Читать книгу The Last Call: A Romance (Vol. 3 of 3) - Dowling Richard - Страница 5

The news of Dora's death was a great shock to the O'Donnells. The girl's landlady had telegraphed to them in order that they might break it to Lavirotte. Of late, O'Donnell had begun to think that Lavirotte was not treating Dora very well, and Nellie was distinctly of opinion that his conduct towards the poor girl was very far from what it ought to be. Neither knew exactly to what extent his neglect had gone. He spoke little of Dora of late. They knew she wrote to him regularly every week, and in palliation of the tone which he took when speaking of her, O'Donnell said: "Smooth water runs deep. He may be fonder of her than ever. It may be only his way of trying her constancy." At this Mrs. O'Donnell would become very wroth, and cry out: "Trying her constancy indeed! That is an odd way for you who know everything about him to put it. Whether is it he or she is more likely to be inconstant?" If Lavirotte had had any notice that Dora was ill, he had kept it to himself. The telegram was very brief. It simply stated that the girl died after a few days' illness, and that they were to break the news to Lavirotte. In the face of her sad end, both their hearts softened towards the Frenchman. Whatever may have been his past, even if he had been a little careless of her, and had carried on an undignified flirtation with the flower-girl, Luigia, it never occurred to either of them he had the faintest notion of finally abandoning Dora. Now there was but one thing to be thought of, and that was how they could best break the sad news. They sent for him, and it was agreed before he came that O'Donnell should speak to him alone. "Something wrong?" said Lavirotte, on entering the room where he found Eugene. "I wanted to see you particularly," said the other. "Are you prepared for any unpleasant news?" Lavirotte started and coloured, and looked uneasily about the room. "Has anyone come from London? I swear to you, Eugene, there is nothing in that Luigia affair. I know I shouldn't have started even a flirtation. I am sure you did not tell Dora. She has come to Milan, and is with your wife? Am I not right?" "No, Dominique. No, my dear Dominique. I wish she were." "Then, the girl is dead?" cried Lavirotte. "My Dora is dead! Tell me so at once, and put me out of pain, Eugene!" "I had a telegram, Dominique." "Yes, yes. I know. You need say no more," said the Frenchman, as he threw himself on a chair. "I am accursed! Poor girl! Poor child!" He covered his face with his hands and sobbed. Eugene put his hand softly on the shoulder of his friend as a token of his sympathy, and then stole quietly out through the window into the little garden behind the house. He thought he would leave Lavirotte alone in the first burst of his grief. In a few minutes O'Donnell came back to the room and found it empty. He consulted for a short time with his wife, and they came to the conclusion that it was better not to follow Lavirotte, but to leave him in solitude and grief. The afternoon passed away, and it was late in the evening before they decided that Eugene should look him up at his lodgings. Here again the Irishman drew a blank. The Signor had left that day for his country, for England, and would be away for example, a day for every finger-one, two, three, four, five. The Signor had not said why he was going. He had taken nothing whatever with him but his purse, out of which he had given her, the landlady, before the Signor went away, this gold piece, which was over and above the money due to her. He seemed in great grief and spoke to himself, not in Italian, and it seemed to her, who now spoke English somewhat, not in English. It may have been French. It seemed as though he cursed and threatened, for he ground his teeth and shook his fists, thus, and thus, and again in this manner, the last greatly terrifying her, the landlady. And she left the room, fearing he might, without reason, take vengeance on her, who had done nothing. For he seemed as one distraught, as one mad, who might easily strike one who had done no harm. Ah! Was it so? His sweetheart dead! In that far-away country! Then, perhaps, when he recovered from this he would marry Luigia, who had the most wonderful hair in the world, and was so fair, as to seem as though she had come from the place where his, Signor O'Donnell's, wife had come from. Luigia was a good girl, and not like others, and if the Signor did marry her, she would make him a good wife; for having been poor she would know the value of his money. But the poor Signor who had gone away that day was in no humour to think of marriage now. Only of death and the grave. Did Signor O'Donnell know of the sweetheart of the other? Yes. And she was also fair, like the Signora and Luigia? No; dark. Ah, how strange. How incomprehensible. Here in this country they were nearly all dark, and when a fair woman came among them, no dark