Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Vittoria’s gentle young face was undeniably sad. She did not look weary like her friend, for she was not naturally nervous; but there was something shadowy and half ethereal about her eyes and features that moved Orsino strangely. He made a civil remark to Miss Slayback, in order not to be silent, and she answered him in short, broken little sentences. Somehow the whole position seemed odd to him. All at once Miss Lizzie rose to her feet.

  ‘I knew I had forgotten something!’ she said. ‘It is the day for letters to catch the French steamer, and I have not written to Uncle Ben. I always write him a line once a week. Do you mind amusing Don Orsino, Vittoria? Just a moment, you know — I can write a letter in ten minutes.’

  And before Vittoria could answer, she was gone, talking as she went, and not looking back. As the door closed after her, Orsino was beside Vittoria, with both her hands hidden in his and looking into her face. She met his eyes for a moment, and her head sank on his breast, as though she were very tired.

  ‘It is not meant to be, love,’ she said, and he could but just hear the words.

  ‘It shall be, whether it is meant or not,’ he answered, bending down to her little ear.

  ‘It is all too terrible!’ She shook her head against his coat, hiding her face. ‘Nothing but death, death, everywhere — my poor brothers — one after the other.’ She roused herself and laid her hands upon his shoulders, looking up suddenly into his face with wide, searching eyes. ‘Tell me that Ippolito did not kill him!’ she begged. ‘Tell me that it is not true! I shall believe you. I cannot believe myself, when I say it.’

  ‘It is not true,’ answered Orsino, earnestly. ‘I will pledge you what you will for my brother, my word of honour — everything. It is not true,’ He repeated the words slowly and emphatically.

  ‘I know it is not, when you say it.’ Her head sank upon his shoulder. ‘But it is all so terrible, so horrible! Tebaldo killed him. I know it. I knew he would, when I saw his face that night, after they had quarrelled. Tebaldo has put it upon your brother — I know it, though I do not know how it was.’

  He kissed her hair, for he could not see her face.

  ‘It is a worse crime than if Ippolito had killed him to defend himself,’ she said. ‘I feel — I do not know — but I love you so — and yet — oh, Orsino, Orsino! How will it all end?’

  She rocked herself a little, to and fro, her forehead against his coat, and her hand twisted painfully upon his, but there were no tears in her voice, for she had shed all she had in the lonely nights since she had seen him last.

  ‘It shall end in our way,’ said Orsino, in the low tone that means most with a man.

  ‘You and I? Married?’ Again she shook her head. ‘Oh no! It will be different — the end! I am not cowardly, but this is killing me. My mother—’ She lowered her voice still more, and hesitated. ‘My mother is going mad, they say.’

  Orsino wondered how fate could do more than it had done upon the Corleone.

  ‘Nothing shall take you from me,’ he said, his arms going round her and folding her to him. ‘Nothing, neither death, nor madness, nor sorrow.’

  She was silent for a moment, and the mirage of happiness rose in the mist of tears.

  ‘But it is not possible,’ she said, as the brief vision faded. ‘You know it is not possible. Ippolito did not do it — I know. There is not that to separate us. But you could not take the sister of such brothers as mine have been to be your wife. How could you? And your father, your mother — all that great family of yours — they would not have me, they would not — oh, it is impossible! Do not talk to me of it, love. It will make it harder to die.’

  ‘To die? You?’ His voice rang with life.

  Suddenly, and for the first time since he had loved her, he pressed her head gently backwards, and his lips met hers.

  She started, and a little shiver ran to her small hands, and her eyelids dropped till they closed, and still he kissed her, long and passionately. And the colour rose slowly in her cheeks when her pulse beat again, for it had stopped a moment, and then she hid the scarlet blush against his coat, and heard the heavy, mysterious beating of his heart through flesh and bone and cloth, — the strong, deep sound which no woman forgets who has heard it, and has known that it was for her.

  ‘You can make me live,’ she said softly. ‘But not without you,’ she added, drawing a deep breath between.

