Marcello stood at an open window listening to the musical spring rain
and watching the changing lights on the city below him, as the
dove-coloured cloud that floated over Rome like thin gauze was drawn up
into the sunshine. Then there were sudden reflections from distant
windows and wet domes, that blazed like white fires for a little while,
till the raindrops dried and the waves of changing hues that had surged
up under the rain, rising, breaking, falling, and spreading, subsided
into a restful sea of harmonious colour.
After that, the sweet smell of the wet earth came up to Marcello's
nostrils. A light breeze stirred the dripping emerald leaves, and the
little birds fluttered down and hopped along the garden walks and over
the leaves, picking up the small unwary worms that had been enjoying a
bath while their enemies tried to keep dry under the ilex boughs.
Marcello half closed his eyes and drank the fragrant air with parted
lips, his slim white hands resting on the marble sill. The sunshine made
his pale face luminous, and gilded his short fair hair, casting the
shadow of the brown lashes upon his delicate cheeks. There was something
angel-like in his expression--the look of the frescoed angels of Melozzo
da Forli in the Sacristy of St. Peter's. They are all that is left of
something very beautiful, brought thither broken from the Church of the
Holy Apostles; and so, too, one might have fancied that Marcello,
standing at the window in the morning sunshine, belonged to a world that
had long passed away--fit for a life that was, fit for a life to come
hereafter, perhaps, but not fit for the life that is. There are rare and
beautiful beings in the world who belong to it so little that it seems
cruelty and injustice to require of them what is demanded of us all.
They are born ages too late, or ages too soon; they should not have been
born now. Their very existence calls forth our tenderest sympathy, as we
should pity a fawn facing its death among wolves.
But Marcello Consalvi had no idea that he could deserve pity, and life
looked very bright to him, very easy, and very peaceful. He could hardly
have thought of anything at all likely to happen which could darken the
future, or even give him reasonable cause for anxiety. There was no
imaginative sadness in his nature, no morbid dread of undefined evil, no
melancholy to dye the days black; for melancholy is more often an
affliction of the very strong in body or mind than of the weak, or of
average men and women. Marcello was delicate, but not degenerate; he
seemed gentle, cheerful, and ready to believe the world a very good
place, as indeed it is for people who are not too unlike their
neighbours to enjoy it, or too unlucky to get some of its good things,
or too weak to work, fight, and love, or too clever to be as satisfied
with themselves as most men are. For plain, common, everyday happiness
and contentment belong to plain, average people, who do what others do
and have a cheerfully good opinion of themselves. Can a man make a good
fight of it if he does not believe himself to be about as good as his
adversary?
It had never occurred to Marcello that he might have to fight for
anything, and if some one had told him on that spring morning that he
was on the very verge of a desperate struggle for existence against
overwhelming odds, he would have turned his bright eyes wonderingly to
the prophet of evil, asking whence danger could come, and trying to
think what it might be like.
At the first appearance of it he would have been startled into fear,
too, as many a grown man has been before now, when suddenly brought face
to face with an unknown peril, being quite untried: and small shame to
him. He who has been waked from a peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams to
find death at his throat, for the first time in his life, knows the
meaning of that. Samson was a tried warrior when Delilah first roused
him with her cry, "The Philistines are upon thee!"
Marcello was no youthful Samson, yet he was not an unmanly boy, for all
his bringing up. So far as his strength would allow he had been
accustomed to the exercises and sports of men: he could ride fearlessly,
if not untiringly; he was a fair shot; he had hunted wild boar with his
stepfather in the marshy lands by the sea; he had been taught to fence
and was not clumsy with weapons, though he had not yet any great skill.
He had always been told that he was delicate and must be careful, and he
knew that he was not strong; but there was one good sign in that his
weakness irritated him and bred at least the desire for strength,
instead of the poor-spirited indolence that bears bodily infirmity as
something inevitable, and is ready to accept pity if not to ask for it.
The smell of the damp earth was gone, and as the sun shone out the air
was filled with the scent of warm roses and the faintly sweet odour of
wistaria. Marcello heard a light footstep close to him, and met his
mother's eyes as he turned.
Even to him, she looked very young just then, as she stood in the light,
smiling at him. A piece of lace was drawn half over her fair hair, and
the ends went round her throat like a scarf and fell behind her. Its
creamy tints heightened the rare transparency of her complexion by faint
contrast. She was a slight woman and very graceful.
"I have looked for you everywhere," she said, and she still smiled, as
if with real pleasure at having found him.
"I have been watching the shower" Marcello answered, drawing her to the
window. "And then the earth and the roses smelt so sweet that I stayed
here. Did you want me, mother?"
