Olive in Italy Part 34

Suddenly, in spite of herself, she began to think of her grave. It would be dug soon. She would be brought to it in a black covered cart.

No prayers would be said, and there would be no sound at all but that of the earth falling upon the coffin.

She sprang up, her face chalk white, her eyes wide and dark with terror. She was afraid, horribly afraid of this lonely and violent end. Jean would never know that she died rather than let another man--Jean would never know--Jean--

"I can't! I can't!" she said aloud piteously.

She was trembling so that she had to cling to the banisters as she went down the stairs to save herself from falling. There was a post-office at the corner. She went in and explained that she wanted to send a telegram. The young woman behind the counter glanced at the clock.

"Where to? You have half an hour."

"To Florence." She wrote it and gave it in.

"To JEAN AVENEL, Villa Fiorelli, Settignano, Florence.

"If you would help me come if you can to the Villino Bella Vista at Albano to-morrow soon after noon; watch for me and follow me in. I know it may not be possible, but the danger is real to me and I want you so much. In any case remember that my heart was yours only.--OLIVE."

CHAPTER VIII

Jean sat leaning forward that he might see the road. The night was dark, starless, and very wet, and he and the chauffeur were all streaming with rain and splashed with liquid mud that spattered up from the car wheels. Now and again they rattled over the rough cobble stones of a village street, but the way for the most part lay through deep woods and by mountain gorges. The roar of Arno in flood, swollen with melted snows, and hurrying on its way to the sea, was with them for a while, but other sounds there were none save the rustling of leaves in the coverts, the moaning of wind in the tree-tops, the drip-drip of the rain, and the steady throbbing of the car.

When the darkness lightened to the grey glimmer of a cheerless dawn Jean changed places with the chauffeur; Vincenzo was a careful driver, and he dared not trust his own impatience any longer. His hands were numbed with cold, and now he took off his gloves to chafe them, but first he felt in his inner pocket for the flimsy sheets of paper that lay there safe against his heart.

He had been sitting alone at the piano in the music-room, not playing, but softly touching the keys and dreaming in the dark, when Hilaire came in to him.

"You need not write to her after all. She has sent for you. Hear what she says." He stood in the doorway to read the message by the light that filtered in from the hall. Jean listened carefully.

"The car--I must tell Vincenzo." The lines of the strong, lean face seemed to have softened, and the brown eyes were very bright. His brother smiled as he laid a kindly hand upon his arm. "The car will be round soon. I have sent word, and you have plenty of time. a.s.sure Olive of my brotherly regard, and tell her that my books are still waiting to be catalogued. If she will come here for a while she will be doing a kindness to a lonely man."

"I wonder what she is frightened of," Jean said thoughtfully, and frowning a little. "She says 'was yours' too; I don't like that."

"Well, you must do your best for her," Hilaire answered in his most matter-of-fact tone. "Be prepared."

Jean agreed, and when he went to get ready he transferred a pistol from a drawer of the bureau to his coat pocket. "I shall bring her back with me if I can. Good-bye."

The sun shone for a few minutes after its rising through a rift in the clouds, but soon went in again; the rain still poured down, and the distance was hidden in mist that clung to the hillsides and filled each ravine and cranny in the rocks. They were near Orvieto when the car broke down; Vincenzo was out on the road at once, but his master sat quite still. He could not endure the thought of any delay.

"What is it? Will it take long?" He had forced himself to wait a minute before he asked the question, but still his lips felt stiff, and all the colour had gone out of them.

The man rea.s.sured him. "It is nothing."

Jean went to help him, and soon they were able to go on again.

They came presently to the fen lands--the Campagna that so greatly needs the magic and glamour of the Roman sunshine, the vault of the blue sky above, and the sound of larks singing to adorn it. It seemed a desolate and dreary waste, wind-swept, and shivering under the lash of the rain on such a morning as this, and the car was a very small thing moving in that apparently illimitable plain along a road that might be endless. Jean saw a herd of the wild, black buffaloes standing in a pool at the foot of a broken arch of the Claudian aqueduct, and now and again he caught a glimpse of fragments of masonry, or a ruined tower, ancient stronghold of one or other of the robber barons who preyed on Rome-ward pilgrims in the age of faith and rapine.

They reached Albano soon after eleven o'clock, and Jean left his man in the car while he went in to the Ristorante of the Albergo della Posta. He ordered a cup of coffee, and sat down at one of the little marble tables near the door to drink it. There was no one else in the place at the moment.

"Can you tell me the way to the Villino Bella Vista?"

The waiter looked at him curiously. "It is down in the olive woods and quite near the lake, and you must go to it by a lane from the Galleria di Sopra, the upper road to Castel Gandolfo." After a momentary hesitation he added, "_Scusi!_ But are you thinking of taking it, signore?"

