Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  ‘Have you told me the whole truth?’ she asked suddenly, after a long silence.

  ‘Of course I have told you the truth,’ he answered, with a half-startled, nervous intonation.

  ‘You have not always done so,’ said she, leaning back in her chair. ‘But I do not see why you should conceal anything from me now.’

  ‘You will see it all in the account of the trial.’

  ‘It is terrible!’ she exclaimed, realising once more what it all meant. ‘Terrible, terrible,’ she repeated, passing her hand over her eyes. ‘Only yesterday he was here, sitting beside me, telling me—’

  She stopped short.

  ‘Yes, I heard what he told you,’ said Tebaldo, in an altered voice. ‘It is of no use to go over it.’

  ‘I was fond of him,’ she answered. ‘I was very fond of him. I have often told you so. It is dreadful to think that we shall never see him again — never hear his voice—’

  Her eyes filled with tears, for beyond the first horror of his death there was the sadness. He had been so young, so full of life and vitality. She could hardly understand that he was gone. The tears welled over slowly and rolled down her smooth cheeks, unheeded for a few moments.

  ‘I wish I knew the truth,’ she said, rousing herself, and drying her eyes.

  ‘But I have told you the truth,’ answered Tebaldo, with a return of nervous impatience.

  ‘Yes, I know. But there must be more. What was there between him and the priest? Why did they fight in the road? It all seems so improbable, so mysterious. I wish I knew.’

  ‘You know all that I know, all that the law knows. I cannot invent an explanation.’

  ‘It is a mystery to you, too, then? You do not understand?’

  ‘I do not understand. No one knows all the truth but Ippolito Saracinesca. He will probably tell it in self-defence. If he could prove that my brother attacked him first, it would make a great difference. He will try to make out that he killed him in self-defence.’

  ‘It is very mysterious,’ repeated Aliandra.

  They talked in the same way for some time. Gradually her distrust of him disappeared, because he did not try to prove too much, and his own story, as he went over the points, seemed to her more and more lucid. He took advantage of little questions she put to him, from time to time, in order to show her how very complete the account was, and how utterly beyond his own comprehension he thought the fight at the cemetery on the day before the murder. He was amazingly quick at using whatever presented itself. Her doubts did not really leave her, and they would return again after he was gone, but they sank out of her reach as she listened to him.

  Then she made him go upstairs with her and tell the whole story to her father. Tebaldo submitted, but the strain on him was becoming very great, and the perspiration stood in great drops on his brows, as he went over it all for Basili. He knew that the notary was a man not easily deceived, and was well aware that his opinion would be received with respect by the principal people in Randazzo. He was, therefore, more careful than ever to state each point clearly and accurately. He saw, moreover, that Aliandra was listening as attentively as before. Possibly, now that he was no longer speaking directly to her, her doubts were coming to the surface again. But Tebaldo’s nerves were good, and he went to the end without a fault. The notary only asked three or four simple and natural questions, and he did not seem surprised that Tebaldo should not know the cause of the disagreement between his brother and Ippolito.

  Aliandra went downstairs with Tebaldo. She seemed to expect that he should go away, for she stood still in the hall at the foot of the stone staircase.

  ‘When are you going back to Rome?’ he asked, for he wished to see her again.

  ‘As soon as my father can spare me,’ she answered.

  ‘I shall have to go down to Messina to give my evidence,’ he said. ‘When the funeral is over, to-morrow morning, I shall come here, and go on to Messina the next day. May I see you to-morrow afternoon?’

  To his surprise, she hesitated. She herself scarcely knew why she did not at once assent naturally.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, after a pause. ‘I suppose so, if you wish to.’

  ‘I do wish to see you,’ he answered. ‘You have no reason to doubt that, at all events.’

  ‘You speak as though I had reason to doubt other things you have said.’ She watched him keenly, for the one incautious little speech had weakened the effect he had produced with such skill.

  ‘You pretended to doubt,’ he answered boldly. ‘You asked me if I was telling you the truth about my brother. That was doubting, was it not? You always do. I think you do not even believe that I love you.’

