by Nevil Shute
Very soon after that, he said, his father had been killed by a chance shell on the Austrian front. Leglia had come out of hospital towards the end of the war to find himself head of his family, Duca di Estalebona, Principe d’Acceglio, Marchese di Sarzana, Conte di Vall’ Estesa, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and a Grandee of Spain. He was rather funny about that, in his queer English way; he said that he needed a wheelbarrow for that little lot. He had never married. At first, he said, his relations had been assiduous in presenting eligible damsels for his attention and necessary action; he had had them up one by one to have a look at them, and had sent them away again. He remarked, a little bitterly, that shopping was no fun when you couldn’t go and look for the goods yourself.
He lived with his sister; for the benefit of his sister’s fair name he also gave house-room to an old aunt. There were two other brothers; one was in the Legation at Athens, the other in America. Leglia himself spent much of his time in his castle in the Apennines, the remainder in Florence. He told me that it was a great piece of luck that I had caught him in Florence. At that time of year he was generally in the country, but he had remained in Florence on account of a certain stirring in the local politics. He said that he thought his people needed him.
He said that with such a matter-of-fact air that for a moment I didn’t notice the authority with which he had spoken. In a minute or two I was puzzling over it; I was beginning to see that Leglia must be occupying a far more important position in the town than I had supposed. I remembered how the driver of my carriage had behaved when I said I was for the Palazzo Leglia. I began to edge the conversation round to Florence and Italian politics, but I found that he needed very little encouragement to talk on what was evidently his favourite subject. It was rapidly getting dark. I sat there in the failing light sipping the Madeira and eating biscuits, and listened while he sketched the course of Italian politics through the years since the Fascist revolution. I was amazed to find how close a study he had made of the affairs of his country. The Leglia that I had known during the war had been a feather-headed young man, not especially remarkable for an interest in his country’s affairs. As he talked, it seemed to me that his knowledge must be something quite out of the ordinary even in a country of born politicians. He never mentioned himself, but there was a personal note all through his story that I found it very hard to account for. For him the politicians were live men, men whose characters he knew, men with whom he had argued. He spoke as if he were reading extracts from a diary.
‘You don’t seem to miss much that goes on in Italy,’ I remarked at last.
He laughed. ‘But I see … not very much of what goes on, is it not so?’ he said. ‘I go out only a little, only a little now and then. But sometimes my friends, they come to see me to talk about our country, so that I tell them what I think. They come to me to stay for a little in the country—from Milano, from Roma.’ He mused a little. ‘In England you have a proverb of the sport that sometimes I laugh about with my sister, because I think I am like that. The onlooker, he sees the most of the game. Non è vero?’
‘It seems to be,’ I said. ‘You can knock spots off anyone else I’ve ever met on Italy.’
He smiled happily. ‘Knock spots …’ he repeated. ‘The English slang, that I have not heard not since we were together. Always I have wished to travel in England, to see again the little town where I learnt the flying, And—Andover. That will be the only visit that ever I have paid to England. Always I have wished to return, to see again your pretty country. But.…’ He glanced down at his legs. ‘And I do not know any people.…’
I put him right about that. Then I leaned back in my chair and thought a bit. It was almost dark.
‘I say, Leglia,’ I said slowly at last. ‘I’ve not come to Italy for fun. I really came out to see if I could touch you for a bit of advice. I came to see if you could help me a bit. It’s about one of your countrymen.’
He raised his hand with a smile. ‘One moment,’ he said. ‘It is with pleasure that I am at your service of my countrymen, old bean. But for my countrywomen, I beg that you will remember that I am Giovanni da Leglia, and my people love me.’
That tickled me no end. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of coming to you about a girl. The man I want to find out something about is Baron Mattani.’
I saw him glance sharply at me. ‘Ah,’ he said quietly. ‘He is half English, by his mother.’
It had become so dark that I could see very little in the room. Leglia lay silent on his couch in the gloom, quietly puffing a cigarette, waiting for me to go on.
‘Does he cut much ice in Italy?’ I asked.
He laughed suddenly. ‘The argot!’ he explained. ‘I had not heard the word till I was with you, and I had forgotten.’ He became serious again. ‘He cuts much ice, very much. He is popular, as the papers say. He has the press.’
‘What do you think of him yourself?’ I asked.
He flicked the ash from his cigarette. ‘For myself,’ he said evenly, ‘the Leglias do not smuggle spirits. But in Italy it is not always that one will speak one’s thoughts.’ He turned to me. ‘Now you shall tell me what you want to know of Baron Mattani. If it is that I cannot answer, yet you shall know to-morrow or the next day.’
‘He murdered a pal of mine a few days ago,’ I said bluntly. ‘I want to see him extradited and hung.’
It was a long time before he spoke again.
‘Murder …’ he said at last. ‘That will be something new.’
I knocked out my pipe and filled it again. ‘It’s about that that I came to Italy,’ I said. ‘I can tell you about it if you like. But it’s a long story.’
He lit a small reading-lamp that stood on the table by his couch; in the soft light I could see that he was very serious.
‘Tell me, Capitano mio,’ he said. ‘Of Baron Mattani the littlest things are important to one who loves Italy. And murder is more still.’