"I always like to know where you are."
She passed her arm through his with a loving pressure, and looked out
of the window with him. The villa stood on the slope of the Janiculum,
close to the Corsini gardens.
"Do I run after you too much?" the mother asked presently, as if she
knew the answer. "Now that you are growing up, do I make you feel as if
you were still a little boy? You are nearly nineteen, you know! I
suppose I ought to treat you like a man."
Marcello laughed, and his hand slipped into hers with an almost childish
and nestling movement.
"You have made a man of me," he answered.
Had she? A shadow of doubt crossed her thoughtful face as she glanced at
his. He was so different from other young men of his age, so delicately
nurtured, so very gentle; there was the radiance of maidenly innocence
in his look, and she was afraid that he might be more like a girl than a
man almost grown.
"I have done my best," she said. "I hope I have done right."
He scarcely understood what she meant, and his expression did not
change.
"You could not do anything that was not right," he answered.
Perhaps such a being as Marcello would be an impossibility anywhere but
in Italy. Modern life tears privacy to tatters, and privacy is the veil
of the temple of home, within which every extreme of human development
is possible, good and bad. Take privacy away and all the strangely
compound fractions of humanity are soon reduced to a common
denomination. In Italy life has more privacy than anywhere else west of
Asia. The Englishman is fond of calling his home his castle, but it is a
thoroughfare, a market-place, a club, a hotel, a glass house, compared
with that of an average Italian. An Englishman goes home to escape
restraint: an Italian goes out. But the northern man, who lives much in
public, learns as a child to conceal what he feels, to be silent, to
wear an indifferent look; whereas the man of the south, who hides
nothing when the doors of his house are shut, can hide but little when
he meets his enemy in the way. He laughs when he is pleased, and scowls
when he is not, threatens when he is angry, and sheds tears when he is
hurt, with a simplicity that too often excites the contempt of men
accustomed to suffer or enjoy without moving a muscle.
Privacy favours the growth of individual types, differing widely from
each other; the destruction of it makes people very much alike.
Marcello's mother asked herself whether she had done well in rearing him
as a being apart from those amongst whom he must spend his life.
And yet, as she looked at him, he seemed to be so nearly the ideal of
which she had dreamt throughout long years of loving care that she was
comforted, and the shadow passed away from her sweet face. He had
answered that she could do nothing that was not right; she prayed that
his words might be near the truth, and in her heart she was willing to
believe that they were almost true. Had she not followed every good
impulse of her own good heart? Had she not tried to realize literally
for him the most beautiful possibilities of the Christian faith? That,
at least, was true, and she could tell herself so without any mistaken
pride. How, then, had she made any mistake? The boy had the face of a
young saint.
"Are you ready, my dear?" she asked suddenly, as a far-off clock struck.
"Yes, mother, quite ready."
"I am not," she answered with a little laugh. "And Folco is waiting, and
I hear the carriage driving up."
She slipped from Marcello's side and left the room quickly, for they
were going to drive down to the sea, to a little shooting-lodge that
belonged to them near Nettuno, a mere cottage among the trees by the
Roman shore, habitable only in April and May, and useful only then, when
the quail migrate along the coast and the malarious fever is not yet to
be feared. It was there that Marcello had first learned to handle a gun,
spending a week at a time there with his stepfather; and his mother used
to come down now and then for a day or two on a visit, sometimes
bringing her friend the Contessa dell' Armi. The latter had been very
unhappy in her youth, and had been left a widow with one beautiful girl
and a rather exiguous fortune. Some people thought that it was odd that
the Signora Corbario, who was a saint if ever there was one, should have
grown so fond of the Contessa, for the latter had seen stormy days in
years gone by; and of course the ill-disposed gossips made up their
minds that the Contessa was trying to catch Marcello for her daughter
Aurora, though the child was barely seventeen.
This was mere gossip, for she was quite incapable of any such scheme.
What the gossips did not know was something which would have interested
them much more, namely, that the Contessa was the only person in Rome
who distrusted Folco Corbario, and that she was in constant fear lest
she should turn out to be right, and lest her friend's paradise should
be suddenly changed into a purgatory. But she held her tongue, and her
quiet face never betrayed her thoughts. She only watched, and noted from
month to month certain small signs which seemed to prove her right; and
she should be ready, whenever the time should come, by day or night, to
help her friend, or comfort her, or fight for her.
