Читать книгу The Passport - Bagot Richard - Страница 5

Giacinto Rossano was quite mistaken in supposing the piece of paper she had seen her brother thrust into his pocket to have been still there when he returned to her after its pretended restoration to its rightful owner. As a matter of fact, a capricious April breeze was blowing its scattered remnants about the court-yard of Palazzo Acorari, for Silvio had torn it into little shreds so soon as he had read the words written upon it.

She had been perfectly correct, however, in her other suppositions, for since Silvio had first beheld Donna Bianca in the church of the Sudario on Christmas night, he had certainly not wasted his time. He had been, it is true, considerably dismayed at learning from Giacinta who the girl was who had so immediate and so powerful an attraction for him. Had she been almost anything else than what she was, he thought to himself impatiently, the situation would have been a far simpler one; but between him and the heiress and last remaining representative of the Acorari, princes of Montefiano, there was assuredly a great gulf fixed, not in rank only, but in traditional prejudices of caste, in politics – even, it might be said, in religion – since Bianca Acorari no doubt implicitly believed all that the Church proposed to be believed, while he, like most educated laymen, believed – considerably less.

Perhaps the very difficulties besetting his path made Silvio Rossano the more determined to conquer them and tread that path to the end. What he had said of himself to his sister, not in any spirit of conceit, but rather in the confident assurance which his youth and ardent temperament gave him, was true. When he had set his mind on success, he had always gained it in the end; and why should he not gain it now?

After all, there were things in his favor. Although he might not be of noble blood, his family was a good and an old one. There had been Rossano in Rome before a peasant of the name of Borghese became a pope and turned his relations into princes. One of these early Rossano, indeed, had been a cardinal. But, unluckily for the family, he had also been a conscientious priest and an honest man – a combination rarely to be met with in the Sacred College of those days.

But there were other things to which Silvio attached more weight – things of the present which must ever appeal to youth more than those of the past. His father was a distinguished man; and he himself might have – nay, would have – a distinguished career before him. Money, too, was not wanting to him. The professor was not a rich man; but he had considerably more capital to divide between his two children than many people possessed who drove up and down the Corso with coronets on their carriages, while their creditors saluted them from the pavements.

And there were yet other things which Silvio, reflecting upon the wares he had to go to market with, thought he might fairly take into account, details such as good character, good health, and – well, for some reason or other, women had never looked unfavorably upon him, though he had hitherto been singularly indifferent as to whether they did so or not. Something – the professor would no doubt have found a scientific explanation of a radio-active nature for it – told him, even in that instant when he first met her glance, that Bianca Acorari did not find him antipatico. He wondered very much how far he had been able to convey to her his impressions as regarded herself.

In an incredibly short space of time it had become absolutely necessary to him to satisfy his curiosity on this point – hence that sudden desire to attend the early masses at Santa Maria in Campitelli, which had done more than anything else to arouse Giacinta's suspicions.

For some weeks, however, Silvio had been absolutely foiled in his attempts again to find himself near Bianca Acorari. He had very quickly realized that any efforts on his sister's part to improve her acquaintance with the girl would be detrimental rather than the reverse to his own objects, and he had, consequently, soon ceased to urge Giacinta to make them. But Silvio Rossano had not spent several years of his boyhood in drawing plans and making calculations for nothing; and he had set himself to think out the situation in much the same spirit as that in which he would have grappled with a professional problem demanding accurate solution.

Occasionally he had caught glimpses of Bianca as she went out driving with the princess, and once or twice he had seen her walking in the early morning, accompanied by the same woman who had been with her in the Sudario. It had been impossible, of course, for him to venture to salute her, even if he had not fancied that her companion eyed him sharply, as though suspecting that his proximity was not merely accidental.

Bettina was probably unconscious that she had been more than once the subject of a searching study on the part of the signorino of the second floor, as she called him. But the results of the study were negative, for Silvio had instinctively felt that any attempt to suborn Donna Bianca's maid would almost certainly prove disastrous. The woman was not young enough to be romantic, he thought, with some shrewdness, nor old enough to be avaricious.

And so he had found himself obliged to discover a weaker point in the defences of Casa Acorari, and this time fortune favored him; though in those calmer moments, when scruples of conscience are apt to become so tiresome, he felt somewhat ashamed of himself for taking advantage of it.

