The Passport

Expression and demeanor changed, however, as Monsieur d'Antin greeted Bianca with an airy compliment on her appearance. His salutation was scarcely replied to, and every subsequent attempt to draw her into conversation failed ignominiously. The meal was decidedly not a cheerful one, and it had scarcely concluded when Bianca got up from her chair, and, making a slight courtesy to her step-mother, left the room without a word. The Abbé Roux lifted his eyes to the ceiling with a sigh, and the princess looked pained and uncomfortable. The men-servants were already bringing in the coffee, and Monsieur d'Antin was constrained to wait until they had served and retired before seeking for an explanation of the state of the social atmosphere in which he found himself.

The princess drank a few mouthfuls of her coffee, and left the table almost as soon as the door had closed upon the servants.

"If you will excuse me, Philippe," she said to her brother, "I am going to my room. I am nervous – unwell. That unhappy child – " Her voice trembled, and it was evident that Princess Montefiano was very near to tears. "Monsieur l'Abbé will explain to you," she continued; "he is entirely in my confidence. You can talk together over your cigars, and we will meet afterwards, when I am calmer."

She left the room hastily, and Monsieur d'Antin looked across the table to the abbé.

"Que diable!" he exclaimed. "Might one ask what has happened?"

The Abbé Roux cleared his throat. "Let us go into the next room," he said. "We can talk quietly there without being overheard by the servants" – and he led the way into the apartment specially devoted to his use.

"Ah, my dear monsieur," he said, as soon as they had shut the double doors behind them, "it is not to be wondered at if Madame la Princesse is upset! Since you have been away, Donna Bianca has made a scene – a veritable scene, you understand. It appears that she has asserted her fixed determination to marry this impossible young man, and has announced that she will wait till she is her own mistress, if – "

"If what?" asked Monsieur d'Antin, as he paused.

"Parbleu! If her lover does not choose that she should marry him before – the religious marriage, of course."

Monsieur d'Antin lit a cigarette.

"A girl's enthusiasm," he observed. "It will pass."

The abbé glanced at him. "I think not," he replied. "I have known Donna Bianca since she was a child. When she has made up her mind to do or not to do a thing, it is not easy to make her alter it. She is undisciplined – completely undisciplined," he added, almost angrily.

"No doubt. It is all the more reason that she should learn what discipline means. She will make a better wife for knowing it," and Monsieur d'Antin chuckled softly.

"Ah, as to that, monsieur, there can be, I suppose, no question. But what I have already told you is not all. The princess, perhaps, would not have taken Donna Bianca's refusal to submit her will to the direction of those who are her lawful guardians so deeply to heart, if that had been all. She would have trusted to time and – and to Donna Bianca's conscience, to make her step-daughter see reason and realize that obedience is the first of all duties."

Monsieur d'Antin fidgeted uneasily in his chair. "I think, Monsieur l'Abbé," he said, dryly, "that you and I can afford to dispense with moralities, can we not?"

The abbé looked angry for an instant. Then he smiled. "Perhaps," he replied. "After all, we have to regard Donna Bianca's position from a business point of view."

"Precisely, my dear friend, from a business point of view. Let us confine it to that, if you please. Let us assume, for example, that you are – a layman. It will simplify matters very much."

The abbé looked at him suspiciously, and his black eyebrows contracted disagreeably. He was never quite sure whether he were managing Monsieur d'Antin or whether Monsieur d'Antin were managing him.

"It would appear," he observed, presently, "from what Donna Bianca has said to Madame la Princesse, that you have introduced – what shall I say! – a little too much sentiment into your business point of view."

Monsieur d'Antin smiled complacently.

"What would you have, my dear abbé?" he replied. "You know my little secret. If I remember rightly, I confessed to you, and you gave me absolution – is it not so? Yes. I admit that I have perhaps been a little indiscreet, a little premature. But one cannot always control one's feelings. The soutane is one thing, and the pantalons are another. You must make allowance for those who do not wear the soutane."

"The question is," said the Abbé Roux, a little irritably, "that Donna Bianca will have none of it."

"None of which, my dear friend?" asked Monsieur d'Antin, imperturbably. "Of the soutane, or – "

The abbé laughed in spite of himself. "You have frightened her," he said. "She understands; and she has told the princess – oh, told her very plainly! It was a mistake. You should have waited – a month – six months. Moreover, she has found out that it was you who saw her and young Rossano together at the Villa Acorari; and now she feels that you have deceived her throughout the whole business. She will never forgive that. It would have been better to have told her that it was through you the affair became known, that you had felt bound to warn Madame la Princesse of what you believed to be a great peril threatening her step-daughter. Now, Donna Bianca has said that even if she is kept here for three years it will make no difference; that she will not be made love to by you; and that you are a liar and a coward."

Monsieur d'Antin started up from his chair.

"Monsieur l'Abbé!" he exclaimed, furiously.

"Oh, I am quoting Donna Bianca's words. You cannot be surprised that madame your sister should be upset. It is now three days ago – that little scene – and the girl has scarcely spoken a word to the princess since. She is hard – hard as a piece of stone when she chooses to be so. Now, I ask you, what is to be done? She will wait three years, six years, if necessary, or she will find some means of running away with her lover – who knows? But she will never allow you to approach her, Monsieur le Baron; of that I am convinced."

Monsieur d'Antin swore, softly. "She must give way!" he exclaimed. "It is a mere question of time. The girl has a spirit, that I do not deny, but it can be broken. Bah! it is not worth while de se faire de la bîle about a girl's sentimental passion for a good-looking young man who has once kissed her, and whom she will never see again. We have only to remain firm, and all will turn out as we propose. It will take time, perhaps, but from a business point of view – always from a business point of view, my dear Monsieur l'Abbé – time is exactly what we wish to gain, is it not? I admit that, from the other point of view – mine, you understand – delay is not so satisfactory."

The abbé looked up quickly. "Ah, certainly," he said, eagerly, "you are perfectly right; to gain time is everything! And if Donna Bianca does not mind waiting for her lover, well, from a business point of view, delay will be very advantageous."

Monsieur d'Antin lit another cigarette.

"To you," he said, quietly. "To you, dear Monsieur l'Abbé; but, as I said before, to me not quite so much so. There is my part of the bargain to be considered, is there not? And if I am not to marry Donna Bianca Acorari, I confess that I do not particularly care whether she marries young Rossano or goes into a convent. All the same, I do not imagine that she will go into a convent."

Monsieur d'Antin paused, and looked steadily at his companion. His voice and manner were suaveness itself; nevertheless, the abbé was conscious that his words implied something very like a threat.

"Of course," he replied, "there is your part of the question to be considered. I do not forget it. But what you want is not so easy to obtain. I fear that Donna Bianca, even were she finally to renounce all hopes of Rossano, would never be induced to listen to your proposal to take his place. Besides, I very much doubt if Madame la Princesse would go so far as to attempt to force upon her step-daughter an alliance apparently so distasteful to her. No, Monsieur le Baron, I speak frankly. Donna Bianca's sudden assertion of the course she intends to adopt has materially altered the situation. Who has any influence over her? Certainly not the princess, certainly not myself, to whom she never addresses a word if she can avoid doing so. The only person who, until recently, seemed to have gained her confidence, was yourself. What has caused her to declare, as she has declared, that she will not allow you to approach her, you must know better than I. In the mean time, the field is as clear to you as it was before, and we will hope that this little outburst on the part of Donna Bianca may not be of much importance. At least, you must admit that I have done my best to further your object. You owe it entirely to me if the princess, against her own inclinations, was persuaded to countenance that object."

"But, my dear Monsieur l'Abbé," returned Monsieur d'Antin, airily, "I fully realize the efforts you have made on my behalf. Why not? As to Donna Bianca having taken me en grippe, well, I assure you that I rather enjoy it. I like a woman to show some fight. I shall do my best to remove the bad impression I have made. Apparently, she enjoys it also. I never saw her look so animated as she did to-day. The little scene with my sister, that you tell me of, must have acted as a tonic – and no doubt she will be the better for it, and more amenable to reason. Do not let us talk any more about it for the present. Apropos, how do your little matters of business progress? I think you told me before I left that my sister had some trouble with the agent here, and that you had advised her to dismiss him?"

The abbé frowned. "Yes," he said, curtly, "the man is dismissed, and I have another fattore ready to take his place. But there is some little difficulty. It appears that the people are angry at his dismissal. I am told it has created great ill-feeling in Montefiano. There is a meddlesome parroco here – "

"Diable!" exclaimed Monsieur d'Antin; "I had quite forgotten about him."

"What? You know him?"

"No, my dear friend, no. But I happened to see him two or three evenings ago in Rome, and in whose company do you suppose he was? You will never guess. Well, he was dining at a restaurant with Professor Rossano and his son and daughter."

The Abbé Roux gave an exclamation of surprise.

"Lelli! Dining with the Rossanos? Are you sure that it was he?"

"Absolutely sure. I was dining with Peretti – you know whom I mean? – and Peretti knew Monsignor Lelli perfectly well. He left the restaurant very soon after he saw us."

"Lelli!" repeated the Abbé Roux, with a scowl. "Yes, he is the priest at Montefiano. Peretti will have told you his story. He fell into disgrace at the Vatican – in fact, he embezzled money, and rather than have a public scandal, he was sent here to get him out of the way. What was he doing with the Rossanos?"

"Eating his dinner," replied Monsieur d'Antin, tranquilly; "at least, if you call such a thing a dinner. Ciel!what filth one eats in a Roman restaurant, even in the best of them. Oh, la, la! Yes, your parroco was dining with the Rossano family. It would appear that he is an intimate friend."

"No doubt," observed the abbé, with a sneer. "Lelli was always hand and glove with all the canaille in Rome of the literary and scientific world. He is simply a free-thinker – nothing more nor less. It does not at all surprise me that he should be a friend of Professor Rossano."

"But it is a little unfortunate that a friend of the Rossanos should be curé at Montefiano, is it not?" asked Monsieur d'Antin.

The abbé started. "Assuredly," he said. "You are right. It is a danger. For the moment I did not think of it. Yes, it might be a grave danger. Moreover, the man is mischievous. He is always siding with the peasants. Only yesterday I heard that he had declared Fontana's – the agent's – dismissal to be an injustice. We do not want men of that sort. They spoil the people and make them discontented."

"It is clear that he is very intimate with Professor Rossano and his son," returned Monsieur d'Antin, "and in his position here at Montefiano as parish priest, what is to prevent him from inducing one of the people about to deliver some letter or some message to Donna Bianca? And once she realizes that she can receive communications from the outside world, all our precautions will be useless. The knowledge that she could do so would make her more obstinate than ever in her determination not to give up young Rossano."

The abbé frowned. "Leave it to me, monsieur," he replied. "Lelli will not succeed in entering the castle of Montefiano, however much he may be the village priest. I put a stop to any idea of the kind long ago. Indeed, it was necessary to warn the princess against him. She had never heard his history, and I discovered – oh, two or three years ago – that he was getting money out of her for the poor; and, moreover, that he was always urging Fontana to appeal for a reduction in the rents. Of course, directly the princess realized that he had been sent to Montefiano in disgrace, and heard all the scandal concerning his removal from the Vatican, she ceased to allow him to interfere between the people and the administration of the estates. No, I do not think we need fear Monsignor Lelli."

"At least it will do no harm to be on our guard," insisted Monsieur d'Antin.

"Oh, as to that, of course! Moreover, should there be any cause to suspect that he was helping young Rossano, it would not be difficult to obtain his removal. There are many hill villages which are even more isolated than Montefiano – in the Abruzzi, for instance. And I do not imagine that the Holy Father cares where Lelli is, so long as he is safely out of the way until it pleases Providence to remove him altogether." And the Abbé Roux laughed harshly.

Monsieur d'Antin yawned. "I shall go to my room," he said, throwing away his cigarette and rising from his chair. "Travelling on one of these horrible Italian railways is bad enough at any time, with the dirt and the unpunctuality, but in hot weather it is doubly fatiguing. Then it appears to me, my dear friend," he added, "that notwithstanding Donna Bianca's charming display of petulancy, we remain as before. A little stricter discipline, perhaps – a little more precaution against any possible interference on the part of this monsignore, is it not so?"

"Precisely, monsieur – and patience, always patience!"

"Ah!" observed Monsieur d'Antin. "It is an admirable quality – but the exercising of it is apt to become monotonous."

XXV

The evening before Monsieur d'Antin's return to Montefiano from Rome, Bianca Acorari had dined alone. The princess had been invisible most of the day. Although she appeared at breakfast, she had retired to her room later on in the afternoon, a victim to a violent nervous headache, the result, as Bianca was only too well aware, of the agitation she had been in ever since the scene on the previous day. The Abbé Roux had announced at breakfast that he should be away until late that evening, having, as he explained, to go to Orvieto to visit a friend who lived near that city. As Bianca sat alone at dinner, she felt grateful to the abbé for having had the tact to absent himself. She did not feel inclined for a tête-à-tête meal with anybody, and certainly not with the Abbé Roux.

To say the truth, her step-mother's evident distress had made Bianca almost regret that she had allowed herself to speak so plainly as she had done the day before. Resolute and strong-willed as she could be when she chose, her nature was both sensitive and warm-hearted; and although she would not have retracted one word that she had said, or retreated one inch from the attitude she had taken up, she felt sorry and disturbed in her mind at the pain she had evidently occasioned the princess. After all, it was not unnatural that her step-mother should consider it to be her duty to impede by every means in her power a marriage of which she disapproved. It was not unnatural, either, that she should disapprove. Bianca, whose sense of justice was unusually strong, would have scorned to be unjust to any individual simply because she happened not to be in agreement with that individual. She was quite aware, too, that her conduct had been certainly not in accordance with that which was considered fitting to a young girl in any position. She should, of course, have refused to allow Silvio to speak a word of love to her until he should first have gained the consent of her step-mother. No doubt she had been wrong – immodest, perhaps, as her step-mother had said – but all the same, she was glad she had not repulsed Silvio that day in the ilex grove. Glad, did she say? But that was an untruth. She had never thought of repulsing him, could not have done so, for she wanted love. She had wanted it for so long, and she had understood that Silvio had it to give her. And she wanted somebody whom she could love, not merely some one towards whom she was perpetually being told she should be dutiful. No, it was absurd to say she was glad she had listened to him, and had let him tell her his love in his own way. It was worse than absurd – it was a lie told to herself. Ever since that Christmas night when she had seen him in the church of the Sudario, she had understood that she loved, and that he loved her. And she had never thought of repulsing him. She had thought only of the moment when she should hear him tell her of his love; when she should feel his arms around her and his lips on hers; when she could show him that she, too, knew what love was.

From which reflections it was evident that Monsieur d'Antin had been right in his diagnosis of Bianca Acorari's temperament, and in coming to the conclusion that his sister and the Abbé Roux would be preparing for themselves a disillusion if they continued to regard her as little more than a child.

Bianca retired to her room early that night. It was certainly not cheerful to sit alone in the drawing-room after dinner, trying to read a book by the light of one or two old-fashioned moderator lamps, which only served to cast gloomy shadows into the corners of the vast apartment. The princess had caused a pianoforte to be sent from Rome; for the Érard which stood at one end of the drawing-room was reduced by age and damp to a compass of some two octaves of notes which, when played upon, produced sounds that were strange but scarcely musical; while the upper and lower octaves of the key-board had ceased to produce any sound whatever, save a spasmodic, metallic tapping as the hammer struck the broken wires. Bianca used to touch the instrument sometimes, and wonder whether it had belonged to her mother, and if her hands had pressed the yellow keys. She knew that her mother had passed the last year or two of her life at Montefiano, and that she herself had first seen the light there.

But to-night she was not in the humor for either reading or playing the piano. She felt weary, mentally and bodily; for, after the excitement of the discussion the previous day with her step-mother, reaction had set in. She was depressed, and, a thing very unusual to her, nervous. An almost intolerable sensation of loneliness haunted her. It seemed strange to think that a few hundred metres away, down in the paese, people were talking and laughing and living their lives. She was not living hers; life was going on all around her, but she had no part or share in it. Ah, if only she could hear something from Silvio! – hear of him, even – she would not feel quite so lonely. She would feel sure then, though they were separated, though probably they would be divided for months and years to come, that they were together in their thoughts; that he was faithful and true to her, as she was struggling with all her force to be faithful and true to the promise she had made him there, under the ilex-trees at the Villa Acorari.

Passing quietly through her step-mother's apartment, lest she should be perhaps already asleep, Bianca was about to enter her own room, when the princess called to her.

"Come here, figlia mia," she said, gently, "I am not asleep."

Bianca approached the bed and remained standing by it. Princess Montefiano took her hand and held it in hers for a moment.

"You think me very cruel, do you not, Bianca?" she said; "like the cruel step-mothers in the fairy-tales," she added, with a little attempt at a laugh. "Well, some day you will understand that if I am unkind, it is for your good. But there is something else I want to say to you. I do not intend to discuss the other matter – the Rossano matter. I shall never change my opinion on that point – never! And so long as you are under my authority, so long shall I absolutely forbid any question of a marriage between you and a son of Professor Rossano, and communication of any sort to pass between you. What I wish to say to you is this. Because I will not consent to your marriage with this young Rossano, you must not think that I wish to influence you or compel you to listen to my brother. That would not be my idea of what is my duty towards you as my husband's child, for whose happiness I am responsible, both before God and before the world. You must understand that you are free, Bianca, absolutely free to do as you choose as regards accepting or not the affection my brother offers you. It may be, perhaps, that when you are in a more reasonable frame of mind, and have realized that under no circumstances would you be allowed to marry out of your own sphere in life – and certainly not the son of an infidel professor, who, no doubt, shares his father's abominable principles and ideas – you will hesitate before throwing away my brother's love."

Bianca shook her head. "It is useless to think of that," she said, "and it is useless to tell me that under no circumstances shall I marry Silvio Rossano. Unless one of us dies, I shall marry him. I have nothing more to say than what I said yesterday, and nothing to unsay. You ask me if I think you unkind. No; I do not think that."

"Surely," exclaimed the princesse, almost wistfully – "surely you can understand that in all this miserable business I am only doing what my conscience tells me to be my duty towards you!"

Bianca withdrew her hand. "Yes," she said; "I quite understand. I have always understood." Then, wishing her step-mother good-night, she bent down and kissed her, and passed into her own room, gently closing both of the double set of doors which separated the two apartments.

She had not been in bed long before sleep came to her, for she was, in fact, more weary in body and mind than she had realized. For four or five hours she slept soundly enough, but after that her slumbers became disturbed by dreams. She dreamed that Silvio was near her, that she could see him but could not speak to him, and that he had some message for her, some letter which the Abbé Roux was trying to take from him. In her sleep she seemed to hear strange noises and her own name called softly at intervals. Suddenly she awoke with a start. A gleam of moonlight was shining through the window-curtains and half-closed persiennes. It made a broad track across the floor to the wall opposite her bed, and fell on the face of a picture hanging near the corner of the room – a portrait of that very Cardinal Acorari who had caused the Renaissance palace to be added to the Montefiano fortress, in order that he might have a villa in the Sabine Mountains in which to pass the hot summer months away from Rome. The moonlight glanced upon his scarlet robes and skull-cap and on his heavy countenance. Time had caused the flesh colors to fade, and the full mouth, with the sensual lips, looked unnaturally red against the waxy whiteness of the rest of the face.

Bianca lay and looked at the streak of moonlight on the floor. Presently her gaze followed the track until it rested on the picture. For some moments she looked at the portrait with a certain fascination. She had never seen it in the moonlight before; it looked ghostly. She had once seen a cardinal lying in state when she was a child, and the sight had frightened her. She was not at all frightened now, for she was no longer a child; but all the same, she could not take her eyes off the picture. She found herself wondering what relation she was to that old Cardinal Acorari – great-great-what? Granddaughter would not do, for cardinals, of course, never had children; certainly not cardinal-priests; and Cardinal Acorari had been bishop of Ostia and cardinal vicar of Rome.