearly thirty years ago. In Nice, too, like her
father, poor girl. She was only just nineteen, and very beautiful
they say. I suppose the dear good old lady fancies she sees some
resemblance even now, though I am so much older than her daughter
was when she died. There is the origin of our friendship — the
trivial and the tragic — confectionery and death — a box of candied
fruits and an irreparable loss! If there were no contrasts what
would the world be? All one or the other, I suppose. All death, or
all Kiew sweetmeats.
“I suppose you know what life in Egypt is like. If you have not
tried it yourself, your friends have and can describe it to you. I
will certainly not inflict my impressions upon your friendship. It
would be rather a severe test — perhaps yours would not bear it, and
then I should be sorry.
“Do you know? I like to think that I have a friend in you. I like
to remember the time when you used to talk to me of all your
plans — the dear old time! I would rather remember that than much
which came afterwards. You have forgiven me for all I did, and are
glad, now, that I did it. Yes, I can fancy your smile. You do not
see yourself, Prince Saracinesca, Prince Sant’ Ilario, Duke of
Whatever-it-may-be, Lord of ever so many What-are-their-names,
Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Grandee of Spain of the First
Class, Knight of Malta and Hereditary Something to the Holy See — in
short the tremendous personage you will one day be — you do not
exactly see yourself as the son-in-law of the Signora Lucrezia
Ferris, proprietor of a tourist’s hotel on the Lake of Como!
Confess that the idea was an absurdity! As for me, I will confess
that I did very wrong. Had I known all the truth on that
afternoon — do you remember the thunderstorm? I would have saved you
much, and I should have saved myself — well — something. But we have
better things to do than to run after shadows. Perhaps it is as
well not even to think of them. It is all over now. Whatever you
may think of it all, forgive your old friend,
Maria Consuelo d’A.”
Orsino read the long letter to the end, and sat a while thinking over the contents. Two points in it struck him especially. In the first place it was not the letter of a woman who wished to call back a man she had dismissed. There was no sentiment in it, or next to none. She professed herself contented in her life, if not happy, and in one sentence she brought before him the enormous absurdity of the marriage he had once contemplated. He had more than once been ashamed of not making some further direct effort to win her again. He was now suddenly conscious of the great influence which her first letter, containing the statement of her parentage, had really exercised over him. Strangely enough, what she now wrote reconciled him, as it were, with himself. It had turned out best, after all.
That he loved her still, he felt sure, as he held in his hand the pages she had written and felt the old thrill he knew so well in his fingers, and the old, quick beating of the heart. But he acknowledged gladly — too gladly, perhaps — that he had done well to let her go.
Then came the second impression. “I like to remember the time when you used to talk to me of all your plans.” The words rang in his ears and called up delicious visions of the past, soft hours spent by her side while she listened with something warmer than patience to the outpouring of his young hopes and aspirations. She, at least, had understood him, and encouraged him, and strengthened him with her sympathy. And why not now, if then? Why should she not understand him now, when he most needed a friend, and give him sympathy now, when he stood most in need of it? She was in Egypt and he in Rome, it was true. But what of that? If she could write to him, he could write to her, and she could answer him again. No one had ever felt with him as she had.
He did not hesitate long. On that same evening, after dinner, he went back to his own room and wrote to her. It was a little hard at first, but, as the ink flowed, he expressed himself better and more clearly. With an odd sort of caution, which had grown upon him of late, he tried to make his letter take a form as similar to hers as possible.
“MY DEAR FRIEND” (he wrote)— “If people always yielded to their
impulses as you have done in writing to me, there would be more
good fellowship and less loneliness in the world. It would not be
easy for me to tell you how great a pleasure you have given me.
Perhaps, hereafter, I may compare it to your own memory of the Kiew
candied fruits! For the present I do not find a worthy comparison
to my hand.
