Chapter Three
In which Mary Reveals Certain Suspicions
Dinner, served with that same stiff stateliness that characterised everything in the Morini household, was over, and the three men had rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room.
Mary, in a pretty décolleté dinner-gown of pale pink chiffon, with a single tea-rose in her corsage, had, at Dubard’s suggestion, gone to the piano, and in a sweet contralto had sung some of those old Florentine folk-songs, or stornelli, as they are called, those weirdly mediaeval songs that are still sung by the populace in the streets of Florence to-day. Then as conclusion she ran her fingers lightly over the keys and sang —
“Fiorin Fiorello!
Di tutti i fiorellin che fioriranno,
Il fior del’ amor mio sara il piu bello?”
“Brava! Brava!” cried the young Frenchman standing by the piano, and as she raised her eyes to his, it was patent that the pair entertained a regard for each other.
“Your songs of old Florence are so charming, so different from everything else in music, mademoiselle,” he declared. “We have nothing like them in France. Our chansons are, after all, inharmonious rubbish. It is not surprising that you in Italy have a contempt for our literature, our music, and our drama, for it cannot compare with yours. We have had no poet like Dante, no composer like Verdi, no musician like Paganini – and,” he added, dropping his voice to a low whisper as he bent quickly to her ear, “no woman so fair as Mary Morini.”
She blushed, and busied herself with her music books in order to conceal her confusion. The general was chatting with her father and mother at the farther end of the long room, and therefore did not notice that swift passage of admiration on the part of Jules Dubard.
The Frenchman was a friend of the family, mainly because he had been helpful to Morini in a variety of ways, and also on account of his pleasant, easy-going manner and quiet elegance. He was from the South. The old family château – a grey, dismal place full of ghostly memories and mildewed pictures of his ancestors – stood high up in the Pyrenees above Bayonne, five miles from the Spanish frontier; yet he had always lived in Paris, and from the days when he left college on his father’s death he had led the gay, irresponsible life of the modern Parisian of means, was a member of the Jockey Club, and a well-known figure at the Café Américain and at Maxim’s.
As a young man about the French capital he gave frequent bachelor parties at his cosy flat in the Avenue Macmahon, and possessing a very wide circle of friends, he had been able to render the Italian Minister of War several confidential services.
Two years ago, while in Rome, he had received an invitation to dine one evening at His Excellency’s splendid old palace – once the residence of a Roman prince – and from that time had been on terms of intimacy with the family and one of Mary’s most ardent admirers. He spent a good deal of his time in the Eternal City, and had during the past season become a familiar figure in society.
His Excellency, quick of observation, had, however, detected Borselli’s antipathy towards the young man, even though it was so cleverly concealed. And he had wondered. As fellow-guests beneath his roof they had that evening chatted and laughed together across the dinner-table, had referred to each other by their Christian names, and had fraternised as though they were the best friends in the world. Yet those words uttered by Angelo Borselli while awaiting the ladies had been full of hidden meaning.
The Morinis were in ignorance of the truth – and Mary most of all.
Dubard was not a handsome man – for it is difficult to find a man of the weak, anaemic type of modern Parisian who can be called good-looking from an English standpoint. He was thin-featured, lantern-jawed, with a pale complexion, dark eyes, and a brown moustache. He wore his hair parted in the centre, and as an élégant was proud of his white almost waxen hands and carefully manicured finger-nails. His dress, too, often betrayed those signs of effeminacy which in Paris just now are considered the height of good form in a man. His every movement seemed studied, yet his stiff elegance was on the most approved model of the Bois and the ballroom. He played frequently at his cercle, he wore the most hideous goggles and fur coat and drove his motor daily, and he indulged in le sport in an impossible get-up, not because he liked tramping about those horrid muddy fields, but because it was the correct thing for a gentleman to do.
But his greatest success of all had, he told himself, been the attraction of Mary Morini. All through the past winter in Rome he had danced with her, flirted with her, raised his hat to her as she had driven on the Pincio, and had joined her in her mother’s box at the Constanzi. To the Quirinale he had, of course, not been bidden, but he lived in the hope of next season receiving the coveted royal command.
With Camillo Morini as his friend, everything in Italy was possible.
