Part 35 (1/2)
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
MR. BENJAMIN LEVY IS BUSY
A woman stood on the little stone piazza of that Italian villa, with her face raised in agony to the blue sky, and her thin white hands wrung together with frantic nervous strength. Her whole att.i.tude was full of the hopeless abandonment of a great tearless grief; and slowly dawning pa.s.sion, long a stranger to her calm face, was creeping into her features. On the ground, spurned beneath her feet, was a long official-looking letter and envelope. A thunderbolt had flashed down upon the sweet stillness of her serene life.
She was quite alone, and she looked out upon an unbroken solitude--that fair neglected garden with its high walls which seemed to give it an air of peculiar exclusiveness.
”I will not go,” she said, speaking quickly to herself in an odd, uneven tone. ”The law of England shall not make me. I am an old woman. If they do, they cannot open my lips. I! to stand up in one of their courts, and tell the story of my shame, that they may listen and condemn my son. Oh, Bernard, Bernard, Bernard! The Lord have mercy upon you for this your crime! Mine was the sin. Mine should be the guilt. Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d!
Is this just, in my old age, to pour down this fire of punishment upon my bowed head? Have I not suffered and done penance--ay, until I had even thought that I had won for myself peace and rest and forgiveness?
Was it a sin to think so? Is this my punishment? Oh, Bernard, my son, my son! Let not the sin be his, O Lord. It is mine--mine only!”
Sweet perfumes were floating upon the soft still air, and away on the hill sides the morning mists were rolling away. The sun's warmth fell upon the earth and the flowers, and birds and humming insects were glad.
And in the midst of it all she stood there, a silent, stony figure, grief and anguish and despair written in her worn face. G.o.d was dealing very hardly with her, she cried in her agony. Truly sin was everlasting.
”Signorina!”
She turned round with a start. A servant girl stood by her side with a card on a salver.
”A gentleman to see the signorina,” she announced; ”an English gentleman.”
The woman turned pale with fear, and her fingers trembled. She would not even glance at the name on the card.
”Tell him that I see no one. I am ill. I will not see him, be his business what it may. Do you hear, child? Go and send him away.”
The girl curtsied and disappeared. Her mistress stepped back into the room, and listened fearfully. Soon there came what she had dreaded, the sound of an altercation. She could hear Nicolette protesting in her shrill _patois_, and a rather vulgar, but very determined English voice, vigorously a.s.serting itself. Then there came the sound of something almost like a scuffle, and Nicolette came running in with red eyes.
”Signorina, the brute, the brute!” she cried; ”he will come in. He dared to lay his hands upon me. See, he is here! Oh, that Marco had been in the house! He should have beaten him, the dog, the coward, to oppose a woman's will by force!”
While she had been sobbing out her complaint, her a.s.sailant had followed up his advantage, and Mr. Benjamin Levy, in a rather loud check suit, and with a cringing air, but with a certain dogged determination in his manner, appeared. Mrs. Martival turned to him with quiet dignity, but with flas.h.i.+ng eyes.
”Sir, by what right do you dare to enter my house by force, and against my command? I will not speak with you or know your business. I will have no communication with you.”
”Then your son will be hanged!” Mr. Benjamin said, with unaccustomed bluntness.
Mrs. Martival trembled, and sank into a chair. Mr. Benjamin followed up his advantage.
”I am not from the police. I have no connection with them. On the other hand, I am considerably interested in saving your son, and I tell you that I can put into your hands the means of doing so. Now, will you listen to me?”
Something in Mrs. Martival's face checked him. The features had suddenly become rigid, and an ashy pallor had stolen over them. Nicolette, who had been lingering in the room, suddenly threw herself on her knees beside her mistress's side, and caught hold of her hands.
”Oh, the wretch!” she cried, ”the miserable wretch; he has killed my mistress!”
He stood helplessly by while she ran backwards and forwards with cold water, smelling salts, and other restoratives, keeping up all the while a running fire of scathing comments upon his heartless conduct, of which, needless to say, he understood not a single word. Beneath his breath he cursed this unlucky fainting fit. He had already lost a day on the way, and the time was short. What if she were to be ill--too ill to be moved! The very thought made him restless and uneasy.
In the midst of the confusion Mrs. Martival's housekeeper returned from her marketing in the little town, and to his relief he found that she understood English. He interrupted Nicolette's shrill torrents of abuse against him, and briefly explained the situation.
”I do not wish to force myself upon her,” he said. ”I do not wish to be troublesome in any way. But when she is conscious, I want you just to show her half a dozen words which I will write on the back of a card.