For a moment I was at a loss as to where I should begin the tale. ‘Did you know that Mattani had an English stepbrother?’ I said. ‘It was he who was killed.’
Leglia swore, very softly, in Italian. I glanced at him in surprise; in the soft light of the lamp I could see that he was immensely shocked. In Italy there is a great sense of the family unity, far more so than in England. To us a murder is a murder, whoever it be. In Italy, I think, there are degrees of murder and fratricide is a very bad business.
I could see now that Leglia was intensely interested. He lay listening to me for the most part in silence; now and then he snapped out a question when I had not made myself clear, or when he had missed the meaning of the English. I told him the story straight ahead from the beginning, and left out nothing.
By the time I had finished it was nearly midnight. For a long time he sat smoking in silence, staring out over the quiet roofs of the city, bright in the moonlight. I knew what he was thinking about; his mind was running on the politics of his country. He was wondering what this would mean for Italy. I left him to it, and we sat like that for a quarter of an hour in silence. At last he threw away his cigarette.
‘You will be tired from your journey,’ he said, ‘and it is late. We will go to bed, and to-morrow we will talk. As you have said, I do not think that Baron Mattani will have forgotten you. But for to-night you will be safe in my house. To-morrow, when you have met my friends, you will be safe in the town. There is nobody in all Florence that will not see to a friend of Giovanni da Leglia.’
On this eloquent note we went to bed. He rang for his servant and I was shown to my room. For a hot-weather bedroom it was a pretty good spot. The floor was of stone with little rugs on it. Both the walls and the ceiling were panelled with dark cedar, with little patterns picked out upon the beams in blue and white paint.
I noticed these next morning as I was sitting up in bed over my breakfast. The valet who had brought the tray was quite a boy, with a rich crop of bright red hair. He referred to the meal proudly as a
‘colazione Inglese’, and it was certainly a noble effort for a household where breakfast was unknown. There was coffee, a sort of stuffed tomato with olives round it, a kidney aristocratically perched upon a bit of haddock, the cold leg of a small roast chicken, rolls, butter, and preserved ginger. I did pretty well by it, gratified at the thought that had evidently been spent over my comfort. Then I got up.
The red-haired boy came in in the middle and wanted to shave me, but I sent him away with a flea in his ear. He told me that Leglia was already up, and was sitting in the cloister. I had a bath, dressed, wished my suit was a little more respectable, and went downstairs.
It was a brilliant morning. After wandering about the house for a bit I found the cloister; Leglia was sitting in the invalid chair in a shady corner beside a table littered with papers. There was a girl sitting with him, his sister. We suffered a very proper introduction at his hands, after which he returned to his work and left us to amuse each other. She was a girl of the typical Italian type, small, with dark eyes, a lot of black hair, and a very clear complexion.
At the end of a quarter of an hour I had learned that she was an experienced charmer and that she liked her occasional visits to Milan, dancing at the magnificent balls given by the local nobility, officers from the Scuola Cavalliere across the river, and chocolates. After that I felt that I had learned all there was to know about her. She was a good sort in her own way.
Leglia asked me to excuse him while he finished his business. I sat down on the edge of the balustrade and told his sister what a corking breakfast I’d had. Her English was about on a par with my Italian; we tried each in turn with very similar results.
‘Aha!’ she laughed. ‘La colazione Inglese!’ She paused, and thought out a sentence. ‘We have tried,’ she said painfully, ‘that it is made beautiful.’
‘Squisita,’ said Leglia, without looking up. ‘Good to eat.’
‘Si si si!’ she said brightly. ‘Squisita.’
I replied that it was a splendid breakfast and that I had enjoyed it very much, and got this through at the second attempt. For some time we conversed laboriously about England and the English, till at last we came to the point that was really exercising her mind; did I think the English girls were prettier than the Italians? I knew this gambit of old; I flatter myself that the delicate courtesy of my reply was well up to the high standard set by the officers of the School of Riding. At all events, it went down very well.
She glanced mischievously at her brother. ‘For Giovanni,’ she remarked, ‘I must to find a bride English.’
He spoke very rapidly and tersely to her in Italian, and returned to his writing. She sighed and shook her head.
‘Gli Inglesi,’ she said. ‘Always he talks of England and the English.’
She said that he was mad on England.
We went on gossiping till we were interrupted. The white-haired old man appeared round the corner of the arcade conducting the most gorgeously attired police official that I had ever seen. Leglia sat up as he came in sight.
‘That is good,’ he remarked to me. ‘It is about you that he comes, old bean.’
He put his hands to the wheels of his chair and swivelled himself round to meet the official. He was very nimble in that chair of his. It was the usual motion of a host rising to meet his guest, but one that might well have been forgiven to an invalid. I think that must have been one of the many trifles that combined to build up his great influence in the town. I knew very little of Leglia; I had yet to realise what a popular idol he had become. It took me some time to adjust my ideas to the fact that his popularity was genuine. For centuries the Leglias had been nobles in the town, for centuries the townspeople had looked to them for a lead. Giovanni da Leglia before the war had been modern enough to please the youngest of them, a shade too modern for their elders. The war put the whole town at his feet. That one of the nobility should go and look at Jerry face to face in the British Flying Corps instead of going to Rome upon the Staff seemed to them a very strange thing, very modern and very wonderful. When he was crippled he became a hero. But when he came back to Florence and took up his hereditary position, when it became evident that his one care was for his people, he became a saint.
