To Leeward Part 37

In the week they had spent in Turin there had been already twenty or thirty communications of various kinds. Poor Marcantonio never knew that his sister sorted the mail for him. It was brought to him by the confidential servant, and he always took it and went to his room with an air of great importance to "get through his business," as he expressed it. He was evidently proud of doing it, showing that unaccountable vanity in small things which characterises so many lunatics. Indeed, he had always been proud of his attention to details, and now it became a sort of pa.s.sion, though he was never able to carry out his intentions, and always left the unfinished work to Diana.

On the fourth of September Julius Batis...o...b..'s letter, directed to Marcantonio in Rome, had come back to Turin. Julius had marked it "very urgent," and the steward had looked at it, had thought Batis...o...b..'s handwriting indistinct, and to secure greater certainty had put it into another envelope and directed it in his own business-like way. The consequence was that it was mistaken for a common business letter, and handed to Marcantonio with the rest.

It seemed to be the last blow that an evil fate could strike at the unhappy man, and it was a terrible one in itself and in its consequences.

He sat at his table by the window, opening one letter after another, and looking over the contents with a pleased expression, a little vacant perhaps, but not altogether without intelligence. There was a lacuna in his mind, and sometimes he was conscious of being confused by faces and things about him, but he was still capable of understanding the questions about his estates, and farms, and buildings, though he always seemed to lack the energy to write the directions with his own hand.

He turned over the sheets and folded each one neatly and put it back into its particular envelope. Then he opened the one from the steward, and found in it a letter directed to Rome in a strange hand.

He held it in his fingers with a puzzled look for a moment; it seemed as though one letter had suddenly become two. Then he understood and smiled a little sadly at his own weakness of comprehension, and broke the seal.

The effect was not instantaneous. He read it over again, and a third time, his face still vacant, and he put his hand to his head trying and striving with all his might to remember. The week of insanity had done its work and Diana need not have feared that he could be easily recalled to an understanding of the past. But it was not wholly gone yet; he would try to remember. He rose to his feet, and perhaps the slight physical effort helped to stir his dull mind.

Suddenly he trembled violently from head to foot, and his colour changed from the natural complexion it had taken of late to a deadly pallor. For an instant his whole nature seemed to be convulsed, he reeled to and fro and caught himself by the heavy frame of his bedstead, staring wildly about, and fell backwards across the pillows, clutching the counterpane to right and left of him with his two hands, his face distorted and horrible to see.

It only lasted for a moment, and he regained his feet, stood still for a few seconds, and pa.s.sed his hands across his eyes and seemed at once to recover his faculties. He took Batis...o...b..'s letter again and read it over, as though fixing the few words and the address in his mind. The vacant expression of ten minutes ago had changed to a look of supernatural intelligence and cunning. He put the letter in his pocket and sat down at the table. He opened some of the envelopes again and scattered the papers about, eying the effect rather critically. He then took his dressing-case, opened it, and removed one small tray, and then a second. In the bottom of the box was a revolver, bright and ready, with all its appurtenances, a few cartridges lying loose in their little compartment. The weapon was loaded, but he carefully opened it and examined each chamber, turning it round slowly by the light. It was not a large pistol, and when he was sure that it was in order, he put it carefully into the inside pocket of his coat, and surveyed the effect in the gla.s.s. No one would have suspected that he was armed.

He saw that his hat was ready in its place, and he rang the bell and sat down at his table once more, holding a letter in his hand, as though reading. The confidential servant appeared.

"Will you please to bring me a lemonade?" said Marcantonio, with perfectly natural intonation. The man bowed and retired to execute the order. His master seemed better than usual, he thought; the appearance of the papers and Carantoni's bland smile had completely deceived him.

As soon as he was alone he took his hat, felt that he had his purse in his pocket, and opened the door to the sitting-room. Diana was not there, for she generally wrote her own letters until Marcantonio appeared with his correspondence, asking her to answer it for him. The servant was gone to get the lemonade and Marcantonio slipped quietly out on tiptoe.

Once upon the main staircase of the hotel he ran nimbly down, humming a little tune in a jaunty fashion, to show everybody that he was at his ease. Of course the people in the house had no idea that he was insane.

It had been Diana's chiefest care to conceal the fact from every one; and Marcantonio walked calmly past the porter's lodge into the street, and took a cab. It was nearly midday and the thoroughfares were less crowded than in the morning and evening; the cab flew rapidly over the smooth pavement to the station.

There are many trains to Cuneo in the summer season, and before very long Carantoni found himself in a smoking-carriage with three or four men, all reading the papers and smoking long, black cigars with straws in them. He lit a cigarette, bought a paper just as the guard was closing the doors, and he rolled out of the station, looking just like anybody else. He pretended to read, and no one noticed him.