  ‘I only half believe it. Are you going over the discussion we had in Rome, again?’

  ‘No. It would be useless.’

  ‘I think so too,’ she said, and her grey eyes grew suddenly cold.

  He sighed and turned from her, towards the door. It was the first perfectly natural expression of feeling that had escaped him, and it was little enough. But it touched her unexpectedly, and she felt a sort of pity for him which was hard to bear. That one audibly-drawn breath of pain did more to persuade her that he really loved her than all the words he had ever spoken. She called him back when his hand was already on the door.

  ‘Tebaldo — wait a moment!’ Her voice was suddenly kind.

  He turned in surprise, and a softer look came over his drawn and tired features.

  ‘I shall be very glad to see you when you come,’ she said gently. ‘I do not know why I hesitated — I did not mean to. Come whenever you like.’

  She held out her hand, and he took it.

  ‘You may think the worst you will of me, Aliandra,’ he said. ‘But do not think that I do not love you.’

  ‘I believe you do,’ she answered in the same gentle tone, and she pressed his hand a little.

  Just as he was about to open the door, her eyes fell upon the rifle Francesco had left standing in the corner.

  Take your brother’s gun,’ she said. ‘I do not like to see it here. I am sad enough already.’

  He slipped the sling over his shoulder without speaking, for the odd sensation that Francesco was not dead, after all, came over him as on the previous evening, and with it the insane longing to see his brother alive. He felt that his face might betray him, and he went out hastily into the noon-day glare. The heat restored the balance of his nerves, as it generally did, and when he reached the inn he was calm and collected.

  Aliandra went upstairs to her father’s room, and sat down beside his couch, in silence. The sunlight filtered through the green blinds, and brought the warm scent of the carnations from without. The notary lay back, with half-closed eyes, apparently studying the queer outline of his splinted leg as it appeared through the thin, flowered chintz coverlet.

  ‘For my part,’ he said, without moving, and as though concluding a train of thought which he had been following for a long time, ‘I do not believe one word of the story, from beginning to end.’

  ‘You do not believe Don Tebaldo’s story?’ asked Aliandra, more startled than surprised.

  ‘Not one word, not one half word, not one syllable,’ replied the notary, emphatically. ‘We can say it between ourselves, my daughter. If my sister were here, I should not say it, for she is not discreet. It is a beautiful story, well composed, logical, studied, everything you like that is perfect. It must have taken much thought to put it together so nicely, and it is not intelligence that Tebaldo Pagliuca lacks. But no one will make me believe that a quiet little Roman priest could have killed one of those Corleone in that way. It is too improbable. It is a thing to laugh at. But it is not a thing to believe.’

  ‘I do not know what to say,’ answered Aliandra, all her doubts springing up again.

  ‘We are not called upon to say anything. The law will take its course, and if it condemns an innocent Italian — well, it has condemned many innocent Sicilians. The one will pay for the other, I suppose. B
ut as for the facts, that is a different matter. I daresay the priest had a knife of his own in his pocket, but it was not the knife that killed Pagliuca. Now, I do not wish to imply that Don Tebaldo killed him—’

  ‘That is impossible!’ exclaimed Aliandra. ‘He could not come here and talk about it so calmly. The mere idea makes me shiver. What I think is that someone else killed him, — a brigand, perhaps, for some old quarrel, and that Tebaldo has thrown the blame on the priest, just because he is a Saracinesca.’

  ‘Perhaps. Anything is possible, except that the priest killed him. But as we know nothing, it is better to say nothing. It might be thought that we favoured the Romans.’

  ‘It is strange,’ said Aliandra. ‘When he is speaking, I believe all he says, but now that he is gone, I feel as you do about it He said he should come back to-morrow.’

  ‘It is of no use for you to see him again. Why does he come here? I do not wish to be involved in this affair. Make an excuse, if he comes, and do not see him.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Aliandra. ‘I will manage not to see him. It is of no use, as you say.’