If Corbario guessed that the Contessa did not trust him, he never showed
it. He had found her installed as his wife's friend, and had accepted
her, treating her with much courtesy and a sort of vicarious affection;
but though he tried his best he could not succeed in reaching anything
like intimacy with her, and while she seemed to conceal nothing, he felt
that she was hiding her real self from him. Whether she did so out of
pride, or distrust, or jealousy, he could never be sure. He was secretly
irritated and humiliated by her power to oppose him and keep him at a
distance without ever seeming to do so; but, on the other hand, he was
very patient, very tenacious of his purpose, and very skilful. He knew
something of the Contessa's past, but he recognised in her the nature
that has known the world's worst side and has done with it for ever, and
is lifted above it, and he knew the immense influence which the
spectacle of a blameless life exercises upon the opinion of a good woman
who has not always been blameless herself. Whatever he had been before
he met his wife, whatever strange plans had been maturing in his brain
since he had married her, his life had seemed as spotless from that day
as the existence of the best man living. His wife believed in him, and
the Contessa did not; but even she must in time accept the evidence of
her senses. Then she, too, would trust him. Why it was essential that
she should, he alone knew, unless he was merely piqued by her quiet
reserve, as a child is when it cannot fix the attention of a grown-up
person.
The Contessa and her daughter were to be of the party that day, and the
carriage stopped where they lived, near the Forum of Trajan. They
appeared almost directly, the Contessa in grey with a grey veil and
Aurora dressed in a lighter shade, the thick plaits of her auburn hair
tied up short below her round straw hat, on the theory that she was
still a school-girl, whose skirt must not quite touch the ground, who
ought not to wear a veil, and whose mind was supposed to be a sensitive
blank, particularly apt to receive bad impressions rather than good
ones. In less than a year she would be dancing all night with men she
had scarcely heard of before, listening to compliments of which she had
never dreamt--of course not--and to declarations which no right-minded
girl one day under eighteen could under any circumstances be thought to
expect. Such miracles as these are wrought by the eighteenth birthday.
Corbario's eyes looked from the mother to the daughter, as he and
Marcello stood on the pavement to let them get in. The Contessa touched
his outstretched hand without restraint but without cordiality, smiling
just as much as was civil, and less readily than would have been
friendly. Aurora glanced at him and laughed prettily without any
apparent reason, which is the privilege of very young girls, because
their minds are supposed to be a blank. Also because her skirt must not
quite touch the ground, one very perfect black silk ankle was distinctly
visible for a moment as she stepped into the carriage. Note that from
the eve of her eighteenth birthday till she is old enough to be really
wicked no well-regulated young woman shows her ankles. This also is one
of the miracles of time.
Marcello blushed faintly as he sat down beside Aurora. There were now
five in the big carriage, so that she was between the two men; and
though there was enough room Marcello felt the slight pressure of her
arm against his. His mother saw his colour change, and looked away and
smiled. The idea of marrying the two in a few years had often crossed
her mind, and she was pleased whenever she saw that Marcello felt a
little thrill of emotion in the girl's presence. As for Aurora, she
looked straight before her, between the heads of the two elder women,
and for a long time after they had started she seemed absorbed in
watching the receding walls of the city and the long straight road that
led back to it. The Contessa and her friend talked quietly, happy to be
together for a whole day. Corbario now and then looked from one to the
other, as if to assure himself that they were quite comfortable, and his
still face wore an unchanging look of contented calm as his eyes turned
again to the sunlit sweep of the low Campagna. Marcello looked steadily
away from Aurora, happily and yet almost painfully aware that her arm
could not help pressing against his. The horses' hoofs beat rhythmically
on the hard high road, with the steady, cheerful energy which would tell
a blind man that a team is well fed, fresh from rest, and altogether fit
for a long day's work. The grey-haired coachman sat on his box like an
old dragoon in the saddle; the young groom sat bolt upright beside him
with folded arms, as if he could never tire of sitting straight. The
whole party looked prosperous, harmonious, healthy, and perfectly happy,
as if nothing in the least unpleasant could possibly happen to them,
still less anything terrible, that could suddenly change all their
lives.
One of fate's favourite tricks is to make life look particularly gay and
enjoyable, and full of sunshine and flowers, at the very moment when
terror wakes from sleep and steps out of the shadow to stalk abroad.
The cottage where the party were going to spend the next few days
together was built like an Indian bungalow, consisting of a single story
surrounded by a broad, covered verandah, and having a bit of lawn in
front. It was sheltered by trees, and between it and the beach a bank
of sand from ten to fifteen feet high ran along the shore, the work of
the southwest gales during many ages. In many places this bank was
covered with scrub and brushwood on the landward side.