It had not escaped Silvio's notice that punctually at nine o'clock every morning a neatly dressed Frenchwoman entered Palazzo Acorari, and was admitted into the princess's apartment, and the porter informed him that she was the principessina's governess, who came from nine o'clock till twelve every day, excepting Sundays and the great feste.

Silvio studied Donna Bianca's governess as he had studied her maid. Mademoiselle Durand was certainly much younger than the latter, and better looking. Moreover, unlike Bettina, she did not look at Silvio witheringly when she happened to meet him in or near Palazzo Acorari, but perhaps a little the reverse. At any rate, after a few mornings on which bows only were exchanged between them, Silvio felt that he might venture to remark on the beauty of the spring weather. He spoke French fluently, though with the usual unmistakable Italian accent, and his overtures were well received.

Mademoiselle Durand smiled pleasantly. "Monsieur lived in Palazzo Acorari, did he not? A son of the famous Professor Rossano? Ah, yes – she had heard him lecture at the Collegio Romano. But perhaps it would be as well not to say so to Madame la Princesse. Madame la Princesse did not approve of science" – and Mademoiselle Durand looked at him, smiling again. Then she colored a little, for her glance had been one of obvious admiration, though Silvio, full of his own thoughts, was not aware of it.

After that, the ice once broken, it had been an easy matter to become fairly intimate with Donna Bianca's instructress. Knowing the precise hour at which she was accustomed to leave Palazzo Acorari, Silvio frequently managed to meet her as she crossed the Piazza Campitelli on her way back to her abode in the Via d'Ara Coeli, where she occupied a couple of rooms over a small curiosity shop.

Fortunately, probably, for Silvio, Mademoiselle Durand very soon discovered that it was due to no special interest in herself if this good-looking young Roman sought her acquaintance. It had scarcely struck him that his advances might easily be misinterpreted; and, indeed, for the space of a few days there had been not a little danger of this misinterpretation actually occurring. The shrewdness of her race, however, had prevented Mademoiselle Durand from deceiving herself; and Silvio's questions, which he flattered himself were triumphs of subtle diplomacy, speedily revealed to her how and where the land lay.

On the whole, the thought of lending herself to a little intrigue rather commended itself to the Frenchwoman. Life in Rome was not very amusing, and to be the confidante in a love-affair, and especially in such an apparently hopeless love-affair, would add an interest to it. Perhaps a little of the sentimentality, the existence of which in Bettina Silvio had doubted, entered into the matter. Mademoiselle Durand liked her pupil, and had always secretly pitied her for the dulness and isolation of her life; and as for Silvio – well, when he looked at her with his soft Roman eyes, and seemed to be throwing himself upon her generosity and compassion, Mademoiselle Durand felt that she would do anything in the world he asked her to do. The Princess of Montefiano she regarded as a mere machine in the hands of the Abbé Roux. Though she had only been a few moments in her present position, Mademoiselle Durand had fully realized that the Abbé Roux was master in the Montefiano establishment; and, though she had been highly recommended to the princess by most pious people, she entertained a cordial dislike to priests except in church, where, she averred, they were necessary to the business, and no doubt useful enough.

"It is Monsieur l'Abbé of whom you must beware," she insisted to Silvio, after she was in full possession of his secret. "The princess is an imbecile – so engaged in trying to secure a good place in the next world that she has made herself a nonentity in this. No – it is of the priest you must think. I do not suppose it would suit him that Donna Bianca should marry."

"Does he want to put her in a convent, then?" asked Silvio, angrily, on hearing this remark.

"But no, Monsieur Silvio! Convents are like husbands – they want a dowry." She looked at Silvio sharply as she spoke, but it was clear to her that he was quite unconscious of any possible allusion to himself in her words.

"It is true, mademoiselle," he answered, thoughtfully. "I forgot that. It is a very unlucky thing that Donna Bianca Acorari has not half a dozen brothers and as many sisters; for then she would have very little money, I should imagine, and no titles."

Mademoiselle Durand hesitated for a moment. Then she looked at him again, and this time her black eyes no longer had the same shrewd, suspicious expression.

