fervent religious thoughts thereby re-enlivened, she was ready to bear such burdens and make such sacrifices as might come into her way, with the assured belief that they were especially sent from heaven for the improvement of her soul, by the restraint and mortification of her very innocent worldly desires.
It could hardly have been otherwise. She had not yet loved Bosio, but her affection had been sincere and of long growth. On the last day of his life he had become her betrothed husband, and for one hour all her future living, as woman, wife, and mother, had been bound up with his, to have being only with him–to disappear in black darkness with his tragic death, as though he had taken all motherhood and wifehood and womanhood of hers to the grave forever. As for what Don Teodoro had said of his having loved Matilde, she believed that less than all the rest, if possible; and the fact that the priest had said it proved beyond all doubt to her that he was out of his mind. Beyond that, it had not prejudiced her against him, for there was a certain noble loftiness in her character which could largely forgive an unmeant wrong.
In her great loneliness, in that dismal household, the reality of faith, hope, and charity as the body, mind, and spirit of the truest life, took hold upon her thoughts, as the mere words and emblems of religion had not done in her first girlhood. She read for the first time the Imitation of Christ and some of the meditations of Saint Bernard. The true young soul, suddenly and tragically severed from the anticipation of womanly happiness, turned gladly to visions of saintly joy–simply and without affectation of form or show–purely and without earthly regret–humbly and without touch of taint from spiritual pride. She had no burden to cast from her conscience, and she sought neither confessor nor director for the guidance of her thinking or doing. Straight and undoubting, her thoughts went heavenwards, to lay before God’s feet the sad, sweet offering of her own sorrow.
Without, in those dark winter days, storm drove storm over the ancient, evil city, rain followed rain, and gloom changed watches with darkness by day and night for one whole week, while the moon waned from the last quarter to the new. And within, Matilde Macomer went about the house, when she left her room at all, like a great, pale-faced, black shadow of something terrible, passing words. And in the library, Gregorio’s stony features were bent all day over papers and documents and books of accounts, seeking refuge from sure ruin, while now and then his face was twisted into a curiously vacant grimace, and his maniac laugh cracked and reverberated through the lonely, vaulted chamber. He often sat there by himself until late into the night, for the end of the year was at hand, with all the destruction that a date can mean when a man is ruined.
It was a big, long room, with old bookcases ranged by the walls, not more than five feet high, and closed by doors of brass wire netting lined with dark green cotton. A polished table took up most of the length between the door which led to the hall at the one end, and the single high window at the other. There was no fireplace, and the count had the place warmed by means of a big brass brazier filled with wood coals. At night, he had two large lamps with green glass shades.
Matilde sometimes came in and sat with him during the evening. She looked at him, and wished he were dead. But she was drawn there by the power which brings together two persons menaced by a common danger, in the hope that something may suddenly change, and turn peril into safety. He sat at one end of the table with his papers, and she took the place opposite to him, the lamp being a little on one side, so that they could see each other. They were a gloomy couple, in their black clothes, under the green light, with harassed, mask-like faces.
One night, Matilde came in very late. She trod softly on the polished floor, wearing felt slippers.
“Elettra sleeps in her dressing-room,” she said in a low voice.
Macomer looked up, and the twitching of his face began instantly, as though he were going to laugh. Matilde brought the palm of her hand down sharply upon the bare table, fixing her eyes upon him.
“Stop that!” she cried in a tone of command. “It is very well for the servants. You are learning to do it very well. It is of no use with me.”
He looked at her steadily for a moment. Then he laughed, but naturally and low.
“I might have known that you would find me out,” he said. “But it is becoming a habit. It may serve us in the end. How do you know that the woman sleeps in Veronica’s dressing-room?”
“I was wandering about, just now,” answered Matilde, looking away from him. “I saw the door of Elettra’s room ajar. I pushed it open and looked in, and I saw that her bed was not disturbed. Then I stood outside the door of Veronica’s dressing-room, and listened. Something moved once, and I was sure that I heard breathing.”
Gregorio watched her gravely while she was speaking, but in the silence that followed, his small eyes wandered uneasily.
“The girl is lonely,” he said at last. “She makes Elettra sleep in the room next to hers, because she is nervous.”
Matilde seemed to be thinking over what she had said. Some time passed before she answered, and then it was by a vague question.
“Well?”
Again they looked at each other.
“That is certainly bad,” said Macomer, thoughtfully. “What are we to do? Speak to her about it? You can say that you found Elettra’s door open, at this hour.”
“It would do no good,” answered Matilde. “We could not prevent her from having her maid there, if she wishes it.”
“After all,” observed Macomer, absently, “it is only a woman.”
“Only a woman?” Matilde’s lip curled. “I am only a woman.”
Macomer nodded slowly, as though realizing what that meant, but he said nothing in answer. With his hands under the table he slipped low down in his chair, his head bent forward upon his breast, in deep thought.
“Can you not suggest anything?” asked Matilde, at last, gazing at him somewhat scornfully. “After all, this is your fault. You have dragged me into this ruin with you.”
“I know, I know,” he repeated in a low voice. “But we cannot do it now–with that woman there.”
“No. It is impossible now.” Matilde’s tones sank to a whisper.
She looked down at her strong hands that had grown thinner during the past days, but were strong still. Gregorio waited a few moments and then roused himself and bent over his papers again.
“You cannot see any way out of it, can you?” asked his wife at last. “Is there no possibility of keeping afloat until things go better?”
“No,” answered Macomer, not looking up. “There is nothing to go better. You know it all. There is only that one way. Failing that, I must go mad. One can recover from madness, you know.”
“Yes,” said Matilde, thoughtfully. “But it is a very difficult thing to do well. They have expert doctors, who know the real thing from the imitation.”
Gregorio looked up suddenly.
“She could not go mad, could she?” he asked, a quiver of cunning intelligence making his stony mask quiver. “Are there not things–is there not something–you know–something that produces that? What is all this talk, nowadays, about hypnotic suggestion?”
“Fairy tales!” exclaimed Matilde, incredulously. “The other is sure. This is no time for experiments. There are thirteen days left in this year. If we are to do it at all, we must do it quickly.”
“I do not like the idea of the pillow,” said Macomer, speaking very low again.
Matilde’s shoulders moved uneasily, as though she were chilly, but her face did not change.
“It is of no use to talk of such things,” she answered. “Besides,” she added, “you are dull. Only remember that you have just thirteen days more, after to-day.”
“Remember!” his voice told all his terror of the limit.
Then Matilde did not speak again. She rested her elbows on the table, and her chin upon her hands, staring at him as though she did not see him, evidently in deep thought. He bent over his papers, but was aware that her eyes were on him. He glanced up nervously.
“Please do not look at me in that way. You make me nervous,” he said.
With a scornful half-laugh she rose from her seat.
“Good night,” she said indifferently, and in her soft felt slippers she noiselessly went away.
She had not come in the expectation of help from her husband in anything that was to be done. But besides the bond of fear by which they were drawn together, there was the feeling that his presence, especially in that room, brought before her vividly the necessity for action. Under such pressure, an idea might come to her which would be worth having. It had come to-night, but it was of a nature which made it wiser not to tell Gregorio about it. Such things, being complicated and delicate, and difficult of execution, were best kept to herself, at least until her plans were matured and ready. But this time, she believed that she had at last what she wanted. The scheme flashed upon her all at once, complete and feasible, and perfectly safe, but she resolved to think it over for twenty-four hours before finally deciding to adopt it.
And while such things were being said and done in the lonely night, and deeply pondered through the long, silent days, Veronica came and went peacefully, with sad but not unhappy eyes, her thoughts fixed upon the new path by which her single sorrow was to lead her up to the eternity of all celestial joys.
In those days she determined to lead a holy life, in the memory of the dead betrothed, and perhaps in the thought that by the outpouring of much good around her, she might yet obtain mercy for the soul of one self-slain. She meant not to cut herself off from all mankind, devoting her maidenhood to heaven and her body to the servitude of slow suffering, whereby some say that the spirit may be saved most certainly–in the hard rule of daily dying, and daily rising again one day nearer to death. That was not what she meant to do; that depth of godly dreaming was too cold and still a depth for her. There must be motion and life in her means of grace, since she had the power to make others move and live. Marriage, wifehood, motherhood, should not be for her, she said; but there was all the rest. There were the many hundreds–the thousands, indeed, had she known it–of men and women and poor children, toiling against the impossible with hands that had long learned to labour in vain, save for the bare bread of life. To them all, in many quarters of the land, she would be a mother, to help them, to feed them, and to heal them; to work for them and their welfare, as they had worked and toiled for the greatness of her dim, great ancestors, repaying to humanity, in one lifetime, what humanity had been forced to give them through many generations.
She would lead a holy life, for she would pray continually, when there was nothing else that she could do. When she could not be thinking out some good thing for her people, she would meditate upon higher things for the good of her own soul. But first and foremost should be the doing, the helping, the giving of life to the far spent, and of hope to the helpless.
There in that room, where she dwelt continually in those days, she made no vow, she registered no resolution, she imposed no one self upon another self within her to thrust out evil and implant good. She had no need of that. It was all as simply natural as the growth of a flower, effortless, rising heavenward by its own instinct life.
In one thing only she made a determination of her will. She decided that with the new year she would at last take over her fortune and estates into her own management. Until she did that, she could not know what she had, nor where she should begin her good work. That was absolutely necessary, and of course, thought she, it presented no difficulty at all. Possibly her own indolence about it, and her distaste for going into the question of money and accounts, was a fault with which she should have reproached herself, because she might have begun to do good sooner, had she chosen. But she did not think of that. She would begin with the new year.
As though a good destiny had anticipated her desire, the first call for her help came suddenly, on the day after the last recorded conversation between Gregorio and Matilde.
It was still early in the morning when Elettra brought her a letter, bearing the postmark of the city, and addressed in one of those small, clear handwritings which seem naturally to belong to scholars and students. It was from Don Teodoro, and Veronica read it while she drank her tea and Elettra was making a fire in the next room.
The old priest did not refer to the strange story he had told her ten days earlier. But he recalled her question concerning the people at Muro and their condition. They were indeed desperately poor, he said, and the winter was a hard one in the mountains. There were many sick, and there was no hospital,–not so much as a room in which a dying beggar might lie out of the cold. It was a very pitiful tale, told carefully and accurately. And at the end the good man humbly begged that the most Excellent Princess would deign to allow his stipend to be paid in advance, in order that he might do something to help his poor.
