The Day of Temptation
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“I’ll go down by the early train,” he said, “and I’ll be back again here by nine to dine with you.” Then, turning to the waiter standing behind his chair, he inquired whether he spoke Italian.
“I am Italian, signore,” the man answered.
“Then, if the signorina is in any difficulty to-morrow, you will assist her?”
“Certainly, signore; my number is 42,” the man said, whisking off the empty plates and rearranging the knives.
“I wouldn’t go, only it is imperative for one or two reasons,” he explained to her. “In the morning you can take a cab, and the waiter will tell the driver that you want to go for an hour or so in the West – remember, the West End – not the East End. Then you will return to lunch, and have a rest in the afternoon. You know well that I’ll hasten back to you, dearest, at the earliest possible moment.”
“Yes,” she said, “go, by all means. You’ve often told me you like a day’s shooting, and I certainly do not begrudge my poor Nino any little pleasure.”
“Then you are sure you don’t object to being left alone?”
“Not in the least,” she laughed, as with that chic which was so charming she raised her wine-glass to her pretty lips.
When they had finished luncheon she went to her room, while he smoked a cigarette; then, when she re-appeared, he drove her to his own chambers in Ebury Street.
“My place is a bit gloomy, I’m afraid,” he explained on the way. “But we can chat there without interruption. In the hotel it is impossible.”
“No place is gloomy with my Nino,” she answered.
His arm stole around her slim waist, and he pressed her to him more closely.
“And you must not mind my servant,” he exclaimed. “She’s been in our family for twenty years, and will naturally regard you with considerable suspicion, especially as you are a foreigner, and she can’t speak to you.”
“Very well,” she laughed. “I quite understand. Woman-servants never like the advent of a wife.”
Presently they alighted, and he opened the door of the flat with his latchkey.
“Welcome to my quarters, piccina,” he exclaimed as she entered the tiny, dimly lit hall, and glanced round admiringly.
“How pretty!” she exclaimed. “Why, it is all Moorish!” looking up at the silk-embroidered texts from the Korân with which the walls were draped.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said happily; and together they passed on into his sitting-room, a spacious apartment, the windows of which were filled with wooden lattices, the walls draped with embroidered fabrics, the carpet the thickest and richest from an Eastern loom, the stools, lounges, and cosy-corners low and comfortable, and the ceiling hidden by a kind of dome-shaped canopy of yellow silk.
Slowly she gazed around in rapt admiration.
“I delight in a Moorish room, and this is the prettiest and most complete I have ever seen,” she declared. “My Nino has excellent taste in everything.”
“Even in the choice of a wife – eh?” he exclaimed, laughing, as he bent swiftly and kissed her ere she could draw away.
She raised her laughing eyes to his, and shrugged her shoulders.
“Don’t you find the place gloomy?” he asked.
“My friends generally go in for old oak furniture, or imitation Chippendale. I hate both.”
“So do I,” she assured him. “When we are married, Nino, I should like to have a room just like this for myself – only I’d want a piano,” she added, with a smile.
“A piano in a Moorish room!” he exclaimed. “Wouldn’t that be somewhat out of place? Long pipes and a darbouka or two, like these, would be more in keeping with Moorish ideas;” and he indicated a couple of drums of earthenware covered with skin, to the monotonous music of which the Arab and Moorish women are in the habit of dancing.
“But you have an English table here,” she exclaimed, crossing to it, “and there are photographs on it. Arab never tolerate portraits. It’s entirely against their creed.”
“Yes,” he admitted; “that’s true. I’ve never thought of it before.”
At that instant she bent quickly over one of the half-dozen photographs in fancy frames.
Then, taking it in her hand, she advanced swiftly to the window, and examined it more closely in the light. “Who is this?” she demanded in a fierce, harsh voice.
“A friend of mine,” he replied, stepping up to her and glancing over her shoulder at the portrait. “He’s an army officer – Major Gordon Maitland.”
“Maitland!” she cried, her face in an instant pale to the lips. “And he is a friend of yours, Nino – you know him?”
“Yes, he is a friend of mine,” Armytage replied, sorely puzzled at her sudden change of manner. “But why? Do you also know him?”
