For a few weeks all Italy was profoundly interested in the story of
Marcello Corbario's disappearance and of his mother's almost
unaccountable death. It was spoken of as the "double tragedy of the
Campagna," and the newspapers were full of it.
The gates of the beautiful villa on the Janiculum were constantly
assailed by reporters; the servants who came out from time to time were
bribed, flattered, and tempted away to eat sumptuous meals and drink the
oldest wine in quiet gardens behind old inns in Trastevere, in the hope
that they might have some information to sell. But no one gained
admittance to the villa except the agents of the police, who came daily
to report the fruitless search; and the servants had nothing to tell
beyond the bare truth. The young gentleman had gone for a walk near the
sea, down at the cottage by the Roman shore, and he had never been heard
of again. His mother had been suffering from a bad headache, had lain
down to rest in a cane chair on the verandah, and had been found dead,
with a smile on her face, by her husband, when he came back from his
first attempt to find Marcello. The groom who always went down with the
carriage could describe with greatest accuracy the spot where the
Signorina Aurora had last seen him; the house servants gave the most
minute details about the cane chair, the verandah, and the position in
which the poor lady had been found; but that was all, and it was not at
all what the reporters wanted. They had all been down to the cottage,
each with his camera and note-book, and had photographed everything in
sight, including Nino, Ercole's dog. What they wanted was a clue, a
story, a scandal if possible, and they found nothing of the sort.
Folco Corbario's mourning was unostentatious and quiet, but none of the
few persons who saw him, whether detectives or servants, could doubt
that he was profoundly affected. He grew paler and thinner every day,
until his own man even began to fear that his health was failing. He had
done, and continued to do, everything that was humanly possible. He had
brought his wife's body to Rome, and had summoned the very highest
authorities in the medical profession to discover, if possible, the
cause of her death. They had come, old men of science, full of the
experience of years, young men of the future, brimming with theories,
experts in chemistry, experts in snake poisons; for Folco had even
suggested that she might have been bitten by a viper or stung by a
venomous spider, or accidentally poisoned by some medicine or something
she had eaten.
But the scientific gentlemen were soon agreed that no such thing had
happened. Considerably disappointed, and with an unanimity which is so
unusual in the confraternity as to be thought absolutely conclusive when
it is observed, they decided that the Signora Corbario had died of
collapse after intense excitement caused by the disappearance of her
son. Thereafter she was buried out at San Lorenzo, with the secret, if
there were any; masses were said, the verdict of the doctors was
published, with the signatures of the most eminent practitioners and
specialists in Italy; and the interest of the public concentrated itself
upon the problem of Marcello's mysterious removal, or abduction, or
subduction, or recession, or flight, from the very bosom of his family.
This problem had the merit of defying solution. In a comparatively open
country, within a space of time which could certainly be limited to five
minutes, at a place whence he should have been clearly seen by Folco
Corbario as soon as Aurora dell' Armi could no longer see him, the boy
had been spirited away, leaving not even the trace of his footsteps in
the sand. It was one of the most unaccountable disappearances on record,
as Folco insisted in his conversations with the Chief of Police, who
went down with him to the cottage and examined the spot most carefully,
with several expert detectives. Folco showed him exactly where Aurora
had stood, and precisely the direction he himself had followed in
approaching the gap, and he declared it to be almost a physical
impossibility that Marcello should have become suddenly invisible just
then.
The official thought so too, and shook his head. He looked at the
detectives, and they shook their heads, also. And then they all looked
at Corbario and expressed the opinion that there was some mistake about
the length of time supposed by Aurora to have elapsed between the
moment when Marcello left her and the instant of Folco's appearance
before her. She had not looked at her watch; in fact, she had not
carried a watch. The whole story therefore depended upon her more or
less accurate judgment of time. It might have been a quarter of an hour
instead of five minutes, in which case Corbario had not yet left the
cottage, and Marcello would have had ample leisure to disappear in any
direction he pleased. Ercole had been away at Porto d'Anzio, the men had
been all at the hut; if Folco had not been on the path precisely at the
time guessed by Aurora, everything could be accounted for.
