He had found her, which was more than he had hoped, and had found her earning her bread in a legitimate manner, and living with the aunt who was in some wise a protector, although, remembering that lady’s easy manner of regarding her niece’s former position, there was perhaps not overmuch security in such a duenna.
He walked across Bow Street, and speedily found Stone Court, which seemed a quiet haven from the roar and roll of carriages in the street outside; a highly respectable retreat, consisting for the most part of private houses, one of which—wedged into an obscure corner, where a narrow alley, like the neck of a bottle, cut through into another street—proved to be 24B.
La Zia herself opened the door in answer to Vansittart’s knock, and welcomed him with a cordiality which took his breath away.
“Welcome, Signor. She said you would come, but I was doubtful that you would trouble about her or me,” she said, in Italian, and then, in very tolerable English: “Do me the favour to walk upstairs; it is rather high—il secondo piano. She knew you again in an instant. She has such eyes.”
They ascended the narrow staircase, lighted only by the Zia’s candle. The door of the front room on the second floor was open, and Fiordelisa stood on the threshold, in the light of a paraffin lamp, dressed in a shabby black gown, and with her splendid hair rolled up on the top of her head in a roughened mass.
She held out both her hands to Vansittart, and welcomed him as if he had been her dearest friend. The aunt had fairly astonished him, but the niece was even more astounding.
“I knew you would come,” she exclaimed. “I knew you would not turn your back upon the poor girl whose life you made desolate.”
And then she burst into a tempest of sobs. She flung herself on to the little horsehair sofa, and sobbed as if her heart would break; whereupon la Zia tumbled into an armchair, and sobbed in concert.
What could Vansittart do between two fountains of tears? He could only patiently abide till this passionate grief should abate, so that he might speak with the hope of being heard.
“I am deeply distressed,” he said at last, when these lamentations had subsided. “I have never ceased to repent the act that bereaved you—both—of a friend and protector. I dared not go back to Venice—lest—lest the law should weigh heavily upon me. I had no means of communicating with you. I knew neither your names nor your address, remember. I had no means of helping you. I could do nothing to lighten the load upon my conscience—nothing. You must have thought me an arrant coward for running away and leaving you to suffer for my sin?”
“If you had stopped you would have been put in prison—perhaps for ever so many years,” said la Zia, with a philosophical air.
Fiordelisa had dried her tears, and was looking at him graciously, with almost a smile in the soft Italian eyes.
“Your going to prison would not have brought him back to life,” she said. “I am glad you got away. Poor fellow! he was so fond of me—and so jealous! Ah, how jealous he was! It was foolish. I had done no harm. A little pleasure at Carnival time, while he was away! What a pity that he should come back to Venice that night, and find me at the Florian with you! We ought not to have gone to that caffè. He always went there—it was just the likeliest place for him to find us. But then I did not know he was coming back to Venice so soon.”
The lightness of her tone, thus easily accepting the tragic past, surprised him, so strangely did her speech contrast with her passionate sobs of a few minutes ago. That she should threaten him with no vengeance, that she should welcome him as a friend, was stranger still; and he had to remember that this lightness was characteristic of the Italian nature; he had to remember that in Rome a noble lady and her daughter will go out to dine at a restaurant because it is so dull at home where the husband and father lies dead, or a mother will take her daughters to the opera to revive their spirits after a brother’s untimely death.
It was a relief to him, naturally, to find a philosophical submission to Fate where he had expected to find a thirst for his blood, a stern resolve that the law should claim from him the uttermost atonement it could exact. It was a tremendous relief to find himself sitting between aunt and niece—while they eat their frugal supper from a tin box of mortadello, a bundle of radishes, and a half quartern loaf—listening to their account of their lives after his victim’s death.
“He was buried next day,” said la Zia; “a very pretty funeral. It was a lovely day, and the gondola was full of flowers, though flowers are dear in Venice. Lisa and I, and the Padrona from the house where we lived, went with him to the cemetery, where it was all so still and happy-looking in the sunlight. Lisa tried to throw herself into his grave, but we would not let her. Poor child, she was so miserable, and we thought of the day before when we were returning from the Lido in your gondola—”
“And