  ‘Together,’ he answered. ‘Always together, to the very end.’

  Then, by degrees, as the great wave of passion subsided, they talked more quietly, he with perfect confidence in the future, and she more hopefully, and they forgot Miss Lizzie and her letter, till they heard her move the handle of the door. They both started.

  ‘Does she know?’ asked Orsino, quickly.

  ‘I never told her,’ Vittoria had time to answer, before Miss Slayback could hear.

  ‘I have written such a nice long letter to Uncle Ben,’ said the young girl, airily. ‘I hope you have not bored yourselves! Not that I am very amusing myself,’ she added, pausing before a mirror, on her way along the side of the room. ‘And I am a perfect fright! Just look at my eyes. Oh, well, it does not matter! Don Orsino does not mind, and I am sure you do not, Vittoria, do you?’

  It was the girl’s way of trying to jest at what was a real pain, if it was not a very great sorrow. It was not very successful, and her worn little face betrayed her, as well as the dark lines under her eyes. She had believed herself very much in love with Tebaldo, and, to tell the truth, she was in love with him still, so far as she had yet any idea of what it meant to be in love. But she had just made up her mind that she could never marry him. It was not possible to marry into such a family, where everybody was always killing everybody else, as Mrs. Slayback expressed it. The friends of the Saracinesca had found a great deal to say about the previous history of the whole tribe of Pagliuca d’Oriani, including the Corleone of old, during the last four days, and much of it had got into the Roman papers, which all took part against the Sicilians. Romance was very well, up to a certain point, Miss Lizzie thought, but it was necessary to draw the line somewhere, and she had drawn it now. Yet her heart ached for the fierce-eyed Sicilian, all the same, and her small face was weary and careworn.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  TEBALDO’S NERVES WERE beginning to give way. It was of no use for him to argue with himself, and tell himself that the knife would not be found. He knew that the possibility existed. No one in Santa Vittoria would look for it, but there was the bishop, who would shortly reconsecrate the church, and there was the judge, who had told San Giacinto that he might go up to visit the scene of the murder. The bishop might order the grating to be opened in order to see the bones of the saint; and the judge, accustomed to the ways of criminals, might insist upon a search, seeing that the murder had taken place within arm’s length of the altar.

  In his broken dreams, the judge and the bishop appeared separately and together and turned into each other, and invariably found the knife, and then Tebaldo was suddenly in the court-room, at the bar, where Ippolito had stood, instead of on the witness stand, and he heard all the people yell and curse his name, as the villagers of Santa Vittoria had cursed the young priest. As in the old days of torture a man was drawn up by his hands to the high vault of the prison, and then dropped all at once with a hideous wrenching and tearing of the joints till his feet were but a foot from the floor, so Tebaldo’s sudden waking was but a sudden change of agony renewed each time and each time more unendurable, till the fear of dreaming was outdone by the dread of returning to consciousness.

  When he was awake he imagined impossible schemes for getting possession of the knife unobserved. It might have seemed simple enough to go up to Santa Vittoria, call the sacristan, and have the church opened for him. Then he could have invented an excuse for sending the fat man away while he quietly reached down through the grating and felt for the knife. In his ordinary state of mind and health he would have done that, and there were ninety-nine chances in
a hundred that he would have succeeded.

