The Passport

Nevertheless, after it became evident that she would never be allowed to go out under her escort, Bianca thought it prudent not to let it be supposed that Mademoiselle Durand talked with her on any other subject but those she was engaged to talk about, lest she should be dismissed and a less agreeable woman take her place.

Whether it was that Mademoiselle Durand was urged to stronger efforts by Silvio Rossano's increasing impatience, or whether she considered the time arrived when she could safely venture to convey to her pupil that Giacinta Rossano's good-looking brother was madly in love with her, the fact remained on this particular morning that never before had she spoken so much or so openly of Silvio, and of the happiness that was in store for any girl sensible enough to marry him.

Bianca Acorari sat listening in silence for some time.

"He is certainly very handsome," she observed, presently – "and he looks good," she added, meditatively.

"Handsome!" ejaculated Mademoiselle Durand. "There is a statue in the Vatican – a Hermes, they call it – Well, never mind – of course he is handsome. And as to being good, a young man who is a good son and a good brother makes a good husband – if he gets the wife he wants. If not, it does not follow. I am sorry for that poor boy – truly sorry for him!" she added, with a sigh.

Bianca pushed away a French history book and became suddenly more interested.

"Why, mademoiselle?" she asked.

Mademoiselle Durand pursed up her lips.

"Because I fear that he will certainly be very unhappy. Enfin, he is very unhappy, so there is no more to be said."

"He did not look it when I saw him," observed Bianca, tranquilly.

Mademoiselle Durand glanced at her. Like Princess Montefiano, she was never quite sure how much might be concealed beneath Bianca's quiet manner. But, like most of her race, she was quick to seize a point in conversation and use it to advance her own argument.

"Of course he did not look it – when you saw him," she repeated, "or when he saw you," she added, significantly.

Bianca knitted her brows. "If he is unhappy," she said, "and I am very sorry he should be unhappy – I do not see how a person he does not know can make him less so."

"That," said Mademoiselle Durand, "all depends on who the person is. It is certainly very sad – poor young man!" and she sighed again.

"I suppose," Bianca said, thoughtfully, "that he is in love with somebody – somebody whom he cannot marry."

"Yes," returned Mademoiselle Durand, dryly, "he is in love with somebody. He could marry her, perhaps – "

"Then why doesn't he?" Bianca asked, practically.

Mademoiselle Durand was a little taken aback at the abruptness of the question.

"I will tell you," she replied, after hesitating for a moment or two. "He has no opportunity of seeing the girl, except sometimes as she is driving in her carriage, or well, in church. By-the-way, I believe he first saw her in a church, and fell in love with her. That was odd, was it not? But what is the use of seeing people if you can never speak to them?"

"He could speak to her parents," said Bianca, who apparently knew what was proper under such circumstances.

Mademoiselle Durand shrugged her shoulders.

"Scarcely," she said, "since they are in heaven. Besides, he would not be allowed to ask for this girl's hand in any case. She is like you, of noble birth; and, like you again, she is rich. Those about her, I dare say, are not very anxious that she should marry at all. It is possible."

Bianca Acorari did not speak for a few moments. At length she said, slowly: "I wonder what you would do, mademoiselle, if you knew somebody was in love with you, and you were not allowed to see or speak to that person?"

Mademoiselle Durand looked at her critically.

"It entirely depends," she replied.

"And upon what?"

"Upon what? Oh, upon something very simple. It would depend upon whether I were in love with him."

"I don't think it is at all simple," observed Bianca. "How would you know if you were in love with him or not?"

Mademoiselle Durand laughed outright. Then she became suddenly grave. "Well," she replied, after hesitating a moment, "I will tell you. If I thought I did not know – if I were not sure – I should say to myself: 'Marie, you are in love. Why? Because, if you are not, you would be sure of the fact – oh, quite sure!'"

"And supposing you were in love with him?" demanded Bianca. She looked beyond Mademoiselle Durand as she spoke.