Veronica read the letter twice, and judged it. Then she determined to do something at once, for she knew that the man had written the truth. She should have liked to send for him, and talk with him of what should be done; but she could not forget the things he had said about Bosio, and for that reason she did not wish to see him again–at least, not yet. His mind was unbalanced about that matter; but charity was a different thing.
His address in Naples was in the letter. She wrote a note in answer, begging him to tell her how much money he should need to hire a vacant house, since there was no time to build one, and to fit it decently with what he thought necessary, in order that it might serve as a refuge and hospital for the very poor. She sent Elettra with the letter.
It was raining again, and by good fortune Don Teodoro was at home, though it was still before noon. While the maid waited, he wrote his answer. His thanks were heartfelt on behalf of his parish, but shortly expressed. He said that in order to do what Veronica proposed so generously, at least two thousand francs would be necessary. He briefly explained why the charity would need what he looked upon as a large sum, and he begged pardon for being so frank.
Again Veronica read the letter carefully over, and she put it into the desk. Half an hour later she went to luncheon. The meal was as silent and gloomy as usual, and scarcely half a dozen words were said. Afterwards the three came back to the yellow drawing-room for their coffee. When the servant was gone, Veronica, stirring the sugar in her cup, turned to her uncle.
“Will you please give me three thousand francs, Uncle Gregorio?” she asked quietly. “I want it this afternoon, if you please.”
Gregorio Macomer grew slowly white to the tips of his ears. Matilde sipped her coffee, and turned her back to the light.
“Three thousand francs!” repeated Macomer, slowly recovering a little self-control. “My dear child! What can you want of so much money?”.
“Is it so very much?” asked Veronica, innocently surprised. “You have told me that I have more than eight hundred thousand a year. It is for charity. The people at Muro have no hospital. I shall be glad if you will give it to me before four o’clock; I wish to send it at once.”
Macomer had barely a thousand francs in the house, and he knew that there was not a man of business in Naples who would have lent him half the little sum for which Veronica was asking.
“I shall certainly not give you money for any such absurd purpose,” said Gregorio, with sudden, assumed sternness.
Veronica raised her eyes in quiet astonishment, offended, but not disconcerted.
“Really, Uncle Gregorio,” she said, “as I am of age and mistress of whatever is mine, I think I have a right to my little charities. Besides, you know, it is not giving, since you are no longer my guardian in reality. It is merely a case of sending to the bank for the money, if you have not got it in the house. I should like it before four o’clock, if you please, Uncle Gregorio.”
In his terror the man lost his temper.
“I shall certainly not let you have it,” he answered, with cold irritation. “It is absurd!”
If Veronica had wanted the money to spend it on herself, she might have waited until he was cool again, in the evening, before insisting. But her blood rose, for she felt that it was for her poor people, starving, sick, frozen, shelterless, in distant Muro. She knew perfectly well what her rights were, and she asserted them then and there with a calm young dignity of purpose which terrified Gregorio more and more.
“This is very strange,” she said. “I do not wish to say disagreeable things, Uncle Gregorio; we should both regret them. But you know that I am entitled to spend all my income as I please, and I must really beg you to get me this money at once. It is for a good purpose. The case is urgent. I am the proper judge of whether it is needed or not, and I have decided that I will give it. There is nothing more to be said.”
“Except that I entirely refuse to listen to such words from my ward!” answered Gregorio, angrily.
“I appeal to you, Aunt Matilde,” said Veronica, setting down her coffee cup upon the table and turning to the countess.
But Matilde knew well enough that her husband could not get the money. She shook her head gravely and said nothing.
By this time Veronica was thoroughly determined to have her way.
“Very well,” she answered calmly. “I shall telegraph to the cardinal. I understand that he is in Rome.”
Gregorio turned away, and he felt that his knees were shaking under him. He knew well enough what the result would be if the cardinal’s suspicions were aroused. Matilde saw the danger and interfered.
“I think you are pushing such a small matter to the verge of a quarrel, Gregorio,” she said sweetly. “Since Veronica insists, you must give her the money. After all, it is hers, as she says.”
Macomer turned and stared at his wife in amazement.
“I am going out at once,” she continued. “If you like, I will go to the bank and get the money for you. Yes, dear,” she added, turning to Veronica, “I shall be back before four o’clock, and you shall have it in plenty of time. Did you say four thousand or five thousand?”
“Only three,” answered the young girl, rapidly pacified. “Three thousand, if you please. Thank you very much, Aunt Matilde! A woman always understands a woman in questions of charity. One wishes to act at once. Thank you.”
And in order to end an unpleasant situation, she nodded and left the room. Husband and wife waited a moment after the door was closed. Then Matilde, before Gregorio could speak, went and opened it suddenly and looked out, but there was no one there.
“She would not listen at the door!” exclaimed Gregorio, with some contempt for his wife’s caution.
“She? No! But I distrust that woman she has.”
“And how do you propose to get this money?” asked the count.
“Have I no diamonds?” inquired Matilde. “She would have ruined us. Order the carriage, and I will go to a jeweller at once.”
“Yes,” said Macomer. “You are very wise. I thought there was going to be trouble. It was clever of you to restore her confidence by offering her more. But–” he lowered his voice–“something must be done at once.”
“Yes,” answered Matilde, looking behind her. “It shall be done at once.”
He went out half an hour later, and before four o’clock Veronica despatched Elettra to Don Teodoro with three thousand francs in bank notes. But the diamonds which Matilde had left at the jeweller’s were worth far more than that, and she had got more than that for them.
CHAPTER XIII.
Veronica was well satisfied, and slept peacefully, dreaming of the pleasure she had given the old priest, and of the good which he could do with her money. And then in her dream, the scene of his first visit was acted over, and suddenly Veronica started up awake in the dark. She must have uttered an unconscious exclamation, just as she awoke, for in a moment the door opened and she heard Elettra’s voice asking her if she needed anything, but in a tone so anxious and changed that it seemed to Veronica to belong to her dream rather than to any reality.
“Are you there?” she asked, in the darkness, surprised that the woman should have come in so unexpectedly.
“Yes,” answered Elettra, briefly, and she groped for the matches on the little table beside the bed.
She struck a light and lit a candle. Veronica saw that her face was very pale, and that she was half dressed, wearing a black skirt and a white cotton jacket. As the young girl looked at her she realized how strange it was that she should have appeared at the slightest sound.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, with a little smile. “What time is it?” She looked at the watch, holding it up to the flame of the candle. “Three o’clock! What is the matter, Elettra? Why have you come?”
Elettra looked down, in real or pretended confusion.
“Excellency,” she said in a humble tone, “my room is very cold and damp in this rainy weather. For some nights I have slept on the sofa in the dressing-room. I hope your Excellency will pardon me. And I heard you cry out, just now. Then, forgetting that I ought not to have been sleeping there, I got up and came.”
“Oh! Did I cry out? Yes–I woke up suddenly. I was dreaming of Don Teodoro and of–” She checked herself. “Why did you not tell me that your room is damp? You shall have another.”
“Excellency, if you will forgive me, it would give trouble at this time. If you will allow me to sleep on the sofa until the weather is fine again. I will make no noise. You have seen–in the morning no one would know it, and I am very well there.”
Veronica looked at her and hesitated a moment. In the stillness she heard a soft sound.
“What is that?” she asked quickly.
“It is the cat,” answered the maid, peering down below the level of the candle-light.
“It did not sound like the cat,” said Veronica, pushing her dark, brown hair back with her slim hand, and looking down over the edge of the bed. “It was more like a footstep,” she added, with a little laugh.
But at that moment she caught sight of the Maltese cat’s green eyes in shadow. The creature came forward from the door, sprang instantly upon the foot of the bed and lay down, purring, its forepaws doubled under it, and its eyes shut.
“It is a heavy cat,” said Elettra, thoughtfully. “It is so fat. One can hear it when it walks across the room.”
She scratched its head gently, and it purred more loudly under her hand.
“Excellency, you will allow me to sleep in the dressing-room, just for these days,” she said presently.
“Oh yes–if you like,” answered Veronica, laying her head down upon the pillow, sleepy again.
The maid bent over her and drew the things up about her neck in a half-tender, motherly way, looking at the girl’s face. Then she hesitated before putting out the light.
“Excellency,” she said, “let us go to Muro. The air of this house is not good for you. It is damp, and you are pale in these days. In the mountains the colour will come back. The people will make a feast when you come. It will amuse you. Excellency, let us go.”
Veronica laughed sleepily.
“You are dreaming, Elettra. Go away. I want to go to sleep.”
The woman sighed softly, extinguished the light, and groped her way to the door in the dark. Veronica was very sleepy, as she said, but somehow after her maid had gone away, she became wakeful again for a time. The cat had remained on the foot of the bed, and its soft purring disturbed her a little, because she was accustomed to absolute silence. There had been a curious cross-fitting of her dream and of the little realities of Elettra’s entrance. She had dreamt over again the priest’s earnest warning that her life was in danger, and she had imagined that she heard a footstep of a person coming up quickly behind her. Then, somehow, in the same instant, recalling what Don Teodoro had told her about her uncle’s frauds, she had seemed to know that he had refused the money in the afternoon because there was no more to take, nor to be given to her. Waking suddenly, she had heard Elettra’s anxious voice, giving the strong impression that she was really in present peril. Then she had really thought that she heard another footstep, somewhere, while Elettra was standing still beside her. It had only been the cat, of course. It was such a very fat cat, as Elettra said, and the floors were of the old-fashioned sort, laid on wooden beams, and trembled very easily, as they do in old Italian houses. But each detail had fitted with another, into a sort of whole which was a reflexion of the priest’s story. Some of it all at once looked true, and instead of going to sleep at once, Veronica’s eyes were wide open, and she turned uneasily on her pillow.
Of course, it was absurd, for she had received the money when she had insisted upon having it, and if Elettra’s room was damp, that quite explained her presence. Besides, Elettra could not be supposed to know what Don Teodoro had said to Veronica. And then, there was the rest of the story, all that connected Bosio and Matilde. She absolutely refused to think of believing that. She would not even admit that there might have been some little foundation for it in the past.
