Chapter 27

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_ CHAPTER XXVII

Orsino was to all intents and purposes without a friend. How far circumstances had contributed to this result and how far he himself was to blame for his lonely state, those may judge who have followed his history to this point. His grandfather had indeed offered him help and in a way to make it acceptable if he had felt that he could accept it at all. But the old Prince did not in the least understand the business nor the situation. Moreover a young fellow of two or three and twenty does not look for a friend in the person of a man sixty years older than himself. While maintaining the most uniformly good relations in his home, Orsino felt himself estranged from his father and mother. His brothers were too young, and were generally away from home at school and college, and he had no sisters. Beyond the walls of the Palazzo Saracinesca, San Giacinto was the only man whom he would willingly have consulted; but San Giacinto was of all men the one least inclined to intimacy with his neighbours, and, after all, as Orsino reflected, he would probably repeat the advice he had already given, if he vouchsafed counsel of any kind.

He thought of all his acquaintance and came to the conclusion that he was in reality in terms more closely approaching to friendship with Andrea Contini than with any man of his own class. Yet he would have hesitated to call the architect his friend, as he would have found it impossible to confide in him concerning any detail of his own private life.

At a time when most young men are making friends, Orsino had been hindered, from the formation of such ties by the two great interests which had absorbed his existence, his attachment and subsequent love for Maria Consuelo, and the business at which he had worked so steadily. He had lost Maria Consuelo, in whom he would have confided as he had often done before, and at the present important juncture he stood quite alone.

He felt that he was no match for Del Ferice. The keen banker was making use of him for his own purposes in a way which neither Orsino nor Contini had ever suspected. It could not be supposed that Ugo had foreseen from the first the advantage he might reap from the firm he had created and which was so wholly dependent on him. Orsino might have turned out ignorant and incapable. Contini might have proved idle and even dishonest. But, instead of this, the experiment had succeeded admirably and Ugo found himself possessed of an instrument, as it were, precisely adapted to his end, which was to make worthless property valuable at the smallest possible expense, in fact, at the lowest cost price. He had secured a first-rate architect and a first-rate accountant, both men of spotless integrity, both young, energetic and unusually industrious. He paid nothing for their services and he entirely controlled their expenditure. It was clear that he would do his utmost to maintain an arrangement so immensely profitable to himself. If Orsino had realised exactly how profitable it was, he might have forced Del Ferice to share the gain with him, and would have done so for the sake of Contini, if not for his own. He suspected, indeed, that Ugo was certain beforehand, in each case, of selling or letting the houses, but he had no proof of the fact. Ugo did not leave everything to his confidential clerk, and the secrets he kept to himself were well kept.

Orsino consulted Contini, as a matter of necessity, before accepting Del Ferice's last offer. The architect went into a tragic-comic rage, bit his cigar through several times, ground his teeth, drank several glasses of cold water, talked of the blood of Cola di Rienzo, vowed vengeance on Del Ferice and finally submitted.

The signing of the new contract determined the course of Orsino's life for another year. It is surprising to see, in the existence of others, how periods of monotonous calm succeed seasons of storm and danger. In our own they do not astonish us so much, if at all. Orsino continued to work hard, to live regularly and to do all those things which, under the circumstances he ought to have done and earned the reputation of being a model young man, a fact which surprised him on one or two occasions when it came to his ears. Yet when he reflected upon it, he saw that he was in reality not like other young men, and that his conduct was undoubtedly abnormally good as viewed by those around him. His grandfather began to look upon him as something almost unnatural, and more than once hinted to Giovanni that the boy, as he still called him, ought to behave like other boys.

"He is more like San Giacinto than any of us," said Giovanni, thoughtfully. "He has taken after that branch."

"If that is the case, he might have done worse," answered the old man. "I like San Giacinto. But you always judge superficially, Giovanni--you always did. And the worst of it is, you are always perfectly well satisfied with your own judgments."

"Possibly. I have certainly not accepted those of others."

"And the result is that you are turning into an oyster--and Orsino has begun to turn into an oyster, too, and the other boys will follow his example--a perfect oyster-bed! Go and take Orsino by the throat and shake him--"

"I regret to say that I am physically not equal to that feat," said Giovanni with a laugh.

"I should be!" exclaimed the aged Prince, doubling his hard hand and bringing it down on the table, while his bright eyes gleamed. "Go and shake him, and tell him to give up this dirty building business--make him give it up, buy him out of it, put plenty of money into his pockets and send him off to amuse himself! You and Corona have made a prig of him, and business is making an oyster of him, and he will be a hopeless idiot before you realise it! Stir him, shake him, make him move! I hate your furniture-man--who is always in the right place and always ready to be sat upon!"

