DR. AMATI
Not once for a month past had Dr. Antonio Amati seen that thoughtful,
delicate girl's face between the yellowish old curtains in the
balcony opposite his study window, which looked into the big court
of Rossi Palace, formerly Cavalcanti. Two years had passed from the
day that one of the youngest, though one of the most distinguished,
Naples doctors had come to take up his abode there alone, with one
man-servant and a housekeeper, but bringing a crowd of old and new
patients after him, filling the spacious, but rather dark, stairs
with a going and coming of busy, preoccupied people. From the very
first day he had noticed opposite his study window in passing that
pure oval, the faintly pink, delicate complexion, those proud, soft
eyes, that touched the heart from their gentleness. He saw all that
at once, in spite of the windows opposite being dull from old age
and her appearing for a short time only. He was a quick observer;
in fact, a great part of his medical skill was owing to his quick
glance, his lively, true, deep intuition.
'A heart with no sun,' he said to himself, turning round to put
his heavy scientific volumes into his carved oak shelves. Nor was
he surprised when the Rossi Palace door-keeper, humbly consulting
him under the portico, as he got into his carriage for his round of
afternoon visits, about a feverish illness that had inflamed her
spleen, told him, amongst a flood of other gossip, that that angel
opposite his balcony was Lady Bianca Maria Cavalcanti, a lady of
high birth, but reduced in circumstances, poor girl, not by her own
fault.... 'But perhaps she will become a nun,' the woman ended up. 'A
heart with no sun,' Dr. Antonio Amati thought again as he went away,
after prescribing for the sickly, talkative door-keeper.
But he had no time to remark or think of aristocratic ladies
come down by bad luck, or their parents' sins, to obscurity and
wretchedness; he could not let his fancy linger long on that
melancholy life alongside of his, but so different from it. He was
a silent, energetic man of action; a Southerner not fond of words,
who put into his daily work all the strength other Southerners put
into dreams, talk, and long speeches, accustoming himself to this
self-government, calling up every day the violence of his fiery
temper to conquer it by strength of will, and make use of it for
scientific practical work, keeping always in touch with life, books,
and suffering humanity, which at thirty-five had made him famous. He
was proud of his great reputation, but not conceited, though lucky
fortune had not made him mean or lowered him. No, he could not dream
about Bianca Maria's lily face; too many around him were ill of
typhus, smallpox, consumption, and a hundred other severe, almost
incurable, illnesses that required his daily help and energies. Too
many people called to him, implored him, stretched out their hands
for help, besieging his waiting-room and the hospital door, watching
for him at the University and other sick people's doors patiently and
submissively, as if waiting for a saviour. Too many were suffering,
sick and dying, for him to dream about that slight apparition, and
admire the pale, thoughtful face bending under the weight of black
tresses.
Still, through that life of useful work for himself and others,
through the seeming hardness, hurry, even scientific brutality of
his constant activity, which was made up for by his noble daily
sacrifices, that silently attractive figure pleased Dr. Antonio
Amati's fancy. Gradually it took its place each morning among the
things he admired and liked to find in their places every day: his
books, old leather note-books, some mementos of childhood and youth,
a wax model of his dead sister's little hand, an old photograph of
his mother, who lived in Campobasso province, a local accent he had
not lost, in spite of living eighteen years in Naples and his travels
in France and Germany.
Bianca Maria came into this harmonious atmosphere, that gently
satisfied this strong man's eyes and heart. Antonio Amati did not
try to see her oftener, nor to know and speak to her; it was enough
to see her in the early morning, behind her balcony windows, look
down vaguely into the dull, damp court, then disappear as slowly as
she came--a quiet, solitary figure, not sorrowful, but not smiling.
Between one patient going and another coming, Dr. Amati got up
from his desk, and went as far as the balcony; in one or other of
these little walks, that seemed to serve him as a pause, a rest, a
distraction between one bit of work finished and another begun, he
caught sight of Bianca Maria's pale, thoughtful face; and for two
years that satisfied him. It is true that sometimes in these two
years he had met her on the stairs, or in the Rossi Palace dark
entrance, with her father or Margherita; he took off his hat, and she
acknowledged his bow unsmilingly. She, too, knew him well, seeing him
every day; but she looked him in the face frankly, with none of that
extreme reserve, half smile, half sham indifference, or any of the
little coquetries of commonplace girls. Frankly and innocently she
looked at him a minute, returned his bow, and then her proud, gentle
eyes took their vague thoughtful expression again.
They did not make daily appointments to see each other--he was
too serious, too engrossed in duty to do so, and she was a simple
creature, living too solitary an inward life to think of it--only
they saw each other every day, and got accustomed to it.