Instinctively driving away the thought, she began to say certain prayers for the poor man, and little by little, repeating the words often, her mind grew calm, and she fell asleep once more. Yet in her sleep the needle of doubt ran through the little bits of memories, one by one, threading them in one continuous string. There was Bianca Corleone’s look of blank surprise when Veronica had first spoken of a possible marriage with Bosio, and there was Taquisara’s bold assertion, tallying with the priest’s, that the Macomer wanted her fortune, and there was very vividly before her the gnawing anxiety she had seen in Matilde’s face until the latter had caught sight of the artificial flower on that memorable evening. And the string on which the beads of memory were threaded was her long-repressed but profound distrust of Gregorio Macomer. It had seemed a wicked prejudice, a gratuitously false judgment, based upon something in his face, and she had always fought against it as unworthy, besides being irrational. Then, too, there was the will she had signed a fortnight since, for the sake of peace. If there was nothing in what the priest had said, why had they been so terribly anxious to get the document executed without delay? It was scarcely natural. And there were fifty other details, turns of phrases, changes of expression, little words of Gregorio’s spoken in an enigmatic tone to his wife, which Veronica had not understood, but which she had therefore remembered, and which could mean that he was on the verge of ruin, and in great trouble of mind about his affairs. Amidst the wildly shifting scenery of dreams, the little doll figures of abiding facts out of memory joined hands in procession, showing their faces one by one and their likeness to one another more and more clearly. Even in her dream, it flashed upon her that it might all be true except that one part of it which said that Bosio had loved Matilde and not herself. That was not true. He had loved her, Veronica; they had known it, and had taken advantage of it. She did not blame them for that. She had been so fond of him,–she knew that she should soon have loved him,–and the dream swung back upon itself, and she was again standing beside the fire in the yellow room, with him so near to her. And after she awoke, she shed tears.
On that morning, after eleven o’clock, Matilde came to Veronica’s room, bringing a piece of needlework with her, and she sat down to stay a while. They talked idly about dull subjects, and from time to time Matilde looked up and smiled sadly. She sat so that she could not see Bosio’s photograph on the mantelpiece. After she had been there half an hour, she started, suddenly remembering something.
“I have done such a stupid thing!” she exclaimed, with an expression of annoyance. “I believe I am losing my memory!”
“What is it?” asked Veronica, naturally.
“I sent my maid out, just before I came to you, with a number of errands to do, and I forgot two things that I wanted very much. There was some medicine which I was to take before luncheon, and some jet beads that I needed. I do not care so much about the beads, but I need the medicine. I feel so horribly tired and weak, all the time.”
“Send one of the men,” suggested Veronica.
“A man could not buy jet things,” objected Matilde. “You could not let Elettra go out for me, could you? It is a fine morning, for a wonder, and she need not be gone more than half an hour.”
“Certainly,” answered Veronica, promptly. “She has nothing to do, and the walk will be good for her.”
She rose and rang for her maid.
“I will go and get the recipe,” said Matilde, rising, too. “It is an old one, given me by our poor doctor who died last year, and I kept it because it did me so much good. They will make it up in ten minutes. She can go and buy the jet, and stop for it on the way back. Will you tell her that she may go?”
Elettra had entered the room, and Veronica explained to her what she was to do.
“Put on your hat, Elettra,” said Matilde, “and then please come to my room, and I will give you the recipe. I must find it among my things. I will be back presently, dear,” she said to Veronica.
She went out, followed by the maid, who did as she was bidden and then went to Matilde’s room. The countess explained exactly what sort of jet she wanted, and then gave her the recipe.
“Tell the chemist that this is only for two doses,” she said, “but that I wish him to make up twenty doses, because I am going to take it regularly. Say that it is for me, and go to Casadio for it, where we get everything. Have it put down on the bill. Do you understand? Here are twenty francs for the jet, but you will not need so much. You understand, do you?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
Elettra stuck the little slip of paper, on which the recipe was written, into her shabby pocket-book without looking at it. She could read and write fairly well, and had been used to helping her husband the under-steward with his accounts at Muro, but even if she had looked at the recipe she would have understood nothing of the doctor’s hieroglyphics and abbreviated Latin words. The prescription was for a preparation of arsenic, which Matilde had formerly taken for some time. The chemist would not make any difficulty about preparing twenty doses of it for the Countess Macomer, though the whole quantity of arsenic contained in so many would probably be sufficient to kill one not accustomed to the medicine, if taken all at once.
But though Matilde was so anxious to have the stuff before luncheon, she had a number of doses of it put away in a drawer, which she took out and counted, after Elettra had gone. She opened one of the little folded papers and looked at the fine white powder it contained, took a little on the end of her finger and tasted it. Then, from the same drawer, she took a package done up in coarser paper, and opened it likewise, looked at it, smelt it, and touched it with the tip of her tongue very cautiously indeed. It was white, too, but coarser than the medicine. She was very careful in tasting it, and she immediately rinsed her mouth with water, before she tied up the package again, shut the drawer, and put the key into her pocket.
By and by Elettra came back and brought her the jet and the medicine, returning her the change without any remark. Matilde thanked her, and laid the package of twenty doses upon her dressing-table, before the mirror.
At luncheon, she persuaded Veronica to go out with her for a drive in the afternoon. She said that she felt ill and tired, and did not like to go alone. Gregorio said that he was too busy to accompany her, and it would not have been easy for Veronica to refuse. While it was still early, they drove out, past Bianca Corleone’s house, over the hill, and down to Posilippo, on the other side. They talked very little, but Veronica enjoyed the bright afternoon air, after the long spell of bad weather. There was no dust, for the road was not yet dry, and a gentle land breeze just roughed the surface of the calm sea to a deeper blue. When they turned to drive home, there was already a purple mist about Vesuvius, and the great Sant’ Angelo’s crest was black against the sky, for these were the shortest days, and the sun set far to southward. It was almost dark when they got back to the city.
“Shall we have tea in your room?” asked Matilde as they went up the stairs together. “It is so dreary in the drawing-room.”
“Certainly,” answered Veronica, readily. “Yes–the rest of the house is horribly gloomy, now.” Matilde was behind her on the stairs, evidently fatigued, but as the young girl spoke, a look of detestation flashed across her worn face. She hated Veronica, now that Bosio was dead. But for Veronica, Bosio would still have been alive. There was more than the mere desperate determination to save herself, and her husband with her, in what Matilde did after that. But when they entered the hall, the look was quite gone from her face. She had been very gentle, all that morning and afternoon. They had talked a little of the incident that had occurred on the previous day, of Gregorio’s feeling about not letting Veronica spend money uselessly. He was so conscientious, Matilde had said. Though the guardianship had expired, he still felt it his duty to watch his former ward’s expenditure. And he was not charitable–no, it had always been a cause of regret to Matilde that Gregorio, with all his good qualities, was hard to poor people. Bosio had been different. Ah–poor Bosio!
She spoke gently, and sometimes there was a true ring in her voice which Veronica heard and understood, for it was quite genuine. And now, she seemed tired and weak–she who was so strong.
So they went to Veronica’s room, and Elettra brought the tea things, and Matilde made tea, and they both drank it, and talked a little more, and gave the Maltese cat milk in a saucer, on the lower shelf of the little two-storied tea-table.
Afterwards, Matilde went away to her room, and Veronica remained alone after Elettra had taken away the things.
Before dinner, Elettra came and told her mistress that the countess was suddenly taken very ill, and was crying aloud with the pain she suffered. Veronica hastily went to her aunt, and found that a doctor had already come and was making her swallow olive oil out of a full tumbler. A servant followed her into the room with a plate full of raw eggs, and the doctor was asking for magnesia. Gregorio Macomer was standing by, shaking his head, and occasionally supporting his wife with one hand, when her strength seemed to be failing. Veronica took the other side, and the doctor stood before the sick woman.
“What is it, Doctor?” asked Veronica, after a moment. “What is the matter with her?”
The physician looked over his shoulder and saw that there was no servant in the room. “It is arsenic,” he answered in a low voice. “She has been poisoned. But there was not enough to kill her–she will be quite well to-morrow.”
“Poisoned!” exclaimed Veronica, in horrified surprise. “By whom?” She looked at Gregorio, addressing the question to him.
He gravely raised his high shoulders and shook his head. Veronica expected to hear his awful laugh; but though his face twitched nervously, it did not come. He knew that the doctor might afterwards be an excellent witness to his peculiarities, in case he wished to prove himself insane; but on the other hand, had he shown any signs of insanity now, the doctor might have suspected him of having poisoned his wife. That would have been very unfortunate.
As the physician had foreseen, Matilde was soon better, and by bed-time she felt no ill effects from what had happened to her, beyond great weakness and lassitude. The doctor had asked many questions and had elicited the fact that Matilde had a preparation of arsenic in powders, which she took according to prescription, and which she showed him after the first spasms were passed. She assured him, however, that she had only taken one on that day, and had taken it just before luncheon. The rest of the powders were intact and still lay upon her toilet table. She showed them also. He took the next one, on the top of the pile, and said that he would examine it and ascertain whether the chemist had made any mistake. Then he went away, promising to come in the morning.
At last Matilde was alone with her husband. Veronica had gone to bed, and Gregorio waited for an opportunity of questioning his wife.
“Whom do you suspect?” he asked, sitting down by her bedside.
“No one,” she answered. “I took it on purpose. You need not be anxious. I pretended to suffer more than I did, and I do not mind the pain at all.”
He stared at her, trying to fathom her thoughts, but he altogether failed to understand her.
“Why did you do it?” he asked, drawing the lids close together over his small eyes.
“You are so dull!” she answered. “You shall see. I cannot explain now. I have been really poisoned and I feel ill and weak. Do not go out to-morrow before I see you.”
He left her, but she did not sleep all night. In spite of what she had gone through on that evening and of all the mental suffering of many days, she was stronger still than any one knew. It was between two and three in the morning when she lighted a candle, wrapped herself in a dressing-gown and began to make certain preparations for the day.
In the first place she locked both her doors very softly, and arranged a stocking over each keyhole, twisting it round the keys themselves. Then she got some stiff writing-paper, and a heavy ivory paper-knife, and from the locked drawers she took that other package which was done up in coarse paper.
From this she took some of the rough, half-pulverized white stuff, laid it upon the marble top of the chest of drawers, and with the ivory paper-knife, pressing heavily, she little by little crushed it as fine as dust.