"Very well," Corbario answered. "Let us suppose that my stepson had time
to get away. In that case he can be found, alive or dead. Italy is not
China, nor Siberia, and I can place unlimited funds at your disposal.
Find him for me; that is all I ask."
"We shall find him, never fear!" answered the Chief of Police with a
confidence he did not feel.
"We shall find him!" echoed the three detectives in chorus.
Ercole watched the proceedings and listened to what was said, for he
considered it his duty to attend on such an occasion, his dog at his
heels, his gun slung over his shoulder. He listened and looked from one
to the other with his deep eyes and inscrutable parchment face,
shrivelled by the malarious fever. But he said nothing. The Chief of
Police turned to him at last.
"Now what do you think about it?" asked the official. "You know the
country. Had there been any suspicious characters about, fellows who
could have carried off the boy?"
"Such people would ask a ransom," answered Ercole. "You would soon hear
from them. But I saw no one. There have been no brigands about Rome for
more than twenty years. Do you dream that you are in Sicily? Praise be
to Heaven, this is the Roman Campagna; we are Christians and we live
under King Victor! Where are the brigands? They have melted. Or else
they are making straw hats in the galleys. Do I know where they are?
They are not here. That is enough."
"Quite right, my friend," answered the Chief of Police. "There are no
brigands. But I am sorry to say that there are thieves in the Campagna,
as there are near every great city."
Ercole shrugged his angular shoulders contemptuously.
"Thieves would not carry a man away," he answered. "You know that, you
who are of the profession, as they say. Such ruffians would have knocked
the young gentleman on the head to keep him quiet, and would have made
off. And besides, we should have found their tracks in the sand, and
Nino would have smelt them."
Nino pricked up one ragged ear at the sound of his name.
"He does not look very intelligent," observed the official. "A clever
dog might have been used to track the boy."
"How?" inquired Ercole with scorn. "The footsteps of the young gentleman
were everywhere, with those of all the family, who were always coming
and going about here. How could he track them, or any of us? But he
would have smelt a stranger, even if it had rained. I know this dog. He
is the head dog on the Roman shore. There is no other dog like him."
"I daresay not," assented the Chief of Police, looking at Nino. "In
fact, he is not like any animal I ever saw."
The detectives laughed at this.
"There is no other," said Ercole without a smile. "He is the only son of
a widowed mother. I am his family, and he is my family, and we live in
good understanding in this desert. If there were no fever we should be
like the saints in paradise--eating our corn meal together. And I will
tell you another thing. If the young gentleman had been wounded anywhere
near here, Nino would have found the blood even after three days. As for
a dead man, he would make a point for him and howl half a mile off,
unless the wind was the wrong way."
"Would he really?" asked Corbario with a little interest.
Ercole looked at him and nodded, but said no more, and presently the
whole party of men went back to Rome, leaving him to the loneliness of
the sand-banks and the sea.
Then Ercole came back to the gap and stood still a little while, and
his dog sat bolt upright beside him.
"Nino," he said at last, in a rather regretful tone, "I gave you a good
character. What could I say before those gentlemen? But I tell you this,
you are growing old. And don't answer that I am getting old too, for
that is my business. If your nose were what it was once, we should know
the truth by this time. Smell that!"
Ercole produced a small green morocco pocket-book, of the sort made to
hold a few visiting cards and a little paper money, and held it to
Nino's muzzle.
Nino smelt it, looked up to his master's face inquiringly, smelt it
again, and then, as if to explain that it did not interest him, lay down
in the sand with his head on his forepaws.
"You see!" growled Ercole. "You cannot even tell whether it belonged to
the boy or to Corbario. An apoplexy on you! You understand nothing! Ill
befall the souls of your dead, you ignorant beast!"
