Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  TEBALDO SLACKENED HIS speed at last and attempted to concentrate his thoughts. Exhausted as he was by exertion and by the ever-increasing strain on his faculties, it was not easy to think at all. But his bare feet, chilled in the cold stirrups, drew his attention to the present necessity of being shod as soon as possible. He could reach Randazzo long before dawn and get into the inn by knocking and rousing the man who slept on the ground-floor. He could invent some story to explain why he had ridden home on another horse. In the dark, with only a taper or a lantern, the man would not notice his bare feet, and he could get to his room in safety. After that, he did not know what he should do. He felt that if he could not get rest soon, he must fall ill. As a matter of fact, he was ill already, with the dangerous fever of the south, as the sudden chills he had lately felt would have told him at any other time.

  He made up his mind that he must reach the inn; he put his horse to a canter again and got to Randazzo just as the first pallor of the dawn threw the dark outline of Etna into stronger relief against the sky. Everything happened as he had hoped. The sleepy man-servant gave him the key of the stable, and he hitched his horse in a stall, came back, entered the house, and reached his room in safety, the man not having noticed that he was barefoot.

  He locked the door and almost staggered to his bed, falling upon it as he was, in his wet clothes. A moment later he was asleep.

  It seemed but a moment more and he was waked by a loud knocking. He started up in one of those hideous dreams of fear, of which the whole length takes but an instant of time. The knocking was the sound of rifle-shots, and he was once more plunging down through the tangle below Camaldoli. Then he saw that it was broad daylight outside, and he heard the voice of the officer of carabineers speaking to him from without in a friendly tone. Forgetting or not caring how he looked, he opened the door.

  The grey-haired lieutenant entered. He was already shaved and dressed with his usual scrupulous neatness, but he was extremely pale, and his arm was in a black sling.

  ‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ he said, ‘though, as it is nearly twelve o’clock, I had expected to find you up. The fact is, I should be very much obliged to you if you could make it convenient to go to Rome — or Paris, if you please. One of the brigands escaped us last night.’

  ‘Only one?’ asked Tebaldo, mechanically.

  ‘Only one. We suppose that it must have been the famous Moscio.’

  ‘The Moscio?’

  ‘We suppose so. Whoever it was, he has lost no time in telling what has happened, and your share in the business. You are not safe even in the town of Randazzo, unless you will consent to go about between a couple of carabineers like a prisoner. I am sorry to say that you had better go at once. The population is roused against you. You know what they are.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’ Tebaldo leaned against the table.

  ‘I can protect you with soldiers,’ continued the officer, his own voice weak from loss of blood. ‘But your position will be a very unpleasant one. I have sent for a carriage for you and will give you a strong escort, but for your own safety, as well as for the quiet of the country, I must beg you to start as soon as you can dress and get your things together. To-day you may get away quietly. To-morrow your appearance might cause something like a riot.’

  ‘I knew how it would end,’ said Tebaldo, faintly. ‘Very well. I will get ready.’

  The lieutenant was in reality exaggerating the danger of the man’s position, though quite unintentionally. He would certainly not have been safe in such a place as Santa Vittoria, but it was extremely unlikely that he should be attacked in Randazzo, though he might very probably have been insulted in the streets.

  The Moscio had in reality seen but one man with whom he had spoken before dawn, but he was the woodcutter who had chiefly supplied the outlaws with provisions during their stay in the forest of Maniace, and he had come up as usual to know if they wanted anything on that day, being as yet ignorant of the fight at Camaldoli. But as he came down, the man had met an acquaintance and had repeated the story without telling how he had learned it. Before noon the facts were known far and wide from Santa Vittoria to Randazzo, substantially as the Moscio knew that they had happened.