'But perhaps she is to be a nun,' the door-keeper repeated sometimes.
She had got over her illness, and employed herself over other
people's ailments, moral and physical.
But the doctor walked on without replying, thinking of the sad chorus
of lamentations that went on around him, from rich and poor, for
real, present, imminent sorrows, almost hopeless to cure, but worthy
of his courage and talent to attempt. Still, in that damp, south-east
wind this autumn morning, whilst bad coughs, heart complaints, fevers
came by turns dolefully in his list of cases, this sickly atmosphere
of bad weather in Naples making them worse, he had, as usual, filled
up his leisure by going to the balcony; and not seeing Bianca Maria,
he felt annoyance of a latent, indefinite kind, which every new
country or suburban patient made him forget; but it came back when
the patient left. The forenoon passed in the gloom of the great
writing-table, covered with maroon; of these colourless, anxious
faces held up to him; these weak, complaining voices; lean breasts,
or flabby with unhealthy fat, that were bared for him to find traces
of consumption or atrophy, with wheezing, funereal coughs. Never had
he felt the disagreeables of his profession so much as that day.
Bianca Maria did not appear.
'She is ill,' he thought momentarily. Having thought of this, he felt
as sure as if someone had told him or if he had seen her ill himself.
She was sick. He at once thought of helping her, with that instinct
to save life all great doctors have. He thought it over a minute; but
his mind came back to the realities of life at once. It was folly to
be taken up about a person he did not know, and who probably did not
care to have him. If they needed his skill, they would have called
him. For all that, he was sure Bianca Maria was ill.
But another patient came into the room. There were two, rather--a
youth and a girl of the lower class. He recognised the girl at once
from her hollow, worn face and sad, black-encircled eyes, the lock of
untidy hair. He had cured her of typhoid at San Raffaele hospital,
when the epidemic was raging in Naples.
'Is it you, Carmela?'
'Good-day to you, sir,' said the girl, rushing forward to kiss the
doctor's hand, which he quickly drew back.
'Are you ill?' he asked.
'As if I was ill,' she said, smiling, in a faint, melancholy way,
while the doctor was trying to recognise the young fellow's face. 'I
am going to have a misfortune that is worse than an illness, sir.'
She turned to her companion as she spoke, and called out: 'Raffaé!'
Then Amati saw the young fellow in all the _guappesca_ style of
bell-trousers, small folded cap, silver chain with a bit of coral,
shiny squeaking shoes, and the half-scampish, impudent look of a lad
of twenty who has given up the knife, the traditional _sfarziglia_
of his ancestors in the Camorra, for the modern revolver. 'This is
my lover, sir,' she said, humbly and proudly, whilst Raffaele looked
straight before him, as if it was not his business. She gave the
youth so intense a look, so full of tenderness and passion, that the
doctor had to restrain an impatient shrug.
'Is he ill?' he asked.
'No, sir; he is very well, thank God! But he has--that is to say,
we have--another misfortune coming on us; or, indeed, it is my
misfortune, as I must lose him. They want to take him for the levy,'
said she, in a trembling voice, her eyes filling with tears.
'That is natural enough,' answered the doctor, smiling.
'How can you say so, sir? It is infamous of the Government to take a
fine lad that ought to marry. If you won't help me, sir, what will I
do?'
'And what can _I_ do?'
Raffaele, in the meanwhile, stood with one hand at his side, hanging
his hat between two fingers; sometimes he looked Carmela up and down
absent-mindedly and haughtily, as if it was out of mere good-nature
he allowed her to look after his affairs; then he cast an oblique but
dignified glance on the doctor.
'You are so kind, sir,' Carmela murmured. 'I want you to give
Raffaele a medicine to make him ill, and get him scratched off the
list.'
'It is impossible, my dear girl.'
'Why so, sir?'
'Because there are no such miraculous medicines.'
'Oh, sir, you mean you don't wish to do me this kindness. Think if
they take him for three years!--three years! What could I do without
him for three years? And, then, he won't go, sir! If you knew what he
says----'
'I told her,' Raffaele interrupted emphatically, pulling down his
waistcoat, a common _guappa_ trick, 'that if they take me by force,
we will hold a little shooting; someone will be wounded, they take me
to prison, and what happens? A year's imprisonment at most. I must go
to San Francesco some day, at any rate.'
'Don't speak that way--don't say that!' she called out in admiring
terror. 'Beg the professor to give you the medicine.'
'Are you to be married soon?' asked the doctor, who no longer
wondered at anything, from knowing the people so well.
'Very soon,' Carmela answered by herself, while Raffaele looked
before him.
'When are you to be?'
'When we get the _terno_,' she retorted, quietly and with certainty.