A little stream meandered down to the sea on the north side of the
cottage, ending in a pool full of tall reeds, amongst which one could
get about in a punt. The seashore itself is very shelving at that place,
and there is a bar about a cable's length out, over which the sea breaks
with a tremendous roar during westerly storms. Two hundred yards from
the cottage, a large hut had been built for the men-servants and for the
kitchen; near by it there was a rough coach-house and a stable with room
for a dozen horses. The carriage usually went back to Rome on the day
after every one had arrived, and was sent for when wanted; but there
were a number of rough Campagna horses in the stable, such as are ridden
by the cattle herders about Rome, tough little beasts of fairly good
temper and up to a much heavier weight than might be guessed by a
stranger in the country. In the morning the men of the party usually
went shooting, if the wind was fair, for where quail are concerned much
depends on that. Dinner was in the middle of the day, and every one was
supposed to go to sleep after it. In the late afternoon the horses were
saddled, and the whole party went for a gallop on the sands, or up to
classic Ardea, or across the half-cultivated country, coming back to
supper when it was dark. A particularly fat and quiet pony was kept for
Marcello's mother, who was no great rider, but the Contessa and Aurora
rode anything that was brought them, as the men did. To tell the truth,
the Campagna horse is rarely vicious, and, even when only half broken,
can be ridden by a lady if she be an average horsewoman.
Everything happened as usual. The party reached the cottage in time for
a late luncheon, rested afterwards, and then rode out. But the Signora
Corbario would not go.
"Your pony looks fatter and quieter than ever," said Maddalena dell'
Armi with a smile. "If you do not ride him, he will turn into a
fixture."
"He is already a very solid piece of furniture," observed Folco, looking
at the sleek animal.
"He is very like the square piano I practise on," said Aurora. "He has
such a flat back and such straight thick legs."
"More like an organ," put in Marcello, gravely. "He has a curious,
half-musical wheeze when he tries to move, like the organ in the church
at San Domenico, when the bellows begin to work."
"It is a shame to make fun of my horse," answered the Signora, smiling.
"But really I am not afraid of him. I have a little headache from the
drive, that is all."
"Take some phenacetine," said Corbario with concern. "Let me make you
quite comfortable before we start."
He arranged a long straw chair for her in a sheltered corner of the
verandah, with cushions and a rug and a small table beside it, on which
Marcello placed a couple of new books that had been brought down. Then
Folco went in and got a little glass bottle of tablets from his wife's
travelling-bag and gave her one. She was subject to headaches and always
had the medicine with her. It was the only remedy she ever carried or
needed, and she had such confidence in it that she felt better almost as
soon as she had swallowed the tablet her husband gave her.
"Let me stay and read to you," he said. "Perhaps you would go to sleep."
"You are not vain of your reading, my dear," she answered with a smile.
"No, please go with the others."
Then the Contessa offered to stay, and the good Signora had to use a
good deal of persuasion to make them all understand that she would much
rather be left alone. They mounted and rode away through the trees
towards the beach, whence the sound of the small waves, breaking gently
under the afternoon breeze, came echoing softly up to the cottage.
The two young people rode in front, in silence; Corbario and the
Contessa followed at a little distance.
"How good you are to my wife!" Folco exclaimed presently, as they
emerged upon the sand. "You are like a sister to her!"
Maddalena glanced at him through her veil. She had small and classic
features, rather hard and proud, and her eyes were of a dark violet
colour, which is very unusual, especially in Italy. But she came from
the north. Corbario could not see her expression, and she knew it.
"You are good to her, too," she said presently, being anxious to be
just. "You are very thoughtful and kind."
Corbario thought it wiser to say nothing, and merely bent his head a
little in acknowledgment of what he instinctively felt to be an
admission on the part of a secret adversary. Maddalena had never said so
much before.
"If you were not, I should never forgive you," she added, thinking
aloud.
"I don't think you have quite forgiven me as it is," Folco answered more
lightly.
"For what?"
"For marrying your best friend."
The little speech was well spoken, so utterly without complaint, or
rancour, or suggestion of earnestness, that the Contessa could only
smile.
"And yet you admit that I am not a bad husband," continued Folco.
"Should you accept me, or, say, my exact counterpart, for Aurora, in a
year or two?"
"I doubt whether you have any exact counterpart," Maddalena answered,
checking the sharp denial that rose to her lips.
"Myself, then, just for the sake of argument?"
"What an absurd question! Do you mind tightening the girth for me a
little? My saddle is slipping."
She drew rein, and he was obliged to submit to the check. As he
dismounted he glanced at Aurora's graceful figure, a hundred yards
ahead, and for one instant he drew his eyelids together with a very
strange expression. He knew that the Contessa could not see his face.