Jean started. It had not occurred to him that the house might be empty. "I don't know," he answered cautiously. "Has it been to let long?"

"Oh, yes," the man said. "The Princess Tor di Rocca spent her last years there, alone, and after her death the agent in Rome found tenants. But lately no one has come to it, even to see." He lowered his voice. "The place has a bad name hereabouts. The _contadini_--rough, ignorant folk, signore--say she still walks in the garden at moonrise, waiting for the husband and son who never came; and the women who go to wash their linen in the lake will not come back that way at night for fear of seeing her dead eyes peering at them through the bars of the gate."

"Ah, that is very interesting," Jean said appreciatively. He finished his coffee, paid for it with a piece of silver, and waited to light a cigarette before he went out.

Vincenzo sat still in the car, a model of patient impa.s.sivity, but he turned a hungry eye on his master as he came down the steps.

"You can go and get something to eat. I shall drive up to the Galleria di Sopra, and you must follow me there. You will find the car at the side of the road. Stay with it until I come, and if anyone asks questions you need not answer them."

Jean drove up the steep hill towards the lake. The rain was still heavy, and the squalid streets of the little town were running with mud. He turned to the left by the Calvary at the foot of the ilex avenue by the Capuchin church, and stopped the car some way further down the road. The lane the waiter had told him of was not hard to find. It was a narrow path between high walls of olive orchards; it led straight down to the lake, and the entrance to the Villino was quite close to the water's edge. Nothing could be seen of it from the lane but the name painted on the gate-posts and one glimpse of a shuttered window, forlorn and viewless as a blind eye, and half hidden by flowering laurels. Jean looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to twelve, and she had written "after noon," but he could not be sure that she had not come already, and since he had heard the name of Tor di Rocca he was more than ever anxious to be with her.

He tried the gate but it was locked; there was nothing for it but to climb the wall, and as he was light and active he scrambled over without much difficulty and landed in a green tangle of roses and wild vines. He knocked at the house door, and stood for a while listening to the empty answering echoes and to the drip-drip of rain from the eaves. Evidently there was no one there. He drew back into the shrubberies; great showers of drops were shaken down on him from the gold-powdered mimosa blossoms that met above his head; he shook himself impatiently, like a dog that is disturbed while on guard. From where he stood he could see the gate and the gra.s.s-grown path that led from it to the house. The time pa.s.sed very slowly. He looked at his watch four times in the next fifteen minutes, and he was beginning to wonder if he had not left Florence on a fool's errand when Olive came.

He saw her fumbling with the key; it was hard to turn in the rusty lock, and she had to close her umbrella and stand it against the wall so as to have both hands free. The gate swung open slowly, creaking on its warped hinges. Jean noticed that she left it unlatched and that she looked back over her shoulder twice as she came down the path, as though she thought someone might be following her.

She opened the house door with a key she had and went in, and he came after her. He stood for a moment on the threshold listening. She was hurrying from room to room, opening the shutters and the windows and letting in the light and air; the doors banged after her, and muslin curtains flapped like wings as the wind blew them.

His heart was beating so that he thought she must hear it before she saw him, before his step sounded in the pa.s.sage. As he came in she gave a sort of little cry and ran to him, and he put his arms about her and kissed her again and again; her dear lips that were wet and cold with rain, her soft brown hair, the curves of cheek and chin that were as sweet to feel as to see. One small hand held the lapel of his coat, and he was pleasantly aware of the other being laid about his neck. She had wanted him so much--and he had come.

"Thank G.o.d, you are here, Jean. Oh, if you knew how frightened I have been."

He kissed her once more, and then, framing her face with his hands, he looked down into her eyes. The blue eyes yearned to his, but there was fear in them still, and he saw the colour he had brought into her cheeks fading.

"I am not worth all the trouble I have given you."

"Perhaps not," he said, smiling. "Hilaire sent you a long message, but I want to hear what we are supposed to be doing here first."

"Dear Hilaire!... Jean, you won't be angry?"

"I don't promise anything," he said. "I shall probably be furious. But in any case, if it is going to be a long story we may as well make ourselves at home."

"Not here! I must tell you quickly, before he comes."

He noticed that she looked towards the door, and he understood that she was listening fearfully for the creaking of the gate, the sound of footsteps on the path outside, the turning of the key in the lock.

"Tor di Rocca, I suppose? When is he coming?"

"Between one and two."

"We have at least half an hour then," he said comfortably, and drew her closer to him with his arm about her shoulders.

"When I first came to Rome I tried for weeks to get something to do, but no one seemed to want lessons. Then one day Signora Aurelia's sister told me how poor she was. She cried, and I was very much upset because I felt I was a burden, and that very afternoon I found out a way of making money ... Jean, you won't be angry?"

"No, dearest."