CHAPTER x.x.xIX

MR. BENJAMIN LEVY IS BUSY

A woman stood on the little stone piazza of that Italian villa, with her face raised in agony to the blue sky, and her thin white hands wrung together with frantic nervous strength. Her whole att.i.tude was full of the hopeless abandonment of a great tearless grief; and slowly dawning pa.s.sion, long a stranger to her calm face, was creeping into her features. On the ground, spurned beneath her feet, was a long official-looking letter and envelope. A thunderbolt had flashed down upon the sweet stillness of her serene life.

She was quite alone, and she looked out upon an unbroken solitude--that fair neglected garden with its high walls which seemed to give it an air of peculiar exclusiveness.

"I will not go," she said, speaking quickly to herself in an odd, uneven tone. "The law of England shall not make me. I am an old woman. If they do, they cannot open my lips. I! to stand up in one of their courts, and tell the story of my shame, that they may listen and condemn my son. Oh, Bernard, Bernard, Bernard! The Lord have mercy upon you for this your crime! Mine was the sin. Mine should be the guilt. Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d!

Is this just, in my old age, to pour down this fire of punishment upon my bowed head? Have I not suffered and done penance--ay, until I had even thought that I had won for myself peace and rest and forgiveness?

Was it a sin to think so? Is this my punishment? Oh, Bernard, my son, my son! Let not the sin be his, O Lord. It is mine--mine only!"

Sweet perfumes were floating upon the soft still air, and away on the hill sides the morning mists were rolling away. The sun's warmth fell upon the earth and the flowers, and birds and humming insects were glad.

And in the midst of it all she stood there, a silent, stony figure, grief and anguish and despair written in her worn face. G.o.d was dealing very hardly with her, she cried in her agony. Truly sin was everlasting.

"Signorina!"

She turned round with a start. A servant girl stood by her side with a card on a salver.

"A gentleman to see the signorina," she announced; "an English gentleman."

The woman turned pale with fear, and her fingers trembled. She would not even glance at the name on the card.

"Tell him that I see no one. I am ill. I will not see him, be his business what it may. Do you hear, child? Go and send him away."

The girl curtsied and disappeared. Her mistress stepped back into the room, and listened fearfully. Soon there came what she had dreaded, the sound of an altercation. She could hear Nicolette protesting in her shrill _patois_, and a rather vulgar, but very determined English voice, vigorously a.s.serting itself. Then there came the sound of something almost like a scuffle, and Nicolette came running in with red eyes.

"Signorina, the brute, the brute!" she cried; "he will come in. He dared to lay his hands upon me. See, he is here! Oh, that Marco had been in the house! He should have beaten him, the dog, the coward, to oppose a woman's will by force!"

While she had been sobbing out her complaint, her a.s.sailant had followed up his advantage, and Mr. Benjamin Levy, in a rather loud check suit, and with a cringing air, but with a certain dogged determination in his manner, appeared. Mrs. Martival turned to him with quiet dignity, but with flashing eyes.

"Sir, by what right do you dare to enter my house by force, and against my command? I will not speak with you or know your business. I will have no communication with you."

"Then your son will be hanged!" Mr. Benjamin said, with unaccustomed bluntness.

Mrs. Martival trembled, and sank into a chair. Mr. Benjamin followed up his advantage.

"I am not from the police. I have no connection with them. On the other hand, I am considerably interested in saving your son, and I tell you that I can put into your hands the means of doing so. Now, will you listen to me?"

Something in Mrs. Martival's face checked him. The features had suddenly become rigid, and an ashy pallor had stolen over them. Nicolette, who had been lingering in the room, suddenly threw herself on her knees beside her mistress's side, and caught hold of her hands.

"Oh, the wretch!" she cried, "the miserable wretch; he has killed my mistress!"

He stood helplessly by while she ran backwards and forwards with cold water, smelling salts, and other restoratives, keeping up all the while a running fire of scathing comments upon his heartless conduct, of which, needless to say, he understood not a single word. Beneath his breath he cursed this unlucky fainting fit. He had already lost a day on the way, and the time was short. What if she were to be ill--too ill to be moved! The very thought made him restless and uneasy.

In the midst of the confusion Mrs. Martival's housekeeper returned from her marketing in the little town, and to his relief he found that she understood English. He interrupted Nicolette's shrill torrents of abuse against him, and briefly explained the situation.

"I do not wish to force myself upon her," he said. "I do not wish to be troublesome in any way. But when she is conscious, I want you just to show her half a dozen words which I will write on the back of a card.

If, when she has read them, she still wishes me to go, I will do so without attempting to see her again."

