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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
Title: Anthony Adverse (1933)
(In 3 volumes - Volume 3)
Author: Hervey Allen
eBook No.: 0200541ch.html
Language: English
Date first posted: August 2002
Date most recently updated: August 2002
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook
Title: Anthony Adverse (1933)
(In 3 volumes - Volume 2)
Author: Hervey Allen
XLVIII. Old Friends Grown Older
L. Don Luis Reflects by Candlelight
LV. The Little Man at Great Headquarters
LVI. A Metallic Standard Is Resumed
LVII. Your Humble Obedient Servant
LXII. The Prince of the Peace Beyond the Pyrenees
LXIII. By the River of Babylon
LXIV. The Snake Changes Its Skin
LXVII. The Prison of St. Lazarus
LXVIII. The Stone in the Heart of the Tree
Don Luis leaned back in the coach, which had been comfortably repaired at Dijon only a month before, and inhaled the scent of the vineyards about Livorno with considerable satisfaction.
He was nearing the end of a year's journey from Madrid by way of Paris, and the certainty of resting his bones in a good bed that night lent an additional charm to the admirable vistas along the ancient highway between Pisa and Leghorn.
These, however, he was fully prepared to admire for themselves alone.
After an absence of nearly twenty-five years upon his estates in Spain, the Marquis da Vincitata was returning to visit Tuscany, the land of his predilection. And he was thinking, as he leaned back in the luxurious, albeit somewhat faded upholstery that still lined his old-fashioned coach, that a return to Italy must ever be to every civilized European a home-coming.
He had even composed an epigram about it.
At the particular moment when he swept with a clatter of sixteen hoofs through the hamlet of San Marco he was attempting to write the epigram upon a small slate which he kept handy for the purpose. It was not often possible to write when travelling, although the coach was now slung upon the best steel springs. But so level and straight was the Roman highway, which had lately been repaired by Bonaparte--so smooth was the stone pavement upon which the coach was now rapidly and invincibly rolling, that in this instance Don Luis had no difficulty whatever in writing upon the slate without breaking the delicate point of his stone pencil.
At this triumph of modern engineering he looked up with an amused and faintly-pleased expression about the eyes. The crow's-feet on the pouches under his heavy lids contracted a little ironically and he started to drum with his thick, powerful fingers on the surface of the slate which rested on his knee. The scent of the vineyards had caused him to remember something that interfered with his epigrammatic style. Finally, with an angry motion of his club-like thumb, he obliterated what he had just written upon the slate. He looked at the smudge and laughed, for he had not really intended to wipe out the epigram but to destroy only the uncomfortable memory which had just been forced upon him.
During the course of his frequent journeys--and upon diplomatic business he still travelled a great deal--the marquis had composed several thousand epigrams. He first set them down upon the slate and later transferred them to an elegant, morocco-bound notebook that reposed together with a pack of cards, the latest French novel, some goat cheese, and a bottle of white wine in a small locker on the side of the coach. This alcove had once, long ago, held a figure of the Madonna belonging to his girl-wife.
It was a bright memory of the dead woman, vividly but unconsciously forced upon him by the odour of grape blossoms, that had interfered with his writing. He looked annoyed. He brushed his hand over his eyes, and went on again.
The peculiarly sardonic and sententious style in which Don Luis composed his epigrams was a balm to his injured ego which had never ceased to suffer from the wound inflicted upon it by the unfaithful conduct of his wife. It was for that reason that there were thousands and not merely hundreds of epigrams now safely copied into the morocco notebook. Don Luis had thus taken his revenge on fate by secretly continuing to drip vitriol upon everybody and everything under the sun. His sarcasm was a kind of spiritual pus that he wiped away privately with page after page of the notebook.
Outwardly Don Luis had scarcely changed at all. He even looked a little better preserved. Indeed, there was something about the marquis that reminded some close observers of a living mummy. One almost crippling attack of the gout had brought a Spartan diet into his regimen. He lived principally upon sour wine, cheese, and goat's milk. And he knew exactly how to physic himself after those banquets for which even a Spanish grandee and an old diplomat semi-occasionally had to unbutton.
For a man well up in his sixties the conde de Azuaga, as he was known in Spain, was really remarkable. But the most remarkable thing about him was that the world went on taking his spry, youthful vigour and unimpaired energy as a matter of course. It did not, except in a few cases of old men who enviously failed before him, remark his vigour at all.
In Estremadura, where Don Luis had spent a great deal of his time, the life was both healthy and hardy. Those who survived it in infancy usually lived to a vigorous old age. There were priests there who had been known to have had children at the age of ninety. And it was for that reason that the nobility in the neighbourhood of Don Luis' estates frequently sent to Valencia, or other provinces, for family confessors whose ripe old age was less likely to break forth into ridiculous blossoms. In Estremadura there was,--yes, undoubtedly,--there was something in the air. Don Luis had breathed it in calmly, and preserved its fire.
After a decade of retirement in Estremadura the marquis had gradually begun to resume his position of natural influence and inevitable emolument at the then much disordered court of Spain. For this he was excellently fitted by both inheritance and long practice. At the supine court of Charles IV he possessed an enormous advantage over even the most selfish of timeservers; he was no longer troubled by any social conscience whatever. Over those who matched him in this respect he was still superior, for his own selfishness was complex and conservative while theirs was simple and immediately voracious. Those dull glimmerings of virtue, which even the most lupine of statesmen occasionally employ as beacons of direction in an otherwise purely opportunist piloting, did not in the midnight oceans of Don Luis' soul mark even a distant headland. He steered only by the fixed star of self-interest with a Machiavellian craft. It was in this sense that the conde de Azuaga was in a very real way a "prince" among men.
The Marquis da Vincitata and conde de Azuaga had in fact been endowed by an all-wise Providence, that accomplishes its mysterious ends with the deadly foil of evil as well as the sword of justice, with an awful and profound mind. That the colour of his soul was Stygian was only natural, for it is in the darkness of night that mental lightning without thunder makes its finest display when it strikes. The marquis' self-interest consisted in what he was interested in, and that can be described most laconically as a passionate desire to hold back the hands on the clock of time. With that end in view he had gradually thrown himself back into the ways and places of influence, body and soul.
Don Luis had within him a strong sense of the trend of the age; of the becoming of men and peoples in the stream of time. And as this, when combined with the practical ability to influence events, is undoubtedly a trait of genius, the advent of the conde in his gloomy coach at the Escurial just before the French Revolution broke out had marked a distinct epoch of pause in the history of his own peninsula. He proposed to preserve it as a perfect Christian Tibet, and for a time he succeeded.
He left no record of his strange and stilling influence. He wrote nothing, except the epigrams in his notebook. His method was the ancient, and often most effective one in human affairs, of a devious personal influence. He attached himself to the right men and left them at exactly the right time. He drove hither and yon in his gloomy coach, which for many years had remained slung upon the chains with which he had furnished it for his wife's martyrdom. A call paid by the suave, and inevitably correct, conde in this vehicle driven by a cat-like coachman was like receiving the ambassador of smouldering subterranean powers whose force is known but whose depth has never been plumbed. Virtue and sanctimony were forced to listen to his wisdom with respect, while the superficially sinful were left both envious and scared. A few ardent young spirits who opposed him had been questioned as to the basis of their curious opposition during the last ample days of the Holy Office. Thus, opposition to Don Luis was always dangerous; co-operation inevitably paid. Consequently, the ends he fostered throve, and the web, which the constantly widening circle of the peregrinations of the coach left upon the map of Spain, found an ever more and more powerful and alert spider sitting upon the faded rose-coloured upholstery at its shifting centre.
Don Luis was not "popular," of course. It had never occurred to any mob to shout, "Long live Don Luis," or to any assembly of notables to drink his health. It would have seemed preposterous, unnecessary. He somehow carried with him everywhere, and under every conceivable circumstance, the suggestion that he would inevitably outlive and prevail over those with whom he dealt. All this was largely due to an unquenchable desire for revenge upon life which now directed the movements of the marquis' soul. He would have liked to stop all other life than his own. And in that event he would have valued his own existence only because it would have enabled him to watch over a universal calm. The marquis was therefore known as a "conservative."
Indeed, there was only one positive desire left in his still active but negative nature. It was an harassing sensuality that still hoped for long-protracted and callous intercourse. It constituted, as it were, the secret, youthful vigour of his senility, and, when actively exerted, held a certain kind of mysterious and unexpected charm for older women. It was for this reason that the marquis as he made his rounds always kept at least one of his drooping eyelids half open, and he was no longer at all particular as to where he could slake a passion that was both dull and violent at the same time.
His reactionary hopes, however, had not prevented him from making those necessary outward concessions to change without which even a "conservative" cannot conserve. These were for the most part exhibited in his astute political manœuvres, his meticulous dress, and in the constant, almost affectionate, rehabilitation of the coach.
He liked to recall that he had won the coach from the Duc d'Orléans at a lucky run of cards in what he looked back upon as better days. For various reasons he had cherished it and rejuvenated it from time to time. The vehicle had almost become a part of him. In the course of time it received new tires, new wheels, new axle-trees and new shafts. It had been dragged over Spain, Portugal, and France by horses and mules that had died in its service and left the body of the coach behind them. Only that had remained the same. In its lines were expressed the luxurious amplitude and the heavy ruthlessness of the ancien régime. Its cat-like coachman had been promoted. He still rode upon the box in a coat-of-many-capes like a torn cat dressed in frills. But Sancho was now Don Luis' valet and general factotum, and the coach was driven by his son, a young man with grey hair, a round, ocelot-shaped head, and wide, greenish eyes. This personage, known as the "Kitten" in Madrid, flourished a whip and said nothing except to his horses or mules. These he occasionally addressed in a tempest of lewd squalls, while he drove with an uncanny skill that seemed to be reckless.
Towards the end of 1799 Don Luis had gone to Paris to try to arrange the little matter of transferring the southern part of Portugal to the prime minister of Spain. He and the First Consul Bonaparte had found that they understood one another. Pourparlers had rapidly changed into conversations during the course of which the character of the Prince of the Peace, the queen's favourite, and the general sorry mess of affairs at the court of Spain were amply discussed. These conversations were carried on with a masterful directness on the part of the first consul and a faultless, self-serving innuendo on the part of Don Luis that rapidly brought about an understanding between these two men as their admiration for each other increased. Napoleon saw in the marquis one whom it would be wise to favour in order to use; Don Luis beheld in Bonaparte a man whom it was imperative to serve well in order to profit amply. They got on.
"What sort of a man is the Prince of the Peace?" asked Bonaparte whirling about upon Don Luis, as he walked up and down looking out upon the gardens of the Luxembourg which he was just about to leave for the Tuileries.
"A man of large parts, citizen-general, necessary and assiduous in the service of Her Majesty both day and night."
Bonaparte smiled wanly.
"I have heard that he is also the friend of the king," he said. "Is there no one to whose interest it would be to enlighten His Catholic Majesty as to the state of his own domestic affairs?"
"Several, now in exile, have made the attempt," replied Don Luis. "But His Majesty's family party at the Escurial has been carefully arranged to insure the royal peace of mind. I might add that the unique relation the Prince of the Peace holds to the king has thrown a new and romantic light upon the power and privileges of a viceroy."
Napoleon smiled again, this time not so wanly. He began rapidly to discuss the basis of a new treaty with Spain in which the payment of a larger annual subsidy to France was the most important item. It was at this interview that Don Luis first mentioned to Napoleon the possibility of the cession of Louisiana to France. He merely suggested it, as it were. It was difficult to transfer bullion from Mexico to Spain on account of the British fleet but a continent could be transferred at Paris, by a stroke of the pen. Napoleon shook his head. It was ready money he wanted. But he remembered the suggestion and turned it over in his planetary mind.
The upshot of several such conversations was surprising to several persons. The Prince of the Peace failed to get his Portuguese principality but was assured of French support at the court of Spain. For this he could grind his teeth--and be thankful--to both Don Luis and Bonaparte. The precise way in which the gratitude was to be shown was carefully provided for and understood beforehand.