"Ah – if I were, then – well, then I should leave the rest to him to manage. Between ourselves, I believe that to be what is troubling the poor young Rossano. He does not know if the girl he loves has any idea that he does so, and still less if she could ever return his love. It is very sad. If I were that girl, I should certainly find some means of letting him know that I cared for him – "

"But you say she cannot – that she would never be allowed – "

Mademoiselle Durand sang the first few bars of the habanera in "Carmen" to herself. "When two people are in love," she observed, "they do not always stop to think of what is allowed. But, if you please, Donna Bianca, we will go on with our history – I mean, our French history, not that of Monsieur Silvio Rossano," and Mademoiselle Durand suddenly reassumed her professional demeanor.

It was of this little interlude in her morning's studies that Bianca Acorari was meditating as she sat waiting for the hour when she would have to accompany her step-mother in her afternoon drive. She wished that Mademoiselle Durand would have been more communicative. It was certainly interesting to hear about Giacinta Rossano's brother. Silvio! Yes, it was a nice name, decidedly – and somehow, she thought, it suited its owner. It must be an odd sensation – that of being in love. Perhaps one always saw in the imagination the person one was in love with. One saw a well-built figure and a sun-tanned face with dark, curling hair clustering over a broad brow, and a pair of dark-blue eyes that looked – but, how they looked! as though asking a perpetual question… How pleasant it would be there in the gardens of Villa Acorari! – so quiet and cool in the deep shade of the ilex-trees, with the sound of the water falling from the fountains. But it was a little dull to be alone – always alone. What a difference if she had had a brother, as Giacinta Rossano had. He would have wandered about with her sometimes, perhaps, in these gardens … and he and she would have sat and talked together by the fountains where the water was always making a soft music of its own. What was the story she had heard the people tell of some heathen god of long ago who haunted the ilex grove? How still it was – and how the water murmured always … and the eyes looked at her, always with that question in their blue depths – and the graceful head with its short, close curls bent towards her … the god, of course – they said he often came – and how his sweet curved lips smiled at her as he stood in that chequered ray of sunlight slanting through the heavy foliage overhead…

And with a little sigh Bianca passed from dreaming into sleep; her face, with its crown of tawny gold hair, thrown into sharp relief by the red damask cushions of the chair on which she was sitting, and her lips parted in a slight smile.

VII

"Bianca is certainly a strange child," the Princess Montefiano was saying. "I confess I do not understand her; but then, I never did understand children."

Baron d'Antin looked at his sister, and then he smiled a little satirically.

"After all," he replied, "the fact is not surprising. You married too late in your life – or, shall we say, too late in your husband's life – but it does not matter! No, Bianca is decidedly not like other girls of her age, in certain ways. But I think, Jeanne, that you make a mistake in regarding her as a child. She seems to me to be a fairly well-developed young woman."

"Physically so, perhaps," returned the princess.

Her brother smiled again – not a very pleasant smile. Monsieur d'Antin was scarcely middle-aged, being a good many years younger than his sister. He was tall for a Belgian, and tolerably handsome, with well-cut, regular features, and iron-gray hair as yet fairly plentiful. But he was a man who looked as though he had "lived." His eyes had a worn, faded expression, which every now and then turned to a hard glitter when they became animated; and his small, well-shaped hands were apt to move restlessly, as though their owner's nerves were not always in the best of order.

"Physically?" he repeated. "Precisely, my dear Jeanne. Physically, your step-daughter is – well, no longer a child, we will suppose. Some young man will probably suppose the same thing one of these days; and he will presumably not wish to confine himself to suppositions," and Monsieur d'Antin blinked his eyes interrogatively at his sister.

During the last couple of years, Baron d'Antin had abandoned Brussels and Paris, where he had hitherto passed the greater part of his time, for Rome. He had certainly not chosen Rome as a place of residence on account of its worldly attractions, and its other claims to interest did not particularly appeal to him. As a matter of fact, Monsieur d'Antin found Rome exceedingly dull, as a city. It is, indeed, scarcely the capital that a man of pleasure would elect to live in. Now Monsieur d'Antin had certainly been a man of pleasure while his constitution and years had allowed him to be so, and he still liked amusing himself and being amused. Unfortunately, however, when necessity obliged him to pursue other pastimes with greater moderation, he had given way more and more to a passion for gambling, and he had left the larger portion of his patrimony in clubs, both in his own capital, in Paris, and in Nice. It was not unnatural, perhaps, that, on financial disaster overtaking him, he should have remembered his sister, the Princess of Montefiano, and have been seized with a desire to pass a season or two in Rome; and it had never, somehow or other, been quite convenient to return to Belgium or to Paris since.

