Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  He had something to be grateful for, which is not, however, always a cause of gratitude in the receiver of favours and mercies. He had been a convict, and had served a term of several years in penal servitude. The sentence had been passed upon him for having stabbed a man in the back, in a drunken brawl, but Masin had steadily denied the charge, and the evidence against him had been merely circumstantial. It had happened in Rome, where Masin had worked as a mason during the construction of the new Courts of Justice. He was from the far north of Italy, and was, of course, hated by his companions, as only Italians of different parts of the country can hate one another. To shield one of themselves, they unanimously gave evidence against Masin; the jury was chiefly composed of Romans, the judge was a Sicilian, and Masin had no chance. Fortunately for him, the man lived, though much injured; if he had died, Masin would have got a life sentence. It was an old story; false witnesses, a prejudiced jury, and a judge who, though willing to put his prejudices aside, had little choice but to convict.

  Masin had been sent to Elba to the penitentiary, had been a “good-behaviour man” from first to last, and his term had been slightly abridged in consequence. When he was discharged, he went back to the north. Malipieri had found him working as a mason when some repairs were being made in the cathedral of Milan, and had taken a fancy to him. Masin had told his story simply and frankly, explaining that he found it hard to get a living at all since he had been a convict, and that he was trying to save enough money to emigrate to New York. Malipieri had thought over the matter for a week, speaking to him now and then, and watching him, and had at last proposed to take him into his own service. Later, Masin had helped Malipieri to escape, had followed him into exile, and had been of the greatest use to him during the excavations in Carthage, where he had acted as body-servant, foreman, and often as a trusted friend.

  He was certainly not an accomplished valet, but Malipieri did not care for that. He was sober, he was honest, he was trustworthy, he was cool in danger, and he was very strong. Moreover, he was an excellent and experienced mason, a fact of little or no use in the scientific treatment of shoes, trousers, silk hats, hair-brushes and coffee, but which had more than once been valuable to Malipieri during the last few years. Finally, his gratitude to the man who had believed in his innocence was deep and lasting. Masin would really have given his life to save Malipieri’s, and would have been glad to give it.

  He set the lamp down on the table, and waited for orders, his blue eyes quietly fixed on his master.

  “I never saw that gentleman before,” said Malipieri, setting some papers in order, under the bright light, but still standing. “Did you look at his face?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered Masin, and waited.

  “What sort of man should you take him to be?”

  “A spy, sir,” replied Masin promptly.

  “I think you are right,” Malipieri answered. “We will begin work to-morrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Malipieri ate his supper without noticing what Masin brought him, and then installed himself with his shaded lamp at his work-table. He took from the drawer a number of sketches of plans and studied them attentively, by a rather odd process.

  He had drawn only one plan on heavy paper, in strong black lines. An architect would have seen at once that it represented a part of the foundations of a very large building; and two or three persons then living in Rome might have recognized the plan of the cellars under the north-west corner of the Palazzo Conti — certainly not more than two or three, one of whom was the snuffy expert who had come from beyond the Tiber, and another was Baron Volterra. Toto, the mason, could have threaded the intricate ways in the dark, but could assuredly have made nothing of the drawings. On the other hand, the persons who were acquainted with them did not know what Toto knew, and he was not at all inclined to impart his knowledge to any one, for reasons best known to himself.

  Furthermore, an architect would have understood at a glance that the plan was incomplete, and that there was some reason why it could not be completed. A part of it was quite blank, but in one place the probable continuation of a main wall not explored, or altogether inaccessible, was indicated by dotted lines.

  Besides this main drawing, Malipieri had several others made on tracing paper to the same scale, which he laid over the first, and moved about, trying to make the one fit the other, and in each of these the part which was blank in the one underneath was filled in according to different imaginary plans. Lastly, he had a large transparent sheet on which were accurately laid out the walls and doors of the ground floor of the palace at the north-west corner, and in this there was marked a square piece of masonry, shaded as if to represent a solid pilaster, and which came over the unexplored part of the cellars. Sometimes Malipieri placed this drawing over the first, and then one of the others on both, trying to make the three agree. It was like an odd puzzle, and there was not a word written on any of the plans to explain what they meant. On most of the thin ones there were blue lines, indicating water, or at least its possible course.

  The imaginary architect, if he could have watched the real one, would have understood before long that the latter was theorizing about the probable construction of what was hitherto inaccessible, and about the probable position of certain channels through which water flowed, or might be expected to flow. He would also have gathered that Malipieri could reach no definite conclusion unless he could break through one of two walls in the cellar, or descend through an opening in the floor above, which would be by far the easiest way. He might even have wondered why Malipieri did not at once adopt the latter expedient. It is not a serious matter to make an aperture through a vault, large enough to allow the passage of a man’s body, and it could not be attended with any danger to the building. It would be much less safe and far more difficult to cut a hole through one of the main foundation walls, which might be many feet thick and yet not wholly secure. Nevertheless the movements made by the point of Malipieri’s pencil showed that he was contemplating that method of gaining an entrance.

