Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Come with me,” said Padre Francesco. “Where is your vessel?”

  “At Fiumicino. The master sent us on an errand to Porto d’Anzio last night and we are going back.”

  “It is a long pull,” observed the watchman. “Tell the other man to come ashore and rest in the shade. I also have been to sea. The water is not very good here, but what there is you shall have.”

  “Thank you,” said the man gratefully, and giving Nino a very wide berth as he followed Padre Francesco. “We could have got some water at the Incastro creek, but it would have been the same as drinking the fever.”

  “May the Madonna never will that you drink of it,” said Padre Francesco, as they reached the shady side of the tower. “I see that you know the Roman shore.”

  “It is our business,” replied the man, taking off his ragged rush hat, and rubbing his still more ragged blue cotton sleeve over his wet forehead. “We are people of the sea, bringing wine and lemons to Cività Vecchia and taking charcoal back. Evil befall this calm weather.”

  “And when it blows from the west-southwest we say, evil befall this time of storm,” said Padre Francesco, nodding wisely. “Be seated in the shade. I will fetch water.”

  “And also let us drink here, so that we may take the jug away full.”

  “You shall also drink here.” The old watchman went into the tower.

  “The last time I passed this way, it was in a west-southwest gale,” said the man, addressing Ercole, who had sat down in his old place with his dog at his feet.

  “It is an evil shore,” Ercole answered. “Many vessels have been lost here.”

  “We were saved by a miracle that time,” said the sailor, who seemed inclined to talk. “I was with a brigantine with wine for Marseilles. That vessel was like a rock in the sea, she would not move with less than seven points of the wind in fair weather. We afterwards went to Rio Janeiro, and it was two years before we got back.”

  “So it was two years ago that you passed?” inquired Ercole.

  “Two years ago May or the beginning of June. She was so low in the water that she would have swamped if we had tried to carry on sail, and with the sail she could carry she could make no headway; so there we were, hove to under lower topsail and balance-reefed mainsail and storm-jib, with a lee shore less than a mile away. We recommended ourselves to the saints and the souls of purgatory, and our captain said to us, ‘My fine sons, unless the wind shifts in half an hour we must run her ashore and save the cargo!’ That is what he said. But I said that I knew this Roman shore from a boy, and that sometimes there was no bar at the mouth of the Incastro, so that a vessel might just slip into the pool where the reeds grow. You certainly know the place.”

  “I know it well,” said Ercole.

  “Yes. So I pointed out the spot to our captain, standing beside him, and he took his glasses and looked to see whether the sea was breaking on the bar.”

  “The bar has not been open since I came here,” said Padre Francesco, returning with water. “And that is ten years.”

  The men drank eagerly, one after the other, and there was silence. The one who had been speaking wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and drew a long breath of satisfaction.

  “No, I daresay not,” he said at last. “The captain looked all along the shore for a better place. Then he saw a bad thing with his glasses; for they were fine glasses, and though he was old, he had good sight. And I stood beside him, and he told me what he saw while he was looking.”

  “What did he see?” asked Ercole, watching the man.

  “What did he see? I tell you it was a bad sight! Health to us all, as many as are here, he saw one man kill another and drag his body into some bushes.”

  “Apoplexy!” observed Ercole, glancing at Padre Francesco. “Are there brigands here?”

  “I tell you what the captain said. ‘There are two men,’ said he, ‘and they are like gentlemen by their dress.’ ‘They shoot quail,’ said I, knowing the shore. ‘They have no guns,’ said he. Then he cried out, keeping his glasses to his eyes and steadying himself by the weather vang. ‘God be blessed,’ he cried — for he never said an evil word, that captain,— ‘one of those gentlemen has struck the other on the back of the head and killed him! And now he drags his body away towards the bushes.’ And he saw nothing more, but he showed me the place, where there is a gap in the high bank. Afterwards he said he thought he had seen a woman too, and that it must have been an affair of jealousy.”

