“And I have my dear Carlotta,” said I.
I drew my chair near her, and gradually I learned all the unhappy story.
Pasquale had made love to her from the very first minute of their acquaintance—even while I was hunting for the L’Histoire Comique de Francion. He had met her many times unknown to me. They had corresponded, her letters being addressed to a little stationer’s shop close by. She did not love him. Of that I have an absolute conviction. But he was young, he was handsome, he had the libertine’s air and manner. She was docile. And she was ever positively truthful. If I had questioned her she would have confessed frankly. But I never questioned, as I never suspected. I wondered sometimes at her readiness in quoting him. I noticed odd coincidences; but I was too ineffectual to draw inferences from phenomena. His appearance on the Paddington platform was prearranged; his duchessa at Ealing a myth.
Apparently he had dallied with his fancy. The fruit was his any day for the plucking. Perhaps a rudimentary sentiment of loyalty towards me restrained him. Who can tell? The night of our meeting with Hamdi brought the crisis. The Turk’s threats had alarmed both Carlotta and myself. It was necessary for him to strike at once. He saw her the next day—would to heaven I had remained at home!—told her I was marrying her to save her from Hamdi. I loved the other woman. He would save her equally well from Hamdi. The other woman met her soon after parting from Pasquale and besought her to give me up. She did not know what to do. Poor child, how should she have known? On the previous evening I had told her she was to marry me. She was ready to obey. She went to bed thinking that she was to marry me. In the morning she went for her music lesson. Pasquale was waiting for her. They walked for some distance down the road. He hailed a cab and drove away with her.
“He said he loved me,” said Carlotta, “and he kissed me, and he told me I must go away with him to Paris and marry him. And I felt all weak, like that—” she dropped her arms helplessly in an expressive gesture, “and so what could I do?”
“Didn’t you think, Carlotta, that I might be sorry—perhaps unhappy?” I asked as gently as I could.
“He said you would be quite happy with the other woman.”
“Did you believe him?”
“That’s why I said I have been very wicked,” Carlotta answered, simply.
She went on with her story—an old, miserable, detestable, execrable story. At first all went merrily. Then she fell ill in Paris. It was her first acquaintance with the northern winter. Her throat proved to be delicate and she was laid up with bronchitis. To men of Pasquale’s type, a woman ill is of no more use than a spavined horse or a broken-down motor-car. More than that, she becomes an infernal nuisance. It was in his temperament to perform sporadic acts of fantastic chivalry. It appealed to something romantic, theatrical, in his facile nature. But to devote himself to a woman in sickness—that was different. The fifteenth century Italian hated like the devil continued association with pain. He would have thrown his boots to a beggar, but he would have danced in his palace over the dungeons where his brother rotted in obscurity.