"If you can persuade him to give up affairs I have no objection."

"Persuade him! I never knew a man worth speaking to who could be persuaded to anything he did not like. Make him--that is the way."

"But since he is behaving himself and is occupied--that is better than the lives all these young fellows are leading."

"Do not argue with me, Giovanni, I hate it. Besides, your reason is worth nothing at all. Did I spend my youth over accounts, in the society of an architect? Did I put water in my wine and sit up like a model little boy at my papa's table and spend my evenings in carrying my mamma's fan? Nonsense! And yet all that was expected in my day, in a way it is not expected now. Look at yourself. You are bad enough--dull enough, I mean. Did you waste the best years of your life in counting bricks and measuring mortar?"

"You say that you hate argument, and yet you are arguing. But Orsino shall please himself, as I did, and in his own way. I will certainly not interfere."

"Because you know you can do nothing with him!" retorted old Saracinesca contemptuously.

Giovanni laughed. Twenty years earlier he would have lost his temper to no purpose. But twenty years of unruffled existence had changed him.

"You are not the man you were," grumbled his father.

"No. I have been too happy, far too long, to be much like what I was at thirty."

"And do you mean to say I am not happy, and have not been happy, and do not mean to be happy, and do not wish everybody to be happy, so long as this old machine hangs together? What nonsense you talk, my boy. Go and make love to your wife. That is all you are fit for!"

Discussions of this kind were not unfrequent but of course led to nothing. As a matter of fact Sant' Ilario was quite right in believing interference useless. It would have been impossible. He was no more able to change Orsino's determination than he was physically capable of shaking him. Not that Sant' Ilario was weak, physically or morally, nor ever had been. But his son had grown up to be stronger than he.

Twelve months passed away. During that time the young man worked, as he had worked before, regularly and untiringly. But his object now was to free himself, and he no longer hoped to make a fortune or to do any thing beyond the strict execution of the contract he had in hand, determined if possible to avoid taking another. With a coolness and self-denial beyond his years, he systematically hoarded the allowance he received from his father, in order to put together a sum of money for poor Contini. He made economies everywhere, refused to go into society and spent his evenings in reading. His acquired manner stood him in good stead, but he could not bear more than a limited amount of the daily talk in the family. Being witty, rather than gay, if he could be said to be either, he found himself inclined rather to be bitter than amusing when he was wearied by the monotonous conversation of others. He knew this to be a mistake and controlled himself, taking refuge in solitude and books when he could control himself no longer.

Whether he loved Maria Consuelo still, or not, it was clear that he was not inclined to love any one else for the present. The tolerably harmless dissipation and wildness of the two or three years he had spent in England could not account for such a period of coldness as followed his separation from Maria Consuelo. He had by no means exhausted the pleasures of life and his capacity for enjoyment could not even be said to have reached its height. But he avoided the society of women even more consistently than he shunned the club and the card table.

More than a year had gone by since he had heard from Maria Consuelo. He met Spicca from time to time, looking now as though he had not a day to live, but neither of them mentioned past events. The Romans had talked a little of her sudden change of plans, for it had been known that she had begun to furnish a large apartment for the winter of the previous year, and had then very unaccountably changed her mind and left the place in the hands of an agent to be sub-let. People said she had lost her fortune. Then she had been forgotten in the general disaster that followed, and no one had taken the trouble to remember her since then. Even Gouache, who had once been so enthusiastic over her portrait, did not seem to know or care what had become of her. Once only, and quite accidentally, Orsino had authentic information of her whereabouts. He took up an English society journal one evening and glanced idly over the paragraphs. Maria Consuelo's name arrested his attention. A certain very high and mighty old lady of royal lineage was about to travel in Egypt during the winter. "Her Royal Highness," said the paper, "will be accompanied by the Countess d'Aranjuez d'Aragona." Orsino's hand shook a little as he laid the sheet aside, and he was pale when he rose a few moments later and went off to his own room. He could not help wondering why Maria Consuelo was styled by a title to which she certainly had a legal right, but which she had never before used, and he wondered still more why she travelled in Egypt with an old princess who was generally said to be anything but an agreeable companion, and was reported to be quite deaf. But on the whole he thought little of the information itself. It was the sight of Maria Consuelo's name which had moved him, and he was not altogether himself for several days. The impression wore off before long, and he followed the round of his monotonous life as before.

