Chapter 5

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_ CHAPTER V

Bosio felt that if he remained in his room alone with the horror of his position, he should go mad before night. He was weakly resolved not to marry Veronica, but he knew and for the first time dreaded the power Matilde had over his thoughts as well as his actions. He felt that if he could avoid her, he could still cling to the remnant of honour, but that she would tear it from him if she could and cast it to the winds. The whole card-house of his ill-founded life was trembling under the breath of fate, and its near fall seemed to threaten its existence.

He went out and walked slowly through sunny, unfrequented places, high up in the city, trying to shake off the chill of his fear as a man hopes to rid himself of an ague by sitting in the sun. But the chill was in his heart, and it was his soul that shivered. He weakly wished that he were wholly bad, that he might feel less.

Then, in true Italian humour, he tried to think of something which might divert his thoughts from the duty of facing their own terrible perplexity. If it had been evening, he would have strolled into the theatre; had it been already afternoon, he would have had himself driven out along the public garden towards Posilippo, to see the faces of his friends go by. But it was morning. There was nothing but the club, and he cared little for the men he might meet there. There was nothing to do, and his eyes did not help him to forget his troubles. He wandered on through ways broad and narrow, climbing up one steep lane and descending again by the next, hardly aware of direction and not noticing whether he went east or west, north or south, up or down.

At last, at a corner, he chanced to read the name of a street. It was familiar enough to him, as a Neapolitan, but just now it reminded him of something which might possibly help to distract his attention. He stopped and got out his pocket-book, and found in it a card, glanced at the address on it, and then once more at the name of the street. Then he went on till he came to the right number, entered a gloomy doorway, black with dampness and foul air, ascended four flights of dark stone steps, and stopped before a small brown door. The card nailed upon it was like the one he had in his pocket-book. The name was 'Giuditta Astarita,' and under it, in another character, was printed the word 'Somnambulist.'

There was nothing at all unnatural in the name or the profession, in Naples, where somnambulists are plentiful enough. And the name itself was a Neapolitan one, and by no means uncommon. The card, however, was white and clean, which argued either that Giuditta Astarita had not long been a professional clairvoyante, or else that she had recently changed her lodgings. Bosio knew nothing about her, except that she had suddenly acquired an extraordinary reputation as a seer, and that many people in society had lately visited her, and had come away full of extraordinary stories about her power. He rang the little tinkling bell, which was answered by a very respectably dressed woman servant with only one eye,--a fact which Bosio noticed because it was the blind side of her face which first appeared as the door opened.

The Signora Giuditta Astarita was at home, and there was no other visitor. Bosio, without giving his name, was ushered into a small sitting-room, of which the only window opened upon a narrow court opposite a blank wall. The furniture was scant and stiff, and such of it as was upholstered was covered with a cheap cotton corded material of a spurious wine colour. There were small square antimacassars on the chairs, and two of them, side by side, on the back of the sofa. The single window had heavy curtains, now drawn aside, but evidently capable of shutting out all light. A solid, square, walnut table stood before the sofa, without any table-cloth, and upon it were arranged half a dozen large books, bound with a good deal of gilding, and which looked as though they had never been opened.

Bosio was standing before the window, looking out at the blank wall, when he heard some one enter the room and softly close the door. Giuditta Astarita came forward as he turned round.

He saw a heavy, phlegmatic woman, still very young, though abnormally stout, with an unhealthy face, thin black hair and large weak eyes of a light china blue. Her lips were parted in a sort of chronic sad smile, which showed uneven and discoloured teeth. She wore a long trailing garment of heavy black silk, not gathered to the figure at the waist, but loose from the shoulders down, and buttoned from throat to feet in front, with small buttons, like a cassock. From one of the upper buttonholes dangled a thin gold chain, supporting a bunch of small charms against the evil eye, a little coral horn, a tiny silver hunchback, a miniature gilt bell, and two or three coins of gold and silver, besides an Egyptian scarabee in a gold setting. The woman remained standing before Bosio.

"You wish to consult me, Signore?" she inquired, in a professional tone, through the chronic smile, as it were. Her voice was very hoarse.

