The Princess Galva: A Romance

by David Whitelaw

CHAPTER XV

EDWARD SHOOTS AN ARROW INTO THE AIR

In a state of the deepest dejection Edward Povey listened to the story. At times during its recital he would raise his head and look at Gaspar Mozara. The lieutenant, when Edward's head was bent again, eyed his hearer narrowly.

He had told his tale well—circumstantially and yet with the feeling that Anna Paluda, who, sitting rigidly in her chair, never once removed her doubting eyes from his face, did not believe a word he was saying. He found it increasingly difficult to marshal his facts under the fire of those steady watching eyes. Hitherto, this grim lady in black had held no importance for him, but now, as he looked at her and felt her presence, she took on a new individuality. To Mozara it seemed as though an unconsidered pawn belonging to an opponent had crept unobserved up the chess-board of his plans and had become suddenly a force to be reckoned with.

The lieutenant was between two stools. He had told his tale, and was now anxious to be gone, but he felt that no sooner did he leave, so surely some piece of evidence, some vital point in the scheme would occur to him as having been left unsaid.

He had made his way to the little villa as soon as the third-rate medical man, whom Dasso had pressed into the plot, had given the lieutenant permission to get up, a sorrowful figure in deep mourning. His right arm was suspended in a sling of black silk and was tightly swathed in surgical bandages. He had sunk in well-simulated exhaustion into the big chintz-covered arm-chair in the drawing-room facing the sea, and had laid an ebony crutch beside him on the carpet. One leg had been carefully stretched out stiffly before him.

Edward, all unsuspecting, had assisted him in his movements and had opened the windows, letting in the bracing breeze that blew up from the bay. Anna Paluda, however, had merely inclined her head. When the lieutenant entered she had felt only a dull anger against the author of her poor Galva's death. It was only as his story progressed that she grew to doubt the truth of what she was listening to. Gaspar had begun with well-acted expressions of sympathy and with carefully considered phrases of self-condemnation. He told them that the blame of the accident had been entirely his in agreeing to Miss Baxendale's demands for increased speed. The road was one on which he had seldom travelled and they had rounded the spur of the hillside before he was aware of their danger. He had applied the brakes and turned the wheel to keep in the middle of the narrow road but the impetus had been too great. There had been a hideous skid as the car crashed almost broadside into the old and crumbling wall.

The lieutenant had remembered no more until he had come to his senses to find that he was being carried along on some kind of rough litter. The pain and the jolting had caused him again to lose consciousness, and when next he awoke he was in his uncle's house.

There had been no questions from his hearers. Anna had sat rigidly as before, and Edward, his head between his hands, rocked himself gently to and fro. From time to time he gave a little moan.

Gaspar had fixed his eyes on the centre of a rose pattern in the carpet, and had resumed his tale in a low, hopeless voice.

"My first thoughts were of Miss Baxendale and of how she had fared. For two days they would tell me nothing except that she was slightly hurt. I only heard yesterday the true state of affairs, how her cloak and hat had been found in the ravine near the Wrecked car. The river, they tell me, is deep here and weed-grown and there are great rocky holes. I——"

The lieutenant had risen with a choking sound in his throat as he recited these details. He leant heavily on his crutch, standing before Anna and Edward.

"This is as painful to me—as to you. I—I—can say no more." He advanced to the little bowed figure before him and held out a hesitating left hand.

"I would like to hear you say one word, sir. This affair will be with me to the day of my death. I am beyond the reach of Miss Baxendale's pardon, but not of yours. You will perhaps be leaving San Pietro and I would like a word to remember and look back on. It would be one spot of brightness in the darkness of my future."

Edward had taken the proffered hand and the lieutenant had bent low over it, pressing it to his lips. Then he turned for the harder task of facing Anna Paluda. But that lady had taken advantage of his back being turned to slip unnoticed away. Gaspar's relief at being spared the leave-taking was mixed with a disquieting feeling of a pending misfortune. He told himself that it would be long before he could forget the eyes of the lady in black.

Painfully, and with dragging step, Mozara left the house and made his way down the path to the boulevard. The fiacre which had been waiting for him was drawn up at the curb, and into it the wounded officer was helped by the driver, who, mounting his box, turned his horse and drove off in the direction of the Old Town.

