"We are left alone," he repeated, seeing that she was silent, "and I make it hereby my business and my pleasure to amuse you."

"You are good, sir. But I thank you. I need no entertainment of your devising."

"That is eminently unfortunate," returned the baron, with his imperturbable smile, "for I am universally considered to be the most amusing of mortals,--if, indeed, I am mortal at all, which I sometimes doubt."

"Do you reckon yourself with the G.o.ds, then?" asked Hedwig scornfully.

"Which of them are you? Jove? Dionysus? Apollo?"

"Nay, rather Phaethon, who soared too high--"

"Your mythology is at fault, sir,--he drove too low; and besides, he was not immortal."

"It is the same. He was wide of the mark, as I am. Tell me, countess, are your wits always so ready?"

"You, at least, will always find them so," she answered, bitterly.

"You are unkind. You stab my vanity, as you have pierced my heart."

At this speech Hedwig raised her eyebrows and stared at him in silence. Any other man would have taken the chilling rebuke and left her. Benoni put on a sad expression.

"You used not to hate me as you do now," he said.

"That is true. I hated you formerly because I hated you."

"And now?" asked Benoni, with a short laugh.

"I hate you now because I loathe you." She uttered this singular saying indifferently, as being part of her daily thoughts.

"You have the courage of your opinions, countess," he replied, with a very bitter smile.

"Yes? It is only the courage a woman need have." There was a pause, during which Benoni puffed much smoke and stroked his white moustache. Hedwig turned over the leaves of her book, as though hinting to him to go. But he had no idea of that. A man who will not go because a woman loathes him will certainly not leave her for a hint.

"Countess," he began again, at last, "will you listen to me?"

"I suppose I must. I presume my father has left you here to insult me at your n.o.ble leisure."

"Ah, countess, dear countess,"--she shrank away from him,--"you should know me better than to believe me capable of anything so monstrous. I insult you? Gracious heaven! I, who adore you; who worship the holy ground whereon you tread; who would preserve the precious air you have breathed in vessels of virgin crystal; who would give a drop of my blood for every word you vouchsafe me, kind or cruel,--I, who look on you as the only divinity in this desolate heathen world, who reverence you and do you daily homage, who adore you--"

"You manifest your adoration in a singular manner, sir," said Hedwig, interrupting him with something of her father's severity.

"I show it as best I can," the old scoundrel pleaded, working himself into a pa.s.sion of words. "My life, my fortune, my name, my honour,--I cast them at your feet. For you I will be a hermit, a saint, dwelling in solitary places and doing good works; or I will brave every danger the narrow earth holds, by sea and land, for you. What? Am I decrepit, or bent, or misshapen, that my white hair should cry out against me?

Am I hideous, or doting, or half-witted, as old men are? I am young; I am strong, active, enduring. I have all the gifts, for you."

The baron was speaking French, and perhaps these wild praises of himself might pa.s.s current in a foreign language. But when Nino detailed the conversation to me in our good, simple Italian speech, it sounded so amazingly ridiculous that I nearly broke my sides with laughing.

Hedwig laughed also, and so loudly that the foolish old man was disconcerted. He had succeeded in amusing her sooner than he had expected. As I have told you, the baron is a most impulsive person, though he is poisoned with evil from his head to his heart.

"All women are alike," he said, and his manner suddenly changed.

"I fancy," said Hedwig, recovering from her merriment, "that if you address them as you have addressed me you will find them very much alike indeed."

"What good can women do in the world?" sighed Benoni, as though speaking with himself. "You do nothing but harm with your cold calculations and your bitter jests." Hedwig was silent. "Tell me," he continued presently, "if I speak soberly, by the card as it were, will you listen to me?"

"Oh, I have said that I will listen to you!" cried Hedwig, losing patience.

"Hedwig von Lira, I hereby offer you my fortune, my name, and myself.

I ask you to marry me of your own good will and pleasure." Hedwig once more raised her brows.

"Baron Benoni, I will not marry you, either for your fortune, your name, or yourself,--nor for any other consideration under heaven. And I will ask you not to address me by my Christian name." There was a long silence after this speech, and Benoni carefully lighted a second cigarette. Hedwig would have risen and entered the house, but she felt safer in the free air of the sunny court. As for Benoni, he had no intention of going.

"I suppose you are aware, countess," he said at last, coldly eying her, "that your father has set his heart upon our union?"

"I am aware of it."

"But you are not aware of the consequences of your refusal. I am your only chance of freedom. Take me, and you have the world at your feet.

Refuse me, and you will languish in this hideous place so long as your affectionate father pleases."

"Do you know my father so little, sir," asked Hedwig very proudly, "as to suppose that his daughter will ever yield to force?"

"It is one thing to talk of not yielding, and it is quite another to bear prolonged suffering with constancy," returned Benoni coolly, as though he were discussing a general principle instead of expounding to a woman the fate she had to expect if she refused to marry him. "I never knew anyone who did not talk bravely of resisting torture until it was applied. Oh, you will be weak at the end, countess, believe me.

You are weak now; and changed, though perhaps you would be better pleased if I did not notice it. Yes, I smile now,--I laugh. I can afford to. You can be merry over me because I love you, but I can be merry at what you must suffer if you will not love me. Do not look so proud, countess. You know what follows pride, if the proverb lies not."