She held her breath; her face had in that instant become drawn and haggard, her pointed chin sank upon her breast in an attitude of hopeless despair, her clear blue eyes were downcast; but no answer passed her trembling lips.
This sudden, unexpected discovery that the Major was acquainted with the man she loved held her dumb in shame, terror, and dismay. It had crushed from her heart all hope of love, of life, of happiness.
Chapter Fourteen
The Doctor’s Story
Doctor Malvano, in a stout shooting-suit of dark tweed, his gun over his shoulder, his golf-cap pulled over his eyes to shade them, was tramping jauntily along, across the rich meadow-land, cigar in mouth, chatting merrily with his host, a company promoter of the most pronounced Broad Street type named Mabie, who had taken Aldworth Court, in Berkshire, on a long lease, and who, like many of his class, considered it the best of form to shoot. The ideal of most men who make money and spend it in London city is to have “a place in the country;” and in this case the “place” was a great, old, time-mellowed, red-brick mansion, inartistic as was architecture in the early Georgian days, but nevertheless roomy, comfortable, and picturesque in its ivy mantle, and surrounded by its spacious park.
The party with whom he was shooting was a decidedly mixed one. At a country house, Malvano was always a welcome guest on account of his good humour, his easy temperament, and his happy knack of being able to entertain all and sundry. Ladies liked him because of his exquisite Italian courtesy, and perhaps also because he was a merry, careless bachelor; while among the men of a house-party, he was voted good company, and the excellence of his billiard-playing and shooting always excited envy and admiration. In the hours between breakfast and luncheon, few birds had that day escaped his gun. To his credit he had placed a good many brace of partridges and pheasants, half a dozen snipe, a hare or two, and held the honours of the morning by bringing down the single woodcock which the beaters had sent up.
They had lunched well at an old farmhouse on his host’s estate, a table being well spread in the great oak-beamed living-room, with its tiny windows and a fire on the wide hearth, and, in the enjoyment of an unusually good cigar, the Doctor felt disinclined to continue his feats of marksmanship. Indeed, he would have much preferred the single hour’s rest in an easy chair, to which he had always been accustomed in Italy, than to be compelled to tramp along those high hedgerows. Yet he was a guest, and could make no complaint.
Malvano possessed a very curious personality. Keen-eyed and far-sighted, nothing escaped him. He had a deep, profound knowledge of human nature, and could gauge a man accurately at a glance. His merry, careless manner, thoughtless, humorous, and given to laughing immoderately, caused those about him to consider him rather too frivolous for one of his profession, and too much given to pleasure and enjoyment. The popular mind demands the doctor to be a person who, grave-faced and care-lined, should study the Lancet weekly, and carefully note every new-fangled idea therein propounded; should be able to diagnose any disease by looking into a patient’s mouth; and who should take no pleasure outside that morbid one derived from watching the growth or decline of the maladies in persons he attended. Malvano, however, was not of that type. Without doubt he was an exceedingly clever doctor, well acquainted with all the most recent Continental treatments, and whose experience had been a long and varied one. He could chatter upon abstruse pathological subjects as easily as he could relate a story in the smoking-room, and could dance attendance upon the ladies, and amuse them by his light brilliant chatter with that graceful manner which is born in every Italian, be he peasant or prince. Within twenty miles or so of Lyddington, no house-party was complete without the jovial doctor, who delighted the younger men with his marvellous collection of humorous tales, and whom even the elder and grumpy admired on account of his perfect play at Bridge.
But Filippo Malvano was not in the best spirits this autumn afternoon, tramping across the meadows from Manstone Farm, at the Pangbourne and Hampstead Norris cross-roads, towards Clack’s Copse, where good sport had been promised by the keeper. He was careful enough not to betray to his host the fact that he was bored, but as he strode along, his heavy boots clogged with mud, he was thinking deeply of a curious incident that had occurred half an hour before, while they had been lunching up at the farm.
The remainder of the party, half a dozen guns, were on ahead, piloted by the keeper, the beaters were before them on either side of the tall hazel hedge, but beyond one or two rabbits, the spot seemed utterly destitute of game.
“What kind of sport have you this season up in Rutland?” the City merchant was asking with the air of wide experience which the Cockney sportsman is so fond of assuming.
