Three days of continuous and tiring travel gave her her first view of the Palazzo of Alta Lauria, crushed in, as it were, between stupendous rocks, high over a well-wooded ravine, in which lay hidden all that called itself the hamlet.
Violante having been warned by telegram from Naples of her intended visit, Ida confidently expected, so soon as the courtyard gates of the Palazzo opened to receive her, that there would be its girl-mistress awaiting her, and that then together they would exchange confidences and sympathy.
No such result ensued. She was ushered into a small, scantily furnished, and decidedly untidy room by a bare-legged peasant boy, and there Francesca left her to her own devices for nearly an hour, while she went to Violante’s apartment.
The ill-kept exterior of the Palazzo did not promise much in the way of comfort for its interior. Ida was nevertheless struck with astonishment at the poverty and disorder which on every side proclaimed itself. A third-rate albergo would have supplied better entertainment than was to fall to her lot during her sojourn in that ancient Palazzo.
Francesca, returning from her long colloquy with her young mistress, apologised somewhat for the condition of things; but then, she said, what would you have? The honoured Maestro of the house was dead, and its young mistress—ah, she was so ill, so ill! She had thought for nothing; she could not even see the English Signora—not that day, at least—but tomorrow, next day, perhaps. Would the Signora have patience and wait a day or so?
And then Francesca had again disappeared, and her place was taken by an untidy little maid, who spoke an odd patois utterly unintelligible to Ida, and seemed at a loss to understand Ida’s Italian.
This was the case with the other servants of the house. They were but few in number, and they one and all presented the appearance of untidy, ill-educated peasants, assuredly not that of trained domestics. And they one and all spoke the odd mixture of Italian and Greek known as Calabrese.
To add to the discomfort of the whole thing, the fare was of the coarsest and most frugal, and the sleeping accommodation corresponded in quality. The rooms were small; the heat was intolerable; the buzzing of the insects and the noise of the cicale alone were sufficient to prevent sleep.
On the third day after her arrival Ida began to feel that the journey so impetuously undertaken was a mistake from first to last, and bethought her of writing home to her father and Juliet stating the facts of the case, and explaining her reasons for not writing sooner.
First, however, she thought she would finally ascertain if there were any likelihood of obtaining an interview with Violante.
To this end she despatched the untidy little waiting-maid in search of Francesca, who had seemed oddly enough to have purposely kept out of her way since the day of her arrival. But before the little maid could have had time to deliver her message, Francesca herself, agitated and weeping passionately, entered the room.
Violante was dying—could not live more than a week, if that said the doctor, who had been hastily summoned from Cosenza.
She wished to see the Englishman who had broken faith with her once more, give him back his ring with her own hand, and bid him an everlasting adieu. Would the Signora send him a letter that would bring him without a moment’s delay?
Ida at once consented to do so. To summon her husband and her father to the bedside of the dying girl would be one step in the programme she had planned. So she wrote a hurried line to her husband, and immediately after a second and longer letter to her father explaining matters, and begging him to accompany Sefton to Alta Lauria.
Francesca did not see any necessity for posting the letter to Lord Culvers, so it was torn in fragments and tossed into the kitchen fire.
The letter to Sefton, however, she carefully sealed with Violante’s ring in order to render it the more impressive, and then transmitted through the post to Giorno, who, with Pippo, remained in Paris, keeping an eye on Captain Culvers.
XXI
To the last hour of his life Clive will never forget that swift yet tedious journey to the south undertaken under such strange conditions. Had anyone said to him only yesterday, “Out of the whole human race can you single out your enemy?” he would at once have replied affirmatively with the name of Sefton Culvers. Yet here was he today playing the part of a sworn friend to this man, the part, indeed, that could be expected of none but a sworn friend, starting, at a moment’s notice, on a quest out of which all he could hope to receive by way of payment would be the pleasure of looking upon another man’s happiness.
For, stifle the thought as he might, again and again would it present itself: “By-and-by you will have to stand by and see this husband and wife kiss each other on the lips, and join hands in reconciliation, and then nothing more will fall to your share but to drop out of their lives forever.”
During the long night hours of their journey, with his nerves strung to their tightest, and his brain active in conjuring up terrors and horrible possibilities, Clive tried to face this thought in its bare hideousness, and, as it were, look it out of countenance. The effort was futile. Face it as much as he liked, he could never look away its ugliness. The mere endeavour to do so was something equivalent to running the point of a stiletto into his flesh, and crying out, “See here! The farther I send it in the less I shall feel