Marcello and Aurora had been companions since they were children, and
just now they were talking familiarly of the place, which they had not
seen since the previous year. All sorts of details struck them. Here,
there was more sand than usual; there, a large piece of timber had been
washed ashore in the winter gales; at another place there was a new
sand-drift that had quite buried the scrub on the top of the bank; the
keeper of the San Lorenzo tower had painted his shutters brown, though
they had always been green; here was the spot where Aurora had tumbled
off her pony when she was only twelve years old--so long ago! And
here--they looked at each other and then quickly at the sea, for it was
here that Marcello, in a fit of boyish admiration, had once suddenly
kissed her cheek, telling her that she was perfectly beautiful. Even
now, he blushed when he thought of it, and yet he longed to do it again,
and wondered inwardly what would happen if he did.
As for Aurora, though she looked at the sea for a moment, she seemed
quite self-possessed. It is a strange thing that if a boy and a girl are
brought up in just the same way, by women, and without many companions,
the boy should generally be by far the more shy of the two when
childhood is just past.
"You are very fond of your stepfather, are you not?" asked Aurora, so
suddenly that Marcello started a little and hesitated slightly before he
answered.
"Yes," he said, almost directly, "of course I am! Don't you like him,
too?"
"I used to," answered Aurora in a low voice, "but now his eyes frighten
me--sometimes. For instance, though he is a good way behind, I am sure
he is looking at me now, just in that way."
Marcello turned his head instinctively, and saw that Folco had just
dismounted to tighten the girth of the Contessa's saddle. It was exactly
while Aurora was speaking that he had drawn his eyelids together with
such a strange expression--a mere coincidence, no doubt, but one that
would have startled the girl if she could have suddenly seen his face.
They rode on without waiting for the others, at an even canter over the
sand.
"I never saw anything in Folco's eyes that could frighten anybody,"
Marcello said presently.
"No," answered Aurora. "Very likely not."
Marcello had always called Corbario by his first name, and as he grew up
it seemed more and more natural to do so. Folco was so young, and he
looked even younger than he was.
"It must be your imagination," Marcello said.
"Women," said Aurora, as if she were as near thirty as any young woman
would acknowledge herself, "women have no imagination. That is why we
have so much sense," she added thoughtfully.
Marcello was so completely puzzled by this extraordinary statement that
he could find nothing to say for a few moments. Then he felt that she
had attacked his idol, and that Folco must be defended.
"If you could find a single thing, however small, to bring against him,
it would not be so silly to say that his eyes frighten you."
"There!" laughed Aurora. "You might as well say that because at this
moment there is only that one little cloud near the sun, there is no
cloud at all!"
"How ridiculous!" Marcello expressed his contempt of such girlish
reasoning by putting his rough little horse to a gallop.
"Men always say that," retorted Aurora, with exasperating calm. "I'll
race you to the tower for the first choice of oranges at dessert. They
are not very good this year, you know, and you like them."
"Don't be silly!" Marcello immediately reined his horse back to a walk,
and looked very dignified.
"It is impossible to please you," observed Aurora, slackening her pace
at once.
"It is impossible, if you abuse Folco."
"I am sure I did not mean to abuse him," Aurora answered meekly. "I
never abuse anybody."
"Women never do, I suppose," retorted Marcello, with a little snort of
dissatisfaction.
They were little more than children yet, and for pretty nearly five
minutes neither spoke a word, as their horses walked side by side.
"The keeper of the tower has more chickens this year," observed Aurora.
"I can see them running about."
This remark was evidently intended as an overture of reconciliation. It
acted like magic upon Marcello, who hated quarrelling, and was moreover
much more in love with the girl than he knew. Instinctively he put out
his left hand to take her right. They always made peace by taking hands.
But Aurora's did not move, and she did not even turn her head towards
him.
"Take care!" she said quickly, in a low tone. "They are watching us."
Marcello looked round and saw that the others were nearer than he had
supposed, and he blushed foolishly.
"Well, what harm would there be if you gave me your hand?" he asked. "I
only meant--"
"Yes, I understand," Aurora answered, in the same tone as before. "And I
am glad you like me, Marcello--if you really do."
"If I do!" His tone was full of youthful and righteous indignation.
"I did not mean to doubt it," she said quickly. "But it is getting to be
different now, you know. We are older, and somehow everything means
more, even the little things."
"Oh!" ejaculated Marcello. "I begin to see. I suppose," he added, with
what seemed to him reckless brutality, "that if I kissed you now you
would be furious."
He glanced uneasily at Aurora's face to note the effect of this
terrible speech. The result was not exactly what he had expected. A
faint colour rose in her cheeks, and then she laughed.