Bosio bowed gravely, whereupon she pointed to a chair for him, drew another into position for herself, opposite his, and at some distance from it, and then fumbled in the curtains for the cord that pulled them.

"If you will sit down," she said, "I will darken the room."

Bosio seated himself, and in a moment the light was shut out as the heavy curtains ran together. Then he heard the rustle of the woman's silk dress as she sat down opposite to him in the dark. He felt unaccountably nervous, and her china blue eyes had made a disagreeable impression upon him. He expected something to happen.

"I see a name over your head," said a clear, bell-like voice, certainly not Giuditta Astarita's. "It is Veronica."

Bosio started uneasily, though like most Neapolitans, he had visited somnambulists more than once.

"Who is speaking?" he asked quickly.

"It is the spirit," said the woman's hoarse tones. "That is his voice. Is there such a person as Veronica in your life? Is it about her that you wish to consult the spirits?"

"Yes," said the spirit voice, before Bosio could answer. "You are afraid that they will murder her, if you do not marry her--or if she will not marry you."

Bosio uttered a loud exclamation of alarm and astonishment, for this was altogether beyond anything in his experience.

"Is it so?" asked Giuditta Astarita.

"Yes. It is true," said Bosio, in uncertain tones. "And I wish to know--whether--" he stopped.

"Whether the grey-faced man and the handsome woman whose eyes are near together will really kill her?" asked the spirit voice.

Bosio felt his soft hair rising on his head. "Do you know who I am?" he asked nervously.

"No," replied the voice of Giuditta. "The spirits know everything, but I do not. They only speak through me with another voice. I do not know what they are going to say. You need have no apprehension. This is more sacred than the confessional, Signore, more secret than the tomb."

The phrase sounded as though it had been carefully studied and often repeated, but the dramatic tone in which it was uttered produced a certain reassuring effect upon Bosio, in his half-frightened state.

"Do you wish to tell whether they will really kill Veronica?" inquired Giuditta. "If you have any question to ask, you must put it quickly. I cannot keep the spirits waiting. They exhaust me when they are impatient."

"What shall I do to avoid marrying her?" asked Bosio, suddenly springing to the main point of his doubts.

"The handsome woman whose eyes are near together will make you marry Veronica," said the spirit voice.

"But if I refuse? If I say that I will not? What then? Is her life really in danger?"

"Yes. They wish to kill her to get her money. The handsome woman has her will leaving her everything if she dies."

"But will they really kill her?" insisted Bosio, half breathless in his fear and nervous excitement.

The spirit voice did not answer. In the silence Bosio heard Giuditta Astarita's breathing opposite to him.

"Will they really kill her?" he asked again.

Still there was silence, and Bosio held his breath. Then Giuditta spoke hoarsely.

"The spirit is gone," she said. "He will not answer any more questions to-day."

"Can you not call it back?" asked Bosio, anxiously, and peering into the blackness before him, as though hoping to see something.

"No. When he is gone he never comes back for the same person. He answered you many things, Signore. You must have patience."

He heard her rise, and a moment later the light dazzled him as he looked up and met her china blue eyes. He was dazed as well as dazzled, for there had been an extraordinary directness and accuracy about the few questions and answers he had heard in the clear voice which was so utterly unlike Giuditta's, though quite human and natural. He was certain that he had not heard the door open after she had drawn the curtains. He looked about the scantily furnished room, in search of some corner in which some third person might have been hidden. Giuditta Astarita's chronic smile was momentarily intensified.

"There was no one else here," she said, answering his unspoken question. "You heard the spirit's voice through my ears."

"How can that be?"

"I do not know. But what the spirit says is true. You may rely upon it. I do not know what it said, for when I return from the trance state I remember nothing I have heard or seen while I have been in it. If you wish to ask more, you must have the kindness to come again. It is very fatiguing to me. You can see that I am not in good health. The hours are from ten till three."

The smile had subsided within its usual limits, and the china blue eyes stared coldly. She was evidently waiting to be paid.

"What do I owe you?" asked Bosio, with a certain considerateness of tone, so to say.

