After he had parted from Tommaso, the latter went about his business, though not in breathless haste. His errand, as he had called it, took him amongst the dealers in coaches, new and second-hand, who had their warehouses near the Massimo palace and in the neighbourhood of Saint Mark’s, and in other regions near by, from which the public conveyances started and where private carriages could be bought or hired.
The Bravi, who were practical men, judged that a former highway robber should be a good judge of such vehicles, and had commissioned Tommaso, who had stopped and plundered hundreds of them on the Bologna road, to find one that would suit their purpose. It was to be perfectly sound, not large, comfortably cushioned and provided with solid shutters to draw up outside the windows. There were to be good locks to the doors, with keyholes inside and out, and a boot for luggage, also provided with a safe fastening. It was no easy matter to find exactly what the Bravi wanted, without paying a high price for a perfectly new carriage, and it was a prime necessity that the one Tommaso was to buy for them should be able to stand a rather unusual journey without once breaking down.
They also needed good horses of their own, for there were several reasons why they could not hire a team from the post for the start, and they meant to trust to luck for exchanging or selling theirs at the end of the first stage. Tommaso was a capital judge of horseflesh, as they had found out on the journey from Venice, and they confidently left the whole matter in his hands while they occupied themselves with graver affairs, or sought relaxation in the pleasures which the city afforded.
CHAPTER XIX
ORTENSIA HAD TOLD her husband everything that had passed between her and Don Alberto, and Stradella’s first instinct was to seek him out, insult him, and force him into a duel. Ortensia saw the big vein swelling ominously in the middle of the white forehead, the tightening of the lips, and the unconscious movement of the fingers that closed upon an imaginary sword-hilt; she saw all this and was pleased, as every woman is when the man she loves is roused and wants to fight for her. But Ortensia did not mean that there should be any bloodshed, and she soothed her husband and made him promise that he would only watch over her more jealously than ever, and make it impossible for Don Alberto ever to be left alone with her again. If he would promise that, she said, she should feel quite safe.
He promised reluctantly, but said that he would not stay under Altieri’s roof another day; he would not owe such an obligation to a man who had attacked his honour, he would not tolerate the thought that his wife was actually dwelling in the house of the wretch against whom she asked his protection. But Ortensia besought him to do nothing hurriedly, lest he should cause a scandal which would do more harm to her good name than Don Alberto’s foolish declarations, which could be kept a secret.
‘He began to look about for lodgings’ToList
Stradella yielded to her entreaties at first, for he saw that there was some sense in what she said; but his pride could not bear such a situation long, and with every day that passed he became more anxious to leave the palace. He began to look about for lodgings when he went out alone in the morning, and he saw more than one that would have suited him; but none of them would be free until the Feast of Saint John, which was then the quarter-day in Rome, on which leases began and expired. He wanted a dwelling with a hall large enough for rehearsing with his orchestra, and having a loggia looking towards the south, like the one at the Orso inn.
And now it happened, on that same morning when Cucurullo went to find Tommaso, that Stradella himself had gone out to see another house of which he had heard; and Don Alberto, who was well informed of the movements of the little household, judged the moment favourable for visiting Ortensia, since he had observed that Stradella was usually away at least an hour, and often much longer, when he went out early; and if Cucurullo should return sooner, it would not matter.
Ten minutes after the hunchback had left the palace Don Alberto knocked at the door of the small apartment halfway down the grand staircase. Pina opened almost immediately, not suspecting anything, but started in surprise when she saw who the visitor was.
‘I desire to speak with the Lady Ortensia,’ said Don Alberto suavely.
‘The master is gone out,’ Pina answered, ‘and my mistress would never receive a gentleman’s visit alone, sir.’
‘The matter is urgent and concerns the Maestro,’ Don Alberto explained, and at the same time he made the gold pieces in his pocket jingle, as if quite accidentally.
‘The Maestro will be at home in two hours,’ said Pina firmly, and making as if she would shut the door.
‘I am too busy to wait so long,’ objected the young man. ‘My dear good woman, do you know who I am?’
‘Perfectly, sir. You are Don Alberto Altieri, His Eminence’s nephew.’
‘Well, then, you need not make so much trouble about letting me in, my dear, for this is my own house, and a lady may surely see her landlord on a matter of business!’
Thereupon he took out a gold florin and tried to put it into Pina’s palm in a coaxing way and with a smile. But she shut her hand quickly and held it behind her back, shaking her head. Don Alberto was not used to servants who refused gold. He tried flattery.
‘Really,’ he cried, ‘for a girl with such a sweet face, you are very obstinate! If you will not take an Apostolic florin, I will give you the Apostolic kiss, my dear!’
He tried to kiss her, trusting that a middle-aged serving-woman could not resist the Pope’s nephew when he called her a sweet-faced girl. But she kept him at arm’s length with surprising energy.
‘You are mistaken,’ she said in a low voice, lest Ortensia should hear her within; ‘I am neither young, nor pretty, nor quite a fool!’
