CHAPTER XXVII
CARLO BARONI EXPLAINS
Diana sat on, very still, very silent, staring straight in front of her with wide, tearless eyes. Only now and again a long, shuddering sigh escaped her, like the caught breath of a child that has cried till it is utterly exhausted and can cry no more.
She felt that she had come to an end of things. Nothing could undo the past, and ahead of her stretched the future, empty and void of promise.
Presently the creak of the door reopening roused her, and she turned, instantly on the defensive, anticipating that Olga had come back to renew the struggle. But it was only Baroni, who approached her with a look of infinite concern on his kind old face.
"My child!" he began. "My child! . . . So, then! You know all that there is to know."
Diana looked up wearily.
"Yes," she replied. "I know it all."
The old maestro's eyes softened as they rested upon her, and when he spoke again, his queer husky voice was toned to a note of extraordinary sweetness.
"My dear pupil, if it had been possible, I would haf spared you this knowledge. It was wrong of Olga to tell you—above all"—his face creasing with anxiety as the ruling passion asserted itself irrepressibly—"to tell you on a day when you haf to sing!"
"I made her," answered Diana listlessly. She passed her hand wearily across her forehead. "Don't worry, Maestro, I shall be able to sing to-night."
"Tiens! But you are all to pieces, my child! You will drink a glass of champagne—now, at once," he insisted, adding persuasively as she shook her head, "To please me, is it not so?"
Diana's lips curved in a tired smile.
"Is champagne the cure for a heartache, then, Maestro?"
Baroni's eyes grew suddenly sad.
"Ah, my dear, only death—or a great love—can heal the wound that lies
in the heart," he answered gently. He paused, then resumed crisply:
"But, meanwhile, we haf to live—and prima donnas haf to sing.
So . . . the little glass of wine in my room, is it not?"
He tucked her arm within his, patting her hand paternally, and led her into his own sanctum, where he settled her comfortably in a big easy-chair beside the fire, and poured her out a glass of wine, watching her sip it with a glow of satisfaction in his eyes.
"That goes better, hein? This Olga—she had not reflected sufficiently. It was too late for the truth to do good; it could only pain and grieve you."
"Yes," said Diana. "It is too late now. . . . I've paid for my ignorance with my happiness—and Max's," she added in a lower tone. She looked across at Baroni with sudden resentment. "And you—you knew!" she continued. "Why didn't you tell me? . . . Oh, but I can guess!"—scornfully. "It suited your purpose for me to quarrel with my husband; it brought me back to the concert platform. My happiness counted for nothing—against that!"
Baroni regarded her patiently.
"And do you regret it? Would you be willing, now, to give up your career as a prima donna—and all that it means?"
A vision rose up before Diana of what life would be denuded of the glamour and excitement, the perpetual triumphs, the thrilling sense of power her singing gave her—the dull, flat monotony of it, and she caught her breath sharply in instinctive recoil.
"No," she admitted slowly. "I couldn't give it up—now."
An odd look of satisfaction overspread Baroni's face.
"Then do not blame me, my child. For haf I not given you a consolation for the troubles of life."
"I need never have had those troubles to bear if you had been frank with me!" she flashed back. "You—you were not bound by any oath of secrecy. Oh! It was cruel of you, Maestro!"
Her eyes, bitterly accusing, searched his face.
"Tchut! Tchut! But you are too quick to think evil of your old maestro." He hesitated, then went on slowly: "It is a long story, my dear—and sometimes a very sad story. I did not think it would pass my lips again in this world. But for you, who are so dear to me, I will break the silence of years. . . . Listen, then. When you, my little Pepperpot, had not yet come to earth to torment your parents, but were still just a tiny thought in the corner of God's mind, I—your old Baroni—I was in Ruvania."
"You—in Ruvania?"
He nodded.
"Yes. I went there first as a professor of singing at the Borovnitz Conservatoire—per Bacco! But they haf the very soul of music, those Ruvanians! And I was appointed to attend also at the palace to give lessons to the Grand Duchess. Her voice was only a little less beautiful than your own." He hesitated, as though he found it difficult to continue. At last he said almost shyly: "Thou, my child, thou hast known love. . . . To me, too, at the palace, came that best gift of the good God."
He paused, and Diana whispered stammeringly:
"Not—not the Grand Duchess?"
"Yes—Sonia." The old maestro's eyes kindled with a soft luminance as his whispering voice caressed the little flame. "Hers, of course, had been merely a marriage dictated by reasons of State, and from the time of our first meeting, our hearts were in each other's keeping. But she never failed in duty or in loyalty. Only once, when I was leaving Ruvania, never to return, did she give me her lips at parting." Again he fell silent, his thoughts straying back across the years between to that day when he had taken farewell of the woman who had held his very soul between her hands. Presently, with an effort, he resumed his story. "I stayed at the Ruvanian Court many years—there was a post of Court musician which I filled—and for both of us those years held much of sadness. The Grand Duke Anton was a domineering man, hated by every one, and his wife's happiness counted for nothing with him. She had failed to give him a son, and for that he never pardoned her. I think my presence comforted her a little. That—and the child—the little Nadine. . . . As much as Anton was disliked, so much was his brother Boris beloved of the people. His story you know. Of this I am sure—that he lived and died without once regretting the step he had taken in marrying an Englishwoman. They were lovers to the end, those two."
Listening to the little history of those two tender love tales that had run their course side by side, Diana almost forgot for a moment how the ripples of their influence, flowing out in ever-widening circles, had touched, at last, even her own life, and had engulfed her happiness.
But, as Baroni ceased, the recollection of her own bitter share in the matter returned with overwhelming force, and once more she arraigned him for his silence.
"I still see no reason why you should not have told me the truth about
Adrienne—about Nadine Mazaroff. Max couldn't—I see that; nor Olga.
But you were bound by no oath."
"My child, I was bound by something stronger than an oath."
The old man crossed the room to where there stood on a shelf a little ebony cabinet, clamped with dull silver of foreign workmanship. He unlocked it, and withdrew from it a letter, the paper faintly yellowed and brittle with the passage of time.
He held it out to Diana.
"No eyes but mine haf ever rested on it since it was given into my hand after her death," he said very gently. "But you, my child, you shall read it; you are hurt and unhappy, battering against fate, and believing that those who love you haf served you ill. But we were all bound in different ways. . . . Read the letter, little one, and thou wilt see that I, too, was not free."
Hesitatingly Diana unfolded the thin sheet and read the few faded lines it contained.
"CARLO MIO,
"I think the end is coming for Anton and for me. The revolt of the people is beyond all quelling. My only fear is for Nadine; my only hope for her ultimate safety lies in Max. If ever, in the time to come, your silence or your speech can do aught for my child—in the name of the love you gave me, I beg it of you. In serving her, you will be serving me.
"SONIA."
Very slowly Diana handed the letter back to Baroni.
"So—that was why," she whispered.
Baroni bent his head.
"That was why. I could not speak. But I did all that lay in my power to prevent this marriage of yours."
"You did." A wan little smile tilted the corners of her mouth at the remembrance.
"Afterwards—your happiness was on the knees of the gods!"
"No," said Diana suddenly. "No. It was in my own hands. Had I believed in Max we should have been happy still. . . . But I failed him."
A long silence followed. At last she rose, holding out her hands.
"Thank you," she said simply. "Thank you for showing me the letter."
Baroni stooped his head and carried her hands to his lips.
"My dear, we make our mistakes and then we pay. It is always so in life. Love"—and the odd, clouded voice shook a little—"Love brings—great happiness—and great pain. Yet we would not be without it."