"It is twenty-five lire," answered Giuditta Astarita. "I have but one price. Thank you," she added, as he laid the notes upon the polished walnut table. "Do you wish a few of my cards? For your friends, perhaps. I shall be grateful for your patronage."

"Thank you," said Bosio, taking his hat and going towards the door. "I have one of your cards. It is enough. Good morning."

As he opened the door, he found the one-eyed serving-woman in the passage, ready to show him out. Instinctively he looked at the single eye as he glanced at her face, and he was surprised to notice that it was of the same uncommon china blue colour as Giuditta's own. The woman who did duty as a servant to admit visitors was undoubtedly Giuditta's mother or elder sister, or some very near relative. It would be natural enough, amongst such people, as Bosio knew, but he wondered how many more of the same family lived in the rooms beyond the one in which he had received spirit-communications, and whether Giuditta Astarita supported them all by her extraordinary talents.

He descended the damp stone stairs and passed out into the street again, dazed and disturbed in mind. He had been to such people before, as has been said, and he had generally seen or heard something which had either interested or amused him. He had never had such an experience as this. He had never heard a voice of which he had been so certain that it did not come from any one in the room, and he had never found any somnambulist who had so instantly grasped his most secret thoughts, without the slightest assistance or leading word from himself. Yet at the crucial test--the question of a certainty in the future, this one had stopped short as all stopped, or failed in their predictions of what was to come. He had been startled and almost frightened. Like many Southern Italians, he was at once credulous and sceptical--a superstitious unbeliever, if one may couple the two words into one expression. His intelligence bade him deny what his temperament inclined him to accept. Besides, on the present occasion, no theory which he could form could account for the woman's knowledge of his life. She had never seen him. He had no extraordinary peculiarity by which she might have recognized him at first sight from hearsay, nor was he in any way connected with public affairs. He had come quite unexpectedly and had not given his name, and the spirit, or whatever it might be, had instantly told him of Veronica, of her danger, of his brother and sister-in-law and of the will. Moreover, the friends who had spoken to him of Giuditta Astarita had told him similar tales within a few days.

The spirit had said that the handsome woman would make him marry Veronica. But what had the silence meant, when he had asked more? That was the question. Did it mean that the spirit was unwilling to affirm that Veronica must die if he refused to marry her? He passed his hand over his eyes as he walked. This was the end of the nineteenth century; he was in Naples, in the largest city of an enlightened country. And yet, the situation might have been taken from the times of the Medici, of Paolo Giordano Orsini, of Beatrice Cenci, of the Borgia. There was a frightful incongruity between civilization and his life--between broad, flat, comfortable, every-day, police-regulated civilization, and the hideous drama in which he was suddenly a principal actor.

More than once he told himself that he was mistaken and that such things could not possibly be; that it was all a feverish dream and that he should soon wake to see that there was a perfectly simple, natural and undramatic solution before him. But turn the facts as he would, he could not find that easy way. If he refused to marry Veronica and attempted to get legal protection for her, the inevitable result would be the prosecution, conviction, and utter ruin of his brother and of the woman he loved. If he refused to marry Veronica and did nothing to protect her, Matilde's eyes had told him what Matilde would do to escape public shame and open infamy. If he married Veronica and saved his brother--he was still man enough to feel that he could not do that. He could die. That was a possibility of which he had thought. But would his death, which would save him from committing the last and greatest baseness, save Veronica? She would have one friend less in the world, and she had not many.

With a half-childish smile on his pale face, he wondered what such a man as Taquisara would do, if he were so placed, and the Sicilian's manly face and bold eyes rose up contemptuously before him. To such a depth as Bosio had already reached, Taquisara could never have fallen. Bosio's instinct told him that.

If he had been able to find one friend in all his acquaintance to whom he might turn and ask advice, it would have been an infinite relief. But such friends were rare, he knew, and he had never made one. Pleasant acquaintances he had, by the score and the hundred, in society, and amongst artists and men of letters. But the life he had led had shut out friendship. To have a friend would have been to let some one into his life, and that would have meant, sooner or later, the betrayal of the woman he loved.

