To Win the Love He Sought Part 25

"I cannot!"

"Mother!"

"Lumley, I cannot! She looks at me out of his eyes; she speaks to me with his voice; something tells me that she bears in her heart his hate toward me. You do not know these Marionis! They are one in hate and one in love; unchanging and hard as the rocks on which their castle frowns.

Even Margharita herself, in the old days, never forgave me for sending Leonardo to prison, although I saved her lover's life as well as mine.

Lumley, you have said nothing to her?"

"Not yet."

"She would not marry you! I tell you that in her heart she hates us all!

Sometimes I fancy that she is here--only----"

"Mother!"

He laid his hand firmly upon her white trembling arm. She looked around, following his eyes. Margharita, pale and proud, was standing upon the threshold, with a great bunch of white hyacinths in the bosom of her black dress.

"Am I intruding?" she asked quietly. "I will come down some other evening."

Lord Lumley sprang forward to stop her; but his mother was the first to recover herself.

"Pray don't go away, Margharita," she said, with perfect self-possession. "Only a few minutes ago we were complaining that you came down so seldom. Lumley, open the piano, and get Miss Briscoe's songs."

He was by her side in a moment, but he found time for an admiring glance toward his mother. She had taken up a paper knife, and was cutting the pages of her book. It was the _savoir-faire_ of a great lady.

CHAPTER XXIII

MARGHARITA'S DIARY--A CORRESPONDENCE

_Letter from Count Leonardo di Marioni to Miss M. Briscoe, care of the Earl of St. Maurice, Mallory Grange, Lincolns.h.i.+re._

"HOTEL DE PARIS, TURIN.

"MY BELOVED NIECE: Alas! I have but another disappointment to recount. I arrived here last night, and early this morning I visited the address which I obtained at Florence with so much difficulty. The house was shut up. From inquiries made with caution among the neighbors I learned that Andrea Paschuli had left a few months before for Rome. Thither I go in search of him.

"The delay is irksome, but it is necessary. Although my desire for the day of my vengeance to come is as strong as ever, I would not have the shadow of a suspicion rest upon you. Truly, yours will be no crime, but the world and the courts of justice would have it otherwise. You will, in verity, be but the instrument. Upon my head be the guilt, as mine will be the exceeding joy, when the thing for which I crave is accomplished. Bless you, my child, that you have elected to aid me in carrying out this most just requital! Bless you, my child, that you have chosen to bring peace into the heart of one who has known great suffering!

"Your last letter was short; yet I do not wonder at it. What is there you can find to say to me, while our great purpose remains thus in abeyance? My health continues good, I am thankful to say, yet, were it otherwise, I know that my strength would linger with me till my oath is accomplished. Till that day shall come death itself has no power over me. Even though its shadow lay across my path I could still defy it.

Think not that I am blaspheming, Margharita, or that I believe in no G.o.d. I believe in a G.o.d of justice, and he will award me my right. Oh, that the time may be short, for I am growing weary. Life is very burdensome, save only for its end.

"Sometimes, my beloved Margharita, you have sought to lighten the deep gloom through which I struggle, by picturing the happy days we may yet spend together in some far-distant country, where the shadows of this great selfish world barely reach, and its mighty roar and tumult sound but as a faint, low murmur. I have listened, but I have answered not; for in my heart I know that it will never be. Those days will never come. I have shrunk from throwing a chill upon your warm, generous heart; but of late I have wondered whether I do well in thus silently deceiving you. For, Margharita, there is no such time of peaceful happiness in store for me. I am dying! Nay, do not start! Do not pity me! Do not fear! I know it so well; and I feel no pang, no sorrow. The limit of my days is fixed--not in actual days or weeks, but by events. I shall live to see my desire accomplished, and then I shall die. The light may flicker, but, till then, it will not go out. You will ask me: Who am I that I dare to fix a limit to an existence which G.o.d alone controls? I cannot tell you, Margharita, why I know, or how, yet it is surely so. The day which sees me free of my vow will also be the day of my death.

"Trouble not, my child, at this thought, nor wonder why I can write of the end of my days so calmly. Ask yourself rather what further life could mean for me. There is no joy which I desire; my worn-out frame could find no pleasure in dragging out a tasteless and profitless existence. I look for death as one looks for his couch who has toiled and labored through the heat of the day. I shall find there rest and peace. I have no other desire.

"For yourself, Margharita, have no fear. I have made your fortune my care, and G.o.d grant that it may be a happy one. Honest men have made good profit out of my lands during my imprisonment. I have wealth to leave, and it is yours. The Castle of the Marionis will be yours, and well I know you will raise once more and uphold the mighty, though fallen, traditions of our race. I leave all fearlessly in your hands, at your entire disposal. Only one thing I beg of you, and that without fear of refusal. Marry not an Englishman. Marry one of the n.o.bility of our own island, if you can find one worthy of you; if not, there are n.o.bles of Italy with whom your alliance would be an honor, and also a profit.

You will be rich as you are beautiful; and the first lady in Italy, our distant kinswoman, Angela di Carlotti, will be your guardian and your friend. May you be very, very happy, dearest; and all that comes to you you will deserve, for you have lightened the heart of a weary old man, whose blessing is yours, now and for ever.

