Читать книгу A Matter Of Millions - Anna Katharine Green - Страница 8

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To the sound of a scream from the signorina’s lips, young Degraw turned. Before him, in the doorway I have mentioned, he saw standing the slight, dark and unprepossessing figure of a man so evidently Italian in his appearance and bearing, that it did not need the hurried bound and startled exclamation of the Portuguese for him to recognize in this menacing intruder the Signor Montelli.

“So, so, we are to wind up with a scene,” thought he; and instinctively stepped between this stranger and the shrinking figure of the signorina.

But the precaution seemed needless. At the first words uttered by the Portuguese, the Italian broke into a harsh laugh, and drawing the old crone after him, left the room and shut the door behind him. Mr. Degraw, surprised by this sudden departure, stood staring, while the signorina trembled so that she seemed in danger of falling.

“It is very strange,” quoth the former, “He did not seem to notice that the couch was empty and that you stood living and breathing before him. The Portuguese cannot be as true to you as you thought. She must have told him that you would wake—”

“Oh! oh! hush!” broke from the young girl’s lips, as the door opened again and the old woman stepped in. “I am so bewildered, I do not know what to make of all this.” And leaving him, she advanced toward the crone, who met her with a look that added to his surprise and her perplexity.

A short interchange of words followed, and then the old woman drew back and the signorina turned. But with what a different air and with what a different look. Young Degraw would hardly have known her face if he had not already seen it under the influence of various emotions, and when she opened her lips, she seemed to find it so hard to speak, that in mercy he was going to begin the conversation for her, when her trouble found a tongue and she exclaimed:

“I cannot endure any more to-night; you must go and let me find some rest. Perhaps, tomorrow—”

“But this wretch,” he interposed. “Am I to leave you to his mercy?”

“He is gone and Annetta has locked the door. I do not fear him; he will trouble us no more.”

She looked so confident and yet so discouraged, that he did not know what to say. It seemed dreadful to leave her thus, and yet neither in look nor tone could he discover any inducement to stay. All the light had gone out of her face, and she seemed only a waiting image, eager for him to be gone.

He drew a deep breath and held out his hand. “To-morrow, then?” said he.

She nodded, sighed, and something like a sob seemed to rise in her throat.

“Oh, go!” she cried, “go, go!” And she let her hand touch his before she pointed toward the door.

“I will be here at three,” he murmured. And tearing his gaze away from her drooping face and figure, he dashed across the threshold and out into the hall. As the door closed behind him, her sobs broke their bounds, and he distinctly heard her moan. But he dared not go back.

“This last mystery is worse than the first;” so he commented, as he reached the street. “Is the Portuguese a demon, or—” He did not complete his sentence, for just then he caught sight of the figure of a man going on before him toward the avenue, and convinced that it was that of the hated Montelli, he quickened his pace in the hope of overtaking him and coming to some sort of an explanation.

But as soon as his step rung faster, that of the man in front did the same, and though he hurried to the full extent which decency allowed, he did not reach the man nor even catch the car which the other managed to board as it rushed down the somewhat steep incline which marks the avenue at this point.

When he came to think of it, however, he was not sorry that he had missed an encounter with a man, of whose resources and intentions he could know so little. If the signorina was all he believed her, she would preserve herself in safety till the morrow, while if she were not, the sooner he forgot the bewitching face and touching manner, the better. Till to-morrow, then, he would be patient, meanwhile trusting that all good angels would guard the rest of her whom in his inmost heart he felt to be the one woman chosen by Providence to be the light and glory of his life.

His studio, when he returned to it, struck him for the first time in his remembrance as cold and barren. Though the signs of ideal life were about him, and from every quarter of the great room shone images of beauty and the creations of art, he experienced a sensation of desolation and loneliness, that should have warned him of the depth of the experience which he had undergone since he had passed out of this place four hours before. The picture of the fair beauty was the sole object which seemed to possess any interest for him, and struck again by the oddity of the coincidence which had brought him face to face with the woman who had unconsciously furnished him with the basis for this painting, he lit all the gas jets in the room, and sat down to study this work of his in the light of his late encounter.

It was like her and yet it was not like her. The features, the grace, the coloring were all there, but the humanity which made her countenance so engaging, was lacking from this dream-like face.

“I have a fairy here,” he muttered, “but she is a woman. Would it have been better if I had left her such in the painting? No; or I should have had no ‘Dream’ to match my beautiful ‘Reality.’ ” And he tore from his portfolio the sketch which he had made of the signorina, and, with a heart throbbing too fast for comfort, placed it beside the painting he had just been contemplating, and sat down again to study them and compare.

O the exquisite contrast between them! And O the touching grace of his new idol! Could any one see such a face and not love it? Hamilton Degraw could not. Without struggle, without fear, without any doubt of the wisdom of such an abandonment, he let his whole heart go in this hour of silent reverie, and it was not to the rich and gracious unknown that it fled, but to the poor, the desolate and to the menaced singer, with her woeful past and perished ambition.

At three o’clock the next day, he stood again before her house. He had looked for Montelli all the morning; he had even vaguely expected the Portuguese, but his quiet had been undisturbed and his studio unvisited. It was, therefore, with faint apprehensions of possible evil that he rang the bell and waited for the answer, which was longer in coming to-day than it was yesterday.

At last, after two or three smart rings, the door swung back, and he saw the same inane-looking girl before him, backed by the same, unfurnished and lonesome hall; but there was no loneliness there for him. She was within, and that would have made prison walls attractive.

“The Signorina Valdi?” he inquired. “Shall I find her in her rooms? Shall I go up, as I did yesterday?”

The girl stared, looked helpless, and made no response.

“She must be deaf,” he decided, and was pushing by her, when she caught him by the sleeve, violently shaking her head.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Is she not there? Shall I not find her?”

The girl evidently did not comprehend him, but went on shaking her head, even after he, irritated and alarmed beyond endurance, tore his arm away and rushed up-stairs into the hall above. But he no longer busied himself about her. He was on the floor with the signorina, and bounding to the first door he saw, he vigorously rapped, and when he got no answer from within, passed to the next door, and so on till he reached the one by which he had entered the day before.

Here he no longer hesitated, but turned the knob. The door opened without difficulty, and at the first glimpse he got of the space within, young Degraw started back in dismay. The floor was bare, the walls denuded, the room unfurnished. Uttering a cry, he dashed around to that inner door in which he had last seen Montelli standing, and which, as you remember, communicated with the apartment where he had held his wonderful interview with the signorina. It was standing open, and beyond it all was as empty and bare as the space in which he stood.

“Is she gone! Have I lost her?” was his cry, and he dashed from one end of the room to the other, searching for traces of a farewell he could not believe to be final, or of an escape which her dangerous position with Montelli had doubtless prompted. But he found nothing, and, moved by a thousand emotions, he hastened back into the hall and up another flight of stairs, determined upon discovering some one who could explain this mystery to him.