Yet, though he felt that Taquisara was his enemy and not his friend, he had such sudden confidence in the man's honour and truth that he was insanely impelled to go to him and tell him all, and implore him to save Veronica at any cost, no matter what, or to whom. Then of course, a moment later, the thought seemed madness, and he only felt that he was losing hold more quickly upon his saner sense. His visit to the somnambulist, too, had helped to unnerve him, and as he wandered through the streets he forgot that it was time to eat, so that physical faintness came upon him unawares and suddenly.

He did not wish to go home; for if he did, the final decision would be thrust upon him by Matilde, and he did not feel that he could face another scene with her yet. When he found himself near the Palazzo Macomer, he turned back, walking slowly, and went towards the sea, till he came to the vast Piazza San Ferdinando, beyond San Carlo. He went into a cafe and sat down in a corner to drink a cup of chocolate by way of luncheon. The seat he had chosen was at the end of one of the long red velvet divans close to a big window looking upon the square. There were little marble tables in a row, and at the one before that which Bosio chose, a priest was seated, reading, with an empty cup before him. He was evidently near-sighted, for he held his newspaper so near his eyes that Bosio could not have seen his face even had he thought of looking at it. The priest had thrown back his heavy black cloak after he had sat down, so that it fell in wide folds upon the seat, on each side of him. His hands, which held up the paper, while he seemed to be searching for something in the columns, were thin to emaciation, almost transparent, and very carefully kept,--a fact which might have argued that he was not an ordinary, hard-working parish priest of the people, even if his presence in a fashionable cafe had not of itself made that seem improbable. On the other hand, he wore heavy, coarse shoes; his clothes, though well brushed, were visibly threadbare, and his clean white stock was frayed at the edge and almost worn out. He had taken off his three-cornered hat, and his high peaked head was barely covered with scanty silver-grey hair. When he dropped his paper and looked about him for the waiter, evidently wishing to pay for his coffee, he showed a face sufficiently remarkable to deserve description. The prominent feature was the enormous, beak-like nose--the nose of the fanatic which is not to be mistaken amongst thousands, with its high, arching bridge, its wide, sensitive nostrils, and its preternaturally sharp, down-turning point. But the rest of the priest's face was not in keeping with what was most striking in it. The forehead was not powerful, narrow, prominent--but rather, broad and imaginative. The chin was round and not enough developed; the clean-shaven lips had a singularly gentle expression, and the very near-sighted blue eyes were not set deeply enough to give strength to the look. The priest carried his head somewhat bent and forward, in a sort of deprecating way, which made his long nose seem longer, and his short chin more retreating. The skull was unusually high and peaked at the point where phrenologists place the organ of veneration. The man himself was tall and exceedingly thin, and looked as though he fasted too often and too long. He was certainly a very ugly man, judged according to the standards of human beauty; and yet there was about him an air of kindness and sincerity which had in it something almost saintly, together with a very unmistakable individual identity. He was one of those men whom one can neither forget nor mistake when one has met them once. Bosio did not notice him, being much absorbed by his own thoughts. The waiter came to ask what he wished, and was stopped on his way back by the priest, who desired to pay for what he had taken. But Bosio had turned to the window again, and sat looking out and watching the people in the broad semicircular Piazza.

The priest, having paid his little score, carefully folded his newspaper and put it into the wide pocket of his cassock. Then he gathered up the collar of his big cloak behind him, as he sat, and began to edge his way out from behind the little marble table. But the long folds had fallen far on each side--so far that Bosio had unawares sat down upon the cloth, and as the priest tried to get out, he felt the cloak being dragged from under him. The priest stopped and turned, just as Bosio rose with an apology on his lips, which became an exclamation of surprise, as he began to speak.

"Don Teodoro!" he cried. "You were next to me, and I did not see you!"

The priest's eyelids contracted to help his imperfect sight, and he smiled as he moved nearer to Bosio.

"Bosio!" he exclaimed, when he had recognized him. "I am almost blind, but I was sure I knew your voice."

"You are in Naples, and you have not let me know it?" said Bosio, reproachfully and interrogatively.

