There is water and good wine. They are the best cordials."
"Eh, a little water. I do not refuse. As for the wine, no. I thank you the same. I am fasting and have walked. After supper, at home, I will drink."
"Serafina!" cried Sor Tommaso, and the old sibyl immediately appeared from the stairs, whither she had discreetly retired to wait during Annetta"s visit. "Bring water, and that bottle of my wine from downstairs. You know, the bottle of old wine of Stefanone"s that was opened."
"No, no. I want no wine," said Annetta, quickly.
"Bring it all the same. Perhaps she will do us the honour to drink it."
Serafina nodded, and her bare feet were heard on the stone steps as she descended.
"It is bad to drink pure water when one is very thirsty," said Sor Tommaso. "It cramps the stomach. A little wine gives the stomach strength. But it is best to eat. If you will eat, there are fresh jumbles. I also eat them."
"I thank you the same," answered Annetta. "I wish only water. It is a long way from Civitella, and there is no good spring. There is the brook that runs out of the pond at the foot of the last hill. But it is heavy water, full of stuff."
Serafina came back, bringing two heavy tumblers of pressed gla.s.s on a little black j.a.panned tray, with a decanter of cold water. In her other hand she carried two bottles, one half full of wine, the other containing the white and sugary syrup of peach kernels of which Italians are so fond.
"I brought this also," she said, holding up the bottle as she set down the tray. "Perhaps it is better."
"Yes," said Sor Tommaso, nodding in approbation. "It is better."
"You will drink a little orgeat?" asked the old woman, in a tone of persuasion, and mixing it in the gla.s.s.
"Water, simply water," said Annetta, who was still suspicious. "Give me water in the other gla.s.s."
"But I have mixed already in both," answered Serafina. "Eh, you will drink it. You will not make an old woman like me go all the way down the stairs again. But then, it is good. It is I that tell you. I made it myself, yesterday morning, for the doctor, to refresh his blood a little."
Annetta had risen to her feet and was watching the gla.s.ses, as the old woman stirred the white syrup in the water with an old-fashioned, long-handled spoon. She did not wish to seem absurdly suspicious, and yet she distrusted her enemy. She took one of the gla.s.ses, went to his side, and held it to his lips as one gives an invalid drink.
"After you," he said, with a polite smile, but raising his hand to take the gla.s.s.
"Sick people first, well people afterwards," answered Annetta, smiling too, but watching him intently.
He had satisfied himself that she really suspected foul play, for he knew the peasants well, and was only a degree removed from them himself.
He at once dismissed her suspicions by drinking half the tumbler at a draught. She immediately took the other and emptied it eagerly, as she was really very thirsty.
"A little more?" suggested Serafina, in her croaking voice.
"No," interposed Sor Tommaso. "It might hurt her--so much at once."
But Annetta filled the tumbler with pure water, and emptied it again.
"At last!" she exclaimed with a sigh of satisfaction. "What thirst! I seemed to have eaten ashes! And now I thank you, Sor Tommaso, and I am going home; for it is Ave Maria, and I do not wish to make a bad meeting in the dark as happened to you. Ugly a.s.sa.s.sins! I will never forgive them, never! What am I to say at home? That you will come to supper one of these days?"
"Eh, if G.o.d wills," answered the doctor. "I will be accompanied by Serafina."
"I!" exclaimed the old woman. "I am afraid even of a cat! What could I do for you?"
"Company is always company," said Sor Tommaso, wisely. "Where one would not go, two go bravely. Good evening, my beautiful daughter," he added, looking up at Annetta. "The Madonna go with you."
"Thank you, and good evening," answered the girl, dropping half a courtsey, with a vicious twinkle in her little eyes.
She turned, and was out of the room in a moment. On the way home through the narrow streets in the evening glow, she sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of song to herself, and thought of all she had said to Sor Tommaso, and of all he had said to her, and of how much afraid he was of her father"s knife.
For otherwise, as she knew, he would have had her arrested.
Suddenly, at the last turning she stopped and turned very pale, clasping both hands upon her bodice.
"a.s.sa.s.sin!" she groaned, grinding her short white teeth. "_He_ has poisoned me, after all! An evil death to him and all his house!
a.s.sa.s.sin!"
She forgot that she had experienced precisely the same sensations once before, when she had been overheated and had swallowed too much cold water.
CHAPTER XIII.
WITH slow steps, and pressing her clasped hands to her bodice, the girl reached the door of her father"s house at dusk. She knew that he was away, and that as she had not come home earlier her mother would be in the lower regions preparing Dalrymple"s supper for him. The door which gave access to the staircase from the street was still open, and she was almost sure of being able to reach her own room un.o.bserved, unless she chanced to come upon Dalrymple himself on the stairs. Just then she would rather have met him than her mother. She was in great pain, and it would have been hard to explain to Sora Nanna that she believed herself to have been deliberately poisoned.
She crept noiselessly up the stairs, which were almost dark, and she came to Dalrymple"s door which faced the first landing. She paused and hesitated, leaning against the wall. He was a wise man in her opinion, and would of course understand her symptoms at once. But then, as she was poisoned, he could do nothing for her. If that were true, her next thought told her that Sor Tommaso must have poisoned himself. He would not do that. She had never heard of antidotes; for though poisoning was traditionally familiar to her and the people of her cla.s.s, it was very uncommon. Yet her sharpened wit told her that if Sor Tommaso had swallowed the stuff, as he had done, with a smile, he had means at his disposal for counteracting it--some medicine which he had doubtless taken as soon as she had left him. But if he had medicine to save from poison, Dalrymple, who was a far wiser man, must have such medicines, too, and even better ones. This reflexion decided her. She was close to his door. It was probable that he would be in his room at that hour. She was in fear of her life, and she knocked.