The Duke and Duchess of Parma were also surprised. It was agreed that they should pack up and move their thrones to Florence, as Napoleon had new arrangements for Italy in view and was graciously willing to endow their Etrurian Majesties-to-be generously, at the expense of a helpless ally. Don Luis was commissioned to inform them tactfully of the little surprise in store for them, after arranging certain details beforehand through the Spanish ambassador at Paris.
The mission to prepare the authorities at Florence was one which for several reasons filled Don Luis with a peculiar satisfaction. He liked moving royalties, who had to pretend to be thankful to him, like figures in chess. He liked returning to Italy, where the Renaissance had been taken seriously, he said. There was a decidedly Roman pagan side to Don Luis. He had finally reduced his Christianity to nothing but ritual with no moral implications. And a trip to Tuscany in particular coincided exactly with certain private business of his own in that region.
Thus, as usual, Don Luis was able to conduct his own and the public business as one. Before leaving Paris he had obtained certain letters from the first consul which insured the return of his confiscated estates in Tuscany. The dilapidated castle and small hill-town of Vincitata was nothing to Napoleon, who was therefore glad to return it to Don Luis upon whom he counted for further confidential advices when he should return to Spain.
In all of this Don Luis had been acting as the confidential agent of the Prince of the Peace. But he had seen fit to see eye to eye with the first consul, because perforce he must, and because as a matter of fact, it was in that way that he could make the best terms for Spain. At least he had obtained the promise of French support for the policies of Godoy, the queen's favourite, who was already anathema at home. Don Luis was also casting an eye into the future as every good diplomat should. A vague but stupendous outline of the plans of the young Corsican general with the Roman head had begun to dawn upon Don Luis. On one occasion the general in the coat with green facings had honoured the marquis with one of those metaphysical discourses on European affairs which so many people had made the mistake of not taking seriously. Don Luis did not indulge in that error. He had experienced a curious sensation while he listened to Napoleon, one of having participated in a similar interview somewhere else, very long ago. It had, he told himself, a kind of Trajanic ring about it. Just why, Don Luis could not be sure. But the experience of recall had been a powerful one. He dismissed that, but he retained in his head the vision of a great European empire with Paris as the new Rome. This suited the spiritual politics of Don Luis, and for the first time in many years there stirred within him an emotion akin to enthusiasm. For a minute or so the two men, who were conversing across a desk with the map of Italy laid out upon it, had been bound together in a profoundly deep and naturally flowing conversation as to the destinies of European civilization. It was above religion, national politics, and folk morals. For a minute or two what the Roman Empire had accomplished centuries before was reconstituted in a room over the portico of the Tuileries in Paris in 1800. Two free and ruthlessly candid intellects had dropped the petty conventions and prejudices of feudal provinces and looked upon Europe as a whole. Don Luis remembered afterward that Napoleon had lapsed into Italian in the excitement of finding himself understood, and he considered that to be the most majestic compliment which could have been offered him. Indeed, he looked back upon that interview as the crowning moment of his career. It had had about it the flavour of a meeting of Roman augurs, but of augurs who took themselves seriously and had eagles to unleash. Don Luis was able to add a few quotations and observations from some of the Sibylline books of the West. Then, as it were, the curtain had been withdrawn again. The sense of immediate communication in a mutual dream lapsed. Napoleon went on in French.
It was this that had caused Don Luis to smile ironically as he swept over the Roman highway, recently improved by Napoleon. It was only a small spur of the great system that had once linked Europe into one Latin whole. It was possible, however, that the whole system might now be repaved. He hoped so. It would give to life in the West a principle of direction in which every individual might participate with a sense not only of becoming, but of being with a sense of having been. At the present time society in Europe was composed of innumerable tangents from a curve that had dropped into a burst of shooting stars in the Renaissance and Reformation. Every person who was possessed of anything more than a purely conventional consciousness was now aware that he must steer by himself alone. Those remnants of the curve which still remained in Italy and Spain were hanging in limbo. It might be possible that a French segment would complete the old; no, a new and more magnificent Roman arch. Britain could go to hell her own way. What could be done with a people who had subordinated everything to a desire to trade? No, no, they were out of the arch forever. Barbarous! Don Luis reached for his slate again. The horses seemed to be galloping in hexameter.
It was at this point that the odour of grape blossoms had interrupted him. As an odour will, it recalled with extreme vividness certain scenes of his own secret life. The gears of his mind were suddenly shifted from impersonal politics to purely private considerations, as though a hand from without had been laid upon them. It was curious how those two seemingly disparate worlds were bound into one and made inseparable by the rapid and unceasing motion of the coach. As the vehicle rounded the curve at the southern end of the village of San Marco, Don Luis felt himself pressed back into the upholstery by the invisible hand that laid upon him the feeling of motion. He leaned against the momentum and stuck his head out of the window, bawling at Sancho not to go so fast. For some reason while the coach had swung him he felt angry. But the mood soon passed and, as he looked out over the landscape covered with vineyards in blossom, he was immediately presented gratis with a view of a somewhat similar countryside on a spring evening a quarter of a century before.
The coach he remembered was ascending a hill on a road through the midst of vineyards, approaching the Château of Besance. On the very seat where he was now riding sat his wife Maria. He remembered how the sunset had dazzled in her golden hair.
He turned, almost expecting to find her sitting beside him, and shivered a little at finding nothing there. The now faded rose of the old upholstery was merely touched into a sort of mockery of its ancient splendour by the approaching sunset. Here and there, over the back of the carriage, moved a few spots of shifting pentecostal fires.
The marquis felt suddenly as if he would like to get out of the coach. Where, after all,--where was it taking him? He felt for a minute that another hand than his own had really directed its motion. He had only collaborated with it. Perhaps he had not done so well in being sure he was always the master of its direction. A rare emotion crept upon him. He felt a little fearful of being all alone where only the lights and shadows of the outside world flickered over the inside of the old carriage--exactly as his thoughts flickered through his mind. He stuck his head out of the window again . . . "what, for instance, had become of Maria's child?" It might be a wise precaution to inform himself. The convent where he had left him was in the immediate neighbourhood--the "Convent of Jesus the Child." Don Luis smiled ironically again and decided to pay a visit to the mother superior. He could very easily concoct an excuse. Should he?
Just then they topped the rise of a small hill. In the valley beyond the marquis saw a large, rambling building with red roofs. An immense plane tree rose out of its midst about whose top a flock of pigeons was circling preparing to return for the night. It was this glimpse of the place which decided Don Luis to take advantage of its vicinity.
He called to Sancho and pointed. The man raised his eyes slightly and nodded. "So they were going to stop there again after all!" Sancho had wondered if they would. With the same grinding reverberations that the tires of the coach had aroused from the same stones twenty-five years before he caused the vehicle to pull up before the lane leading to the convent.
This time the marquis was somewhat longer in transacting his business at the convent than he had been on his previous visit. He had a long interview with the mother superior, whom he found to be an able and evidently painfully discreet woman. She was now directing the most exclusive convent-school for aristocratic young ladies in Tuscany. Mistaking Don Luis for a wise parent with a daughter to educate, she insisted upon showing him over the entire establishment. Don Luis was forced to be politely patient, and to look at kitchens, laundry, and schoolrooms. He reflected as he went through the kitchens, as a revenge for being bored, that everything that woman used even for cooking had been invented and was made by man. He afterwards entered this in his morocco book. In the courtyard, however, he lingered with genuine admiration. Never, he thought, had he seen so antiquely somnolent, so pagan and classic a fountain. The statue of the bronze boy, who stood staring at the water with those peculiarly blind eyes that Phidias had perfected in Western sculpture, caused the cold springs of the marquis' internal aesthetic tears to melt discreetly. He even murmured a few words of admiration to Mother Marie José, who, thinking them to be an ironical compliment, tried to hurry him through what was now a long-deserted portion of the establishment; one of which she was thoroughly ashamed.
As a matter of fact, Don Luis, as a connoisseur, would have liked to own the statue. He inquired as to the missing twin. The mother superior did not even know what he meant. She looked at the statue of the lusty young boy somewhat askance. It was unnecessarily exuberant, she believed. Rather an unfortunate representation of the Christ Child for a girls' school, she thought. She could not discuss that, however. "Probably the twin was carried off and lost during the Renaissance," reflected Don Luis; "lonely enough in some modern garden even now, perhaps. Ah, well, he could never hope to find the twin." They went on into the refectory where upwards of thirty young ladies, dressed in elegant, but unbelievably prim costumes stayed with whalebone, sat bolt upright saying nothing. A sad-faced sister read to them of the blessed poverty of St. Francis, while they ate an iced sherbet.
"The niece of the unfortunate Duchess of Parma," said Mother Marie José indicating a gypsy-like girl near by . . . "The young Countess of Monteficuelli," she whispered.
That young gypsy managed to look discreetly down her nose at Don Luis. Don Luis allowed the lace from his sleeves to droop a little more elegantly, and bowed. He might have been acknowledging the presence of the Empress of Austria. The compliment was at once discreet, impeccable, and tremendous. To a young girl overwhelming. The breath of the world he brought in with him caused the envious bosoms of the other young ladies to stretch tight against their whalebones even in the Convent of Jesus the Child. Mademoiselle Monteficuelli blushed. Don Luis felt suddenly much younger again.
". . . And we have many other noble names represented here," the mother superior was saying. It was her principal argument. "Permit me to show you the rolls for some years past." She had often won her bid by laying her face cards upon the table.
It was exactly what Don Luis had hoped for but had been at a loss to bring about. Once having begun on the records, he pretended great interest; he kept going back. It was not difficult at first. Every teacher will talk about her school, for since that is all of life that she knows, she thinks that is all there is in life to know how to talk about. But finally Mother Marie José became anxious. There were certain entries in the 1770's which she was not anxious for any prospective patron to see. The curiosity of the stranger, however, was insatiable.
"What is this?" said Don Luis, scowling, and looking somewhat scandalized. "An orphan boy, Anthony, apprenticed to the English merchant John Bonnyfeather, what! what!" Here his face darkened like a thundercloud. There could be no doubt he was shocked now.
"Dios!" thought Don Luis. "Who would ever have thought that? To his own grandfather! Impossible! No, true! Yes, it must have been Maria's child. Here was the receipt by the old merchant for the little madonna and his own ten gold pieces. Even the black bag and the cloak. Hers!" He felt her cold hands in his own again as on that night in the mountains. A sudden chill went to his heart. Life was not so simple as he had thought. He wished now he had left his wife's bastard in a basket in the mountains. Nature has a way with her. This unlooked-for eventuality actually gave him a headache as if he had received a blow between the eyes.
Mother Marie José felt much the same. She had always feared that entry would be misunderstood. She hastened to explain the presence of an orphan boy with the greatest detail. Don Luis now saw all the records. She forced them upon him. There could be no doubt about it. For a few moments he sat with an expression that almost reduced the protesting mother superior to tears. At last seeing the effect he was producing on the good woman, he rapidly recovered himself and reassured her.
"Believe me, I understand the matter fully," he said.
He determined to remove any unpleasant impression from her mind by an act of generosity. "After all the woman's worst failing is a little profitable snobbery," he thought. He would have to be careful, therefore, how he offered to confer a gift. The convent was no longer the home of charity. A way out of the difficulty came aptly to his mind.
"You have evidently mistaken my motives in visiting here, madame," he explained. "I myself am childless, but in former times my family were among the many noble patrons of this holy place. I have not been in Italy for many years, but, as I was travelling this way, I could not refrain out of a sentimental, yet I trust pious, prompting of the heart from paying you a visit. You will understand, therefore, that my curiosity about your records was a natural one, ahem . . . I might say an inherited one. Permit me to congratulate you upon your superbly judicious management; your highly distinguished clientele."
Mother Marie José blushed. The scar under her headdress burned with pride.