"I have not been in Naples two hours, and have just left my bag at my usual quarters with Don Matteo. Then I came here to get a cup of coffee, and now I was going to you. Besides, it is the tenth of December. You know that I always come on the tenth every year, and stay until the twentieth, in order to be back in Muro four days before Christmas. But I am glad I have met you here, for I should have missed you at the Palazzo."

"Yes," said Bosio, "I am glad that we have met. Sit with me, now, while I drink a cup of chocolate. Then we will do whatever you wish." He sat down again. "I am glad you have come, Don Teodoro," he added thoughtfully. "I am very glad you have come."

Don Teodoro produced a pair of silver spectacles as he reseated himself, and proceeded to settle them very carefully on his enormous nose. Then he turned to Bosio, and looked at him.

"Have you been ill?" he asked, after a careful scrutiny of the pallid, nervous face.

"No." Bosio looked out of the window, avoiding the other's gaze. "I am nervous to-day. I slept badly; and I have been walking, and have not breakfasted. Oh! no--I am not ill. I am never ill. I have excellent health. And you?" He turned to his companion again. "How are you? Always the same?"

"Always the same," answered the priest. "I grow old, that is the only change. After all, it is not a bad one, since we must change in some way. It is better than growing young--better than growing young again," he repeated, shaking his head sadly. "Since the payment must be made, it is better that the day of reckoning should come nearer, year by year."

"For me it has come," said Bosio, in a low voice, and his chin sank upon his breast, as he leaned back, clasping his hands before him on the edge of the marble table. The priest looked at him anxiously and in silence. The two would certainly have met later in the day, or on the morrow, and the accident of their meeting at the cafe had only brought them together a few hours earlier. For the hard-working country parish priest came yearly to Naples for a few days before Christmas, as he had said, and the first visit he made, after depositing his slender luggage at the house of the ecclesiastic with whom he always stopped, was to Bosio Macomer, his old pupil.

In his loneliness, that morning, Bosio had thought of Don Teodoro and had wished to see him. It had occurred vaguely to him that the priest generally made a visit to the city about that time of the year, but he had never realized that Don Teodoro always arrived on the same day, the tenth of December, and had done so unfailingly for many years past.

Before he had been curate of the distant village of Muro, which belonged to the Serra family, Don Teodoro had been tutor to Bosio Macomer. He had lived in Naples as a priest at large, a student, and in those days, to some extent, a man of the world. When Bosio was grown up, his tutor had remained his friend--the only really intimate friend he had in the world, and a true and devoted one. It was perhaps because he was too much attached to Bosio that Matilde Macomer had induced him at last to accept the parish in the mountains with the chaplaincy of the ancestral castle of the Serra,--an office which was a total sinecure, as the family had rarely gone thither to spend a few weeks, even in the days of the late prince. Matilde hated the place for its appalling gloominess and wild scenery, and Veronica, to whom it now belonged, had never seen it at all. It had the reputation of being haunted by all manner of ghosts and goblins, and during the first ten years following the Italian annexation of Naples, the surrounding mountains had been infested by outlaws and brigands. But Don Teodoro, as curate and chaplain, received a considerable stipend which enabled him to procure for himself books at his pleasure, when he could bring himself to curtail the daily and yearly charities in which he spent almost all he received.

He was, indeed, a man torn between two inclinations which almost amounted to passions,--charity and the love of learning,--and their action was so evenly balanced that it was a real pain to him either to deny himself the book he coveted, or to forfeit the pleasure of giving the money it would cost to the poor. He had sometimes kept the last note he had left at the end of the month for many days, quite unable to decide whether he should send it to Naples for a new volume, or buy clothes with it for some half-clad child. So sincere was he in both longings, that after he had disposed of the money in one way or the other, he almost invariably had an acute fit of self-reproach. His common sense alone told him that when he had given away nine-tenths of all he received, he had the right to spend the other tenth upon such food for his mind as was almost more indispensable to him than bread. But, besides this, he had been engaged for twenty years upon a history of the Church, in compiling which he believed he was doing a work of the highest importance to mankind; so that it appeared to him a duty to expend, from time to time, a certain amount of money in order to procure such books, old and new, as were necessary for his studies. As a matter of fact, the seasons themselves decided his conduct in these difficulties; for in cold weather, or times of scarcity, his charity outran his desire for books; whereas, in the warm weather, and when there was plenty, and no pitiful starved faces gathered about his door, he bought books, instead of searching for the few who were still in need.

