XIX
Although Rome is supposed to be abandoned during the months of August and September by all who can afford the time and the money to leave it, there is always a certain number of people who from choice remain within its walls throughout the summer, declaring, not without reason, that the heat is felt far less in the vast, thick-walled palaces than in country villas and jerry-built hotels.
Among this number was the Senator Rossano. He had fitted up for himself a library in Palazzo Acorari, a long, high room looking to the north, which, if difficult to keep heated in winter, was always deliciously cool even on the hottest of summer days. Here he did the greater part of his writing, and passed the weeks when Rome is deserted, both pleasantly and profitably. Usually he was quite alone during these weeks, for Giacinta as a rule went with friends to one or another of the summer resorts in the Apennines or the north of Italy, or perhaps southward to the fresh sea-breezes of Sorrento.
This year, however, she had delayed her villeggiaturalater than usual, and was still in Rome. The professor was engaged upon a new scientific work, dealing with no less complicated a theme than the moral responsibility of criminals for the crimes they happened to have committed. Giacinta had been busily engaged in making a clear copy of her father's manuscript. The wealth of detail and example which the professor had brought to bear in order to support certain of his theories did not, it must be owned, always form suitable reading for even the comparatively young, and certainly not for an unmarried woman of Giacinta's age.
But Professor Rossano did not trouble himself about such a trifle as this. He regarded his illustrations as illustrations, mere accidents necessary to his arguments; and it would never have entered into his head that his daughter might not look at them from the same detached point of view. As a matter of fact, Giacinta did so look at them; consequently, no harm was done.
She was sitting with her father in his library, engaged in sorting some papers. It was nearly five o'clock and the great heat of the day was nearly over; in another hour or so she would insist on dragging the professor away from his work, and making him accompany her in a drive outside one of the gates of the city. She was contemplating some suggestion of the kind when her father suddenly looked up from his writing.
"I tell you what we will do this evening, Giacinta," he observed. "We will go and dine at the Castello di Costantino. I have not been there yet this summer. Perhaps we shall find some friends there. The Countess Vitali – she often dines there at this time of year, and nobody can be more amusing when she is in the vein. Her dry humor is most refreshing; it is like something that has been sealed up in an Etruscan tomb and suddenly brought to light with all the colors fresh upon it. Yes, we will go to the Castello di Costantino, and you can tell the servants we shall not eat here."
Giacinta was more than ready to fall in with the idea. She was about to ring the bell in order to tell the servants not to prepare dinner, when the door opened and Silvio walked into the room.
The professor gazed at him placidly.
"I thought that you were at Terni," he said.
"So I was," replied Silvio, smiling, "a fortnight ago. But I completed my business there, and placed the order for the steel girders. Since then I have been in the Sabina. I came from Montefiano this morning."
Giacinta started. "From Montefiano?" she exclaimed.
"From Montefiano – yes," repeated Silvio. "I have not been staying at the castle there," he added, dryly.
"You have been committing some folly, I suppose," remarked the professor, "and I do not wish to hear about it. You will have the goodness, Silvio, not to mention the subject."
"I have been staying with a friend of yours, Babbo," Silvio replied, laughing. "Don Agostino – "
"Don Agostino?" repeated his father. "The devil take your Don Agostino! I do not know whom you mean."
"Monsignor Lelli, then," returned Silvio. "He has come to Rome with me, and he is here – in the house. I left him in the drawing-room. I suppose you will go there to see him; or shall I tell him that you hope the devil may take him?"
The professor burst out laughing. "Lelli! Here?" he exclaimed. "Certainly I will go. I have not seen him for years. I remember now, of course – they sent him to Montefiano – those imbroglioni at the Vatican! And so you have been staying with Lelli? Well, at least you have been in good company. I hope he has succeeded in putting a little common-sense into your head."
He hurried out of the room to greet his old friend, leaving Silvio and Giacinta alone together.
"I suppose," said the latter, "that you have seen Donna Bianca again – otherwise I cannot imagine what you have found to do at Civitacastellana for nearly a fortnight? I am told there is nothing to see there."
"It is very picturesque," observed Silvio. "The river, and the situation – "
"No doubt; but I never supposed you went there to look at the river. When I heard it was only four or five miles from Montefiano, then I understood! But who is this Monsignor Lelli, Silvio? I think I have heard Babbo tell some story about him, but I have forgotten what it was."
