Kitabı oku: «Behind the Throne», sayfa 17
Chapter Thirty Three
Mrs Fitzroy’s Governess
Mrs Charles Fitzroy was delighted with her new Italian governess.
She had contemplated engaging a Frenchwoman or a Swiss to teach little Bertha, but most fortunately, General Borselli, whom she had met during a season spent with her husband in Rome, came to her aid and recommended the daughter of the deceased Colonel Nodari. She came, and her slight, rather tall figure in neat black, her well-cut, handsome features, and her plainly dressed hair, almost black, had attracted her mistress from the first. She was refined, unobtrusive, merry-eyed, and just the kind of bright companion and governess she required for her child. She noticed that although her dresses were well made there were tokens, in more ways than one, that since her father’s death she and her mother had fallen upon evil days.
Fitzroy himself liked her. There was something interesting in her quaint broken English and in her foreign gestures that commended itself to him in preference to the angular blue-stocking Miss Gardener, who had recently left his wife’s service. So “Mademoiselle,” as they called her in preference to the rather ugly word “Signorina,” quickly became as one of the family, and within a week of her arrival she met that pompous millionaire of eggs and bacon, Mr Morgan-Mason.
The latter became as much attracted by her as were the others, but she exerted no effort to captivate or to gain admiration, merely acting her part modestly as became the humble governess in a wealthy family. Nevertheless she recollected the general’s instructions, and more than once, in the secrecy of her room, wrote to that address in Genoa reporting her progress.
Mrs Charles Fitzroy, a pretty and rather extravagant woman, still on the right side of forty, moved in a very good set, and entertained a good deal at her house in Brook Street. Her husband was a magnate in the city, and the fact that Morgan-Mason was her brother gave her the entrée to houses which would have otherwise been closed to her. Fitzroy, a rather short, grey-bearded man with a florid countenance, had risen from a clerk’s stool to be what he was, and differed in little particular from thousands of well-off city men who live in the West End and enter the anteroom of society.
Nevertheless, through the influence of the white-waistcoated Member for South-West Norfolk, a good many well-known people dined at Brook Street from time to time, while to Morgan-Mason’s smart gatherings at his house or his dinners at the Carlton his sister and her husband were always invited.
It was pleasant enough to mix with such people as surrounded her employers, but, truth to tell, Filoména Nodari quickly found the post of governess monotonous and irksome. First of all, it was difficult for her to preserve her unassuming character as a paid menial; secondly, she hated children; thirdly, Bertha was a spoilt child, with no leaning towards lessons; and fourthly, the small bare schoolroom at the top of the house was a gloomy place in which to spend those bright spring days. Still, she never complained. She was well paid by the Minister of War, and with a woman’s love of intrigue, she had set herself to carefully accomplish the difficult task which Borselli had given her.
She was fortunate, inasmuch as Mrs Fitzroy treated her with such consideration. Indeed, sometimes when there were no visitors, she would invite her in to lunch with her, when they would generally talk French, a language with which her mistress was well acquainted.
So well did she act her part that the governess was quickly voted a treasure, and as Bertha was a particular favourite of her Uncle Morgan-Mason, the latter became gradually interested in her. Sometimes, indeed, he would come up to the schoolroom while lessons were in progress with an excuse to leave a packet of sweetmeats for his niece; but Filoména, with her woman’s shrewd intuition, knew that he came to have a little chat with her.
He was inquisitive – always inquisitive.
One day as he sat with Bertha upon his knee in the schoolroom he asked about her parentage.
“You are a native of Bologna – where the sausages come from?” he laughed.
Perhaps he sold that comestible at his many shops, she reflected, but she answered in her broken English —
“Yes. But just as none of straw hats are made in Leghorn, so there are none of Bologna sausages made in Bologna.”
“You must be already tired of life here in London after your beautiful Italy?” he remarked.
“Ah! non,” she assured him. “I like your London – what leetle I have seen of it. But that is not very much. I take Bertha for one walk in the park, or down to what you call Kensington, every day. And many times we ascend to the roof of an omnibus. But omnibuses are so puzzling,” she added, with a laugh. “You never know where one goes. We always ascend and seet there till we come to the end of the voyage. But we make some amusing errors many times. Only the day before to-day we ascended on a ’bus outside the Gallery Nationale, where are the fountains, paid twenty centimes – I mean two pennies —eh bien! the next street-corner past a church they turned us off – the omnibus went no farther!”