'Then, not for some time yet,' the doctor replied, laughing.
'No, no, sir; Don Pasqualino De Feo, the medium, has promised me a
safe number. We will be married very soon. But you must get Raffaele
off.'
'There is no need of my services. Raffaele will be rejected, because
he has a narrow chest,' concluded the doctor, after looking carefully
at the dandy.
'Do you say so, really?'
'Really it is so.'
'God bless you, sir! if I had to have this sorrow too, I would die.
So many sorrows--so many,' she said in a low tone, pulling up her
shabby shawl on her shoulders; 'I am the mother of sorrows,' she
added, with a sad smile.
'Good-day, sir,' said Raffaele. 'When you come to Mercato or Pendino
district, ask for Raffaele--I am called Farfariello--and let me serve
you in any way I can.'
'Thank you--thank you,' replied the doctor, sending them off.
The two again repeated their farewells on their way out--she with a
smile on her suffering face, he with the look of a man that despises
women. Other patients came in requiring his medical skill up to
twelve o'clock, when the time for receiving visits was over. Bianca
Maria had not appeared. She was ill, therefore.
He took breakfast very hurriedly, and ordered the coachman to bring
round the carriage to go to the hospital at one o'clock. The day
was getting more and more unpleasant, from the scirocco's damp,
ill-smelling breath. He went out quickly, as he was rather late, and
on the stairs, half in shadow, he met Bianca Maria going down also,
with Margherita, her maid.
'Then, she is not ill,' thought the doctor.
But with the sharp eyes of an observing man, who finds out the truth
from the slightest symptoms, he saw the girl was walking undecidedly;
her face, as she looked up to bow, was intensely pale, so that again
his medical instinct was to help her. He was just going to speak,
to ask her brusquely where the pain was, but her proud, gentle eyes
were cast down again absent-mindedly; her mouth had that severe
silent look that imposes silence on others. She disappeared without
his saying anything. Dr. Amati shrugged his shoulders as he got into
the carriage, and buried himself in a medical journal, as he did
every day, to fill up even the short drive usefully. The carriage
rolled along silently over the thin layer of mud; the damp obscured
the windows, and the doctor felt the scirocco in himself and in the
air. Even the hospital could not soothe the doctor's discomfort,
though to take his thoughts off it he went deeper into practical
medical work and scientific explanations to the pupils than usual.
He went backwards and forwards from one bed to another, followed by
a crowd of youths, taller than any of them, with an obstinate man's
short forehead, marked by two perpendicular lines, from a constant
frown, showing a strong will and absorption in his work; his thick
brush of black hair was roughly set on his forehead, with some
white tufts showing already. So great was his activity of thought,
words, and action, one expected to see the smoke of a volcano coming
out. His orders to the assistants and his class, even to the nuns,
were given harshly; they all obeyed quickly and silently, feeling
respect for the iron will, in spite of his rough commands, mingled
with admiration for the man who was looked on as a saviour. Even the
room he had charge of looked more melancholy and wretched that day
than ever; the dulness of the air saddened the invalids, the heavy,
evil-smelling damp made them feel their pains more. A whispered
lament, like a long, laboured breath, was heard from one end of the
room to the other, and the sick folks' pale faces got yellow in that
ghastly light; their emaciated hands on the coverlets looked like wax.
In spite of trying to stun himself with work and words, Dr.
Amati felt the disagreeables of his profession more than ever.
Through that long, narrow room, full of beds in a row, and yellow,
suffering faces, and the constant smell of phenic acid; through
the scirocco mist and damp, that made even the nuns' pink cheeks
bloodless-looking, he had a dream, a passing vision of a sunny,
green, warm, clear, sweet-smelling country place, and his heart ached
for this idyll, come and gone in a moment.
'Good-bye, gentlemen,' Amati said brusquely to the students,
dismissing them.
They knew that when he so greeted them he wished to be left alone;
they knew, they understood, the Professor was in a bad humour;
they let him go. One of the ambulance men brought him two or three
letters that came while he was going his rounds; they were summonses,
urgent letters from sick people longing for him, from a father who
had lost his head over a son's illness, from despairing women. He
shook his head as he read them, as if he had lost confidence--as if
all humanity sorrowing discouraged him. He went--yes, he went; but
he felt very tired, which must have come from his mind, for he had
worked much less than usual. He was going along absent-mindedly,
when a shadow rose before him on the hospital stairs. It was a
poor woman, of no particular age, with sparse grayish hair, black
teeth, prominent cheek-bones, her clothes torn and dirty, whilst the
slumbering babe she carried was clean, though meanly clad.
'Sir--please, sir!' she called out in a crying voice, seeing the
doctor was going on without troubling himself about her.