  Ercole and Padre Francesco looked at each other in silence for a moment.

  “Did you hear of no murder at that time?” asked the sailor, taking up the earthen jar full of water.

  “We heard nothing,” said Ercole promptly.

  “Nothing,” echoed Padre Francesco. “The captain was dreaming. He saw trees moving in the wind.”

  “Don Antonino had good eyes,” answered the sailor incredulously.

  “What was the name of your vessel?” asked Padre Francesco.

  “The Papa” replied the sailor without a smile. “She was called Papa.”

  Ercole stared at him a moment and then laughed; and he laughed so rarely that it distorted the yellow parchment of his face as if it must crack it. The sound of his laughter was something like the creaking of a cart imitated by a ventriloquist. But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows, for he thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been boatswain on a square-rigger.

  “I went to sea for thirty years,” he said, “but I never heard of a vessel called the Papa. You have said a silly thing. I have given you water to drink, and filled your jar. It is not courtesy to jest at men older than you.”

  “Excuse me,” answered the man politely. “May it never be that I should jest at such a respectable man as you seem to be; and, moreover, you have filled the jar with your own hands. The brigantine was called as I say. And if you wish to know why, I will tell you. She was built by two rich brothers of Torre Annunziata, who wished much good to their papa when he was old and no longer went to sea. Therefore, to honour him, they called the vessel the Papa. This is the truth.”

  Lest this should seem extravagantly unlikely to the readers of this tale, I shall interrupt the conversation to say that I knew the Papa well, that “she” was built and christened as the sailor said, and that her name still stood on the register of Italian shipping a few years ago. She was not a brigantine, however, but a larger vessel, and she was bark-rigged; and she was ultimately lost in port, during a hurricane.

  “We have learned something to-day,” observed Ercole, when the man had finished speaking.

  “It is true,” the man said. “And the name of the captain was Don Antonino Maresca. He was of Vico.”

  “Where is Vico?” inquired Ercole, idly scratching his dog’s back with the stock of his gun.

  “Near Castellamare,” answered Padre Francesco, willing to show his knowledge.

  “One sees that you are a man of the sea,” said the sailor, meaning to please him. “And so we thank you, and we go.”

  Ercole and the old watchman saw the two ragged sailors put off in the battered boat and pull away over the bar; then they went back to the shade of the tower and sat down again and refilled their pipes, and were silent for a long time. Padre Francesco’s old wife, who had not shown herself yet, came and stood in the doorway, nodded to Ercole, fanned herself with her apron, counted the chickens in sight, and observed that the weather was hot. Then she went in again.

  “It is easy to remember the name of that ship,” said Ercole at last, without glancing at his companion.

  “And the master was Antonino Maresca of Vico,” said Padre Francesco.

  “But the truth is that it is none of our business,” said Ercole.

  “The captain was mistaken,” said Padre Francesco.

  “He saw trees moving in the wind,” said Ercole.

  Then they looked at each other and nodded.

  “Perhaps the Professor was mistaken about the girl, and the silk dre
ss and the gold earrings,” suggested Padre Francesco, turning his eyes away.

  “He was certainly mistaken,” asserted Ercole, watching him closely. “And moreover it is none of our business.”

  “None whatever.”

  They talked of other things, making remarks at longer and longer intervals, till the sun sank near the oily sea, and Ercole took his departure, much wiser in regard to Marcello’s disappearance than when he had come. He followed the long beach for an hour till he came to the gap in the bank. There he stopped, and proceeded to examine the place carefully, going well inside it, and then turning to ascertain exactly where Marcello must have been when he was struck, since at that moment he must have been distinctly visible from the brigantine. The gap was so narrow that it was not hard to fix upon the spot where the deed had been done, especially as the captain had seen Marcello dragged quickly away towards the bushes. Every word of the sailor’s story was stamped with truth; and so it came about that when Corbario believed himself at last quite safe, a man in his own pay suddenly discovered the whole truth about the attempted crime, even to the name of the principal witness.

