To Leeward Part 29

"You did not expect me so soon," she said, speaking very gently. "It was by a mere chance that I managed it."

"I am very sorry," said Marcantonio in a monotonous voice that had no life in it, and seemed not his own. "If you had waited a little while I could have saved you the journey."

"The journey is nothing," said she. "I am not tired at all, and I would come across the world to be with you."

"Yes," said Marcantonio, "I know you would. It would have been better if we had met further on."

"Further on?" she repeated, hoping he would give her some clue to his intentions.

The old habit of confidence was too strong for him; he wished her away, but he could not help speaking and telling her something. He had never concealed anything from her.

"In Turin," he answered briefly.

"Ah,--is he there?" asked Diana in a low voice.

"He sent his box there,--he will go and get it."

"And then?"

"And then," said Marcantonio, the sullen fire burning in his reddened eyes, "we shall meet."

Diana was silent for a moment, determining what to do. All this she had expected, but she had not thought to find her brother so changed.

"Tell me, Marcantonio," she said earnestly, "did you think I would prevent your meeting with him?" He hesitated. She took his hand and looked into his face as though urging him to answer.

"Yes," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

Diana understood. This was the reason of his evident annoyance at her coming. He thought she meant to prevent him from fighting Batis...o...b...

"You know better than that," she said gravely. Marcantonio turned upon her quickly with an angry look.

"You prevented me before," he said. "If I had shot him then, this trouble would not have come. You know it,--why do you look at me like that?"

"If you had shot him before," said she, "this could not have happened.

But if he had shot you,--that was possible, was it not?--you gained nothing. If neither of you had killed the other, there would have been a useless scandal. The case is different."

If she had found her brother overcome with his sorrow and abandoned to the suffering it brought, sensitive and shrinking from all allusion to his shame, she would have acted very differently. But she found him possessed of but one idea, how to kill Julius Batis...o...b..; he was hard and unyielding; he seemed to have forgotten the wife he had loved so well, in the longing to destroy the man who had stolen her away. She felt no hesitation in speaking plainly of the matter in hand, since his feelings needed no sparing. But her sympathy was so large and honest that she did not feel hurt herself because he was cold to her; she understood that he was scarcely in his right mind, and she could make all allowance for him.

Marcantonio did not answer at once. But her influence on him, as she sat there, was soothing, and he was gradually yielding under it--not in the least abandoning his one idea, but feeling that she might not hinder its execution after all.

"Do you mean to say," he asked suddenly, "that you will not try to prevent my meeting with him?" He turned and looked into her eyes, that met his honestly and fearlessly.

"a.s.suredly I will not prevent you," said she.

"Really and truly?"

"So truly that if I thought you had meant to leave him alone, I would have tried to make you fight him."

Marcantonio laughed scornfully, in a way that was bad to hear. It had never struck him that he could possibly have not wanted to fight. But in a moment he was grave again.

"What a woman you are, Diana!" he exclaimed. It sounded more like himself than anything he had said yet, and Diana was encouraged. But she said nothing.

In her simple code, fighting was a necessary thing in the world. She had been brought up among people who fought duels under provocation, and it never entered her head that under certain circ.u.mstances there was anything else to be done. Women often scream with terror at the mention of such a thing, but very few of them will have anything to do with men who will not fight when they are insulted. In preventing a challenge after the affair at Sorrento she had done violence to her feelings for the sake of Leonora's reputation. In the present instance that was no longer at stake. It was perfectly clear that her brother must have satisfaction from his enemy, as soon as might be.

She had never hesitated, therefore, in her view of Marcantonio's situation, and when he put the question to her she answered it boldly and naturally. But, somehow, he had not understood his sister before, though he had yielded to her, and he was astonished at her readiness to agree with him. He looked at her with a sort of admiration, and his feeling towards her changed.

"Then you will help me to find him?" he asked.

"I will stay with you until you do," she answered.

"It is the same thing," said he. "Will you come to Turin with me at once?"

"I will not leave you," she said. "We can go to Turin to-morrow, if you like."

"No--to-night," he said, quickly. The idea of wasting twelve hours seemed intolerable.

But Diana had made up her mind that he must rest a while before doing anything more. She shuddered when she looked at his face and saw the change wrought there in six and thirty hours.

"If we start now," she said, "we shall arrive in the evening. You could do nothing at night. Rest until the morning, and then we will go. You will need all the strength you have."

"I cannot rest," he said gloomily.

"You must try," answered Diana. "I will read to you till you are asleep."

He rose and began to pace the room. The doubt that she intended to keep him back sprang up again in his unsettled mind. He stopped before her.

"No," he said, "I will go to-night, and you need not come if you are too tired. You want to prevent me from going at all--I see it in your face."

Diana looked up at him as she sat. No one but a madman could have doubted the faith of those grey eyes of hers, and as Marcantonio gazed on them the old influence of the stronger character began to act. He turned away impatiently.

"You always make me do what you like," he said, and began to walk again.

Diana forced herself to laugh a little.

"Do not be so foolish, dear boy," she said. "I want you to sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will go to the world's end together. You will lose twelve hours somewhere, because there are certain things that cannot be done at night. Better make use of them now, and sleep, before you are altogether exhausted. I promise to go with you to-morrow. Do you mean to have an illness, or to go out of your mind? You will accomplish one or the other in this way, and there will be an end of the whole matter."

"Very well," said Marcantonio, unable to resist her will, "since you promise it to me I will do as you please. But to-morrow morning I will start, whatever happens."

"Very well," said Diana. "And now, dear brother, will you kindly give me some dinner? I have scarcely had anything to-day."

"Dio mio!" cried Marcantonio, "what a brute I am!"

It was like him, she thought, to be angry at himself for having forgotten to be hospitable. The words rea.s.sured her, for they sounded natural. There had been moments during the conversation when she had thought he was insane. Perhaps it was more his looks than his words, however. At all events, as he rang the bell and ordered what was necessary, she felt as though he were already better.

One of her reasons for wishing him to stay a night in Rome was that he might immediately have a chance of growing calmer. Nothing distances grief like sleep. Until the first impression had become less vivid in his mind, she could not ask him questions about the circ.u.mstances of the flight. She guessed that, although he was willing, and even anxious, to talk of his future meeting with Batis...o...b.., it would be quite another thing to make him speak of the past fact. And yet she knew nothing of the details--not even exactly the time when it had all happened. She half fancied that they must have got away by the sea, because it would have been so simple; but she had no idea of how much Marcantonio knew, nor whether the matter had yet in any way become public property. It was necessary, she judged, that she should know something, at least, of the circ.u.mstances. No one but Marcantonio could tell her, and before he could be brought to speak he must be saved from the danger of a physical illness which seemed to threaten him.

Before long dinner was ready. It was ten o'clock, and the meal had been prepared for Marcantonio at eight; but he had behaved so strangely that no one liked to go near him, and the servants supposed that if he wanted anything he would ring the bell.