William Le Queux

“ She shook her head slowly.
“It is not a trap, Godfrey,” she answered. “Rather call it force of circumstances. Those who told you I was dead lied to you, while I, hearing nothing from you, naturally concluded that you had forgotten. Therefore it is best for us to part again at once—to-night—for the memories of the past are to us both too painful.”
“Part from you, Ella!” I cried. “Never—never. You must be mad. While you breathe and live I shall remain near you as your friend, your protector, nay, your lover—the man who loves you better than his own life!” ”

“ All the disjointed admissions which she had made regarding her acquaintance with the dead Minister for Justice, her appeal to him to speak the truth and clear her of some mysterious stigma, and her mention of the Villa Verde out at Tivoli crowded upon me. When we suffer very much everything that smiles in the sun seems cruel.
Beneath that beautiful face, pale in the bright moonbeams shining upon it, was mystery—a great unfathomable mystery. Was she not daughter of one of the cleverest thieves in Europe? And, if so, could she not most probably keep a secret if one were entrusted to her? ”

“ Ah! when I think of it all, when I think how one word from Giovanni Nardini would have liberated me and showed the world that I was what I was, an honest woman, I am seized by a frenzy of hatred against him, as against that man Gordon-Wright—the man who knows the truth and intends to profit by it, even though I sacrifice my own life rather than face their lying denunciation without power to defend myself. ”

“ She spoke with such feeling and sympathy, and she was so full of an ineffable charm that I refused to believe that she was a mere adventuress assisting her father in his direction of some ingenious gang of thieves who worked in secret.
Her father, too, was the very last man whom I should have believed to be an adventurer had not the proof been so plain. Was not that appeal of Lucie’s to Nardini an ugly and suspicious truth?
The more suspicious, too, that she would give me no idea of the allegation against her. She evidently feared lest I should make inquiry and discover the disgraceful truth. ”

“ We may abuse its defects, we may revile its people as dishonest idlers, we may execrate its snail-like railways and run down its primitive hotels, yet all the same we have a secret longing to return to that glowing land where life is love, where art is in the very atmosphere, where the sun brings gladness to the heaviest heart, and the night silence is broken by love stornelli and the mandoline. ”

“ What mystery need there be if you are to be married?”
“I have promised to say nothing until we are man and wife,” she answered. “You alone, Godfrey, have I told because—well, because I dare not again deceive you.”
“Then you still love me!” I exclaimed quickly. “Confess the truth.”
“What is the use of discussing affection?” she asked. “The die is cast. At the very moment when we meet again after this long separation, we find ourselves debarred from happiness. We can never become man and wife.” ”

“ Three winters before I found myself, after the brilliant season at Monte Carlo, at a little sea-side resort called Nervi, which, as travellers know, is a few miles beyond Genoa, on the way to Rome. You have possibly looked out of the train and there obtained a glimpse of the blue Mediterranean beating upon its brown rocks; you have admired the splendid white villas of the Genoese merchants, and you have, probably, noticed behind the little railway station a great hotel garden, with green lawns and a splendid avenue of spreading palms. ”

“ Did we not love each other with a fond, mad passion? And yet my darling had, it appeared, fallen beneath the influence of some nameless fellow, who was, no doubt, a scoundrel and an adventurer! Should I calmly stand by and allow her to ruin her life and mine? No. A thousand times, no. And as I stood there in silence in the low-ceilinged old room with Lucie Miller at my side, I made a firm and furious resolve that my Ella should not again escape me. Our love, however, seemed ill-fated. The remembrance of that night in Bayswater ever arose within my memory. ”

“ Yes, my Ella, my sweet-faced love, was not satisfied with the prospect of being the wife of a man comfortably off. Like so many other girls who are dazzled by the lights of life, she longed to shine as a hostess, to wear Paquin frocks and have her portraits in the papers. I was deeply disappointed with her, for, fool that I was, I really believed that she honestly loved me. How often, alas! is a man deceived! ”

“ Had she invented this nameless lover with some ulterior object? No man can ever fathom the ingenuity of a woman who intends to deceive.
“Permit me to say so, Ella, but you are not frank with me,” I exclaimed reproachfully. “Why do you not tell me the whole truth, and allow me to take what steps I think proper? Cannot you realise all I feel at the thought of losing you again—for the second time? The past has been black enough, but the future for me will be even darker if I go away in the knowledge that you are the victim of a man unworthy of you. ”

“ At half-past five o’clock that same afternoon, heedless of the Countess Moltedo’s mysterious warning, I was standing by Lucie’s side at the long French window that opened upon the balcony. Below, hundreds of visitors, mostly dressed in white, as is the mode of Leghorn, were promenading in the little pine wood that lies between the roadway and the sea, while beyond stretched the broad glassy Mediterranean aglow in the fiery rays of the Tuscan sunset, the mystic islands showing dark purple on the far-off horizon. ”