  It was only in the quail season, when there were poachers about, during April, May, and early June, that Ercole lived in his straw hut, a little way from the cottage. He spent the rest of the year in a small stone house that stood on a knoll in sight of Ardea, high enough to be tolerably safe from the deadly Campagna fever. Every other day an old woman from the village brought him a copper conca full of water; once a month she came and washed for him. When he needed supplies he went to Ardea for them himself. His dwelling was of elementary simplicity, consisting of two rooms, one above the other, with grated windows and heavy shutters. In the lower one he cooked and ate, in the upper chamber he slept and kept his few belongings, which included a plentiful supply of ammunition, his Sunday clothes, his linen, and his papers. The latter consisted of a copy of his certificate of birth, his old military pass-book, showing that he had served his time in an infantry regiment, had been called in for six weeks’ drill in the reserve, had been a number of years in the second reserve, and had finally been discharged from all military service. This booklet serves an Italian throughout life as a certificate of identity, and is necessary in order to obtain a passport to leave the country. Ercole kept his, with two or three other yellow papers, tied up in an old red cotton handkerchief in the bottom of the chest that held his clothes.

  When he got home after his visit to Padre Francesco he took the package out, untied the handkerchief, and looked through all the papers, one by one, sitting by the grated window in the twilight. He could read, and had once been able to write more or less intelligibly, and he knew by heart the contents of the paper he wanted, though he had not unfolded it for years. He now read it carefully, and held it some time open in his hand before he put it back with the rest. He held it so long, while he looked out of his grated window, that at last he could see the little lights twinkling here and there in the windows of Ardea, and it was almost dark in the room. Nino grew restless, and laid his grim head on Ercole’s knee, and his bloodshot eyes began to glow in the dark like coals. Then Ercole moved at last.

  “Ugly animal, do you wish me well?” he asked, rubbing the dog’s head with his knotty hand. “If you are good, you shall go on a journey with me.”

  Nino’s body moved in a way which showed that he would have wagged his tail if he had possessed one, and he uttered a strange gurgling growl of satisfaction.

  The next morning, the old woman came before sunrise with water.

  “You need not bring any more, till I let you know,” Ercole said. “I am going away on business for a few days, and I shall shut up the house.”

  “For anything that is in it, you might leave the door open,” grumbled the hag, who was of a sour temper. “Give me my pay before you go.”

  “You fear that I am going to America,” retorted Ercole, producing an old sheepskin purse from the inside of his waistcoat. “Here is your money. Four trips, four pennies. Count them and go in peace.”

  He gave her the coppers, and she carefully tied them up in a corner of her ragged kerchief.

  “And the bread?” she asked anxiously.

  Ercole went to the blackened cupboard, took out the remains of a stale loaf, drew a big clasp-knife from his pocket, and cut off a moderate slice.

  “Eat,” he said, as he gave it to her.

  She went away grumbling, and Nino growled after her, standing on the door-step. When she was a hundred yards from the house, he lay down with his jaw on his forepaws and continued to watch her till she was out of sight; then he gave a snort of satisfaction and immediately went to sleep.

  Ercole left his home after sunset that evening. He locked both the upper and lower doors and immediately dropped the huge key into a crevice in the stone steps, from which one might have supposed that it would not be easy to recover it; but he doubtless knew what he was about. He might have had one of the little horses from the farm if he had wanted one, for he was a privileged person, but he preferred to walk. To a man of his wiry frame thirty or forty miles on foot were nothing, and he could easily have covered the distance in a night; but he was not going so far, by any means, and a horse would only have been in the way. He carried his gun, from force of habit, and he had his gun-licence in his pocket, with his other papers, tied up in the old red handkerchief. There was all that was left of the stale loaf, with the remains of some cheese, in a canvas bag, he had slung over his shoulder, and he had plenty of money; for his wages were good, and he never spent more than half of what he received, merely because he had no wants, and no friends.