The millionaire laughed aloud, saying —
“It must have been a Royal Oak or Cricklewood ’bus coming home. They go no farther than Charing Cross.”
“But oh!” she continued, “we go many time a long, long way – out into the country – away from London. Once we went on and on till I thought we would never arrest – right on till we came to a small town down by the river – Tweet-ham – Tweek-ham – the conductor called it, or something like that. Your English names are so very difficult. There was an island in the river, and an old church close by.”
“Twickenham! You mean Twickenham!” he exclaimed. “Fancy your going so far on an omnibus! Your adventures, mademoiselle, must have been amusing.”
“Ah yes. But poor madame! We did not return till seven of the clock, and she was fearing something had happened.”
“Naturally,” he said. “But let me give you a word of advice, mademoiselle. Be very careful where you go. London is not at all safe for a foreign lady like yourself, more especially if her face is as attractive as yours.”
“Oh!” she laughed. “Mine has no attraction, surely. And I tell you, m’sieur, that I am not in the least afraid.”
He had expected her to be impressed by his flattery, but she was not. On the contrary, she passed his remark as though it had never been uttered, and continued to relate to him her impressions of London and London life, some of which were distinctly humorous, for the streets of our metropolis always strike the foreigner as full of quaint incongruities, from the balancing of the hansom cab to the kilt of the Highland soldier.
He found her conversation amusing and interesting. She was somehow different from the wide circle of women of his acquaintance, those society dames who borrowed his money, ate his dinners, and gave tone to his entertainments. And this was exactly how she desired to impress him.
As the weeks went on, the society swallows returned from wintering in the South, and the London season began in earnest. The millionaire, a frequent visitor at his sister’s house, often met the pleasant-faced governess, who very cleverly succeeded in increasing her popularity until she was well-known to Mrs Fitzroy’s lady friends, and declared by them all to be “a perfect treasure.”
None knew, however, save little Bertha – who feared to speak lest mademoiselle should punish her – of a rather curious incident which occurred one morning as she was sitting with her charge in Kensington Gardens. A tall, dark-faced, middle-aged man with black moustache, well-dressed in frock coat and silk hat, a fine diamond pin in his scarf, approached, raised his hat, uttered some mysterious words in Italian, and then took a seat at her side.
At first mademoiselle regarded the stranger with distrust, until he drew a paper from his pocket and allowed her to read it. Then, apparently satisfied, she listened to all he told her. But as it was in Italian, the child could not understand. She only noticed that mademoiselle turned rather pale, and seemed to be expressing deep regret.
The dark-faced man spoke slowly and calmly, while, on her part, she shrugged her shoulders and showed her palms, and responded with quick volubility, while the child sat at her side regarding the stranger in open-eyed wonder.
Presently, after a long argument, the man took from his pocket a small tin box of matches which he gave to her. Without examining it, she transferred it quickly to her coat-pocket, and then, after a few parting words, the man rose, raised his hat, and strode away towards Queen’s Gate, swinging his cane airily as he walked.
“Who was that?” inquired the child after he had gone. “What did he give you, mademoiselle?”
“Nothing that concerns you, dearest,” was her governess’s reply. “Remember you must say nothing of that m’sieur – nothing, you recollect. You must never mention him to your mother or to anyone, because if you do I shall punish you very severely, and I shall never, never take you out with me again. You understand – eh?”
The child’s face fell, and her eyes were fixed straight before her as she answered, “Very well, mademoiselle. I won’t say anything.”
“That’s a good girl,” her governess responded. “Some day you shall have a watch like your uncle’s if you are very good,” she added, for Bertha was very fond of watches, and especially of Morgan-Mason’s gold repeater. She liked to hear it chime upon its musical bell.
One afternoon a few days later Filoména watched from her window the millionaire descend from his motor and enter the house. First she hurried into the schoolroom, where Bertha was sitting with the maid, and then she leisurely descended to the drawing-room, where she found Mrs Fitzroy and her brother talking together.
“Oh, m’sieur,” laughed the governess, “Mademoiselle Bertha saw you arrive, and has sent me to ask a favour.”
“A favour!” he exclaimed. “Of course, I always grant the young lady’s requests when she asks nicely.”
