Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  It was all idle and strangely empty, and yet hard to understand. She would have been much surprised if she could have guessed how much its emptiness interested other people in Rome; how the dowagers chattered about her over their tea, abusing her mother and all her relations for abandoning her like a waif; how the men reasoned about Baron Volterra’s deep-laid schemes, trying to make out that his semi-adoption of Sabina, as they called it, must certainly bode ruin to some one, since he had never in his life done anything without a financial object; how the young girls unanimously declared that the Baroness wanted Sabina for one of her sons, because she was such a dreadful snob; how Cardinal Della Crusca shook his wise old head knowingly, as he, who knew so much, always did on the rare occasions when he knew nothing about the matter in hand; how a romantic young English secretary of Embassy christened her the Princess in the Tower; and how old Pompeo Sassi went up to his vineyard on Monte Mario every Sunday and Thursday and sat almost all the afternoon under the chestnut-tree thinking about her and making unpractical plans of his own.

  CHAPTER IV

  IF BARON VOLTERRA did not choose to sell the Palazzo Conti to the first comer, he doubtless knew his own business best, and he was not answerable to every one for his opinion that the fine old building was worth a good deal more than the highest offer he had yet received. Everybody knew that the palace was for sale, and some of the attempts made to buy it were openly discussed. A speculator had offered four hundred thousand francs for it, a rich South American had offered half a million; it was rumoured that the Vatican would give five hundred and fifty thousand, provided that the timbers of the carved ceilings were in good condition, but Volterra steadily refused to allow any of the carvings to be disturbed in order to examine the beams. During several days a snuffy little man with a clever face poked about with a light in dark places between floors, trying to find out whether the wood were sound or rotten, and asking all sorts of questions of the old porter, and of two workmen who went with him, and who had been employed in repairs in the palace, as their fathers had been before them, perhaps for generations. But their answers were never quite satisfactory, and the snuffy man disappeared to the mysterious regions beyond the Tiber, and did not come back.

  Some people, knowing the ways of the Romans, might have inferred that the two workmen, a mason and a carpenter, had not been treated by Baron Volterra in such a way as to make them give a favourable report; and as he seemed perfectly indifferent about the result this is quite possible. At all events the carpenter made out that he could not get at the beams in question, without moving the decorations which covered them, and the mason affirmed that it was quite impossible to get a view of the foundations of the north-west corner of the palace, which were said to be weak, without knocking a hole through a wall upon which depended such solidity as there was. It was useless, he said. The snuffy gentleman could ask the Baron, if he pleased, and the Baron could do what he liked since the property now belonged to him: but he, the mason, would not lay hand to pick or crowbar without the Baron’s express authorization. The Baron was a Senator of the Kingdom, said the mason, and could therefore of course send him to penal servitude in the galleys for life, if he pleased. That is the average Roman workman’s idea of justice. The snuffy expert, who looked very much like a poor priest in plain clothes, though he evidently knew his business, made no reply, nor any attempt to help the mason’s conscience with money.

  But he stood a little while by the wall, with his lantern in his hands, and presently put his ear to the damp stones, and listened.

  “There is running water somewhere not far off,” he said, looking keenly at the workman.

  “It is certainly not wine,” answered the man, with a rough laugh, for he thought it a very good joke.

  “Are there any ‘lost waters’ under the palace?” asked the expert.

  “I do not know,” replied the mason, looking away from the lantern towards the gloom of the cellars.

  “I believe,” said the snuffy gentleman, setting down his lantern, and taking a large pinch from a battered silver snuff-box, on which the arms of Pius Ninth were still distinguishable, “I believe that the nearest ‘lost water’ to this place is somewhere under the Vicolo del Soldati.”

  “I do not know.”

  The expert skilfully inserted the brown dust into his nostrils with his right thumb, scarcely wasting a grain in the operation.

  “You do not seem to know much,” he observed thoughtfully, and took up his lantern again.

  “I know what I have been taught,” replied the mason without resentment.

  The expert glanced at him quickly, but said nothing more. His inspection was finished, and he led the way out of the intricate cellars as if he knew them by heart, though he had only passed through them once, and he left the palace on foot when he had brushed some of the dust from his shabby clothes.

  The porter looked enquiringly at the two men, as they filled little clay pipes that had cane stems, standing under the deep entrance.

  “Not even the price of half a litre of wine,” said the mason in answer to the mute question.

  “Church stuff,” observed the carpenter discontentedly.

  The porter nodded gravely, and the men nodded to him as they went out into the street. They had nothing more to do that day, and they turned into the dark little wine shop, where the withered bush stuck out of the blackened grating. They sat down opposite each other, with the end of the grimy board of the table between them, and the carpenter made a sign. The host brought a litre measure of thin red wine and set it down between them with two tumblers. He was ghastly pale, flabby and sullen, with a quarter of an inch of stubbly black beard on his unhealthy face.

  The carpenter poured a few drops of wine into one of the tumblers, shook it about, turned it into the other, shook it again, and finally poured it on the unctuous stone floor beside him. Then he filled both glasses to the brim, and both men drank in silence.