'What do you want? Who are you?' the doctor asked roughly, without
looking at her.
'I am Annarella, Carmela's sister--you saved her life,' said Gaetano
the glove-cutter's wretched wife.
'Your sister in the morning, and now you!' the doctor impatiently
exclaimed.
'Not for me, sir--not for me,' the gambler's wife said in a low tone.
'I can die. I don't signify. I do so little in the world I can't even
find bread for my children.'
'Get out of the way--get out of the way.'
'It is for this little creature, for my sick son, sir;' and she bent
to kiss the little slumberer's forehead. 'I don't know what is the
matter, but he falls off every day, and I don't know what to give
him. Cure him for me, sir.'
The doctor leant over the little invalid, with its pretty, delicate,
pallid face, purple eyelids, hardly perceptible breathing, and lips
slightly apart; he touched its forehead and hands, then looked at the
mother.
'You give it milk?' he asked shortly.
'Yes, sir,' said she, with a slight smile of motherly content.
'How many months old is he?'
'Eighteen months.'
'And you still suckle him? You are all the same, you Naples women.
Wean him at once.'
'Oh, sir!' she exclaimed, quite alarmed.
'Wean him,' he repeated.
'What am I to give him?' she said, almost sobbing. 'I often want
bread for myself and the other two, but never milk. Must this poor
little soul die of hunger too?'
'Does your husband not work?' asked the doctor ponderingly.
'Yes, sir, he does work,' she said, shaking her head.
'Does he keep another woman?'
'No, sir.'
'What does he do, then?'
'He plays at the lottery.'
'I understand. Wean the child. He has fever. Your milk poisons him.'
After gazing at the doctor and her child, she just said 'Jesus' in a
whisper, and a sob burst out from her motherly breast.
Amati wrote out a prescription in pencil on a leaf of his
pocket-book. He went down the stairs, followed by Annarella, whose
tears fell over the child's face, her dull sobs following him in
lamentation.
'This is the prescription; here are five francs to get it with,' said
the doctor, motioning to her not to thank him.
She looked at him with stupefied eyes while he crossed the big cold
hospital court to his carriage; she began to cry again when she was
alone; gazing on the baby, the prescription in her hand shook--it was
so bitter for her to think of having poisoned her son with her milk.
'It must be cholera,' she kept saying to herself, for among Naples
common folk stomach disorders are often called cholera.
Dr. Amati shook his head again energetically, as if he had lost
confidence altogether in the saving of humanity. As he was opening
the carriage door to get in, a woman who had been chattering with the
hospital porter came up to speak to him. It was a woman in black,
with a nun's shawl, and black silk kerchief on her head, tied under
the chin. She had coal-black eyes in a pale face--eyes used to the
shade and silence. She spoke very low.
'Sir, would you come with me to do an urgent kindness?'
'I am busy,' the doctor grumbled, getting into his carriage.
'The person is very, very ill.'
'All the people I have to see are ill.'
'She is near here, sir, in the Sacramentiste convent. I was sent to
the hospital to find a doctor. I can't go back without one ... she is
so very ill....'
'Dr. Caramanna is still up there--ask for him,' Amati retorted. 'Is
it a nun that is ill?' he then added.
'The Sacramentistes are cloistered; they can't call men into the
convent,' said the servant, pursing her lips. 'It is someone who got
ill in the convent parlour, not belonging to the convent....'
'I will come,' Amati said quickly.
He pushed the servant into the carriage, got in and shut the door.
The carriage rolled along the Anticaglia road, which is so dark,
muddy, and wretched from old age; and they did not say a word to each
other in the short drive. The carriage stopped before the convent
gate; instead of ringing the bell, the servant opened the door with
a key. The doctor and she first crossed an icy court overlooked by a
number of windows with green jalousies, then a corridor with pillars
along the court; complete solitude and silence was everywhere. They
went into a vast room on the ground-floor. Along the white-washed
walls were straw chairs, nothing else; at the end a big table, with
a seat for the porter lay Sister. A crucifix was nailed on one wall.
Along the other were two narrow gratings with a wheel in the middle,
to speak through and pass things to the nuns. Near this wall, on
three chairs, a woman's form was stretched out; another woman was
kneeling and bending over her face. Before the doctor got as far as
the woman lying down, the servant went up to the grating and spoke:
'Praise to the Holy Sacrament----'
'Now and for ever,' a very feeble voice answered from inside, as if
it came out of a deep cave.
'Is the doctor here?'
'Yes, Sister Maria.'
'That is well;' and a long, feverish sigh was heard.
In the meantime Dr. Amati had gone up to the fainting girl.
Margherita was bathing her forehead with a handkerchief steeped in
vinegar, and whispering: 'My darling! my darling!'