"He is the parroco of Montefiano," replied Silvio, "and he used to be at the Vatican some years ago. I do not know the story – he would not tell it me; but Babbo knows it well, and we will ask him – the history of his earlier life – that he did tell me. Imagine, Giacinta, he was engaged to Bianca Acorari's mother. They forced her to marry the Principe di Montefiano, and then he became a priest. But he never ceased to love her, although he did become a priest; that I know."
Giacinta looked at him.
"And now?" she asked.
"Now he has come to ask Babbo for my character," answered Silvio, smiling. "If he gets a good one, he will help me to marry Bianca. Do you know, Giacinta, that they want to marry her to a brother of the princess – a Baron d'Antin? Did you ever hear of anything so outrageous? As Don Agostino – he will not be called monsignore– says, such a thing must be prevented, and, of course, I am the proper person to prevent it."
"Of course!"
"You must admit that it is strange, Giacinta, that Don Agostino should have been engaged to Bianca's mother – and her name was Bianca also – just as I am engaged to the daughter, and that he should be at Montefiano. It seems like a destiny. As for this Baron d'Antin – "
"I have seen him several times," observed Giacinta. "He always stares very hard. I asked the porter who he was. He is not so very old, Silvio; he looks younger than the princess."
"You had better marry him," returned Silvio; "then you will become my step-aunt by marriage as well as being my sister."
Giacinta laughed. "Don't talk nonsense," she said; "but tell me what you and Monsignor Lelli propose to do. I never expected that you would confide your love affairs to a priest. First of all a French governess, and now a monsignore. You are certainly an original person, Silvio."
"Ah, but Don Agostino is not like most priests – "
"Because he has been in love himself?" interrupted Giacinta, laughing.
"Oh, not at all! There would be nothing unusual in that," answered Silvio, dryly. "Priests are no different from other people, I suppose, although they may profess to be so. No; Don Agostino is not like the majority of his brethren, because he has the honesty to be a man first and a priest afterwards. He does not forget the priest, but one hears and feels the man all the time he is talking to one.
"As to what I am going to do, Giacinta," Silvio continued, tranquilly, "I am going to marry Bianca Acorari, as I have told you before – "
"Very often," added Giacinta.
"But how I am going to do it, is certainly not quite clear at present. I would have waited, and so would she; but how can we wait now that they are trying to force her to marry this old baron in order to prevent her from marrying me?"
"It is very strange," said Giacinta, thoughtfully. "I certainly believed they did not intend her to marry at all – at any rate, for some years."
"Ah, but that was before I appeared on the scene," observed Silvio. "Now they are afraid of her marrying me, and so would marry her to anybody who happened to be noble."
Giacinta shook her head. "There is some other reason than that," she replied. "The princess could find scores of husbands for the girl without being obliged to fall back on her own brother, who must be nearly thirty years older than Donna Bianca. A marriage between those two would be a marriage only in name."
Silvio stared at her. "What in the world do you mean, Giacinta?" he exclaimed.
"Oh," she returned, hurriedly, "I don't mean – well, what you think I mean! I meant to say that, supposing Bianca Acorari were married to this old baron, everything would go on as before in Casa Acorari. It would be, so to speak, merely a family arrangement, which would, perhaps, be very convenient."
"Perbacco!" exclaimed Silvio, "but you have your head upon your shoulders, Giacinta! I never thought of that. I thought it was simply a scheme to marry Bianca as soon as possible, in order to get her away from me. But very likely you are quite right. There is probably some intrigue behind it all. We will hear what Don Agostino thinks of your supposition – ah, here they come!" he broke off suddenly as his father and Don Agostino entered the library together.
Silvio made the priest acquainted with his sister, and then turned to the professor.
"I hope, Babbo," he said, "that you have given me a fairly good character."
"I have explained that you are as obstinate as a mule," replied his father.
Don Agostino laughed. "I have heard a few other things about you also," he said, laying his hand on Silvio's shoulder. "After all," he added, "they were only things I expected to hear, so I might quite as well have stopped at Montefiano instead of coming to Rome – except for the pleasure of seeing an old friend again."
"Don Agostino will spend the evening with us," said Silvio to his father, "and early to-morrow morning I am going back with him to Montefiano."
Giacinta looked somewhat perplexed. "Do you know," she said, "we had settled to dine at the Castello di Costantino this evening? You see, Silvio, I had no idea you were coming back, and still less that we should have a visitor – "
"But we will all go and dine at the Costantino," interposed the professor, jovially. "Why not? We shall be a party of four – and four is a very good number to sit at table, but not to drive in a botte– so we will have two botti, and then nobody need sit on the back seat. You will go with Silvio, Giacinta, and monsignore and I will go together."