Edward had sat where his visitor had left him, the prey to the most poignant sorrow and agony of mind. To his own rash and criminal act in personating another man all this tragedy was due. Although he had, at times, told himself that Miranda would not be seated upon a throne without some opposition, he had never imagined that danger threatened the girl herself. She was so beautiful and tender-hearted, so delightfully modern, that the idea of her being the centre of a plot of scheming scoundrels had barely occurred to him. That an accident should have been the cause of her death was a stunning blow to the little man who sat in the sunlit drawing-room, gazing blankly at the wall before him.

He rose at last with a sigh, and passed out through the French windows on to the balcony. Below him rolled the carriages and motors of the fashionable world of Corbo; from the smart café a little up the boulevard came the sound of strings of a gipsy orchestra and the laughter and chatter of the crowd of loungers who were taking their absinthe. Edward told himself that in the whole of San Pietro there was no house afflicted as was Venta Villa. The flowering shrubs on the balcony on which he stood, the gaudy red-striped awning over his head seemed to mock him, and he turned from the gay scene with a little sob. It was then that he saw Anna Paluda. She was sitting in a low wicker chair, and like him had been gazing out upon the boulevard and on to the blue of the bay beyond.

She beckoned Edward to come to her side, and standing there, one hand resting on the little iron railing, he listened while the lady told him of her disbelief in no undecided voice.

Edward's expression changed as he drank in her words, and the hand on the railing tightened its hold till the knuckles showed white patches of skin. The suggestion of doubt on what he had looked upon as an accepted tragedy was acting as balm upon his spirits, and all the hidden power of his brain was responding to the call and demanding action—deeds.

"And you say you watched him?"

"Yes, from this balcony. As he was getting into the cab, the driver who was helping him stumbled a little. I distinctly saw Señor Mozara put out his right hand and grasp the back of the hood. I had doubted before in my own mind, but this is certain. The lieutenant's right arm is as sound as his left, for all his surgical bandages. Again, why should so important a personage as the nephew of Señor Luazo call in the services of an unknown medical man, instead of the family practitioner?"

The lady paused for a moment, then went on fiercely—

"Oh! I can see it all now. Dasso, the cursed regicide, is at the bottom of this. I, who have suspected the man, have watched his friends. I have seen meaning looks, glances pass from evil eye to evil eye. Mr. Sydney—you will understand that I, too, have a quarrel with Dasso. The hand that struck down Queen Elene struck down my child—the baby at whose tomb I, her mother, have to sorrow in secret——"

Edward laid a hand lightly on the weeping woman's shoulder.

"And my sorrow, Anna, my anguish! Have you thought of that, of what it means to me, who have indirectly brought Miranda to this?"

Anna took his hand between both of hers and looked up at him through her tears.

"You have been kindness itself, Mr. Sydney. You had your duty to Mr. Baxendale and you have done it nobly."

The man turned away and thought of Kyser. Anna's trust in his integrity was almost too much for him to bear. Rapidly the little devils of pro and con invaded his conscience. Then and there he registered a silent vow that come what might he would go through with it. There was no turning back now; he would not add cowardice to his crime. If Miranda were still in the land of the living, his would be the hand that would save her and deal vengeance where it was due. He hoped that, if need be, he might die in the doing. He went into his bedroom and took from his trunk a leather writing-case, and from one of its pockets a letter. It had been handed to him as they left the hotel in Paris, and was from the Duc de Choleaux Lasuer. He had laughed as he read it and put it away in his case. Now he read it with all seriousness. It was merely a short note, in which the writer had set down boyishly his admiration for Miss Baxendale. He had heroically demanded that should that lady ever be in trouble, he should be called upon to come to her assistance. A letter addressed under cover to M. de Brea, the manager of the hotel, would always find the duke.

It was a letter breathing the spirit of knight errantry, such a letter as a love-sick boy of twenty would write. And yet, as Edward read the words under the changed conditions, they seemed to hold a deal of truth and manliness. The duke was a high-spirited young man, a little addicted, as Edward had seen, to the vices of his class, but he had liked and admired him in many ways.

There could be no harm, he told himself, in writing to him. Perhaps his grace had already forgotten that he had written such a letter; but Edward rather thought otherwise.

That evening after dinner he took a letter out and posted it himself. The outer envelope was addressed to—

M. de Brea,
Manager,
Ruttez Hotel,
Rue Scribe, Paris;

the inner merely to—

His Grace le Duc de Choleaux Lasuer
(by the courtesy of M. de Brea).