The doctor put his hat on the ground, and knelt down too, to examine
the fainting girl. He felt her pulse, and gently raised one eyelid;
the eye was glassy.
'How long has she been like this?' he asked in a whisper, rubbing her
icy hands.
'Half an hour,' the old woman replied.
'What have you done for her?'
'Nothing but use the vinegar. They gave it to me through the wheel;
they have nothing else; it is a convent under strict rules.'
'Does she often faint?'
'Last night ... she had another swoon. I found her on the ground in
her room. I called my master.'
'Did she recover of herself ... last night?'
'Yes.'
'Had she got a fright?'
'I don't know ... I don't think so,' she said in a hesitating way.
They were speaking in a whisper, whilst the servant stood right at
the grating, as if mounting guard.
'Is she better?' the feeble voice inside asked.
'Just the same,' replied the servant in a monotonous voice.
'Oh God!' the voice called out in anguish.
Meanwhile the doctor bent down to hear the breathing better. He
seemed thoughtful and preoccupied. Margherita looked at him with
despairing eyes.
'Did she get a fright, half an hour ago, in here?' he began again to
ask, whilst he carefully raised Bianca's head and placed it against
his breast.
'No! ... certainly not!' Margherita whispered. 'I was in church. I did
not hear what was said; they called to me.'
'Who is that nun?' he asked, pointing to the grating.
'It is Sister Maria degli Angioli--the aunt.'
Then he got up and went to the grating. The serving Sister pursed up
her lips to remind him of the cloistral rule, almost as if she wanted
to prevent any conversation between him and the nun.
'Sister Maria----' he said very gently.
'Now and for ever,' the feeble voice said hurriedly, hearing a man's
voice.
'Has your niece had a fright?'
Silence on the other side.
'Did she tell you of anything disagreeable that had happened to her?'
'Yes, yes!' the voice breathed out, trembling.
'Can you tell me what it was about?'
'No, no!' she went on quickly, still trembling. 'Something very
sad ... I can't tell you.'
'Very well--thank you,' he whispered, getting up again.
'How is she? Are you giving her anything?' the Sister's voice asked.
'We are going to take her to the house. Nothing can be done here.'
'We are poor nuns,' the Sister murmured. 'How will you carry her?'
'In the carriage,' he said shortly. Then, going up to Margherita, he
went on in a low, forcible voice: 'I am coming with my coachman just
now. She can't stay here; I can't do anything for her here. We will
carry her out to the carriage and go home.'
'In this state?' she asked undecidedly.
'Do you want her to die here?' he interrupted brusquely.
'Please forgive me, sir.'
He had already gone out, without his hat and overcoat, across the
passage and icy court. After a minute he came back with the coachman,
who had evidently got his orders.
The doctor gently raised the fainting girl's body from under the
arms, resting her head on his breast, while the coachman raised
her feet. She was almost rigid and very heavy. The coachman had
a frightened look; perhaps he thought he was carrying out a dead
woman, all in black, through that bare parlour, deserted corridor,
and chilly court; and although the sight of physical suffering was
not new to him, being in a successful doctor's service, the idea of
carrying a young woman's cold body, a corpse perhaps, gave him such
a shudder he turned away his head. Old Margherita, coming behind,
looked yellower, more like wrinkled parchment than ever, in the
bright court. The procession of the anxious doctor, the frightened
man, the rigid figure in black, and the old servant sadly bent by
a strange new anguish, moved silently across the silent, tomb-like
cloister, like a funeral. Gently, with the care needed not to waken a
sleeping baby, the two men placed the poor lifeless creature in the
carriage, her head against the cushions and her feet on the opposite
seat. She had not given a sign of life whilst she was being carried;
the two lines deepened between Dr. Amati's eyebrows, lines showing
a strong will and deep thought, but which gave him an absent-minded
look. Margherita still gently tried to rearrange the girl's loosened
tresses that had fallen down, but she did not manage it, her lean
hands trembled so; she, too, had got into the broad landau; she
gathered up her mistress's hair caressingly, and the doctor heard her
mutter, 'My darling! my darling!'
He had lowered the blue blinds against indiscreet eyes; the carriage
went at a foot-pace; and in that bluish, misty shade the slow pace
kept up the idea of a funeral still more. However, the carriage
stopped at one point; after a little the coachman opened the door,
and handed in to the doctor a hermetically sealed phial, which he
held to the unconscious girl's nose. A sharp smell of ether at once
spread through the carriage, which was still going very slowly.