She then took nine of the eighteen little papers containing the arsenic, which were left, opened each one at the end and poured out the contents apart, into a little heap quite separate from the other. And of the other, she took a pinch for each little paper and dropped it in–about as much in quantity as she had taken out. Then she closed each of the papers, carefully slipping one folded end into the other as chemists do; when they were all closed, she made a tiny hole in each with the point of a needle, so that she should know the bad from the good, if necessary. This was only a precaution, and could do no harm. Then she arranged the good and the bad in their little packages of five, each in a tiny india-rubber band, laying bad ones and good ones alternately. When this was done, she put all the packages into the original paper, loosely opened, and laid them once more before her looking-glass, upon the toilet table. Her large white hands were exceedingly skilful, and it would have needed sharp eyes to see that the papers of medicine had been tampered with.
After this, she cut a sheet of the writing-paper into four square pieces, and very neatly made out of three of them three very small open boxes, for moulds, each of the size of a large lump of sugar, and she set them up side by side in a row. One was larger than the other two.
They had brought her powdered sugar, with the juice of a lemon in a glass and a decanter of water; she had said that if she were thirsty she would make herself a glass of lemonade in the night. She had also a bottle of ordinary sticking gum.
She took the sugar and mixed a very little with some of the stuff she had pulverized, and with a few drops of the gum, till it was a stiff, hard paste, and with the end of the paper-knife she carefully filled the largest of her three moulds with it. She was sure that it would be dry and hard by the next day, and it would have the size, the appearance, and somewhat the taste of a lump of sugar.
Then she halved the little heap of arsenic medicine as exactly as she could. There were nine powders in all. To produce the symptoms of poisoning in herself, she had taken four from her old supply, that evening. Half of nine would be four and a half, and that would not be too much. She mixed enough wet sugar and gum with each little pile to fill one of each of the smaller moulds, pressing the sticky mass firmly into the paper.
When all was finished, she carefully cleaned the marble top of the chest of drawers, and threw what little of the coarser powder remained into the ashes of the fire, in which a few coals still glowed. The heat would consume the powder immediately.
Having done this, she set the three little moulds on the warm marble hearthstone to dry, took the remainder of the package of coarser powder, twisted the stiff paper closely, so that it should not open, took the stockings from the keyholes, and, candle in hand, left the room, locking the door softly behind her. She made no noise as she traversed the dim rooms, in her felt slippers; but she avoided the yellow drawing-room and passed through a passage behind it. Her nerves were singularly good, but since Bosio’s death she did not like to be alone in that room at night. Bosio had been fond of dabbling in spiritism and such things, and they had often talked about the possibility of coming back after death, in that very room, promising each other that, if it were possible, the one who died first would try to communicate with the other. Matilde turned aside from the room in which they had said those things to each other.
She walked more and more cautiously as she came to the other end of the long apartment, where Veronica lived, and she stopped in a dark corridor before the door of Elettra’s room. It was not ajar this time, but closed. Matilde did not hesitate, and began to turn the handle very slowly. Then she pushed the door and looked in, shading her candle with her hand, from her eyes, so as to look over it. She had determined, if she found the woman in bed, to wake her boldly, to say that she felt ill again and to tell her to go and heat some water. That would have taken some time. But Elettra was not there, and the bed, as usual of late, was untouched.
Matilde looked about her hastily, at the same time extracting the package from the wide pocket of her dressing-gown. The furniture was scant and simple–the bed, a table covered with things belonging to Veronica, beside which lay sewing-materials, two chairs, a shabby chest of drawers, a deal washstand–that was all. Italian servants are not accustomed to very luxurious quarters. A couple of coarse, uncoloured prints of saints were tacked to the wall over the bed, and a bit of a dusty olive branch, from the last Palm Sunday, nine months ago, was stuck behind one of them.
Matilde looked about her, and hesitated a moment. Then, setting the candlestick down, she knelt upon the floor, and thrust the package as far as she could under the chest of drawers. Of all the things she had to do, in the course of that night and the following day, this was the only one with which any danger was connected, for at any moment Elettra might have come from Veronica’s room to her own. The thing was possible, but not probable, between three and four o’clock in the morning. It did not happen, and when Matilde left the room and softly closed the door behind her, all was safe.
Before she went to bed, she entered the dining-room, poured herself out a glass of strong Sicilian wine from a decanter on the sideboard and drank it at a draught, for she was very tired. She left the decanter and the glass on the table, so that any one might see them. If by any remote possibility some wakeful person had chanced to hear her moving about in the night, she would say that she had felt ill, and had left her room in order to find the stimulant. She thought of every possible detail which could in any way hereafter be brought up in evidence.
At last she went back to her room, unlocked the door, and locked herself in.
Her plan was simple, though the details of it were complicated, so far as the preparation was concerned. It was an extremely bold plan, but one not at all likely to fail in the execution. Almost all the difficulty had lain in the preparations, and she had spared no pains and no suffering for herself, in the preliminaries.
She knew the story of Elettra’s husband very well, and of how he had been murdered by peasants near Muro in trying to collect the exorbitant rents Macomer had attempted to exact. She was a good enough judge of character to see that Elettra had the revengeful disposition common to many of the southern hill people, and the woman’s dark complexion, sombre eyes, and thin frame would all help to strengthen the impression in the mind of an unprejudiced judge.
She intended to make it appear that Elettra had poisoned the whole family, beginning with Matilde herself, out of revenge for her dead husband. Veronica was to die, but Gregorio and Matilde herself would only suffer a certain amount of pain for a few hours, and then recover. She had begun by half poisoning herself, both to remove all suspicion, and as a sort of experiment, to be sure that she was giving herself and her husband a sufficient amount to produce the real symptoms of poisoning by arsenic. No half measures, no mere acting, would be of any avail.
The stuff in the package wrapped in coarse paper was an almost pure salt of arsenic, sold by grocers as rat-poison.
The two small lumps of sugar and arsenic medicine were for herself and her husband; the large lump of almost pure poison was for Veronica.
In the examination which would follow upon the deed, the package of rat-poison would be found under the chest of drawers in the maid’s room, half empty. It would be discovered that every alternate paper of Matilde’s medicine had been tampered with, and it would be supposed that Matilde had at the first time taken one of those containing poison, whereas the doctor who had attended her had taken the next, which was untouched and only had medicine in it.
She intended to make tea on the following afternoon in Veronica’s room. She could easily find an excuse for bringing in Gregorio who, like many modern Italians, had acquired the habit of drinking tea every day. She herself would make the tea, and put in the sugar and cream. Elettra would, as usual, have brought in the tea-tray with the silver urn, for Veronica always preferred being served by her maid when she had anything in her own room. It would go hard, if Matilde could not divert Veronica’s attention for one moment while she dropped the lumps into the cups, having concealed them in her handkerchief beforehand. There would be no servant in the room, for Elettra would have gone out. Gregorio would know beforehand what was to be done and would help to divert Veronica at the right moment. Arsenic had little or no taste, and Veronica would drink her cup readily like the rest.
She would die before the next morning. That was certain. Everything would tend to throw the suspicion of having attempted to commit a horrible wholesale murder, upon Elettra. The will could be kept back until the first uproar and excitement should be over. Then Matilde would have the fortune, Gregorio would be saved, and Elettra would be condemned to penal servitude for life.
It was certainly a very bold plan, and Matilde did not see where it could fail.
CHAPTER XIV.
Matilde received on the following morning a curious letter which surprised and startled her. She had risen at last, grey and weary of face, with heavy eyes and drawn lips, to face the deed she meant to do. The sky was overcast, but it was not raining yet, though it soon would. She had risen before ringing for her maid, and had carefully removed the paper from the three little cakes of white stuff which she had made. It had to be done cleverly, for the smaller ones seemed likely to crumble; but the large one was quite consistent. She had hidden them all in the drawer she kept locked; then she had unfastened her door and had rung the bell. It was past nine o’clock, and her maid had brought her a letter with her coffee.
It was very short, but the few words it contained were exceedingly disquieting. It was accompanied by a card on which Matilde read ‘Giuditta Astarita, Sonnambula,’ and the address was below, in one corner. The few words of the letter, written in a subtle, sloping, feminine handwriting, correctly spelt and grammatically well expressed, ran as follows:–
“The spirit of B.M. wishes to make you an important communication and torments me continually. I pray you to come to me soon, on any day between ten and three o’clock. In order that you may be assured that it is really the spirit of B.M., and not a deceiving spirit, I am to remind you that on the evening of the ninth of this month, when you and he were alone together in a room which is all yellow, you laid your hand upon his head and stroked his hair and said: ‘It is to save me.’ The spirit tells me that you will remember this and understand it, and know that he is not a deceiving spirit.”
Matilde read the short letter many times over, and her hands trembled when she at last folded it and returned it to its envelope. A sensation of curiosity and of ghastly horror ran through her hair, more than once, like a cool breeze, and with it came the infinite desire for some one word of truth out of the black beyond, from the one being whom she had loved so fiercely.
But in such things she was sceptical, and she sought to make some theory which should explain the writer of the letter into a common impostor. She could find none. She remembered the act and the words that had gone with it. Only she and Bosio had known, and he was dead–he had died four-and-twenty hours after she had touched his hair and had said: ‘It is to save me.’ And she knew him well. He was not, under any circumstances, a man to speak of such things to a third person. Then, how did this Giuditta Astarita know what Matilde had said and done? It was not natural, and not natural meant supernatural–supernatural meant the possibility of communication, and she had loved the dead man with all her big, sinful soul.
It would be long before the time came for the deed, in the late afternoon, and the terrible day must be disposed of in some way or other. She was not afraid of going mad, nor of losing her nerve, nor of making a mistake at the last moment, but even to her courage and strength the hours before her were hours of fear.
She planned her day. The doctor would come, in the first place, at about ten o’clock. He would recommend her to be quiet, to take a little broth for luncheon, and a little more broth for dinner. She smiled grimly, as she thought of his probable instructions, and she knew what she could do and bear at pinch of pressing need. He would also tell her that the powder contained only just the right quantity of medicine, and that she must have been poisoned in some other way. She knew that.