  The feeling against Tebaldo was at once infinitely stronger than that against the carabineers and soldiers. To a certain extent the brigands always terrorised the country, and many of the better sort of people were heartily glad to know that the band of Mauro had been finally destroyed, though they did not say so, lest some survivor should wreak vengeance on them. But there was no difference of opinion in regard to Tebaldo. It was not exactly treachery to carry people off by force and extort a ransom from them, as the outlaws did. But to lead men who trusted him into a trap prepared for them by the troops was a betrayal which no Sicilian could forgive Tebaldo, even though it might have had some good results, and the name of Judas, which the Moscio had spoken alone in the solitude, was on every tongue.

  It is of no use to waste words in trying to explain this feeling, which most people will understand. The fact was that the whole population shared it, as Tebaldo knew that they must, since the story had become known. He recognised at once that he ought to accept the officer’s advice and get away as soon as he could. He would write to Aliandra from Messina, but he was sure that she must despise him now, like everyone else. To all intents and purposes he was a fugitive, as he drove out of the town, half an hour later, in a closed carriage with the ragged shades drawn down. Possibly he remembered, as he shivered in his corner beside the carabineer, how the light had fallen on Ippolito Saracinesca’s face in the street of Santa Vittoria scarcely ten days earlier, how the people had cursed the innocent man, and had thrown things at him, trying to bruise him from a distance.

  Another carabineer sat opposite in the carriage, and one was on the box beside the driver. Tebaldo vaguely understood that even the soldiers despised him, but he was almost past caring what they thought. The fever was slowly gaining on him, and his nerves were utterly broken. His face was like a yellow mask, and he hung his head so that his chin rested on his breast. He reached Messina in a dream and went to the wretched hotel there. He was not able to go on to Rome that night, and a doctor who was sent for said that he had the ‘perniciosa’ fever.

  On the following morning, in Randazzo, Aliandra was sitting alone in her room. She had heard of all that had happened. Twenty people had been to see the notary on the previous day, and the story had been repeated again and again, till she knew every word of it by heart.

  She was ashamed of ever having wished to marry such a man. That was her first sensation, and it had not left her yet. Though she was strong and sensible, she had shut herself up in her own room and had cried for hours, not for Tebaldo, but with shame and anger at herself. She hated him now, far more than she had ever cared for anyone in her short life, and she was glad when she heard that he was gone, for she never wished to see him again. It was a perfectly simple state of mind. The man was a despicable traitor, in her view, and she hated herself for having ever believed in him.

  Her shame at the whole thing was not her own secret. That made it worse. Her father’s friends knew very well that Tebaldo often came to the house and was in love with her, and had not been rebuffed. The lieutenant of carabineers himself generally came once a week to pay a visit, for he liked Basili. All the townsfolk knew it. It was a reproach, and a public one, it was a blot on her good name, and she felt it all the more painfully because she had never done anything to be ashamed of.

  Again and again, through the night and in the morning, the burning tears of anger at herself ran over and scalded her cheeks, and then dried as her anger rose against Tebaldo.

  This morning she had just been through one of these storms of tears in the solitude of her room, when Gesualda knocked at the door. Poor, ugly Gesualda, whose innocent little sin of eating an orange on the stairs one day had started the avalanche of fate that ended in the destruction of Mauro
’s band, the death of Francesco Pagliuca, and the ruin of Tebaldo, would have died of horror had she known that all these things were the direct consequences of Basili’s broken leg, which had brought Aliandra to Randazzo, followed by the two brothers.

  She entered quietly and stupidly enough.

  ‘Signorina,’ she said, ‘dry your eyes, for there is one who would speak with you downstairs.’

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Aliandra, impatiently. ‘Will they ever let me alone? What does he want?’

  ‘Do not be angry, signorina,’ answered the woman. ‘It is a young gentleman from Messina, who has a parcel for you in his hands and begs that you will kindly receive it yourself.’

  ‘A parcel from Messina? Well—’ Aliandra hesitated, but her curiosity was roused. ‘Tell him that I will come down immediately,’ she concluded.

