Casa Braccio Part 56

"She did not die a natural death."

"Indeed?"

"She poisoned herself. She could not bear the life. It was very dreadful." Francesca's voice sank to a low tone.

Lord Redin was silent for a few moments, and his bony face had a grim look. Perhaps something in the dead woman's last act appealed to him, as nothing in her life had done.

"Tell me, please. I should like to know. After all, she was my daughter."

"Yes," said Francesca, gravely. "She was your daughter. She was very unhappy with Paul Griggs, and she found out very soon that she had made a dreadful mistake. She loved her husband, after all."

"Like a woman!" interjected Lord Redin, half unconsciously.

Francesca paid no attention to the remark, except, perhaps, that she raised her eyebrows a little.

"They went out to spend the summer at Subiaco--"

"At Subiaco?" Dalrymple's steely blue eyes fixed themselves in a look of extreme attention.

"Yes, during the heat. They lodged in the house of a man called Stefanone--a wine-seller--a very respectable place."

Lord Redin had started nervously at the name, but he recovered himself.

"Very respectable," he said, in an odd tone.

"You know the house?" asked Francesca, in surprise.

"Very well indeed. I was there nearly five and twenty years ago. I supposed that Stefanone was dead by this time."

"No. He and his wife are alive, and take lodgers."

"Excuse me, but how do you know all this?" asked Lord Redin, with sudden curiosity.

"I have been there," answered Francesca. "I have often been to the convent. You know that one of our family is generally abbess. A Cardinal Braccio was archbishop, too, a good many years ago. Casa Braccio owns a good deal of property there."

"Yes. I know that you are of the family."

"My name was Francesca Braccio," said Francesca, quietly. "Of course I have always known Subiaco, and every one there knows Stefanone, and the story of his daughter who ran away with an Englishman many years ago, and never was heard of again."

Lord Redin grew a trifle paler.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "Does every one know that story?"

There was something so constrained in his tone that Francesca looked at him curiously.

"Yes--in Subiaco," she answered. "But Gloria--" she lingered a little sadly on the name--"Gloria wrote letters to her husband from there and begged him to go and see her."

"He could hardly be expected to do that," said Lord Redin, his hard tone returning. "Did you advise him to go?"

"He consulted me," answered Francesca, rather coldly. "I told him to follow his own impulse. He did not go. He did not believe that she was sincere."

"I do not blame him. When a woman has done that sort of thing, there is no reason for believing her."

"He should have gone. I should have influenced him, I think, and I did wrong. She wrote him one more letter and then killed herself. She suffered horribly and only died two days afterwards. Shall I tell you more?"

"If there is more to tell," said Lord Redin, less hardly.

"There is not much. I went out there last year. They had refused her Christian burial. Paul Griggs bought a piece of land amongst the rock, on the other side of the torrent, and buried her there. It is surrounded by a wall, and there is a plain slab without a name. There are flowers.

He pays Stefanone to have it cared for. They told me all they knew--it is too terrible. She died singing--she was out of her mind. It must have been dreadful. Old Nanna, Stefanone's wife, was in the room, and fainted with terror. It seems that poor Gloria, oddly enough, had an extraordinary resemblance to that unfortunate nun of our family who was burned to death in the convent, and whom Nanna had often seen. She sang like her, too--at the last minute Nanna thought she saw poor sister Maria Addolorata standing up dead and singing. It was rather strange."

Lord Redin said nothing. He had bowed his head so that Francesca could not see his face, but she saw that his hands were trembling violently.

She thought that she had misjudged the man, and that he was really very deeply moved by the story of his daughter's death. Doubtless, his emotion had made him wish to control himself, and he had overshot the mark and spoken cruelly only in order to seem calm. No one had ever spoken to him of his wife, and even now he could hardly bear to hear her name. It was long before he looked up. Then he rose almost immediately.

"Will you allow me to come and see you occasionally?" he asked, with a gentleness not at all like his usual manner.

Francesca was touched at last, misunderstanding the cause of the change.

She told him to come as often as he pleased. As he was going, he remembered that he had not asked after his son-in-law. Reanda had always seemed to belong to Francesca, and it was natural enough that he should inquire of her.

"Where is Reanda to be found?" he asked.

"He is very ill," said Francesca, in a low voice. "I am afraid you cannot see him."

"Where does he live? I will at least inquire. I am sorry to hear that he is ill."

"He lives here," she answered with a little hesitation. "He is in his old rooms upstairs."

"Oh! Yes--thank you." Their eyes met for a moment. Lord Redin's glittered, but Francesca's were clear and true. "I am sure you take good care of him," he added. "Good-bye."

He left her alone, and when he was gone, she sat down wearily and laid her head back against a cushion, with half-closed eyes. Her lips were almost colourless, and her mouth had grown ten years older.

Reanda was dying, and she knew it, and with him the light was going out of her life, as it had gone out long ago from Dalrymple's, as it had gone out of the life of Paul Griggs. The idea crossed her mind that these two men, with herself, were linked and bound together by some strange fatality which she could not understand, but from which there was no escape, and which was bringing them slowly and surely to the blank horror of lonely old age.

The same thought occurred to Lord Redin as he slowly threaded the streets, going back to his hotel, to his lonely dinner, his lonely evening, his lonely, sleepless night. He alone of the three now knew all that there was to know, and in the chronicle of his far memories all led back to that day at Subiaco, long ago, when he had first knocked at the convent gate--beyond that, to the evening when poor Annetta had told him of the beautiful nun with the angel's voice. Many lives had been wrecked since that first day, and every one of them owed its ruin to him. He felt strangely drawn to Francesca Campodonico. There was something in her face that very faintly reminded him of his dead wife, her kinswoman, and of his dead daughter, another of her race. His gloomy northern nature felt the fatality of it all. He never could repent of what he had done. The golden light of his one short happiness shone through the shrouding veil of fatal time. In his own eyes, with his beliefs, he had not even sinned in taking what he had loved so well. But all the sorrow he saw, came from that deed. Francesca Campodonico's eyes were as clear and true as her heart. But he knew that Reanda's life was everything on earth to her, and he guessed that she was to lose that, too, before long. He would willingly have parted with his own, but through all his being there was a rough, manly courage that forbade the last act of fear, and there was a stern old Scottish belief that it was wrong--plainly wrong.

He did not wish to see Paul Griggs any more than he had wished to see his daughter after she had left her husband. But no thought of vengeance crossed his mind. It seemed to him fruitless to think of avenging himself upon fate; for, after all, it was fate that had done the dire mischief. Possibly, he thought, as he walked slowly towards his hotel, fate had brought him back to Rome now, to deal with him as she had dealt with his. He should be glad of it, for he found little in life that was not gloomy and lonely beyond any words. He did not know why he had come.

He had acted upon an impulse in going to see Francesca that day.

When he reached the Corso, instead of going to his hotel he walked down the street in the direction of the Piazza del Popolo. He wished to see the house in which Gloria had lived with Griggs, and he remembered the street and the number from her having written to him when she wanted money. He reached the corner of the Via della Frezza, and turned down, looking up at the numbers as he went along. He glanced at the little wine shop on the left, with its bush, its red gla.s.s lantern, and its rush-bottomed stools set out by the door. In the shadow within he saw the gleam of silver b.u.t.tons on a dark blue jacket. There was nothing uncommon in the sight.

He found the house, paused, looked up at the windows, and looked twice at the number.

"Do you seek some one?" inquired the one-eyed cobbler, resting his black hands on his knees.

"Did Mr. Paul Griggs ever live here?" asked Lord Redin.

"Many years," answered the cobbler, laconically.

"Where does he live now?"