Early in the month of March in the year 1890, he was seated alone in his room one evening before dinner. The great contract he had undertaken was almost finished, and he knew that within two months he would be placed in the same difficult position from which he had formerly so signally failed to extricate himself. That he and Contini had executed the terms of the contract with scrupulous and conscientious nicety did not better the position. That they had made the most strenuous efforts to find purchasers for the property, as they had a right to do if they could, and had failed, made the position hopeless or almost as bad as that. Whether they liked it or not, Del Ferice had so arranged that the great mass of their acceptances should fall due about the time when the work would be finished. To mortgage on the same terms or anything approaching the same terms with any other bank was out of the question, so that they had no hope of holding the property for the purpose of leasing it. Even if Orsino could have contemplated for a moment such an act of bad faith as wilfully retarding the work in order to gain a renewal of the bills, such a course could have led to no actual improvement in the situation. The property was unsaleable and Del Ferice knew it, and had no intention of selling it. He meant to keep it for himself and let it, as a permanent source of income. It would not have cost him in the end one half of its actual value, and was exceptionally good property. Orsino saw how hopeless it was to attempt resistance, unless he would resign himself to voting an appeal to his own people, and this, as of old, he was resolved not to do.

He was reflecting upon his life of bondage when a servant brought him a letter. He tossed it aside without looking at it, but it chanced to slip from the polished table and fall to the ground. As he picked it up his attention was arrested by the handwriting and by the stamp. The stamp was Egyptian and the writing was that of Maria Consuelo. He started, tore open the envelope and took out a letter of many pages, written on thin paper. At first he found it hard to follow the characters, and his heart beat at a rate which annoyed him. He rose, walked the length of the room and back again, sat down in another seat close to the lamp and read the letter steadily from beginning to end.

"My Dear Friend--You may, perhaps, be surprised at hearing from me after so long a time. I received your last letter. How long ago was that? Twelve, fourteen, fifteen months? I do not know. It is as well to forget, since I at least would rather not remember what you wrote. And I write now--why? Simply because I have the impulse to do so. That is the best of all reasons. I wish to hear from you, which is selfish; and I wish to hear about you, which is not. Are you still working at that business in which you were so much interested? Or have you given it up and gone back to the life you used to hate so thoroughly? I would like to know. Do you remember how angry I was long ago, because you agreed to meet Del Ferice in my drawing-room? I was very wrong, for the meeting led to many good results. I like to think that you are not quite like all the young men of your set, who do nothing--and cannot even do that gracefully. I think you used those very words about yourself, once upon a time. But you proved that you could live a very different life if you chose. I hope you are living it still.

"And so poor Donna Tullia is dead--has been dead a year and a half! I wrote Del Ferice a long letter when I got the news. He answered me. He is not as bad as you used to think, for he was terribly pained by his loss--I could see that well enough in what he wrote though there was nothing exaggerated or desperate in the phrases. In fact there were no phrases at all. I wish I had kept the letter to send to you, but I never keep letters. Poor Donna Tullia! I cannot imagine Rome without her. It would certainly not be the same place to me, for she was uniformly kind and thoughtful where I was concerned, whatever she may have been to others.

"Echoes reach me from time to time in different parts of the world, as I travel, and Rome seems to be changed in many ways. They say the ruin was dreadful when the crash came. I suppose you gave up business then, as was natural, since they say there is no more business to do. But I would be glad to know that nothing disagreeable happened to you in the financial storm. I confess to having felt an unaccountable anxiety about you of late. Perhaps that is why I write and why I hope for an answer at once. I have always looked upon presentiments and forewarnings and all such intimations as utterly false and absurd, and I do not really believe that anything has happened or is happening to distress you. But it is our woman's privilege to be inconsistent, and we should be still more inconsistent if we did not use it. Besides I have felt the same vague disquietude about you more than once before and have not written. Perhaps I should not write even now unless I had a great deal more time at my disposal than I know what to do with. Who knows? If you are busy, write a word on a post-card, just to say that nothing is the matter. Here in Egypt we do not realise what time means, and certainly not that it can ever mean money.

"It is an idle life, less idle for me perhaps than for some of those about me, but even for me not over-full of occupations. The climate occupies all the time not actually spent in eating, sleeping and visiting ruins. It is fair, I suppose, to tell you something of myself since I ask for news of you. I will tell you what I can.

"I am travelling with an old lady, as her companion--not exactly out of inclination and yet not exactly out of duty. Is that too mysterious? Do you see me as Companion and general amuser to an old lady--over seventy years of age? No. I presume not. And I am not with her by necessity either, for I have not suffered any losses. On the contrary, since I dismissed a certain person--an attendant, we will call her--from my service, it seems to me that my income is doubled. The attendant, by the bye, has opened a hotel on the Lake of Como. Perhaps you, who are so good a man of business, may see some connexion between these simple facts. I was never good at managing money, nor at understanding what it meant. It seems that I have not inherited all the family talents.

