To Leeward Part 28

At the end of an hour, he found himself in the town, and inquired for Batis...o...b... It seemed as though fate favoured Carantoni at the outset, for he found his name at once on the register of the hotel, and found also the man who had waited on Julius. This servant had been told that a lady had come in great haste soon after seven on the previous evening, and had stayed more than half an hour. As soon as she was gone, Mr.

Batis...o...b.. had sent for his bill and had ordered his boat to be ready at eleven,--the servant had heard the order. The man guessed there was something wrong from Marcantonio's face, but Batis...o...b..'s sudden departure had excited no remark. He had arrived late at night in his boat, as many people had done, and as the moon was full it was natural enough that he should sail away as he had come. People arrive continually at Sorrento in yachts, and no one takes any notice of them.

His luggage? Yes, he had taken most of his things with him, except one large box, which he had ordered to be sent to Turin. It had gone to Castellamare at once. Mr. Batis...o...b.. had been in the hotel before. He was a very good signore.

At this hint Marcantonio gave the man a heavy fee. Did he happen to know the address on the box? There was no address, except his name. The box was to be left at Turin until called for. It was to go by fast train, and Mr. Batis...o...b.. had left money to pay for its carriage in advance.

Mr. Batis...o...b.. paid his bills by cheques on a banker in Rome.

Marcantonio might have the name if he pleased. Before leaving he had paid his bill and given a cheque for five or six hundred francs more.

The proprietor knew him very well, and was always glad to oblige him, so he had procured a little cash. Before going he had sent for a silk merchant--there are hundreds in Sorrento--and had bought a quant.i.ty of things of him. He had left the hotel at eleven by the steps to the sea, and the servant had seen him into his boat,--for which parting civility, Batis...o...b.. had given him ten francs. The man had watched the boat for a few minutes. She did not make sail, but pulled away towards Castellamare.

That was all, absolutely all, that the man could tell Marcantonio. But it was sufficient for the present. It was clear that Julius had taken Leonora from the landing of the villa. She must have slipped out soon after midnight. The barking of the dogs suddenly came back to Marcantonio's memory, and the scream of the poor cat. He sprang into his carriage, and drove furiously homeward.

"Where are the dogs?" he asked, as soon as he alighted.

The groom did not like to answer. He thought Marcantonio would be angry and visit their death on him. But, as his master insisted, he went away without saying a word, and brought a large basket. In it lay the two dead terriers and the dead kitten, all three side by side.

"The dogs killed the cat," said the man, apologetically. "There are the marks of their teeth, eccellenza."

"But the dogs? How were they killed?" asked Marcantonio savagely.

"Eccellenza, their necks are broken. I cannot understand how it could have been done. We found them all dead near the descent, the cat on the path, and the dogs under the trees a few paces away."

Carantoni took up one of the terriers in his hands, and looked at it.

"So you killed my dogs, did you, you brute?" he muttered. "I will kill you."

He unconsciously used Batis...o...b..'s own words. His face was yellow, and his eyes bloodshot. He dropped the dead beast into the basket.

"Bury them," he said aloud, and turned on his heel, going into the house.

He had accomplished a great deal in a few hours. He had ascertained that they had fled by sea; that Julius had a bank account in Rome with a banker whose address he had got; that Julius had sent his box to Turin, where he would most likely be ultimately heard of. More than that he could not know for the present. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. He could still catch the train to Rome. He could do nothing more in Sorrento, and he could no more remain inactive for one moment than he could give up the whole pursuit. While his things were being hastily packed he thought of Diana. It was the first time, since the morning, that he had realised that he was not absolutely alone in the world. He sat down and wrote a telegram, intending to send it from the station.

It was brief and to the point.

"She has left me. Can you meet me anywhere? Answer to Rome."

There are doubtless people in the world who take a morbid and unwholesome delight in the contemplation of sorrow. They can amuse themselves for many hours in studying the effect of grief upon their friends,--and they can even find a curious diversion in their own troubles, so long as they can keep them far enough away to secure their bodily comfort. They have neither the strength to sin, the honesty to be good, nor the common sense to be happy. And so they feebly paddle in their shallow puddles of woe, neither dry nor wet, and very muddy, when they might just as well sit on the clean, hard ground and enjoy the cleanliness and solidity of it, if they can enjoy nothing else. But they will not. They will lie in the mud, and kick and scream and swear that they are shipwrecked, when they are a hundred miles from the sea, and would take to their heels on the first sight of it.

One of the favourite hobbies of these individuals is a mysterious thing they call a "sweet sadness." Their ideas about sorrow are not even artistic. They might at least understand that even the intensest grief, apart from its causes, has no grandeur. The contemplation of sorrow is not elevating unless it breeds a strong desire to alleviate it; nor is the study of vice and crime in the least edifying unless it exhibits the n.o.bility and power of purity in a highly practical light. No vicious criminal was ever reformed by realistic pictures of wickedness, any more than he can be improved by daily a.s.sociation with other vicious criminals. And a very little realism will throw a great ideal into the shade, as far as most people are concerned.