Yet Angelo Borselli’s presence disturbed him that evening. He knew the man who had been given the post of Under-Secretary. They had met long before he had known Morini – under circumstances that in themselves formed a strange and remarkable story – a story which he feared might one day be made public.
And then?
Bah! Why anticipate such a terrible contretemps? he asked himself. Then he bit his under lip as he glanced at his enemy standing beneath the light of the rose-shaded lamp talking with madame, and afterwards turned again to laugh and chat with mademoiselle.
“I lunched at the Junior United Service Club to-day with a friend of yours,” he was saying; for she had risen from the piano and they had gone out upon the moon-lit verandah together, where, obtaining her permission, he lit a cigarette.
“A friend of mine?”
“Captain Houghton, the British naval attaché at Rome. He is home for a month’s leave, and sent his compliments to you.”
“Oh, Freddie Houghton?” she exclaimed. “He was longing to get home all the winter, but couldn’t get leave. He’s engaged, they say, and of course he wanted to see his enchantress. He’s the best dancer in Rome.”
Then suddenly lowering his voice, he asked abruptly —
“Why is Borselli here? I had no idea he was to be a guest!”
“Ah! I know you don’t like the fellow,” she remarked, glancing back into the room. “Neither do I. He is my father’s evil genius, I believe.”
“What makes you suspect that?” inquired the Frenchman, with considerable interest.
“Several circumstances,” was her vague response, as she twisted her curious old snake bracelet, a genuine sixteenth-century ornament which she had bought one day in a shop on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
“You mistrust him – eh?”
“He poses as my father’s friend, but I believe that all the time he is jealous of his position and is his bitterest enemy.”
“But they are very old friends, are they not?”
“Oh yes. The general owes his present position entirely to my father; otherwise he would now be in garrison in some obscure country town.”
“I only wish he were,” declared Dubard fervently. “He is jealous of our friendship. Did you notice how he glared at me while you were singing?”
“And yet at table you were such good friends,” she laughed.
“It is not polite to exhibit ill-feeling in a friend’s house, mademoiselle,” was his calm response. “Yet I admit that I entertain no greater affection for the fellow than you do.”
“But why should he object to our friendship?” she exclaimed. “If he were unmarried, and in love with me, it would of course be different.”
“No,” he said. “He hates me.”
“Why?”
Jules Dubard was silent, his dark eyes were fixed away across the moon-lit lawn.
“Why?” she repeated. “Tell me!”
“Well, he has cause to hate me – that’s all,” and he smiled mysteriously.
“But he’s a dangerous man,” she declared, with quick apprehension. “You probably don’t know so much of him as I do. He would betray his own father if it suited his purpose.”
“I know,” laughed the man drily. “I’ve heard sufficient stories concerning him to be quite well aware of his unscrupulous character. It is a thousand pities that he is an associate of your father’s.”
“Ah yes!” she sighed. “But how can it be avoided? They are in office in the same ministry, and are bound to be in constant touch with each other. The only thing I fear is that he has, by some intrigue, contrived to get my father in his power,” she said confidentially.
“How? What causes you to suspect such a thing?” he inquired quickly.
“Because once or twice of late I have noticed how when he has called in Rome and in Florence my father has been disinclined to see him, and that after the fellow’s departure he has seemed very thoughtful and preoccupied. More than once, too, I’ve heard high words between them when they’ve been closeted together in the study in Rome. I once heard him threaten my father,” she added.
“Threaten him!” cried her companion quickly. “What did the man say? Tell me.” All that the girl was telling him was confirming what, in his heart, he already suspected.
