“There were seven, built by Giovanni Fontana.”
“I loved them. The stone was so old and rose-colored with green and violet streaking it. On the side towards the road it was so bare and forbidding, and on our side it was all beauty and lavishness as if it could not give us too much, of its bounty. There was no entrance, you remember, Maria, there by the road, and I used to follow the wall around the garden trying to see how you ever went out through it. And Assunta told me, I suppose to keep me satisfied, that no one had ever found the way over the wall excepting my mother—”
“Ah, the blind, cackling pullet. If I had known—” Maria nodded her head with relish. “She was selling melons in Mondragone when your mother lived.”
“And when I asked her how my mother ever climbed the wall”—Carlota’s eyes closed and opened again with dreamy ecstasy—“she told me she escaped with the wings of love. After that—don’t scold, dear, I love to talk to you about it, and there is no one else now—after that I loved the wall better than all the gardens and the fountains and the grottoes even. Won’t you tell me what Jacobelli meant, now? What meaning did he put into it all, the wall and the unhappiness of my grandmother and the tragedy of it all?”
Maria Roma was silent for some time. Slowly she reached for a cigarette and lighted it, drawing deeply on it as she stared upward at the ceiling.
“I have waited for this,” she said finally, with a sigh of resignation. “Some day I knew you would ask me, and out of all the world, I would rather tell you, because I will discriminate between what you should know and what is best buried in that old garden tomb. Wait.” She pushed away Carlota’s reaching arms. “See what I have saved for you out of the past.”
Impulsively she rose and crossed to the end of the studio. Hidden here behind old strips of tapestry and mediæval embroidery were old locked chests which had been brought from Italy with all the care the dower treasures of a princess might have commanded. Carlota had never even guessed at their contents. If she had given the matter a thought at all, she had believed them filled with little household keepsakes, linen, silver, bric-à-brac which Maria had managed to save for her.
Now she stood in amazement as the old singer lifted out costume after costume from the chests, stage raiment and festive gowns of thirty and forty years before. From carved and inlaid boxes she drew out gems and decorations that had been lavished on the great diva and laid them before Carlota, forgetting in the pride of the moment the discretion of silence regarding the romance of genius. The girl’s eyes widened with glowing wonder and delight as she fingered the old treasures, listening to Maria’s vivid, picturesque recital of the reign of Margherita Paoli.
“She was taller than you, cara mia, majestic, a queen in carriage and expression. She never wore other hair than her own. It was golden bronze and hung in ripples to her knees. I have woven it in Marguerita’s plaits with these strands of pearls, and coiled it high into Fedora’s crown with this diamond and ruby tiara. The necklace is here, too.” She piled the contents of the cases eagerly until she found it. “Rubies and diamonds. They came from the crown jewels of Roumania, a part of the Constantinople loot centuries ago. The crown prince was exiled to a mountain garrison in the Caucasus for two years after he gave them to her, but he never told where they were. This center ruby in the tiara is from Persia, one of the finest in the world. Some day you shall wear them. They will suit you as they did her. And this—ah, my child, you should have seen her wearing this in ‘Semiramide.’” She lifted out a heavy barbaric stomacher encrusted in rough, uncut jewels. “This was given to her by the Rajah of Kadurstan. He tried to kill himself after the performance one night in Paris when she refused to see him. This necklace of opals and emeralds was from the Grand Duke of Teklahava. It had been part of the Byzantine loot in the days of Ivan the Terrible. Ah, but, Carlota, behold, this was ever about her throat, the medallion hidden in her breast from all eyes. Never will I forget the night when Tennant gave it to her. The king had given a farewell banquet for her. She was decorated and fêted as never any other singer was. And after it was over, I saw the two as they stood out in the moonlit loggia of the palace, and he clasped this about her white throat. His portrait is in the medallion. There is a secret spring—wait—so it opens. Was he not a worthy lover for her?”
Carlota looked long at the pictured face in the old gold and crystal case. It was old-fashioned in style. The hair was worn long and curled back thickly from his forehead. It was the head of an enthusiast, boyish, too, in its eager intensity, passionate, unsatisfied.