Chapter Nineteen. The Sacrifice.

The glaring afternoon had drawn to a close.

Camillo Morini, after a heavy day’s work in the silence of the big old library at San Donato shaded from the sun-glare, rose, and joining Mary, went out along the hill to enjoy the bel fresco of the departing day. The Italian habit is to go out and wander at sundown, and when up at his villa His Excellency always made it a rule to take a stroll through the cool pine woods, generally accompanied by Mary; for his wife was not a good walker, and seldom ventured far. Therefore father and daughter, in the two hours preceding dinner, frequently made excursions on foot through the smiling vineyards and great pine forests around the magnificent old mansion.

They had skirted the mediaeval walls of the village and passed down the old cypress avenue, saluted on every side by their contadini, then striking off on a bypath through the wood they halted at a point known by the countryfolk as the Massa del Fate—or Fairy’s Rock—where there opened suddenly before them a magnificent view—Tuscany, the paradise of Europe, in the sundown.

Surely nothing could be so beautiful as the lines of the Arno valley, the gentle inclination of the hills, and the soft fugitive outlines of the mountains which bounded them. A singular tint and most peculiar harmony united the earth, the sky, and the wide winding river. All the surfaces were blended at their extremities by means of an insensible gradation of colour, and without the possibility of ascertaining the point at which one ended or another began. It appeared ideal, possessing a beauty beyond nature; it was nevertheless the genuine light of old-world Tuscany.

The Minister of War, in his white drill suit and straw hat, a trifle negligent of attire as he always was when he was up there in that remote retreat, halted at the break in the high dark pines, gazed out upon the marvellous panorama, and inhaled a deep breath of the cool, refreshing wind that came up from the valley with the sundown.

After hours of intricate work in his darkened study he stood there to refresh himself, while Mary, in pale blue with a big straw hat, was at his side, her eyes turned away up the valley, reflecting upon some meaning words he had just uttered.

Mary often came to that lonely point on the high-up estate to enjoy the grand scene of departing day. In that hour, when the evening bells came up from the white villages dotted far below, the summits of the Apennines appeared to consist of lapis-lazuli and pale gold, while their bases and sides were enveloped in a vapour which had a tint now violet, now purple. Beautiful clouds like light chariots borne on the wind with inimitable grace that came from seaward made one easily comprehend the appearance of the Olympian deities under that mythological sky. Ancient Florence seemed to have stretched out all the purple of her Cardinals, her Signori, and her Medici, and spread it under the last steps of the God of Day.

“Well?” asked the Minister, as he watched the girl’s beautiful face set full to the dying sunset and saw the far-off look in her wonderful eyes.

“I have nothing to say, father—nothing,” was her quiet answer as she turned to him, and he saw that she was on the point of tears.

“Then you are content that it should be so? I mean you will permit me to give a favourable reply to the count?” he said, not without some hesitation. He had aged visibly since those quiet days in rural England, and the lines upon his pale brow gave him an expression of deep anxiety.

She sighed, and for a few moments made no response.

“Is it your wish that I should marry him?” she asked in a low, mechanical tone, her face pale, her hands trembling.

“I have no desire to place undue pressure upon you, my dear,” he said, placing his hand kindly upon her shoulder. “I merely ask you what response you wish me to give. He came to me while I was sitting alone in Rome three nights ago, and requested permission to pay his court to you.”

“And what response did you give?” she inquired in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

“I told him that I desired to hear your own views before giving him an answer.”

She was again silent, her face turned to the darkening valley. The sundown in Italy disappears less quickly than in England, for when the tints are on the point of vanishing they suddenly break out again and illumine some other point of the horizon. Twilight succeeds twilight, and the charm of closing day is prolonged.

“And what is your wish, father?” she asked presently, still looking blankly before her; for those grey fading lights seemed to be but the reflection of her own fading life and happiness.

“Well, Mary,” he said, his hand still upon her shoulder, “let me speak frankly and candidly. This morning I discussed the matter fully with your mother, and we both came to the conclusion that the count is a very eligible man. Neither of us desire you to marry if you entertain no love for him, but both in England and in Italy we have noticed for a year past that you have not been averse to his attentions, and—well, I may as well tell you quite plainly, my dear—we have been much gratified to think that the attraction has been mutual. Yet,” he added, “it lies with you entirely to accept or to reject him.”

