Shadows of Flames Part 63

"_Si! Si! Sciora!_" he answered eagerly. "_Star_" (I will stay).

The Padrone came up and offered her his arm. The fat, kind-hearted woman also came up, though her great bust still ached from Sophy's frenzied blows.

"_Cara signora_," she pleaded humbly, "allow me to accompany you."

Between the Padrone and this kindly soul Sophy went obediently back to the hotel.

Tilda and Rosa had both gone for a walk with Bobby along the high-road.

Tilda had missed one of the smaller bags, and wished to see if it had been left by mistake with Luigi. So the two women had gone back to Villa Bianca, and were there when the accident happened. Not until Morelli and Peppin had been at work together over Chesney for twenty minutes did they return with Luigi, who, on hearing the terrible news, ran straight to help resuscitate his master. All the women in the hotel gathered round Rosa. She yielded Bobby to one of them, and began to sob and strike her breast and forehead in despair.

Tilda, her round face blotched with pallor, went straight to her lady.

She found Sophy standing by a window that overlooked the sh.o.r.e.

"Oh, Mrs. Chesney!" faltered the girl, beginning to tremble. "May I stay with you?"

"No ... please...." said her mistress without turning. The girl went out obediently, and sat crouched in a chair near the door. Some women stole up and began whispering gruesome details to her. She listened half-unwilling, half-fascinated. The insatiable craving of the lower cla.s.ses for "_le frisson_" made her listen, but she hated herself for doing it, and them for telling her so eagerly. The fat woman, whom Sophy had not permitted to remain with her, and to whose care Rosa had given Bobby, took the boy to her room and fed him bonbons, eating some herself to encourage him, and turning aside every now and then to cry again over the poor _tousin_ whose Babbo had just been drowned, and who was so innocently gay over this unexpected feast of sweetmeats.

And Sophy, all alone at her window in the bleak hotel bedroom, stood and gazed at the little group on the beach, where Morelli, Peppin, and Luigi were striving to restore her husband to life. The first rigorous methods having been used, they had moved him to the shadow of some trees and spread blankets under and over him--only his head and the upper part of his chest were now exposed. And on either side knelt the sailor and the doctor. They had each grasped one of the ma.s.sive arms, and regularly, with a machine-like motion, they lifted these arms up above the p.r.o.ne head, then down again--up--then down again. So powerful did the huge man look, even thus outstretched upon the ground, that it seemed to Sophy as though with his naked, herculean arms, he were bending the two men back and forth--back and forth. She would not believe that he was dead. It was as if, should she allow herself for a moment to believe it, he would really die. It was as if his life depended on her will to believe in it.

It was impossible--that thus, in the sunlight, within a few yards of sh.o.r.e, within the sound of her voice, with his midday-meal preparing for him, his clothes awaiting him on the warm beach--that thus in a moment--in the twinkling of an eye--he should be dead....

Up and down--up and down waved the ma.s.sive arms, white and gleaming in the glare from sky and water. Another figure joined the group. Sophy recognised Tibaldo, the gardener's boy from Villa Bianca. The doctor said something, turning his head sharply. Then she saw Luigi turn back the blankets, and Tibaldo take up a bottle that had been standing near.

He poured stuff from this bottle into Luigi's hands, then into his own.

They began rubbing the naked man vigorously. The doctor and Peppin paused a moment. She saw Morelli mop his face with his handkerchief, and Peppin sling the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. A change was made. Now it was Luigi and Tibaldo who were moving the great arms up and down, while Peppin and Morelli rubbed the outstretched body vigorously....

All at once, without any warning, she could not see them any longer. All that she could see was an endless reach of gleeful, bright blue water, and floating on it, bobbing drolly, a small, yellow chair. Then she saw nothing--then dark clouds that coiled and swam. She did not regain consciousness for five hours. When she came to herself again, she was lying on the bed with Tilda kneeling at her feet, rubbing them. A man's face was bending over her--the face of Doctor Morelli. The Venetian blinds were closed, making a strange green light in the room ... it seemed to be under water. She struggled to rise, feeling suffocated--feeling as though she, too, were drowning. She heard Morelli take a breath as of relief. Tilda had put down her face upon the bedclothes.

"How is he?... How is my husband?" she managed to stammer.

She felt the girl sobbing against her feet.

"_Coraggio, signora_.... _Coraggio_...." murmured the doctor. Then she knew. He was dead. She sank again into merciful depths of unconsciousness.

This time, when she recovered, it was into the tender, l.u.s.trous eyes of the Marchesa Amaldi that she looked up. As soon as Peppin had brought the news to Le Vigne, the Marchesa had set out for Ghiffa. Amaldi was away on a walking tour in the Carpathians. He had left very suddenly.

The Marchesa divined that it was his feeling for Sophy that had caused him to leave so abruptly. She applauded him in her heart while she ached, mother-like, for his unhappiness. Now came this horrible disaster. She was glad that Marco was away. Sheer pity might have stripped him too bare before her, in spite of his powerful reserve. And with the sense of his hopeless, unfortunate love adding to her own pa.s.sion of pity for this young creature widowed in so horrible a way, the Marchesa gathered Sophy as it were into the very shrine of mother-tenderness. Never again after that were things quite the same between them. Never again could the Marchesa look on Sophy only as a charming woman whom her son unfortunately loved; never again could Sophy forget, that on the heart of Marco's mother she had lain in that tragic hour.