  But it looked differently to him now. In the first place, a sheer physical horror of going back to the village at all had taken the place of the cynical indifference which had at first left his cunning and his coolness free to act. Everyone who has dealt with humanity under the influence of pain or fear knows that the effect of either is cumulative, and that in each individual there seems to be a limit beyond which the nerves will resist no more, and the will-power altogether ceases. A man may bear a certain grievous pain on the first day without a sign; on the second day he will grind his teeth; on the third he will wince; later he will groan, writhe, and at last break down, like a mere child, under one-tenth of the suffering he bore manfully and silently at first. And it is the same with any given fear. In a smaller degree it is so also in the matter of losing one’s temper under constantly-renewed irritation of the same kind. Even in another direction, but in one which equally concerns the nerves, this thing is true. Often, in a farce on the stage, an indifferent action passes unnoticed; it recurs and excites attention; again it comes, and the audience smile; once more, and they laugh, and cannot control their laughter each time the action is repeated, until a certain capacity for being moved to mirth again and again in one direction, which varies in each individual, is momentarily paralysed. People afterwards realise with surprise, and sometimes with a little shame, the emptiness of the absurdities at which they have laughed so heartily; as many a man has despised himself for having been angry at a trifle, and wondered at his own weakness in having winced under an insignificant pain. But the trifle is only the drop that overfills the cup at last.

  So Tebaldo had almost reached the limit of endurance, and the mere idea of going back to the village and the church was intolerable to him. It seemed to him that even if he could make up his mind to the attempt, he should be sure to fail. The sacristan would come back unexpectedly and find him with his hand through the grating, groping after the knife; or the lame boy, who always hung about the gate, would look in and see him. Yet he could not have locked himself into the church, for that also would have excited suspicion.

  The idea that he might get some one else to recover the weapon for him took hold of him by degrees. At first it appeared to be madness to trust any one with his secret, and his keen sense rejected the plan with scorn. But it suggested itself again and again with increasing persistence, because the mere thought that he might get the thing back without going to Santa Vittoria in person was an inexpressible relief, and he began to try and think of some person whom he could trust to be prompt and secret.

  At first he thought of asking someone in Santa Vittoria. The fat sacristan, whom he had known for years, could do it easily. But Tebaldo recognised at once that he had no hold upon the man, who might betray him at any moment. Money would tempt the fellow, but no sum could silence him afterwards, if he should demand more, as was very probable. Besides, it would be necessary to write to him, and the man might lose the letter, even if he were able to read it well enough to understand, which was doubtful. There was Don Atanasio, the apothecary. He would do much out of hatred for the Saracinesca, as his daughter had done already. But he was a cautious old man, dependent, in a large measure, upon the government, and would not be inclined to endanger his position to oblige Tebaldo. It would not do to risk a refusal.

  Then it occurred to the wretched man that women had more than once saved men who loved them from desperate danger, and that, after all, he might do worse than to tell Aliandra the truth. If she were willing, she could go up to Santa Vittoria on a pretext and visit the little church, and get rid of the sacristan. Then, if she wore a wide cloak, she could kneel down on pretence of looking through the grating, and her slim woman’s arm could run through it in a moment, and her hand could not fail to find the knife. He could remember, now, exactly at how many inches from the left he had dropped it through. The details came back to him with vivid clearness, though at first he had almost quite forgotten them.

  He almost made up his mind to go to Aliandra for assistance, and the half-decision was a sudden and immense relief. He could eat and drink, and he felt that he should sleep. Immediately his mind outran this first plan, and he saw himself in Rome again, in three or four days at the most, engaged to marry the great heiress, resuming his regular life of wise courtship, and discussing with his future wife the details of a brilliant existence. He drove away the subconsciousness that the thing was not yet done, and revelled in visions in which there was no fear.

  But that did not last long, for he could not sleep, after all; and the knowledge that he must act quickly grew constantly more disturbing, till he rose in the night and sat by the open window, working out his plan. He must go to Randazzo again and see Aliandra; then he must wait at the inn, while she went up to Santa Vittoria. The hours of waiting would be hard to bear, but at the end of them there would be freedom. She would come back, and he should see her pass. He should go to her father’s house. She would meet him at the door and draw him into the familiar sitting-room, and a moment later the weapon would be in his hand. After all, if he once had it, she could have no proof against him, beyond her mere assertion, if she should ever turn against him. For the sake of his love for her, she would never do that, he thought.