Don Alberto suddenly seized her wrist unawares and held it fast.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘you are not a fool, but you are Filippina Landi, a runaway nun, and though you once got a pardon, you are in Rome now, and I can have it revoked in an hour, and you will be lodged in the Convent of Penitent Women before night, to undergo penance for the rest of your life.’
Pina shivered from head to foot and turned very pale. He dropped her wrist, and, as if she were overcome by an invisible power, she stood aside, hanging her head, and let him pass in. For more than a minute after he had disappeared, she stood leaning against the marble door-post, pressing her left hand to her heart and breathing hard.
Don Alberto knew the small apartment well, for he had once lived in it with his tutor, before the Cardinal had left the palace to take up his quarters in the Quirinal. He went directly to the large sitting-room, from the windows of which Ortensia and Stradella had listened to the serenade and had seen the fighting; he tapped at the door, and Ortensia’s voice bade him enter.
She was seated in one of those wooden chairs with arms and a high flat leathern back, which one often sees in Rome even now, chiefly in outer reception-halls and ranged in stiff order against the walls. The shutters were drawn near together to keep out the heat and to darken the room a little. She had a lute on her knees, but her hands held a large sheet of music, from which she had been reading over the words of the song before trying it. She did not look up as the door opened and was shut, for she supposed it must be Cucurullo who had come to ask a question. Don Alberto stood still a few seconds in silent admiration. She had evidently been washing her hair, for it was loose and was combed out over her shoulders in red-auburn waves; and the shorter locks at her temples and round her forehead floated out in little clouds full of rich but transparent colour. The morning was warm, and she was still clad in a loose dressing-gown of thin white silk trimmed with a simple lace. Never, in many misspent days, had Altieri seen a more radiant vision. When she had read all the words of the song, she laid the sheet on the table beside her, and spoke without looking round, for, as her chair was placed, the door was a little behind her, and she was sure that it was Cucurullo who had entered, since she had not heard the slight sound of Pina’s cotton skirt.
�
��What is it?’ she asked quietly.
‘A thief, dear lady,’ answered Don Alberto, smiling; ‘one who has forced your door to steal a sight of you — —’
At the first word she had risen, turning towards him as she rose, and laying the lute on the table at her left, which was between her and the door.
‘How dare you come here?’ she cried, indignantly interrupting his pretty speech.
‘I dare everything and — nothing,’ he answered; ‘everything for the happiness of seeing you and hearing your voice, but nothing else that can displease you! See, I do not move a step, I stand here your prisoner on parole, for I give you my word that I will not run away! I will stand here like a statue, or kneel if you bid me, or lie prostrate at your feet!’
‘I bid you go, sir! I bid you leave me, for you have no right to be here!’
‘No right? I have the right to live, sweet lady! The meanest creature has that.’
‘I do not bid you die,’ Ortensia answered with some contempt. ‘I only tell you to go!’
‘And so to die most painfully, for I cannot live without seeing you! Therefore I will do anything but go away before my eyes have fed me full of you and I can bear another day’s fasting!’
‘Then, sir,’ said Ortensia proudly, ‘it is I that will leave you; and if you mean in earnest not to displease me, you will not stay here.’
She made two steps towards the door of her own room, before he moved; then he sprang nimbly forward and placed himself in front of her, at a little distance.
‘I ask nothing but a kind word,’ he said earnestly, ‘or if you will not speak it, give me one thought of pity, and I shall see it in your eyes! You love your husband, and I respect your love — I admire you the more for it, upon my soul and honour I do! Did I not promise to be a true friend to you both? Have I broken my promise because I am here now, only to see your dear face for a few moments and bear away your image to cheer my lonely life?’
‘Your lonely life!’ Ortensia smiled, though scornfully enough.
‘Yes, my lonely life,’ he answered, repeating the words with grave emphasis. ‘What would yours be, pray, if you were forced to be for ever a central figure amongst men and women who wearied you with adulation and never ceased from flattering except to ask favours for themselves and their relatives? And if, with that, you loved Stradella as you do, and he was another woman’s husband and would not even look at you, nor let you hear his voice, would your existence not be lonely, I ask? In the desert of your life, would you not hide yourself in the hermitage of your heart, with the image of the man you loved upon your only altar? Would you not feel alone all day, and lonelier still all night, though the whole world pressed upon you, even at your rising and your lying down, to call you beautiful and gifted beyond compare, and a divine being on earth, and in return to beg a benefice for a graceless younger son, or a curacy for a starving cousin of a priest, or the privilege of providing the oil for the lamps in the Vatican? That is my life, if you call it a life! It is all I have, except my love for you — my honouring, respecting, venerating love!’
He spoke his words well, with changing tone and moving accent, but the one great gift he had received from nature was his wonderful and undefinable charm of manner; and surely of all marketable commodities, from gold and silver coin to coloured beads and cowry shells, there is none that can be so readily exchanged for almost anything in the world its possessor wants. Ortensia felt it in spite of herself, and while she was not touched by his attempts at eloquence, she was more inclined to laugh than to be angry at what he said. There was something in him and in his way that disarmed and made it almost impossible not to forgive him anything in reason.
