The Lure of the Mask, Harold MacGrath [best beach reads of all time .txt] 📗

of the estates should revert to the crown; again, if we married and separated and were not reunited inside of five years, the fortunes should become the crown's; if, having separated from my husband, either for just or unjust reasons, I should secretly or publicly occupy any villa or palace mentioned in the will, it would be a tacit admission that I accepted my husband. Was there ever such an insane tangle kindly meant? We must marry, we must be happy; that our minds and hearts were totally different did not matter at all. Do you understand why I went from city to city, living haphazard? Sometimes I was very poor, for my income from my mother's estate was paid quarterly, and I did not inherit my father's business ability. During the recent days in Venice I had to offer my jewels because I dared not write my attorneys for an advance, for I did not wish them to know where I was.

Time went on. How young I was in those days! What dreams I dreamed! The old prince died suddenly, his wife followed. And then my kind and loving father went the way. I was very, very lonely. But I was taken under the wing of a duchessa who was popular at court. At this period the young prince was one of the handsomest men in Europe. Foolish women set about to turn his head. He was brave, clever and engaging. Dissipation had not yet enmeshed him. My heart fluttered naturally when I saw him, for he was permitted to see me at intervals. Young girls have dreams which in older years appear ordinary enough. He was then to me Prince Charming. I was really glad that I was to marry him.

On completing my education I decided to live in Rome, where the prince was quartered. I went into the world with serene confidence, believing that all men were good like my father and his friend. The old duchessa mothered the rich American girl gladly; for, though I was half Italian, they always considered me as the child of my father. I was presented at court, I was asked to dinners and receptions and balls. I was quite the rage because the dowager queen gave me singular attention. My head was in a whirl. In Europe, as you know, till a woman is married she is a nonentity. I was beginning to live. The older women were so attentive and the men so gallant that I lost sight of the things that counted. As I was a fluent linguist, and as I possessed a natural lightness of heart, my popularity was by no means due to my property. I believe I sang wherever I went, because I loved music, because it was beautiful to send one's voice across space in confidence; it was like liberating the soul for a moment.

The prince by this time seemed changed in some way; but I was blindly young. A girl of twenty in European society knows less than a girl of fifteen in the States. Often I noticed the long scar on his cheek. He had received it, he said, in some cavalry exercise. As the Italians are reckless horsemen, I accepted this explanation without question. I know differently now! But he was as courteous and gallant to me as ever.

Now, there was another clause in this will. It was the one thing which made the present life tolerable and possible to me. We were to be married without pomp, quietly, first at the magistrate's and then at the church.

Have you not often seen the carriage pass you in the streets? The bride in her white dress and veil and the bouquet of roses? The ribbon round the driver's whip? The good-natured smiles of the idlers, the children running out and crying for a rose? They say that a rose given by the bride brings luck. It was thus we passed through the streets to the magistrate's. I did not know then that I was not in love, that I was only young and curious. I threw roses to any who asked. The prince sat beside me in full-dress uniform, looking very handsome and distinguished. We heard many compliments. The prince smiled, but he was nervous and not at ease. I thought nothing of this at the time. I believed his nervousness a part of my own. To be sure there was a fair gathering at the magistrate's, for the name of Monte Bianca was widely known. But there was none of our own class present; they would be at the church.

The magistrate performed his part in the affair. Legally we were man and wife. We were leaving for the church, when at the very doorway a handsome woman, sad-eyed, weary, shabbily dressed, touched me on the arm.

"A rose, Signora!"

I gave it to her, smiling pityingly.

"God pray," she said, "that this man will make you happier than he made me!"

The prince was at my elbow, pushing me toward the carriage. But something had been said that could not be lightly passed. I stood firm.

"Let us be on!" said the prince eagerly.

"Wait!" I turned to the woman. "Signora, what do you mean by those words?"

"His Highness knows." She pointed to the prince, whose face I now saw, strangely enough, for the first time. It was black with rage and ugliness.

"What has he been to you?" I demanded.