"When you do," she said, "I would rather it should not be before
people."
"I shall try to remember that," answered Marcello, considerably
emboldened.
"Yes, do! It would be so humiliating if I boxed your ears in the
presence of witnesses."
"You would not dare," laughed Marcello.
From a distance, as Aurora had guessed, Folco was watching them while he
quietly talked to the Contessa; and as he watched, he understood what a
change had taken place since last year, when he had seen Marcello and
Aurora riding over the same stretch of sand on the same little horses.
He ventured a reflection, to see what his companion would answer.
"I daresay many people would say that those two young people were made
for each other."
Maddalena looked at him inquiringly and then glanced at her daughter.
"And what do you say?" she asked, with some curiosity.
"I say 'no.' And you?"
"I agree with you. Aurora is like me--like what I was. Marcello would
bore her to death in six months, and Aurora would drive him quite mad."
Corbario smiled.
"I had hoped," he said, "that women with marriageable daughters would
think Marcello a model husband. But of course I am prejudiced. I have
had a good deal to do with his bringing up during the last four years."
"No one can say that you have not done your duty by him," Maddalena
answered. "I wish I could feel that I had done as well by Aurora--indeed
I do!"
"You have, but you had quite a different nature to deal with."
"I should think so! It is my own."
Corbario heard the little sigh as she turned her head away, and being a
wise man he said nothing in answer. He was not a Roman, if indeed he
were really an Italian at all, but he had vaguely heard the Contessa's
story. She had been married very young to a parliamentary high-light,
who had made much noise in his day, had spent more than half of her
fortune after getting rid of his own, and had been forgotten on the
morrow of his premature death. It was said that she had loved another
man with all her heart, but Corbario had never known who it was.
The sun was almost setting when they turned homeward, and it was dark
when they reached the cottage. They found an unexpected arrival
installed beside the Signora in the doorway of the sitting-room.
"Professor Kalmon is here," said the Signora's voice out of the gloom.
"I have asked him to stay till to-morrow."
The Professor rose up in the shadow and came forward, just as a servant
brought a lamp. He was celebrated as a traveller, and occupied the chair
of comparative physiology in the University of Milan. He belonged to
the modern type of scientific man, which has replaced the one of fifty
years ago, who lived in a dressing-gown and slippers, smoked a long
pipe, and was always losing his belongings through absence of mind. The
modern professor is very like other human beings in dress and
appearance, and has even been known to pride himself on the fit of his
coat, just like the common people.
There were mutual greetings, for the Professor knew all the party, and
everybody liked him. He was a big man, with a well-kept brown beard, a
very clear complexion, and bright brown eyes that looked as if they
would never need spectacles.
"And where have you been since we last saw you?" asked Corbario.
"Are your pockets full of snakes this time?" asked Aurora.
The Professor looked at her and smiled, realising that she was no longer
the child she had been when he had seen her last, and that she was very
good to look at. His brown eyes beamed upon her benevolently.
"Ah, my dear young lady, I see it is all over," he said. "You will never
pull my beard again and turn my pockets inside out for specimens when I
come back from my walks on the beach."
"Do you think I am afraid of you or your specimens?" laughed Aurora.
"I have got a terrible thing in my waistcoat pocket," the Professor
answered. "Something you might very well be afraid of."
"What is it? It must be very small to be in your waistcoat pocket."
"It is a new form of death."
He beamed on everybody with increasing benevolence; but somehow nobody
smiled, and the Signora Corbario shivered and drew her light cloak more
closely round her, as the first gust of the night breeze came up from
the rustling reeds that grew in the pool below.
"It is time to get ready for supper," said Folco. "I hope you are not
hungry, Kalmon, for you will not get anything very elaborate to eat!"
"Bread and cheese will do, my dear fellow."
When Italians go to the country they take nothing of the city with them.
They like the contrast to be complete; they love the total absence of
restraint; they think it delightful to dine in their shooting-coats and
to eat coarse fare. If they had to dress for dinner it would not be the
country at all, nor if dinner had to begin with soup and end with sweets
just as it does in town. They eat extraordinary messes that would make a
Frenchman turn pale and a German look grave. They make portentous
pasties, rich with everything under the sun; they eat fat boiled beef,
and raw fennel, and green almonds, and vast quantities of cream cheese,
and they drink sour wine like water; and it all agrees with them
perfectly, so that they come back to the city refreshed and rested after
a gastronomic treatment which would bring any other European to death's
door.