‘If my husband were only here,’ Ortensia said, ‘this would be as amusing as a comedy, but a lady cannot go to the play alone. Will you wait till he comes home? Then we will listen to you together, and you will get twice as much applause, for it is really very good acting, I must admit!’
A professional love-maker always knows when to stop being serious during the early stages of the game, and when to leave off laughing later on; for there is nothing so sure to weary and irritate an average woman as perpetual seriousness at first, when she has not yet made up her mind and perhaps never may, nor is there anything more ruinous than to jest about love when she herself feels it and bestows it. The reason of this must be that if you are too grave while she is still undetermined, she will believe that you are taking her love for granted, which is an unpardonable sin, whereas after she has unfolded her heart and given you the most precious part of herself, she trembles at the merest suggestion that you may not be in earnest.
Don Alberto was a professional love-maker, and at Ortensia’s last speech he laughed so readily and naturally that she could not help joining him.
‘The truth is,’ he said presently, ‘the Queen is going to have a little comedy performed by her friends, and I have been giving you some bits from my part. If you really think I do it well, I will wait for the Maestro, as you say, and he shall hear it too, for his opinion is valuable.’
‘If you had told me the other day at the palace that you were only rehearsing, it would have been better,’ Ortensia said, still smiling.
‘No,’ answered the young man, ‘for I can only judge of my own acting when it carries so much conviction with it that it is mistaken for truth. Is that not sound reason?’
‘Sound reason, but poor compliment, sir! In future, pray choose some one else for your experiments. I have heard a Latin proverb quoted which says that the experiment should be made on a body of small value! You hold me cheap, sir, since you try your experiments on me.’
‘I hold you dearer than you guess,’ answered Don Alberto gaily. ‘But I am no match for you in argument. Giovanni Fiorentino tells the story of a lady who played lawyer to defend her lover against a money-lender to whom he had promised a pound of his flesh if he failed to pay. I think you must be of her family, and a Doctor in Law!’
‘If I have won my case against you,’ retorted Ortensia, ‘there is nothing left for you but to retire from the court, acknowledging that you are beaten.’
‘Beaten as a lawyer, but successful as an actor,’ laughed Altieri, ‘and a good friend at your service, as ever. Will you give me your hand, lady?’
‘What for, sir? I was sorry I did, the other day. I should have boxed your ears instead!’
‘Do it now!’
With a careless laugh he dropped on his knees, just at her feet, folding his hands like a penitent; and laughing too, in spite of herself, she lightly tapped his left ear. He instantly turned the other towards her.
‘Remember the gospel,’ he said. ‘“If thine enemy smite thee on one cheek — —”’
Again she laughed, but she would not touch him a second time, and she turned away. He sprang to his feet, and there was a flash of light in his eyes, and his hands trembled; for he was behind her, and the temptation to catch her in his arms was almost too strong for him. At that moment the door opened without any warning knock.
‘The master is coming up the stairs,’ said Pina quietly, and instantly she disappeared again.
Don Alberto started, but Ortensia was calm.
‘Stay here and say you have come to see him,’ she said, and before he could answer she was in her own room and the door was shut.
Don Alberto was himself again in a moment, for no experienced woman of the world could have done the right thing with more instant decision than Ortensia had shown. He understood, too, that he had so thoroughly frightened the wretched Pina that she was henceforth his slave, on whom he could count as safely as Stradella had depended on her in Venice. With the instinct of an old hand he glanced quickly round the room to see that no object had been displaced in a way to excite suspicion, and he then sat down in a straight chair, folded one knee over the other, and waited for Stradella’s coming.
The musician entered a few moments later and stared in surprise as Don Alberto rose to meet him with outstretched
hand and a friendly smile.
‘Your servant told me that you would not be back for some time,’ said Altieri, ‘but I insisted on coming in. Pray forgive the intrusion, for the matter is very urgent.’
Stradella had taken his hand rather coolly, but he did not mean his visitor to see that he was displeased, and he now politely pushed a chair forward, and took another himself.
‘I am glad to find you here,’ he said, ‘for I also wished to see you in order to thank you once more for the use of this apartment.’
‘But you are not going away?’ cried Don Alberto in astonishment.
‘Not from Rome. But I have at last found a dwelling which will just suit us, and we mean to move on Saint John’s Day.’
‘On Saint John’s Day!’ repeated Don Alberto, with still more evident surprise. ‘Really! Indeed! I assure you that I did not expect this, my dear Maestro, and I am almost inclined to think it a breach of friendship. Are you not well lodged here? Are the rooms too small for you and your lady? Or do you find them hot, or noisy? I do not understand.’
‘Pray put it down to an artist’s foolish love of independence,’ Stradella answered with suavity. ‘It is one thing for you rich nobles to accept favours from each other; you can return them; but we poor musicians cannot, and so we set a limit to what we think we may fairly receive.’
‘You give what we never can,’ objected Don Alberto, ‘for you give us your genius and its works, and I suspect you have some reason hidden away of which you do not care to speak. I can only tell you how sorry I am that you should leave this house, where I had hoped you would live whenever you came to Rome, and where you will always be welcome if you wish to return.’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1309