“Fair – very fair,” Malvano replied mechanically. “Just now I’m shooting somewhere or other two or three days each week, and everywhere pheasants seem plentiful.”
His dark eyes were fixed upon the moving figures before him, and especially upon one – that of a lithe athletic man in a suit of grey homespun, who walked upright notwithstanding the uneven nature of the ground, and who carried his gun with that apparent carelessness which showed him to be a practised sportsman.
It was this man who was occupying all the Doctor’s attention. To his host he chatted on merrily, joking and laughing from time to time, but, truth to tell, he was sorely puzzled. While sitting around the farmer’s table, Mabie, turning to him, had made some observation regarding the autumn climate in Tuscany, whereupon, the young man now striding on before him, had looked up quickly, asking —
“Do you know Tuscany?”
“Quite well,” the Doctor had answered, explaining how for some years he had practised in Florence.
“I know Florence well,” his fellow-guest had said. “While there I made many friends.” Then, after a second’s hesitation, he gazed full into the Doctor’s face, and asked, “Do you happen to know any people named Fanetti there?”
This unexpected inquiry had caused the Doctor to start; but he had been sufficiently self-possessed to repeat the name and calmly reply that he had never heard of it. He made some blind inquiry as to who and what the family were, and in which quarter they resided; and then, with that tactful ingenuity which was one of his most remarkable characteristics, he turned the conversation into an entirely different channel.
This incident, however, caused the jovial, careless Malvano considerable anxiety; for here, in the heart of rural England, across the homely board of the simple, broad-faced farmer, a direct question of the most extraordinary kind had been put to him. He did not fail to recollect the keen, earnest look upon the man’s face as he uttered the name of Fanetti – a name he had cause to well remember – and when he recalled it, he became seized with fear that this man, his fellow-guest, knew the truth. Having for the past half-hour debated within himself what course was the best to pursue, he had at last decided upon acting with discretion, and endeavouring to ascertain how far this stranger’s knowledge extended.
Turning to his host as they walked on side by side, he removed his cigar, and said, in his habitual tone of carelessness —
“I, unfortunately, didn’t catch the name of the young man to whom you introduced me this morning – the one in the light suit yonder.”
“Oh, my nephew, you mean,” Mabie answered. “A good fellow – very good fellow. His name’s Armytage – Charles Armytage.”
“Armytage!” gasped the Doctor. In an instant he remembered his conversation with Lady Marshfield. She had said that she knew a certain Charles Armytage. But Malvano betrayed no sign, and remained quite calm. “Yes,” he continued; “he seems a very decent fellow. He’s a good shot, too. Several times this morning I’ve – ”
At that instant a partridge rose before them, and Malvano raised his gun swift as lightning, and brought it down almost before the others had noticed it.
“Several times to-day I’ve admired his shooting,” continued the Doctor, at the same time reloading.
“He’s only just back from the Continent,” his host explained, “and I asked him to run down from town to-day, thinking a little English sport would be pleasant after the idleness of a summer in Italy.”
“A summer in Italy!” Malvano exclaimed in surprise. “He was rather ill-advised to go there during the hot weather. Every one strives to get away during summer. Where has he been?”
“In Florence, and afterwards at Leghorn, I believe. He’s been away all this year.”
“He has no profession?”
“None,” Mabie answered. “His father died and left him comfortably off. For a couple of years he led a rather wild life in Brussels and Paris, sowed the usual wild oats, and afterwards took to travelling. On the average, he’s in England about a couple of months in the year. He says he only comes home to buy his clothes, as he can’t find a decent tailor on the Continent.”
“I well understand that,” Malvano laughed. “Is he making a long stay at home this time?”
“I believe so. He told me this morning that he was tired of travelling, and had come back to remain.”
Malvano smiled a trifle sarcastically. It was evident that his host did not know the true story of his nephew’s fascination, or he would have mentioned it, and perhaps sought the Doctor’s opinion. Therefore, after tome further ingenious questions regarding his nephew’s past and his present address dropped the subject.
An hour later he found himself alone with Armytage. They had passed through Clack’s Copse, and, after some splendid sport, had gained the road which cuts through the wood from Stanford Dingley to Ashampstead, where they were waiting for the remainder of the party, who, from the repeated shots, were in the vicinity finding plenty of birds.