During this insulting speech Hedwig had risen to her feet, and in the act to go she turned and looked at him in utter scorn. She could not comprehend the nature of a man who could so coldly threaten her. If ever anyone of us can fathom Benoni's strange character we may hope to understand that phase of it along with the rest.

He seemed as indifferent to his own mistakes and follies as to the sufferings of others.

"Sir," she said, "whatever may be the will of my father, I will not permit you to discuss it, still less to hold up his anger as a threat to scare me. You need not follow me," she added, as he rose.

"I will follow you, whether you wish it or not, countess," he said, fiercely; and, as she flew across the court to the door he strode swiftly by her side, hissing his words into her ear. "I will follow you to tell you that I know more of you than you think, and I know how little right you have to be so proud. I know your lover. I know of your meetings, your comings and your goings--" They reached the door, but Benoni barred the way with his long arm, and seemed about to lay a hand upon her wrist, so that she shrank back against the heavy doorpost in an agony of horror and loathing and wounded pride. "I know Cardegna, and I knew the poor baroness who killed herself because he basely abandoned her. Ah, you never heard the truth before? I trust it is pleasant to you. As he left her he has left you. He will never come back. I saw him in Paris three weeks ago. I could tell tales not fit for your ears. And for him you will die in this horrible place unless you consent. For him you have thrown away everything,--name, fame, and happiness,--unless you will take all these from me. Oh, I know you will cry out that it is untrue; but my eyes are good, though you call me old! For this treacherous boy, with his curly hair, you have lost the only thing that makes woman human,--your reputation!" And Benoni laughed that horrid laugh of his, till the court rang again, as though there were devils in every corner, and beneath every eave and everywhere.

People who are loud in their anger are sometimes dangerous, for it is genuine while it lasts. People whose anger is silent are generally either incapable of honest wrath or cowards. But there are some in the world whose pa.s.sion shows itself in few words but strong ones, and proceeds instantly to action.

Hedwig had stood back against the stone casing of the entrance, at first, overcome with the intensity of what she suffered. But as Benoni laughed she moved slowly forward till she was close to him, and only his outstretched arm barred the doorway.

"Every word you have spoken is a lie, and you know it. Let me pa.s.s, or I will kill you with my hands!"

The words came low and distinct to his excited ear, like the tolling of a pa.s.sing bell. Her face must have been dreadful to see, and Benoni was suddenly fascinated and terrified at the concentrated anger that blazed in her blue eyes. His arm dropped to his side, and Hedwig pa.s.sed proudly through the door, in all the majesty of innocence gathering her skirts, lest they should touch his feet or any part of him. She never hastened her step as she ascended the broad stairs within and went to her own little sitting-room, made gay with books and flowers and photographs from Rome. Nor was her anger followed by any pa.s.sionate outburst of tears. She sat herself down by the window and looked out, letting the cool breeze from the open cas.e.m.e.nt fan her face.

Hedwig, too, had pa.s.sed through a violent scene that day, and, having conquered, she sat down to think over it. She reflected that Benoni had but used the same words to her that she had daily heard from her father's lips. False as was their accusation, she submitted to hearing her father speak them, for she had no knowledge of their import, and only thought him cruelly hard with her. But that a stranger--above all, a man who aspired, or pretended to aspire, to her hand--should attempt to usurp the same authority of speech was beyond all human endurance. She felt sure that her father's anger would all be turned against Benoni when he heard her story.

As for what her tormentor had said of Nino, she could have killed him for saying it, but she knew that it was a lie; for she loved Nino with all her heart, and no one can love wholly without trusting wholly.

Therefore she put away the evil suggestion from herself, and loaded all its burden of treachery upon Benoni.

How long she sat by the window, compelling her strained thoughts into order, no one can tell. It might have been an hour, or more, for she had lost the account of the hours. She was roused by a knock at the door of her sitting-room, and at her bidding the man entered who, for the trifling consideration of about a thousand francs, first and last made communication possible between Hedwig and myself.

This man's name is Temistocle,--Themistocles, no less. All servants are Themistocles, or Orestes, or Joseph, just as all gardeners are called Antonio. Perhaps he deserves some description. He is a type, short, wiry, and broad-shouldered, with a cunning eye, a long hooked nose, and very plentiful black whiskers, surmounted by a perfectly bald crown. His motions are servile to the last degree, and he addresses everyone in authority as "excellency," on the principle that it is better to give too much t.i.tular homage than too little. He is as wily as a fox, and so long as you have money in your pocket, as faithful as a hound and as silent as the grave. I perceive that these are precisely the epithets at which the baron scoffed, saying that a man can be praised only by comparing him with the higher animals, or insulted by comparison with himself and his kind. We call a man a fool, an idiot, a coward, a liar, a traitor, and many other things applicable only to man himself. However, I will let my description stand, for it is a very good one; and Temistocle could be induced, for money, to adapt himself to almost any description, and he certainly had earned, at one time or another, most of the t.i.tles I have enumerated.

He told me, months afterwards, that when he pa.s.sed through the courtyard, on his way to Hedwig's apartment, he found Benoni seated on the stone bench, smoking a cigarette and gazing into s.p.a.ce, so that he pa.s.sed close before him without being noticed.