“You ask many questions. I propose to answer them all. Will you
have the patience to read what I write? I hope so, for the sake of
the time when I used to talk to you of all my plans — and which you
say you like to remember. For another reason, too. I have never
felt so lonely in my life as I feel now, nor so much in need of a
friend — not a helping friend, but one to whom I can speak a little
freely. I am very much alone. A sort of estrangement has grown up
between my mother and me, and she no longer takes my side in all I
want to do, as she did once.
“I will be quite plain. I will tell you all my troubles, because
there is not another person in the world to whom I could tell
them — and because I know that they will not trouble you. You will
feel a little friendly sympathy, and that will be enough. But you
will feel no pain. After all, I daresay that I exaggerate, and that
there is nothing so very painful in the matter, as it will strike
you. But the case is serious, as you will see. It involves my life,
perhaps for many years to come.
“I am completely in Del Ferice’s power. A year ago I had the
possibility of freeing myself. What do you think that chance was? I
could have gone to my grandfather and asked him to lay down a sum
of money sufficient to liberate me, or I could have refused Del
Ferice’s new offer and allowed myself to be declared bankrupt. My
abominable vanity stood in the way of my following either of those
plans. In less than two months I shall be placed in the same
position again. But the circumstances are changed. The sum of money
is so considerable that I would not like to ask all my family, with
their three fortunes, to contribute it. The business is enormous. I
have an establishment like a bank and Contini — you remember
Contini? — has several assistant architects. Moreover we stand
alone. There is no other firm of the kind left, and our failure
would be a very disagreeable affair. But so long as I remain Del
Ferice’s slave, we shall not fail. Do you know that this great and
successful firm is carried
on systematically without a centime of
profit to the partners, and with the constant threat of a
disgraceful failure, used to force me on? Do you think that if I
chose the alternative, any one would believe, or that my tyrant
would let any one believe, that Orsino Saracinesca had served Ugo
Del Ferice for years — two years and a half before long — as a sort
of bondsman? I am in a very unenviable position. I am sure that Del
Ferice made use of me at first for his own ends — that is, to make
money for him. The magnitude of the sums which pass through my
hands makes me sure that he is now backed by a powerful syndicate,
probably of foreign bankers who lost money in the Roman crash, and
who see a chance of getting it back through Del Ferice’s
management. It is a question of millions. You do not understand?
Will you try to read my explanation?”
And here Orsino summed up his position towards Del Ferice in a clear and succinct statement, which it is not necessary to reproduce here. It needed no talent for business on Maria Consuelo’s part to understand that he was bound hand and foot.
“One of three things must happen” (Orsino continued). “I must
cripple, if not ruin, the fortune of my family, or I must go
through a scandalous bankruptcy, or I must continue to be Ugo Del
Ferice’s servant during the best years of my life. My only
consolation is that I am unpaid. I do not speak of poor Contini. He
is making a reputation, it is true, and Del Ferice gives him
something which I increase as much as I can. Considering our
positions, he is the more completely sacrificed of the two, poor
fellow — and through my fault. If I had only had the courage to put
my vanity out of the way eighteen months ago, I might have saved
him as well as myself. I believed myself a match for Del
Ferice — and I neither was nor ever shall be. I am a little
desperate.
“That is my life, my dear friend. Since you have not quite
forgotten me, write me a word of that good old sympathy on which I
lived so long. It may soon be all I have to live on. If Del Ferice
should have the bad taste to follow Donna Tullia to Saint
Lawrence’s, nothing could save me. I should no longer have the
alternative of remaining his slave in exchange for safety from
bankruptcy to myself and ruin — or something like it — to my father.
“But let us talk no more about it all. But for your kindly letter,
no one would ever have known all this, except Contini. In your calm
Egyptian life — thank God, dear, that your life is calm! — my story
must sound like a fragment from an unpleasant dream. One thing you
do not tell me. Are you happy, as well as peaceful? I would like to
know. I am not.