“Well,” she said, in a low voice of confidence, “it was early one morning, after the last court ball, and he had driven home with us. Afterwards my father had taken him to the study, and I had said good-night, when, on going to my room half an hour later, I found my maid very unwell. Therefore I went down again, intending to get from the study the key of the medicine cupboard, when I heard voices within, and naturally stopped to listen. I heard my father say distinctly, ‘I won’t. I’ll never be a party to such a piece of audacious robbery – why, it’s treason – treason, do you hear? No, Angelo, not even you can induce me to betray my country!’ Then in reply I heard the general say, ‘Very well. I have told you the course I intend to adopt. Your refusal places me in a critical situation, and I shall therefore save myself.’ ‘At my expense?’ asked my father in a low, hoarse voice. ‘Yes,’ the man replied. ‘I shall certainly not fall without an effort to retain my place, my liberty, depend upon it. And when the truth is out regarding the Sazarac affair, this high moral standard that you are now adopting will avail you but little.’ Then there was a silence. At last my father asked in a tone of reproach, ‘You actually intend to betray me, Angelo? – you, who owe your rank, your position, everything to me! Tell me, you are surely joking?’ ‘No,’ replied the fellow, ‘I am in earnest. You must act as I have suggested, or take the consequences’?”
“You are certain – quite certain – that Borselli mentioned the Sazarac affair?” asked the Frenchman, in deep earnestness and surprise. “I mean that you distinctly heard the name of Sazarac mentioned?”
“Distinctly. Why?”
But the Frenchman made no reply. How could he tell her? What she had related revealed to him a strange and startling truth – a truth which held him amazed, aghast.
Chapter Four
Contains a Mystery
In the rector’s cosy little study at Thornby, George Macbean sat that same evening smoking his pipe, perplexed and puzzled.
In the zone of light shed by the green-shaded reading-lamp the rector, a stout, good-humoured, round-faced man of forty, sat writing a letter, while his nephew, lounging back in the old leather arm-chair before the fireplace, drew heavy whiffs at his pipe, with his eyes fixed straight upon the well-filled bookcase before him.
That day he had become a changed man.
From the first moment he had bowed to Mary Morini, when his uncle had introduced him at Orton, he had been struck by her marvellous grace and beauty, and this admiration had daily increased until now he was compelled to acknowledge within himself that he was deeply in love with her.
He smiled bitterly as the truth made itself manifest. He had been over head and ears in love with half a dozen women in his time, but he had always in a few weeks discovered their defects, their ambitions, and their lack of womanliness, without which a woman is no woman. He supposed it would be the same again, for he was not a man who wore his heart upon his sleeve.
And yet he had discovered that a mystery surrounded her – a mystery that attracted him.
The dead quiet of the night was unbroken save for the scratching of the rector’s pen, for the village of Thornby, like all agricultural villages, goes to bed early and rises with the dawn. The solemn bell in the old church-tower struck ten as Mr Sinclair scribbled the superscription, blotted it, and rose from the table to fill his own pipe.
“Why, George, my boy, you’re glum to-night. What’s the matter?”
“I really didn’t know I was,” laughed his nephew. “I was only thinking. And I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Nothing disturbs me – except babies in church,” declared the big fellow, laughing deeply. He was a good type of the easy-going bachelor parson in the enjoyment of a comfortable living and popularity in local society. He was fond of golf and cricket, was a good judge of a horse, a good shot, and frequently rode to hounds.
He filled his well-coloured briar carefully, lit it, and then casting himself into the chair opposite his nephew, said with a laugh —
“I noticed you were very chummy with Mary Morini. Well, what do you think of her?”
“Very charming,” responded the young man, rather annoyed at his uncle’s chaff.
“All the men about here rave over her beauty – and they have cause to, no doubt. She’s a very entertaining companion and possesses a keen sense of humour – one of those girls who attract a man without being aware of it. That’s the chief essential in a woman’s grace.”
“But who are these Morinis?” inquired Macbean, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Nobody seems to know exactly who or what they are.”
“You’re quite right,” responded his uncle, in a rather changed tone. “Quite between ourselves, I’ve heard that question asked a good many times. Morini himself seems a bit of a recluse, for he seldom goes anywhere. Indeed, I haven’t spoken to him more than half a dozen times in my life. But Madame Morini and her daughter are taken up by the local people because of their apparent affluence and because they rent Orton from Lady Straker.”
“What kind of man is this Morini?” asked Macbean, in an idle tone.
“Oh, rather gentlemanly, with a lot of elegant pose. Speaks English very well for a foreigner, and smokes a very excellent brand of cigar. But, if the truth were told, he’s looked upon here with a good deal of suspicion. Ill-natured people say that he’s a foreign adventurer who comes here in hiding from the police,” he added, laughing.