“It would please you, father, if I became the Comtesse Dubard, would it not?” she asked, tears that were beyond her control springing to her eyes.

“It would please both of us,” he said in a low, earnest voice. “But you yourself must decide. That he will make you a good husband, I have no doubt. Yet, as I have already said, as your father I would be the very last to endeavour to force you to marry a man you do not love.”

She did not reply. He stood gazing upon her face, and his own thoughts were sad ones. Soon, very soon, the blow might fall, and then his wife and daughter would be left alone. He was, therefore, anxious to see her married before that catastrophe, which he knew was inevitable.

When the count had sat with him that evening making his request, he recollected the strange story Mary had told him regarding the secret examination of his papers. It was curious—so curious and so utterly devoid of motive that he could see no reason in it. Yet if that Frenchman had really discovered certain things concealed behind that green-painted steel door, it was to his interest that he should become his son-in-law and so preserve the secret.

Yes, he was anxious to see his daughter married to that man to whom he had taken such a personal liking, yet he affected to leave the decision entirely in her own hands.

She spoke at last in a hard, tuneless voice, as though her youth and life were slowly dying just as surely as the day was fading.

“If it is your wish, father, that I should become his wife, you may give him an affirmative answer. But—”

And she suddenly burst into a torrent of hot tears.

“Ah no! no!” her father cried, touching her pale cheek tenderly. “No. Do not give way, dear. I have no desire that you should marry this man if you yourself do not really love him. Perhaps your mother has been mistaken, but by various signs and looks that both of us noticed in Rome and in England, we believed that you entertained for him a warm affection.”

“I know that my marriage would please you,” she said. “Mother gave me to understand that two months ago, therefore,”—and she paused as though she could not utter the words which were to decide her fate—“therefore I am willing to accept him.”

“Ah, Mary!” he exclaimed quickly, his face brightening, for her decision aroused hope within him. “I need not tell you what happiness your words bring to me. I confess to you that I have hoped that you would give your consent, for I would rather see you the wife of the count, with wealth and position, than married to any other man I know. He loves you—of that I am convinced. Has he never told you so?”

She did not answer for a few moments. She was reflecting upon that scene in the little salon in Rome when he had revealed himself to her in his true colours.

“Yes,” she answered at last in that same hard, colourless voice. “He told me so once.”

He attributed her blank, despairing look to the natural emotion of the moment. It was the great crisis of her young life, for she was deciding her future. He was in ignorance of how already she had made the compact with Dubard—of how she had decided to sacrifice herself in order to save him.

Her father, in ignorance of the truth of how nobly she was acting, went on to analyse the young Frenchman’s good qualities and relate to her all that he had learnt regarding him.

“His youth has been no better and no worse than that of any young man brought up in Paris,” he said, “yet from the information I have gathered it seems that he has sown his wild oats long ago, and for the past couple of years he has given up racing and gambling and all such vices of youth, and has become a perfect model of what a young man should be. Men who know him in Paris speak highly of him as a man of real grit—a man with a future before him. You do not think, Mary,” he went on, “that I should have welcomed him as a guest at my table if I were not sure that he was a man worthy the name of friend?”

“Ah!” she sighed, “you have, my dear father, sometimes been disappointed in your friendships, I fear. Angelo Borselli, for instance, has been your friend through many years.”

“Angelo!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Yes, yes, I know. But I am speaking of Jules—of the man you have consented to marry.”

A slight hardness showed at the corners of her mouth at mention of the man who had so cleverly entrapped her. She knew that escape was impossible. He could place her father in a position of triumph over his enemies, and in return claimed herself. Ah! if she could only speak the truth; if she could only take her father into her confidence, and show him the reason she so readily gave her consent to a union that was odious to her! Yet she knew that if she gave him the slightest suspicion of her self-sacrifice he would withhold his consent, and the result would be dire disaster.

She knew her father’s brave, unflinching nobility of character. Rather than he would allow her to marry a man whom she hated and mistrusted, he would face ruin—even death.

And for that reason she, pale and silent, gazing into the rising mists, accepted the man who had made her father’s honour the price of her own life.

“Tell the count,” she said, in a voice broken by emotion, “tell him that I am ready to be his wife.”

And her father, gladdened at what he, in his ignorance, believed to be a wise decision, bent to her and pressed his lips to her cheek with fatherly affection, in a vain endeavour to kiss her tears away.

They were not tears of emotion, but of a sweet and tender woman’s blank despair.