“ There were lights there, but the green persiennes were still closed, as they had been all day.
As the night wore on the street became extra full of idling promenaders, for it was festa and all Rome was out to gossip, to lounge and to obtain a breath of the bel fresco. Men were crying the evening newspaper in loud strident tones, and here and there walked the police in couples, with their epaulettes and festa plumes. Before every café the chairs overflowed into the roadway, and every table was occupied by men and women, mostly in white cotton clothes, sipping sirops. ”

“ Before I knew the awful truth, poor Manuel was already dead and buried! Since that day,” she added bitterly, “all hope of happiness has been crushed within me. I know now that the love of an honest man is not for me.”
I made no response. I was too absorbed in my own thoughts. Every word of hers bore out Sammy’s story, yet I saw that she herself was innocent of the foul plot which had, as a sequel, the suicide of the poor girl’s lover. ”

“ I echoed. “Why don’t you let me stand before that thief and accuse him?”
“And reveal my secret to my father. Never—never! I would die rather than he should know.” And her face grew pale and hard, and her small hand trembling in mine.
“Ella!” I cried, kissing her passionately on her cold white lips. “How can I save you? How can I gain you for my own? This awful suspense is killing me.”
“Godfrey,” she answered, in a low, distinct voice, “we can never be man and wife—impossible, why therefore let us discuss it further? ”

“ Five minutes later we were standing side by side, in a spot where we could not be observed, she panting and breathless, and I full of eager questions as to the reason of her flight.
“So you actually followed me all the way here, Godfrey!” she exclaimed anxiously, turning those dear eyes upon me, those eyes the expression of which was always as wondering and innocent as a child’s.
“Because I am determined that you shall not again escape me, Ella,” was my answer, grasping her hand and raising it with reverence to my lips.
Are we ever truly read, I wonder, save by the one that loves us best? ”

“ Many fathers act mysteriously in the eyes of their children. Mr Miller had ever been a mystery, and yet with filial affection she had never once suspected him of leading a double life.
“Yes,” urged Ella, “tell us all. Half an hour ago you told me that you are at last free—that the man who held me so entirely in his power also held you in his unscrupulous hands.”
Sammy said nothing. He had already condemned Lucie, and in his eyes she was but a mere adventuress.
“If I confess, Mr Leaf, I wonder if you and Ella will forgive me?” she exclaimed at last, in a hard, strained voice. ”

“ Ella, you—”
“Enough! Enough!” she cried, suddenly interrupting me. “Do not recall the past. All is too bitter, too melancholy. Every single detail of our last interview I have lived over and over again—I, who lied to you, even though my heart was breaking. Blumenthal gave me my freedom—and yet—”
“And yet,” I said very slowly, in a low, intense voice—“and yet you have again fallen the victim of a man’s ingenious wiles. Tell me the truth, dearest. You have been entrapped—and you see no way of escape.”
But she only shook her head sadly, saying:—
“No, I can say nothing—not even to you, Godfrey.” ”

“ I left early and drove back to Worcester through the pelting rain—with her rose that she had slipped into my hand at parting, a silent pledge that spoke volumes to me.
“Good-bye, dear heart!” she whispered. “We shall perhaps meet again in London.”
“Yes,” I said earnestly. “We must meet once again before your marriage. Promise me you will—promise?”
“I’ll try. But you know how very difficult it is to see you when I’m at Porchester Terrace. Aunt Henrietta is such an impossible person.” ”

“ As I sat there in the old-fashioned room, with its punch-bowls full of sweet-smelling roses, I resolved to travel south to the Mediterranean, see Lucie, and endeavour to find some way in which to rescue my love from her father’s accomplice.
From that Dorsetshire village to the old sun-blanched port of Leghorn is a far cry—thirty-six hours in the express from Calais on the road to Rome—yet that night I was back in Granville Gardens; and hastily packing up my traps, chatting with Sammy the while, I next morning left London for Italy. ”

“ But England, our own dear old England, has also a physiognomy that is all her own; that is like nothing else in all the world; pastures intensely green, high hawthorn hedges and muddy lanes, which to some minds is sad and strange and desolate and painful, and which to others is beautiful, but which, be it what else it may, is always wholly and solely English, can never be met with elsewhere, and has a smile of peace and prosperity upon it, and a sigh in it that make other lands beside it seem as though they were soulless and were dumb. ”