“Mademoiselle wants to know if you will let her hear your watch. Since you showed it to her a fortnight ago she has allowed me no peace. So I promised I would come and ask of you.”
“Certainly,” was the millionaire’s reply, taking his repeater and the gold albert from his pocket. “You know how to make it strike. I showed you the other day,” he laughed as he handed it to her.
“I will be ve-ry careful of it, m’sieur, and will bring it back when mademoiselle is satisfied. She desires greatly one like it.”
“Some day I’ll give her one, when she’s older,” laughed Morgan-Mason good-humouredly.
And then, when the door had closed behind her, his sister remarked —
“Mademoiselle is most devoted to Bertha. So very different to Miss Gardener. She humours her in every way, and at the same time is a very good teacher. It is really wonderful how the child is improving.”
“I quite agree, Maud. She’s an excellent girl – and I hope you pay her well. She deserves it.”
And then they fell to discussing plans for a big dinner-party at the Carlton on the following Friday.
Meanwhile, mademoiselle ran upstairs with the watch in her hand, first to her own room, where she remained five minutes or so, and then took it to the schoolroom, where she delighted her little pupil by making the watch strike.
“Make it go again, mademoiselle,” exclaimed little Bertha, delighted at being allowed to hold it in her hand. And again and again the governess pressed the ring and caused it to chime, until at last she was compelled to take it forcibly from the child’s hand and carry it back again to the grey-whiskered man in the drawing-room, returning a word of thanks as she handed it back to him.
That same evening, after her charge had been put to bed, and during Mrs Fitzroy’s absence at Lady Claridge’s dance, she went out and dropped into the pillar-box at the corner of Grosvenor Square a small packet in a strong linen-lined envelope addressed to “Giuseppe Gallo, Esq., care of H. Bird, Newsagent, 386 Westminster Bridge Road, S.E.”
And then she returned to the little sitting-room set apart for her, and smiled confidently to herself as she settled to read the Tribuna, which her mother sent her regularly each day.
A week later the household at Brook Street was thrown into a state of agitation and surprise when the vulgarian dashed round in a cab and informed his sister of a most audacious entry made by thieves into his splendid flat at Queen Anne’s Mansions, and how they had turned it topsy-turvy. He had, it appeared, been absent, speaking for a parliamentary candidate up at Leicester, and his valet had slept in the flat alone, the other servants being on holiday, when during the night burglars had entered by a window from some leads adjoining, and had opened everything, even to his safe, and had apparently made a minute examination of every private paper he possessed.
He had missed nothing, except a few cigars; but what puzzled the detectives most was the manner in which safe, writing-table, and two chests of drawers, which he always kept locked, had been opened. Either the thieves possessed all the keys – and this did not appear possible, as they were all in the trusted valet’s room – or else they possessed a master-key to everything, the same as that which the Member of Parliament wore upon his watch-chain.
The millionaire was furious. He even spoke to the Home Secretary about it when he met him in the lobby of the House. But the manner in which the safe had been opened was a complete mystery – a mystery to all except to mademoiselle.
The vulgarian little suspected, when he so innocently lent his watch to his niece, that the handsome governess had taken an impression in wax of the small master-key upon the other end of his chain, or that she had that very same evening posted the wax impression in the tin matchbox to the clever secret agent of the Italian War Office – the man who with two colleagues had come over from Paris specially, who had met Mademoiselle in Kensington Gardens, and who was known at the newsagent’s in the Westminster Bridge Road as Giuseppe Gallo, a civil engineer, seeking employment.
Chapter Thirty Four
In Confidence
General Arturo Valentini, commanding the Italian forces on the Alpine frontier of France, sprang nimbly from an open cab, and helped out his companion – a young lady in deep mourning, with her long crape veil down, as is the custom in Italy.
The sentries at the big arched gateway of the military prison of Turin, recognising the commanding officer, stood at the salute, and in response, the short, dapper little man in his uniform and row of ribbons on his breast raised his hand to his peaked cap quickly in acknowledgment, and passed at once into the great bare courtyard surrounded by the high, white, inartistic outer offices of the prison.