Marcantonio may therefore be allowed to go to Rome without being watched on the journey. His bitter suffering had settled about him and taken a shape and a complexion of its own, thinking its own thoughts and acting its own acts, without reference to the real Marcantonio, the easy, cheerful, happy man of a few short weeks ago. It was no change of character now, but rather the entire disappearance of the character beneath the flood of strong pa.s.sions that had come from without, sweeping away the landmarks and beacons of all moral responsibility. One idea had taken possession of him, and destroyed his consciousness of good and evil, and his comprehension of the common things of life; his body and intelligence had become the mere tools of this idea, and would strain their strength to carry it out until one or the other gave way.

Man is said to be a free agent, and so long as he remembers the fact, he is; but when he forgets it, the freedom is gone.

That morning, when the blow first struck him, he had still some vague thought that there was a course to follow which should be right as well as brave and honourable; it was the fast vanishing outline of his former self, used always to the ways of honour; it was vague and uncertain, and he had no time nor inclination to think about it, but it was present.

The day wore on, bringing a fuller realisation of his desperate case, and the possibility of good in so much evil disappeared. When he was at last in the express train on his way to Rome he was only conscious of one thing--the determination to find Julius Batis...o...b.., and to kill him ruthlessly, be the consequences what they might.

Rome looked much as usual when he at last came out of the great ugly station upon the Piazza dei Termini. It was morning, and not yet eight o'clock, but the pitiless August sun drove its fire through everything--through flesh and bone and marrow of living things, through the glaring stones and dusty trees, and even the great jet of water looked like bright melting metal that would burn if it touched one.

But Marcantonio Carantoni was past feeling heat or cold or bodily hurt.

He did not even remember that he had a servant with him, and he mechanically hailed a cab and was driven to his own house. They put a telegram into his hand; it was from Diana, in answer to his of the day before. It was briefer than his and breathed authority.

"Have left Pegli. Wait for me in Rome."

That was all. He read it stupidly over two or three times. He would not have telegraphed to her if he had waited till to-day. Some instinct told him that she would prevent and hinder his vengeance. Yesterday he wanted help; to-day he wanted nothing but freedom from restraint and an opportunity of meeting Julius Batis...o...b... She would not aid him in that, he was sure.

But she could not arrive to-day,--it was a long journey from Pegli to Rome; he did not know exactly how long it took,--his memory would not serve him with any details. He should have time in Rome to do the things he meant to do, and he would go to Turin that very night and watch that box of Batis...o...b..'s. He would send for it, of course, wherever he was, and the box would betray him at last, if all other means failed. But meanwhile there were the police--there were detectives to be had, and plenty of them; money could do much, and his high position could do more. He would set a whole pack of sharp-scented human hounds at Batis...o...b..'s heels--they should find him, and bring word, never fear. He laughed at the idea of employing the law to hunt his prey, in order that he might bid the law defiance and destroy his man alone.

He threw down the telegram and went to his room, followed closely by his servant, who had arrived in mad haste in a second cab, believing that his master was going to be insane, unless he had a stroke of apoplexy, which seemed not unlikely. The man was a skilled valet, and Marcantonio suffered himself to be dressed and combed and smoothed, in perfect silence; and when it was over he ate something that they brought him, without the slightest idea of what he was doing. He knew it was yet early, and that his business could not be done until the officials he needed were in their offices.

No sooner had the clock struck ten, however, than he took his hat and left the house. He found a cab, and had himself driven from one office to another all through the heat of the day, seeing confidential detectives and stating his business with a strange lucidity, never telling any single agent that he was employing another, but giving to each one a sum of money to begin his search and to each the same precise statement of all that he knew. The consequence was that before the sun was low he had dispatched half a dozen of the best men that could be found, and had got rid of about fifty thousand francs. Each one separately might have to go to the end of the world--to America perhaps, but most probably to England--before he could give the required information. It was necessary that his men should be perfectly free to move in any direction. He himself would go to Turin, and there receive their telegrams, himself watching that box of Batis...o...b..'s, which he was sure must some day be claimed by its owner.

He was perfectly calm and self-possessed throughout all these arrangements. Only the strange ghastly colour that had overspread his face seemed to settle and become permanent, and his eyes were bloodshot and yellow, while his hand trembled violently when he held a pen or lit a match for his cigarette. But he felt no bodily ill, nor any capacity for fatigue. He had not closed his eyes for thirty-six hours, and had eaten little enough, but there was not an ache nor a sensation of pain in him, and he dreaded to pause or sit down, hating the idea of rest.

