Part 20 (1/2)
”Eat what the others eat. Drink what the others drink. Take nothing especially prepared for you. Lock your door at night. If you will not leave the house, that is all you can do.”
He shook his head thoughtfully.
It was true Italian advice--against poison and smothering. Veronica smiled, even in her sadness.
”I have no fear,” she said. ”Let us say no more about it. Can I do anything for the people at Muro?” she asked, by way of preparing to send him away.
”The people at Muro--the people at Muro,” he repeated dreamily. ”Oh yes--they are all poor--almost all. Money would help them. The best would be to come and see us yourself, princess. But if you are not careful, you will never come now,” he added, turning the big spectacles slowly towards her and looking long into her face. ”I have done what I could to warn you,” he said, beginning to rise. ”I will do anything I can to watch over you--but it will be little. Good bye. G.o.d preserve you.”
As she rose she rang the bell beside her that her maid might come and show him the way out. She knew that by this time Elettra must have returned from her errands. The afternoon light was already failing.
She held out her hand, and he took it and kept it for a moment.
”G.o.d preserve you,” he repeated earnestly.
He turned just as Elettra opened the door. The woman recognized him at once, came forward and kissed his hand, he having long been her parish priest. Then she led the way out. Don Teodoro turned at the door and bowed again, and Veronica, standing by the fire, nodded and smiled kindly to him. She was sorry for him. She had never seen him before, and he seemed to be devoted to her, and yet she was sure that his mind was feeble and unsettled. No sane person could believe the monstrous things he had told her.
Outside, he made a few steps and then stopped Elettra, laying his emaciated hand upon her shoulder. He looked behind him and saw that they were alone in the pa.s.sage.
”Take care of your mistress, my daughter,” he said. ”Naples is not Muro, but it is no better. Let her eat what others eat, drink what others drink, and take no medicines except from you, and make her lock her door at night. This is not a good house.”
The dark woman looked at him fixedly for several seconds, and then nodded twice.
”It is well that you have told me, Father Curate,” she said in a low voice. ”I understand.”
That was all, and she turned to lead him out.
CHAPTER XII.
After that, Elettra, unknown to Veronica, slept in the dressing-room every night. After her mistress had gone to bed in the inner chamber, the woman used to lock the outer door softly and then draw a short, light sofa across it; on this she lay as best she might. The nights were cold, after the fire had gone out, and she covered herself with a cloak of Veronica's. In itself, it was no great hards.h.i.+p for a tough woman of the mountains, as she was. But she slept little, for she feared something. In the small hours she often thought she heard some one breathing on the other side of the door, close to the lock, and once she was quite sure that a single ray of light flashed through the keyhole, below the half-turned key. Yet this might have been her imagination. And as for the breathing, there was a large Maltese cat in the house that sometimes wandered about at night. It might be purring all alone outside, in the dark, and she might have taken the sound for that of human breathing. No people are more suspicious and imaginative than Italians, when they have been warned that there is danger; and this does not proceed from natural timidity, but from the enormous value they set upon life itself, as a good possession.
As for what Veronica ate and drank, Elettra was wise, too. She felt sure that if any attempt were made to poison her, Matilde would manage it quite alone; and she seriously expected that such an attempt would be made, after what Don Teodoro had told her. Veronica, like most Italians in the south, never took any regular breakfast, beyond a cup of coffee, or tea, or chocolate, with a bit of bread or a biscuit, as soon as she awoke. It was easy to be sure that such simple things had not been within Matilde's reach, and it was Elettra's duty to go to the pantry where coffee was made, and to bring the little tray to Veronica's room.
At night, the young girl had a gla.s.s of water and a biscuit set beside her, when she went to sleep, but she rarely touched either. Elettra now brought the biscuits herself and kept them in a cupboard in the dressing-room, and she herself drew the water every night to fill the gla.s.s. So far as any food and drink which came to her room were concerned, Veronica was perfectly safe. But Elettra could not control what she ate in the dining-room. She would not communicate her fears to Veronica, either, for she knew her mistress well; and at the same time she did not know what or how much Don Teodoro had told her during his visit. Veronica was perfectly fearless, and was inclined to be impatient, at any time, when any one insisted upon her taking any precautions, for any reason whatsoever--even against catching cold. She was not rash, however, for she had not been brought up in a way to develop any such tendency. She was naturally courageous, and that was all. She was unconscious of the quality, for she had not hitherto been aware of ever being in any real danger.
