Tebaldo felt safe that night when he set his thirsty lips to a big jug
of thin wine and water and drained the whole contents at a draught,
while the fat sacristan stood waiting at the door of the room in the
grocer's house. He had been giving the man directions about the disposal
of the funeral. It was the room Francesco had occupied, and his things
lay about in disorder, as he had left them early in the morning when he
had ridden down to Randazzo for the last time.
The man who had killed him had been under a terrible physical and mental
strain, ever since he had left Rome, in the insanity of his jealousy.
Now that all was over, he fancied that he should be able to think
connectedly and reason about the future. He sent the man away with the
empty jug and sat down, feeling in his pocket for a cigar. He had none,
and he rose again, and began to look among his brother's belongings for
something to smoke.
A strange sensation came over him, all at once. It seemed as though
Francesco could not be dead after all. His things seemed to have his
life in them. The leathern valise lay open on the floor, one side filled
with fresh linen that had been disturbed in pulling something out, a
heap of half-unfolded clothes in the other side keeping up the flap that
divided the two. A pair of black silk braces had fallen out upon the
floor; a coat lay upon the chair close by; there was a clean
handkerchief on the table, a smart note-book with a silver clasp, a
small bottle of Eau de Lubin, a new novel in a paper cover, a crumpled
newspaper two days old, and a pink pasteboard box of Egyptian
cigarettes, open and less than half empty. Tebaldo took one and lighted
it mechanically at the flame of the candle, wondering how it could be
that Francesco would never want his cigarettes again. Surely he would
come in, presently, and take one, and then would begin the old bickering
and quarrelling that had gone on for years.
Now that it was all over, Tebaldo's first feeling among all these
objects was that he missed his brother, whom he had always so utterly
despised and whom he had bitterly hated with all his heart. He had not
the sort of real timidity under a superficial recklessness which begins
to feel the terror of remorse almost as soon as the irrevocable deed is
done. But, little by little, as he turned over the things and puffed at
the cigarette, a kind of stealing horror surrounded him, and would not
leave him.
It had nothing to do with any suspicion of the supernatural, and he
intended to lie down and try to sleep in the bed in which Francesco had
slept on the previous night. It had nothing to do with fear of
discovery, for he felt safe and was outwardly brave to recklessness. It
was rather the horror of having done, almost unwittingly, what no power
could undo, and of having utterly destroyed, at a blow, something to
which he had been accustomed all his life. And this strangely piercing
regret clashed continually with the expectation, arising out of long
habit, of suddenly seeing Francesco appear in person where all his
belongings were lying about, in the room he had last inhabited. He was
reckless, unscrupulous, choleric, almost utterly bad, but he was human,
as all but madmen are. He felt safe, but just then he would have risked
any danger for the sake of seeing Francesco open the door and walk in.
He threw away his cigarette and sat down to think. His eyes fixed
themselves, as his chin rested on his hand and his elbow on the table,
and a long time passed before he moved. But when he got up, he had taken
hold of himself again and was ready to begin his life once more. His
weaknesses did not last long. Francesco was dead. If it had been to do
over again, he would not have done it. He could not have done it at all,
in cold blood,--perhaps no man could,--and there had been much to rouse
him. But since it was done, Francesco could never again make love to
Aliandra, and there was the evil satisfaction of having successfully
thrown the guilt upon a Saracinesca, of all people, and so cleverly
that the accused man would, in all probability, be condemned.