When the servant returned with the lemonade and found that Marcantonio was gone, he did not suspect what was the matter, but put the gla.s.s on the table and went back to the antechamber and waited at his post. He waited a few minutes and then knocked at Diana's door, and asked if the signore were with her.

"No," said Diana quickly, and came out into the sitting-room in her loose morning gown. "Where is he? Is he not in his room? He never comes into mine."

"He is not there," said the man, who by this time was thoroughly frightened. "He sent me for a lemonade. He looked better than usual, and was sitting just there, at his table, reading his letters. When I came back he was gone. He seemed entirely himself, better than I have ever seen him."

Diana was frightened and puzzled. After all it was quite possible that Marcantonio had taken it into his head to go out by himself. He had never suggested such a thing yet, and always seemed unwilling to cross the threshold alone; but since he was so much better that day, he might have gone out. It was possible. She would not have believed that without some immediate cause he could have fallen back into a remembrance of his troubles; for she had studied his moods very carefully, and was convinced that, as the doctor said, there would always be a blank in his mind now, destroying the memory of those three or four days. She glanced hastily over the papers on the table. They were all of the usual sort, for Marcantonio had taken Batis...o...b..'s letter with him.

Nevertheless, she was very much frightened, and was angry with the confidential servant for not having sent some one else to get the lemonade. She lost no time in dispatching him to make inquiries. He was really an active man, and understood his business thoroughly, but Marcantonio's manner had completely deceived him, and he had conscientiously thought his charge perfectly safe. Maniacs have more than once deceived their keepers, and their doctors, and Marcantonio seemed to have fallen into a very different sort of madness--rather foolish and gentle than cunning and dangerous.

The servant soon discovered that Marcantonio had pa.s.sed the porter's lodge and had taken a cab, not many minutes earlier; but no one had heard the order he gave to the driver. There were no more carriages on the stand. The man lost no time but ran down the street till he found one, and was driven to the station, as he was, bareheaded and clothed in a dress-coat and a white tie, after the manner of hotel servants in the morning. His experience told him that crazy people generally made for the railway when they escaped. But he was too late. A train had just left--he made anxious inquiries of every one, describing Marcantonio's clothes and jewelry, which he knew by heart. No one had noticed him. He might not have come to the station after all.

But a dirty little boy elbowed his way through the crowd of railway porters and guards that soon surrounded the man, and the boy listened.

"Had that signore a great ring on his finger, with a black stone in it, and a red one on each side?" he asked.

"Yes," cried the confidential servant. "You have seen him?" He seized the small boy by the arm and held him fast.

"Yes," said the little fellow; "but you have no need to pinch me like that. I sold him a paper, and he gave me a silver half-franc, and I noticed his fingers and his ring."

The servant released him.

Some one else had noticed the ring, which was very large and brilliant,--a great sapphire with a ruby on each side of it. The individual remembered hearing the gentleman ask for the train to Cuneo.

The confidential servant rushed back to the hotel, after ascertaining that there would not be another train for two hours.

He told Diana what he had learned, and she listened attentively. She was pale and quiet, and she did not reproach the man again. It was of no use now. She had dressed herself, and she sent for a cab; and then she also was driven to the station, the man accompanying her. She did not speak except to give her orders.

She went at once to the station-master, an extremely civil individual with a great deal of silver lace.

"Can you give me a special train to Cuneo at once?" she asked.

The station-master was in despair, he said. There was only a single track, and it would be impossible to arrange the line at such short notice. He bowed, and looked grave, and put everything in the station at the disposal of the magnificent lady who ordered special trains as other people order cabs. But he could do nothing. Diana hesitated.

Something must be done at once.

"My brother," she said, "took the last train to Cuneo, and I desire to stop him. He--he is insane."

It was a hard thing to have to tell a stranger, a railway official, and Diana was whiter than death as she said it. She would rather have put a knife into her heart.

The station-master was graver and more polite than ever. He could telegraph to all the stations to have the pa.s.sengers watched as they descended. Would she give him a description,--the name, perhaps?

It had to be done. She gave the details, and the telegram was sent.

Meanwhile she sat in the station-master's private office, to wait for more than an hour until the next train should be ready.

The consequence of all this was that when Marcantonio finally reached his destination, he was politely asked, in company with the other pa.s.sengers, whether he had seen or heard of an insane gentleman called the Marchese Carantoni. But his newly-found cunning did not desert him.