But Dalrymple had not come back. He had gone for a long walk alone in the hills, had climbed higher as the sun sank lower, and was belated in steep paths along which even his mountain-trained feet trod with some caution. He was too familiar with the country to lose his way, but he by no means found the shortest way there was, nor was he especially anxious to do so. The hours would pa.s.s sooner in walking than in sitting over his books under the flaring little flames of the three bra.s.s beaks.
Annetta saw that there was no light in the room, for the hole through which the latch-string hung was worn wide with use. She felt dizzy, too, and the knife-like pain ran through her so that she bent herself. She knew that Dalrymple kept his medicines locked up in the laboratory, and that she could not get at them, though she would have had little hesitation in swallowing anything she found, in the simple certainty that all his medicines must be good in themselves, and therefore life-saving and good for her. But he was out, and she was sure that there could be nothing in the bedroom. She had herself too often looked into every corner when she watered and swept the brick floor each morning, and put things in order according to her primitive ideas.
She then and there lost her hold upon life. She was poisoned, and must die. She was as sure of it as the Chinaman who has seen an eagle, and who, recognizing that his hour is come, calmly lies down and breathes his last by the mere suspension of volition. In old countries the lower orders, as a rule, have but a low vitality. It may be truer to say that the vital volition is weak. Let the learned settle the definition. The fact is easily accounted for. During generations upon generations the majority of European agricultural populations live upon vegetable food, like the majority of Eastern Asiatics, and with the same result. Hard labour produces hard muscles, but vegetable food yields a low vital tension, so to say. Soldiers know it well enough. The pale-faced city clerk who eats meat twice a day will out-fight and out-last and out-starve the burly labourer whose big thews and sinews are mostly compounded of potatoes, corn, and water.
The girl crept up the stairs stealthily to her lonely little room, and lay down to die upon her bed, as though that were the only thing to be done under the circ.u.mstances. It never occurred to her to go to her mother and tell her what had happened and what she suspected, any more than it had suggested itself to Sor Tommaso to lay information against her for having stabbed him. If her father had been at home, she might perhaps have gone to him and told him with her dying breath that the doctor had killed her, and that Stefanone must avenge her. But he was away. She was stronger than her mother and had always dominated her. She knew also that if she complained, Sora Nanna would raise such a scream as would bring half Subiaco running to the house. The girl"s animal instinct was to die alone, and quietly. So she made no sound, and lay upon her bed writhing in pain and holding her sides with all her might, but with close-set teeth and silent lips.
Looked at from the point of view of fact, it was all ridiculous enough.
The girl had been all day in the hot autumn sun, had eaten a quant.i.ty of over-ripe figs and grapes, which might have upset the digestion of an ostrich, had tired even her strong limbs with the final walk home, and had then, at Sor Tommaso"s house, swallowed nearly a quart of ice-cold water. It was not surprising that she should be very ill. It was not even strange that the theory of poison should suggest itself. To her it was tragedy, and meant nothing less than death, when she lay down upon her bed.
Between the spasms all sorts of things pa.s.sed through her mind, when her head lay still upon the pillow. Chiefly and particularly her thoughts were filled with hatred of Sor Tommaso, and a sort of doglike longing to see Dalrymple"s face before she died. She was still fascinated by the vision of his red hair and bright blue eyes which came back to her vividly, with the careless smile his hard face had for her half-childish, half-malicious sayings. And with the thought of him came also jealousy of Maria Addolorata, and another hatred which was deeper and stronger and more vengeful than any she owed Sor Tommaso. She felt, rather than understood, that Dalrymple loved the nun with all his heart.
She had spoken of her to him and had watched his face, and had seen the quick, savage glare of his eyes, though his voice had only expressed his annoyance. As the vision of him rose before her, she saw him as he had been when the angry blush had overspread his face to the roots of his hair.
The image fixed itself. In the dim shadow behind it, she saw the face of Maria Addolorata like a death-mask, and those strange, deep eyes of the nun"s looking scornfully at her over the man"s shoulder, though she forgot him in the woman"s deadly fascination. She stared, unable to close her lids, as it seemed to her, though she longed to shut out the sight. Then a dull noise seemed to be in her ears, a noise that was not a sound, but the stunning effect on her brain of a sound not heard but imagined. There were great circles of light around the nun"s head, which cut through Dalrymple"s face and then hid it. They were like glories, like the halos about the heads of saints. Annetta was angry with them, for she was sure that Maria Addolorata was bad, and sinned in her throat.
"An evil death on you and all your house!" cried the angry peasant girl, in a low voice.
"Death!" She could not tell whence the echo came back to her, in a tone strange to her ears--for it was her own, perhaps.
She was startled. The vision vanished, and she sat up on her bed with a quick movement, suddenly wide awake. The pain must have pa.s.sed. No--it came again, but with far less keenness. She felt her face with her hands, and laughed softly, for she knew that she was alive. It was night, and she must have lain some time there all alone, for there was a silvery, misty something through the darkness, the white dawn of moonrise, which is not like the dawn of day, nor like the departing twilight. As she sat up she saw the outline of the hills, jagged against the crosses of the lead-joined panes in the window. There was the moon-dawn sending up its soft radiance to the sky. A little longer she watched, and a single bright point sent one level ray straight into her face. A moment more and the room was flooded with light so that she could see the smallest objects distinctly.
"But I am alive!" she exclaimed in a soft, glad tone. "The brigand only did me a spite. He was afraid to kill me."
The pain seized her again, less sharp than before, but keen enough to stir her anger. She still sat up, but bent forward, clasping her bodice.
In the moonlight she could see her heavy shoes on her feet sticking up before her. Realizing that it was a disgraceful thing to lie down with them on, she sprang off the bed, and began to dust the coverlet with her hand. The pain pa.s.sed.