He had made up his mind at the instant as to what he should say, and he
had said it all to the corporal of carabineers. He and his brother had
met in Randazzo at Basili's house, and intending to come up to Santa
Vittoria, had laid a wager, the one who first entered the little church
to be the winner, and Tebaldo had agreed to ride bareback and allow his
brother a start of five minutes. Francesco had killed his horse and had
run for the church on foot, and Tebaldo had entered two or three minutes
late. Doubtless, he had said, Francesco, in his haste to win the bet,
had run against Ippolito, and in a moment the quarrel of the previous
day had been renewed more violently. Francesco was unarmed, and the
priest had stabbed him instantly, just as Tebaldo came in. The wager had
been a reckless and foolish one, no doubt, but there was nothing
impossible in the story, which perfectly accounted for the wild riding,
in case, as had really happened, anyone had seen the two men on the
road. No one but Aliandra Basili knew how they had left her father's
house, and she, for her own sake, and certainly for Francesco's, would
not tell what she knew. She was sure to say that Tebaldo had borrowed
the horse, and she would not let her father know that the brothers were
quarrelling about her. Nevertheless, she knew that much, and would guess
the rest, and being a woman, there was a possibility that she might
volunteer her evidence when she should hear that the innocent priest was
upon his trial.
It was necessary to see Aliandra at once. The crude cynicism which was
at the root of the man's strange character came to the surface again, as
he followed out his train of thought and discovered, at the end of it,
where the weak point of his safety lay.
He slept little that night, though he was weary from the mad ride and
shaken by the strain under which he had lately lived. Again and again he
dreamed that he was doing the deed, and awoke each time with a start in
the dark. And the familiar perfume of Francesco's dressing things
disturbed him, even through the stale smoke of the cigarette he had
smoked. Yet one of his chief characteristics was that he was always
ready and not easily surprised. Waking, he realised each time where he
was, who he was, what he had done, and the fact that he must be up early
in the morning, and each time he laid his head upon the pillow again
with the determination to sleep and get the rest he needed.
Apart from the elements of fear and honour, and in so far as the mere
act of killing is concerned, there is but a difference of degree between
the homicide who has stabbed a man in anger, and the soldier who has
killed one enemy, or ten, in battle. In most cases the homicide is
pursued by a fear of consequences to which the soldier is not subject.
Tebaldo felt himself safe.
He had lost no time in so fully indemnifying Taddeo, the grocer, for the
death of his horse, that the excellent 'maffeuso' had no difficulty in
providing him with another in the morning. He rode up to the
carabineers' quarters and gave notice of his movements before going down
to Randazzo, for he did not wish to appear to leave Santa Vittoria
without informing the authorities. He was told that Ippolito had been
taken to Messina before dawn, and that Orsino had accompanied him. He
had decided that his brother should be buried on the following day, and
meanwhile the coffin lay in the little church surrounded by many burning
candles, and preparations were being made for a solemn requiem. Many of
the people went in, on their way to their work, and knelt a moment to
say a prayer for the soul of Francesco Pagliuca, and a short but
heartfelt one for the destruction of all the Saracinesca in this world
and the next. This seemed to them but simple justice, though the more
devout of them were aware that it was sinful to wish death to anyone.
Tebaldo dismounted at the door of the church, and bade a loiterer hold
his horse while he went in. He knew that the whole population would
think it strange and unnatural if he should pass by, on his business,
without stopping, after giving such elaborate orders for the funeral.
For his own part, he would gladly have escaped the ugly necessity, not
because the hypocrisy of it was in the least repugnant to him, but
because he had the natural animal dislike of revisiting a place where
something terrible had happened. It was so strong that he grew pale as
he went in under the door and walked up the aisle to the catafalque.
But the whole place seemed changed. He had no realisation of the fact
that his brother's body lay in the angular thing under the black pall.
There was a strong smell of incense and many lights were burning. He
felt that he was observed, and his nerves were singularly good. He knelt
some time with bent head at the foot of the coffin, then crossed
himself, rose, and went out. The people about the door made way for him
respectfully. There were two or three of the very poor among them. No
one begs in that part of Sicily, but Tebaldo gave them the copper coins
he had loose in his pocket, and passed on.
'God will render it to you,' said the poor people, kissing the backs of
their own fingers towards him as a way of kissing his hand by proxy.
'God bless you! The Madonna accompany you!'