  Under the starlight he walked at a steady pace by familiar paths and byways, so as to avoid the village and strike the highroad at some distance beyond it. Nino followed close at his heels and perfectly silent, and the pair might have been dangerous to any one inclined to quarrel with them.

  When Ercole was in sight of Porta San Sebastiano it was past midnight, and he stood still to fill and light his little clay pipe. Then he went on; but instead of entering the gate he took the road to the right again, along the Via Appia Nuova. Any one might have supposed that he would have struck across to that highroad some time before reaching the city, but it was very long since Ercole had gone in that direction; many new roads had been opened and some old ones had been closed, and he was simply afraid of losing his way in a part of the Campagna no longer familiar to him.

  “ERCOLE LEFT HIS HOME AFTER SUNSET THAT EVENING”

  A short distance from the gate, where the inn stands that goes by the name of Baldinotti, he took the turning to the left, which is the Frascati road; and after that he walked more slowly, often stopping and peering into the gloom to right and left, as if he were trying to recognise objects in the Campagna.

  CHAPTER XII

  CORBARIO WAS NOT pleased with the account given by Settimia in the letter she wrote him after reaching Pontresina with Regina and Marcello, who had chosen the Engadine as the coolest place he could think of in which to spend the hot months, and had preferred Pontresina to Saint Moritz as being quieter and less fashionable. Settimia wrote that the dear patient had looked better the very day after arriving; that the admirable companion was making him drink milk and go to bed at ten o’clock; that the two spent most of the day in the pine-woods, and that Marcello already talked of an excursion up the glacier and of climbing some of the smaller peaks. If the improvement continued, Settimia wrote, it was extremely likely that the dear patient would soon be better than he had ever been in his life.

  Folco destroyed the letter, lit a cigarette, and thought the matter over. He had deemed it wise to pretend assent when the Contessa had urged him to join Marcello at once, but he had not had the least intention of doing so, and had come back to Paris as soon as he was sure that the Contessa was gone. But he had made a mistake in his calculations. He had counted on Regina for the love of excitement, display, and inane dissipation which women in her position very often de
velop when they find that a man will give them anything they like; and he had counted very little on her love for Marcello. Folco was still young enough to fall into one of the most common errors of youth, which is to believe most people worse than they are. Villains, as they grow older, learn that unselfish devotion is more common than they had thought, and that many persons habitually speak the truth, for conscience’ sake; finding this out, villains have been known to turn into good men in their riper years, and have sometimes been almost saints in their old age. Corbario smoked his cigarette and mentally registered his mistake, and it is to be feared that the humiliation he felt at having made it was much more painful than the recollection of having dropped one deadly tablet into a little bottle that contained many harmless ones. He compared it in his mind to the keen disappointment he had felt when he had gone down to hide Marcello’s body, and had discovered that he had failed to kill him. It is true that what he had felt then had been accompanied by the most awful terror he could imagine, but he distinguished clearly between the one sensation and the other. There was nothing to fear now; he had simply lost time, but that was bad enough, since it was due to his own stupidity.

  He thought over the situation carefully and considered how much it would be wise to risk. Another year of the life Marcello had been leading in Paris would have killed him to a certainty; perhaps six months would have done it. But a summer spent at Pontresina, living as it was clear that Regina meant him to live, would give the boy strength enough to last much longer, and might perhaps bring him out of all danger.

  Corbario considered what might be done, went over many plans in his mind, compared many schemes, for the execution of some of which he might have paid dearly; and in the end he was dissatisfied with all, and began over again. Still he reached no conclusion, and he attributed the fault to his own dulness, and his dulness to the life he had been leading of late, which was very much that which he wished Marcello to lead. But he had always trusted his nerves, his ingenuity, and his constitution; if one of the three were to fail him, now that he was rich, it was better that it should be his ingenuity.