The table was set out on the verandah that evening, as usual in spring,
and little by little the Professor absorbed the conversation, for they
all asked him questions, few of which could be answered shortly. He was
one of those profoundly cultivated Italians who are often to be met
nowadays, but whose gifts it is not easy to appreciate except in a
certain degree of intimacy. They are singularly modest men as a rule,
and are by no means those about whom there is the most talk in the
world.
The party sat in their places when supper was over, with cloaks and
coats thrown over them against the night air, while Kalmon talked of all
sorts of things that seemed to have the least possible connection with
each other, but which somehow came up quite naturally. He went from the
last book on Dante to a new discovery in chemistry, thence to Japanese
monks and their beliefs, and came back smiling to the latest development
of politics, which led him quite naturally to the newest play, labour
and capital, the German Emperor, and the immortality of the soul.
"I believe you know everything!" exclaimed Marcello, with an admiring
look. "Or else I know nothing, which is really more probable!" The boy
laughed.
"You have not told us about the new form of death yet," said Aurora,
leaning on her elbows and burying her young hands in her auburn hair as
she looked across the table at Kalmon.
"You will never sleep again if I tell you about it," answered the
Professor, opening his brown eyes very wide and trying to look terrible,
which was quite impossible, because he had such a kindly face. "You do
not look frightened at all," he added, pretending to be disappointed.
"Let me see the thing," Aurora said. "Perhaps we shall all be
frightened."
"It looks very innocent," Kalmon answered. "Here it is."
He took a small leather case from his pocket, opened it, and drew out a
short blue glass tube, with a screw top. It contained half a dozen white
tablets, apparently just like those in common use for five-grain doses
of quinine.
A little murmur of disappointment went around the table. The new form of
death looked very commonplace. Corbario was the only one who showed any
interest.
"May I see?" he asked, holding out his hand to take the tube.
Kalmon would not give it to him, but held the tube before his eyes under
the bright light of the lamp.
"Excuse me," he said, "but I make it a rule never to let it go out of my
hands. You understand, don't you? If it were passed round, some one
might lay it down, it might be forgotten, somebody might take it for
something else."
"Of course," said Folco, looking intently at the tube, as though he
could understand something about the contents by mere inspection. "You
are quite right. You should take no risks with such things--especially
as they look so innocent!"
He leaned back in his chair again, as if satisfied, and his eyes met the
Contessa's at the same moment. There was no reason why she should not
have looked at him just then, but he rested one elbow on the table and
shaded his eyes from the light.
"It is strange to reflect," said Kalmon, looking at the tube
thoughtfully, "that one of those little things would be enough to put a
Hercules out of misery, without leaving the slightest trace which
science could discover."
Corbario was still shading his eyes from the light.
"How would one die if one took it?" asked Aurora. "Very suddenly?"
"I call it the sleeping death," answered the Professor. "The poisoned
person sinks into a sweet sleep in a few minutes, smiling as if enjoying
the most delightful dreams."
"And one never wakes up?" inquired Marcello.
"Never. It is impossible, I believe. I have made experiments on animals,
and have not succeeded in waking them by any known means."
"I suppose it congests the brain, like opium," observed Corbario,
quietly.
"Not at all, not at all!" answered Kalmon, looking benevolently at the
little tube which contained his discovery. "I tell you it leaves no
trace whatever, not even as much as is left by death from an electric
current. And it has no taste, no smell,--it seems the most innocent
stuff in the world."
Corbario's hand again lay on the table and he was gazing out into the
night, as if he were curious about the weather. The moon was just
rising, being past the full.
"Is that all you have of the poison?" he asked in an idle tone.
"Oh, no! This is only a small supply which I carry with me for
experiments. I have made enough to send all our thirty-three millions of
Italians to sleep for ever!"
Kalmon laughed pleasantly.
"If this could be properly used, civilisation would make a gigantic
stride," he added. "In war, for instance, how infinitely pleasanter and
more Êsthetic it would be to send the enemy to sleep, with the most
delightful dreams, never to wake again, than to tear people to pieces
with artillery and rifle bullets, and to blow up ships with hundreds of
poor devils on board, who are torn limb from limb by the explosion."
"The difficulty," observed the Contessa, "would be to induce the enemy
to take your poison quietly. What if the enemy objected?"
"I should put it into their water supply," said Kalmon.
"Poison the water!" cried the Signora Corbario. "How barbarous!"
"Much less barbarous than shedding oceans of blood. Only think--they
would all go to sleep. That would be all."
[Illustration: "'I CALL IT THE SLEEPING DEATH,' ANSWERED THE PROFESSOR"]
"I thought," said Corbario, almost carelessly, "that there was no longer
any such thing as a poison that left no traces or signs. Can you not
generally detect vegetable poisons by the mode of death?"