As he mounted, one old woman touched his knee and then kissed the hand
with which she had touched it. He nodded gravely and rode away, glad to
turn his back on the church at last and get out upon the high-road.
The news of Francesco's death had already reached Randazzo by a
wine-carrier who had come down with a load in the night. Tebaldo
expected that this would be the case, and he considered that his
interview with Aliandra would be facilitated thereby. He went to the inn
and put up his horse. The people treated him with a grave and
sympathising respect. He had arrived there on the previous day with a
few belongings, but in the suddenness of events the landlord did not
consider it strange that he should not have returned during the night.
Tebaldo did not volunteer any explanations, but went to his room,
refreshed himself, changed his clothes, and then told the landlord that
he was going to see Basili, the notary. This, also, seemed quite
natural, in such a case, as Basili had always been the Corleone's man of
business.
Gesualda opened the door, and he at once saw, by the gravity in her ugly
face as she greeted him, that she knew what had happened. She ushered
him into the front room downstairs and went up to call Aliandra, for
Tebaldo said that he wished to see her before visiting her father. He
stood waiting for the young girl, and going to the window he saw that
the fastenings of the blinds were broken, and he remembered that he must
have broken them when he forced them to look out after Francesco. The
fact brought the whole scene vividly to his memory again, with all its
details, and he remembered, by the connexion of little events, much that
he had forgotten. Notably he recalled distinctly the very few words he
had spoken to Aliandra during a meeting which had scarcely lasted two
minutes, but which, by the operation of his anger, had hitherto seemed
almost a blank in his recollection.
Aliandra entered the room and spoke to him first. To his own surprise,
he started nervously at the sound of her voice, as though she were in
some way connected with Francesco, and should have been dead with him,
or he alive with her. For since his brother's sudden departure from
Rome, the two had been constantly linked in his mind by his desperate
jealousy.
Aliandra wore a loose black silk morning gown, and she was pale. She did
not come up to Tebaldo, after she had closed the door, but seemed to
hesitate and laid her hand upon the back of a chair, looking at him
earnestly. His face was grave, for he knew his risk.
'I have just heard,' she said in a low voice.
'Yes,' he said after a short pause. 'I thought that you must know. I
wished to see you at once, so I came, though he is not buried yet.'
'I am glad,' she answered, 'for I do not understand. It all seems so
strange and terrible.'
'It is. Sit down beside me, and I will try to tell you. It will not be
so hard as it was to tell the authorities up in Santa Vittoria
yesterday. I love you, Aliandra. That is why I came to you.'
It was true that he loved her, but that was not the reason of his
coming. Yet he spoke simply and sincerely, and she said nothing, but sat
down at a little distance from him and folded her bands, waiting for him
to tell his story.
'I love you,' he repeated slowly and thoughtfully. 'When he left Rome,
I knew that he must come to you, and as soon as I could get away, I
followed him, sure that I should find him here, for I was jealous of
him, jealous to madness. People laugh at jealousy. They do not know what
it is.' He paused.
'No,' she answered gravely, for she remembered how he had looked when he
had entered the house on the previous afternoon. 'No. People do not
understand what it is. Go on, please.'
'It is a hell in soul and body. When I came here yesterday, I meant to
come in at once. As I passed under the window I heard your voices
distinctly. There was no one in the street, and I leaned against the
wall and heard what you said. I touched the blinds once or twice, moving
them a little, so as to hear better. Then I heard him tell you that
falsehood about my engagement to Miss Slayback, and I put my hand on the
sill, to draw myself up and deny it. But I struck my head under the
blinds that were pushed out. Then I heard him come to the window, and I
asked him to come outside. You know how he fled, while I was here, and I
took your father's mare, without saddle or bridle, and chased him.'
'Yes, you frightened me,' said Aliandra, as he paused again. 'I had to
tell my father that you had borrowed the mare. She came back of her own
accord and was standing outside the stable gate this morning, waiting to
be let in, all covered with mud. Please go on quickly.'