When he had done all that he could think of as being at all useful in his plan, he went home and told his servant to prepare for the journey to Turin that night. The train left at half past ten--there were some hours yet to wait. He moved restlessly about the house, and ordered all the windows to be opened.

The great rooms were in their summer dress. The furniture, the huge pier gla.s.ses and the chandeliers were all clothed in brown linen. The carpets had all been taken up, and the floors--some of marble, some of red brick, and some of tiles--were bare and smooth. There was the coolness and absence of all colour that seems to belong to great palaces when the owners are out of town, and the cold monotony of everything soothed him a little. After wandering aimlessly for half an hour, he settled into a regular walk, up and down the great ball-room, with its clere-story windows and vaulted ceiling. Up and down, up and down, with an even, untiring tread he paced, his eyes bent always on the floor and his hands behind him. His walk was like clockwork, absolutely even and unchanging, with its rhythmic echo and unvarying accuracy.

The broad daylight softened into shadow, and the shadow deepened into gloom, but still he kept on his beat as though counting his steps and measuring the time. There was a certain relief in it, though not from his mastering thought, which held him in a vise and never relaxed for a second, but from his terrible restlessness. It was an outlet to his overwrought activity, and he did it monotonously, without any consideration, because there was nothing else to do, and it would have driven him mad to sit still for five minutes.

As the night came on, strange faces seemed to look upon him from the gathering darkness. The thick, warm air took shape and substance, and he could distinguish forms moving quickly before him that he could not overtake. But there was no sensation of horror or fear with the sight--he gazed curiously at the fleeting shadows and looked into their faces as they came close to him and retreated, but he could not recognise them, and did not ask himself whence they came nor whither they were going, nor why he saw them. It seemed very natural somehow.

But at last, as he turned, there was one coming toward him that had more substance than the rest, so that they all vanished but that one. It was a woman, and she seemed moving towards him; but it was almost quite dark. He came nearer; his waking senses caught the sound of her footstep; she was no shadow--it was his wife coming back to him--it had all been a fearful dream, and she was there again. He sprang forward with a quick cry.

"Leonora! Oh, thank G.o.d!" and he fell forward into her arms.

"No, dearest brother--it is not Leonora--would G.o.d it were!"

Diana had come already--he could not tell how--and they stood together in the dark, empty ball-room, clasped in each other's arms.

CHAPTER XIX.

Diana had found ample time to think over the situation during the journey, and she was prepared for difficulties. Her brother could hardly be in his right mind, she thought, and would certainly be on the verge of doing something desperate, which she must prevent.

As was usual with her in sudden emergencies, she had been wonderfully quiet. She was shocked and horrified at the news, but neither the shock nor the horror were uppermost in her mind. What she most felt was an unutterable and loving pity for her brother; and as she sat in the express train and looked out of the window at the interminable miles of vineyard and cornland, the kind, womanly tears gathered and fell softly.

She could not help it, and she would not. Poor fellow! he deserved all her heart, and her soul's sympathy, and the tears thereof.

Marcantonio was in no state to reason or to be reasoned with. He had a strange illusion for a moment, when he thought his wife had returned to him, but he at once realised his folly and understood that Diana had come to meet him--had come, doubtless, to prevent him from accomplishing his vengeance. He had been so sure that she could not arrive until the next morning that he had antic.i.p.ated no interruption in his plans, and he was angry with her for being in his way. She would watch him day and night, and hinder all his movements. So long as she was with him it would be impossible to do anything. He answered her very coldly.

"You have come already? I did not expect you so soon."

They moved towards the door, groping in the deep gloom, and presently reached a room where there were lights. Then Diana saw her brother's face and understood that he was mad or desperately ill, or both. The ghastly colour, the bloodshot eyes, the trembling hand, she saw it all.

She had not known what change his trouble would make in him, but she knew it would be great. But she was startled now that she was face to face with him. It seemed too terribly real. She could not help it, she bent her beautiful fair head on his shoulder and threw her arms about him and sobbed aloud.

But Marcantonio only understood that she was there to keep him from his ends, from the one thing in the world which he wished to do, and meant to do, and surely would accomplish. As she leaned on him and shed those bitter tears for him, he stood pa.s.sive and dry-eyed, staring vacantly above her at the wall, and his hands hung by his side, not offering to support her or to comfort her. He only wished she were gone again and had never come to trouble him.

It was only for a moment. Such outbursts of feeling were rare with Diana; people said she was a piece of ice, heartless, and without sympathy for any human being. They judged her by her face and by the dignity of her manner, not knowing of the things she had done in her life that were neither heartless nor cold. But now she recovered herself quickly and dried her eyes, and made Marcantonio sit down. She looked at him intently as though trying to understand him. He had never met her so coldly before in his life; there must be a reason for it,--he was evidently beside himself with suffering, but his temporary madness could hardly take the form of a sudden dislike for herself unless there were some cause.