  They repeated the operation, and after the second glass there was not much left in the measure. The flabby host had retired to the gloomy vaults within, where he played cards with a crony by the light of a small smoking lamp with a cracked chimney.

  “That was the very place, was it not?” asked the carpenter at last, in a low tone, and almost without moving his lips.

  The mason said nothing, but shrugged his shoulders, in a sort of enigmatic assent. Both drank again, and after a long time the carpenter smiled faintly.

  “He was looking for the ‘lost water,’” he said, in a tone of contempt.

  The faint smile slowly reflected itself in the mason’s face. The two finished their wine, lit their pipes again, left the price of their drink on the table without disturbing the host and went away.

  So far as any outsider could have judged, the expert’s curiosity and the few words exchanged by the workmen referred to the so-called “lost water,” which might be somewhere under the north-west corner of the Palazzo Conti, and no one unacquainted with subterranean Rome could possibly have understood what any of the three meant.

  The “lost waters” of Rome are very mysterious. Here and there, under old streets and far down amongst the foundations of ancient palaces, there are channels of running water which have no apparent connection with any of the aqueducts now restored and in use. It is a water that comes no one knows whence and finds its way to the Tiber, no one knows how. It is generally clear and very cold, and in the days when the aqueducts were all broken and most people drank of the river, the “lost water” was highly prized. It appears in the most unexpected places, sometimes in great quantities and seriously interfering with any attempt to lay the foundations of a new building, sometimes black and silent, under a huge flagstone in an old courtyard, sometimes running with an audible rush through hidden passages deeper than the deepest cellars. It has puzzled archaeologists, hydraulic engineers and architects for generations, its presence has never been satisfactorily explained, there seems not to be any plan of the city which shows
its whereabouts, and the modern improvements of the Tiber’s banks do not appear to have affected its occult courses. By tradition handed down from father to son, certain workmen, chiefly masons and always genuine Romans, claim to know more about it than other people; but that is as much as can be said. It is known as the “lost water,” and it rises and falls, and seeks different levels in unaccountable ways, as water will when it is confined under the earth but is here and there confronted by the pressure of the air.

  But though the old-fashioned Roman workman still looks upon all traditional information about his trade as secret and never to be revealed, that fact alone might seem insufficient to account for the behaviour of Gigi the carpenter and of Toto the mason under the particular circumstances here narrated, still less for the contempt they showed for the snuffy expert who was apparently looking for the “lost water.” An invisible witness would have gathered that they had something of more importance to conceal. To the expert, their conduct and answers must have been thoroughly unsatisfactory, for the Vatican was even said to have refused to pay the additional fifty thousand francs, On the ground that the state of the foundations was doubtful and that the timbers of the upper story were not sound.

  Baron Volterra’s equanimity was not in the least disturbed by this. On the contrary, instead of setting the price lower, he frankly told all applicants, through his agent, that he was in no hurry to sell, as he had reason to believe that the land about the Palazzo Conti would soon rise in value. He had settled with the representatives of the Conti family, and it was said that he had behaved generously. The family had nothing left after the crash, which might partially account for such an exhibition of generosity; but it was hinted that Baron Volterra had given them the option of buying back the palace and some other property upon which he had foreclosed, if they should be able to pay for it in ten years.

  Soon after the visit of the snuffy expert, Volterra’s agent informed the porter that a gentleman had taken the small apartment on the intermediate story, which had formerly been occupied by a chaplain but had been disused for years. It had been part of the Conti’s folly that they had steadily refused to let any part of the vast building since the old Prince’s death.

  On the following day, the new-comer moved in, with his belongings, consisting of a small quantity of new furniture, barely sufficient for himself and his one servant, and a number of very heavy cases, which turned out to be full of books. Gigi, the carpenter, was at once sent for to put up plain shelves for these, and he took stock of the lodger while the latter was explaining what he wanted.

  “He is a gentleman,” said Gigi to Toto, that very evening, as they stood filling their pipes at the corner of the Vicolo del Soldati. “His name is Malipieri. He is as black as the horses at a funeral of the first-class, and he is not a Roman.”

  “Who knows what race of animal this may be?” Toto was not in a good humour.

  “He is of the race of gentlemen,” asserted Gigi confidently.

  “Then he will end badly,” observed Toto. “Let us go and drink. It is better.”

  “Let us go and drink,” repeated Gigi. “You have a sensible thought sometimes. I think this man is an engineer, or an architect. He wants a draughtsman’s table.”

  “Evil befall his little dead ones, whatever he is,” returned the other, by way of welcome to the young man who had moved into the palace.

  “He advanced me ten francs to buy wood for the shelves,” said Gigi, who was by far the more cheerful of the two.

  “Come and drink,” returned Toto, relevantly or irrelevantly. “That is much better.”

  So they turned into the wine shop.

  CHAPTER V

  BARON VOLTERRA INTRODUCED Marino Malipieri to the two ladies. The guest had come punctually, for the Baron had looked at his watch a moment before he was announced, and it was precisely eight o’clock.

  Malipieri bowed to the Baroness, who held out her hand cordially, and then to Sabina.