  A few minutes later she descended the stairs, having plunged her face into cold water and done her best to remove the traces of her tears. She entered the front room and met a girlish-looking youth with close and curling brown hair, and extremely well dressed in light grey. A rather delicate hand held out a parcel to her, as he bowed respectfully.

  ‘I was commissioned to hand you this parcel, signorina,’ said the Moscio. ‘It is from one of your greatest admirers.’

  ‘From whom is it?’ she asked quickly, as she took the heavy little package.

  ‘That is your friend’s secret. He only begs that you will open it when you are alone. It contains a little surprise for you. I thank you for your kindness in receiving me, signorina. Good morning.’

  He bowed and moved quickly towards the door.

  ‘But you, signore — what is your name? I am infinitely obliged—’

  ‘My name is Angelo Laria, signorina. Good morning.’

  Before she could stop him, he had left the room, and she heard the front door shut immediately afterwards. She looked out through the closed blinds, and there was no one within sight. It was as though she had dreamed of the visitor.

  Then she felt the package, shook it, weighed it, began to undo it, changed her mind, and went swiftly up the stairs to her own room. It might be an ornament or a jewel, she thought, sent to the celebrated singer by an unknown admirer — possibly the well-dressed young gentleman who had brought it was himself the giver, in spite of what he said. At all events she would look at it in private. She bolted the door of her room, sat down near the window in order to have plenty of light, and opened the parcel carefully.

  It contained a letter sealed, addressed to her, and folded round the black leathern sheath of Tebaldo’s knife. She took the letter in one hand and the knife in the other, turning over the latter curiously. But she was too much a Sicilian not to have heard of such messages, and she guessed that the letter contained either a threat or a warning. She tore open the envelope and read the contents eagerly. There were two large sheets, tolerably closely written in excellent handwriting, and beginning as follows: —

  ‘Signorina, — We, who are beyond laws, do not betray even our enemies to the law, much less our friends. We have little, but we have honour. The man to whom this knife belonged has neither, and against him, and such as he, we warn women like yourself, who are young, beautiful, and honest. These words are not written to the incomparable artist, the matchless singer, the wonder of Sicily, and the pride of the nation. They are addressed to you — simply as Aliandra Basili, an honourable Sicilian maiden, the daughter of an honest Sicilian notary. It is known to us all that you have put your faith and trust in Tebaldo Pagliuca. Consider what is here written, your own honour and your father’s name, and do not marry one who has betrayed his friends to death and captivity, and who, moreover, murdered his own brother with the weapon I now place in your hands. Judas was an honourable man compared with your betrothed husband, Tebaldo Pagliuca.’

  Aliandra stopped at this point, read the last sentences again, and glanced at the knife she still held in one hand. With a movement of horror and disgust she threw it from her. Then she hesitated, rose, picked it up, and hid it in a drawer before she continued reading.

  The letter went on to tell the story of the last four days in detail, from the time when Tebaldo had sent for the Moscio to sup with him at the inn, till Tebaldo’s departure from Randazzo. Aliandra did not pause till she reached the last sentences, but there was the bright red flush of anger and shame in her cheeks. There is perhaps no such cruel shame in human nature as that a woman feels at the disgrace of the man she has accepted as husband or lover. She paused, bit her lips, and then read to the end.

  ‘This is not an anonymous letter, signorina. I who write to you am known as the Moscio, but many people call me Angelo Laria. I am he who by a miracle escaped from the massacre the night before last, when all my friends were dead or taken and I had not a shot left to fire. When I leave you I am going to the inn where Tebaldo Pagliuca stayed, for I will not send such a letter as this and then slink away like a thief. It is in your power, if you have read this at once, to inform the authorities and have me taken. I am not even armed. We, who have no law, do not betray our friends, but we warn our women against such men as Tebaldo Pagliuca, and we know that they will not betray us treacherously as he did.’