The soldiers off duty, who were lounging and gossiping, quickly drew themselves up to attention as he crossed the courtyard to the office of the governor, walking with his firm military gait and spurs clinking, and his sword trailing over the stones. He was one of the smartest and best soldiers Italy possessed, a man who had shown an iron nerve in those turbulent days of the struggle for unity, a man of rigid discipline and yet of kindly heart. The loss of his only son in the reverses in Abyssinia two years before had left him without kith or kin, and although he commanded a military district as large as England, and was also in possession of a private income, he led a simple life at his headquarters there in Turin, going into society as little as possible, and ever working to improve the condition of his command. His district was the most important of any in Italy, for in case of hostilities it would be the first point attacked; and as triumph usually lies with those who strike the first blow, it was his object to enter France effectively and on the instant, if the dogs of war were ever let loose.
With this end in view, he was untiring in his efforts to perfect the defences of those many valleys and Alpine passes by which the enemy might gain admittance if not perfectly secure. In both summer and winter his troops were ever manoeuvring in those high misty mountains, skirmishing, throwing bridges over the deep gorges, and executing evolutions always in secret, always fearing that the French might learn their intentions in case of war.
That enormous army on the Italian frontier which one never sees, those regiments upon regiments which dwell far up in the remote heights of the Alps, away from the civilisation of the towns, are kept a mystery by the Ministry of War. They are there, ever ready, one knows, but where all the hidden fortresses are situated, or where the death-dealing mines are laid, are secrets which only the War Office and the commander know.
And it is those secrets which French spies are ever endeavouring to discover. Indeed, one of General Valentini’s chief anxieties was the ingenuity displayed by the emissaries of France, who crossed the frontier in all kinds of disguises in the endeavour to learn the military secrets. Not a year went past but two or three of these spies were arrested and condemned – and, be it said, the same state of things existed on French territory, where the secret service of Italy, the men from the bureau at headquarters there in Turin, boldly took their liberty in their hands and went forth to gain the secrets of their friends in the opposite valleys.
It required an officer of clear foresight, great tact, and wide experience to control such a command, and in Arturo Valentini, the short, stout, red-faced little man, Italy certainly had one in whom she could repose the most absolute confidence.
In the office of the prison governor the pair stood for a few minutes, until the dark-bearded, spectacled official entered, saluted the commander, invited both him and his companion to seats, and settled himself at his table.
“I wish to have an interview with Felice Solaro,” the general explained. “He is still here, I suppose?”
“Until Thursday next, when he is to be transferred to Gorgona.”
“To Gorgona!” exclaimed the general in surprise; for the name of that lonely penal island in the Mediterranean opposite Leghorn was sufficient to cause him to shudder. “Then it is fortunate we came to-day,” he added.
“But,” hesitated the grave-faced man, looking inquiringly at his company, “but of course this lady cannot see him. It is against the regulations, you know, general. No prisoner can be seen by anyone except yourself, save by order of the Minister of War.”
“I know,” was the old officer’s reply. “But this lady happens to be the daughter of the Minister Morini.” Whereupon the governor bowed politely at the figure, whose face he could not well distinguish through her veil.
“You therefore need have no hesitation in allowing the interview,” added the general. “If you wish, I’ll sign an order for it now.”
“No, certainly not. If the lady is the Minister’s daughter, it is of course different.”
“But this fact is confidential, recollect. It must not appear in any report that she has visited here.”
The governor nodded. It was not the first time that ladies, high born and well-dressed some of them, had, on presenting orders from Camillo Morini, had interviews with officers and men undergoing imprisonment for various offences.
Solaro’s crime was, however, the most serious of that of any prisoner who had been incarcerated there since he had held the post of governor – the unpardonable crime of treason, of selling his country into the hands of its enemy! He only knew that the court-martial had found the charges proved, and therefore he was guilty. It surprised him that the daughter of the Minister should wish to see the man condemned of such an offence, but he made no comment. He only touched his bell and gave instructions for the prisoner Solaro to be brought from his cell to the parlatorio, or speaking-room.
“You of course wish, general, to see the prisoner in private,” remarked the governor, when the chief warder had gone.
“If you please,” responded the old officer, in his sharp habit of speech.
“Then I will not accompany you. But I may tell you that the prisoner has become much changed since his sentence. He declares his innocence, and sits pondering all day in idleness.”
The general sighed, without replying. They discussed the matter until the chief warder returning they rose and followed him out across the courtyard, through a small iron-bound door before which a sentry stood at the salute, into the inner courtyard of the prison itself, the small, dismal, bare stone place which formed the exercise-yard, while all around were the small, barred, high-up windows of the cells.