Don Agostino hesitated for a moment. "It is a place where one may meet people," he said, "and nobody knows that I am in Rome – "
"No, no," returned the professor, hastily, "you are not likely to meet any one you know at the Costantino, unless it be Countess Locatelli – and you certainly would not mind meeting her?"
"On the contrary," said Don Agostino. "It is always a pleasure to meet her – and to talk to her. Doubly so," he added, "after so long an exile at Montefiano. I do not find the female society of Montefiano very – what shall I say? sharpening to the intellect. My house-keeper is occasionally amusing – but limited as to her subjects."
Silvio and his father both laughed. "At any rate, she gives you a better dinner than you will get to-night," said the former.
A quarter of an hour's drive brought them to the Aventine, the most unspoiled and picturesque of the seven hills of Rome, with its secluded convent-gardens and ancient churches, its wealth of tradition and legend. In no other quarter of Rome – not even in the Forum, nor among the imperial ruins of the Palatine – does the spirit of the past seem to accompany one's every step as on the almost deserted Aventine. Especially as evening draws on, and the shadows begin to creep over the vineyards and fruit-gardens beyond the city walls; as the scattered ruins that have glowed rose-red in the rays of the setting sun now stand out – purple masses against the green background of the campagna, and Tiber reflects the orange and saffron tints of the sky, the dead present seems to be enwrapped by the living past in these groves and gardens hidden away on the Aventine and far removed from the turmoil and vulgarity of modern Rome.
In those years the so-called Castello di Costantino was not the well-known resort that it has recently become. It was, indeed, little more than a somewhat superior trattoria, where one ate a bad Roman dinner and drank good Roman wine on a terrace commanding one of the most picturesque, as it is assuredly one of the most interesting, views in the world. In those days it was not the scene of pompous gatherings in honor of foreign or home celebrities, followed by wearisome speeches breathing mutual admiration in hackneyed phrases. A few artists, a few secretaries of embassies left to conduct international affairs while their chiefs were in cooler climates; a few ladies of the Roman world who happened to be still left in the city, these, and a family party or two of the Roman mezzo-ceto, were its occasional visitors in the hot summer evenings when it is pleasant to get away from the baked pavements and streets of the town, and to breathe the fresh, sweet air stealing in from the open country and the sea.
The terrace behind the restaurant was almost deserted, and Professor Rossano selected a table at one corner of it, whence an uninterrupted view could be obtained over a part of the city, and across the campagna to the Sabine mountains in the nearer background; while between these and the Alban Hills the higher summits of the Leonessa range glowed red against the far horizon as they caught the last rays of the setting sun.
Monsignor Lelli cast a rapid glance around him as he seated himself at the little table, while the professor discussed the ordering of the dinner with the waiter. There was nobody, however, who would be likely to know him by sight, and comment on his presence in Rome in quarters where he would prefer it to remain unknown. A few couples, already half-way through their meal, or smoking their cigars over a measure of white wine, were the only visitors to the Castello di Costantino that evening besides Professor Rossano and his party, and these were evidently students either of art or of love.
"And so," observed Professor Rossano to his guest, as the waiter retired with his order, "you have come to Rome to tell me that you mean to help my son to make an idiot of himself. I suppose you are a little short of something to occupy you at Montefiano?"
Don Agostino laughed. "There was certainly more to occupy me when I lived in Rome," he said, dryly. "As for helping Silvio to make an idiot of himself, I am inclined to think he would make a worse idiot of himself without my assistance."
"Grazie, Don Agostino!" murmured Silvio, placidly.
"I wonder when they will call you back?" the professor said; "not," he added, with a quick movement of the head towards the Vatican, "as long as – "
"Caro senatore!" interrupted Don Agostino, deprecatingly.
"Of course – of course!" returned Professor Rossano, hastily. "I forgot your soutane– I always did, in the old days, if you recollect. We will talk of something else. It is always like that – when a man insists upon his right to use his own reason and to think for himself – "
"I thought you proposed to talk of something else," suggested Giacinta, mildly, to her father.
Don Agostino looked at her and laughed.
"He is the same as he was twenty years ago – our dear professor," he said.