In his youth, Don Teodoro had travelled much. He had accompanied a mission to Africa at the beginning of his life, and had afterwards wandered about Europe, being at that time, as yet, more studious than charitable, and possessed of a small independence left him by his father, who had been an officer in the Neapolitan army in the old days. He had seen many things and known many men of many nations, before he had at last settled in Muro, in the little priest's house, under the shadow of the dismal castle, and close to the church. There he lived now, all the year round, excepting the ten days which he annually spent in Naples. The little house was full of books, and there was a big, old shaky press, containing his manuscripts, the work of his whole life. He had neither friends nor companions of his own class, but he was beloved by all the people. Playing on his name, Teodoro, in their dialect, they called him, O prevete d'oro'--'the priest of gold.' And many said that he had performed miracles, when he had fasted in Lent.

This was practically Bosio Macomer's only intimate friend. For although the intimacy had been interrupted for years, by circumstances, it had never been checked by any action or word of either. It is true that neither was, as a rule, in need of friendship, nor desirous of cultivating it. Learning and charity absorbed the priest's whole life. Bosio's existence, of which Don Teodoro knew in reality nothing, had moved in the vicious circle of a single passion, which he could never acknowledge, and which excluded, for common caution's sake, anything like intimacy with other men. But Bosio had not ceased to look upon the priest as the best man he had ever known, and in spite of his own errings, he was still quite able to appreciate goodness in others; and Don Teodoro had always remembered his pupil as one of the few men to whom he had been accustomed to speak freely of his hopes, and sympathies, and aspirations, feeling sure of appreciation from a nature at once refined and reticent, though itself hard to understand. For Don Teodoro was, strange to say, painfully sensitive to ridicule, though in all other respects a singularly brave man, morally and physically. As a child or as a boy, he had been laughed at by his companions for his extraordinary nose and his short sight; and he had never recovered from the childish suffering thus inflicted upon him by thoughtless children. The fear of being ridiculous had largely influenced him through life, and had really contributed much towards deciding him to accept the cure of the wild mountain town.

Bosio's almost solemn words, as his chin fell upon his breast, and he clasped his hands before him, suddenly recalled to the priest the years they had spent together, the confidence there had been between them, the interest he had once felt in Bosio's fortune,--as an object once daily familiar, and fresh once and not without beauty, then long hidden for years, and coming suddenly to sight again, moth-eaten, dusty, and all but destroyed, is oddly painful to him who used it long ago, and then sees it when it is fit only to be thrown away.

"You are suffering," said Don Teodoro, leaning forward upon the marble table and peering through his silver-rimmed spectacles into Bosio's pale face, and gentle, exhausted eyes.

The priest's nervous, emaciated hand softly pressed the sleeve of the younger man's coat, and the fantastic features grew wonderfully gentle and kind. It was the transformation that came over them whenever any one was visibly poor, or starving, or sorrowing, or hurt,--the change which a beautiful passion brings to the ugliest face in the world.

Bosio smiled faintly as he saw it, and a little hope was breathed into his heart, as though somewhere, at some immeasurable distance, there might be a possibility of salvation from the ruin and wreck of his horrible life.

"Yes," he said. "I am suffering. It is a great suffering. I do not think that I can live much longer."

"Can I do nothing?" asked Don Teodoro.

Bosio still smiled, as a man smiles in torture when one speaks to him of peace.

"If I believed that anything could be done," he said, "I should not suffer as I do. I have lived a bad life, and the time has come when I must pay the score. But it is not my fault if things are as they are--it is not all my fault."

The priest sighed, and looked away after a moment.

"We have all done some one great wrong thing in our lives," he said gently. "The price may perhaps be paid to God in good, as well as to man in pain." _

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