_PART I—THE DEATH_
I
In the big hall of the Grand Hotel at Rome I introduced Peter Deeming
to Vernon Kersteven.
The two men were friends of mine, and I wanted them to like each
other; and, perhaps because they were both fond of me, I thought that
they would get on well together, and that we should form a happy and
a lively trio at dinner. Was this the fancy of an egoist? I have
sometimes wondered since.
At the time I speak of I had known Deeming for over two years, having
met him first in London at a friend’s house. Vernon was a comparatively
recent acquaintance whom I had encountered when I was travelling in
Algeria; but already in my heart I gave him the dearer title, for I had
come to like him greatly, and I knew that my sympathy was returned.
The two men were very different—in their appearance, their natures,
their ways of life—but differences sometimes seem to make for pleasant
intercourse, and even for intimacy. We often love ourselves; but do we
generally love those who markedly resemble us?
Vernon usually spent his winters in Rome, where he had a delightful
house on the Trinità dei Monti. Deeming had come from England to take a
long holiday, as his health had partially broken down from overwork. He
was a very successful London doctor, devoted to his profession. Vernon
was a rich man, passionately interested in the arts and in travel. How
well I remember that first evening we spent together, that—I had almost
written fatal evening! We were dining in the restaurant, and directly I
had made my friends known to each other we went in and sat down at our
table, which was in the middle of the room.
Deeming was a very thin man, nearly forty, clean shaven, with iron-grey
thick hair, narrow clear-cut features, and a tremendously decisive
mouth and chin, betokening power and resolution. His face was pale, and
bore traces of his recent illness. In his long, rather colourless grey
eyes, penetrating and usually calm, one could see the slightly anxious
and irritable expression of a man whose nerves had been, and still
were, overwrought. His hands were delicate, with thin fingers curving
backward perceptibly at the tips. He leaned forward as he sat in his
chair, glancing over the crowd of English, Americans, and foreigners
who were busily eating and talking round us.
Vernon was tall and fair, younger than Deeming by some five or six
years, with meditative, almost gentle, and very kind brown eyes, a
sensitive, though not handsome, face, with a clear boyish colour in it,
a voice that was generally low unless he got much interested in the
subject he was discussing, and an extremely fascinating manner, whose
fascination sprang from his great courtesy, combined with a perfectly
natural self-possession, as of a man who seldom thought about himself,
and who was desirous of making things go easily and pleasantly for
those with whom he was brought into contact.
I saw Deeming look at him steadily, rather as a doctor looks at a new
patient, more than once as we drank our soup, and I knew that with
his invariable acuteness he was taking stock of his new acquaintance.
Vernon, on the other hand, showed at first no special interest in
Deeming, did not regard him earnestly, but was gracefully agreeable to
him as he was to everyone. He was far more what is generally called a
man of the world than Deeming, whose devotion to, and great success in,
his profession had kept him bound to the wheel of work in London, and
had prevented him from having the opportunity of knowing the nations
and mixing perpetually with society which Vernon had enjoyed.
At first we talked quietly, almost languidly, of Rome, of its changes
and its tourists, of the influence of America upon its society, of its
climate, of the differences between life in England and life abroad,
and so forth. It was not till the middle of dinner that anything
occurred to wake us up into great animation. Then a stout, dark, and
very vivacious little lady, with a commanding air, came into the
restaurant followed by two men, and sat down at a table near us. She
and her companions were obviously Italians, and almost directly she
screwed up her eyes at Vernon and nodded to him. He returned her salute
with _empressement_.
“Would you mind telling me who that lady is?” said Deeming.
“Margherita Terrascalchi,” replied Vernon.
“What—the famous authoress?” I said. “The writer of ‘Pietà’?”
“Yes.”
Deeming stared hard at the little lady, who was beginning to eat with
extraordinary, almost comical, gusto.
“I have read that book,” he said. “In a translation.”
“What do you think of it?” asked Vernon.
“No doubt it is well done and calculated to move the ordinary reader.”
“Only the ordinary reader?” said Vernon, with a slight upward movement
of his eyebrows.
“I think it wrongheaded and sentimental,” said Deeming, with more
energy than he had yet shown. “She appears to wish to elevate the
animals above humanity, to take them out of their proper place.”
[Illustration: “SHE AND HER COMPANIONS WERE OBVIOUSLY ITALIANS.”]
“What would you say is their proper place?”
“They are in the world, in my opinion, to be the servants of humanity,
to minister to our comfort, our pleasure, our necessities, to help to
increase our knowledge and satisfy our appetites, to give us ease and
to gain us money. Don’t you think so?”
“No doubt many scientists, many sportsmen, and most, if not all,
butchers do.”