"It was my hope," continued Don Luis, "to confer some passing benefit upon you. Charity, of course, is now out of the question. Your excellent management! But I feel sure, or rather I make bold to hope, that you will not refuse a mere memento of my regard. That old statue by the fountain now--" Don Luis could look embarrassed when he liked--"it is . . . well, it is scarcely what one would choose as an item of ecclesiastical decoration under your present circumstances. The ancients were of course naïve even in their piety. We have become more chaste. More may now be left safely even to the imagination of religious young ladies. Do you not agree with me?"
Mother Marie José lowered her head.
"Of course! Well, it was my hope that you would permit me to have an elegant, modern bambino in the best Florentine style installed, and the--er--somewhat outmoded, not to say dilapidated statue now in the courtyard removed. I should make only one condition. The gift must be anonymous. I am going on to Livorno tonight. I will send the workmen some time this week. Do not give them anything, the rascals. They will be well paid."
He looked at her keenly.
The mother superior was making self-satisfied and pious noises in her throat. Not only had she swallowed the bait, she now seemed to be chortling over the sinker.
As she parted from Don Luis at the door, she gave him her blessing with such a genuine warmth and humility for having misjudged him that he was forced to bend low to hide his natural emotions under the touching circumstances.
In the coach it was not necessary to conceal them. He sat there, as evening fell and he began to approach Livorno, with a look of mingled grimness, curiosity, and amusement.
In settling his connection with the Bonnyfeather estate and closing up the old building which he had rented to his erstwhile father-in-law, there might be more to settle than he had supposed. Well, he was ready for it. In a very short time he would know.
Just as darkness came he drove into the courtyard of the old Casa da Bonnyfeather and got out of the coach. The place seemed to be deserted. He felt annoyed. He had sent word of his arrival. But, no. There was a light coming through the chink of a shutter. Somebody, a female, was coming out.
"Good evening, my good woman," said Don Luis.
Faith Paleologus looked at him and smiled.
The Unicorn had been battered about the Bight of Benim and generally bedevilled by gales and head winds for many weeks after leaving the Rio Pongo. Captain Bittern finally fetched a tremendous leg away across the Atlantic before he put-about and beat back for Gibraltar, gradually edging north. In early April he at last made port at the Rock, where with two topmasts and most of the rest of his top-hamper blown away, he had to refit and revictual.
Anthony was at a loss what to do with the ship. His own nationality was so vague that he was afraid of serious legal complications over her prizes when he finally came to settle his affairs in London with Baring Brothers & Co. It might be difficult to explain to an English court how a gentleman who had taken an oath of allegiance to the King of Spain, and had for long run an establishment under the Spanish flag, also owned an English ship that had been preying on French and Spanish commerce in the meantime.
He finally decided to get rid of the Unicorn by sending her under Captain Bittern to London and having the Barings sell her while they were still acting as Mr. Bonnyfeather's executors.
This plan suited Captain Bittern to a "t." He asked only for the padded chair as a keepsake. He received the entire cabin furniture, plate and all.
"Very handsome, very handsome, indeed, Mr. Adverse," he said, turning a little red in the face. He had asked for the chair only to save £2.3, he told himself. He could never admit his one romantic slip. Somehow the wind had been taken out of his sails with getting the chair, and so much else, gratis. He almost wished he had waited for the auction. He was sure the chair would have gone for,--well, just about £2.3. Now it would only make a good elder's seat at the chapel in Spitalfields. Certainly not at the cottage. Certainly not!--after what had occurred on that chair. He wound the chronometer--his now--thoughtfully. It was a nice chronometer--but it was too late now. It would always be too late. All the time left to him was bound now to be highly respectable. Well, he had seen a good deal in his time--in the time that was past.
While Captain Bittern refitted, Anthony began to find his way about Gibraltar. With a good-sized draft awaiting him from the Barings and a fat letter of credit on London, there was not much trouble in doing so.
It was amusing to see, as a sort of foretaste of what might come later, that he easily and rapidly became a person whose importance was taken for granted; whose antecedents were honourably involved in property. Already a door-opening rumour of his being a young man of great wealth had gone the rounds. The Unicorn was thought to be his "armed yacht" which he had contributed to the cause of king and country--and, if his patriotism had proved profitable, who was there to cavil at that? Before a week went by he was "commanded" to dine with the governor.
Indeed, he found he might linger on at Gibraltar indefinitely, passing the clear, spring days, that slipped over from Africa so early with a breath of summer in them,--days that set the flowers in the quarry gardens on the Rock to blooming madly,--seeing people, eating dinners, riding, being introduced by and to hopeful mothers, who tactfully withdrew leaving him "alone" in the moonlight--while they watched.
He might go to tea every afternoon in neat, bare, little military houses with green jalousies outside and pretty women within pouring Bohea out of china more sinolesque than the Chinese. Would he have Scotch marmalade or ginger out of neat, blue jars covered with rattan? To tea or not to tea--that was the question. People like the Udneys, and cool, tall girls like Florence were everywhere. And it was all very pleasant, very pleasant indeed to be back again in this world of his own kind; a world of uniforms, bonnets, long white gloves that wrinkled at the elbows; of white bread, yellow butter; skirts with white, mousy slippers twinkling under them, and always tea, jam, cards, whisky; the boom of artillery from the heights, the ships' bells below, and the shouts of the stevedores. Then there were Sundays when all the sailors marched to church. And the purple-blue of the middle, mother-sea made a moat around it all.
What with the ships of the fleet coming and going and a big wartime garrison on the mysterious Rock, there were endless dances, receptions, and affairs. Innumerable boats were always going and coming with dapper little "snotties" in charge, who sprang out on the quay and drew their ridiculous dirks while they landed in charge of a boat's crew of great bearded fellows in glazed hats with a yard of ribbon falling over their left eye; men who could pull, and pull all together.
Here was all the assurance of British official society, naval and military, with its well-ordered social classes, the stratified atmosphere in which it lived and breathed. But with the dullness of peace times worn off. For these were stirring times. Security was given a fillip by the constant hazard of war surrounding it. Respectability was hurried while lovers and husbands made love as men who might never come back again to women who would be left behind. Everywhere was that unarguable moral fervour about "us and ours" that it is the peculiar genius of the English to manufacture and to store up in vast, static quantities before, during, and after a national fight. Like the sparks from a cat's fur, most potent in bracing weather, it snaps at the least stroke the wrong way in war time. Then the lion is feeling his best with his mane full of great and petty lightnings.
At first Anthony was almost taken-in by this inherent righteousness and moral potentiality generated by the necessity to win. It was overpowering, especially in the wardrooms of the fleet, or at an officers' mess ashore; over the port with the candles lit and gold epaulettes drooping down the shoulders of scarlet tunics. Then it was especially convincing from its calm self-assurance and quiet understood boasting and humour; in its ignorance of what it was really opposed to.
It was especially convincing to Anthony, since it was carried on in what he felt to be--more than any other--his native tongue. Of course, he was assumed to be of them, and therefore with them and for them. What other side could there be than "ours"? And besides it was not possible for them to understand one whose fate had turned him into a mere European, a wanderer of the West which no longer had even the ghost of an imperial political body in which to contain its oversoul. The age for that had gone by, or had not yet come. By accident he had fallen into that vanished age. Its ideal had been reinforced in him in Africa, where he had unconsciously looked back upon Europe as one. Now suddenly, suddenly as if into a steaming hot bath, he had stumbled back into Europe at Gibraltar to find it divided against itself and vapouring and seething in a kind of prolonged explosion.
Even in a few days' time at this English outpost Anthony had found himself both attracted and repulsed in an infinitely complex way by his brothers of blood and tongue. They were a delightful people, but they seemed to have forgotten something which he remembered and to be content not to look for something which he must find. If he had ever had any false spiritual pride he had left it in the valley with Brother François, yet he could not help but feel that he belonged to a larger unit than to any that all the stir of affairs and the social order at Gibraltar had now to do with. That society was self-sufficient. It was even too self-contained. It was insular, cut-off. He must look for a larger, perhaps a more empty country, he felt.
This was the essence he distilled from the total experience of plunging back into the world of the West at a British post. At Gibraltar the light of the days he was living in was concentrated into a narrow circle and made more intense by the broad sun-glass of the nation focused behind the fortress. Here England was projected in all its various colours in the living prisms of its garrison, men, women, and children. He thought of this one bright Sunday as he watched the garrison and the citizens of the English town being paraded, and parading to church, the Church of England.
He went in and listened to the service. He could do little more. Here were many of the forms he knew, strangely preserved but somehow having suffered a clammy sea-change. The many things which they were now about and still sought to embody were not the one thing which they were once devised to show. That supreme unity had somehow vanished. There was no doubt about it, only the god of England dwelt there. He was perhaps a captain, even an admiral in the British service. The Spirit of the World had gone. God was no longer Our Father, but the god of our fathers--and of "us"--our fathers' precious children. How had that happened? He did not know, but he felt it. Then he remembered something else like it otherwhere.
What was it Mrs. Jorham had felt uneasy about in the churches in Havana? Was that still another thing, too?
After the service he climbed with a party of officers up to the pinnacle of the Rock--that is forever England's--and looked out over Spain, and across the straits back and down into Africa. And he let his eyes wander freely over the blue sea and the arms of it betwixt and between. And again it all seemed equally good to him, part of the great indivisible world, of which, despite an already large dose of it, he knew he could never see and hear, taste and smell--and feel and think about enough. The range of cannon was surely not the criterion of the boundaries of it for those who were invisible spirits of another time; those who, even while the guns muttered, could slip between.
They descended the Rock again to Sunday evening tea and potted-ham, while a salute rang out in the harbour below. For Anthony it was a parting salute. He still might have gone on to London in the Unicorn. Next day he let her sail for "home" under Captain Bittern. He sent Juan "on leave" to Tarifa, his native town, nearby and regretfully sent Simba with him.
Taking the able little purser, Mr. Spencer, along with him, Anthony found passage for Malta in a naval supply ship. At Malta he hired a fast felucca and its crew to slip him into Livorno. They glided into the harbour one dark night only a few hours after Don Luis had dismounted from the coach in the court of the Casa da Bonnyfeather.
Anthony, Mr. Spencer, and a few chests and belongings, among which was the bundle taken from his room at Gallegos that had not yet been untied, were all quietly set ashore on the deserted quay of the Darsena.
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Anthony was standing again at the same corner where he and Father Xavier had shared the orange between them over fifteen years ago. He was sure now that he had received the larger half. Along the familiar water front the dark water lapped in the starlight. But the Darsena was well-nigh deserted. Since the French and English had been quarrelling, commerce had languished, especially by larger craft.
It seemed curious not to be going home. Surely, surely John Bonnyfeather would come down the old steps at the casa to greet him. The fire would be blazing under the portrait of King James and the misty room aglow. But he was gone and the casa was only a pile of stones now, one of a series of house fronts along the quays. Impossible! He could not resist going to see. It was only a few hundred paces away. He left Mr. Spencer sitting rather disconsolately on the piled luggage. Under the arches his heels echoed. This was the gate.
It was open, swinging a little in the night wind and creaking. There was not a light in the court. Overhead the stars burned like lights on a sable pall. The fountain was still. It had been turned off. A mysterious air of fear seemed to rest over the whole place. It was like looking at a tomb. What was that vast vague outline against the stars, a vehicle of some kind, a hearse?
He tiptoed in, reluctantly, aware of a kind of hostility that emanated from the great coach. Perhaps it was due to its strangeness, its great bulk, the dead windows agape in the night, the funereal droop of the trappings from the driver's seat. What was this catafalque doing here? In the vague starlight it took on for him the outlines of the hieroglyph of warning. It simply meant "beware." In the stables beyond a horse stamped three times hollowly. It seemed as if a curtain somewhere in the night was about to go up. He was vaguely aware of a stage lying behind it. All the stir and expectancy of a play was there, waiting. A cloud passed and the stars shone through. He turned away disappointed. For a minute it seemed as if he had been about to see through. The feeling of something grisly and oppressive returned. The Casa da Bonnyfeather was positively hostile. He had not expected that. He poked his head into the coach just to prove himself. It smelled of Malacca snuff. He tiptoed out. The gate creaked in the wind behind him. The arch boomed hollowly.
Mr. Spencer was still sitting on the luggage when he returned.