“Pray write again, when you have time — and inclination. If there is
anything to be done for you in Rome — any little thing, or great
thing either — command your old friend,
“ORSINO SARACINESCA.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
ORSINO POSTED HIS letter with an odd sensation of relief. He felt that he was once more in communication with humanity, since he had been able to speak out and tell some one of the troubles that oppressed him. He had assuredly no reason for being more hopeful than before, and matters were in reality growing more serious every day; but his heart was lighter and he took a more cheerful view of the future, almost against his own better judgment.
He had not expected to receive an answer from Maria Consuelo for some time and was surprised when one came in less than ten days from the date of his writing. This letter was short, hurriedly written and carelessly worded, but there was a ring of anxiety for him in every line of it which he could not misinterpret. Not only did she express the deepest sympathy for him and assure him that all he did still had the liveliest interest for her, but she also insisted upon being informed of the state of his affairs as often as possible. He had spoken of three possibilities, she said. Was there not a fourth somewhere? There might often be an issue from the most desperate situation, of which no one dreamed. Could she not help him to discover where it lay in this case? Could they not write to each other and find it out together?
Orsino looked uneasily at the lines, and the blood rose to his temples. Did she mean what she said, or more, or less? He was overwrought and over-sensitive, and she had written thoughtlessly, as though not weighing her words, but only following an impulse for which she had no time to find the proper expression. She could not imagine that he would accept substantial help from her — still less that he would consent to marry her for the sake of the fortune which might save him. He grew very angry, then turned cold again, and then, reading the words again, saw that he had no right to attach any such meaning to them. Then it struck him that even if, by any possibility, she had meant to convey such an idea, he would have no right at all to resent it. Women, he reflected, did not look upon such matters as men did. She had refused to marry him when he was prosperous. If she meant that she would marry him now, to save him from ruin, he could not but acknowledge that she was carrying devotion near to its farthest limit. But the words themselves would not bear such an interpretation. He was straining language too far in suggesting it.
“And yet she means something,” he said to himself. “Something which I cannot understand.”
He wrote again, maintaining the tone of his first letter more carefully than she had done on her part, though not sparing the warmest expressions of heartfelt thanks for the sympathy she had so readily given. But there was no fourth way, he said. One of those three things which he had explained to her must happen. There was no hope, and he was resigned to continue his existence of slavery until Del Ferice’s death brought about the great crisis of his life. Not that Del Ferice was in any danger of dying, he added, in spite of the general gossip about his bad health. Such men often outlasted stronger people, as Ugo had outlived Donna Tullia. Not that his death would improve matters, either, as they stood at present. That he had explained before. If the count died now, there were ninety-nine chances out of a hundred that Orsino would be ruined. For the present, nothing would happen. In little more than a month — in six weeks at the utmost — a new arrangement would be forced upon him, binding him perhaps for years to come. Del Ferice had already spoken to him of a great public undertaking, at least half of the contract for which could easily be secured or controlled by his bank. He had added that this might be a favourable occasion for Andrea Contini and Company to act in concert with the bank. Orsino knew what that meant. Indeed, there was no possibility of mistaking the meaning, which was clear enough. The fourth plan could only lie in finding beforehand a purchaser for buildings which could not be so disposed of, because they were built for a particular purpose, and could only be bought by those who had ordered them, namely persons whom Del Ferice so controlled that he could postpone their appearance if he chose and drive Orsino into a failure at any moment after the completion of the work. For instance, one of those buildings was evidently intended for a factory, and probably for a match factory. Del Ferice, in requiring that Contini and Company should erect what he had already arranged to dispose of, had vaguely remarked that there were no match factories in Rome and that perhaps some one would like to buy one. If Orsino had been less desperate he would willingly have risked much to resent the suave insolence. As it was, he had laughed in his tyrant’s face, and bitterly enough; a form of insult, however, to which Ugo was supremely indifferent. These and many other details Orsino wrote to Maria Consuelo, pouring out his confidence with the assurance of a man who asks nothing but sympathy and is sure of receiving that in overflowing measure. He no longer wa
ited for her answers, as the crucial moment approached, but wrote freely from day to day, as he felt inclined. There was little which he did not tell her in the dozen or fifteen letters he penned in the course of the month. Like many reticent men who have never taken up a pen except for ordinary correspondence or for the routine work of a business requiring accuracy, and who all at once begin to write the history of their daily lives for the perusal of one trusted person, Orsino felt as though he had found a new means of expression and abandoned himself willingly to the comparative pleasure of complete confidence. Like all such men, too, he unconsciously exhibited the chief fault of his character in his long, diary-like letters. That fault was his vanity. Had he been describing a great success he could and would have concealed it better; in writing of his own successive errors and disappointments he showed by the excessive blame he cast upon himself, how deeply that vanity of his was wounded. It is possible that Maria Consuelo discovered this. But she made no profession of analysis, and while appearing outwardly far colder than Orsino, she seemed much more disposed than he to yield to unexpected impulses when she felt their influence. And Orsino was quite unconscious that he might be exhibiting the defects of his moral nature to eyes keener than his own.