"But I return to Egypt, to the Nile, to this dahabiyah, on board of which it has pleased the fates to dispose my existence for the present. I am not called a companion, but a lady in waiting, which would be only another term for the same thing, if I were not really very much attached to the Princess, old and deaf as she is. And that is saying a great deal. No one knows what deafness means who has not read aloud to a deaf person, which is what I do every day. I do not think I ever told you about her. I have known her all my life, ever since I was a little girl in the convent in Vienna. She used to come and see me and bring me good things--and books of prayers--I remember especially a box of candied fruits which she told me came from Kiew. I have never eaten any like them since. I wonder how many sincere affections between young and old people owe their existence originally to a confectioner!

"When I left Rome, I met her again in Nice. She was there with the Prince, who was in wretched health and who died soon afterwards. He never was so fond of me as she was. After his death, she asked me to stay with her as long as I would. I do not think I shall leave her again so long as she lives. She treats me like her own child--or rather, her grandchild--and besides, the life suits me very well. I am, really, perfectly independent, and yet I am perfectly protected. I shall not repeat the experiment of living alone for three years, until I am much older.

"It is a rather strange friendship. My Princess knows all about me--all that you know. I told her one day and she did not seem at all surprised. I thought I owed her the truth about myself, since I was to live with her, and since she had always been so kind to me. She says I remind her of her daughter, the poor young Princess Marie, who died nearly thirty years ago. In Nice, too, like her father, poor girl. She was only just nineteen, and very beautiful they say. I suppose the dear good old lady fancies she sees some resemblance even now, though I am so much older than her daughter was when she died. There is the origin of our friendship--the trivial and the tragic--confectionery and death--a box of candied fruits and an irreparable loss! If there were no contrasts what would the world be? All one or the other, I suppose. All death, or all Kiew sweetmeats.

"I suppose you know what life in Egypt is like. If you have not tried it yourself, your friends have and can describe it to you. I will certainly not inflict my impressions upon your friendship. It would be rather a severe test--perhaps yours would not bear it, and then I should be sorry.

"Do you know? I like to think that I have a friend in you. I like to remember the time when you used to talk to me of all your plans--the dear old time! I would rather remember that than much which came afterwards. You have forgiven me for all I did, and are glad, now, that I did it. Yes, I can fancy your smile. You do not see yourself, Prince Saracinesca, Prince Sant' Ilario, Duke of Whatever-it-may-be, Lord of ever so many What-are-their-names, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Grandee of Spain of the First Class, Knight of Malta and Hereditary Something to the Holy See--in short the tremendous personage you will one day be--you do not exactly see yourself as the son-in-law of the Signora Lucrezia Ferris, proprietor of a tourist's hotel on the Lake of Como! Confess that the idea was an absurdity! As for me, I will confess that I did very wrong. Had I known all the truth on that afternoon--do you remember the thunderstorm? I would have saved you much, and I should have saved myself--well--something. But we have better things to do than to run after shadows. Perhaps it is as well not even to think of them. It is all over now. Whatever you may think of it all, forgive your old friend,

Maria Consuelo d'A."

Orsino read the long letter to the end, and sat a while thinking over the contents. Two points in it struck him especially. In the first place it was not the letter of a woman who wished to call back a man she had dismissed. There was no sentiment in it, or next to none. She professed herself contented in her life, if not happy, and in one sentence she brought before him the enormous absurdity of the marriage he had once contemplated. He had more than once been ashamed of not making some further direct effort to win her again. He was now suddenly conscious of the great influence which her first letter, containing the statement of her parentage, had really exercised over him. Strangely enough, what she now wrote reconciled him, as it were, with himself. It had turned out best, after all.

That he loved her still, he felt sure, as he held in his hand the pages she had written and felt the old thrill he knew so well in his fingers, and the old, quick beating of the heart. But he acknowledged gladly--too gladly, perhaps--that he had done well to let her go.

Then came the second impression. "I like to remember the time when you used to talk to me of all your plans." The words rang in his ears and called up delicious visions of the past, soft hours spent by her side while she listened with something warmer than patience to the outpouring of his young hopes and aspirations. She, at least, had understood him, and encouraged him, and strengthened him with her sympathy. And why not now, if then? Why should she not understand him now, when he most needed a friend, and give him sympathy now, when he stood most in need of it? She was in Egypt and he in Rome, it was true. But what of that? If she could write to him, he could write to her, and she could answer him again. No one had ever felt with him as she had.