  Tebaldo rode back to Santa Vittoria to bury his brother. Almost the whole population followed the funeral from the church to the cemetery, and it was easy to see how the people looked at the matter. Tebaldo received a summons to appear and give his evidence in two days, and he left the village early in order to have time to spend in Randazzo with Aliandra before taking the afternoon train from Piedimonte to Messina.

  One thing only he had left undone which he had intended to do, for it had been impossible to accomplish it without attracting attention. He had meant to get into the little church alone and recover the knife he had dropped through the grating that stood before the glass casket in which the bones of the saint were preserved. As the details of those short and terrible moments came back to him, he remembered that the thing had not dropped far. He had heard it strike the stone inside immediately, and though it was improbable that the grating should be opened for a long time, yet the weapon was there, waiting for someone to find it, and possibly for some to recognise it, for he had possessed it several years.

  The first requiem mass for Francesco had been sung in the parish church, for the curate had said that Santa Vittoria must be reconsecrated by the bishop before mass could be celebrated there again, the crime committed being a desecration. Tebaldo thought it just possible that at the bishop’s visit the grating might be opened in order to show him the casket. But this was by no means certain. On the whole he believed himself safe, for there was no name on the sheath of the knife, and he did not remember that he had ever shown it to anyone who could identify it as belonging to him.

  He had sent for a carriage and drove down to Randazzo, stopping at the inn, as usual. He knocked at the door of the notary’s house a few minutes later, expecting to be admitted by Gesualda. To his surprise, no one came to let him in. He knocked twice again with the same result, and was about to go away, when Basili’s man, the same who had accompanied San Giacinto and Orsino to Camaldoli, opened the stable gate and came up to him.

  ‘There is the notary,’ he said. ‘No one else is at home. The Signorina Aliandra has taken Gesualda and is gone out to visit friends in the country. They will not come back before to-morrow. The notary sleeps.’

  Tebaldo was very much surprised and disconcerted. He remembered how kindly and gently Aliandra had spoken when he had parted from her, and he could not understand. She had left no message, and it was clear enough that she had gone away in order to avoid him. He went back to the inn, a good deal disturbed, for if she wished to avoid him, it must be because she had some suspicion. That was the only conclusion which he could reach as he thought the matter over. It was by no means absolutely logical, being suggested by the state of his conscience rather than by the operation of his reason.

  He was disturbed and nervous, and he realised with a vague trepidation that instead of forgetting what he had done, and becoming hardened to the consciousness of it, he was suffering from it more and more as the hours and days went by. Little things came back to their lost places in his memory, which might have been noticed by other people, and might betray him. To himself, knowing the truth, the story he had invented looked far less probable than it appeared to those who had heard it from him.

  He thought of writing to Aliandra, for he was bitterly disappointed at not seeing her; but when he considered what he could say in a letter, he saw that he could only tell her of his disappointment. What he unconsciously longed for, was the liberty to speak out plainly to someone, and tell the whole truth, with perfect safety to himself. But that desire was still vague and unformulated.

  There was no possibility of waiting till the next day to see Aliandra when she returned. He was expected to appear on the following morning in Messina, to give his evidence, and he had no choice but to go at once. He left Randazzo with a heavy heart, and a feverish sensation in his head.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  IPPOLITO WAS COMMITTED for trial on the charge of having killed Francesco Pagliuca in the church of Santa Vittoria, and Tebaldo Pagliuca was the principal witness against him. That was the result of the preliminary examination in Messina.