She answered with a gesture, pathetic but easily translatable. It was enough for me. I understood. In that moment I became a woman without illusions. Without looking at the prince I entered the carriage and closed the door in his face. He stormed, he pleaded, he lied. I was of stone. There was a scene. He was low enough to turn upon the poor woman and strike her across the face with his gloves. Even had I loved him, that would have been the end of the romance. I ordered the driver to take me home. There would be no wedding at the church that day. There was a great scandal. Every one took up the prince's cause, with the exception of the king. But my determination was not to be moved.

The prince was almost bankrupt. He had squandered the liberal fortune left him independently of the will. He had sold to the Jews half of the fortune he expected to get after marrying me. He had not the slightest affection for me; he was desperate and wanted the money. How old and wise I became during that ride home from the magistrate's! The prince called, but I was not at home to him. He wrote many times, but I replied to none of his letters. He struck but one string; I was foolish to let a little peccadillo of bachelorhood stand in the way; all men were the same; the position I took was absurd. I never answered. I returned to Venice. I have seen him but twice since; once at Monte Carlo and that night at the Villa Ariadne. How he begged, schemed, plotted, and manoeuvered to regain my favor! But I knew now. I vowed he should never have a penny; it should all go to the crown.

When at length he found that I was really serious, he became base in his tactics. He was the one who was wronged. He gave life to such rumors among those I knew that soon I found doors closed to me which had always been open. No Italian woman could see the matter from my point of view. I was an American for all that my mother was a Venetian, therefore I was wrong.

So great was this man's vanity that he truly believed that all he had to do was to meet me face to face to overcome my objections! I have already told you that my impulses are as mysterious to me as to others. Why I went to the Villa Ariadne is not to be explained. I do not know.... A comic opera singer! But I shall always love those light-hearted companions, who were cheerful under misfortune, who accepted each new calamity as a jest by the Great Dramatist. Perhaps the truth is, this last calamity was brought about by my desire to aid them without letting them know who I was. I have committed many foolish acts, but innocent and hurtless. To you I have been perfectly frank. From the first I warned you; and many times I have given you hurts which recoiled upon my own head. But all for your good. I wanted you to be clear of the tangle. There! That is all. There is no more mystery concerning Sonia Hilda Grosvenor.

* * * * *

And so the letter ended. There was not a word regarding any future meeting; there was nothing to read between the lines. A great loneliness surged over Hillard. Was this, then, really the end? No! He struck the letter sharply on his palm. No, this should not be the end. He would wait here in Florence till the day of doom. He would waste no time in seeking her, for he knew that if he sought he would not find.

Day after day dragged through the hours, and Florence grew thinned and torrid. Sometimes he rode past the Villa Ariadne, but he never stopped. He could not bring himself to enter those confines again alone.

In the meantime he had received a cable from Merrihew, stating that he and Mrs. Merrihew would be at home after September. He read the line many times. Good old Dan! He was right; it took patience and persistence to win a woman.

It was in the middle of June that, one afternoon, the concierge handed him a telegram. It contained but three words:

"Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio."


CHAPTER XXVII

BELLAGGIO


The narrowness of the imagination of the old masters is generally depicted in their canvases. Heaven to them was a serious business of pearly gates, harps, halos, and aërial flights on ambient pale clouds. Or, was it the imagination of the Church, dominating the imagination of the artist? To paint halos, or to starve? was doubtless the Hamletonian question of the Renaissance. Now Hillard's idea of Heaven-and in all of us it is a singular conception-was Bellaggio in perpetual springtime; Bellaggio, with its cypress, copper-beech, olive, magnolia, bamboo, pines, its gardens, its vineyards, its orchards of mulberry trees, its restful reaches, for there is always a quality of rest in the ability to see far off; Bellaggio, with the emerald Lecco on one side and the blue-green Como on the other, the white villages nestling along the shores, and the great shadowful Italian Alps.

The Villa Serbelloni stands on the wooded promontory, and all day long the warm sunshine floods its walls and terraces and glances from the polished leaves of the tropical plants. The villa remains to-day nearly as it was when Napoleon's forces were in Milan and stabling their horses in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazia, under the fading Last Supper, by Da Vinci. It is a hotel now, the annex of one of the great hostelries down below in the town. A tortuous path leads up to the villa; and to climb it is to perform the initial step or lesson to proper mountain-climbing. Here and there, in the blue distances, one finds a patch of snow, an exhilarating foretaste of the high Alps north of Domo d' Ossola and south of the icy Rhone.