“Your uncle tells me you know Italy well,” Malvano observed.
“I don’t know it well,” Armytage replied, looking the picture of good health and good humour as he stood astride in his well-worn breeches and gaiters, and his gun across his arm. “I’ve been in Tuscany once or twice at Florence, Pisa, Viareggio, Lucca, Leghorn, and Monte Catini. I’m very fond of it. The country is lovely, the garden of Italy, and the people are extremely interesting, and of such diverse types. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is there such pride among the lower classes as in Tuscany.”
“And nowhere in the world are the people more ready to charge the travelling Englishman excessively – if they can,” added Malvano, laughing. “I’m Italian born, you know, but I never hesitate to condemn the shortcomings of my fellow-countrymen. The honest Italian is the most devoted friend in the world; the dishonest one is the brother of the very devil himself. You asked me at lunch whether I knew any one named Fanetti – was Fanetti the name? – in Florence,” said the Doctor, after a pause, watching the younger man’s face narrowly. “At the time I didn’t recollect. Since lunch, I have remembered being called professionally to a family of that name on one occasion.”
“You were?” cried Armytage, immediately interested. He felt that, perhaps, from this careless, easy-going doctor, he might obtain some clue which would lead him to the truth regarding Gemma’s past.
Malvano recalled Lady Marshfield’s words, and with his keen dark eyes looked gravely into the face of the tall, broad-shouldered young Englishman.
“Yes,” he said. “There was a mother and two daughters, if I remember aright, and they lived in a small flat in the Via Ricasoli, a few doors from the Gerini Palace. I was summoned there in the night under somewhat mysterious circumstances, for I found, on arrival, that one of the daughters had a deep-incised wound in the neck, evidently inflicted with a knife. I made inquiry how it occurred, but received no satisfactory reply. One thing was evident, namely that the wound could not have been self-inflicted. There had been an attempt to murder the girl.”
“To murder her!” Armytage cried.
“No doubt,” the Doctor answered. “The wound had narrowly proved fatal, therefore the girl was in too collapsed a condition to speak herself. I dressed the wound, and advising them to call their own doctor, went away.”
“Didn’t you see the girl again?” asked Armytage. “No. There was something exceedingly suspicious about the whole affair, and I had no desire to imperil my professional reputation by being party at hushing up an attempted murder. Besides, from what I heard later, I believe they were decidedly a family to avoid.”
“To avoid! What do you mean?” the young man cried, dismayed.
Malvano saw that the words were producing the effect he desired, namely, to increase suspicion and mistrust in his companion’s heart, and therefore resolved to go even further.
“The family of whom I speak held a very unenviable reputation in Florence. Some mystery was connected with the father, who was said to be undergoing a long term of imprisonment. They were altogether beyond the pale of society. But, of course,” he added carelessly, “they cannot be the same family as those of whom you speak. Where did you say your friends live?”
“They no longer live in Florence,” he answered hoarsely, his brow darkened, and his eyes downcast in deep thought. All that he learnt regarding Gemma seemed to be to her detriment. None had ever spoken generously of her. It was, alas! true, as she had told him, she had many enemies who sought her disgrace and ruin. Then, after a pause, he asked, “Do you know the names of the girls?”
“Only that of the one I attended,” Malvano answered, his searching eyes on the face of young Armytage. “Her name was Gemma.”
“Gemma!” he gasped. His trembling lips moved, but the words he uttered were lost in the two rapid barrels which the Doctor discharged at a couple of pheasants at that instant passing over their heads.
Chapter Fifteen
The Shadow
In an old and easy dressing-gown, Gemma was idling over her tea and toast in her room on the morning after her lover had been shooting down in Berkshire, when one of the precocious messenger-lads delivered a note to her.
At first she believed it to be from Armytage, but, on opening it, found scribbled in pencil on a piece of paper, the address, “73, St. James’s Street, second floor;” while enclosed were a few words in Italian inviting her to call at that address on the first opportunity she could do so secretly, without the knowledge of her lover. The note was from Tristram.
With a cry of anger that he should have already discovered her presence in London, she cast the letter from her and stamped her tiny foot, crying, in her own tongue —
“Diavolo! Then ill luck has followed me – even here!” For a long time she sat, stirring her tea thoughtfully, and gazing blankly at her rings.