'It rained. There was a terrible thunderstorm. I overtook him two or
three miles on, where the road winds, for he saw that it was senseless
to run away as though I wished to injure him.'
'You looked as though you did,' said Aliandra, thoughtfully. 'I do not
wonder that he fled.'
'I do not say that if I had found him here, I might not have handled him
roughly,' said Tebaldo, wisely. 'But the gallop cooled us both, I
suppose. And you know that when he chose he had a gentle, good-natured
way of speaking that disarmed one. Yes--we quarrelled about you at first
for a while, and then, being cooler, as I said, we rode quietly along
together, though we did not say much. On the more level part of the road
higher up, he began to talk of the horse he was riding, which belonged
to Taddeo, the grocer, and was a good beast, but I said that your
father's mare was the fleeter, and he denied it. At last he proposed
that we should settle the question by racing up to the town. The one who
got into the little church of Santa Vittoria outside the gate was to
win. I gave him four minutes' start by my watch, because I was lighter
and was riding bareback. Do you understand?'
He looked at her keenly and expectantly, for the story sounded very
plausible to him. She nodded slowly, in answer, with a little
contraction of the eyelids, as though she were weighing the
possibilities.
'I had him in sight, and then I fell with the mare at a jump, for I had
no bridle and could not lift her properly. But we were not hurt, and I
got on again. I saw him again before me on the long, straight stretch up
to the cemetery. Taddeo's horse must have had an aneurism, I should
think, for just beyond the gate it rolled over stone dead. I saw
Francesco jump off as the beast staggered, for he knew what was the
matter. But he meant to win the bet and be in the church first. He ran
up the last bit like a deer, and disappeared over the shoulder of the
hill. It all happened in a moment, and I had still a quarter of a mile
to make. Seeing that he must win, I did not hurry the mare, but she took
fright at the dead horse and bolted up the last bit. At the church I got
off and hitched the halter to a stake that had been driven into the
ground for a banner at the last festa. I did it carelessly, I suppose,
for the mare got loose. I do not know. When I entered the church I saw
my brother wrestling with Ippolito Saracinesca on the steps of the
altar, and the priest had a big knife in his hand and struck him before
I was half-way up the church.'
Tebaldo was now excessively pale, and there was a nervous tremor in his
voice. Aliandra was almost as pale as he, but still her lips were a
little drawn in, and she kept her eyes on him.
'You have heard the rest,' said Tebaldo, and his mouth was so dry that
he could hardly speak. 'I locked the priest into the church, which has
no other door, and I went for the carabineers. They took him down to
Messina early this morning, before the people were about in the streets,
and he will be committed for trial without doubt. His hands were covered
with blood, and he had the knife in his pocket. He had cleaned the blade
carefully on his pocket handkerchief, like a fool, instead of throwing
it away into a corner. As for the reason of the murder, Francesco and he
had come to blows on the day before yesterday in the road. The priest
admitted the fact. Heaven only knows what they were quarrelling about,
but it must have begun again in the church. At all events, that is what
happened, and my poor brother is dead. God rest his soul.'
'Amen,' said Aliandra, mechanically.
Tebaldo wiped the moisture from his pale forehead, glad that he had told
his story and told it so well. It was, indeed, a marvellously lucid
narrative, in which he had taken full advantage of every available
fragment of truth to strengthen and colour the general falsehood.
Aliandra, like any reasonable person, would have found it hard to
believe that a man supposed to have the manners and civilisation of a
modern gentleman could do what Tebaldo had really done. But, on the
other hand, it was even harder to see how the deed could have been done
by one who was not only just as civilised, but a churchman besides.