The young man blew a long cloud of smoke from his lips, and remained silent. He was trying to recall a face he had seen – the face of a man, evidently a foreigner, who had passed them in a dogcart as they were on the road home from Orton. The man’s features had puzzled him ever since. They were familiar, yet he could not recollect in what circumstances they had met before.
In his position as secretary to the Member for South-West Norfolk he met many men, yet somehow he held a distinct idea that in the misty past this man had created upon him some impression of evil.
“You recollect,” he exclaimed at last, “that just before we came to the cross-roads to Calthorpe we passed a dogcart coming out from Rugby, with a groom in dark green livery.”
“Yes. It was Morini’s cart. The man in it is a guest at Orton,” was the rector’s reply. “More than that,” he added, “he’s said to be engaged – or about to be engaged – to the girl you admire so much.”
“Oh, that’s interesting!” remarked Macbean. “Do you know the man’s name?”
“He’s a young French count named Dubard. I’ve met him here several times; he seems quite a decent fellow for a Frenchman.”
“Dubard? Dubard?” repeated the young man aloud, starting forward as though a sudden revelation had flashed upon him. “Surely he can’t be Jules Dubard, the – ”
“The what?” asked the rector quickly.
His nephew hesitated, recognising how he had narrowly betrayed the secret of that recognition. Then he added quite coolly —
“The Frenchman.”
Basil Sinclair, disappointed at this clever evasion, looked his nephew straight in the face, and from the pallor of his cheeks saw that whatever recollections had been conjured up by mention of that name they were evidently the reverse of pleasing.
“His name is certainly Jules, and he is a Frenchman,” he said gravely. “But you know something about him. I see it in your face.”
The young man smiled, and lolling back again in the big easy-chair, answered with admirable coolness, considering the bewildering truth that had at that moment flashed upon him —
“I am only surprised that Miss Morini should become engaged to a Frenchman. She told me to-day that her greatest regret is that they cannot live in England always.”
“Ah, my boy, she’s a thorough-going cosmopolitan,” replied the rector, his pipe still between his teeth. “Such women always marry foreigners. I daresay her father would object if she wanted to marry an Englishman. He’s a man who evidently means his daughter to marry a title.”
“In Italy it is rather a claim to distinction not to possess a title,” laughed his nephew, recollecting how many penniless counts and marquises he had come across during those happy years when he lived with his Uncle Pietro in the white, half-deserted old city of Pisa.
“Morini is Italian to the backbone, with all the Italian’s admiration for England and yet with all the Italian’s prejudices. You’ll say so when you know him.”
“But this count?” exclaimed Macbean. “Tell me what you know about him.”
“You know more than I do, my dear George,” declared Sinclair, with a sly smile, “only you don’t choose to tell me. You hold an opinion that he is not a fit and proper person to become the husband of Morini’s daughter. Admit it.”
“I don’t yet know who Morini really is,” responded his nephew, with a clever diplomacy. “You have not yet told me the general impression in the neighbourhood regarding the family.”
“As I have already said, they’re looked upon with distinct suspicion.”
“Because they are foreigners – eh?”
“Possibly. We are very insular here in Leicestershire, notwithstanding the increasing foreign element in the hunting-field.”
George slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe, saying —
“We English hold the foreigner in too great contempt. We are apt to forget that there are other Powers constantly conspiring to undermine our strength and to overthrow our sovereignty. The rural stay-at-home entertains a belief in England’s security that is really childish in its simplicity, and if we have not a wise king, a strong Cabinet, and shrewd men in our diplomatic service, the mine must explode some day, depend upon it.”
“Ah,” laughed the rector, “I suppose it’s your parliamentary associations that make you talk like that. You told me you sometimes prepare speeches for Morgan-Mason to deliver to his constituents. Is that one of his texts?”
“No, not exactly,” replied the other, with a good-humoured smile. “I only speak what I think. The ignorance of the public regarding foreigners is simply appalling. They are in utter ignorance of the state of advancement of certain foreign nations as compared with our own. We are always slow and conservative, while they are quick to adopt new inventions, new ideas, and new schemes of progress.”
“Mostly gingerbread,” remarked the rector.
“Argument upon that point is unnecessary,” said Macbean, growing serious. “I only emphasise the fact that a foreign family in England is at a far greater disadvantage than an English family on the Continent. The former is held in suspicion or shunned, while the latter is fêted and welcomed. Ah, my dear uncle, society, with all its sins and vices, is full of amazing prejudices.”
“But of course there is another side to the question of the Morinis,” his uncle said. “It got abroad last year that Morini held some very high position in Rome. Young Barton, the schoolmaster at Kilworth, went with one of Lunn’s tours to Italy, and when he came back he told an extraordinary story of how the party were being shown the outside of one of the public offices when a gentleman descended from a carriage which drove into the courtyard, and as he entered the sentries saluted. To his surprise he recognised him as Mr Morini, and on inquiry understood from one of the doorkeepers that he was His Excellency the Minister of War. Of course nobody believed him. But I’ve looked in ‘Whitaker,’ and, strangely enough, it gives Signor Camillo Morini as Minister of War!”
“Ah, my dear uncle,” laughed Macbean, “of course regard it as entirely confidential, but what Barton discovered is the truth. Signor Morini is a member of the Italian Cabinet, and one of the most prominent personages in Italy – and they actually believe him here to be an adventurer!” he laughed. “But,” he added, “you haven’t told me about Dubard.”
“I know practically nothing, except that he stayed at Orton for a month last summer, and was very attentive to Mary. And as he’s here again this season, the gossips say they are engaged. He is a rich man, I hear, with estates in the Pyrenees.”
George Macbean’s lip curled slightly, and he gave vent to a distinct sniff of dissatisfaction. He had recognised him as they had passed on the highroad, and yet, until his uncle had mentioned the name of Dubard, he had been puzzled as to the man’s actual identity.
To him, the fact that the Frenchman was guest at Orton, and engaged to the Minister’s daughter, was utterly staggering. Yet rumour did not say there was really an engagement – or at least it had not been formally announced.
The young man relit his pipe and smoked on in silence, his brows knit, his mind full of a certain scene of the past – a scene conjured up in his memory by sight of that pale, narrow face with the brown moustache – a scene that caused his hands to clench themselves and his teeth to close together firmly.
“Do tell me what you know about the Frenchman,” urged the rector.
“No, thank you, my dear uncle,” responded the other. “I know too well these gossiping villages, and I hold the law of slander in too great a dread. The count is all right,” he laughed. “A very nice fellow, you said.”
His uncle saw that he had no intention of saying a word against the visitor at Orton, and yet at the same time it was apparent that he held him in distinct mistrust. Yet, after all, reflected the rector, it was curious that George had not recognised him at once.
Macbean sat back watching the smoke curl slowly up, plunged in deep reflection. That man of all others was to marry Mary Morini! What a cruel vagary of Fate! Did she really love the fellow? he wondered. Had his elegant airs and graces, his stiff poses, and French effeminacy really attracted her? To him it seemed impossible. She was too sweet and womanly, too modest and full of the higher ideals of life, to allow that veneer of polish to deceive her. It might be, of course, that the marriage was to be one of convenience – that the Minister wished his daughter to become a French countess with an ancient title like that of Dubard – yet he could not conceive that she would of her own free will marry such a man.
Evidently His Excellency Camillo Morini was in blind ignorance of the character of his guest, or he would never for a moment entertain him in the bosom of his family.
If they were really engaged, then her future was at stake. He alone knew the truth – that ghastly, amazing truth – and it was therefore his bounden duty to go to her and frankly tell her all that he knew – or better, to seek an interview with the Minister and place the facts before him.
When he had bidden his uncle good-night and mounted to the small old-fashioned bedroom, he blew out the candle and sat at the open window gazing out upon the wide stretch of pasture land white in the moonbeams, reviewing the whole situation and endeavouring to decide upon the best course of action.
Mary Morini had charmed him with her sweet face and piquante cosmopolitan manner, yet at that same moment he had made a discovery that held him dumb in amazement. He recognised that she was in deadly peril – how deadly she little dreamed, and that to save her – to save the honour of her family – he must tell the truth.
He saw before him the tragedy of silence, and yet, alas! his lips were sealed.
To utter one single word of what he knew would be to bring upon himself opprobrium, disgrace, ruin!