They passed through a door, and walking along a short corridor entered a small room divided in half by long iron bars from floor to ceiling, like the cage of some ferocious animal in captivity. Behind those bars stood the bent, pale-faced figure of Felice Solaro, different indeed from the straight, well-set-up man who had stood before the Minister of War and defiantly broken his sword across his knee. Dressed in an ill-made suit of coarse canvas, the beard he had grown gave him an unkempt and neglected appearance, the aspect of one in whom all hope was dead.
On recognising his visitors, he sprang forward to the bars.
“Ah! my general?” he cried. “How good of you to come to me!” And he put out his thin white hand through the iron cage to greet the man who had stood his friend and endeavoured to get his verdict reversed. Then, as the gallant old officer took his hand, he turned inquiringly towards the figure in black.
She threw her long veil aside, and when he saw her face revealed he gasped —
“Signorina Mary! You – you have come here —to see me!”
Tears rose to her eyes and almost blinded her. Recollections of the past crowded upon her in that moment, and her heart was overburdened by pity for him.
“The signorina has done her best to induce her father to sign the order for your release, captain, but, alas!” – And the general sighed without concluding his sentence.
“The Minister refuses!” said the unfortunate man behind the bars. “And yet I tell you I am innocent – innocent.”
“I believe you are, captain. If I did not, I should not interest myself on your behalf. But, unfortunately, the powers in Rome are greater than mine. They are sending you out to Gorgona, it seems.”
“To Gorgona!” he gasped hoarsely, all the light dying from his pale, emaciated face. “Ah! then they mean to drive me mad by solitary confinement. My enemies have, indeed, triumphed!”
“But have courage, Felice,” exclaimed Mary, speaking to him for the first time and taking his thin hand. “Surely one day you will have justice done to you. I cannot understand why my father so steadily refuses to release you.”
“Because he fears to do so,” declared the condemned man. “I am victim of a foul intrigue in which that woman Filoména was one who conspired against me.”
“And yet you loved her,” remarked the girl reproachfully.
“Ah! I believe I did. I know that to you I ought not to mention her, signorina. But forgive me. Do you recollect that night in Rome – at the ball at the Colonna Palace – when I asked you a question?”
“I do,” she responded, now very pale. “I was younger, and did not know my own mind then. I thought – I thought I loved you. It was our flirtation that has brought you to this. I am to blame for everything.”
“No, no,” he declared. “It is I who committed the indiscretion of falling in love with you when I knew that I, a poor captain, could never hope to marry the daughter of the Minister of War.”
She sighed, and tears welled again in her dark brown eyes. The general at her side was no woman’s man, but even he became affected at this meeting.
“They allege that you sold to France a copy of the mobilisation scheme,” she went on. “They say that I purposely locked you in my father’s library at Rome for three hours in order that you might have access to the secret documents which were in a drawer in his writing-table.”
The prisoner, smiling bitterly, answered —
“Let them allege whatever it pleases them; they cannot make my unjust punishment greater than it is. You yourself know that the charge is an unjust one – and my general knows that I would never betray Italy!”
“But to whom do you attribute this ingenious plot by which you have been made the scapegoat of someone else’s offence?” asked Mary, looking straight into his deep-sunken eyes. “That the plans of the Tresenta as well as the copy of the mobilisation scheme have reached the French Intelligence Department is proved beyond doubt. Our secret service in Paris has ascertained that.”
“I have enemies – bitter ones,” he answered in a strange tone, his eyes fixed upon her. “They fear me, and have taken this course in order to close my mouth – in order to prevent me making certain revelations that would effect their ruin.”
“But who are they?” she demanded. “The general has brought me here on purpose to put this question to you. If we are aware of all the facts, we may be able, after all, to rescue you from the horrors of Gorgona.”
The pale-faced man shook his unkempt head sorrowfully, his lips pressed together, his eyes upon hers.
“No. You can never secure my release,” he declared, with despair. “They dare not give me my liberty for their own sakes. Jules Dubard and that Englishman George Macbean will take good care that I never come forth to denounce them.”
“George Macbean?” she gasped open-mouthed, all the colour fading from her cheeks. “Do you know him? Is he actually one of those who is responsible for this?”
For answer, the man behind the bars clenched his teeth and nodded in the affirmative.