He had come to Rome, he told his acquaintances, to economize; which, in plainer language, meant to say that he had come there to live upon his sister. The princess, indeed, was not unconscious of the fact; but her brother carried out his intention with such unfailing tact and consideration that she had no excuse for resenting it.

Monsieur d'Antin did not often invade the austere seclusion of Palazzo Acorari. It would, no doubt, have been more economical to breakfast and dine at his sister's table, when not bidden elsewhere, than to eat at a restaurant or club. But Monsieur d'Antin liked to be independent; and, moreover, the pious atmosphere of Palazzo Acorari did not at all appeal to him.

His sister bored him, and her entourage bored him still more. It was infinitely more convenient every now and then to borrow sums of money from her to meet current expenses, on the tacit understanding that such loans would never be repaid, than to take up his abode in Palazzo Acorari, as the princess had at first more than once suggested he should do.

Monsieur d'Antin was an egoist, pure and simple, but he could be a very agreeable egoist – so long as he was supplied with all he wanted. Fortunately, perhaps, for his popularity, his egoism was tempered by an almost imperturbable good-humor, which, as a rule, prevented it from ruffling the nerves of others.

There are some men, and a great many women, who invariably succeed in obtaining what they want out of daily life. Their needs are trifling, possibly, but then life is made up of trifles – if one chooses to live only for the present. But to be a really successful egoist, it is necessary at all events to acquire a reputation for good-humor.

Monsieur d'Antin had acquired this reputation in Rome, as he had acquired it elsewhere; and he was shrewd enough to make it one of his most useful possessions. Indeed, it was almost a pleasure to lose money to Monsieur d'Antin at cards, or to place at his disposal any convenience of which he might momentarily be in need, such was his invariable bonhomie in society. He had very soon made a place for himself in the Roman world, and in this it must be confessed that he had shown remarkable ingenuity. Had he arrived in the Eternal City possessed of ready money, it would have made no difference whether he was a Belgian gentleman or an English or American "bounder," for all Rome would have willingly allowed him to entertain it at the Grand Hotel or elsewhere, provided he got the right society women to "run him." But Baron d'Antin had arrived in Rome with no reputation at all, beyond that of being an elderly viveur who happened to be the brother of the Principessa di Montefiano. He had studied his ground, however, and it had not taken him long to come to the conclusion that an unofficial foreigner, to be a social success in modern Rome, must usually be either an adventurer or a snob, and that the two almost invariably went together. Being a gentleman in his own country, albeit in somewhat straitened circumstances, Monsieur d'Antin had at first been amazed at the apparent inability of the average Romans of society to distinguish between a foreigner, man or woman, who was well-bred and one who was not. Finally, he had come to the conclusion that good-breeding was not expected from the unofficial foreigner, nor, indeed, any other of the usual passports to society – but merely a supply of ready money and a proper appreciation of the condescension on the part of the Roman nobility in allowing it to be spent on their entertainment. This, however, was not a condition of affairs that suited Monsieur d'Antin's plans. He had come to Rome not to be lived upon by the society he found there, but to make that society useful to him. That he had done so was entirely due to his own social talents, and to his apparently amiable disposition. He had no need of the Palazzo Acorari, so far as his society and his food were concerned, for there were few evenings of the week during the winter and spring that he had not a dinner invitation; and if by any chance he had no engagement for that meal, there were various methods at his disposal of supplying the deficiency.

Altogether, Baron d'Antin had become persona grata in Roman society, and in his good-humored, careless way he had deliberately laid himself out to be so, even waiving his prejudices and suppressing a certain nervous irritation which the Anglo-Saxon race generally produced in him, sufficiently to dine with its Roman members in their rented palaces.