He did not hesitate long. On that same evening, after dinner, he went back to his own room and wrote to her. It was a little hard at first, but, as the ink flowed, he expressed himself better and more clearly. With an odd sort of caution, which had grown upon him of late, he tried to make his letter take a form as similar to hers as possible.

"MY DEAR FRIEND" (he wrote)--"If people always yielded to their impulses as you have done in writing to me, there would be more good fellowship and less loneliness in the world. It would not be easy for me to tell you how great a pleasure you have given me. Perhaps, hereafter, I may compare it to your own memory of the Kiew candied fruits! For the present I do not find a worthy comparison to my hand.

"You ask many questions. I propose to answer them all. Will you have the patience to read what I write? I hope so, for the sake of the time when I used to talk to you of all my plans--and which you say you like to remember. For another reason, too. I have never felt so lonely in my life as I feel now, nor so much in need of a friend--not a helping friend, but one to whom I can speak a little freely. I am very much alone. A sort of estrangement has grown up between my mother and me, and she no longer takes my side in all I want to do, as she did once.

"I will be quite plain. I will tell you all my troubles, because there is not another person in the world to whom I could tell them--and because I know that they will not trouble you. You will feel a little friendly sympathy, and that will be enough. But you will feel no pain. After all, I daresay that I exaggerate, and that there is nothing so very painful in the matter, as it will strike you. But the case is serious, as you will see. It involves my life, perhaps for many years to come.

"I am completely in Del Ferice's power. A year ago I had the possibility of freeing myself. What do you think that chance was? I could have gone to my grandfather and asked him to lay down a sum of money sufficient to liberate me, or I could have refused Del Ferice's new offer and allowed myself to be declared bankrupt. My abominable vanity stood in the way of my following either of those plans. In less than two months I shall be placed in the same position again. But the circumstances are changed. The sum of money is so considerable that I would not like to ask all my family, with their three fortunes, to contribute it. The business is enormous. I have an establishment like a bank and Contini--you remember Contini?--has several assistant architects. Moreover we stand alone. There is no other firm of the kind left, and our failure would be a very disagreeable affair. But so long as I remain Del Ferice's slave, we shall not fail. Do you know that this great and successful firm is carried on systematically without a centime of profit to the partners, and with the constant threat of a disgraceful failure, used to force me on? Do you think that if I chose the alternative, any one would believe, or that my tyrant would let any one believe, that Orsino Saracinesca had served Ugo Del Ferice for years--two years and a half before long--as a sort of bondsman? I am in a very unenviable position. I am sure that Del Ferice made use of me at first for his own ends--that is, to make money for him. The magnitude of the sums which pass through my hands makes me sure that he is now backed by a powerful syndicate, probably of foreign bankers who lost money in the Roman crash, and who see a chance of getting it back through Del Ferice's management. It is a question of millions. You do not understand? Will you try to read my explanation?"

And here Orsino summed up his position towards Del Ferice in a clear and succinct statement, which it is not necessary to reproduce here. It needed no talent for business on Maria Consuelo's part to understand that he was bound hand and foot.

"One of three things must happen" (Orsino continued). "I must cripple, if not ruin, the fortune of my family, or I must go through a scandalous bankruptcy, or I must continue to be Ugo Del Ferice's servant during the best years of my life. My only consolation is that I am unpaid. I do not speak of poor Contini. He is making a reputation, it is true, and Del Ferice gives him something which I increase as much as I can. Considering our positions, he is the more completely sacrificed of the two, poor fellow--and through my fault. If I had only had the courage to put my vanity out of the way eighteen months ago, I might have saved him as well as myself. I believed myself a match for Del Ferice--and I neither was nor ever shall be. I am a little desperate.

"That is my life, my dear friend. Since you have not quite forgotten me, write me a word of that good old sympathy on which I lived so long. It may soon be all I have to live on. If Del Ferice should have the bad taste to follow Donna Tullia to Saint Lawrence's, nothing could save me. I should no longer have the alternative of remaining his slave in exchange for safety from bankruptcy to myself and ruin--or something like it--to my father.

"But let us talk no more about it all. But for your kindly letter, no one would ever have known all this, except Contini. In your calm Egyptian life--thank God, dear, that your life is calm!--my story must sound like a fragment from an unpleasant dream. One thing you do not tell me. Are you happy, as well as peaceful? I would like to know. I am not.

"Pray write again, when you have time--and inclination. If there is anything to be done for you in Rome--any little thing, or great thing either--command your old friend,

"ORSINO SARACINESCA." _

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