Bianca Maria never moved; after a little there was one sign of
feeling: her closed eyelids got red, big tears burst out between the
lashes and ran down her cheeks. The doctor did not take his eyes off
her for a minute, keeping her hand in his. She went on weeping, still
unconscious, without giving another sign of life: as if she still
felt sorrow through her unconsciousness, as if through her loss of
memory one bitter recollection still remained--only one. She did not
recover consciousness.
When they got to the Rossi Palace courtyard, hardly was the door
opened when a murmuring noise broke out, gradually growing stronger,
impossible to restrain. Beside the carriage door the porter's wife
called out and screamed as if the girl was dead. All the windows
looking into the courtyard, all the landing-place doors, had opened
to see the poor, fainting, pale creature in black, with hair hanging
down, taken out of the carriage. The doctor vainly tried to insist on
silence, but the cry of surprise and compassion grew louder, rising
in the heavy air.
On the first-floor landing-place Gelsomina, Agnesina Fragalà's nurse,
came out, holding the pretty, healthy infant in her arms; the happy
mother, Luisella Fragalà, came behind her, dressed to go out, with
her bonnet on. But she lingered, leaning on the iron railing, smiling
vaguely at her baby, and looking pityingly on the strange escort. She
had felt rather tired and preoccupied for some time past, for she had
been going every day to the Santo Spirito shop, from an instinct, a
presentiment, that was stronger than her pride, tying up the parcels
of sweets and cakes with her ring-covered, white hands.
'Poor thing! poor thing!' Luisella Fragalà muttered; her compassion
had a deeper, acuter feeling in it than the other people's had.
Raising the heavy yellow brocade curtains behind her double
windows on the first-floor, Signora Parascandolo's bloodless face
appeared--the rich usurer's wife who had lost all her children.
She seldom went out; she stayed shut up in her gorgeous apartment,
full of rich furniture now quite useless and dreary, as she never
received anyone since her sons died; only she looked out of the
window now and then in a silly kind of way that had grown on her.
On seeing Bianca Maria carried up in that way, the poor woman, who
took an interest in nothing usually, opened the window, and her voice
was added to the rising tumult, crying in prayer and supplication,
'Jesus, Jesus, help us!' All Domenico Mayer's misanthropic family
came out on the third-floor landing, leaving their three-roomed
little flat that looked on to the Rossi Theatre. First came the
father's long, peevish face, and, having just left some copying
work brought home from the Finance Office, he had sleeves on to
save his coat; then Donna Christina, the mother, who had got rid of
the tooth-ache but had a stiff neck instead; next Amalia, with her
staring eyes, thick nose and lips, and sulky look of a girl who has
not yet got a husband; and Fofò, still afflicted by the hunger which
his relations said was a mysterious illness. The whole family nearly
threw themselves over the railings out of curiosity, and shrieked out
in a chorus: 'Poor girl! poor girl!' A woman in a muslin cap and a
man in a blue sweeping-apron were at the window--even the doctor's
housekeeper; nor did they stop gazing when their master came up, so
overpowering was the excitement in all the Rossi Palace.
That carrying up the stair, amid the noisy compassion of all these
different people, the frightened, pitying shrieks, that had a false
ring about them, seemed endless to Dr. Amati; as for old Margherita,
she shook with annoyance and shame, as if that noise and publicity
were insulting to her mistress.
When the door was shut behind them, she asked Giovanni in a fright:
'Is milord not in? Milady is ill.'
'No,' he said, making way for the bearers.
Margherita shook her head despairingly. She went with the doctor and
his man into Bianca Maria's room; the girl was laid on the bed. The
man-servant went away. The doctor again tried to bring her back with
ether--no result. He bit his lip; he said twice or thrice, 'It is
impossible!' Once again he raised the violet eyelids, looking at her
eyes. She was alive, but she did not recover consciousness.
'Where is her father?' he asked, without turning round.
'I don't know,' the old woman muttered.
'There will be some place he goes every day; send for him.'
'I will send, as you order me to,' she said, still hesitating; and
she went out.
He sat down by the bedside, and laid down the ether bottle,
convinced now it was useless. That bare, cold little room, with a
look of childish purity, had calmed somewhat the scientist's dull
anger at not being able to cure nor find out the reason of the
illness. He had seen, a hundred times, long, queer fainting fits;
but they were from nervous illnesses, from abnormal temperaments,
out of order from the beginning, and ordinary methods had overcome
them. The colourless young girl seemed to be sleeping heavily, and
she might remain so for many hours, wrapped up in the dark regions of
unconsciousness. He armed himself with patience, turning over in his
mind medical books that spoke of such fainting fits. Twice or thrice
Margherita had come back into the room, questioning him with an
agonized look; he shook his head, 'No.' Then he asked her for brandy.