As for Don Teodoro's warning, she put it down as the result of some mental shock which had weakened his intelligence. Possibly Bosio's sudden and terrible death had affected him in that way. At all events, she was enough of an Italian to know how often in Italy such extraordinary ideas of fict.i.tious treachery find their way into the brains of timid people. On the face of it, the whole story seemed to her utterly absurd and foolish, from the tale of Macomer's ingenious frauds upon her property, to the supposition that she was in danger of being murdered for her fortune. Murder was always found out in the end, she thought, and of course such people as her aunt and uncle, even if they had any real reason for wis.h.i.+ng their niece out of the way, would never really think of doing anything at once so wicked and so unwise. But the whole thing was absurd, she repeated to herself, and she found it easy to put it out of her thoughts.
Meanwhile, the first days after the catastrophe pa.s.sed in that sad, unmarked succession of objectless hours by which time moves in a house where such a death has taken place. It is not the custom among the upper cla.s.ses of Italians to attend the funerals of relations and friends. The servants are sent, in deep mourning, to kneel before the catafalque in church during the first requiem ma.s.s. Occasionally some of the men of a family are present at the short ceremony in the cemetery. But that is all. The family, as a rule, leaves the city at once.
Veronica wondered why her aunt and uncle did not propose to go to the country. Macomer had a pretty place in the hills near Caserta, and though it was winter the climate there was very pleasant. She did not know that the house was already dismantled, in antic.i.p.ation of the probable foreclosure of a mortgage. Besides, in his desperate position, Gregorio would have feared to leave Naples for a day. As for making a journey to some other city, he was positively reduced to the point of having no ready money with which to go. Lamberto Squarci, the notary, positively refused to advance anything, and it was quite certain that no one else would. For Squarci, who was a wise villain in his way, and had aided and abetted Macomer's frauds in order to enrich himself, had only given his a.s.sistance so long as he was quite sure that he was acting as the paid agent of Veronica's guardian. The responsibility was then entirely theirs, and he merely obeyed their directions in preparing any necessary legal doc.u.ments. But as soon as the guardians.h.i.+p had expired, he knew that in order to be of use in helping Macomer to rob his ward, he should be obliged to artificially construct the instruments needed, in such a way as to appear legal to the world. In such business, forgery could not be far off. The man had himself to think of as well as mere money, and at the point where the smallest illegality of action on his part would have begun, he stopped short, and refused to do anything whatever, leaving Macomer to grapple with his creditors as best he might, and to take care of himself if he could. It was now the middle of December, and the guardians.h.i.+p had expired, legally speaking, in the previous month of March, when Macomer's debts had already reached a very high figure. Macomer, after that, had presumed upon his authority and position to draw Veronica's income for his own purposes. That was easy, as the revenues accrued almost entirely from the great landed estates, of which the various stewards were in the habit of sending the rents, when collected, directly to Macomer. It was clear that unless Veronica herself protested, and until the authorities should discover that she was being cheated, these men would naturally continue to send the rents to the order of Gregorio Macomer.
Feeling that he was near the end of his chances, he had desperately attempted to improve his position by using as much of the year's income as he could extract from the stewards, in a final speculation. This had failed. He had not been able to pay the interest on his mortgages, and the ready money was all gone. A disastrous financial crisis had supervened, which had made itself felt throughout the country, and the banks which held the mortgages had given notice that they would foreclose some of them, and not renew the others. If Gregorio Macomer could have laid hands, no matter how, on any sum of money worth mentioning, he would have fled, under an a.s.sumed name, to the Argentine Republic, the usual refuge of Italians in difficulties. But he had exhausted all he could touch, had gambled, and had lost it. If he fled now, it must be as a penniless emigrant. As he had no taste for such adventures, at his age, there was but one chance for him, and that lay in somehow getting control of Veronica's fortune before the end of the month. As for getting any more of the income, in time to be of any use in staving off the tidal wave of ruin that rose against him, there was no chance of that. The farmers all over the country paid their quarter's rents on the first of January, or should do so, but there was often difficulty in collecting, and the money would not really get to Macomer's hands much before February. By that time all would be over; and it was not the idea of bankruptcy which frightened Gregorio; it was the certainty that a declaration of bankruptcy must lead to, and involve, a minute examination into his past transactions which had led to it.
Matilde knew all the truth, as has been shown. What she suffered in remaining in Naples, in going and coming through the familiar rooms, in spending her evenings in that room, of all others, in which she had last seen Bosio alive, no one knew. She went about silently, and her face grew daily paler and thinner. In her behaviour she was subdued and silent, though she treated Veronica with greater consideration than before. They had never spoken together of the possible reasons for Bosio's death, but it had been publicly stated that he had been insane, and Matilde, to all appearances, accepted the explanation as sufficient.
It was made the more reasonable by the evident fact that Gregorio's mind was unsettled, and that he himself was in imminent danger of going mad.
That, at least, was the impression produced upon the household.
As the days went by, the gloom deepened in the Palazzo Macomer, and when the three met at their meals, or sat together for a short time in the evening, the silence was rarely broken.