woman had a chance against her. But if what people said was true, there were the dark and the fair in the place from which the Signora came, and a man could choose, after his liking, the dark or the fair. Yet the poor Signor, who had lost his sweetheart, had chosen, in his own country, a dark woman for a sweetheart, and here, for a sweetheart, a fair woman. He was fickle in love. Had Signor O'Donnell noticed that Luigia had a strong resemblance to the Signora? Luigia was a good girl. God keep her from harm. Eugene came back and told Nellie that Lavirotte had suddenly left for London, without, as far as he knew, saying a word to anyone. According to what his landlady had said, Lavirotte must have gone straight home, and gone from his lodgings to the railway station. What an odd fellow he was, not to say a word, not to take a portmanteau or even hand-bag with him, but dash off across Europe just as they had seen him last. "You know, Nellie," said Eugene, putting his arm round his wife's waist, "I often told you I thought there was a screw loose in Lavirotte, and every day that goes over confirms me more and more in this belief. It is a curious fact that some great-great-grandfather or other had a mania for mania, and wrote a book about something or other connected with the mind. Of late Lavirotte has said a lot to me about the injudiciousness of trusting to a voice for a living. He has told me, what is quite true, that until a voice has been tested on the stage and in front of an audience, no one can tell what it is going to be. It is just like an unacted play. It may be worth five pounds a week, or it may be worth five hundred. Then he has said to me that he thinks his natural bent was towards medicine, and only that he had given up so much time now to the cultivation of his voice, he would certainly, if he had the money, become a doctor. "Eugene," said Nellie, "you have told me something of this before. All this talk about the impossibility of deciding the value of a voice until it is tested in front of an audience, seems to me to have a good deal to do with the fact that people, both here and in England, say your voice is better than his. Whatever may be on the surface of his talk about his voice, I am sure at the bottom of it there is jealousy of yours." "Nonsense, Nellie!" cried Eugene, good-naturedly. "You know what you are saying is absurd. Such jealousy as you speak of is a lost art. As Uncle Toby said to the fly, Lavirotte might say to me: 'Go, go, poor devil! Get thee gone-why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.' How could two men of second or third-rate voices, such as we have, even clash. There are hundreds of towns which want third-class tenors, and once we have taken to the boards there is no more likelihood of our meeting and clashing than of two twenty-fifth-rate comets meeting in space." "He is jealous by nature, Eugene; and he is jealous of you." "If he is jealous of me, darling, it must be in regard to you." He pressed her to him, and kissed her forehead as he spoke. "You may put it what way you will, Eugene, but you are a truer friend to him than he is to you." "God bless my soul!" cried her husband, "how can you say so? Did he not nearly lose his life in trying to get that treasure, with a view to saving our house?" "I suppose I must believe that he believed he would get that money, and so be able to do you a service, but I do not know anything harder to credit." "Why, he not only nearly lost his life, but he certainly injured his health in some way in that unfortunate undertaking at St. Prisca's Tower. The day he got the letter from me about the money for the last call, he fell asleep or fainted in a chair at his lodgings, and he tells me that ever since, his chest now and then feels strange." "According to what your father told us afterwards, it is very wonderful that neither of these men should have known anything about the law. For my part, Eugene, I believe poor old Mr. Crawford was a sincere, half-witted man, and that Lavirotte seemed to adopt the delusion of the old man in order that he might pose as your patron or benefactor, to balance the injury he had done you that dreadful night at the cove." "Nonsense!" cried her husband. "Men do not carry farces so far as to injure their health permanently." "If you were to talk till morning," said she, decisively, "you could not convince me he is not jealous." "Of my voice?" "I don't say of that only." "Of you?" "I don't say that either." "In the name of Heaven, then, what is he jealous of? Of baby?" laughed the husband. "Do you think he is jealous of our having little Mark?" At that moment the door opened, and a young Italian girl entered, carrying the baby. "You needn't be so absurd, Eugene," said the young mother, fondly taking her infant from the girl. "And yet," she added, kissing the child, "anyone might well be jealous of us about you, darling." "Nellie, dear, you have capped the climax of absurdity."