The woman nodded.

"Very well," she said; "wait outside."

He left the room and walked softly up and down the pa.s.sage, eyeing with some contempt the rich faded curtains and quaint artistic furniture about the place, so unlike the gilded glories of his own taste. In about half an hour the housekeeper came out to him.

"She is conscious now," she said; "give me your message."

He gave her a card on which he had already penciled a few words, and waited, terribly anxious, for the result. The woman withdrew, and closed the door. For a moment there was silence. Then a wild, fierce cry rang out from the room and echoed through the house. Before it had died away the door was flung open, and she stood on the threshold, her white hair streaming down her back, and every vestige of color gone from her face.

Her eyes, too, shone with a feverish glow which fascinated him.

"Is it you who wrote this?" she cried, holding up the card clenched in her trembling fingers. "If you are a man, tell me, is it true?"

"I believe it is," he answered. "In my own mind, I am certain that it is. You are the only person who can prove it. I want you to come to England with me."

"I am ready," she said. "When can we start?"

He looked at his watch.

"I will be here in half an hour with a carriage," he said. "If we can get over the hills by midday, we shall catch the express."

"Go, then," she said calmly; "I shall be waiting for you."

He hurried away, and soon returned with a carriage from the inn. In less than an hour they had commenced their journey to England.

It was an early summer evening in Mayfair, and Sir Allan Beaumerville stood on the balcony of his bijou little house, for which he had lately deserted the more stately family mansion in Grosvenor Square. There was a soft pleasant stillness in the air, and a gentle rustling of green leaves among the trees. The streets below were almost blocked with streams of carriages and hansoms, for the season was not yet over, and it was fast approaching the fashionable dinner hour. Overhead, in somewhat curious contrast, the stars were shining in a deep cloudless sky, and a golden-horned moon hung down in the west.

Sir Allan was himself dressed for the evening, with an orchid in his b.u.t.tonhole, and a light overcoat on his arm. In the street, his night brougham, with its pair of great thoroughbred horses, stood waiting. Yet he made no movement toward it. He did not appear to be waiting for anyone, nor was he watching the brilliant throng pa.s.sing westward. His eyes were fixed upon vacancy, and there was a certain steadfast, rapt look in them which altered his expression curiously. Sir Allan Beaumerville seldom used his powers of reflection save for practical purposes. Just then, however, he was departing from his usual custom.

Strange ghosts of a strange past were flitting through his mind. Old pa.s.sions, which had long lain undisturbed, were sweeping through him, old dreams were revived, old memories kindled once more smoldering fires, and aided at the resurrection of a former self. The cold man-of-the-world philosophy, which had ruled his life for many years, seemed suddenly conquered by this upheaval of a stormy past. Under the influence of the serene night, the starlit sky, and the force of these old memories, he seemed to realize more than he had ever done before the littleness of his life, its colorless egotism, the barrenness of its routine. Like a flash it stood glaringly out before him. Stripped of all its intellectual furbishing, the chill selfishness of the creed he had adopted struck home to his heart. A finite life, with a finite goal--annihilation! Had it really ever satisfied him? Could it satisfy anyone? A great weariness crept in upon him. Epicureanism could have been carried no further than he had carried it. He had steeped his senses in the most refined and voluptuous pleasures civilization had to offer him. Where was the afterglow? Was this all that remained? A palled appet.i.te, a hungry heart, and a cold, chill despair! What comfort could his much-studied philosophy afford him? It had satisfied the brain; had it nothing to offer the heart? Something within him seemed to repeat the word with a grim echo. Nothing! nothing! nothing!

What was it that caused his eyes to droop till they rested upon two figures on the opposite pavement? He could not tell whence the power, and yet he obeyed the impulse. They glanced over the man with indifference and met the woman's upturned gaize. And Sir Allan Beaumerville stood like a figure of stone, with a deathlike pallor in his marble face.

The stream of carriages swept on, and the motley crowds of men and women pa.s.sed on their way unnoticing. Little they knew that a tragedy was being played out before their very eyes. A few noticed that stately white-haired lady gazing strangely at the house across the way, and a few too saw the figure of the man on whom her eyes were bent. But no one could read what pa.s.sed between them. That lay in their own hearts.

Interruption came at last. Mr. Benjamin Levy's excitement mastered his patience. He asked the question which had been trembling on his lips.

"Is it he?"

She started, and laid her hand upon his shoulder for support. She was very much shaken.

"Yes. See, he is beckoning. He wants me. I shall go to him. May G.o.d give me strength!"

She moved forward to cross the road. He caught hold of her arm in sudden fear.