She stood hesitating; there was none in the house. Amati told her to
go and ask for it in his flat next door. With a teaspoon, a wretched
one that had lost its plating, he opened the girl's lips, and poured
the strong liquor through her closed teeth, with no result. Again, he
asked Margherita, who was fidgeting about, to heat flannel cloths;
seeing her still embarrassed, he told her to go to his house, and ask
the housekeeper for some.
Whilst she was away, Giovanni came back out of breath; he panted as
he spoke.
'I have not found the Marquis anywhere, not at Don Crescenzio's
lottery stand, nor at the Santo Spirito assembly, nor in Don
Pasqualino the medium's house, where they meet every day.'
'Who meet?' asked the doctor distractedly, hardly listening to what
he said.
'The Marquis's friends.... But I left word wherever he is to come
back to the house, because her ladyship is ill.'
'Very good; send out this prescription,' said the doctor, who as
usual wrote it with a pencil on a leaf from his pocket-book.
The old servant's pale face looked disturbed. The doctor, always
taken up about his patient, did not notice him.
'Go, and get it,' he said, feeling Giovanni was still there.
'It is because ...' the poor man stammered out.
Then the doctor, just as he had done for Annarella, the
glove-cutter's wretched wife, pulled ten francs out of his purse and
gave them to him.
'... the master not being in and not being able to tell the
mistress,' Giovanni muttered, wishing to account for the want of
money.
'Very good--all right,' said the doctor, turning to his patient.
But a loud ring at the bell sounded all through the flat. A
resounding step was heard, and the Marquis di Formosa came in. He
seemed only to see his daughter stretched out on the bed. He began
kissing her hand and forehead, speaking loudly in great anguish.
'My daughter, my daughter, what is the matter with you? Answer your
father. Bianca, Bianca, answer! Where have you the pain? how did it
come? My darling, my heart's blood, my crown, answer me! It is your
father calling you. Listen, listen, tell me what it is! I will cure
you, dear, dear daughter!'
And he went on exclaiming, crying out, sobbing, pale and red in the
face, by turns, running his fingers through his white hair, his still
graceful, strong figure bent, while the doctor looked at him keenly.
In a silent interval the Marquis noticed Amati's presence, and
recognised him as his celebrated neighbour.
'Oh, doctor,' he called out, 'give her something--this daughter is
all I have!'
'I am trying what I can,' the doctor said slowly, in a low voice, as
if he was chafing against the powerlessness of his science. 'But it
is an obstinate faint.'
'Has she had it long?'
'About two hours. It came on in the Sacramentiste parlour.'
'Ah!' said the father, getting pale.
The doctor looked at him. They said no more. The secret rose up
between them, wrapped in the thickest, deepest obscurity.
'Do something for her,' Formosa stammered, in a trembling voice.
But he was summoned; Giovanni whispered to him; the Marquis was
undecided for a minute.
'I will come back at once,' he said as he went off.
The doctor had wrapped the invalid's little feet in warm clothes; now
he wanted to wrap up her hands. All at once he felt a slight pressure
on his hand: Bianca Maria with open eyes was quietly looking at him.
The doctor's forehead wrinkled a little with surprise just for a
moment.
'How do you feel?' he asked, leaning over the invalid.
She gave a tired little smile, and waved her hand as if to tell him
to wait, that she could not speak yet.
'All right, very good,' the doctor said heartily. 'Don't speak;' and
he made Margherita, who was coming in, keep silence, too.
The servant's poor tired eyes shone with joy when she saw Bianca
Maria smiling.
'Are you better? Make a sign,' the doctor asked tenderly.
She made an effort, and very low, instead of a sign, she pronounced
the word 'Better.' The voice was low, but quiet. With a medical man's
familiarity, he took one of her hands in his to warm it.
'Thank you!' said she after a time.
'For what?' he said, rather put out.
'For everything,' she replied, smiling again.
Now, it seemed, she had quite got back the power of speaking. She
spoke, but kept quite still, only living intensely in her eyes and
smile.
'For everything--what do you mean?' he asked, piqued by a lively
curiosity.
'I understood,' said she, with a profound look.
'You were conscious all the time?'
'All. I could neither move nor speak, but I understood.'
'Ah!' said he thoughtfully. He sent Margherita to let the Marquis
know that his daughter had recovered consciousness.
'Were you in pain?'
'Yes, a great deal, from not being able to come out of my faint. I
wept; I felt a pain at my heart.'
'Yes, yes,' he said. 'Don't speak any more--rest.'
The doctor made a sign to the Marquis, who was coming in, to keep
silence. Formosa leant over his daughter's bed and touched her
forehead with his hand, as if he was blessing her. Her eyelids
fluttered and she smiled.