"You are quite right, Giacinta," returned Professor Rossano. "When I think of the intellects – God-given – that have been warped and crushed in the name of God, it makes me fly into a rage. Yes, it is certainly better to talk of something else. All the same, Monsignor Lelli understands what I mean. If he did not, he would still be at the Vatican, and not at Montefiano."
"I am particularly glad that Don Agostino understands," interposed Silvio.
"You!" exclaimed the professor, witheringly. "I have told you more than once that you are a pumpkin-head. A fine thing, truly, to make my old friend Monsignor Lelli a confidant of your love affairs! Not but what you appear to have confided them to him at a tolerably early stage. It is usually at a later stage that a priest hears of a love affair – is it not so, caro monsignore?" he added, with a twinkle of amusement in his brown eyes.
Don Agostino smiled. "Yes," he replied, "at a much later stage;" and then he paused and glanced across the table at Giacinta.
The professor saw the look and misinterpreted it. "Oh," he observed, carelessly, "my daughter knows all about Silvio's folly. But I do not wish to hear anything more about that. You have asked me certain questions about Silvio, and I have answered them, and that is enough. If you choose to help the boy in making an idiot of himself, my dear friend, I suppose you must do so, but I do not wish to know anything of the matter. There will be disturbances, and I am too busy for disturbances. I am preparing my work on criminal responsibility. It will be followed by another volume on responsibility in mental diseases. By-the-way, if I had the time I would study Silvio's case. It might be useful to me for my second volume. No; Giacinta and I are decidedly too busy to be troubled with Silvio's love affairs. Giacinta, you must know, acts as my secretary and copies out my manuscripts."
Don Agostino raised his eyebrows slightly.
"All of them?" he asked.
"Certainly, all of them. Her handwriting is exceedingly clear, whereas mine is frequently almost illegible. If it were not for Giacinta, I should have to employ a typewriter."
Don Agostino said nothing, but he glanced again at the girl, and wondered how much she understood of the professor's physiological arguments, and of the examples upon which many of them were based. The few minutes' conversation he had had alone with Professor Rossano had speedily convinced him that the professor was both proud and fond of his son. He had given Silvio the character which Don Agostino, a practised reader of countenances and the natures those countenances reflected, had felt sure would be given. At the same time, the professor had expressed his opinion of his son's passion for Donna Bianca Acorari in very decided terms, and had upbraided his old friend for encouraging the boy in his folly. Don Agostino had not explained his motives for espousing Silvio's cause. He had learned all he wanted to know, and was satisfied that he had gauged Silvio's nature and character correctly. He felt, indeed, an unconquerable aversion from explaining the motives which prompted him to interest himself in a love affair between two headstrong young people. Everybody knew why he had left the Vatican; but very few people knew why, some four-and-twenty years ago, a good-looking young fellow, by name Agostino Lelli, became a priest. Most of us have an inner recess in our hearts – unless we are of that fortunate number who have no hearts – a recess which we shrink from unlocking as we would shrink from desecrating a tomb over which we are ever laying fresh flowers. Something which he could scarcely define had impelled Don Agostino to allow Silvio Rossano to glance into his jealously guarded shrine. He felt as though he had received some message from his beloved dead that the boy had a right to do so. He was convinced, moreover, in his own mind that the living spirit of the woman he had loved was urging him to save her child from the unhappiness that had fallen upon herself. Perhaps he had brooded too long and too deeply over the strange change of coincidences which had brought him and Silvio together – at the strange similarity between his own life's story and that of his old friend Professor Rossano's son, between the dead Bianca, Princess of Montefiano, and the child who bore her name and bodily likeness. In any case, it seemed to Don Agostino as though he were living over again those far-off years in Venice; as though he saw in Silvio Rossano his own youth, with all its hopes and all its joys, and yet with the same dark shadows – shadows that only youth itself had prevented him from realizing – threatening to overwhelm and destroy both.
"The boy is in earnest," he had said to Professor Rossano during their conversation together before setting out for the Castello di Costantino. "Cannot you see that he is in earnest?"
He spoke almost angrily, the more so, perhaps, on account of that strange feeling which never left him – the feeling that he was pleading his own cause and that of his dead.
"My dear friend," the professor had responded, with a slight shrug of the shoulders, "when one is young and in love, one is always in earnest – each time. Are you so old that you cannot remember? Ah, I forgot, you had no experience of such things – at least, no official experience."
Don Agostino smiled. "No," he repeated, "no official experience."
