Chapter Thirty One
Fiori d’Arancio
Nearly a year had gone by.
The strange suicide of an Italian at the Hotel Victoria had been regarded merely as a tragic incident by readers of newspapers, for no word of the motive which led Nenci to take his life had been allowed to leak out.
To the public, the death of Vittorina still remains one of London’s many mysteries.
In the few brief months that had elapsed, peace, calm and complete, had come to Gemma and to Charles Armytage; for one morning, in the dimly lit old Church of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, and afterwards at the Office of the British Consul-General in the Via Tornabuoni, they had been made man and wife. Then, for nearly six months, they had travelled in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, subsequently spending the winter in a furnished villa high up on the olive-clad hill behind Cimiez, where they were visited by Captain Tristram and Carmenilla, who, too, had married, and were spending their honeymoon on the Riviera. At last, when Carnival had come and gone, the season waned, and Nice and Cannes were emptying, they, too, left and returned to the great old Palazza Funaro in Florence.
They had dined tête-à-tête one evening, had strolled arm in arm through these great silent chambers which seemed to speak mutely of the gorgeous pageantry in the days when the Medici had ruled Florence, and entered the room furnished in modern style – the same in which he had a year ago pledged his belief in her.
After the man resplendent in the Funaro livery had brought their coffee, Gemma seated herself upon the settee beside her husband, and, taking up her mandolino, commenced to sing that sweet old Tuscan song he loved so well, which has for its chorus —
“O bello mio adorabile
Svenire in se mi par
Vorrei fuggirti rapida,
Non so come mi far!”
When she had finished, she was silent, as if in hesitation; then, with her clear eyes fixed upon his, exclaimed, in very good English —
“You have trusted me blindly, completely, Nino. You married me in face of all the vile libels which spread from mouth to mouth; yet only to-night am I free to tell you the truth. My story is a strange – a very strange one. Would you like to hear it?”
“Of course, dearest,” he cried eagerly. “You know for months I have longed to know the truth.”
“Then you shall know. I will tell you everything,” she answered. “When I returned here fresh from the convent-school, with unformed girlish ideas, I fancied that the King had slighted my family, one of the oldest in Tuscany, and, finding myself possessor of this place and my father’s fortune, became imbued with a deep, implacable hatred of the monarchy. I lived here with a maiden aunt, took sides with the Republicans, and was induced to secretly join a league of desperate malefactors who had in view the establishment of the long-dreamed-of republic in Italy. In my youthful ignorance, I knew nothing of the means by which they intended to accomplish their object, for their action seemed confined in daubing in black paint upon the walls and pavements of the principal cities such as ‘Down with the royal robbers! Long live the Republic!’ In every town where elections took place the ominous writing on the wall appeared, but the authorities were never able to detect its mysterious authors. With old Lady Marshfield, whose eccentric support of all sorts of wild schemes is well known, and who lived in Florence at that time, I joined this secret league at a meeting held in a house on the Passeggio in Livorno, only a few doors from where I lived when we spent so many sunny hours together. A month later, however, at a reception one night at the British Embassy at Rome, I found myself chatting with the Marquis Montelupo, His Majesty’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. Having obtained my sanction, he next day called upon me; but his attitude had changed, for he accused me of being one of the ringleaders of this mysterious gang, and declared that he would order my arrest if I did not consent to become a spy in the service of the Ministry. He saw, I suppose, that I was young, attractive, and could possibly obtain knowledge of certain secrets which would be of use to him. In vain I pleaded, even upon my knees, but he was obdurate. He intended, he said, to stamp anarchism out of Italy, and told me that to avoid imprisonment and disgrace I must furnish complete reports of the intentions and doings of my associates. At last – well, at last I was forced to consent.”
“You became a spy?”
“Yes,” she answered hoarsely. “I became a mean, despicable traitor, a wretched, soul-tortured woman, whose denunciations caused the arrest and imprisonment of the more dangerous members of the gang, while at the same time, moving in the diplomatic circle in Rome, I furnished constant reports to Montelupo of the feeling existing towards Italy. Friendless and helpless, I became that man’s catspaw. He held me for life or death. He spread reports about me, vile scandals which caused respectable people to shun me, but increased my popularity among the faster set in Rome and Florence, to whom I became known as the Contessa Funaro although I was unmarried. When I protested, he merely laughed in my face, saying that he had done so for political reasons, because it had got abroad that I was in the pay of the Ministry, and if I showed myself to be a gay, heartless woman, instead of a patrician diplomatist, this rumour might be refuted.