She had been terribly shocked by the news of Francesco's death, which
had reached her only a few minutes before Tebaldo had appeared. She
remembered the latter's face, and the terror of the former on the
previous afternoon, she remembered that the other brother had been a
brigand, or little better, and she knew many stories of the Pagliuca's
wild doings before they had gone to Rome. It would have surprised her
far less if Gesualda, who had heard the story from the carter himself,
had told her that one brother had killed the other, than it did to be
told that the guilty man was a Roman, a priest, and a Saracinesca.
But Tebaldo's story was plausible, and she had to admit that it was as
she thought it over. He had evidently been under a strong emotion while
telling it, too, and the fact was in his favour, in her eyes, for she
had been fond of Francesco.
'Have you told me the whole truth?' she asked suddenly, after a long
silence.
'Of course I have told you the truth,' he answered, with a
half-startled, nervous intonation.
'You have not always done so,' said she, leaning back in her chair. 'But
I do not see why you should conceal anything from me now.'
'You will see it all in the account of the trial.'
'It is terrible!' she exclaimed, realising once more what it all meant.
'Terrible, terrible,' she repeated, passing her hand over her eyes.
'Only yesterday he was here, sitting beside me, telling me--'
She stopped short.
'Yes, I heard what he told you,' said Tebaldo, in an altered voice. 'It
is of no use to go over it.'
'I was fond of him,' she answered. 'I was very fond of him. I have often
told you so. It is dreadful to think that we shall never see him
again--never hear his voice--'
Her eyes filled with tears, for beyond the first horror of his death
there was the sadness. He had been so young, so full of life and
vitality. She could hardly understand that he was gone. The tears welled
over slowly and rolled down her smooth cheeks, unheeded for a few
moments.
'I wish I knew the truth,' she said, rousing herself, and drying her
eyes.
'But I have told you the truth,' answered Tebaldo, with a return of
nervous impatience.
'Yes, I know. But there must be more. What was there between him and the
priest? Why did they fight in the road? It all seems so improbable, so
mysterious. I wish I knew.'
'You know all that I know, all that the law knows. I cannot invent an
explanation.'
'It is a mystery to you, too, then? You do not understand?'
'I do not understand. No one knows all the truth but Ippolito
Saracinesca. He will probably tell it in self-defence. If he could prove
that my brother attacked him first, it would make a great difference.
He will try to make out that he killed him in self-defence.'
'It is very mysterious,' repeated Aliandra.
They talked in the same way for some time. Gradually her distrust of him
disappeared, because he did not try to prove too much, and his own
story, as he went over the points, seemed to her more and more lucid. He
took advantage of little questions she put to him, from time to time, in
order to show her how very complete the account was, and how utterly
beyond his own comprehension he thought the fight at the cemetery on the
day before the murder. He was amazingly quick at using whatever
presented itself. Her doubts did not really leave her, and they would
return again after he was gone, but they sank out of her reach as she
listened to him.
Then she made him go upstairs with her and tell the whole story to her
father. Tebaldo submitted, but the strain on him was becoming very
great, and the perspiration stood in great drops on his brows, as he
went over it all for Basili. He knew that the notary was a man not
easily deceived, and was well aware that his opinion would be received
with respect by the principal people in Randazzo. He was, therefore,
more careful than ever to state each point clearly and accurately. He
saw, moreover, that Aliandra was listening as attentively as before.
Possibly, now that he was no longer speaking directly to her, her doubts
were coming to the surface again. But Tebaldo's nerves were good, and he
went to the end without a fault. The notary only asked three or four
simple and natural questions, and he did not seem surprised that Tebaldo
should not know the cause of the disagreement between his brother and
Ippolito.
Aliandra went downstairs with Tebaldo. She seemed to expect that he
should go away, for she stood still in the hall at the foot of the stone
staircase.
'When are you going back to Rome?' he asked, for he wished to see her
again.
'As soon as my father can spare me,' she answered.
'I shall have to go down to Messina to give my evidence,' he said. 'When
the funeral is over, to-morrow morning, I shall come here, and go on to
Messina the next day. May I see you to-morrow afternoon?'
