Margarita's Soul Part 22

_Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto G.o.d who gave it._

I can see her now ... there are those, I know, who have guessed my poor secret, and who wonder that I do not "console myself," in the silly phrase of the day. How could I? The twitter of the Hawaiian girls is like that of the beach-birds in my ears, after that golden-ivory voice!

It was in October, I think, that she began to grow restless. Roger was full of plans for the coming winter, and had even gone so far as to all but complete the formalities of renting a house in New York, when she startled us all by inquiring of me when I intended to start for Italy.

"For I am coming with you," she concluded placidly.

"I'm afraid not, _cherie_," said Roger, "I must get to work, you know.

You can take lessons in New York, all you want."

"But I do not care to go to New York," she returned quietly. "I like Paris better. I need not nurse the baby, now, and I can sing a great deal. Jerry can take me."

"Mr. Bradley means he must be in New York to continue his professional career, dear Mrs. Bradley," Miss Jencks interposed, "and you must go with him, of course."

"Why?" asked Margarita.

"Because a wife's place is by her husband," said Miss Jencks, after a pause which neither Roger nor I volunteered to fill.

"But why?" Margarita inquired again. "_I_ cannot do Roger's pro--professional career!"

"No, my dear, but you can help him greatly in it," Miss Jencks instructed placidly (she was invaluable, was Barbara, when it was a matter of proper plat.i.tude, which flowed from her lips with the ease of water from a tap--and she believed it, too!) "a man needs a woman in his home. Her influence--"

"Yes, I know, you have told me that before. But you could stay with Roger, Miss Jencks, and be that influence," said Margarita sweetly, "and I could go with Jerry." Was she impish, or only ingenuous, I wonder? One could never tell.

"How about the baby?" Roger demanded cheerfully.

"I am not going to nurse it any more," said the mother of little Mary quietly. "Madame said I had better stop it now--it will be better for my voice. So it will not need me. Dolledge knows all about taking care of it."

"But, my dear, are you sure it will be good for Mary not to nurse her?

She is not six months old, you know," Miss Jencks suggested mildly.

Margarita leaned her round chin into the cup of her hands and gazed thoughtfully at her mentor.

"Then why do you not nurse her, dear Miss Jencks?" she asked.

At this Roger and I left the room hastily. I am unable to state what the late directress of the Governor-General's family said or did!

It was the next day, I remember, that I was called to New York on business connected with my mother's small affairs, and while there I was greatly surprised and not a little amused to receive a telegram from Roger asking me to engage pa.s.sage for himself, Margarita, Miss Jencks, Dolledge and the baby, on my own boat, if possible, if not, to change my sailing to fit theirs. It is only fair to say that Sears, Bradley and Sears had recently become involved in a complicated lawsuit of international interests and importance, and Roger took some pains to inform me of the very handsome retaining-fee which his knowledge of the workings of English law combined with his proficiency in French quite justified him in accepting in consideration of his giving the greater part of his time to this case--a case almost certain to drag through the winter and require his presence in London and his constant correspondence with Paris.

I received this information as gravely as he offered it, but, to use his own phrase, I reserved my decision as to whether the lack of that same international case would have kept the Bradley menage in New York.

I stayed in Paris long enough to see Margarita and wee Mary, with their respective guardians, installed comfortably and charmingly in the _Rue Marboeuf_, bade Roger G.o.d-speed across the Channel (I could tell from the set of his shoulders how he would plunge into the work there and how well-earned would be his flying trips Parisward!) and then struck south into Italy, bent on a private errand of my own.

This was nothing less than the tracing, if possible, of Margarita's Italian ancestry, a mission, needless to say, laid upon me by no one, as she knew nothing of this and Roger, apparently, cared less. My reasons for undertaking this search, which I well knew might prove endless and was almost sure to be long, were a little obscure, even to myself, but I now believe them to have sprung princ.i.p.ally from my smouldering rage against Sarah Bradley and her ugly insinuations--a subject I have not dwelt upon in this narrative. But I have thought much of it, and I believe now that my vow was registered from the hour of the finding of the dispatch box which solved one-half of the problem.

Sue Paynter was of great a.s.sistance to me here, and by judicious questionings of Mother Bradley at the Convent and artless suggestions and allusions when with the other good nuns, to whom she was honestly attached and whom she often visited, she actually procured for me a few vague clues, breathless rumours of those tragedies that rear, now and then, their jagged, warning heads above the smooth pools of cloister life. News travels fast and far among those quiet retreats; some system of mysterious telegraphy links Rome and Quebec and New York, and it was not without the name of a tiny town or two tucked away in my mind and at least three n.o.ble families jotted down on the inside cover of my bank-book that I started on my wild-goose chase.

They were, however, quite useless. Two of the n.o.ble families had held no greater sinner than a postulant whose ardour had cooled during her novitiate, and the third had paid for what was at best (or worst) a slight indiscretion with a broken spirit and rapidly failing health.

It required no great exercise of detective powers to beg the genial little doctor of each tiny neighbourhood for Italian lessons and I learned more than his language from each. They were veritable h.o.a.rds of gossip and information of all sorts, and my ever ready and unsuspected note-book held more than verb-contractions and strange vagaries of local idiom.

It was from none of these, however, that I got my first clue, but from the boatman who took me out at sunset for the idle, lovely hour that I love best in Italy and which her name always brings before me.