"Yes," answered the Professor, returning the glass tube to its case and
the latter to his pocket. "But please to remember that although we can
prove to our own satisfaction that some things really exist, we cannot
prove that any imaginable thing outside our experience cannot possibly
exist. Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not
induce a modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as
absolute. Impossibility is now a merely relative term, my dear Corbario,
and only means great improbability. Now, to illustrate what I mean, it
is altogether improbable that a devil with horns and hoofs and a fiery
tail should suddenly appear, pick me up out of this delightful circle,
and fly away with me. But you cannot induce me to deny the possibility
of such a thing."
"I am so glad to hear you say that," said the Signora, who was a
religious woman.
Kalmon looked at her a moment and then broke into a peal of laughter
that was taken up by the rest, and in which the good lady joined.
"You brought it on yourself," she said at last.
"Yes," Kalmon answered. "I did. From your point of view it is better to
admit the possibility of a mediÊval devil with horns than to have no
religion at all. Half a loaf is better than no bread."
"Is that stuff of yours animal, vegetable, or mineral?" asked Corbario
as the laughter subsided.
"I don't know," replied the Professor. "Animal, vegetable, mineral?
Those are antiquated distinctions, like the four elements of the
alchemists."
"Well--but what is the thing, then?" asked Corbario, almost impatiently.
"What should you call it in scientific language?"
Kalmon closed his eyes for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts.
"In scientific language," he began, "it is probably H three C seven,
parenthesis, H two C plus C four O five, close parenthesis, HC three O."
Corbario laughed carelessly.
"I am no wiser than before," he said.
"Nor I," answered the Professor. "Not a bit."
"It is much simpler to call it 'the sleeping death,' is it not?"
suggested the Contessa.
"Much simpler, for that is precisely what it is."
It was growing late, according to country ideas, and the party rose from
the table and began to move about a little before going to bed. The moon
had risen high by this time.
Marcello and Aurora, unheeded by the rest, went round the verandah to
the other side of the house and stood still a moment, looking out at the
trees and listening to the sounds of the night. Down by the pool a frog
croaked now and then; from a distance came the plaintive, often
repeated cry of a solitary owlet; the night breeze sighed through the
long grass and the low shrubbery.
The boy and girl turned to each other, put out their hands and then
their arms, and clasped each other silently, and kissed. Then they
walked demurely back to their elders, without exchanging a word.
"We have had to give you the little room at the end of the cottage,"
Corbario was saying to Kalmon. "It is the only one left while the
Contessa is here."
"I should sleep soundly on bare boards to-night," Kalmon answered. "I
have been walking all day."
Corbario went with him, carrying a candle, and shielding the flame from
the breeze with his hand. The room was furnished with the barest
necessities, like most country rooms in Italy. There were wooden pegs on
which to hang clothes instead of a wardrobe, an iron bedstead, a deal
wash-stand, a small deal table, a rush-bottomed chair. The room had only
one window, which was also the only door, opening to the floor upon the
verandah.
"You can bolt the window, if you like," said Corbario when he had bidden
the Professor good-night, "but there are no thieves about."
"I always sleep with my windows open," Kalmon answered, "and I have no
valuables."
"No? Good-night again."
"Good-night."
Corbario went out, leaving him the candle, and turned the corner of the
verandah. Then he stood still a long time, leaning against one of the
wooden pillars and looking out. Perhaps the moonlight falling through
the stiff little trees upon the long grass and shrubbery reminded him of
some scene familiar long ago. He smiled quietly to himself as he stood
there.
Three hours later he was there again, in almost exactly the same
attitude. He must have been cold, for the night breeze was stronger, and
he wore only his light sleeping clothes and his feet were bare. He
shivered a little from time to time, and his face looked very white, for
the moon was now high in the heavens and the light fell full upon him.
His right hand was tightly closed, as if it held some small object fast,
and he was listening intently, first to the right, whence he had come,
then to the left, and then he turned his ear towards the trees, through
which the path led away towards the hut where the men slept. But there
was no sound except the sighing of the wind. The frog by the pool had
stopped croaking, and the melancholy cry of the owlet had ceased.
Corbario went softly on, trying the floor of the verandah with his bare
feet at each step, lest the boards should creak a little under his
weight. He reached the window door of his own room, and slipped into the
darkness without noise.
Kalmon cared little for quail-shooting, and as the carriage was going
back to Rome he took advantage of it to reach the city, and took his
departure about nine o'clock in the morning.
"By the way, how did you sleep?" asked Corbario as he shook hands at
parting. "I forgot to ask you."
"Soundly, thank you," answered the Professor.
And he drove away, waving his felt hat to his hosts.