  CHAPTER VII

  SABINA HAD BEEN more than two months in Baron Volterra’s house, when she at last received a line from her mother. The short letter was characteristic and was, after all, what the girl had expected, neither more nor less. The Princess told her that for the present she must stay with the “kind friends” who had offered her a home; that everything would be right before long; that if she needed any advice she had better send for Sassi, who had always served the family faithfully; that gowns were going to be short next year, which would be becoming to Sabina when she “came out,” because she had small feet and admirable ankles; and that the weather was heavenly. The Princess added that she would send her some pocket-money before long, and that she was trying to find the best way of sending it.

  In spite of her position Sabina smiled at the last sentence. It was so like her mother to promise what she would never perform, that it amused her. She sat still for some time with the letter in her hand and then took it to the Baroness, for she felt that it was time to speak out and that the interview could not be put off any longer. The Baroness was writing in her boudoir. She wrote her letters on large sheets of an especial paper, stamped with her initials, over which appeared a very minute Italian baron’s coronet, with seven points; it was so small that one might easily have thought that it had nine, like a count’s, but it was undeniably smart and suggested an assured position in the aristocracy. No one quite remembered why the late King had made Volterra a baron, but he undoubtedly had done so, and no one disputed Volterra’s right to use the title.

  Sabina read her letter aloud, and the Baroness listened attentively, with a grave expression.

  “Your dear mother—” she began in a soothing tone.

  “She is not my ‘dear mother’ at all,” said Sabina, interrupting her. “She is not any more ‘dear’ to me than I am to her.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed the Baroness, affecting to be shocked by the gi
rl’s heartlessness.

  “If it were not for my ‘dear mother,’ I should not be a beggar,” said Sabina.

  “A beggar! What a word!”

  “There is no other, that I know of. I am living on your charity.”

  “For heaven’s sake, do not say such things!” cried the Baroness.

  “There is nothing else to say. If you had not taken me in and lodged me and fed me, I should like to know where I should be now. I am quite sure that my ‘dear mother’ would not care, but I cannot help wondering what is to become of me. Are you surprised?”

  “Are you not provided for here?” The question was put in a tone almost of deprecation.

  “Provided for! I am surrounded with every sort of luxury, when I ought to be working for my living.”

  “Working!” The Baroness was filled with horror. “You, my dear, the daughter of a Roman Prince! You, working for your living! You, a Conti!”

  Sabina smiled and looked down at her delicate hands.

  “I cannot see what my name has to do with it,” she said. “It is not much to be proud of, considering how my relatives behave.”

  “It is a great name,” said the Baroness solemnly and emphatically.

  “It was once,” Sabina answered, leaning back in the low chair she had taken, and looking at the ceiling. “My mother and my brother have not added lustre to it, and I would much rather be called Signorina Emilia Moscetti and be a governess, than be Sabina Conti and live on charity. I have no right to what I do not possess and cannot earn.”

  “My dear child! This is rank socialism! I am afraid you talked too long with Malipieri the other night.”

  “There is a man who works, though he has what you call a great name,” observed Sabina. “I admire that. He was poor, I suppose — perhaps not so poor as I am — and he made up his mind to earn his living and a reputation.”

  “You are quite mistaken,” said the Baroness drily.

  Sabina looked at her in surprise.

  “I thought he was a distinguished architect and engineer,” she answered.

  “Yes. But he was never poor, and he will be very rich some day.”

  “Indeed!” Sabina seemed rather disappointed at the information.

  There was a little pause, and the Baroness looted at her unfinished letter as if she wished that Sabina would go away. She had foreseen that before long the girl would make some protest against her position as a perpetual guest in the house, but had no clear idea of how to meet it. Sabina seemed so very decided.

  “We have done our best to make you feel at home, like one of the family,” the Baroness said presently, in a rather injured tone.

  Sabina did not wish to be one of the family at all, but she knew that she was under great obligations to her hosts, and she did not wish to be thought ungrateful.

  “You have been more than kind,” she answered gently, “and I shall never forget it. You have taken more trouble with me in two or three months than my mother in all my life. Please do not imagine that I am not thankful for all you have done.”

  The words were spoken sincerely, and when Sabina was very much in earnest there was something at once convincing and touching in her voice. The Baroness’s sallow cheek actually flushed with pleasure, and she was impelled to leave her seat and kiss Sabina affectionately. She was restrained by a reasonable doubt as to the consequences of such demonstrative familiarity, though she would not have hesitated to kiss the girl’s mother under like circumstances.

  “It was the least we could do,” she said, knowing very well that the phrase meant nothing.

  “Excuse me,” Sabina objected, “but there was no reason in the world why you should do anything at all for me! In the natural course of things I should either have been sent to the country with my sister-in-law, or to the convent with Clementina.”

  “You would have been very unhappy, my dear child.”

  “I do not know which would have been worse,” said Sabina frankly. “They both hate me, and I hate them.”