"Tiens!" she muttered to herself; and then she said, aloud: "And what do you want me to do for you, Monsieur Silvio? You have not confided in me for nothing —hein? Am I to take your proposals for Donna Bianca's hand to Madame la Princesse? It seems to me that monsieur your father is the fit and proper person to send on such an errand, and not a poor governess."

"Per Carità!" exclaimed Silvio, relapsing in his alarm into his native tongue. "Of course I do not mean that, mademoiselle. I thought perhaps – that is to say, I hoped – "

He looked so disconcerted that Mademoiselle Durand laughed outright.

"No, mon ami," she replied. "I may call you that, Monsieur Silvio, may I not, since conspirators should be friends? I promise you I will not give your secret away. All the same, unless I am mistaken, there is one person to whom you wish me to confide it – is it not so?"

"Yes," replied Silvio; "there is certainly one person."

"But it will not be easy," continued Mademoiselle Durand, "and it will take time. Yes," she added, as though to herself – "it will be fairly amusing to outwit Monsieur l'Abbé – only – only – " and then she paused, hesitatingly.

"Only?" repeated Silvio, interrogatively.

"Ma foi, monsieur, only this," exclaimed his companion, energetically, "that I like the child, and I do not wish any harm to come to her through me. Have you thought well, Monsieur Silvio? You say that you love her, and that she can learn to love you; you will marry her if she be twenty times Princess of Montefiano. Well, I believe that you love her; and if a good countenance is any proof of a good heart, your love should be worth having. But if you make her love you, and are not strong enough to break down the barriers which will be raised to prevent her from marrying you, will you not be bringing on her a greater unhappiness than if you left her to her natural destiny?"

Silvio was silent for a moment. Was this not what Giacinta had said to him more than once? Then a dogged expression came over his face – his eyes seemed to harden suddenly, and his lips compressed themselves.

"Her destiny is to be my wife," he said, briefly.

Mademoiselle Durand shot a quick glance of approval at him.

"Diable!" she exclaimed, "but you Romans have wills of your own even in these days, it seems. And suppose the girl never learns to care for you – how then, Monsieur Silvio? Will you carry her off as your ancestors did the Sabine women?"

Silvio shrugged his shoulders. "She will learn to care for me," he said, "if she is properly taught."

Mademoiselle Durand laughed. "Tiens!" she murmured again. "And I am to give her a little rudimentary instruction – to prepare her, in short, for more advanced knowledge? Oh, la, la! Monsieur Silvio, you must know that such things do not come within the province of a daily governess."

"But you see her for three hours every day," returned Silvio, earnestly. "In three hours one can do a great deal," he continued.

"A great deal too much sometimes!" interrupted Mademoiselle Durand rapidly, under her breath.

"And when it is day after day," proceeded Silvio, "it is much easier. A word here, and a word there, and she would soon learn that there is somebody who loves her – somebody who would make her a better husband than some brainless idiot of her own class, who will only want her money and her lands. And then, perhaps, if we could meet – if she could hear it all from my lips, she would understand."

Mademoiselle Durand gave a quick little sigh. "Oh," she said, "if she could learn it all from your lips, I have no doubt that she would understand very quickly. Most women would, Monsieur Silvio."

"That is what I thought," observed Silvio, naïvely.

The Frenchwoman tapped her foot impatiently on the ground.

"Well," she said, after a pause, "I will see what I can do. But you must be patient. Only, do not blame me if things go wrong – for they are scarcely likely to go right, I should say. For me it does not matter. I came to Rome to learn Italian and to teach French – and other things. I have done both; and in any case, when my engagement with Madame la Princesse is over, I shall return to Paris, and then perhaps go to London or Petersburg – who knows? So if my present engagement were to end somewhat abruptly, I should be little the worse. Yes – I will help you, mon ami– if I can. Oh, not for money – I am not of that sort – but for – well, for other things."

"What other things?" asked Silvio, absently.

Mademoiselle Durand fairly stamped her foot this time.

"Peste!" she exclaimed, sharply. "What do they matter – the other things? Let us say that I want to play a trick on the princess; to spite the priest – by-the-way, Monsieur l'Abbé sometimes looks at me in a way that I am sure you never look at women, Monsieur Silvio! Let us say that I am sorry for that poor child, who will lead a stagnant existence till she is a dried-up old maid, unless somebody rescues her. All these things are true, and are they not reasons enough?"

And Silvio was quite satisfied that they were so.