"Can't you cry, my poor darling?... Can't you cry?" the Marchesa kept murmuring, her beautiful large hand folding Sophy's head to her breast, as it had been the head of a child that she was suckling. But no tears would come. It was as though she were bleeding tears inwardly.

When she was strong enough to rise, she said, whispering:

"I want to go to him."

The Marchesa a.s.sisted her to her feet without a word. In silence she led her to the communicating door behind which her husband lay, then stepped aside for her to enter.

Sophy closed the door softly as she went in. It was late at night.

Candles burned by the bed, on either side. He lay there immensely, majestically long under the white sheet. Sophy went forward unfalteringly, and kneeling down beside him, lifted back the sheet. Awe filled her at the icy splendour of that face. She had not known how beautiful he was, until thus translated into cream-hued marble. His brow seemed to triumph; on his lips was that austere, secretive smile as of Initiation, that only death can give. It seemed to her that it was not her husband who lay there before her, but a majestic High-priest, dead with the words of some mysterious and awful ritual still on his lips, now sealed with that smile of ultimate initiation.

She bent closer, very reverently, and kissed the thick fair hair, then the wonderful, triumphant brow. She had never before touched the dead.

This coldness of what had been so warm made her realise in one sick throe that the imagination of Divinity may be abominable....

Then all at once in the stark silence of the room she became conscious of the ticking of his watch, made resonant by the bare wood of the table on which it had been placed. Like a little metal heart it seemed, continuing the unavailing minutes of the life that had stopped, while it went on. And next to the coldness of the familiar brow, that ticking of the dead man's watch seemed to her the most fearful thing that she had ever known or dreamed of. She sank back on her knees, her hands folded upon the bed, gazing at that loftily indifferent face, listening to the steady pulse of the watch.... She could not bring it all near her. A tragedy had taken place in some far planet, and this was the mysterious painting of it on which she looked. That was not Cecil who lay there in that frozen dignity, Cecil who had been like a flame from the hottest core of life's great furnace ... he could never have lapsed into such seemingly voluntary pa.s.sionlessness, even in death. Had there been a frown of revolt on his forehead, he would have seemed nearer, more real.

Thus, he was not Cecil, but a stranger.... She felt confused, impa.s.sive and appalled. She was appalled at what she thought her own heartlessness. But then why should she weep for him, when he lay there with such plenitude of satisfaction and agreement on his forbiddingly beautiful, stranger's face?

She went back after an hour into the next room. Her face looked dull and wild at the same time. The Marchesa, who had lain down on the bed, rose and drew her down beside her, keeping gentle but firm hold of her hand.

Sophy submitted obediently. She lay until day without moving, her eyes wide open, fixed on the opposite wall. Now and then the Marchesa would turn her head cautiously to see if by chance she had fallen asleep. But the dark eyes were always wide open, fixed on the bright green wallpaper.

"Poor girl," thought the Marchesa. "Poor Marco ... she loved her husband deeply, in spite of all. There may be brain fever unless I can make her cry in some way."

At dawn Sophy was still stretched there moveless, her eyes on the green wall behind which Cecil lay in cold, aloof content.

Robins began their sweet autumnal piping in the hotel garden. A thought came to the Marchesa. Babies waked with birds. She rose softly, and slipped out into the hall. Rosa and Bobby had been given a room just opposite. The Marchesa entered without knocking. The wisdom of the old nurse in the song was in her heart. As she had thought, the boy was awake. He was sitting up in bed, his short red curls tousled, the sleeves of his blue flannel dressing-gown that came far down over his hands, evidently annoying him, for he tugged at them impatiently. He was trying to make two fiercely moustachioed tin soldiers do battle on the pillow that Rosa had laid before him. Every time that one soldier would almost clash swords with the other, down would come the sleeves like a curtain, extinguishing the warriors.

"Bad teeves!" he was scolding them as the Marchesa entered. "_Pias minga a mi_" (You don't please me). He had picked up much dialect since coming to the Lake. Rosa, who also waked with the birds, and who, attired in a red flannel petticoat and cotton under-body, was washing her face in a corner of the room, kept murmuring, "_Pazienza, tousin, pazienza._"

She looked up as the Marchesa entered, horrified to be found by a _Sciora_ in such attire. But the Marchesa did not glance at her. She went straight to Bobby.

He greeted her joyously.

"My 'ady! Take off!" he cried, holding up his m.u.f.fled hands.

The Marchesa talked with him for about twenty minutes, then she lifted him, all subdued and piteous, into her arms, and carried him to his mother. The sun had now risen and that green light as of watery depths again filled the room.

The Marchesa put the boy down beside Sophy without a word. She did not look at him, but her arm went round him. Bobby snuggled close, then lifted his head and gazed into her white face. He began "pooring" it with his little hand. The Marchesa had turned back the bothersome sleeves. Then he knelt up to see her better.

"Poor dada ... dwownded...." he murmured, caressing her cheek. "Poor muvvah ... all lone...." His lips began to quiver with the sad sound of his own broken words.... "Don't c'y...." he pleaded, big tears bursting from his own eyes.... "Bobby 'tay wiv you.... Bobby tate tare of you....

Don't c'y...."

And with this he began to sob himself as though his little heart would break.

Sophy started from her trance of numbness. She caught the boy to her....

Then her tears came.... Then she remembered Cecil as her young lover ...

her husband.... Then he became real to her again, as she clasped his son in her arms and they wept together.

The Marchesa had stolen out.

"_Ringrazio Dio!_" she said in her heart. She, too, was weeping.

PART II

I