"Wait just a few minutes longer," Anthony said, "and I will get you help."
Anthony took the familiar short cut to the square of the Mayoralty and a few minutes later found himself knocking at the door of the old Casa da Franco. There was now nothing but a neat brass plate on the door with the legend "Herr Vincent Nolte, Banking and Foreign Exchange." But a light streamed out over the threshold as if there was someone living here and awake to welcome him. Nevertheless, he had to knock several times. He heard voices calling in German upstairs. Feeble steps approached and someone fumbled at the door chain. "Franko," the Swiss porter, stood there. "Why, he has grown old!" The man recognized him. "Mr. Adverse!" It was a glad cry, a welcome given unconsciously. The old fellow made quite a clamour over him. Someone looked over the banisters and giggled. A tall woman with corn-coloured hair and wide, blue eyes was coming down the stairs in a dressing gown and slippers. Anthony looked up at her rather startled. She was like a Valkyrie.
"Don't you know me?" she cried.
"Das kleine fräulein," whispered old Franko.
So it was. It was his little mädchen who used to sit knitting by the window.
"Du lieber!"
She came and kissed him laughingly on both cheeks. She led him upstairs holding onto his arm, stopping to tell him the family gossip on every step. By the time they got to the landing with the brass rail about it and the statue of Frederick the Great in its niche, they were both in gales of laughter.
"His Majesty Vincent is still asleep," she called out.
"The devil I am," sang out Vincent, his voice now grown richer and deeper. He had only waited to dress. He came down holding out both his hands. "We've been expecting you for weeks!" They stood grasping each other by the elbows. "My God!" said Anthony.
The tears sprang into their eyes as they looked at each other. "Come up," said Vincent, "and see how you like the bedroom with the new chintz curtains. Anna has been getting it ready for you every day for a month."
"I have not," she said. "It's been ready."
A faint reminiscence of beer and sauerkraut brought the room they were about to enter to Anthony's view before the door opened. And there it was; the long table and carved chairs, the pewter, the geraniums in the window and the bird cages with cloths over them. Franko was hurrying about lighting candles. One of the maids was setting a corner of the table evidently for a midnight supper. Old Frau Frank hurried in out of the kitchen whence savoury odours exuded. The lines on the side of her nose were much deeper. She peered more under her moony glasses. But the arms that came out of her short-sleeved wrapper were still rosy and strong. Her grey hair and cap belied her.
"Ach--ach!" Anyone would think Anthony had been her son.
"Do not kill the fatted calf, Frau Frank," he laughed.
"Nein, nein, shust a leetle snack. Kaffee und . . ." She disappeared into the kitchen again. The door banged on a clatter of dishes. A tray with Münchner and pretzels came. Excuses, more food would follow.
"Prosit."
Anthony, Vincent, and Anna.
They sat down and started to talk to one another all at the same time.
Anna was going to be married soon--"think of it, little Anna--ja wohl"--to a rich Düsseldorfer. A look of bland happiness overspread Anna's features suddenly making her look like a young mother with milk in her breasts. This approaching marriage was somehow the most important news. Anthony seemed to have come back just to hear about it. The girl described the home of her betrothed at Düsseldorf. Anthony sat watching and listening, all at once feeling a touch of melancholy. It was for this that his little mädchen had been knitting and sewing even years ago; even when she didn't know it. How naturally and inevitably some women fulfilled themselves! And yet the quality of life was rich for Anna. Yes, he knew that. There were tones in her voice, the way her hands moved, and her feet--to music--to the music. Not guitars in the moonlight. No, no, heavily-strung viols auf dem grünewald, deep, unhurried, low-toned instruments invisible where the sunlight filtered through the oak branches and the Kobolds could be heard clinking briskly in their smithies under the huge, dark roots. Sweet forest, strong and ancient and blithe. Her bracelets clinked like hammers on elf-gold. He sat dreaming about her, and the music welled up in his heart in a splendid chorus. A new experience. More than a tune, full-throated, manifold. She tossed her head in the lamplight. The suite ended at last with the sound of birds in the branches, and a flute somewhere away off in the cool, quiet glades. Dear Anna! He would give her something beautiful for her wedding, and there would be gifts for all her babies when they came. She looked at him, and seeing he understood the current of her life, suffused her eyes with his own. Vincent looked on in the current, too, and smiled. The flute ceased.
Frau Frank had come in with a pot of steaming coffee. She sat down wiping her hands on her apron while two tears ran down the runnels in her cheeks as she described Anna's trousseau. Schön, sehr schön. They began to eat pigs' feet and sausage. The wedding dress just basted together was shown him in a ribboned box. An immense cake powdered with nuts and cinnamon was brought in; more coffee, very black; more beer--wine. The world became softly rosy; the room delightfully bright and warm. Every shining pewter and silver thing duplicated it.
Vincent opened a new box of cigars with a small, gold knife on a chain. He rattled his seals. He was as much of a dandy as ever. But he dressed now with a careful solidity and a lambent good taste about him that just managed to be impressive and colourful without being crass. He dressed as if someone were just about to strike a beautifully polished brass gong--but had sounded a full rich tone on a harp instead. His was the latest French mode now. He felt the Continent was going that way--Bonaparte's. The English were in the offing for a while. He lived by Paris and not by London. While the armies and ships were deciding it between them--he lived on the Continent and made loans. He looked, and he was, prosperous.
Yes, he was going to Paris--had been waiting for Anthony to join him. They must talk it over, tomorrow. There was a great scheme under way amongst the bankers for floating the next French loan. Certainly he was in on it! And he had a proposition to make to Anthony. He had the very best connections now in Paris--the very best. There were some people he wanted Anthony to meet in Paris on his way to London. He took it for granted Anthony was going to London. But they could go as far as Paris together. "Think of it, my boy, Paris!--travelling together--old times again! Ach!"
"Herr Gott, Toni, I do luf you," he said suddenly overcome. "What a grand gentleman you have become. And now you are rich, too! Ooo--ooo--it is all coming true, everything we dreamed and more." He started to cry into the beer from sheer happiness and the tremendous, alcoholic sentimental implications of the divine past. Everything in which he himself had taken part was romantic to Vincent. Consequently the future was magnificent by implication, for some time in the future he would be looking back upon it as his past. The tears actually dropped into the foam on his dark beer. And yet Vincent Nolte was in all details of business the most practical of men. He was a sheerly German combination of moonlight playing across the hard marble of a banker's façade behind which the owner counted his marks with a nosegay of forget-me-nots on his counter. He kept his accounts of interest due in an iron safe with a knight painted on its oiled door, ate sausages--and cried or laughed over his beer. And in addition Vincent had spent most of his youth in Italy.
"Ach, Toni, I have great plans. You shall know them tomorrow."
They sat looking at each other very happy, pleased, agreeably surprised with the changes of time.
Anthony saw that from Vincent the last of the pink, rabbit-like impression was gone. His hair prematurely verged toward grey and stood up in a mane in which the ears were lost. His mouth had hardened. The eyes could be cold as they were blue. His high, white stock made him positively impressive with the expanse of splendid waistcoat beneath with a solid splurge of gold seals and a heavy chain across it. There was a round chin that might have been voluptuous if business had not hardened it sufficiently to make it look merely abundant and successful. He emanated an optimistic but convincing warmth. An able man on the make.
To Vincent there was still something decidedly mysterious and strongly reserved about Anthony. But the suggestion that this something might be vague and weak, in the final analysis not sure of itself and incapable of action, had vanished. As a banker Vincent, had already acquired a considerable knowledge of people. Some men he knew intended to do what they promised but could by no means do it. The signatures to the well-meaning promises of incapable men were the hardest and most necessary things to watch against. He had, at the first, accumulated a number of small signatures like that. They had cost him dear. "Bad paper." Really one was safer in dealing with a rogue than with people who under other circumstances become other men. The world was too much for them. Anthony was not one of those.
One did not know exactly who or what he was--that was the aloofness of him--but one was quite sure that Anthony himself knew what and who he was now; that he was secure within himself and that "there was good security there." And Vincent felt instinctively as he looked at him that evening with all the keenness and illumination of a fresh view, while he was still a stranger, that Anthony had seen much more of the world than he himself had. Vincent was a little jealous of that, and yet, he was proud of it, too. One could not place Anthony exactly as belonging to this class or to that profession--or to just one nation. He was fair and blue-eyed, northern, but browned now; bitten deeply by some land of constant sun. How tall and strong he was. And yet when he had first come in Vincent had not noticed it. It was the way he moved and dressed that concealed it. Obviously one could not think of Anthony's clothes as being put on. They seemed a part of him. Vincent had never quite been able to achieve that. No, there were always clothes on Vincent Nolte. And he knew it. He saw them himself. Yes, "there is a difference between being a mere man of the world and a gentleman at home in the universe," Vincent remembered. He had not read much lately--the new French loan, but it had been said in a good German book.
But that smooth grey suit, almost silken in texture, the easy roll of the collar, and the neat flamboyance of the cravat--how did it all manage to sit so quietly upon Anthony from his varnished boots to the grey pearl pin at the throat? How the head rose up from the wide shoulders that supported it! Yet he had thought of him as being slim. He must have found a tailor at Gibraltar. The English were good at that. "It will be interesting to see what he does with all the money," thought Vincent. "I wonder if he knows how much he has? Tomorrow," he began. . . .
The door at the end of the room opened and old Uncle Otto shuffled in. He was in slippers and a dirty dressing gown. Anthony jumped up to greet him. It was a shock to find that the old man's mind was nearly gone. He remembered Anthony, but he did not know that he had been away or that he had come back. Only his general kindliness remained as a vague sort of friendship for all that moved. He responded to the warmth of the greeting. Here was an occasion, a general-warmth. He sensed that. He even brightened a little. He clutched Anthony by the arms looking up at him, trying to remember something. "Thou," he said. He smiled immensely pleased at understanding so much. His teeth were gone. Then for a minute a queer look of instinctive, childlike understanding came into his face. "Thou hast found the light," he cried. "Thou hast it! Warm," he said. He tried to lay his withered old head on Anthony's shoulder. They led him away. Frau Frank was greatly embarrassed. She treated him like a child. "Be polite," she said and almost shook him. Uncle Otto objected.
He sat in a chair and gesticulated and made noises. It was impossible not to look at him. "Go to church," said he suddenly. "It is there. I found it. My wife hung bedclothes over it, sheets. But it is there. It shines through. God has given it to his little boy again. And I am so small, so small."
"Uncle, uncle," said Anna. "Here is a footstool. Do sit up now."
"Ja, give it to me. I will pray on it," he cried. "Anna, my little one, thou knowest, too. Let me."
She held him up soothing him. Vincent shook his head.
"We have had a hard time with him," he said.
"Die deutsche, evangelisch-lutherische, protestantische Kirche," exploded Uncle Otto.
"Ah, the poor little papa," said Frau Frank, wiping her eyes. "Do you know he seems to hate me now. He says I am lost." She could not keep from weeping. "It is terrible. And I am the mother of his children. You would think he might remember that. But no. He sits brooding. You would think he saw something away off. It is nothing that he looks at. Eyes like the sky, wide. Ever since Buonaparte came that day and he was arrested and locked up he has withered. Now he is just a moon-baby."
Anthony tried to comfort her.
"Buonaparte?" shouted the old man. He shuddered and seemed to wilt. "Brigand," he muttered. He looked around apprehensively and collapsed into a sort of breathing heap.
Vincent was much annoyed at having the evening impinged upon this way. He bundled the old man back to his room. But Frau Frank, who went along with him, came back afterwards to listen and sit with her hands folded in her lap, watching the young folks. Anna insisted on hearing from Anthony where he had been. He began to tell her something about it. He had to go on, and the hours slipped away rapidly. Vincent and Anna sat spellbound. Frau Frank finally tiptoed to bed unseen. They would not let him stop. At last the light began to come through the window. The birds in the cages began to stir.
"Good Lord," said Anthony, breaking away suddenly out of the midst of Africa, "it's morning, and that poor fellow Spencer is still sitting on my luggage at the quay!"