Leglia conversed in rapid Italian for a little while with the official, who seemed to be agreeing to everything he said. Presently he beckoned to me. I went up to them, and became aware that the official was scrutinising me carefully. He bowed to me as I came up, and asked if His Excellency would have the egregious kindness to display his passport. I gave it to him; he stamped it with a stamp and pad that he introduced from the tail pocket of his coat, and returned it to me with a flourish. He made a little speech in Italian then, the burden of which was that in all my walks abroad the Civil Power would strew rosebuds in the way and would endeavour to restrain the populace from throwing things at me. I took this with a grain of salt, but it was a fact that for so long as I remained in Florence every carabinier saluted me.
I made a laboured little speech in reply, and presently he bowed himself away.
He was followed by a succession of visitors. To all of them I was introduced. Most of them came upon their lawful occasions to see Leglia at his hour of levée; some, I think, had been summoned only to be introduced to me. I could make nothing of the plan upon which they had been selected. Mostly they were of the black-coated bourgeois type, some evidently affluent, some less so. There were one or two that seemed to be peasants or small farmers in from the country; there was one that was a pure-blooded gipsy if ever I saw one. All at the conclusion of their business with Leglia turned and looked me up and down. Some of them even made a little speech assuring me of friendship should I be in need of it. I had a set answer which I gave them in reply to this sort of thing; to the others I bowed, and they went away in silence.
The whole show struck me as extremely curious. There was something in the way in which they had all offered their friendship that seemed to me too uniform to be altogether natural. It was as if they were accustomed to it, as if it was all in the day’s work. And here I may say at once that I never found out any more about the conditions under which they offered me this friendship, nor did I inquire. Looking back upon it, I have become convinced in my own mind that it was to the members of some society that Leglia introduced me. I know this much: that they were not Freemasons.
At last they stopped coming. Leglia turned to me.
‘You have now many friends in Florence,’ he said. ‘I do not think that now you may come to any harm.’
I was very much impressed and said as much. ‘It seems to me that you go one better than the law of the land.’
He smiled a little ruefully. ‘The law of the land,’ he said reflectively, ‘he does not always work all of the time. In every country he will not work now and again.’ He sighed. ‘In my country I think he works not so well as he does in England. And the more so with the new Government.’
I began to see dimly what he was driving at. ‘Do you get much trouble in that way?’ I asked.
The girl had disappeared. Leglia motioned to me to sit down; he lay back in his chair and lit one of his innumerable cigarettes. ‘I am Fascist, for myself,’ he said.
He mused a little. ‘Always with a Government of force there will be trouble now and again,’ he said. ‘It must be. And we have many troubles—very many troubles, so that sometimes one will doubt of Fascismo. But for myself, I am Fascist because the old Government was not—not so good, not sincere. Fascismo is for those that love Italy. And Il Duce is a man.’
He leaned towards me and tapped me on the arm. ‘With some,’ he said quietly, ‘Fascismo is as a religion and Il Duce is a God. The people who think so, they are a danger to us all because they are so foolish, so led away. They are—what do you say? Mad. No.…’
‘You mean they get fanatical about it,’ I said.
He brightened. ‘That is the word,’ he said. ‘They are fanatics, for whom the Opposition in Parliament is a heresy.
They are so foolish. For them the whole of the business of Government is to make a speech and to say “I am Fascist, I fought for Italia in the war.” ’ The mimicry in his voice was wonderful. ‘More still. They do not think. For them a Ras is as a God, and one above the law though he be smuggler and murderer.’
‘I understand,’ I muttered.
He laid his hand upon my arm again. ‘Do not misjudge my people,’ he said. He spoke royally, but somehow I didn’t want to laugh. ‘They are not as the English. They are as the Irish, I think, much as the Irish. They are so easily inflamed, so easy to lead away with talk, not very responsible. But they will settle; they settle now to the business of sound government of our great nation. Let only Il Duce live for ten years more, as we pray to the Mother of God daily.’
I glanced at him. ‘And if he dies?’
He flicked the ash from his cigarette. ‘My friend,’ he said quietly, ‘we pray that he will live.’
The sun was bright in the court, blazing down on the flowers in the shade of the arches of the cloister, and the queer dry-looking cactuses in the centre round about the fish-pond. I turned to Leglia.
‘It’s a Government that is open to abuse,’ I said.
He inclined his head proudly. ‘When I think of that, as sometimes I do, I tell you, old bean, I am most proud. The Government stands to be abused; in any other country it would be abused in fact. But in Italy the people are well governed. The people work more hard, and we balance on the Budget.’
‘That’s certainly a damn fine thing to be able to say of the country,’ I remarked. ‘At the same time, the Government is open to abuse. Mattani seems to get away with it here in a way he couldn’t do in any other country.’