  No one believed that Ippolito had committed the crime, neither the judge nor the prefect of the province, nor the carabineers who had arrested him and brought him down. Yet the evidence was such that it was impossible to acquit him, and his obstinate silence, after a simple denial of the charge, puzzled the authorities. It was the expressed opinion of the judge that, in any case, and supposing that the priest were guilty, it was not a murder, but a homicide committed in a struggle, which had been the result of a quarrel entirely unaccounted for. Taking Tebaldo’s own story as true, it was clear that Francesco’s appearance in the church had been too sudden and unexpected to allow of the smallest premeditation on Ippolito’s part. Tebaldo said that he had come in and seen the two fighting. The judge observed that, if a struggle had taken place, it was more than probable that Francesco, coming suddenly upon Ippolito, had sprung upon him to avenge himself for having been maltreated by the priest on the previous day. Here Orsino rose and told the story of that first quarrel, as he had heard it from his brother immediately after it had occurred. On being questioned, Ippolito admitted the perfect truth of the story, and the judge ordered that Concetta’s evidence should be taken at Santa Vittoria by a deputy of the court.

  Tebaldo had been in complete ignorance of the truth about Concetta, but he saw that it would be best to take the judge’s view. For all he knew, he said, his brother might have attacked Ippolito on entering the church. Ippolito was at liberty to say so, if he chose, observed Tebaldo. The fact did not militate against his own story, in the least. On the contrary, it accounted for the struggle. Francesco was unarmed, however. Tebaldo was prepared to swear to that, and did. Ippolito did not know it, and, being attacked suddenly, might have drawn his knife and defended himself.

  The worst of all this was that it lent a faint air of probability to the accusation, of which Tebaldo, with his usual quickness, took advantage at once. But the judge, in his heart, was no more inclined to believe Ippolito guilty than before, though he saw no way of acquitting him. The young priest stood calm and self-possessed between the carabineers throughout the whole examination, and his quiet eyes made Tebaldo uncomfortable.

  San Giacinto arrived from Rome before the hearing was finished, and entered the court-room when Tebaldo was speaking. There was something so gloomily ominous about the grey old giant’s eyes that even Tebaldo’s voice changed a little as he spoke. San Giacinto had twice, in serious affairs, been the means of clearing matters up suddenly and completely, and as Orsino grasped his huge hand, he felt that all would be well.

  The judge admitted Ippolito to bail, and San Giacinto offered himself and was accepted as surety, being a large landowner in Sicily and a person well known throughout the country. The trial would probably not take place before the autumn, but there is a great latitude allo
wed in Italy, in the matter of bail, except when the prisoner is charged with premeditated murder.

  ‘I think,’ said San Giacinto to the judge, when the proceedings were officially closed, ‘that it would be worth your while to visit Santa Vittoria in person.’

  Tebaldo heard and listened, and he thought of the knife under the altar. If the judge should go to the church and insist upon examining everything thoroughly, it might be found.

  ‘The second hearing will not come before me,’ observed the judge. ‘Nevertheless—’ He hesitated a moment and then spoke in a lower tone. ‘The case interests me very much,’ he said. ‘I should like to see the place where it happened. I might take that country girl’s evidence myself, and visit the church at the same time. Yes, I think I shall accept the suggestion.’

  Though he had lowered his voice, Tebaldo had heard most of what he had said, and more than enough to increase the fear of discovery, which was rapidly growing up in the place of the cynical certainty of safety which he had at first felt. Nor had the examination gone so absolutely against Ippolito as he had hoped. The judge and the officials were evidently in sympathy with the accused man, and Tebaldo had been heard with a sort of cold reserve which suggested a doubt in his hearers. Like Aliandra and her father, they all felt the utter improbability of the story, as they compared the accused with the accuser, though they had been obliged to admit just so much as they had no means of denying.

  The view taken by the law on the strength of the whole evidence can be summed up in a few words. Francesco Pagliuca had assaulted a young country girl on the high-road. She had screamed for help. Ippolito Saracinesca had been near and had saved her and soundly beaten her assailant. On the very next occasion of meeting him by accident, Francesco had rushed at the priest to repay his score of blows, and the priest, taken unawares, had defended himself with a knife he had about him, and which his brother had insisted that he should carry, for the very reason that he might, at any moment, be assaulted by Francesco. It was not justifiable homicide, assuredly, but there were a great many extenuating circumstances. That was as much as the men of the law could say for Ippolito, on the evidence; but not one of them believed that he had killed Francesco.