Nino growled, but did not lift his head.
"You understand that," said Ercole, discontentedly. "If you were a
Christian you would stick a knife into me for insulting your dead! Yet
you cannot tell whose pocket-book this is! And if I knew, I should know
something worth knowing."
The pocket-book disappeared in the interior recesses of Ercole's
waistcoat. It was empty and bore no initial, and he could not remember
to have seen it in Corbario's or Marcello's hands, but he was quite
sure that it belonged to one of them. He was equally sure that if he
showed it to Corbario the latter would at once say that it was
Marcello's, and would take it away from him, so he said nothing about
it. He had found it in the sand, a little way up the bank, during his
first search after Marcello's disappearance.
Ercole's confidence in the good intentions of his fellow-men was not
great; he was quite lacking in the sort of charity which believeth all
things, and had a large capacity for suspicion of everybody and
everything; he held all men to be liars and most women to be something
worse.
"Men are at least Christians," he would say to Nino, "but a female is
always a female."
If he took a liking for any one, as for Marcello, he excused himself for
the weakness on the ground that he was only human after all, and in his
heart he respected his dog for snarling at everybody without
discrimination. There was no doubt, however, that he felt a sort of
attachment for the boy, and he admitted the failing while he deplored
it. Besides, he detested Corbario, and had felt that his own common
sense was insulted by the fact that Folco seemed devoted to Marcello.
The suspicion that Folco had got rid of his stepson in order to get his
fortune was therefore positively delightful, accompanied as it was by
the conviction that he should one day prove his enemy a murderer.
Perhaps if he could have known what Folco Corbario was suffering, he
might have been almost satisfied, but he had no means of guessing that.
In his opinion the man knew what had become of Marcello, and could be
made to tell if proper means were used. At night Ercole put himself to
sleep by devising the most horrible tortures for his master, such as no
fortitude could resist, and by trying to guess what the wretched man
would say when his agony forced him to confess the truth.
He was almost sure by this time that Marcello was dead, though how Folco
could have killed him, carried off his body to a great distance and
buried him, without ever absenting himself from the cottage, was more
than Ercole could imagine. He paid Corbario's skill the compliment of
believing that he had not employed any accomplice, but had done the deed
alone.
How? That was the question. Ercole knew his dog well enough, and was
perfectly sure that if the body had been concealed anywhere within a
mile of the cottage Nino would have found it out, for the dog and his
master had quartered every foot of the ground within three days after
Marcello had been lost. It was utterly, entirely impossible that Folco,
without help, could have dragged the dead boy farther. When he had gone
on his pretended search he had not been alone; one of the men had ridden
with him, and had never lost sight of him, as Ercole easily ascertained
without seeming to ask questions. Ercole had obtained a pretty fair
knowledge of Corbario's movements on that day, and it appeared that he
had not been absent from the cottage more than half an hour at any time
before he went to look for Marcello.
"If Corbario himself had disappeared in that way," said Ercole to
himself and Nino, "it would be easy to understand. We should know that
the devil had carried him off."
But no such supernatural intervention of the infernal powers could be
supposed in Marcello's case, and Ercole racked his brains to no purpose,
and pondered mad schemes for carrying Corbario off out of Rome to a
quiet place where he would extract the truth from him, and he growled at
the impossibility of such a thing, and fell to guessing again.
In the magnificent library of the villa on the Janiculum, Folco was
guessing, too, and with no better result. But because he could not guess
right, and could get no news of Marcello, his eyes were growing hollow
and his cheeks wan.
The lawyers came and talked about the will, and explained to him that
all the great property was his, unless Marcello came back, and that in
any case he was to administer it. They said that if no news of the boy
were obtained within a limited time, the law must take it for granted
that he had perished in some unaccountable way. Folco shook his head.
"He must be found," he said. "I have good nerves, but if I do not find
out what has become of him I shall go mad."