“So, compelled to suffer this indignity in silence, and maintain the ignominious part he had allotted to me, I went to Livorno under the assumed name of Fanetti, and attended the constant meetings of the league which were taking place there. Was it any wonder that I should, under such circumstances, actually become an Anarchist? Among the members of this band of secret assassins – an offshoot of the dreaded Mafia – was a girl named Vittorina Rinaldo, who, having ascertained by some means that Nenci and Malvano, then in England, had misappropriated the greater part of the funds of the league, resolved to travel to London and denounce them. This she did, being accompanied thither by Captain Tristram, who had been induced to join us by Lady Marshfield, and, I suppose, with some vague hope that the knowledge thus acquired might be of service to the British Foreign Office. Vittorina and myself had taken the oath at the same meeting of the league, and had on that night received from Nenci, the leader, rings of exactly similar pattern – ‘marriage rings,’ he laughingly termed them. Well, you are aware of that scoundrel’s devilish ingenuity. It was he who had made those rings so that by a mere pressure of his hand upon the ring the poison was injected, and the girl’s life taken. You know how cleverly circumstantial evidence was fastened upon her friend. From recent inquiries, I have discovered that Vittorina’s relations on her mother’s side were English, and had a villa up at Como, and that Major Maitland, having a couple of years before appropriated a large sum of money belonging to her, was no doubt an accessory to her death, for he has never been heard of since the night of the crime. Remember that his photograph was found among her possessions, and that he was no doubt with Nenci awaiting her arrival that night at Charing Cross.”
“There seems to be little doubt, from the fact that Nenci gave you a similar ring, that he intended you should share the same fate as Vittorina,” her husband observed, marvelling at her story.
“Certainly he did,” she answered. “Time after time I strove to free myself, from the fetters ever galling me and driving me to desperation, but Montelupo was always inexorable. He loved Vittorina, I afterwards discovered, for it was he who had written that mysterious letter signed ‘Egisto,’ and he was determined to avenge her murderer. Like ourselves he was utterly unaware of the identity of the assassin. Now, however, that you have supplied the information wanting, and the culprit has paid the penalty; now that Malvano, the man who so cleverly acted as secret agent of the Embassy in London, while the same moment he was plotting against the State, and his cunning companion, Romanelli, have been arrested, tried at Rome, and will spend the remainder of their lives in imprisonment on Elba, my master has given me my freedom. I am free to love you, Nino.”
“But the little marble image?” he said. “Why was that deadly thing so ingeniously contrived?”
“In order to strike a blow which was intended should paralyse the monarchy and cause a revolution in Italy,” she answered quickly. “In the blue boudoir in the Quirinal, on a sideboard behind the Queen’s private writing-table, there stands a tiny but exactly similar bust. In collusion with one of the royal servants, it was proposed to exchange this image for one invented by Nenci and Malvano, so that when His Majesty joined the Queen one night after dinner, both would be blown into eternity.”
“Then, by your efforts, and by the imminent risks you ran among that desperate gang, you averted the terrible catastrophe – you, indeed, saved Italy.”
“I suppose I did,” she said. “At that time political feeling ran high, and such a blow at the monarchy would have undoubtedly given the Republicans and Anarchists the upper hand. But I do not now regret,” she added, a look of supreme happiness lighting up her beautiful countenance – “I do not regret, Nino, because I have secured your true honest love.”
“I believe in your honesty, darling, for I know how terribly you have suffered,” he exclaimed, drawing her closer to him, until her head fell upon his shoulder. “Those who now seek to besmirch your good name shall answer to me.”
Their hands clasped, their eyes exchanged a love-look long, deep, and intense. Then her eager lips met his in one fierce passionate kiss.
“The years of my bondage are like some half-remembered hideous nightmare, Nino,” she murmured, still gazing full into his eyes. “But it is all finished, for you, my husband, true, patient, and forbearing placed in my hand a weapon against my enemies; you brought back to me a renewed desire for life and its pleasures; and you gave me deliverance from the evil that encompassed me. Truly a perfect peace is ours, for the dark Day of Temptation has waned, and has given place to a bright and blissful dawn.”