They roused Franko and sent him out with two boys, who returned in a few minutes with the boxes and the young Englishman. He drank some warm coffee and staggered off to bed with a pale, reproachful look. Anna giggled. They snuffed the candles and went to bed themselves.
Outside the dawn began to break in the square of the Mayoralty at Livorno. Anthony could see two tall poplar trees, one on each side of his window. "The best thing about Europe," he thought, "is the beds. No, it is friends! I am home." He slept till noon.
Vincent Nolte was now doing most of the banking and financing for the port of Leghorn and the surrounding territory. He had been among the first to see that the struggle between England and France was going to be a long one, and to arrange his business accordingly. Regular trading had almost ceased, but there was considerable intermittent running of cargoes as the fortunes of war varied in and about the Mediterranean. Livorno had become the centre of this activity. Most of the travellers who came to Italy or crossed it still landed there. The profits on what cargoes did come into the port were enormous, and there was a large fleet of small craft, sloops and feluccas, that slipped from port to port, from Italy to France to Spain, and back again.
Vincent had promptly closed up the old merchant firm of Otto Frank and Co. about five years before and devoted himself to taking risks on cargoes. He made innumerable small loans to small shipowners at high rates. He took care of letters of credit, and slipped bills of exchange through the blockade whether it was the British or the French who were in the offing. In a short time he had concentrated in his hands a surprising volume of business. People in Rome, Florence, Genoa, and Venice depended upon him. The ruling families and bankers of the whole northern part of the peninsula now corresponded with him to transact innumerable affairs, from delivering letters to buying French wines or English manufactures for them or selling their oil. "Nolte can do it" rapidly became a byword.
From this kind of petty business it had been only a natural step to making larger loans of all kinds for short terms and at high rates. In the high financing of the various petty states of Italy Vincent was soon heavily involved. Into his schemes he had drawn bankers at Paris. In short, he was now embarked upon the troubled but interesting sea of European finance during the Napoleonic wars.
The whole lower part of what had been the old Frank warehouse was now taken up by Vincent's clerks, and the ground floor of the dwelling on the piazza was given over to his private bank, its agents and secretaries.
On the morning after Anthony's arrival he had spent the time as usual in his bureau, but at noon he informed his chief clerk he would be "absent from the city" for a day or so, and went upstairs to Anthony's room where they had luncheon together. He brought with him sheaves of papers. Seated together, looking out on the wide piazza, Vincent began to discuss with Anthony the state of his own and his friend's affairs. For the first time Anthony now had the opportunity of reading John Bonnyfeather's will.
The old man's business acumen and foresight were abundantly plain. For some years, prior to 1796, he had been busy rapidly converting his assets into cash, both his ships and merchandise. He had deposited these sums with northern bankers at Hamburg, Rotterdam, and London. In doing all this he had sustained some inevitable losses. But at the time of his death toward the end of 1799, his whole estate, which amounted as nearly as Vincent could then figure it to about £93,000 sterling, was in liquid cash assets concentrated in the hands of Baring Bros. & Co., of London, his executors.
The only items yet to be liquidated were the Unicorn, some merchandise which still remained in the vaults of the Casa da Bonnyfeather, and a lease on that building, which still had five years to run at rather a heavy rental. The fourteen prizes which the Unicorn had "accumulated" rather complicated matters, since nothing could be done with the funds which their sale had brought until the estate was finally settled. To do that "It will be absolutely essential for Mr. Adverse to hasten to London, after he settles his affairs at Leghorn, with as little delay as possible," wrote the Barings.
"Your affairs here," said Vincent, "consist in being identified and accepted as the legal heir under the will according to the forms of the local law. There will be little trouble over that, I feel sure, for I have retained your old friend Baldasseroni to look after the matter. But until you personally probate the will at Livorno the Barings write that they can do nothing in London but invest. You must arrive there with all papers in due form for proving your title as John Bonnyfeather's heir. Here is a list of the documents that will be necessary, sent on by their lawyers."
Anthony laughed to see that the Barings' solicitors were Messrs. McSnivens, Williams, Hickey & McSnivens. He now sent for Spencer and had him bring up the accounts and correspondence which the purser had brought with him from London. Most of this consisted of the accounts and disposition of the sums deposited from Havana for Anthony's share of the Gallegos trading. They amounted with interest to £16,834. Vincent whistled.
"You have lined your nest well, my boy," said he, not without a touch of envy. "I myself never know just where I stand as most of what I have is constantly being loaned out, and the best security is now liable to be swept out as the map changes. However, I guess I can take a risk on this."
He tossed the latest letter from the Barings across the table.
. . . we are greatly relieved to learn by your last advices that you have heard from Mr. Adverse from Gibraltar and that he will soon be in Leghorn. It is also exceedingly satisfactory to learn that you know him personally and are familiar with his antecedents as he is, of course, a complete stranger to us. Kindly advise him to make all haste with his affairs in Italy and impress upon him the convenient necessity of his repairing to London without delay. It will greatly oblige us if you will explain to the gentleman our desire to close-out our connection with the Bonnyfeather interests, as we are primarily merchants and traders, and have consented to act as executors of this estate only at the instance of the senior member of the firm, Sir Thomas Baring, Bart. He for personal reasons of ancient friendship consented. Our situation, however, is somewhat anomalous. Your good offices, Mr. Nolte, will be greatly appreciated in making our position clear. You may advance Mr. Adverse any sum up to £1,000 on our security, should he desire it, at the usual commission.
Latest advices from Paris indicate that a peace will probably be negotiated shortly, etc., etc., etc.
"Well, how much do you want?" asked Vincent, rattling his seals. "Shall we spend an hour or two haggling over the rate?" They both laughed. :
"Wait for a while till I see," said Anthony. "I brought a little gold with me from Africa. Now what else is there to do here besides probate the will? The merchandise still at the casa, of course . . ."
"And the lease. I advise you to buy out of that for a lump sum. The property, as you know, belongs to the Marquis da Vincitata, who, by the way, is now in town. He has made it convenient to come here to talk over with me certain details as to the forwarding and refunding of the Spanish subsidy to France, through Leghorn. You see the British watch the French ports like hawks, and sending bullion over the Pyrenees is a ticklish matter even when they can get it from Mexico. I have arranged a rather clever method of exchange through a neutral state." Vincent puffed himself a little and they both laughed. "Evidently the marquis wants to close out his own affairs here too and you will have to see him. He will want to sell you the old casa, but don't buy. Watch yourself, for he is brilliantly canny. Oh--there are also the legacies to some of the old servants, under the will. I see McNab comes off well. Well, now, I should say you could close-out all these matters in a week, get the will probated, and start with me for Paris, say, next Sunday."
"Why Paris?"
"I will tell you. Believe me, you are not the only one who has been doing things since you left here. I have a proposition to make to you, Toni. Now do listen to me." He ran his hand through his hair in considerable excitement.
"You see, it is like this. The expenses of a general European war have surpassed the most spendthrift imaginations. The royal mistresses of the ancien régime with all their intrigues; our formal old dynastic wars were positively impecunious adventures in bankruptcy compared to what has been going on now more or less continuously for over a decade. People who based their calculations of government expenditure on the experiences of other times cannot even imagine the demands of the present. To cope with modern conditions it has taken men of a new cast of mind, men whose mental and financial speculations leap across old national boundaries to embrace the affairs of the whole world in a planetary economy. Naturally, there have been only a few people capable of this scope of thought and management among either bankers or politicians. Certain Jews, of course, who have always understood the world to be one market, have profited. Then there is Pitt, and a few British merchants and bankers like the Barings who have understood. But above all others in his capacity to keep the wheels of finance moving under the brakes of war is G. J. Ouvrard, the great Parisian banker. That man is a genius.
"For some years now he has been finding the cash for both peaceful and war-time operations of the French government. I would also mention a certain Monsieur P. C. Labouchère connected with the important house of Hope & Co., at Amsterdam. He is a son-in-law, by the way, of Sir Francis Baring. I want you to keep M. Labouchère in mind--and--and there is also in the south of Europe," said Vincent with mock humility, "my humble self. Ja wohl, there is also Herr Vincent Nolte!"
In his excitement at this pleasant thought he offered Anthony a pinch of snuff in his best professional manner employed after the consummation of a successful deal. He began to walk up and down feeling his watch chain, while the tones of his voice became heightened and more metallic.
Indeed, as he went on explaining the intricacies of the majestic scheme he was engaged upon, the new and the old Vincent Nolte--the happy-go-lucky youth who liked to bet and take a chance on everything uncertain, and the new, staid young banker with a wise, knowing gleam in the corner of his eyes--twinkled in and out and played hide-and-go-seek with each other between the sentences as they fell from his plump mouth.
At one instant he was the incorrigible, gambling boy sticking out his tongue and licking his lips over some spicy anecdote of golden profit reaped by your lucky great-ones, and at the next the persuasive, solid, financial adviser and investor playing hypnotically upon the open vowels and deep gutturals of sonorous words as if a variation on his theme had emerged suddenly from a nest of wood instruments. Vincent was talking now in German and now in Italian. And frequently when he broke into the latter, there would be a sudden little bubbling run on a piccolo, a kind of plunging laughter. Then he would be brought up short, stopped suddenly by a feeling of boyish inferiority from the past as he looked at Anthony. He would be embarrassed, standing there laughing at himself, with his heavy watch seal in his smooth, rosy hand.
Anthony admired Vincent; was glad of his success and proud of his friendship--and yet, as he sat watching and listening, he could not help but wonder in the back of his head how it was that the affairs of a continent tended to drift into the smooth, rosy hands of men like Vincent. To what was that manual gravitation due? But another thing he saw at the same time quite plainly. It would not do to laugh with Vincent when he laughed at himself. He must permit him to bury the ridiculous contrast between his past and the so-important present which his own presence inadvertently evoked. "Yes," thought Anthony, "I must be careful how I recall old times to him. He is not sure of himself yet. The plaster of the professional manner is only beginning to set. It must not be jarred loose or the lathing will show through. I shall always, with Vincent--until a good many years have passed--always take the present enormously seriously." So he sat grave and silent, looking like a staid young merchant himself. On this basis the two young men continued to get along famously.
"And so," said Vincent all over again, but very much the banker now, and determined to remain so, "you see it is like this:
"What all the governments must have is bullion in immense quantities. And at the present time that is exactly what they haven't got. England must have it to pay her sailors and her subsidies to her allies to fight France: the French need it to pay their soldiers and buy colonial produce from neutrals while they fight England. At home both governments make their paper money go somehow. The Bank of England suspended specie payment five years ago, and French assignats also went clear out of business. Now it is francs. But try to get metal for them--try it! Yet both the English and the French have to have hard money when it comes to making their settlements abroad. Only victory or peace will make their paper money generally valuable, and no one knows who will win. No, they have to have cash--gold, silver. And who has it? Why, that placid old milch cow, Spain."
He nodded at Anthony wisely.
"But the money is not in Spain. Oh, no--that is the joke. Bonaparte would have had it long ago if it had been there. The bullion--immense supplies of it--is locked up in Mexico. For years now the veins of Potosi have been bleeding into the Mexican treasury and the great pool of silver lies dammed up there. Spain has not been able to tap it, for the British fleet sails between. It was M. Ouvrard who was the first to get around the difficulty, and more or less by accident. Bonaparte had played a joke upon him.
"Ouvrard had advanced great sums to the French treasury and had through influence received the contracts to furnish both French and Spanish fleets with supplies. In payment for that he was given by Bonaparte six useless Spanish royal drafts on the Mexican treasury for the accumulated sum of four millions of piastres. Finally Ouvrard, who was nearly ruined by this, sent his brother of the firm of Ouvrard De Chailles & Co., of Philadelphia, to Mexico. He reported that he had seen there the marked chests set apart as a separate deposit for the liquidation of the six royal drafts in Ouvrard's hands, and that besides that seventy-one millions of coined silver dollars were lying idle in the Mexican fiscus waiting to be shipped to Spain. It was in the next stroke that Ouvrard showed himself to be a financial genius.