'Your daughter was conscious during her swoon--the rarest kind of
fainting fit.'
'Was she conscious?' the Marquis asked in a strange voice.
'Yes; she saw and heard everything. It comes from sensitiveness
carried to excess.'
Then he poured out more brandy in the teaspoon for Bianca Maria to
take. Don Carlo Cavalcanti's face twitched. He leant over the bed,
and asked:
'What did you see? Tell me--what did you see?'
The daughter did not answer. She looked at her father in such sad
surprise that the doctor, turning round, noticed it and frowned. He
had not heard what the father asked his daughter, and he again felt
the great family secret coming up, seeing Bianca Maria's gentle, sad
glance.
'Don't ask her anything,' the doctor said brusquely to the Marquis di
Formosa.
The old patrician restrained a disdainful shrug. He brooded over his
daughter's face, as if he wanted to get the secret out by magnetism.
She lowered her eyelids, but suffering was in her face; then she
looked at the doctor, as if she wanted help.
'Do you want anything?' he asked.
'There is a man at my door: make him go away,' she whispered in a
frightened tone.
The doctor started; so did her father. In fact, outside the door,
in his invariable wretched waiting attitude, was Pasqualino De Feo,
dirty, ragged, with unkempt beard and pale, streaky red cheeks. The
Marquis had left him in the drawing-room, but he slid along to Bianca
Maria's room with the timid, quiet step of a beggar who fears to be
chased from all doors.
'Who is that man?' said the doctor in that rough tone of his, going
up to the door, as if to chase him away.
'He is a friend,' the Marquis answered, hurrying forward in a vague,
embarrassed way.
'Send him away!' the doctor said sternly.
Outside the door the Marquis and Don Pasqualino chattered in a lively
whisper. Bianca Maria looked as if she could hear what her father
said outside; at one point she shook her head.
'Do you want that man sent away from the house?'
'Leave him,' she said feebly. 'It would annoy my father.'
Ah! the doctor knew nothing at all. Even now, on coming back to
stern realities, he blamed himself for the sad, dark romance coming
into his life; but an overmastering feeling entangled him, which he
thought was scientific curiosity. Hours were passing, evening was
coming on; he had made none of his visits, and he stayed on in that
poor aristocratic sick lady's room, as if he could not tear himself
away.
'I ought to go,' he said, as if to himself.
'But you will come back?' she asked in a whisper.
'Yes ...' he said, determined to conquer himself and not come back
again.
'Do come back!' in a humble voice, beseechingly.
'I am here--just next door. If you are in pain, send for me.'
'Yes, yes,' she replied, quieted at the idea of being protected.
'Adieu, madame!'
'À Dieu!' she said, pointedly separating the two words.
Margherita went with him, thanking him softly for having saved her
mistress; but he had again become an energetic, busy man, inimical to
words.
'Where is the Marquis?' he insisted on knowing.
'In the drawing-room, Professor.'
And she took him there. It was just so. Don Carlo Cavalcanti, Marquis
di Formosa, and Pasqualino De Feo were walking up and down silently.
It was almost dark: still, the doctor examined the medium with a
scrutinizing, suspicious eye.
'How is Bianca Maria?' asked Formosa, coming out of a dream.
'Better now,' the doctor replied in a short, cold tone; 'but she has
been struck prematurely, owing to a growing want of balance, moral
and physical. If you don't give her sun, movement, air, quiet, and
cheerfulness, she may die--from one day to another.'
'Don't say so, doctor!' the father cried out, angry and grieved.
'I must tell you, because it is so. I don't know the reason of
to-day's illness--I don't want to know it; but she is ill, you
understand--ill! She needs sun and peace--peace and sun. If you want
a doctor, I am always near; that is my profession. But I have made
out a prescription. Send your daughter to the country. If she stays
another year in this house, only seeing you and going to the nunnery,
she will die, I assure you,' he persisted coldly, as if this truth
ought to be announced decisively, as if he wanted to convince his own
unwilling mind also.
'Doctor, doctor, do not say that!' Formosa moaned, asking for mercy.
'She is ill; she will die. To the country--the country! Good-evening,
Marquis!'
He went off, as if trying to escape. The Marquis and the medium, who
had not said a word, went on again with their silent walk. Now and
then Formosa sighed deeply.
'The Spirit that helps me----' the medium breathed out.
'Eh?' the other cried out, starting.
'Warns me that Donna Bianca Maria has had a heavenly vision ... and
that she will tell you it in an allegory.'
'What do you say? Is it possible? Has the Supreme Being granted me
this favour? Is it possible?'
'The Spirit does not deceive,' the medium said sententiously.
'That is true--it is true!' Formosa murmured, looking into the
darkness with wild eyes.