To his surprise, she hesitated. She herself scarcely knew why she did
not at once assent naturally.
'Yes,' she said, after a pause. 'I suppose so, if you wish to.'
'I do wish to see you,' he answered. 'You have no reason to doubt that,
at all events.'
'You speak as though I had reason to doubt other things you have said.'
She watched him keenly, for the one incautious little speech had
weakened the effect he had produced with such skill.
'You pretended to doubt,' he answered boldly. 'You asked me if I was
telling you the truth about my brother. That was doubting, was it not?
You always do. I think you do not even believe that I love you.'
'I only half believe it. Are you going over the discussion we had in
Rome, again?'
'No. It would be useless.'
'I think so too,' she said, and her grey eyes grew suddenly cold.
He sighed and turned from her, towards the door. It was the first
perfectly natural expression of feeling that had escaped him, and it was
little enough. But it touched her unexpectedly, and she felt a sort of
pity for him which was hard to bear. That one audibly-drawn breath of
pain did more to persuade her that he really loved her than all the
words he had ever spoken. She called him back when his hand was already
on the door.
'Tebaldo--wait a moment!' Her voice was suddenly kind.
He turned in surprise, and a softer look came over his drawn and tired
features.
'I shall be very glad to see you when you come,' she said gently. 'I do
not know why I hesitated--I did not mean to. Come whenever you like.'
She held out her hand, and he took it.
'You may think the worst you will of me, Aliandra,' he said. 'But do not
think that I do not love you.'
'I believe you do,' she answered in the same gentle tone, and she
pressed his hand a little.
Just as he was about to open the door, her eyes fell upon the rifle
Francesco had left standing in the corner.
Take your brother's gun,' she said. 'I do not like to see it here. I am
sad enough already.'
He slipped the sling over his shoulder without speaking, for the odd
sensation that Francesco was not dead, after all, came over him as on
the previous evening, and with it the insane longing to see his brother
alive. He felt that his face might betray him, and he went out hastily
into the noon-day glare. The heat restored the balance of his nerves, as
it generally did, and when he reached the inn he was calm and collected.
Aliandra went upstairs to her father's room, and sat down beside his
couch, in silence. The sunlight filtered through the green blinds, and
brought the warm scent of the carnations from without. The notary lay
back, with half-closed eyes, apparently studying the queer outline of
his splinted leg as it appeared through the thin, flowered chintz
coverlet.
'For my part,' he said, without moving, and as though concluding a train
of thought which he had been following for a long time, 'I do not
believe one word of the story, from beginning to end.'
'You do not believe Don Tebaldo's story?' asked Aliandra, more startled
than surprised.
'Not one word, not one half word, not one syllable,' replied the notary,
emphatically. 'We can say it between ourselves, my daughter. If my
sister were here, I should not say it, for she is not discreet. It is a
beautiful story, well composed, logical, studied, everything you like
that is perfect. It must have taken much thought to put it together so
nicely, and it is not intelligence that Tebaldo Pagliuca lacks. But no
one will make me believe that a quiet little Roman priest could have
killed one of those Corleone in that way. It is too improbable. It is a
thing to laugh at. But it is not a thing to believe.'
'I do not know what to say,' answered Aliandra, all her doubts springing
up again.
'We are not called upon to say anything. The law will take its course,
and if it condemns an innocent Italian--well, it has condemned many
innocent Sicilians. The one will pay for the other, I suppose. But as
for the facts, that is a different matter. I daresay the priest had a
knife of his own in his pocket, but it was not the knife that killed
Pagliuca. Now, I do not wish to imply that Don Tebaldo killed him--'
'That is impossible!' exclaimed Aliandra. 'He could not come here and
talk about it so calmly. The mere idea makes me shiver. What I think is
that someone else killed him,--a brigand, perhaps, for some old quarrel,
and that Tebaldo has thrown the blame on the priest, just because he is
a Saracinesca.'