  There was no signature, for none was necessary. There were few in Sicily who had not heard the name of the Moscio, and many strangely romantic stories were told of him. Some may think that, considering what the man was, Aliandra should have delivered him up forthwith to justice. She would as soon have stabbed her father in the back.

  But gradually, as she leaned back in her chair, staring at the wall, the angry flush subsided from her cheeks and a dreamy look came into her face.

  ‘This outlaw is at least a man and a brave one,’ she said to herself, as she thought of him.

  The Moscio was quite safe, so far as she was concerned. She folded the letter carefully, returning it to its envelope, and then, taking the stout paper in which it had been wrapped, she opened the drawer, took the knife and rolled it up with the letter again, tying it, as she had received it. After that she took sealing-wax and sealed it with the little emblem of Sicily which she carried on a thin chain with other trinkets — the three legs growing out of a human head, for the three capes of the triangular island.

  Tebaldo had disappeared without a word, and she naturally believed that he had gone to Rome to escape the vengeance of the Moscio and of any friends the latter might have. Aliandra was sure he must know that she would never see him again, for though many of the details written by the outlaw were new to her, besides the main fact of Francesco’s murder, the fact of the betrayal of the band by Tebaldo was public property. He had gone to Rome without so much as attempting to defend himself.

  And now she had in her hands the proofs that Tebaldo had killed his brother, or what she believed to be proofs, though the law might have thought differently. She had, at least, the certainty, for it did not enter her head that the Moscio could be trying to deceive her.

  Yet she would not take these proofs to the deputy prefect, nor show them to her father. She was not a detective. The idea of giving the murderer up was repugnant to her, though in a less degree than the thought of informing against the Moscio himself. She wondered what Tebaldo would do next.

  Thinking it over, she came to the rather unexpected conclusion that he had gone to Rome in order to marry the American heiress at once. At first this seemed wild, but she grew accustomed to the thought in a few moments, and it impressed her. There would be much in favour of the plan, if he could carry it out. Once married to Miss Slayback and her millions, Tebaldo could leave Italy for ever and spend the rest of his life as he pleased. The mafia could not pursue him to a foreign country. Even in Rome he would be comparatively safe, for Rome, she thought, was a very civilised capital, and one man could not easily wait for another in the Villa Borghese as he could at the turning of a lonely Sicilian road.

  The more she thought of it, the more certain she felt that he meant to marry Miss Slayback. All th
e details of her last interview with Francesco came back vividly. Knowing, now, that Tebaldo had killed him, she was more willing than before to believe everything Francesco had said. Tebaldo had loved her, in a fierce and brutal way, but he had never meant to marry her at all. He had meant something else. Her cheeks burned once more, and her eyes flashed dangerously. He should not marry Miss Slayback, either, she thought.

  Then she reflected a little more calmly on her own position, and she decided to leave Randazzo at once. After what had happened, she could not stay in her native town, ashamed to show her face in the streets. Even the outlaw had known that she was engaged to marry Tebaldo Pagliuca. The very children would point at her.

  Her father was much better, and she communicated her decision to him. He was very grim and silent about it all, but he thought she was wise. He should soon be on his legs again; at all events, she had helped him to get over the most tiresome part of his recovery from the accident, and he now attended to his business regularly with his clerk and received his clients in his room. Aliandra made her preparations and left on the following day, in the very carriage which had taken Tebaldo to the station of Piedimonte. And she, too, had the old carriage closed and drew down the ragged blinds. The boys in the street did not know who was inside, but they had heard how Tebaldo had driven away, and seeing the blinds down, they ran along by the door, yelling in derision.

  ‘Another betrayer! Another Judas! Curses on the souls of his dead!’ they cried.

  The coachman lashed at them with his whip, and they fell behind, but Aliandra had understood, and her eyes flashed and the burning blush came back.

  She had telegraphed to her aunt, and the Signora Barbuzzi met her at the station in Messina. They reached Rome on the second day, a little less than a fortnight after they had left, and early in the afternoon.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII