Читать книгу A Matter Of Millions - Anna Katharine Green - Страница 7

Table of Contents

“Pardon me,” he entreated; “but you have not told me what your pleasure is in regard to this sketch I have made. Shall I destroy it or deliver it to the person who ordered it?”

“Person who ordered it? You confound me,” was her hurried response. “I had forgotten the picture and all connected with it. How was it ordered and when?”

He took a crumpled note from his pocket and showed it to her. By the nearly consumed candles, she read it, puzzled and wondering, to the end.

“Andrea Montelli!” she cried. “I know no such name. It is all a mystery to me.”

At once and without his volition and encouragement, Hamilton Degraw felt himself seized by a sudden doubt which darkened everything before him. All a mystery to her! How could that be. He looked at her and hesitated. Never had she seemed so childlike, so innocent or so pure. Her large eyes, turned up to him, were full of question; her very attitude was one of waiting. It seemed as if she expected him to explain what evidently amazed her. He mastered his doubts and ventured upon a new topic.

“When I came into the room,” said he, “I found bending over you, as you lay upon the couch, a beautiful lady with fair hair and aristocratic features. She had come in a carriage which stood before the door, and when I first saw her, was strewing flowers over the bed and you. See! they lie withering now in heaps upon the floor. Her you must surely know, for both her beauty and her wealth make her conspicuous.”

“I am sorry,” began the signorina, “but I cannot tell you who she is. I might guess.”

“That may be sufficient.”

“But I cannot be sure. There is a lady, both beautiful and rich, who once took an interest in me. She was a pupil of one of my masters, and though I was never introduced to her, I was given to understand that she was watching my career and hoping much for its success. It may have been she; but why she should have sought me out in my despair, when she held herself aloof from me in the time of my prosperity, and why she should have brought flowers and strewed them over my poor body, I cannot explain. But perhaps Annetta can. She was here and may have seen something or gathered something from the lady’s manner which will help us to comprehend the meaning of her actions;” and beckoning the Portuguese toward her, the signorina asked one or two questions, which being duly answered, she turned back to Mr. Degraw and exclaimed:

“It must have been the lady I spoke of. She came without flowers at first, and asking for me, seemed to be greatly shocked when I was pointed out to her, lying, as she supposed, dead. She attempted to question Annetta, but of course got no answer from her, as my good friend does not speak a word of English; and when the lady went away she made a gesture which must have meant that she would return, for in half an hour or so she did come back, bringing these beautiful flowers, which she at once began to strew over me. That is all Annetta can tell. Would you like me to question her further?”

“I would like to hear what she has to say about these candles and your dress and the drapery of your couch. It may explain who Montelli is, and this you as well as myself ought to know.”

“True, true,” came in a murmur from the young girl’s lips. “Annetta must be able to tell how I came to be dressed thus, though the robe itself is no mystery, being one of the costumes prepared for my debut. But the lights, the drapery! all that I cannot understand.”

And she drew the old crone nearer, and holding her by the arm, put question after question, while the young man stood still, gazing from one to the other, devoured by a curiosity that the signorina’s rapidly changing appearance certainly tended to aggravate. For at the explanations which the old woman tendered without hesitation, the young girl’s head sank lower and lower in manifest confusion, while on her cheek and brow a flush slowly gathered, which, if it added to her beauty, could not but add also to the watchful artist’s impatience and distrust.

“What is it? Tell me,” burst from his lips as the Portuguese finally drew back, leaving the signorina standing by that forsaken couch.

“Ah, how can I?” was her cry, though her eyes looked up fearlessly, and the smile on her sensitive mouth was simply a deprecatory one. “It is such a story of—of an unreasoning passion—of—of a love of which I was ignorant, and would never have countenanced if I had known of it, that—”

He appreciated her confusion; he loved her for its evident depth; but he would not help her even by a word to speak. This story, whatever it was, he must know. She saw his determination and summoned up her courage.

“Annetta tells me,” she began, “that for the last three months I have been pursued by an Italian who has been determined to marry me. She says he found no favor in her eyes, and that she was sure he would find none in mine; and so, to save me anxiety and pain at a time when I needed my full strength and liberty, she had persistently placed herself between us, and by artifices and stratagems of various kinds succeeded in keeping him out of my presence. She says that, owing to my preoccupation and determination to see nothing but my art, she was strangely successful in this, though there were times when he almost brushed my garments in the streets, and others when it nearly took the arm of the police to keep him away from these doors. He had seen me at the theater one day, and, hidden behind the boxes or among the wings of the scenery, had heard me sing, and nothing could rob him of the idea that he was destined to marry me and make of me the leading prima donna of the world; not even my failure, for he was present at that, nor my consequent persistent shrinking from sight into the obscurity that became me. Nothing affected him or changed his mind; and, while he showed some sense in not attempting force after this, Annetta knew that, sooner or later, he would find some means of crossing this threshold and offending me with offers she was confident would meet with a rebuff that would only add to the annoyance and danger of the situation. For he is an ugly man and coarse beyond expression, though seemingly honest and very determined in his wishes. So, when she saw me sunk in despair and anxious for death, she did not attempt to reason with me, but rather humored me in my determination, promising me an effective poison, while secretly resolved upon furnishing me with a drug that merely simulated death. For if she could show me to this Montelli in a state that forbade all further hope on his part, she thought his persecutions might cease and that we might obtain the opportunity for escape which seemed our only security. But when the drug having worked, she let the miserable creature in and showed him the result of his importunity and my distress, he was so overcome by what he was pleased to call the beauty of my face that his passion took a new turn, and he only thought of having my picture painted, and, by means of its exhibition, reap that fortune from my features which he has failed to obtain from my voice.

“It makes me blush to tell you this, but Annetta felt powerless to refuse him. So merely eliciting from him the promise that he would leave me hereafter undisturbed, she accepted from him the money which was necessary to robe the couch as he desired, and prepared to receive you, whom he designated as the artist he meant to employ. That I should wake, she knew; but she trusted that we should find you a gentleman, and we have, so much so that I do not believe you will betray us, even if this fanatic insists upon having a painting completed from this sketch.”

“A painting? He shall never have the sketch even!” exclaimed young Degraw. “See your features in the grasp of a coarse man anxious to make money by exposing them to public view! Never! Not if I have to destroy—”

“Don’t!” she cried, grasping his hand in hers, for he had made a movement as if to tear the drawing he had made. “He is a dangerous man. Annetta says he is not to be trusted. If he detects the deception to which this old friend of mine has subjected him, what may we not expect in the way of persecution? Indeed, I dare not trust myself to this unknown man’s mercies. I would rather he thought me dead till—”

“Till what?”

“Till I can fly his reach or so merge myself in some other identity that he will never dare approach me again either as a lover or a friend.”

“Pretty coward! And so you will not trust me to manage this man. I do not fear him.”

“You are not a woman.”

“True. Well, I will humor this whim. I will take the picture and to-morrow Annetta may send him to my studio. Meantime, may I hope that you will sleep sweetly, and without fear?”

“Oh,” she murmured as she caught his look, so unmistakably full of suppressed love; “how can I thank you for your sympathy? How can I reward you for your goodness?”

“By such sleep,” he answered. And taking her hand in his, he carried it to his lips, when, suddenly, from the doorway communicating with the other room, a voice penetrated harshly through the apartment, crying, with a marked foreign accent:

“And who may you be, sir. and what is your business here?”