  “Donna Sabina Conti,” said the Baron with extreme distinctness, in order that his guest should be quite sure of the young girl’s identity.

  Sabina looked down modestly, as the nuns had told her to do when a young man was introduced to her. At the same moment Malipieri’s eyes turned quietly and quickly to the Baron, and a look of intelligence passed between the two men. Malipieri understood that Sabina was one of the family in whose former palace he was living. Then he glanced again at the young girl for one moment, before making a commonplace remark to the Baroness, and after that Sabina felt that she was at liberty to look at him.

  She saw a very dark man of average height, with short black hair that grew rather far back from his very white forehead, and wearing a closely clipped black beard and moustache which did not by any means hide the firm lines of the mouth and chin. From the strongly marked eyebrows downward his face was almost of the colour of newly cast bronze, and the dusky hue contrasted oddly with the clear whiteness of his forehead. He was evidently a man who had lately been living much out of doors under a burning sun. Sabina thought that his very bright black eyes and boldly curved features suggested a young hawk, and he had a look of compact strength and a way of moving which betrayed both great energy and extreme quickness.

  But there was something more, which Sabina recognized at the first glance. She felt instantly that he was not like the Baron and his wife; that he belonged in some way to the same variety of humanity as herself; that she would understand him when he spoke, that she would often feel intuitively what he was going to say next, and that he would understand her.

  She listened while he talked to the Baroness. He had a slight Venetian accent, but his voice had not the soft Venetian ring. It was a little veiled, and though not at all loud it was somewhat harsh. Sabina did not dislike the manly tone, though it was not musical, nor the Venetian pronunciation, although that was unfamiliar. In countries like Italy and Germany, which have had many centres and many historical capital cities, almost all educated people speak with the accents of their several origins, and are rather tenacious of the habit than anxious to get rid of it, generally maintaining that their own pronunciation is the right one.

  “Signor Malipieri,” said the Baron to Sabina, as they went in to dinner, “is the celebrated archaeologist.”

  “Yes,” Sabina answered, as if she knew all about him, though she had never heard him mentioned.

  Malipieri probably overheard the Baron’s speech, but he took no notice of it. At dinner, he seemed inclined to be silent. The Baron asked him questions about his discoveries, to which he gave rather short answers, but Sabina gathered that he had found something extraordinary in Carthage. She did not know where Carthage was, and did not like to ask, but she remembered that Marius had sat there among some ruins. Perhaps Malipieri had found his bones, for no one had ever told her that Marius did not continue to sit among the ruins to his dying day. She connected him vaguely with AEneas and another person called Regulus. It was all rather uncertain.

  What she saw clearly was that the Baron wished to make Malipieri feel at his ease, but that Malipieri’s idea of being at his ease was certainly not founded on a wish to talk about himself. So the conversation languished for some time.

  The Baroness, who knew about as much about Carthage as Sabina, made a few disconnected remarks, interspersed with laudatory allusions to the young man’s immense learning, for she wished to please her husband, though she had not the slightest idea why Malipieri was asked to dinner. Finding that he was not perceptibly flattered by what she said, she began to talk about the Venetian aristocracy, for she knew that his name was historical, and she recognized in him at once the characteristics of the nobility she worshipped. Malipieri smiled politely, and in answer to a direct question admitted that his mother had been a Gradenigo.

  The Baroness was delighted at this information.

  “To think,” she said, “that by a mere accident you and Donna Sabina should meet here, the descendants of two of the oldest families of th
e Italian aristocracy!”

  “I am a republican,” observed Malipieri quietly.

  “You!” cried the Baroness in amazement. “You, the offspring of such races as the Malipieri and the Gradenigo a republican, a socialist, an anarchist!”

  “There is a difference,” said Malipieri with a smile. “A republican is not an anarchist!”

  “I can never believe it,” answered the Baroness solemnly.

  She ate a few green peas and shook her head.

  “I went to Carthage because I was condemned to three years’ confinement in prison,” replied Malipieri with calm.

  “Prison!” exclaimed the Baroness in horror, and she looked at her husband, mutely asking why in the world he had brought a convict to their table.

  The Baron smiled benignly, as he disposed of an ample mouthful of green peas, before he spoke.

  “Signor Malipieri,” he said, when he had swallowed the last one, “founded and edited a republican newspaper in the north of Italy.”

  “And you were sent to prison for that?” asked Sabina with indignation.

  “It is one thing to send a man to prison,” said Malipieri. “It is another to make him go there. I escaped to Switzerland, and I came back to Italy quite lately, after the amnesty.”

  “I am amazed!” The Baroness looked at the servants timidly, as if she expected the butler and the footman to express their disapprobation of the guest.

  “I have left politics for the present,” Malipieri replied, looking at Sabina and smiling.

  “Of course!” cried the Baroness. “But—” she stopped short.

  “My wife,” said the financier with a grin, “is afraid you have dynamite about you.”

  “How absurd!” The Baroness felt that she was ridiculous. “But I do not understand how you can be friends,” she added, glancing from her husband to Malipieri.