Afterwards, Gregorio would need his instructions. He was to be at home in the afternoon, and to come and drink his tea in Veronica’s room when Matilde sent for him. Just when Matilde was pouring out the tea, he was to distract Veronica’s attention from the tea-table for a moment. She would not tell him that she intended to half poison him, too, for he was a coward, and at the last minute, dreading pain, he would not drink from his cup. She knew that well enough. She would tell him when he began to suffer the effects, and assure him that he was not going to die. Again she smiled grimly, and chancing to be just then before the mirror, she saw that her face had all at once grown old since yesterday. And in spite of her strength of body and will, she felt weak and exhausted, and hated the hours that were to be between.
But when she had spoken to Gregorio, she would go out alone, on foot. And she knew that she should find the address given on Giuditta Astarita’s card, and enter the house and see the woman who had written to her, and hear the message that was promised. If she left her own house, her feet must take her that way, whether she would or not.
And so it all happened just as she foresaw. But she had not known that in threading the intricate, dark streets she would almost forget what she was to do that day, in the mad hope of the one more word from beyond. She had not known that at the thought her eyes would brighten eagerly, the colour would come back to her cheeks, and the strength to her limbs as she walked. After all, the strongest thing that had ever been in her, or ever could be, was that passionate, dominating, despotic devotion to one being; and the merest suggestion that he might not be gone quite beyond the reach of spiritual touch had power to veil the awful future of the day, when her hand was already uplifted to kill. She was not a woman to hesitate at the last moment, unstrung and womanishly trembling because the victim was young, and smiled, and had innocent eyes. And yet, perhaps, had she not gone that day to answer the spirit-seer’s summons and to catch at the straw thrown to her from beyond the grave, she might have seen a reason for changing her mind, and all might have happened very differently. But Fate does not sleep, though she seems sometimes to nod and forget to kill.
Matilde came to the house as the clock struck eleven, and entered by the dark, arched door, and went up the damp, stone steps, as Bosio had done a fortnight earlier. She was admitted by the decent woman whose one eye was of a china blue, and she waited for Giuditta in the same small sitting-room, of which the one heavily curtained window looked out upon an inner court. She did not know that Bosio had ever been there, but in her thoughts of him she felt his presence, and turned, with a shiver under her hair, to look behind her as she stood waiting before the window, just where he had stood. The day was dark, and the room was all dim and cold, with its stiff, ugly furniture and its bare, tiled floor. The corners were shadowy, and her eyes searched in them uneasily, and she would not turn her back upon them again and look out of the windows. Then the door opened noiselessly, and Giuditta Astarita entered, in her loose black silk gown, with her little bunch of charms against the evil eye, hanging by a chain from a button hole.
The china blue eyes looked steadily at Matilde, out of the unhealthy face, but the woman gave no sign to show that she knew who her visitor was. Her hoarse voice pronounced the usual words: “You wish to consult me?”
“You wrote to me. I am the Countess Macomer,” answered Matilde, lifting her veil, which was a thick one.
The expression in the woman’s eyes did not change, but she still looked steadily at Matilde for three or four seconds.
“Yes,” she said. “I thought so. I am glad that you have come, for I have suffered much on your account.”
She looked as though she were suffering, Matilde thought. Then she placed the chairs, made the countess sit down, and drew the curtains, just as she had done for Bosio.
Then, in the dark, there was silence. It seemed to Matilde a long time, and she grew nervous, and moved uneasily. Then, without warning, she heard that other voice, clear, deep, and bell-like, which Bosio had heard, and she trembled.
“I see a name written on your breast,–Bosio Macomer.”
The darkness, the voice, the shiver of anticipation, unnerved the strong woman.
“What does he say to me?” she asked unsteadily.
Again there was a long silence, longer than the first, and by many degrees more disturbing to Matilda, as she waited for the answer.
“Bosio loves you,” said the voice. “He is watching over you. He tells you to remember what you promised each other in the room that is all yellow, long ago,–that the one that should die first would visit the other. He tells you that it is possible, and that he has kept his promise. He loves you always, and you will be spirits together.”
Matilde felt that in the darkness she was horribly pale, but she was no longer frightened.
“Will he come to me when I am alone?” she asked, and her voice did not shake.
“I will ask him,” answered the clear voice, and again there was silence, but only for a few seconds. “This is his answer,” continued the voice. “He cannot come to you when you are alone, as yet. By and by he will come. But he watches over you. For the present he can only speak with you through Giuditta Astarita, who is now asleep.”
“Is she asleep?” asked Matilde.
“She is in a trance,” the voice replied. “I speak through her, but when she awakes, she will not know what I have said. The spirits come to her directly sometimes, when she is awake, and they torment her. Bosio has been coming to her often, and has made her suffer, until she wrote to you. The spirits themselves suffer when they wish to communicate with the living, and cannot.”
“What are you?” inquired Matilda.
“I am Giuditta’s familiar. The spirits generally speak, through me, to her, when she is in the trance.”
“And she knows nothing of what you say?”
“Nothing, after she is awake.”
“Is Bosio suffering now?” asked Matilde, gravely but eagerly, after a moment’s pause.
“I will ask him.” And another brief pause followed. “Yes,” continued the voice. “He is suffering because he has left you. He suffers remorse. He cannot be happy unless he can communicate with you.”
“Can you see him? Can you see his face?”
“Yes,” replied the voice, without hesitation. “He is very pale. His hair is soft, brown, and silky, with a few grey streaks in it. His eyes are gentle and tender, and his beard is like his hair, soft and like silk. He is as you last saw him alive, when you kissed him by the fireplace in the room that is yellow, just before he died. He loves you, as he did then.”
Such evidence of unnatural knowledge might have convinced a more sceptical mind than Matilde’s of the fact that the somnambulist could at least read her thoughts and memories from her mind as from a book. It was impossible that any one but herself could know how, and in what room, she had kissed him for the last time, a few minutes before his end. Again the cold shiver ran under her hair, and she could not speak again for a few moments.
“Does he know what I am going to do to-day?” she asked at last, in a very low voice.
“I will ask him.”
The silence which followed was the longest of all that there had been.
“I cannot see him any more,” said the voice, speaking more faintly. “He is gone. He will communicate with you again. I cannot find him. Giuditta is tired–she will–” The last words were hardly audible, and the voice died away altogether.
In the dark, Matilde heard something like a yawn, as of a person waking from sleep. Then Giuditta’s croaking voice spoke to her.
“I am tired,” she said. “The spirits have kept me a long time. Did you hear anything that you wished to hear?”
“Yes. I heard much.”
While Matilde was speaking, the woman drew the curtain back, and the dull steel light of the gloomy day filled the small room. But after the darkness it was almost dazzling. Matilde looked at Giuditta’s face, and saw the same staring, china eyes, and the same listless expression in the unhealthy features. She had felt a sensation of relief when the voice had been unable to answer the last question she had asked; for she still thought that there might be a doubt as to Giuditta’s total forgetfulness on waking. But that doubt was greatly diminished by the woman’s indifferent and weary look.
“I hope that he will not torment me so much after this,” said Giuditta. “I have lost my sleep for several nights.”
Matilde, believing that the somnambulist was one person when awake and quite another when asleep, did not care to enter into conversation with her in her present state. The vivid, terrible future of the day returned to her mind, too. She had been momentarily unstrung and was in haste to be gone and to be alone. She had her purse in her hand, and stood still a moment, hesitating.
“I generally ask twenty-five francs for a consultation,” said Giuditta. “But I am so much obliged to you for coming to free me from this obsession, that I shall not charge anything to-day.”
“No,” answered Matilde, quietly. “I am not accustomed to receiving anything without paying for it. But I thank you.”
She laid the money upon the polished table, beside the volumes in their gilt bindings.
“Very well,” said Giuditta. “If you desire it, I thank you. If you should wish to come again, I am always to be found between ten and three o’clock.”
“I will come again,” answered Matilde.
She passed through the door while Giuditta held it open for her, and in the passage she was met by the one-eyed woman. But she was more unnerved and less observant than Bosio had been, and she did not notice the extraordinary resemblance between the colour of the woman’s one eye and that of Giuditta’s two. She descended the stairs slowly, feeling dizzy at the turnings, but steadying herself as she went down each straight flight. She made her way quickly to the nearest large thoroughfare and took the first passing cab to get home, for she felt that she had not strength left to walk much more on that day.
She had a moment of weakness and doubt, as she went up her own stairs, knowing that in half an hour she must sit down to table with Gregorio and with Veronica. It would be the last time, for Veronica would never sit down with them again. She had not realized exactly how it was to be. Henceforth, at that table, two places were to be vacant, of two persons dead within a fortnight, the one by his own hand, the other by hers; and from that day, when she and her husband sat there, the shadows of those two would be between them always.
She paused on the staircase, and steadied herself with her hand against the wall. She knew that from now until it was done, she should have no moment in which she could allow herself the pitiful luxury of feeling weak. And as she stood there, and thought of the strange messages she had but now received from beyond the grave, she felt the terror of what the dead man’s spirit might say to her when all was done, and Veronica lay dead in her own room upstairs–in this coming night.
The fear followed her up the steps like a living thing, its hand on her shoulder, its cold lips close to her ears, breathing fright and whispering terror. And it went in with her to her own room, and kept freezing company with her throughout a long half-hour of mental agony. It could not bend her, but it almost broke her. If she could stand and walk and see, she would go to Veronica’s room that afternoon and kill her. She hated her, too. She hated her all the more bitterly because she felt afraid to kill her, and knew that she must conquer her fear before she could do it. She hated her most savagely because, but for her, Bosio Macomer would still have been alive. As though she had been herself about to die, the great pictures of her own past rose in fierce colours, and faced her with vivid life in the very midst of death. And with them came the clear echo of that bell-like voice she had heard speaking message for message between her and the man she had lost.
Her soul was not in the balance, for the die was cast and the deed was to be done. But she suffered then, as though she had still been free to choose. She was not. The atrocious vision of an infamous disgrace stood between her and all possibility of relenting. She saw again the coarse striped clothes, the cropped hair, the hands and feet shackled in irons, the hideous faces of women murderers and thieves around her. Well, that was the alternative, if she let Veronica live–all that, or death.