  “Dear me!” exclaimed the Baroness, shocked again, or pretending to be.

  “In our family,” Sabina answered calmly, “we all hate each other.”

  “I am sure your sister Clementina is far too religious to feel hatred for any one.”

  “You do not know her!” Sabina laughed, and looked at the ceiling. “She hates ‘the wicked’ with a mortal hatred!”

  “Perhaps you mean that she hates wickedness, my dear,” suggested the Baroness in a moralizing tone.

  “Not at all!” laughed the young girl. “She would like to destroy everybody who is not like her, and she would begin with her own family. She used to tell me that I was doomed to eternal flames because I loved my canary better than I loved her. I did. It was quite true. As for my brother, she said he was wicked, too. I quite believe he is, but she had a friendly understanding with him, because they used to make Signor Sassi get money for them both. In the end they got so much that there was nothing left. Her share all went to convents and extraordinary charities, and his went heaven knows where!”

  “And yours?” asked the Baroness, to see what she would say.

  “I suppose it went to them too, like everything else, and to my mother, who spent a great deal of money. At all events, none of us have anything now. That is why I want to work.”

  “It is an honourable impulse, no doubt,” the Baroness said, in a tone of meditative disapproval.

  Sabina leaned forward, her chin on her hand.

  “You think I am too young,” she said. “And I really know nothing, except bad French and dancing. I cannot even sew, at least, not very well, and I cannot cook.” She laughed. “I once made some very good toast,” she added thoughtfully.

  “You must marry,” said the Baroness. “You must make a good marriage.”

  “No one will marry me, because I have no dowry,” answered Sabina with perfect simplicity.

  “Some men marry girls who have none. You are very pretty, you know.”

  “So my mother used to tell me when she was in a good humour. But Clementina always said I was hideous, that my eyes were like a little pig’s, quite inside my head, and that my hair was grey, like an old woman’s, and that I was as thin as a grasshopper.”

  “You are very pretty,” the Baroness repeated with conviction; “and I am sure you would make a good wife.”

  “I am afraid not!” Sabina laughed. “We are none of us good, you know. Why should I be?”

  The Baroness disapproved.

  “That is a flippant speech,” she said severely.

  “I do not feel flippant at all. I am very serious. I wish to earn my living.”

  “But you cannot—”

  “But I wish to,” answered Sabina, as if that settled the question.

  “Have you always done what you wished?” asked the Baroness wisely.

  “No, never. That is why I mean to begin at once. I am sure I can learn to be a maid, or to make hats, or feed babies with bottles. Many girls of eighteen can.”

  The Baroness shrugged her shoulders in a decidedly plebeian way. Sabina’s talk seemed very silly to her, no doubt, but she felt slightly foolish herself just then. At close quarters and in the relative intimacy that had grown up between them, the descendant of all the Conti had turned out to be very different from what the financier’s wife had expected, and it was not easy to understand her. Sometimes the girl talked like a woman of the world, and sometimes like a child. Her character seemed to be a compound of cynicism and simplicity, indifference and daring, gentleness, hardness and pride, all wonderfully amalgamated under a perfectly self-possessed manner, and pervaded by the most undeniable charm. It was no wonder that the poor Baroness was as puzzled as a hen that has hatched a swan.

  Sabina had behaved perfectly, so far; the Baroness admitted this, and it had added considerably to her growing social importance to be regarded as the girl’s temporary guardian. Even royalty had expressed its approval of her conduct and its appreciation of her genero
sity, and it was one of the Baroness’s chief ambitions to be noticed by royalty. She had shown a good deal of tact, too, for she was woman enough to guess what the girl must feel, and how hard it must be to accept so much without any prospect of being able to make a return. So far, however, matters had gone very well, and she had really begun to look forward to the glory of presenting Sabina in society during the following winter, and of steering her to a rich marriage, penniless though she was.

  But this morning she had received a new impression which disturbed her. It was not that she attached much importance to Sabina’s wild talk about working for a living, for that was absurd, on the face of it; but there was something daring in the tone, something in the little careless laugh which made her feel that the delicate girl might be capable of doing very unexpected and dangerous things. The sudden conviction came upon her that Sabina was of the kind that run away and make love matches, and otherwise break through social conventions in a manner quite irreparable. And if Sabina did anything of that sort, the Baroness would not only lose all the glory she had gained, but would of course be severely blamed by Roman society, which would be an awful calamity if it did not amount to a social fall. She alone knew how hard she had worked to build up her position, and she guessed how easily an accident might destroy it. Her husband had his politics and his finance to interest him, but what would be left to his wife if she once lost her hold upon the aristocracy? Even the smile of royalty would not make up for that, and royalty would certainly not smile if Sabina, being in her charge, did anything very startlingly unconventional.

  Sabina was quite conscious that the Baroness did not understand; indeed, she had not really expected to be understood, and when she saw the shrug of the shoulders that answered her last speech she rose quietly and went to the window. The blinds were drawn together, for it was now late in May, but she could see down to the street, and as she looked she started a little.