Taquisara

"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 hoa.r.s.e 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 rea.s.suring 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 hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistance 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 superst.i.tious 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al 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, coa.r.s.e 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 ident.i.ty. 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 ca.s.sock. 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."