  He telegraphed to Tatò at dawn to meet him at the Piedimonte station. It was a Thursday, and he felt sure that the judge would not be at leisure to go up to Santa Vittoria before Sunday. It was most probable, too, that the bishop would choose the Sunday to reconsecrate the church, and it occurred to Tebaldo that it would be strange if the two should meet as they were always meeting in his dreams. But there was plenty of time before that, and all would come right. Aliandra would not refuse to do him this service.

  Tatò met him at Piedimonte in person, instead of sending down his man, and in obedience to Tebaldo’s telegram he had brought a light conveyance in which the two sat side by side, with Tebaldo’s little valise at their feet, and his rifle between them. They were old acquaintances, for Tatò had driven the Corleone family for years himself, and by deputy, as it were, while he had been serving his time in Ponza. He had a profound respect for Tebaldo, for he knew how the latter with his brothers had long ago led the soldiers astray when pursuing the brigands in the neighbourhood of Camaldoli There was probably no man in that part of the country who knew as much about people of all sorts and conditions, and about their movements, as the smart-looking owner of the stable at Piedimonte, nor anyone who could keep his own counsel better. He was a thorough type of the ‘maffeuso,’ at all points, as San Giacinto had at first observed to Orsino. San Giacinto had always believed that the man had known of Ferdinando’s intended attack, and of the pitfall in the avenue.

  Tatò told Tebaldo that he had driven San Giacinto alone up to Camaldoli on the previous evening, returning during the night.

  ‘What courage!’ he exclaimed, with some genuine admiration, as he spoke of the big man. ‘After all that has happened! He is a man of iron, full of courage and blood.’

  ‘There was no particular danger in driving up to Camaldoli,’ observed Tebaldo, indifferently.

  Tatò looked at him curiously for a moment, to see whether he were in earnest.

  ‘Then you do not know?’ he enquired. ‘They are in the woods above Maniace.’

  ‘They’ means the outlaws, or the carabineers, as the sense requires.

  Tebaldo looked quickly at Tatò in his turn.

  ‘How many?’ he asked.

  ‘A dozen or fifteen,’ said Tatò. ‘There is Mauro, and Leoncino, and the one they call Schiantaceci — he was a gentleman of Palermo, but no one knows his real name, and the Moscio — eh, there are many! Who knows all their names? But Mauro is with them.’

  ‘Leoncino is a good man,’ observed Tebaldo, quite naturally.

  ‘Souls of his dead! You have spoken the truth. It was he that wore the carabineer’s uniform when they took the Duca di Fornasco’s bailiff. He has a face like a stone. Yet Mauro himself
is the best of them, though he is often ill with his liver. You know the life they lead. The food is sometimes good, but sometimes it is badly cooked, and they eat in a hurry, and then that poor Mauro’s liver troubles him.’

  ‘Why have they come over from Noto? Do you know?’

  ‘For a change of air, I suppose,’ answered Tatò, imperturbably. ‘But they say that the Fornasco is coming from Naples. Perhaps they would like to try for the Saracinesca. Who knows what they want?’

  ‘Do the carabineers know that they are near Maniace?’

  ‘How should they know? Mauro and the Leoncino rode into Santa Vittoria yesterday afternoon to see — good health to you — to see where Don Francesco died. They asked the little lieutenant of infantry to tell them the way to the church, as though they were strangers. Do you think he has their photographs in his pocket? He took them for two farmers going from Catania to Randazzo.’

  ‘They might have caught San Giacinto last night when you drove him up,’ said Tebaldo.

  ‘If everyone knew where to look for money, there would be no poor men,’ returned Tatò. ‘They did not know about the Saracinesca, and the carabineers do not know about them. Thus the world goes. Each man turns his back on his fortune and chases flies. Should you not like to see the Moscio, Don Tebaldo? You know that it was he who helped that angel of paradise, Don Ferdinando. He goes everywhere, for he is not known.’

  ‘Yes. I should like to see him. But I do not care to go up to the Maniace woods, for I am known, though he is not. How can I see him? I should like to ask him about my brother.’

  ‘Where shall you stay to-night?’ enquired Tatò.