“ Was not his presence in that house sufficient to convince me that what had been suspected of Miller was more than a mere surmise? It had been declared that Lucie’s father, though a county gentleman, was also head of the most daring association of criminals in Europe. It seemed to me that Gordon-Wright, alias Shacklock, was one of his ingenious lieutenants whom he was entertaining in his cosy retreat—planning some new scheme perhaps—and who was, at the same time, an ardent admirer of the beautiful girl whose unhappiness and deadly peril was so great a mystery. ”

“ Perhaps nowhere else in all Europe can be seen such a living panorama of beautiful girls as there, upon the Passeggio at Leghorn on a summer’s evening at six o’clock, those dark-haired, dark-eyed, handsome-featured children of the people walking in twos and threes, with figure and gait perfect, and each with her santuzza, or silken scarf of pale blue, mauve, pink, or black, twisted around her head with the ends thrown carelessly over the shoulders. ”

“ There is some mystery—a great mystery which I am, as yet, unable to fathom—but to speak at this juncture would assuredly only implicate her. Of that I feel sure from certain information already in my possession.”
“You’ve already told me that. But surely you don’t think I can stand by and see her go headlong to her ruin without stretching forth a hand to save her. It is my duty, not only as her lover but also as a man. The fellow is a thief and a scoundrel.”
When we love much we ourselves are nothing, and what we love is all. ”

“ I exclaimed. “Surely you, her oldest friend, will never allow her to commit this fatal error—to wreck her own happiness and mine, without lifting a finger to save her. Need I repeat to you what I told you at the riverside at Studland, with what a fierce passion I adore her, how that she is mine—my very life?”
“I know,” my companion said, in a voice slightly more sympathetic. “I admit that she ought to marry you—that she is yours in heart. Yet in her secret engagement to Gordon-Wright there is a mystery which makes me suspicious.” ”

“ You have lunched between Calais and Paris, dined at the Gare de Lyon, turned into your narrow sleeping berth between Paris and the frontier, lunched in the wagon-restaurant between Modane and Busseleno, scrambled through your dinner in the big buffet at Genoa, and cursed those stifling tunnels between Genoa and Spezia, where between them you get your first glimpses of the moonlit Mediterranean, and you have alighted at old marble-built Pisa, the quaint dead city that contains one of the wonders of the world—the Leaning Tower. ”

“ Of all the people in the whole of proud old Tuscany assuredly none were so easy-going and vivacious, none so light-hearted and full of poetry as those Livornese people passing to and fro below us. The more I had dwelt among the Tuscan people the more I loved them. There is surely no other people on the face of the earth so entirely lovable, even with their many sad faults, as they; none so gregarious, so neighbourly, so courteous, kindly or poetic, none so content upon the most meagre fare that ever held body and soul together. ”

“ Yet I wondered, as I had lately very often wondered, whether she were actually in ignorance of her father’s true profession.
“If she has been entrapped, Mr Leaf,” she said slowly, “then she must find a way in which to extricate herself. We must never allow her to become that man’s wife.”
“He is your father’s friend, and yet you hold him in little esteem?” I remarked.
“What I know is my own affair,” was her hard response. “It is sufficient for us to say that Ella is yours, and must be yours.”
“Ah! yes,” I sighed in despair, “if only she could be. Yet I fear that it is impossible. ”

“ Your popolano even in his rags will bring a flower to a woman with the air of a king, and he will resent an insult with a withering scorn to which no regal trappings could lend further dignity. It is the land where Love still reigns just as supreme as it did in the days of La Fiammetta, of Beatrice, of Laura, or of Romeo—the Land of Amore—the sun-kissed land where even in this prosaic century of ours men and women live and die—often by the knife-thrust, be it said—for “amore,” that king who is greater and more powerful even than good Vittorio Emanuele himself. ”

“ Strange that this sudden happiness was actually the sequel of a tragedy!
“It is really delightful to be back here again,” she remarked to Lucie, glancing round the room. “How well I remember the old days when, in the holidays, I came and stayed with you. Nothing has changed. The dear old place is just the same.”
“Yes,” replied Lucie. “I only wish we lived here more. But father and I are always abroad—always moving from place to place through France, Germany, Spain, Italy, just as the fit takes us. Nowadays, dear old dad is really like the Jew-errant. ”

“ She had told me that she remained at home with old Marietta—the grey-haired Tuscan woman who had admitted me—while her father travelled hither and thither across Europe. Those unscrupulous “birds of prey,” known to the police as international thieves, migrate in flocks, travelling swiftly from one frontier to another and ever eluding the vigilance of the agents in search of them. The international thief is a veritable artist in crime, the cleverest and most audacious scoundrel of the whole criminal fraternity. ”