Of course, in such a case she would have chosen death. But it was characteristic of her that from beginning to end she never thought of taking her own life. She was too vital by nature. She had loved life long and well; she loved it even now that it was not worth living. She never even asked herself the question, whether it would not be better and easier to end all and leave Gregorio to his fate. Gregorio! Her smooth lip curled in contempt. A coward, a thief, a fool–why should she care what became of him? Coldly and sincerely she wished that she were going to kill him, and not Veronica. She despised the one, and hated the other; of the two, she would rather have let the hated one live. But to die herself seemed absurd to her, because she really feared death with all her heart, and clung to life with all her strong, vital nature. If the lives of all Naples could have saved her own, death should have had them all, rather than take hers. To live was a passion of itself–even to live lonely, with a despicable and hated companion in the consciousness of the enormous and irrevocable crime by which that living was to be secured to her.
There was a common, straight-backed chair in the room, between the chest of drawers and the wall. Through that interminable half-hour she sat upright upon it, her hands folded upon her knees, quite cold and motionless, her eyes closed, and her lips parted in an expression of bodily pain. Then she rose suddenly, all straight at once, tall and unbending, and stood still while one might have counted ten, and she opened and shut her eyes slowly, two or three times, as though she were comparing the outer world with that within her. So Clytemnestra might have stood, before she laid her hands to the axe.
She did not mean to be alone again until all was over. It would be easier then. She would have her own bodily pain to bear. There would be confusion in the house–doctors–screaming women–trembling men-servants–her husband’s groans; for he was a coward, and would bear ill the little suffering which would help to save him. Then they would tell her that Veronica was dead; and then–then she could sleep for hours, nights, days, calmly, and at rest.
She bathed her tired face in cold water, and went to face them at luncheon. With iron will, she ate and drank and talked, bearing herself bravely, as some great actresses have acted out their parts, while death waited for them at the stage door.
Had the weather been fine, she would have persuaded Veronica to drive with her, as on the previous day. But it was dark and gloomy, and there would be rain before night. She talked with the young girl, and began to make plans with her for going away. Gregorio ate nothing, and looked on, uttering a monosyllable now and then, and laughing frantically, two or three times. Nobody paid any attention to his laughter, now, for the household had grown used to it. It might break out just when a servant was handing him something; the man would merely draw back a step, and wait until the count was quiet again, before offering the dish.
Over their coffee, Matilde read fragments of news from the day’s paper, and made comments on what was happening in the world. Veronica thought her unnaturally talkative and excited, but put it down to the reaction after the poisoning of the previous night. Matilde drank two cups of coffee instead of one. Macomer smoked one cigarette after another, and sent for a sweet liqueur, of which he swallowed two glasses. He did not look at Veronica, when he could avoid doing so.
At last Matilde rose and asked Veronica to allow her to bring her work and sit with her in her room, to which the young girl of course assented.
“By and by, we will have tea there,” said Matilde. “Perhaps you will let your uncle come and have a cup with us–he always drinks tea in the afternoon.”
“Certainly,” answered Veronica, quietly. “Will you come at four o’clock, Uncle Gregorio? Or is that too early?”
“Thank you. I will come at four, my dear,” said Gregorio; and Matilde saw that his knees shook as he moved.
In Veronica’s room the two women sat through the early part of the afternoon, and still Matilde talked almost continuously. That was the only outward sign that she was not in her usual state, and Veronica scarcely noticed it, for as the time wore on, she spoke less excitedly, and more often waited for an answer to what she said. Of course, the conversation turned for some time upon what had occurred on the preceding evening. Matilde scouted the idea that any one had attempted to poison her. It was perfectly clear, she said, that, although the paper which the doctor had carried away to examine only contained exactly the right amount of medicine, the one from which Matilda had taken her dose must have had too much in it. She was quite out of the habit of taking arsenic, too, and a very slight overdose would always produce the symptoms of poisoning. Veronica could see that she had felt no serious ill effects from the accident. As for thinking that any one had given her poison intentionally, it was utterly and entirely absurd. Matilde refused to entertain the idea even for a moment, and presently she went on to speak of other things, and soon fell back upon making plans for the winter. She did not allow the conversation to flag, for she feared lest Veronica should be tired of sitting in her room and suddenly propose to go somewhere else, just for the sake of the change. It was essential to Matilde’s plan that Elettra should bring the things for tea.
She did not allow herself to think, and she succeeded in staving off silence. Now that the deed was so near, it seemed unreal. Once she touched her handkerchief in her pocket, and felt the three prepared lumps concealed in it, to assure herself that she was not imagining all she had done, and meant to do. Then, suddenly, she felt that her brow was moist, a thing she could hardly remember having noticed before in her life. But the moisture disappeared almost instantly, and her skin was dry and burning.
Then the time came, and it was four o’clock.
Elettra opened the door and brought in the tea things on a large silver tray, set them down, and went to get the little tea-table, that was made with a shelf below, between the four legs, as a table with two stories.
“Let me make it,” said Matilde, cheerfully; “I like to do it.”
She laid down her work, and Elettra set the table before her knees, with its high silver urn, and all the necessary little implements. Veronica found herself on the other side of it, for Matilde had carefully chosen her seat when she had first come, placing herself in such a way with regard to Veronica as to make the present result almost inevitable unless the girl moved into a very inconvenient position.
The big grey Maltese cat came in through the still open door, in the hope of cream at the tea hour, as usual. The creature rubbed itself along Elettra’s skirt while she was lighting the spirit lamp under the urn, which contained water already almost boiling.
“Will you kindly call the count?” said Matilde, addressing the maid.
Elettra left the room, and Matilde settled herself to make the tea, as women do, raising her elbow a little on each side and then dropping them again, bending her face down to see whether the lamp were burning well, opening the teapot, pouring a little hot water into it, opening and shutting the tea-caddy, and settling each spoon in each saucer in a dainty and utterly futile way.
The cat rubbed its grey sides against Veronica’s skirt and against her little slipper, as she sat there, one knee crossed over the other. The young girl bent down and stroked it, and hesitated, looking at the tea-table, and not wishing to disturb the things to take a saucer for the cat until the tea was made. As she bent down, Matilde took her handkerchief quietly from her pocket and laid it quite naturally in her lap. Veronica, being on the other side of the table and the urn, could not possibly see what she did.
Gregorio came in. Elettra had opened the door from without, for him to pass. She stood on the threshold a moment, and looked towards the table, to see whether anything had been forgotten. Then she closed the door, and went away, leaving the three together. The water boiled almost immediately; and Gregorio was just sitting down when Matilde poured the water out of the teapot, and part in the tea. She filled the pot, and leaned back in her chair to allow it to draw a few moments.
The silence was intense during several seconds. Only the purring of the cat was heard, as Veronica, letting her arm hang down without stooping, gently rubbed its broad head. It pushed itself under her hand, bending its back to her caress, turned quickly, and pushed its head under her hand once more, doing the same thing again and again.
Matilde sat upright, lifted the cover of the teapot an instant, and then began to move the cups. Veronica, whose thoughts were intent upon the animal she was touching, and which, as she knew, was begging for cream, immediately leaned forward, and took from under the silver cream jug a saucer which Elettra had especially brought for the purpose. She poured a little cream into it, and, bending down, placed it on the lower shelf of the tea-table, and gently pushed the cat towards it.
Matilde saw her opportunity, while Veronica was stooping; and in that moment she distributed the three lumps from her handkerchief in the three cups before her, and at once began to pour tea into the one containing the largest lump. The cat, for some reason, wished the saucer to be set upon the floor; and Veronica still bent down, until it sprang lightly upon the lower shelf, and began the slow and dainty operation of lapping the cream.
During all this, Gregorio, anxious to seem unaware of anything extraordinary, and not really knowing how his wife meant to put the poison into the tea, was nervously looking away from her, sometimes towards the window, at the fast-fading light of the grey afternoon on the opposite house, and sometimes at Veronica’s head as she bent down. When she looked up, Matilde was holding out her cup to her, having put some cream into it and a lump of real sugar to really sweeten the tea.
Veronica thanked her, drew a little nearer to the table, held her cup on her knee, and took a thin slice of bread and butter, which she proceeded to eat, stirring the tea slowly with her left hand.
Matilde meanwhile filled the other two cups, and handed one to her husband, who took it in silence, unsuspectingly.
“I can never understand why the tea we make here is better than mine,” she said, smiling. “It is the same tea, of course. But it certainly is better in your room.”
“Is it?” asked Veronica, carelessly and looking down at the cup she held on her knee, while she slowly stirred the contents.
As though to verify Matilde’s assertion, she bent a little, raised the cup, and tasted the liquid. It was still too hot to drink, and she stirred it again on her knee. She noticed that although it had been sweet enough to her taste, there was a lump of sugar, not yet dissolved, still in the cup: she never took but one piece, and her aunt had evidently put in two.
Still holding the cup on her knee, where Matilde could not possibly see it, she quietly fished the superfluous piece of sugar out with her teaspoon, and bending down again she deposited it in the saucer from which the cat was lapping the last drops of cream. She noticed that it was only dissolved at the corners, but she had observed before that one sometimes finds a lump of sugar which remains hard a long time. The cat would eat it, for it liked sugar, as some cats do.
Then she filled the cat’s saucer again. By that time what she had was cooler, and she drank some of it.
“It is certainly very good tea,” she said thoughtfully. “I think you probably make it better than I do.”
As she drank again, Gregorio’s unearthly laugh cracked and jarred in the room. But neither he nor his wife had seen what Veronica had done. They were staring hard at each other, and for the second time Matilde felt that her brow was moist.
CHAPTER XV.
The Maltese cat died before six o’clock. The poor creature suffered horribly, and Elettra carried it off to her room that Veronica might not see its agony. But Veronica followed her maid. Elettra had laid the beast upon a folded rug on the floor and knelt beside it. It seemed half paralyzed already, but when Veronica knelt down, too, and tried to caress it, the cat sprang from them both in sudden terror. It stood still an instant, wagging its head while its shoulders contracted violently. Then it glided under the chest of drawers to die alone, if possible, after the manner of animals of prey. The girl and her maid heard its rattling breathing and its convulsions: its body thumped against the lower drawer. Then, while Veronica listened and Elettra bent, candle in hand, till her face touched the floor, to see it and get it out, all at once it was quiet.
“Get up,” said Veronica, nervously, for she was fond of the creature. “Help me to move the chest of drawers out. Then we can get it out.”
“It is dead,” answered Elettra, still on the floor, and thrusting her long, thin arm under the piece of furniture. “But I cannot pull him out,” she added. “He is so big!”