"LEONARDO DI MARIONI."

_Letter from Margharita Briscoe to the Count Leonardo di Marioni, care of the Princess di Carlotti, Palazzo Carlotti, Rome._

"MY DEAR, DEAR UNCLE: I am inclined to scold you for your letter, for it made me very sad. Why should you be so sure of dying just as the vengeance which is your due becomes yours? You are not very old, and I can nurse you even as I did before. Think how lonely I should be without you. No, you must not think of leaving me. I forbid it! It is morbid.

Banish that fancy for my sake, and try and think of a quiet happy life together, away in some southern city, where the sea and the sky are blue, and the sun is warm, and the breezes are soft and laden with the perfume of sweet flowers. We would never live in this country, would we?

I do not like it. It is cold and damp, and it chills me, chills even my heart. Oh! I know just the life we could live together, and be very, very happy. Write to me no more of death.

"I am quite settled down here, waiting. My duties are light, and I do not find them irksome. Every day I realize that I did well in coming here as a governess, and not as one seeking a home. They think that it is because of my pride that I have willed it so. They do not know.

"Lady St Maurice tries to be kind to me in her way; but when the honeyed words are upon her lips, I think of you and my heart is steel. She must have been a very beautiful woman--nay, she is beautiful now! You asked me in your first letter to watch well and to tell you whether they were happy together. You asked me, and I tell you the truth.

"Yes! I think that of all the women whom I have ever seen, her life seems to have flown along the most calmly and peacefully. I have never seen a cloud upon her brow; I hate her for it. She has no right to be happy; she who by such treachery condemned you to a living death. Once my anger rose up so fiercely that I nearly struck her, and I had to hurry from the room lest I should betray myself before the time. Truly she deserves punishment, and my hand shall not shrink from inflicting it.

"Yet, after all, is death the most complete form of punishment.

Sometimes I doubt it. I would mar the beauty of her face for ever, and laugh. I would strike her blind gladly; I would make her a cripple for life, without remorse, without hesitation. To see her suffer would please me. I should have no pity!

"But death, uncle! If anything of our religion be true, would death be so terrible a thing? Against my will I see that her life is good. She has made her home what it should be, and her husband happy. She is a devoted Christian, and, wet or fine, every Sunday morning before breakfast, she goes to the little church in the village and kneels before the altar. She visits the sick and the poor, and they love her.

For me, religion has become something of a dream. I was brought up a Roman Catholic. What I am now I do not know! When I vowed my life to its present purpose I filled it with new thoughts; I put my religion away from me. I could not kneel with hate in my heart; I could not confess, with the desire to kill in my bosom.

"Yet let that pa.s.s. Supposing there be a heaven, if we kill her for her treachery to you will not that sin be wiped out? May she not gain heaven? And if so, what of our vengeance? Death is swift! What will she suffer? It will be those who are left behind who will feel the pain; for her, there will be a happiness beyond even the happiness of earth. She will be shriven of her sin by our vengeance.

"Think of this, my dear uncle! Do not imagine that I am growing faint-hearted; do not imagine that I am drawing back from the task which I now claim as my right. Death, or some other sort of punishment, shall surely fall upon her; she shall not escape! Only think what is best.

"Write to me all that is in your heart. Fear not to speak out! I would know all. Farewell! Your loving

"MARGHARITA."

_Letter from the Count Leonardo di Marioni, the Palazzo Carlotti, Rome, to Miss Margharita Briscoe, Mallory Grange, Lincolns.h.i.+re._

"BELOVED MARGHARITA: I will confess that your letter troubles me. If there be heaven for the woman who wrecked my life, there is no heaven for me, no religion, no G.o.d. You say that she is a good woman. She is then a good woman through fear. She seeks to atone, but she can never atone. She won a boy's pa.s.sionate love; she wore his heart upon her sleeve; she cast it away at the moment of her pleasure. She broke the vows of an order, which should have been as sacred to her as the face of G.o.d to the angels; and she sent a Marioni to rot through a useless life in a miserable prison. The boy whose heart she broke, and the man whose life she severed, lives only to nurse his unchanging and unchangeable hate for her. Away with all other thoughts, my vengeance knows but one end, and that is death! Not sudden death, mind! but death--slow, lingering, and painful. I would see the struggle against some mysterious sickness, with my own eyes; I would stand by the bedside and mock, I would watch the cheeks grow thin and pale, and the eyes grow dim. She should know me in those last moments. She should see me, the wasted shadow of a man, myself on the threshold of the grave, standing by her bedside, cold and unpitying, and holding out toward her a white hyacinth.

"That is how I would have it, though thus it may not be. Yet speak to me not of any other vengeance save death. Let none other dwell for a moment in your thoughts, I solemnly charge you, Margharita.

"As to my search, it has not yet, alas, been successful. Think not that I have lost heart, or that I am discouraged. Never fear but that I shall find the man whom I seek--if not, there are others. I give myself one month longer; at the end of that time, if Paschuli be not found, another must serve my purpose.

"The Princess is much interested in you, and sends her love. She is impatient to take you under her care. I have told her that it will not be long--nor will it.

"Farewell, my child. Soon I shall send you the good news.--Yours,

"LEONARDO DI MARIONI."