The lawyers spoke of courage and patience, but a sickly smile twisted
Folco's lips.
"Put yourself in my place, if you can," he answered.
The lawyers, who knew the value of the property to a farthing, wished
they could, though if they had known also what was passing in his mind
they might have hesitated to exchange their lot for his.
"He was like your own son," they said sympathetically. "A wife and a son
gone on the same day! It is a tragedy. It is more than a man can bear."
"It is indeed!" answered Corbario in a low voice and looking away.
Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came
to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to
look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the
deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than
death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said
that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but
the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the
world and try to divert his thoughts. In their different ways they were
hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of them suspected for a moment
that there was anything wrong. Both were honestly convinced that Folco
had been a model husband to his dead wife, and a model father to her
lost son. What they could not understand was that he should not find
consolation in possessing their millions, and they could only account
for the fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling--a feeling,
indeed, quite past their comprehension.
Even the Contessa dell' Armi was impressed by the unmistakable signs of
suffering in his face. She went twice to see him within three weeks
after her friend's death, and she came away convinced that she had
misjudged him. Aurora did not go with her, and Corbario barely asked
after her. He led Maddalena to his dead wife's room and begged her to
take some object that had belonged to the Signora, in memory of their
long friendship. He pressed her to accept a necklace, or a bracelet, or
some other valuable ornament, but Maddalena would only take a simple
little gold chain which she herself had given long ago.
Her own sorrow for her friend was profound but undemonstrative, as her
nature had grown to be. Aurora saw it, and never referred to it,
speaking only now and then of Marcello, to ask if there were any news of
him.
"He is not dead," the girl said one day. "I know he will come back. He
went away because I called him a baby."
Her mother smiled sadly and shook her head.
"Did you love him, dear?" she asked softly.
"We were children then," Aurora answered. "How do I know? I shall know
when he comes back."
It was true that the girl had changed within a few weeks, and her mother
saw it. Her smile was not the same, and her eyes were deeper. She had
begun to gather her hair in a knot, closer to her head, and that altered
her expression a little and made her look much older; but there was more
than that, there was something very hard to describe, something one
might call conviction--the conviction that the world is real, which
comes upon girlhood as suddenly as waking on sleep, or sleep on waking.
She had crossed the narrow borderland between play and earnest, and she
had crossed it very soon.
"He will come back," she said. "He went away on that little ship that
was tossing in the storm. I know it, though I cannot tell how he got out
to it through the breaking waves."
"That is perfectly impossible, child," said Maddalena with certainty.
"Never mind. If we knew what ship that was, and where she is now, we
could find Marcello. I am as sure of it as I am sure of seeing you at
this moment. You know you often say that my presentiments come true. As
soon as we knew he was gone I thought of the little ship."
It was natural, perhaps. The picture of the small brigantine, fighting
for existence, had graved itself in her memory. With its crew so near
death, it had been the only thing within sight that suggested human life
after Marcello was gone. The utter impossibility of a man's swimming out
through the raging sea that broke upon the bar was nothing compared with
Aurora's inward conviction that the little vessel had borne away the
secret of his disappearance. And she had not been wrecked: Aurora knew
that, for a wreck anywhere on the Roman shore would have been spoken of
at once. They are unfortunately common enough, and since her childhood
Aurora had more than once seen a schooner's masts sticking up out of
the treacherous water a cable's length from the shore. The brigantine
had got away, for the gale had moderated very suddenly, as spring gales
do in the Mediterranean, just when the captain was making up his mind to
let go both anchors and make a desperate attempt to save his vessel by
riding out the storm--a forlorn hope with such ground tackle as he had
in his chain lockers. And then he had stood out, and had sailed away,
one danger more behind him in his hard life, and one less ahead. He had
sailed away--whither? No one could tell. Those little vessels, built in
the south of Italy, often enough take salt to South America, and are
sold there, cargo and all; and some of the crew stay there, and some get
other ships, but almost all are dispersed. The keeper of the San Lorenzo
tower, who had been a deep-water man, had told Aurora about it. He
himself had once gone out in a Sicilian brigantine from Trapani, and had
stayed away three years, knocking about the world in all sorts of craft.