She got upon her feet, and together, without much difficulty, the two dragged the chest of drawers away from the wall, and then bent down behind it, with the candle, to look at the dead animal.
“It is quite dead,” said Elettra. “Poor beast! What can have happened to it?” Veronica was really sorry, but of the two the maid had been the more fond of the cat. “It must have eaten something.”
Elettra looked up, suspiciously, and Veronica drew back a step, half straightening herself. Her foot touched something close to the wall. She stooped again and picked up the package of rat-poison which Matilda had hidden under the chest of drawers on the previous night. She looked at it closely. It had evidently not lain long where she had found it, for there was no dust on it, and the coarse paper had an unmistakably fresh look. The indication of the contents was written upon it in ink, in illiterate characters.
“It is rat-poison!” exclaimed Veronica. “The cat must have eaten some of it! How did it come here?”
She looked at her maid curiously.
“The cat could not have wrapped it up and folded in the ends of the paper,” observed Elettra.
“That is true.”
They looked at each other, in considerable astonishment. Then they talked about it. Veronica asked whether Elettra had complained that there were mice in her room, and whether some stupid servant, having a package of rat-poison at hand, had not stuck it under the chest of drawers, not even thinking of opening the paper. Elettra was suspicious.
“At all events, Excellency,” she said, “remember that you found it, and that it was carefully closed.”
Suddenly, as they were speaking together, Veronica’s face changed, and she grasped the corner of the piece of furniture convulsively. Though she had taken the poisoned lump from her cup in time to save her life, enough had been dissolved already to make her very ill.
Again there was dire confusion and fear in the Palazzo Macomer, by night. It was a wholesale poisoning. Veronica, Matilde, and Gregorio were all seized nearly at the same time.
Several of the servants left the house within half an hour after it was known that their masters were all poisoned. Within a fortnight, Bosio Macomer had killed himself and there had been two poisonings. Matilde’s maid and a housemaid, the cook, and the butler went quietly to their several rooms, took the most valuable of their own possessions, and slipped out. They felt that the house was doomed, with every one in it. But some one had gone for the doctor, and he arrived in a short time. Matilde, to whom all the proper antidotes had been given on the previous day, might have taken them at once, but in the first place, weak and still suffering the consequence of the first dangerous experiment, she was almost unconscious with pain, and secondly, if she had taken an antidote herself, it would have seemed strange that she should not administer it to Veronica, or at least send some one to the young girl to do so. Gregorio lay howling with pain in his room. But Matilde had warned him that it would come, after they had left Veronica’s room together, and he knew that everything depended on his not hinting at the truth.
The doctor came to Matilde first. Far away, at the other end of the house, Elettra was with Veronica. She had known what they had done for the countess on the preceding evening, and while the servants were screaming and running hither and thither through the apartments, like scared sheep, the woman had quietly got oil and warm water, and was giving both to her mistress. She knew that a footman had gone for the doctor. When Veronica had first been seized with pain, Elettra had thrust the package of poison into her own pocket, and it was still there.
By the time the antidote began to act, Elettra believed that the doctor must be in the house. Not wishing to leave Veronica even for a moment, she rang the bell. But no one came. The woman suspected that the doctor had gone first to Matilde, and she decided in a moment that it was better to leave her mistress alone for two or three minutes than not to have the physician’s assistance at once. She hastened to Matilde’s room. As she passed a half-open door the package of poison in her pocket struck against the door-post and reminded her of its presence, if she needed reminding.
The doctor was bending over Matilde, who seemed very weak. As Elettra entered, she saw that there was no one else in the room. A drawer in a piece of furniture stood open as Matilde had left it, and as Elettra passed, she dropped the package in, and with a movement of her hand covered it with some folded handkerchiefs, from a little heap, shutting the drawer with a quick push. Neither Matilde nor the doctor saw her do it. As Elettra spoke to the doctor, the countess started at the sound of her voice. She thought the maid had come to say that Veronica was dead. Almost violently the woman dragged the physician away with her, and Matilde smiled in the midst of her sufferings.
It would be useless to chronicle the details of the night and of the following morning. The three poisoned persons were almost recovered within twelve hours. Of the servants who had fled, Matilde’s maid was the first to come back when she learned that no one was dead.
As the night wore on towards dawn, and the countess learned that Veronica was alive and not at all likely to die, she silently turned her face to the wall and tore her pocket-handkerchief slowly with her teeth. In the morning, when the doctor was there, the maid was alone in the room, arranging things as quickly as she could, and hoping that in the confusion of the previous night, her absence might not have been observed. In the drawer, amongst the handkerchiefs and other things, she came upon the package, looked at it in surprise, turned it round and round, and read the words written on it. Then, thinking that she had discovered the clue to the attempted wholesale murder, and that she might obtain pardon for her defection, she came to the bedside and held it up to the doctor. He, too, looked at it, and read the words. Matilde’s heavy eyes opened, and then stared as she recognized the package. She thought that of course it had been found in Elettra’s room, and was sure of the answer, when she put the question to her maid.
“Where did you find it?” she asked faintly.
“In the drawer, here, Excellency.”
“In the drawer!” cried Matilde, starting up, and leaning on her elbow, as though electrified. “In the drawer? Here, in my room? Why–it was–“
Her head sank back, and her eyes closed. She had nearly betrayed herself, for she was very weak.
“It was not there yesterday–I am sure of it,” she said feebly.
“Give it to me,” said the doctor, sternly, and he put it into his pocket.
All that day Matilde lay in her room. Gregorio had recovered. He came to her, and when they were alone, he reproached her bitterly and upbraided her in unmeasured language for her failure. Veronica was alive, and his terror of the ruin before him grew stronger with the physical weakness. He was a coward always, but he was now half mad with fear. He laughed hideously, and his face twitched. He sawed the air with extraordinary gestures while he walked up and down in his wife’s room, speaking excitedly in a low tone. Matilde turned to the wall and answered nothing. For she could not have found anything to say.
From time to time, during the day, she had news of Veronica. Elettra never left her mistress but once, shortly before twelve o’clock. She went out for a quarter of an hour, and came back bringing fresh eggs, bread, and wine, which she had bought herself.
“It is poor fare, Excellency,” she said, as she boiled the eggs in the tea-urn, “but it is safe. If you are strong enough this afternoon, we will go away. This is not a good house. I do not understand what was done; but it was done to kill you and not to hurt them.”
“I think it was,” said Veronica. “I am not frightened, but I do not think that I am safe here.”
After she had eaten a little and drunk some wine, she felt stronger and wrote a line to the Princess Corleone, asking the latter to receive her for a few days, as she was in trouble. In an hour she had an answer. Bianca, of course, was ready for her whenever she might come. Elettra quickly began to pack such things as her mistress might need immediately.
Veronica lay still, listening to Elettra’s movements in the next room. In a flash she had guessed half the truth, and reflexion now brought her most of the rest. She remembered Don Teodoro’s earnest face and the quiet eyes that had looked at her through the silver spectacles while he had been speaking. There had been conviction in them, and even then she had felt that he believed the truth of what he said, however mistaken he might be. And now she felt that it was not he who had spoken, but Bosio, through him, that the warning came from beyond the grave, and that she had risked her life in disregarding it. She believed that Bosio had been a truthful man, and each detail of what had happened fitted itself to the next, to make up the whole story which the priest had told her. All but Bosio’s love for Matilde, and in that Don Teodoro had misunderstood him. He might have loved her in the past. That was possible, and to the young girl’s mind, in comparison with all that had recently happened, the wrong of that love dwindled to an insignificant detail. She had not been near enough to loving the man herself to be jealous of his past. And she was glad that he had not told Don Teodoro of his love for herself.
The rest all grew to distinctness and to the coincidence of the fact with the warning. She was brave enough to face danger as well as a man, but there was no reason why she should stay where she was, waiting to be murdered. She had a right to save herself without despising herself as a coward. She therefore said nothing to stop Elettra in her preparations, and the maid silently went on with her work in the other room.
She still felt ill and terribly shaken, but she rose softly, to try her strength, and she found that after the first moment’s dizziness she could stand and walk alone. She looked at her hands, and she thought that they had shrunk and were thinner than ever. Then she lay down again and called Elettra, and bade her prepare her own belongings and then come and dress her, when she should have finished.
“Yes, Excellency.”
That was almost all that the woman had said, since she had boiled the eggs for her mistress’s luncheon, and Veronica herself did not speak except to give an order about some detail of the packing. It would have been impossible to talk of what had happened without speaking clearly about Matilde, and Veronica did not wish to do that, though Elettra was of her own people and devotedly attached to her.
Elettra had been careful that no one in the household should learn her mistress’s intention of leaving the palace. Veronica intended to go away in a cab, and it would be the question of a moment only to call one. When all was ready, Elettra went out for that purpose herself, and Veronica went without hesitation to Matilde’s room. When she entered, the countess was alone, propped with pillows on a low couch near the fire. Her large white hands lay listlessly upon the dark shawl that was drawn over her, and she had thrown a piece of thick black lace over her head. It was nearly four o’clock, and the light was already waning, so that, as she lay with her back to the window, Veronica could hardly see her face. She raised her head slowly and wearily as the young girl entered, and then started visibly, as she recognized her.
“It is I,” said Veronica, when she had closed the door.
She came and stood beside the couch on which her aunt lay, and she looked down at the reclining woman. Matilde’s listless hands suddenly clasped each other.
“Yes,” she answered, with an effort. “Are you going out? Are you well enough to go out?” she asked, adding the last question quickly.
“I should go if I were much more ill than I have been,” Veronica replied. “I am not coming back.”
“Not coming back?” Surprise brought energy into Matilde’s voice.
“No. I am not coming back. Do not be astonished. I understand what has happened, and I am going to a safer place.”
“What? How? I do not understand.” Matilde spoke rapidly and unsteadily. “You must stay here–Gregorio is going to send for the chief of police–there will be an inquiry, and you must answer questions–we suspect one of the servants, who has a grudge against your uncle, and who has tried to murder us all in revenge–“
“Yes,” said Veronica, calmly. “It was well arranged, I am sure. If I had not found the rat-poison under the chest of drawers in Elettra’s room, you might have thrown suspicion upon her, because her husband was murdered at Muro. If I had not found my tea too sweet, I should not have taken out the second piece and given it to the cat. The taste I had of it almost killed me–you have explained the rest to me now. But I knew all that I needed to know.”