'Perhaps. Anything is possible, except that the priest killed him. But
as we know nothing, it is better to say nothing. It might be thought
that we favoured the Romans.'
'It is strange,' said Aliandra. 'When he is speaking, I believe all he
says, but now that he is gone, I feel as you do about it He said he
should come back to-morrow.'
'It is of no use for you to see him again. Why does he come here? I do
not wish to be involved in this affair. Make an excuse, if he comes, and
do not see him.'
'Yes,' answered Aliandra. 'I will manage not to see him. It is of no
use, as you say.'
Tebaldo rode back to Santa Vittoria to bury his brother. Almost the
whole population followed the funeral from the church to the cemetery,
and it was easy to see how the people looked at the matter. Tebaldo
received a summons to appear and give his evidence in two days, and he
left the village early in order to have time to spend in Randazzo with
Aliandra before taking the afternoon train from Piedimonte to Messina.
One thing only he had left undone which he had intended to do, for it
had been impossible to accomplish it without attracting attention. He
had meant to get into the little church alone and recover the knife he
had dropped through the grating that stood before the glass casket in
which the bones of the saint were preserved. As the details of those
short and terrible moments came back to him, he remembered that the
thing had not dropped far. He had heard it strike the stone inside
immediately, and though it was improbable that the grating should be
opened for a long time, yet the weapon was there, waiting for someone to
find it, and possibly for some to recognise it, for he had possessed it
several years.
The first requiem mass for Francesco had been sung in the parish church,
for the curate had said that Santa Vittoria must be reconsecrated by the
bishop before mass could be celebrated there again, the crime committed
being a desecration. Tebaldo thought it just possible that at the
bishop's visit the grating might be opened in order to show him the
casket. But this was by no means certain. On the whole he believed
himself safe, for there was no name on the sheath of the knife, and he
did not remember that he had ever shown it to anyone who could identify
it as belonging to him.
He had sent for a carriage and drove down to Randazzo, stopping at the
inn, as usual. He knocked at the door of the notary's house a few
minutes later, expecting to be admitted by Gesualda. To his surprise, no
one came to let him in. He knocked twice again with the same result, and
was about to go away, when Basili's man, the same who had accompanied
San Giacinto and Orsino to Camaldoli, opened the stable gate and came up
to him.
'There is the notary,' he said. 'No one else is at home. The Signorina
Aliandra has taken Gesualda and is gone out to visit friends in the
country. They will not come back before to-morrow. The notary sleeps.'
Tebaldo was very much surprised and disconcerted. He remembered how
kindly and gently Aliandra had spoken when he had parted from her, and
he could not understand. She had left no message, and it was clear
enough that she had gone away in order to avoid him. He went back to the
inn, a good deal disturbed, for if she wished to avoid him, it must be
because she had some suspicion. That was the only conclusion which he
could reach as he thought the matter over. It was by no means absolutely
logical, being suggested by the state of his conscience rather than by
the operation of his reason.
He was disturbed and nervous, and he realised with a vague trepidation
that instead of forgetting what he had done, and becoming hardened to
the consciousness of it, he was suffering from it more and more as the
hours and days went by. Little things came back to their lost places in
his memory, which might have been noticed by other people, and might
betray him. To himself, knowing the truth, the story he had invented
looked far less probable than it appeared to those who had heard it from
him.
He thought of writing to Aliandra, for he was bitterly disappointed at
not seeing her; but when he considered what he could say in a letter, he
saw that he could only tell her of his disappointment. What he
unconsciously longed for, was the liberty to speak out plainly to
someone, and tell the whole truth, with perfect safety to himself. But
that desire was still vague and unformulated.
There was no possibility of waiting till the next day to see Aliandra
when she returned. He was expected to appear on the following morning in
Messina, to give his evidence, and he had no choice but to go at once.
He left Randazzo with a heavy heart, and a feverish sensation in his
head.