Yet this one might have been on a coastwise trip to Genoa and
Marseilles. That was quite possible. If one could only find out her
name. And yet, if she had put into a near port Marcello would have come
back; for Aurora was quite sure that he had got on board her somehow. It
was all a mystery, all but the certainty she felt that he was still
alive, and which nothing could shake, even when every one else had given
him up. Aurora begged her mother to speak to Corbario about it. With his
experience and knowledge of things he would know what to do; he could
find some way of tracing the vessel, wherever she might be.
The Contessa was convinced that the girl's theory was utterly untenable,
and it was only to please her that she promised to speak of it if she
saw Corbario again. Soon afterward she decided to leave Rome for the
summer, and before going away she went once more to the villa. It was
now late in June, and she found Folco in the garden late in the
afternoon.
He looked ill and tired, but she thought him a little less thin than
when she had seen him last. He said that he, too, meant to leave Rome
within a few days, that he intended to go northward first to see an old
friend of his who had recently returned from South America, and that he
should afterwards go down to Calabria, to San Domenico, and spend the
autumn there. He had no news of Marcello. He looked thoughtfully down at
his hands as he said this in a tone of profound sorrow.
"Aurora has a fixed idea," said Maddalena. "While she was talking with
Marcello at the gap in the bank there was a small ship tossing about not
far from the shore."
"Well?" asked Corbario. "What of it?"
As he looked up from the contemplation of his hands Maddalena was struck
by his extreme pallor and the terrible hollowness of his eyes.
"How ill you look!" she exclaimed, almost involuntarily. "The sooner you
go away the better."
"What did Aurora say about the brigantine?" he asked earnestly, by way
of answer.
Maddalena knew too little about the sea to understand that he must have
noticed the vessel's rig to name it correctly, as he did, and without
hesitation.
"She is convinced that Marcello got on board of her," she answered.
Corbario's face relaxed a little, and he laughed harshly.
"That is utterly absurd!" he answered. "No swimmer that ever lived could
have got to her, nor any boat either! There was a terrific surf on the
bar."
"Of course not," assented Maddalena. "But you saw the ship, too?"
"Yes. Aurora was looking at her when I reached the gap. That is why I
noticed the vessel," Corbario added, as if by an afterthought. "She was
a Sicilian brigantine, and was carrying hardly any sail. If the gale had
lasted she would probably have been driven ashore. Her only chance would
have been to drop anchor."
"You know all about ships and the sea, don't you?" asked Maddalena, with
a very little curiosity, but without any particular intention.
"Oh, no!" cried Corbario, as if he were protesting against something. "I
have made several long voyages, and I have a knack of remembering the
names of things, nothing more."
"I did not mean to suggest that you had been a sailor," Maddalena
answered.
"What an idea! I, a sailor!"
He seemed vaguely amused at the idea. The Contessa took leave of him,
after giving him her address in the north of Italy, and begging him to
write if he found any clue to Marcello's disappearance. He promised
this, and they parted, not expecting to meet again until the autumn.
In a few days they had left Rome for different destinations. The little
apartment near the Forum of Trajan where the Contessa and her daughter
lived was shut up, and at the great villa on the Janiculum the solemn
porter put off his mourning livery and dressed himself in brown linen,
and smoked endless pipes within the closed gates when it was not too hot
to be out of doors. The horses were turned out to grass, and the
coachman and grooms departed to the country. The servants opened the
windows in the early morning, shut them at ten o'clock against the heat,
and dozed the rest of the time, or went down into the city to gossip
with their friends in the afternoon. It was high summer, and Rome went
to sleep.