Matilde put her feet to the ground and slowly rose to her feet while Veronica was speaking. Then she laid her two hands upon the girl’s shoulders and stared into her face.
“Do you dare to accuse me of trying to poison you?” she asked in a low, fierce voice.
“Take your hands from me!” cried Veronica, thrusting her back. “Call your husband. I will accuse you both–you and him.”
They were women of the same race and name, and both brave. But the elder and stronger felt her nerves growing weak in her when she heard the other’s voice. Perhaps courageous people recognize courage and conviction in others more easily than cowards can. Matilde hesitated.
“Call him!” repeated Veronica, in a tone of command. “I insist upon it. He shall hear what I have to say.”
“I will call him, that he may see for himself that you are quite mad,” answered Matilde. “That is,” she added, “if he is well enough to come here from his room.” And she moved slowly towards the door.
“If I am alive, he is well enough to hear me speak,” said the young girl.
Matilde stopped, turned, and faced her a moment, as though about to speak angrily. Then she went on. It was best, on the whole, to call her husband, she thought, though her reasoning was confused and uncertain. In her view of matters, the burden of the crime she had tried to commit all fell upon him, and she was willing that he should face Veronica, and realize what he had done. At the same time she believed herself so safe as still to be able to throw the suspicion entirely upon Elettra, though Veronica would protect her. Moreover, though she would not have admitted the fact, her strength was momentarily so broken that she felt it easier to obey the young girl than to visit her and fight out the interview alone.
Veronica did not move while she was gone, but stood quite still, watching the door. She was very pale, with illness and rising anger, but she was not weak, as Matilde was. She had not gone through half so much. Presently Matilde returned, followed by Macomer, wrapped in a dark velvet dressing-gown, his face white and twitching, his usually smooth grey beard unbrushed, and his grey hair in disorder. With drawn lids he looked at Veronica, and in his terror he tried to smile, but there was something at once cowardly and insolent in the expression–there was something else, too, which the young girl did not understand, a sort of vacancy of the brow and unnatural weakness of the mouth.
“I am glad that you have come,” she said, when the door was shut. “I have not much to say, and I wish you to hear it.”
They were all standing. Gregorio steadied himself by the head of the couch, and was as erect as ever.
“I will tell you something which you do not know,” said Veronica, fixing her eyes on him. “Before Bosio died he told the whole truth to Don Teodoro Maresca, his friend. And the day after his death, Don Teodoro came and told it all to me.”
“Bosio!” exclaimed Gregorio, his knees shaking. “Bosio told–“
“What did Bosio tell?” asked Matilde, interrupting her husband in a loud voice to cover any mistake he might be about to make.
But Veronica had seen Macomer’s face and had heard his tone of dread. Whatever doubts she still had, disappeared for the last time.
“He told his friend the whole truth about your management of my fortune,” she answered steadily. “He told how you had lost your own in speculation and had taken everything of mine upon which you could lay hands–all my income and much more, so long as you were still my guardian–you and Lamberto Squarci, helping each other. And I understand now why you would not give me that money the other day. You had not got it to give me. My aunt must have borrowed it. And Bosio told Don Teodoro, that unless he was married to me, you meant to kill me, because I had signed a will leaving you everything. There was nothing that Bosio did not tell, and Don Teodoro repeated every word of it to me. I thought him mad. But now I know that he was not. I have been saved by a miracle, but you shall not try to murder me again–so I am going away.”
Macomer had listened to the end, his face working horribly and his hands grasping the head of the couch. When Veronica paused, his head fell forward as he stood. Even Matilde could not speak, for a moment. The revelation that Bosio had told all before he died, and that Veronica knew it, fell upon her like a blow, with stunning force. The first words came from Gregorio.
“Bosio!” he exclaimed in a loud voice. “The devil take his soul!”
“God will have mercy upon the soul that was lost through your deeds,” said the young girl, solemnly. “Amongst you, you drove him to madness–it was not his fault. But for his soul you shall answer, as well as for your deeds–and that is much to answer for, to Heaven and to me. You neither of you have the strength to deny one word of what Bosio said–“
“He was mad!” Matilde broke in. “You are mad, too–“
“Oh no!” interrupted Veronica, with contempt. “You cannot fasten that upon me. I am not mad at all, and I will show you what it is to be sane, for I know that every word of what Bosio told Don Teodoro was true. I was foolish not to believe it at once–it almost cost my life to believe you better than you are.”
“He was quite insane,” muttered Gregorio, in almost imbecile repetition of what his wife had said.
Matilde made another great effort to impose her remaining strength upon the young girl.
“Whether you are mad or not, you shall not stand there accusing me of monstrous crimes!” she cried, moving a step towards Veronica, and raising her hand with a menacing gesture.
“Shall not?” repeated Veronica, proudly, and instead of retreating she advanced calmly to meet her aunt.
“Would you not rather that I accused you here, and proved you guilty and let you go free, than that I should do as much in a court of justice? You know what the end of that would be–penal servitude for you both–and unless–” she paused, for she was growing hot and she wished to speak with coolness.
“Unless?” Matilde uttered the one word scornfully, still facing her.
“Unless you will confess the truth, here, before I leave the house, I will do what I can to have you both convicted,” said Veronica. “That is your only chance. That or the galleys. Choose. You are thieves and murderers. Choose.”
She spoke like a man to those who would have murdered her and had failed, but who had robbed her with impunity for years. Gregorio Macomer’s face was all distorted. All at once his maniac laugh broke out. But it stopped suddenly and unexpectedly, and it changed to another sort of laughter–low and not unpleasant to hear, but a little vacant. Matilde turned her head slowly and gazed at him. He was bending now and resting his elbows on the head of the couch, instead of his hands, and he held his hands themselves opposite to each other, crooking first one finger and then another, and making one finger bow to the other, as children sometimes do, and laughing vacantly to himself, with a queer little chuckle of enjoyment. Veronica stared. Matilde held her breath. Still he laughed softly.
“Marionettes,” he said, looking up at his wife, his little eyes wide open. “Do you see the marionettes? This is Pulcinella. This is his wife. Do you see how they quarrel? Is it not pretty? I always like to see the marionettes in the streets. Ha! ha! ha! see them!”
And he played with his fingers and made them bob and bow, like little dolls.
“He is ill,” said Matilde, in a low, uneasy voice. “Pay no attention to him.”
He had always intended to save himself by pretending to go mad, but even Matilde was amazed at his power of acting.
“He will recover,” answered Veronica, coldly. “You can still understand me, at all events, even if he cannot. You have your choice. If you tell me the truth, I will not allow any inquiry. I will take over my fortune, if you have left me any, and for the sake of my father’s name, I will not bring you to justice, even if you have ruined me. But I warn you–and it is the last time, for I am going–if you still try to deny what I know to be the truth, the prosecution shall begin to-morrow. You will not be able to murder me, for I shall be protected, and with all your abominable courage you are not brave enough to try and kill me here, before I leave this room. No–you are not. I am not afraid of you. But you have reason to be afraid. You will be convicted. Nothing can save you. Though people do not know me as they knew my father,–though I am only a girl and came to you, straight from the convent,–I know that I have power, and I shall use it. I am not poor Elettra, whom you intended to accuse. I am the Princess of Acireale; I have been your ward; you and your husband have robbed me, and you have tried to murder me. Though I am only a girl, justice will move more quickly for me than it would for you, even if you could call it to help you. Now choose, and waste no time.”
While she had been speaking, Macomer had stared at her with an expression of genuine childish amusement.
“Poor Pulcinella!” he exclaimed softly. “How your wife can talk, when she is angry! Poor fellow!”
The tone was so natural that Matilde again looked at him uneasily, and moved nearer to him, not answering Veronica.
“Come, Gregorio,” she said, “you are ill. Come to your room–you must not stay here.”
“I am sorry you do not like the marionettes,” he said gravely. “They always amuse me. Stay a little longer.”
Veronica supposed that he was ill from the effects of the poisoning and that he was in some sort of delirium. But she did not pity him, and was relentless. She moved nearer to her aunt.
“Answer me!” she said sternly. “This is the last time. If you deny the truth now, I will go to the chief of police at once.”
“Oh! poor old Pulcinella!” cried Macomer, laughing gently. “How she gives it to him!”
Matilde was almost distracted.
“You will be arrested at once,” said Veronica, pitilessly.
“Never mind, Pulcinella!” exclaimed Macomer. “Courage, my friend! You know you always get away from the policeman! Ha! ha! ha!”
Matilde saw Veronica moving to go to the door. She straightened herself and pointed to her husband.
“Yes,” she said. “He did it–and he is mad.”
Her voice was firm and clear, for the die was cast. When she had spoken, she turned from them both towards the fireplace, and hid her face in her hands. If he could act his madness out, she, at least, would still be free and alive. Veronica stood still a moment longer, looking back.
“That is the other piece,” said Macomer, thoughtfully. “Pulcinella does not go mad in this one. The man has forgotten the parts. It is a pity–it was so amusing.”
There was silence for a moment. Matilde did not look round.
“I think he will recover,” said Veronica. “But I am glad you have told the truth. I promise that you shall be safe.”
In a moment she was gone.
“Just so,” said Macomer, speaking to himself. “He forgot the words of the piece, and so he made it end rather abruptly. Let us go home, Matilde, since it is over.”
“It is of no use to go on acting insanity before me,” answered Matilde, with a bitter sigh, as she raised her face from her hands and moved away from the fireplace, not looking at him.
“That is the reason why Pulcinella’s wife disappeared so suddenly,” he replied. “You see, there are two pieces which the marionettes act. In the one which begins with the quarrel–“
“I tell you it is of no use to do that!” cried Matilde, angrily, and beginning to walk up and down the room, still keeping her eyes from the face she hated.
“How nervous you are!” he exclaimed, with irritation. “I was only trying to explain–“
“Oh, I know! I know! Keep this acting for the doctors! You will drive me really mad!”
“The doctors?” He stared at her and smiled childishly. “Oh no!” he exclaimed. “The doctor is in the other piece–I was going to explain–“
She turned with a fierce exclamation upon him and grasped his arm, shaking him savagely, as though to rouse him. To her horror, he burst into tears.