He wrote constantly therefore, with the utmost freedom, and in the moments while he was writing he enjoyed a faint illusion of increased safety, as though he were retarding the events of the future by describing minutely those of the past. More than once again Maria Consuelo answered him, and always in the same strain, doing her best, apparently, to give him hope and to reconcile him with himself. However much he might condemn his own lack of foresight, she said, no man who did his best according to his best judgment, and who acted honourably, was to be blamed for the result, though it might involve the ruin of thousands. That was her chief argument and it comforted him, and seemed to relieve him from a small part of the responsibility which weighed so heavily upon his shoulders, a burden now grown so heavy that the least lightening of it made him feel comparatively free until called upon to face facts again and fight with realities.
But events would not be retarded, and Orsino’s own good qualities tended to hasten them, as they had to a great extent been the cause of his embarrassment ever since the success of his first attempt, in making him valuable as a slave to be kept from escaping at all risks. The system upon which the business was conducted was admirable. It had been good from the beginning and Orsino had improved it to a degree very uncommon in Rome. He had mastered the science of book-keeping in a short time, and had forced himself to an accuracy of detail and a promptness of ready reference which would have surprised many an old professional clerk. It must be remembered that from the first he had found little else to do. The technical work had always been in Contini’s hands, and Del Ferice’s forethought had relieved them both from the necessity of entering upon financial negotiations requiring time, diplomatic tact and skill of a higher order. The consequence was that Orsino had devoted the whole of his great energy and native talent for order to the keeping of the books, with the result that when a contract had been executed there was hardly any accountant’s work to be done. Nominally, too, Andrea Contini and Company were not responsible to any one for their book-keeping; but in practice, and under pretence of rendering valuable service, Del Ferice sent an auditor from time to time to look into the state of affairs, a proceeding which Contini bitterly resented while Orsino expressed himself perfectly indifferent to the interference, on the ground that there was nothing to conceal. Had the books been badly kept, the final winding up of each contract would have been retarded for one or more weeks. But the more deeply Orsino became involved, the more keenly he felt the value and, at last, the vital importance, of the most minute accuracy. If worse came to worst and he should be obliged to fail, through Del Ferice’s sudden death or from any other cause, his reputation as an honourable man might depend upon this very accuracy of detail, by which he would be able to prove that in the midst of great undertakings, and while very large sums of money were passing daily through his hands, he had never received even the very smallest share of the profits absorbed by the bank. He even kept a private account of his own expenditure on the allowance he received from his father, in order that, if called upon, he might be able to prove how large a part of that allowance he regularly paid to poor Contini as compensation for the unhappy position in which the latter found himself. If bankruptcy awaited him, his failure would, if the facts were properly made known, reckon as one of the most honourable on record, though he was pleased to look upon such a contingency as a certain source of scandal and more than possible disgrace.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 573