He shrugged his shoulders, and said he did not know the gentleman. He himself looked so quiet and dignified, that no one could have suspected him of being the person, and the short description telegraphed would have answered to hundreds of Italians all over the country. He had, of course, expected to be pursued, as lunatics often do, and he was prepared to baffle every attempt. His quiet look and frank smile were a perfect pa.s.sport. He even inquired of a porter at the station how he could best reach the Certosa di Pesio; and the man told him it was an hour's drive or more, and got him a little carriage for the journey, and received a few sous for his pains.

Marcantonio leaned back against the moth-eaten cushions and smoked a cigarette and looked at the scenery. He hummed a little tune occasionally, and, when the dirty driver was not looking, he put his hand into his breast pocket, and felt that his pistol was in its place, and then the cunning smile pa.s.sed over his features.

He had managed it all so well,--there could be no mistake about it. He chuckled as he thought how Batis...o...b.. would expect to receive the visit of a third party, and would thus be suddenly brought face to face with the princ.i.p.al. He thought he could antic.i.p.ate just how Batis...o...b.. would look, and he revelled for a while in the contemplation of his hatred. He had forgotten nothing now, except that he had ever forgotten his vengeance for a moment.

On and on he rolled in his rattling little cab. Through a long and gradually-ascending valley, thickly clothed with chestnut-trees of mighty growth. By the roadside ran a stream, that gradually became a torrent as the inclination of its course grew steeper, and the road wound up towards the source. Here and there the water fell over a natural weir of dark-brown rock, forming a deep pool below, where the trout lurked in the shadow. Again the thick woods receded a little on each side, and the bed of the stream, now shallow from the summer heat, grew broad and stony; and further on there was a bit of gra.s.sy bank overhung with many trees, and the small river swept smoothly round.

Suddenly the carriage drew up before an old stone gateway that seemed to start out of the foliage, and there was a noise as of a deep fall of water, at once wild and smooth. Marcantonio had reached the Carthusian monastery at last. His purpose was almost accomplished.

It is a strange building in a marvellous situation. Those old monks knew where to live, as they have always known in all ages and countries,--from the priests of Egypt to the monks of Buddha, from the Benedictines of Subiaco to the holy men of ancient Mexico, they have all reared s.p.a.cious dwellings in chosen sites, where the body might live in peace and the soul be raised, by contemplating the beauties of the earth, to the imagination of the beauties of heaven. They were wise old men; some of them were good, and some bad, as happens in all communities in the world; but they were men who did the earth good in their day, and found out the places that have often become cities in our times, whereby hundreds of thousands of souls have profited by their choice.

The Certosa di Pesio, where Julius and Leonora had taken up their abode for a time, is turned into an establishment for cold-water cures. There are generally some fifty or sixty people there from Turin and the neighbourhood who take the baths, or not, as they please, and lead a pleasant life for a few months in the great cloistered courts, and the bright gardens, and out in the endless chestnut woods. A cool breath of the Alps blows down the valley, and the rush of the water, dammed up by a strong weir of ancient masonry, and continually pouring down with a steady, musical roar, pervades all the cool rooms and the sounding halls and pa.s.sages. It is an ideal place for the summer, almost unknown to foreigners. It is no wonder that Julius had thought it the very spot for Leonora to rest in until the heat was over. A little way from the buildings, up the valley, a dilapidated summer-house overhangs the stream. Sitting there you can see the whole wonderful outline of the convent buildings, crowned with chimneys which the old monk-architects seem to have delighted in greatly, giving them a variety of strange and grotesque shapes such as I never saw anywhere else. Julius and Leonora used often to come to the old summer-house in the afternoon, with their books, which were seldom called into requisition, and they would sit side by side for hours, till the evening sun warmed the colours of the pine-trees on the heights to a green-gold, and reddened the far-off snows of Monte Rosa with the last, loving touch of his departing light.

An obsequious individual came forward from the archway as Marcantonio drove up to the gate. Marcantonio eyed him, and perceived that he was a functionary of the pension.

"Is there an English gentleman here?" he asked,--"a certain Signor Giulio Batis...o...b..?" His voice was very calm, and had a certain suavity in its tones; he smiled, too, as he asked the question.

"Si, signore," answered the man, bowing and gesticulating toward the building. "Certainly. A handsome signore, with his wife--both Inglesi.

They arrived on the thirty-first of last month--five days. Will the signore do the favour to come in? I will inquire whether the English gentleman is at home."

The slightest shade pa.s.sed over Marcantonio's face at the mention of the wife in the case. But the man would not have noticed it. Marcantonio felt sure he had not betrayed himself.

"I will wait here," said he, "while you inquire."

The man disappeared, and Marcantonio was alone. He looked up at the windows in the grey walls, and saw no one. Nevertheless, at any moment Batis...o...b.. might appear--from the house or from the woods--he might be taking a walk. It seemed a very long time to wait.