Rafaello was a big, burned creature, beautiful as Antinous and as simple and faithful as a dog. He took a huge delight in teaching me all the quaint terms of his fisher dialect, and many a deep argument have we held, I gazing into the burning sulphur of the clouds, he with mobile features flashing and cla.s.sic brown fingers never still, while he expounded to me his strange, half pagan, half Christian fatalism.

He was of the South, "well toward the Boot Heel, signore," but Love, the master mariner, had driven him out of his course and brought him within fifty miles of Rome to court a fickle beauty of the hills, whose brother had come down for the wood-cutting and was friendly to his suit.

"These marsh people are a poor sort," said Rafaello contemptuously.

"Not that I would take a wife from them, G.o.d forbid! Here they have great tracts, with buffalo and wild pig--yes, I have seen them myself, rooting through the wild oak--but have they the brains to invite the foreign _signori_ to hunt there and earn fortunes by it? No. Have they even strength to cut their own timber? Again, no. They lie and shiver with malaria. Not that they are not a little better now," he admitted, shifting the sail so that we looked toward the headlands of Sardinia, a cloud of lateens drifting like gnats between, "now they are ploughing on the plains, the boats are out, the bullocks are busy, and the wind is putting a little strength into the poor creatures. I swear the best man among them is an old woman I took across in my _felucca_ to pleasure my girl's brother--she tended him once when he chopped through his foot near her hut just on the edge of the hills. Seventy years, or nearly, and tough and wiry yet, and can help neatly with a boat. And money laid by, too, but is she idle? Never. She spins her hemp and weaves osiers into baskets and changes them for goats' hams.

That with _polenta_ keeps her all winter--and well, too. She is very close. The money, no one knows where it came from."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE SPINS HER HEMP AND WEAVES OSIERS INTO BASKETS AND CHANGES THEM FOR GOATS' HAMS]

Thus Rafaello babbled on, steering cleverly and suddenly into one of the vast, unhealthy lagoons that shelter so many of the winged winter visitors of Italy--visitors unrecorded in the hotels, unnoted by the guides, but of greater interest than many tourists.

I, listening idly to him, caught my breath at the flight of flaming, rosy flamingoes that lighted inland, just beyond us, miracles of flower-like beauty.

"From Egypt, _excellenz'_: They are not due till November, but the winter will be cold and they started early. In March they will start back. Why? How should I know? Who sends the wild duck, for that matter? I have seen a half-mile of them at one flight bound for this place. It may be the good G.o.d warns them and they go."

"It may be, Rafaello."

"But then, _excellenz'_, does he send the brown water-hens, too, and if so, why not tell them of the young n.o.bleman whom I brought here to shoot only last week? Is it likely G.o.d did not know I would bring him?

Of course not."

"Perhaps they know, but must go, nevertheless," I ventured, and we were silent and thoughtful. Did they? Did they fly, helpless, to their death, bound by some fatal certainty? Was Alif right, and is it written for us all?

"That young Roman was very generous," Rafaello resumed after a while.

"A few more like him, and she will think twice before she refuses again. How I bear it, I can't tell. Pettish she is, certainly, but oh, _signore_, lovely, lovely, like _un angiolin'_! It was from a n.o.bleman--a foreigner, anyway, I suppose it is all one--that old 'Cina got her money, Lippo thinks. He hunted, too, Lippo says, and 'Cina's brother waited on him--he came from these parts. He took her brother north with him afterward, and well he did, too, for not many good Catholics would help him in what he did, and that brother was wicked enough, I suppose. She has little enough religion herself, the old woman--they say her money is for making peace with the church. For when it comes to the last rattle in the throat, _excellenz'_, the boldest is glad of a little help," said Rafaello knowingly.

Night was on us now, and I, well knowing that the air was poisonous for me, could not bring myself to order the boat home. There, while Perseus burned above us and off toward Rome Orion hung steady as a lamp in a shrine, I lost myself in strange, deep thinking, and the marshes were the desert for me and Alif and Rafaello were the same, and I--who was I? What was I?

"The _signore_ sleeps?" the man inquired timidly. "I think it is not good to sleep here. Shall we go back?"

"I'm not sleeping, Rafaello, but I suppose we'd better turn. I heard all you said. And what had this wicked foreigner done?"

"He stole a nun out of a holy convent, _excellenz'_," said Rafaello in a low voice.

I felt my heart jump.

"Near here?" I asked, as carelessly as I could.

"Oh, no, far away--I do not know. n.o.body knows. It was only 'Cina and his sister came from here. Mother of G.o.d, does the _signore_ think any woman born hereabouts would have blood enough for that? Look you, _signore_, she climbed down a tree and went with him in the night! A professed nun! Oh, no doubt she is burning now, that one! For no woman need take the veil, that is plain, but once taken, one is as good as married to G.o.d himself, and then to take a man after! Oh, no. She is certainly burning," concluded Rafaello with simple conviction.

"But I thought you said she was alive and made baskets," I said, persistently stupid.

"No, no, the _signore_ misunderstands. That is 'Cina, who went with her when they sailed away, being sent for by her brother. The wicked one died, of course, and 'Cina came back with all the money. She nearly died, herself, on the great ship. She ate nothing--not a bite nor a sc.r.a.p--for four days, she was so sick."

"He was an Englishman, I suppose?"

"No. From the _signore's_ country. Not, of course, that they are all like that," Rafaello added politely, "but the truth must be told, he was."