"He knew that Pitt with his endless demands on the Bank of England had put the governors at their wits' end to furnish coin even for foreign subsidies, and he also knew that just at that time the East India Company was under the necessity of obtaining great sums of silver for Eastern trade. He, therefore, approached Pitt, through the neutral firm of Hope & Co., at Amsterdam--you remember I told you that Labouchère there was the son-in-law of Sir Francis Baring--and he was consequently able, through the pressure of the Barings on the prime minister, to agitate the matter of permitting at least some of the Mexican hoard to be released.
"Pitt was at first obdurate and blustered a good deal about trading with the enemy. But as hoarding continued and the stringency increased, Pitt became more and more inclined to listen to the representations of Sir Francis Baring. At last the matter was arranged, and although England was at war with Spain, four British frigates were dispatched by secret arrangement to Vera Cruz with orders on the Mexican treasury, supplied by Ouvrard through Hope & Co., at Amsterdam, for many millions of silver dollars. Just how much no one here knows. For these drafts on Mexico Ouvrard received drafts to a like amount on British merchants for colonial produce and merchandise, which was imported by way of Holland and the Hopes into France.
"It was said that the six chests marked for him were also brought over as 'tobacco.' I am not sure of that, but I do know that he sold the foreign merchandise all over Europe at enormous profit. The British, of course, received the silver dollars in England and some of them were restamped and put into circulation by the bank. The rest were poured into Europe and India. Those loosed in Europe soon gravitated, due to the exactions of Bonaparte, to France. Both the fiscal and commercial situations were relieved all round--and the war could go on."
"How did Ouvrard get his Spanish drafts for such large amounts?" asked Anthony.
"Oh, I thought I had made that plain," said Vincent. "Spain has by treaty been paying France an annual subsidy and Ouvrard took Spanish drafts on the Mexican treasury, which had been sent to France, in payment for his loans to Bonaparte. Bonaparte was glad to palm them off on him as they seemed uncollectable." Vincent laughed.
"Now bear with me," he continued, "and I will show you how we come in." He looked significantly at Anthony.
"The relief already experienced by this welcome supply of Mexican silver has been so considerable and profitable that the combination of Ouvrard, Hope & Co., and the Baring Bros, contemplates further action along similar lines. They have now under way a plan to get the bulk of the Mexican bullion to the United States and to reship it, or the goods which it purchases, from that neutral territory to England and Europe, chiefly, of course, through the Barings at London or the Hopes at Amsterdam. I may receive the southern consignments here at Leghorn, and, if even a few cargoes reach me, at the present price of colonial produce my fortune will be made. Ouvrard, of course, will continue to furnish the capital in the form of his drafts on Mexico, and the rest of the affair would be carried on by either English or American ships sailing from one neutral port to another. Ships consigned to the Barings or to Hope & Co., or their correspondents, and insured by Lloyds would run an excellent chance of being allowed to proceed even if searched by British cruisers. It is really a remarkable plan, don't you see? For those in the charmed circle the blockade is to be broken and both England and France will profit by the silver. That, of course, is a dead loss to Spain, but somebody must pay for war.
"Now here is what I want to interest you in, Toni, my boy. At several places in the United States it will be necessary for the Hopes, who are the go-between in this affair, to have confidential agents-resident for the purpose of receiving the Mexican bullion,, shipping it, turning it into neutral goods, and investing it for the time being until it can be safely and profitably transmitted to Europe in the most advantageous way. These agents will set up business as regular merchant firms, correspondents of the Barings and the Hopes, and the bullion will be turned over to them ostensibly as their operating capital. Naturally, as great sums will be involved and the whole success of the operations will depend upon the discretion, honesty, and ability of the agents-resident in America, the posts would be filled with carefully selected and marked young men. I need not add that it will be profitable--but above all it would be interesting.
"Your old friend David Parish, by the way, has been asked to go. I have also been asked to take-over at New Orleans, which is in Spanish territory, but a convenient place for receiving the dollars. I cannot go, however. My operations here are already too large and important to think of giving them up. In short, I have other plans. But you, my dear fellow, would be ideal for the post. You are footloose, well-off. You can speak English, French and Spanish. You have already engaged in deals with Spanish colonial officials and you are now on your way to see Sir Francis Baring himself in London.
"You see it all seems to point to you as the ideal man for the New Orleans post, and I believe you would like it. You always used to say you wanted to see the world. Well, here is a marvellous chance to go on seeing it and to engage in its affairs honourably, and I have no doubt with great profit. Why not, why not? Don't just shake your head. Herr Gott! Do you know, I have written about you already to Ouvrard, and to Labouchère at Amsterdam. I want you to meet them, the French bankers particularly, and that is the reason that I especially want you to go with me to Paris. Now do! It is only tentative as yet. At least come along and talk it over with them. That can do you no harm. That will be seeing--meeting--the world, Toni. And what else would you be doing anyway?"
"Ah, yes, that is true," thought Anthony, who was not over-persuaded. "What else shall I be doing?" At last he promised Vincent to think it over with more enthusiasm than he felt.
"So David Parish was still alive. Curious he should put it that way. And he might be seeing him again--see him? How many children did Florence have now?" he wondered, and sighed.
"Oh, it won't be as bad as that, really," said Vincent a little nettled.
"Dear Vincent," said Anthony, "I was thinking about something else. I appreciate all your thought of me. I--I was thinking of little Florence Udney." They both laughed together now. And this laughter was always a bond between them.
"Aha. I always suspected something there," said Vincent. "Well, Parish has not done so badly. Entertains Talleyrand at Hamburg, I hear. Mrs. Udney has been living with them. I'll bet she never plays 'Malbrouk' to Florence any more."
He whistled a snatch of the old tune that unexpectedly trickled like moonlight into Anthony's thoughts. Vincent smiled at his friend's expression. A clerk opened the door.
"His Excellency the Marquis da Vincitata is in the case asking to see Herr Nolte. We thought we had best tell you, sir," said the boy still looking a little pale about something.
"That's right," said Vincent. "Come on, Anthony. Let's go down. We both have business with him. Let's tackle this old fox together."
----------
Don Luis was sitting leaning forward on his gold-knobbed stick in the rather handsome room Vincent had fitted up for himself as his office. He managed to convey the impression to the two young men as they came in that they and not he were being received. Anthony was at first rather fascinated by the older man, whose manners were so suave, formal and polished as to carry even into the little case looking out into the square at Leghorn the atmosphere of the court of Spain. He treated Vincent with a consideration that was evidently flattering, though not without an ironical twinkle at times. And in his sardonic gravity Anthony was somewhat surprised to find himself included.
Vincent introduced Anthony by name, which conveyed nothing to Don Luis, and mentioned that Mr. Adverse was the young "Englishman" about whom--"you may remember, Your Excellency, we had some correspondence at Paris relative to his taking over the post as resident at New Orleans."
The marquis bowed a little more condescendingly than before.
"His Excellency, of course, is fully familiar with the Mexican matter I have just been explaining," added Vincent to Anthony, and then turned to Don Luis again. "I thought it might be well to invite Mr. Adverse to sit in with us on our discussion today before you and he take up the little matter of the Bonnyfeather lease. He is the heir, you know. I am anxious," smiled Vincent, "to enlist Mr. Adverse in the Mexican matter. You can rely on his . . ."
The marquis had started slightly. He turned half about in his chair to look at Anthony who was now sitting in the window with the afternoon sunlight streaming in from the square beyond. Anthony looked up. He was suddenly aware of a vital interest in the old man's stare. The old eyes licked over him from head to foot, half-veiled under their heavy lids. Anthony felt himself turning a little cold.
There was an instant's silence, extremely tense and awkward for some reason.
"You have no objection I hope, sir," added Vincent quite anxiously.
Don Luis recovered himself.
"Certainly, certainly not," he muttered. "No, proceed!" he added with sudden fervour.
"One would think he was giving directions to his coachman," thought Vincent, angered at the tone.
A curious uneasiness had now gripped everybody in the little room. Vincent's caution was awakened by it. He wrote something on a card, and calling one of the clerks, sent him out hot-foot for the advocate Baldasseroni. "The old fox! One can't be too careful," he thought, and began to discuss with Don Luis some of the Spanish ramifications of the plan to import bullion from Mexico.
In this scheme Don Luis was strongly interested. He had recently had long interviews with Ouvrard at Paris and he began to recount at some length the turn that affairs had taken there.
". . . As for the arrangements for the cargoes and the minted money which are to be landed here at Leghorn, you must make your own terms with M. Ouvrard in Paris yourself. He and I have come to a very satisfactory understanding, I might add, as to the honorarium to myself and the Prince of the Peace. We shall deduct that at Madrid," smiled the marquis. "All that arrives here you can figure on as net for yourself in computing your own percentage. I trust a fair part of the original value finally gets to Paris, Herr Nolte. We leave that to your discretion. Remember there will be more than one cargo." He grinned a little wanly, and continued.
"It has also occurred to me that the matter of shipping produce from the Spanish West Indies direct could be arranged--possibly--by securing from the Spanish authorities themselves certain licenses to trade made out in blank, you know. I forgot to mention that to M. Ouvrard in Paris. Will you do me the honour of suggesting it to him when you see him as a proposition coming from me? Neither of us need suffer if M. Ouvrard cares to perfect such an arrangement. Assure him, please, that I can bring it about. Someone who speaks Spanish well should come on to Madrid sooner or later to negotiate the matter. In the meantime . . ."
For nearly half an hour Vincent and Don Luis continued to discuss the details of trade, finance, and politics involved in the combination of M. Ouvrard, the Hopes, the Barings, and Herr Nolte.
Anthony listened surprised at the ramifications of the scheme; at Vincent's grasp of details and quick suggestions, which evidently kept Don Luis on the qui vive.
As time went on, however, he began to become more and more aware of Don Luis, and in an unpleasant way. The man filled him with an unaccountable dis-ease and an unreasonable hostility. Here was someone who, without the slightest reasonable cause for doing so, he felt was an enemy; a being to beware of.
As he sat in the window listening to the discussion the feeling became stronger and stronger. It was absurd, he told himself. The old man had hardly said two words to him as yet; had only favoured him with a few sidelong glances. Yet he was sure, was perfectly sure there was a hostile appraisal in those eyes. He felt toward him very much as he had felt toward Mnombibi that night when he had seen him in the glass. But why? There was something a bit toad-like, something of the sardonic Punchinello countenance in the older man. But why should that make him loathe the very way he wore the buckles at his knees?
His spine crept a little coldly as he looked again. He was glad of the sunlight striking warmly through the window onto his own coat. Well he would not look at him then. He would look away. Where was it he had felt that way recently; eerily repulsed--warned off? Ah yes in the courtyard at the casa the night before--and with Mnombibi.
Now that he came to think of it, now that he was looking away, he still seemed to be seeing Don Luis in a glass somewhere, somewhere--an ugly little fellow. The noise of the talk grew far away and buzzing--an ugly fellow, spider-like--"pshaw!"
He turned to the window and began to look over some bound magazines. Why did Vincent keep old things like that lying about? Some old consignment probably that had miscarried. The European Magazine--April--nine years ago! Good Lord! He turned it over and began to read with one part of his mind:
This extraordinary young man's taste for fame was so early displayed, that a female relation of his persists to say, that at the age of five years, when a relation of theirs had made him a present of a Delf bason with a lion upon it, he said, he had rather it had been an angel with a trumpet to blow his name about.
On quitting this female relation to go to London, he said, "I wish I knew Greek and Latin."
"Why," replied she, "Tom, I think you know enough."
"Aye, but," said he, "if I knew Greek and Latin, I could do anything; but as it is, my name will live two hundred years at least."--Chatterton used to say, that . . .
A sound in his ears like a distant pistol shot made Anthony suddenly look up. The marquis had sprung back the lid of his patent snuff box. The conversation with Vincent was evidently over. Don Luis took a pinch and brushed some loose grains off his vest. He snapped the lid to again. A faint odour of Malacca snuff drifted through the room. Instantly the coach in the courtyard and the clouded, starry sky of the night before came into the part of Anthony's mind which was not reading.