“No,” she murmured aloud in a harsh, broken voice; “I won’t see this man. Let him act as he thinks fit. He cannot wreck my happiness more completely than it is already. Major Maitland is a friend of the man I love. Is not that fact in itself sufficient to show me that happiness can never be mine; that it is sheer madness to anticipate a calm, peaceful life with Charles Armytage, as my husband? But Dio! Was it not always so?” she sighed, as hot tears rose in her clear blue eyes, and slowly coursed down her cheeks. “I have sinned; and this, alas! is my punishment.” Again she was silent. Her breast heaved and fell convulsively, and with hair disordered and unbound she presented an utterly forlorn appearance. Her small white hands were clenched, her lips tightly compressed and in her eyes was an intense expression as if before her had arisen some scene so terrible that it froze her senses.
At last the striking of the clock aroused her, and she slowly commenced to dress. She looked at herself long and earnestly in the mirror, and saw how deathly pale she had become, and how red were her eyes.
Presently, as she crossed the room, she noticed the letter, and, snatching it up, slipped the paper with the address into her purse, tearing up the note into tiny fragments.
It was past eleven when she descended to the great hall, and there found her lover seated on one of the lounges, smoking and patiently awaiting her.
They sat together in the hall for a few minutes, then took a taxi and drove about the West End. Armytage did not fail to observe how Gemma’s beauty and foreign chic were everywhere remarked. In the streets men stared at her admiringly, and women scanned her handsome dresses with envious eyes; while in the hotel there were many low whisperings of admiration. Yet he could not conceal from himself the fact that she was as mysterious as she was beautiful.
While passing across Grosvenor Square, she had been suddenly seized with excitement, for her quick eyes caught sight of a red, white, and green flag, hanging limp and motionless from a flagstaff upon one of the largest houses.
“Look! There’s our Italian flag! Why is it there?” she cried, thrilled at sight of her own national colours.
“That’s the Embassy,” he replied. “I suppose to-day is some anniversary or other in Italy.”
“The Embassy!” she repeated, turning again to look at it. “Is that where Count Castellani lives?”
“Yes. He’s your Ambassador. Do you know him?”
“I met him once in Florence. He was at a ball at the Strossi Palace.”
“Then you know Prince Strossi?” he exclaimed.
“Quite well,” she answered. “The Strossis and my family have long been acquainted.”
Her prompt reply made it apparent to him that she had moved in the most exclusive set in Florence. She had never before mentioned that she was acquainted with people of note. But next instant he recollected the strange story which the Florentine Doctor had told him on the previous afternoon. Had not Malvano declared that her family was an undesirable one to know? What, he wondered, was the reason of this curious denunciation?
Again she fixed her eyes upon the Embassy, and seemed as though she were taking careful observation of its appearance and position.
“Did you go much into society in Florence?” he inquired presently.
“Only when I was forced to,” she answered ambiguously. “I do not care for it.”
“Then you will not fret even if, after our marriage, you know only a few people?”
The word “marriage” caused her to start. It brought back to her the hideous truth that even now, after he had brought her to England, their union was impossible.
“No,” she answered, glancing at him with eyes full of love and tenderness. “I should always be happy with you alone, Nino. I should want no other companion.”
“You would soon grow dull, I fear,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“No, never – never,” she declared. “You know well how I love you, Nino.”
“And I adore you, darling,” he answered. Then, after looking at her in hesitation for a moment, he added. “But you speak as though you still fear that we shall not marry. Why is that?” He had not failed to notice her sudden change of manner when he had spoken of marriage.
“I really don’t know,” she answered, with a forced laugh. “I suppose it is but a foolish fancy, yet sometimes I think that this happiness is too complete to be lasting.”
“What causes you to fear this?” he asked earnestly.
“When I reflect upon the unhappiness of the past,” she said with a sigh – “when I remember how bitter was my life, how utterly blank and hopeless was the world prior to our meeting, I cannot rid myself of the apprehension that my plans, like all my others, will be thwarted by the one great secret of my past; that all my castles are merely air-built; that your love for me, Nino, will soon wane, and we shall part.”