The professor glanced at him with a gleam of satirical amusement. He fancied he had detected a note of irony in the other's voice, but in his interpretation of it he was very wide of the mark.
And Don Agostino had found that the result of his conversation with Silvio's father was exactly what Silvio himself had foretold. The professor had dismissed the whole affair with airy good-humor as a pazzia, a folly in which he had so far participated as to have made formal overtures on his son's behalf for Donna Bianca Acorari's hand, and of which he did not wish to hear anything more. If Silvio thought the girl would make him a good wife, then by all means let him marry her, if he could. If he could not, there were plenty of other girls to choose from, and any one of them who married Silvio would be a great deal luckier than she most probably deserved to be.
Don Agostino had very soon come to the conclusion that the professor would place no serious obstacles in the way to hinder his son from marrying Donna Bianca Acorari, should Silvio find means to accomplish that object. During the remainder of their dinner at the Castello di Costantino he threw himself, as it were, into Professor Rossano's humor, and it soon became evident to Silvio and Giacinta that their father and his guest were mutually enjoying one another's conversation. Giacinta, indeed, was not a little astonished at hearing the professor discourse so readily with a priest. But then, as she noted the facility with which Monsignor Lelli met her father on his favorite ground, the knowledge which he displayed of the scientific and political problems of the day, the serene tolerance with which he would discuss questions which she knew to be anathema to the ecclesiastical temperament, it was at once revealed to her that this was no ordinary priest, whose mental vision was limited by the outlook of the sacristy. The professor, as the evening wore on, seemed to be in his element. From subject to subject he flew with a rapidity which would have been bewildering had it not been for the conciseness and pungency of the arguments he brought to bear upon each of them. But Monsignor Lelli met him at every turn, agreeing with him often, but often parrying his thrusts with rapier-like stabs of keenest satire. The summer twilight was already fading into dusk, and the moon was rising over the Aventine, casting long shadows from the cypress-trees over the gardens and vineyards stretching away beneath the terrace, and still the two continued their discussions.
People seated at little tables near them ceased from laughing and talking, and turned round to listen, for the waiters had whispered that the signore with the beard was the famous Senator Rossano, and that the priest was without doubt a cardinal who had dressed as an ordinary priest lest he should be compromised by being seen in public in such company.
Suddenly, in the midst of a more than usually brilliant sally, provoked by some observation from his host, Monsignor Lelli stopped abruptly and addressed an entirely irrelevant remark to Giacinta. Silvio, who happened to be looking at him, saw his face change slightly as he looked beyond the professor towards the door leading from the restaurant on to the terrace. A small group of new arrivals was issuing from this door, and its members began to make their way to a vacant table a short distance from that occupied by the professor and his party.
Giacinta also had caught sight of the new-comers. "Look, Silvio!" she exclaimed, in a low tone; "look, father, there is Princess Montefiano's brother, Monsieur d'Antin, with those people!"
"Very well, Giacinta," returned the professor, vexed at the interruption; "he can go to the devil! Go on with what you were saying," he added to Don Agostino. "It was well put – very well put, indeed – but I think that I have an argument – "
"Caro senatore," observed Don Agostino, tranquilly, "are you aware that it grows late? We can continue our discussion as we return to the city. Signorina," he continued, turning to Giacinta, "you are sitting with your back to the view. Is it not beautiful, with the moonlight falling on those ruins?"
He rose from his chair as he spoke, and motioned to Giacinta to accompany him to the parapet of the terrace.
"Bring your father away," he said to her, in a low voice, "and Silvio. It is as well for us not to be seen together."
"But Baron d'Antin does not know Silvio by sight," returned Giacinta, "and I doubt if he knows either my father or me by sight. Do you know him, monsignore?" she added.
"I have never seen him," said Don Agostino, "and it is not of him I am thinking – but of the other, the young man who is with him. No, do not look round, signorina! At present I think that we are unobserved. It will be more prudent for me to leave you without any further ceremony. We can meet again outside the restaurant."
"But who is he – that other one?" asked Giacinta, quickly.
"A person I would rather not meet," replied Don Agostino – "at least," he added, "I would rather not be seen by him under the present circumstances, signorina. I beg of you to explain to your father that he will find me waiting for him outside," and, turning from her, Don Agostino walked rapidly towards the door, having satisfied himself that the new-comers were occupied with the head-waiter in ordering their dinner, and that he could probably leave the terrace unobserved by them.