Don Luis was speaking to him.
At the other side of his mind, as if in a glass pressed close to the corner of his eye, a vision of the coach with light flashing from its windows streamed off into starry space against a rack of wild-looking clouds . . . "the . . ." he turned the page
. . . the greatest oath by which a man could swear was, by the honour of his ancestors.
The type on page 286 of the old European Magazine slipped uphill into oblivion as he closed it quickly, suddenly aware that the conversation which he was about to begin with the marquis was a dangerous one and concerned him vitally. At the very first tones of Don Luis' voice he had been instinctively on his guard. He had almost flinched as he heard them.
It had been no small test of Don Luis' now nearly automatic finesse that in the conversation with Vincent he had never fumbled once, although a great many ideas had been kept going. His mind too, had, as it were, divided into two parts. That facet directed toward Vincent was compact of politics, finance, and calm caution; that turned toward Anthony was in a rage and a secret turmoil. For when Vincent had introduced Anthony as Mr. Bonnyfeather's heir it had instantly occurred to the marquis that this was also the apprentice from the convent--Maria's child. It would be just like fate to play a grim trick like that on him. He went hot and cold at the thought. "Just like the humour of Beelzebub!"
During the talk with the young banker Don Luis had occasionally stolen glances from under his heavy lids at the other young man who sat in the window where the sunlight fell across his hair. And it had given the marquis a sick feeling about the heart to notice that the ends of that young man's curls, where they were thin and the light came through them, twinkled with red and golden glints as he bent over his book there--"damn him." For an instant Don Luis saw the face of Maria sitting in the coach bathed in the light of sunset as they rode along; as they rode along and along toward the Château of Besance twenty-five years ago. O God, how he had loved her--and hated her! And here was the son of the young Irishman seized of his grandfather's estate by an act of God--or the devil, who knew which,--reading a book. Oh, splendour of the white Corpse of God! It was true.
At that instant Don Luis felt that the Controller of Fate hated him--and he returned that sensation cordially. He hated the world, and he determined, as he had never determined before, to throw himself against it. In a way which only a Latin European could understand he took the course of events as a personal insult. Fate had outwitted him. He would be even with it yet. He writhed a little in his chair. Then he steadied himself, took a pinch of snuff--and turned to Anthony who had just closed his magazine.
"I understand you are to be congratulated as a very fortunate young man, señor," he began in a silken tone. "It is not every orphan who finds a benefactor and manages to inherit his estate. No doubt, if your parents were alive, they too would be charmed by your felicity." He smiled a little. Somehow he had managed to be insulting. The blood rushed to Anthony's face.
"I have been fortunate in some respects, sir. But I had no idea until shortly before the death of John Bonnyfeather that I was to be his heir. And I have no relatives I know of, no one to share with me in what you have been good enough to style my 'felicity.'"
"Of course, I did not intend to insinuate that you were a designing young person," resumed Don Luis. "My interest in you is, after all, a natural one. Perhaps you may recall that I had at one time the peculiar honour of being your benefactor's son-in-law?"
"And might have been his heir," thought Vincent pricking up his ears.
"I had never heard that," said Anthony obviously astonished.
"Do you mean to say," said Don Luis icily, getting out his pocket spectacles and looking Anthony over as if he were a curiosity, "that your--a--guardian never mentioned to you that the Marquis da Vincitata was his son-in-law?"
"Never," said Anthony, looking that nobleman over so calmly that Don Luis could scarcely sit still.
"The cool young liar," thought he.
"I heard your name mentioned once or twice casually as the owner of the premises upon which Mr. Bonnyfeather conducted his business. But nothing more."
"I will ruin you for that remark," thought Don Luis--and in the intense struggle of his inner feelings permitted himself an instinctive question which he would ordinarily have carefully suppressed. He seldom laid himself open to rebuff.
"Did the old Scotchman never mention his daughter to you at all?"
A thousand speculations were rushing through Anthony's head. He felt himself on the edge of a gulf into which if he could only look he might know his own mystery, but . . . "the greatest oath by which a man could swear . . ." and he seemed to hear the grave tones of the old man's voice in the courtyard that day exacting his promise. "Why was it? Why had Mr. Bonnyfeather made him promise? Who am I?" he thought. For an instant he looked with a peculiar speculation at Don Luis, with an expression of self-struggle that the marquis noted instantly as he leaned forward a little and gripped the arms of his chair.
"That is a point which it is a matter of honour with me never to discuss," said Anthony. "I am sure that Your Excellency will understand me if I put it that way."
"He knows," thought Don Luis. "I 'will understand,' eh--I do!"
The implacable look with which he favoured Anthony was not lost upon Vincent, either, who saw at the bottom of everything a financial trap. Doubtless Don Luis had in mind the possibility of contesting the will.
"I might add," said Vincent suavely in what was meant to be a soothing voice, "that the matter of probating the will has, of course, been carefully attended to."
"'You might add,'" repeated Don Luis witheringly, while preparing to go. "Well, adding is quite in your line, isn't it, Herr Nolte?" He turned swiftly.
"Good day, Don Antonio Adverso, perhaps we shall have the honour of meeting again." He bowed mockingly but with a grave face.
"Ah, who knows?" said Anthony in Spanish. The lines about Don Luis' mouth contracted a little. He took his stick and went out.
"Now what the devil?" said Vincent after he had left.
Anthony was striding up and down. "How those noblemen of the old school do despise us bankers! Well, I shall show him a thing or two." He called into the office to send up Signore Baldasseroni, the advocate. "Now as soon as this lawyer fellow shows up go out and get the matter of proving the will attended to instantly, my dear fellow. I hope that you do not mind my having lied a little for you. The old one is evidently on your trail."
"Do you think so, too?"
"I am quite sure of it," said Vincent. "If ever I saw one man hate another--"
"My God, what have I done?" said Anthony with a half-humorous, half-serious quirk.
"What is the use of moral speculations?" asked Vincent. "The thing to do now is to register the will. Will that lawyer never get here?"
The door opened and a fat, little man with a limp, carrying his hat in one hand and mopping his brow with a flaming orange bandanna, entered quite out of breath.
"Why, Signore Adverse," he panted, "this is a pleasure, an unexpected pleasure. I haven't seen you for years. La la, how you've thickened up!"
He went limping about, very effusive, clapping his hand to his tail every now and then. "Of course, I remember you." He made a wry face. "You were there when that M. Toussaint put a bullet in my behind. A sad, a memorable occasion, very sad." He launched out into a description of his acute sufferings as a cripple, meanwhile laughing and hopping about like a wren. The whole atmosphere of the room cheered up. The sulphur reek which Don Luis seemed to have left behind him was blown away by the breeze that had puffed in through the door with gay Signore Baldasseroni.
Vincent soon cut him short and explained the situation. Signore Baldasseroni produced a huge watch and noted that the office of registry would close in twenty-two minutes. He and Anthony gathered their papers together hastily and tore out. Down the sunlit street they went and across the piazza to the Mayoralty, with the little advocate hopping along with his hand on his hip and chattering.
They registered the will. For an increased fee the clerks kept the office open beyond the usual sacred closing hour. Every paper was stamped. Signore Baldasseroni produced the most grave and respectable witnesses, whom he seemed to keep on tap. "They will swear to anything," he whispered. "I hold them for a small monthly retainer. I trust, Mr. Adverse, you will see fit to repose your legal business at Livorno in my hands. My retainer is reasonable, my refreshers modest, my reputation unblemished. This I admit, signore, rests upon the questionable evidence of my own applause, but you may verify it if you will. Permit me to call one of my witnesses, Beppo."
Anthony laughed and clapped the little man on the back. "I feel quite safe in your hands," he said. "I shall instruct Herr Nolte to remember you from time to time on my account. What I want is someone who will keep an eye to my interests and not turn up as the counsel for the other side, witnesses and all. You know that sometimes happens here. But we, you know, have been through an affair of honour together and I am the star witness to your constancy during trials."
Tears sprang into the eyes of Signore Baldasseroni. "Ah, thou alone knowest to the full my bravery," he cried. "Toussaint and McNab they always laugh when we meet. If you would only tell the clerks here, signore, it would enhance my reputation."
"Some time when it will not embarrass your modesty as it would now, I shall do so," whispered Anthony.
They crossed the street together--friends for life--while the clerks looked over their gold coins and locked the big bronze door. In Vincent's case Anthony paid the spry little advocate a great many compliments and an astonishing retainer. They all had a bottle of wine together.
"You have done well," said Vincent after Baldasseroni had left. "You can depend on him now in the matter of the lease and everything else. And that is important. For Don Luis might otherwise persuade him to change clients. It is the curse of law practice here. Baldasseroni keeps a whole boarding-house full of witnesses, with costumes. He always wins my cases. Our old friend Signora Bovino, by the way, makes a wonderful witness in cases involving domestic disputes." Vincent grinned and put his feet over the arm of his chair. "Well, let's go up and see what the women are sewing on now. Anna's preparations are a triumph."
For the rest of the afternoon Anthony sat in the window under the bird cages while Anna, Frau Frank, and Vincent chattered; while the women and two sempstresses sat stitching at Anna's trousseau. There was something so bright and airy in the room, so domestic and homelike with the constant flashing of white thread and needles, with gold thimbles on white fingers twinkling in and out through soft folds of delicate cloth, that the two young men from time to time looked at each other in mutual enjoyment of peace, happiness, and home.
"After all, this is what banking is about, isn't it?" laughed Anthony as Vincent passed him to light his pipe in the kitchen.
"Ja wohl!" said Vincent.
Anna smiled quietly over her embroidery and held it up to the light.
"See," said she, "it is a white dove with a red rose in its mouth. Now what colour must I make its eyes?"
On the perch just above her, where the warm rays of the afternoon poured through the open window and the curtains waved in the breeze, a canary began to blow golden bubbles of sound from its throat. It sang as if its heart would burst.
"Ach," said Anna, "Ach, mein Gott! I am so happy."
Anthony looked out into the empty piazza. In the breast of his coat the proven will of John Bonnyfeather, merchant, of sound mind and sound body, crackled drily. A lump came into his throat.
In a few days all this would be gone forever. For some reason or other, just why he could not remember now, he was going to London.
The canary sang again and again.
The inn of the "Blue Frog" had for several generations been one of the best kept caravansaries of the Mediterranean littoral. Perhaps more than any other institution in Livorno--and it was an institution--it had realized the original dreams of the Medicean founders of the free port by attaining a complete cosmopolitanism.
Like all really great inns, it had not depended for support nor derived its atmosphere from a purely genteel clientele, which is so dully alike everywhere. It had catered to everybody, from travelling cardinals to sailors getting rid of their pay. And it had done so by sprawling out along the piazza, into various pavilions where each kind of man could find others like himself gathered together eating and drinking, playing and talking according to his nationality and class. In that respect the "Blue Frog" was unique.
But its reputation depended upon, and had been spread abroad chiefly by distinguished travellers; by prosperous ship captains and merchants who had tarried under its roof memorably. And the common item in their universal praise of the "Blue Frog" was always its abundant and tempting fare.
It was the boast of its proprietor, one Lanzonetti, that any guest at his inn could obtain there, not only the best in Italy, but that no matter from what remote portion of the globe the traveller hailed the inn kitchen could also supply him with his favourite, native dish. Lanzonetti had been able to do this by gradually assembling a bevy of remarkable cooks from sundry regions and by collecting from every traveller--who either condescended to take an interest in his "universal menu" or to order a strange dish--a recipe, which the innkeeper immediately proceeded to enter in a carefully cherished book, to experiment with and to improve upon.
A cellar of inspiring proportions and catholic selection contained everything from the rice wine of China to Canary vintages. It was especially rich in importations from England and Germany of brewed beverages of all kinds. In the next cave was a museum of choice sausages. Lanzonetti's main success as a host, however, had been due to two cardinal principles of cookery; he never permitted a woman to enter his kitchens, and he had a whole battalion of saucepans always bubbling over innumerable small fires.
In the late 1770's the "Blue Frog" had been at the height of its prosperity and glory. The art of eating and drinking had during that decade attained among the privileged classes in Europe a high crest of perfection from which it afterward for many confused decades declined. The traveller of the day was usually a landed, frequently a titled gentleman, with leisure and elegant discretion; possessed of taste as well as appetite. The nice craft of purveying to him might be rewarded by reputation as well as gold. Lanzonetti had won both. His recipes were much sought after and went out to all the world like tracts of a society for the propagation of the gastronomic gospel in foreign parts. As far away as "Strawberry Hill" Horace Walpole had learned how to coddle eggs in mulled wine.
Don Luis had stopped at Lanzonetti's at that, to him, regrettable period of his life when he had been making the arrangements for his marriage. On account of his present abstentious diet he remembered the place with more than the usual pleasure of an old epicure. It was only natural upon his return to Livorno even after a quarter of a century that he should again put up there. But alack and alas--the good "Blue Frog" had meanwhile suffered a sorrowful transformation.
To be sure, the main building of the inn still looked across the piazza at the establishment of Herr Nolte directly opposite, but it was no longer known as the "Blue Frog." It existed, or rather it languished, under the now fatal name of the Osteria del Inglese. A recent hasty attempt had obviously been made to obliterate the unlucky designation by painting out the last word of it with the device "Français." But the older letters were again showing through, and the now nearly ruined proprietor, a tall, thin Tuscan by the name of Fratelli Rabazzonie, could not even afford a little new gold-leaf to repair what amounted to a serious political error on the part of his sign. Indeed, in his own spare body the proprietor seemed to personify the lean and sickly times he had fallen upon.
Upon the night of his arrival Don Luis had looked Rabazzonie over doubtfully. He did not believe in thin innkeepers, and there was dirt on the man's apron. Nevertheless, since it was late he risked taking the front chamber on the second floor overlooking the piazza. He was quite tired, and although the room smelled mouldy and the bed was a distinct disappointment, he slept tolerably well. The marquis had left the coach at the Casa da Bonnyfeather, after having refused to stay there despite the preparations and the rather pointed welcome of Faith. For it had suddenly occurred to Don Luis as he descended from the coach in the courtyard that the matter of terminating the old lease had not yet been negotiated and he might be laying himself open to a technical charge of trespass by staying in the house. The horses, however, he had risked leaving in the deserted stables under the care of the Kitten. He brought Sancho along to the inn.
Don Luis was awakened shortly after dawn the next morning by the arrival of luggage under the charge of some noisy porters at Herr Nolte's just across the square. Breakfast was poor, luncheon terrible, and the unexpected encounter with Anthony that afternoon unnerving. On the evening of his second night in Livorno Don Luis sat in his dingy chamber at the Osteria del Inglese confronted with what for a man in his condition was a "ferocious" supper. The blue veins on his forehead stood out even farther than usual as he rang violently and demanded the proprietor.
"Landlord," said he, when that individual had entered and sat down without permission,--"another evidence of degenerate times," thought Don Luis,--"landlord, this food and this room," he swept his arm around overturning a decanter, "might be considered hospitality by shipwrecked sailors with desperate appetites and sea-sore bodies, but by no one else. Do you call this supper? The oil is rancid, the wine sour"--he went on for two minutes--"the servants decrepit and the beds Procrustean."
"No one has ever complained of being bitten by anything but fleas before," said the surprised host. "I tell you, citizen . . ."
"Citizen?" roared Don Luis. "Citizen of what? Don't you know they don't talk that way any more--not even at Paris?" (Twenty years ago, he reflected, he would have caned the man for a similar ignorant impertinence.) "But what the devil has happened to this inn? One used to be received here as a Christian gentleman instead of like a relapsed heretic at a country branch of the Holy Office. The bed! Do you expect to charge patrons for the privilege of being put to the question? Holy Zacharias--and Bellerophon . . ."
In the course of a quarter of an hour the landlord, who had at first sought to defend himself, was reduced to a few stealthy tears for his own misery and a lurid description of his misfortunes in order to stem the tide of steady abuse that flowed into his ears as if they had been manholes in a flooded street.
The man's misfortunes it so happened interested Don Luis, who now felt a little relieved at having successfully vented his spleen upon him. And he also saw in his story a certain confirmation of his own opinions as to the recent decline of civilization. Any inn, he felt, was a social barometer; this one in particular had been so for all Europe. And its glass was now low, ergo. Condescending to indulge himself in a bottle of fine, old Greek wine fetched by the landlord's suggestion from the last rack in the cellar, he finally put the tips of his stubby fingers together, leaned back, and listened to his host's recital with a philosophical air of "God help us all."
"It is the times, signore," said the man, coughing a little and spitting into his handkerchief,--"the terrible times that are responsible for your pitiable supper in what was once the abode of cooking. You remember it otherwise, you say. But consider, how can I help it? My wife, when I married her, was a woman well-off. It was her all that went to purchase this inn for me from the retiring owner, Lanzonetti. He agreed to help me supervise the business for a year. But he was a smooth one, that fellow, and he hated to see another going about in his place. He died only three months after I came--and would you believe it, sir,--but the jealous dog took his famous book of recipes into the grave with him. He had it buried in his coffin, clasped to his breast. It is with him now--in hell. My trade fell off--naturally! Distinguished Englishmen, for example, who ordered turtle soup and received frogs' legs instead, became violent. With my wife always in the kitchen, the old cooks soon left. To retrench my losses I gradually closed up one after the other the various extra pavilions along the square. The inn--he shrinks inward towards his great warm heart in the kitchen, year by year. In seventeen-ninety nothing but the main house is left. The frog has lost his legs! I change his name and hire me all new servants who remember not the times before. Seventeen-ninety-four--most of the men go with the army. No one remains to serve here but old women. The English have stopped coming. Seventeen-ninety-six--the great General Bonaparte, he arrives. Ah!-- all business ceases then. I am forced by decree to keep open. To live I must sell the fine, old wines to soldiers. I change the name again. But no good. All Frenchmen are in the army. No one travels. My wife goes off with an Austrian hussar to Vienna. Only two crones are left who stay on for bed and board. Eighteen-hundred-one--the very distinguished gentleman from Spain arrives and complains of his 'despicable' supper." He shrugged his cadaverous shoulders hollowly--"What would you, signore? What can I do?"
"There will be a peace shortly, I think," said Don Luis, sympathetic in spite of himself. "Your trade may pick up again."
"It will be too late," cried the innkeeper, letting his long hands fall loosely on his sharp knees. "I have the terrible sickness of the lungs. Long before peace comes I shall be hunting that swindler Lanzonetti with his book of recipes through hell."
"You will find him frying in his own grease in the most comfortable spot there," said Don Luis. "But tut-tut, man, it's not so bad as you think. (It's a great deal worse.) Cheer up. At least you are rid of your wife."
"Si?" said the man.
"Si!" said Don Luis.
He had been moved by certain items in this tale of woe and now wished to offer a certain modicum of sympathy. He dismissed him with more kindness than the man expected after paying him on the spot and right nobly for the wine, which had been offered as a present. The innkeeper could not resist gold, however. Wishing Don Luis good night in a mournful voice, he left him alone with the cobwebbed bottle and one candle.
"At least the fellow had enough sense to understand the delicacy of a disguised gratuity," thought the marquis. "He might have been a democrat and so insulted. Well, good luck to him--in hell.
"Yes," thought Don Luis, "he and I have lived through some strange times the last two decades or so. It was a better world when we were born. Nowadays the wives of innkeepers--and others--go off--ahem--with hussars. 'Eighteen-hundred-one,' as that fellow says, June twenty-third my own dear wife's bastard so unexpectedly turns up." He clenched his hands.
"'Anthony,' eh,--takes after his sainted mother. Has his father's reach. Leave him to Providence? Shall I? I suppose the sins of the fathers may still . . . I might try to help that idea along a little, circumspectly, of course. No more errors, no more going too much out of my way. Let opportunity serve." He sipped his wine slowly.
He did not mind so much finding that Anthony had inherited his grandfather's estate. He regarded that as merely a gratuitous insult, a quizzical prank of fate--a--a long deferred slap on the jowl after he had carefully and patiently wiped away the spittle of outrage from a too-trustful eye. Probably he might expect that in the nature of things. No, it was meeting again with the young gentleman at all that had upset him. He had done his best to prevent that. It had, in spite of him--occurred. And how much did the "young gentleman" know? Everything?
He gulped another glass of wine and wiped his lips, which were still red and a little too full like over-ripe cherries with a worm at the heart.
A number of frantic moths were circling rapidly about the big glass candle-shade on the table before him. To Don Luis they seemed to be making visible rings in the air as his eyes grew heavier and a little bleary. Behind them his mind was strangely active. Indignation and old Greek wine are peculiar stimulants. When he felt as he did tonight he often found relief in venting his thoughts on the morocco notebook. It was better than sheep over a stile at any rate.
Futile anger is the base counterfeiter of epigrams, he wrote. His hand trembled a little--and then: Three things never elicit any enthusiasm: a pregnant bride, a reasonable religion, soup without seasoning. "Perhaps I am drawing too much on my own past experience," he thought, "but the soup tonight was saltless. Why must everything be personal?" He dipped his pen again.
Men say they can discuss their affairs dispassionately in the terms of general propositions. But let a man make a remark about the enormous amount of quackery in medicine, for instance, and a woman will immediately wonder how much he owes his physician. In nine cases out of ten the woman is right. It is the tenth man, a genuine philosopher, however, whom she will set down as a fool. She understands the others. Why is it, then, that women seldom or never write poetry, which is the art of talking about one thing in the terms of another? There is a reason: In poetry women are talked about in the terms of something else. That appears to them to be a waste of time.
"Prolix," thought Don Luis. "I am tired, and ordinary in thought tonight. I have had better nights. Let me see." He fluttered the pages of the book backward scanning it listlessly. . .
"Education of the Young"
Boys should be kept in a monastery until they are old enough to be condemned to the galleys for life. Girls . . . "damn them!" He flipped a solid inch of pages and nearly broke the back of the book. The writing he was looking at now was firmer than usual. His hand had not trembled when he wrote this: Once tangle the threads of two lives firmly together, and no matter how apparently remote and disparate their future courses may become, it is quite likely that it will require the good offices of the blind lady with the shears to cut the final tangle.
Certainly the meeting this afternoon tended to confirm him there, he thought.
He dropped his quill and lay back pondering. He was in a state where, with his body too sleepy to write, his mind nevertheless galloped on; speculating; throwing off grand, shadowy visions; coining figures of speech and tags of phrases; watching itself and talking to itself about what was always going on in the old house just under the thatch.
"--which is now getting rather thin in spots under your wig," said a disgruntled voice with a note of suppressed terror in it.
"What is the use of thinking about that?" demanded another.
"In fact what is the use of thinking at all?" a whole crowd seemed to shout. A single-toned voice went on like the blood in the listener's ears:
"What you think is a candle there with the moths going around it--and around and around it--is really the planet Saturn."
"Yes, and wouldn't it just be a good idea to blow out Saturn and go to bed--be in a dark room, tired eyes."
"A dark room? Yes! With the Dutch countess whom you met travelling once, at Besançon--the dark room there, ah--here it would smooth out that inner palsy that you are still shaking with after being so angry this afternoon."
"He was there this afternoon."
"Well, we have not decided what to do about him yet. What--to do?"
"Let by--the countess was five years ago. And how are you now?"
"Can I still?"
"I?"
"Not a doubt--never!"
"Let's all get in the old coach then and drive around to the Casa da--Palazzo Gobo tomorrow where she is. Let's try."
"It's rather shameful at your age, though."
"Never think of it. No one need know. Who cares now if . . ."
"Get the lease arranged. Never mind him. Stay at your own house. She is still there. Do you remember you asked her when you were first seeing Maria what she was doing there--and she smiled just the same way? Why not? It will not be long now until no more beds--no beds at all--but one."
"Stop that. Think--what?"
"Why, how uncomfortable the bed here is. How the old house has tumbled down."
"Yes, it is like Euro