Part 37 (1/2)
In the week they had spent in Turin there had been already twenty or thirty communications of various kinds. Poor Marcantonio never knew that his sister sorted the mail for him. It was brought to him by the confidential servant, and he always took it and went to his room with an air of great importance to ”get through his business,” as he expressed it. He was evidently proud of doing it, showing that unaccountable vanity in small things which characterises so many lunatics. Indeed, he had always been proud of his attention to details, and now it became a sort of pa.s.sion, though he was never able to carry out his intentions, and always left the unfinished work to Diana.
On the fourth of September Julius Batis...o...b..'s letter, directed to Marcantonio in Rome, had come back to Turin. Julius had marked it ”very urgent,” and the steward had looked at it, had thought Batis...o...b..'s handwriting indistinct, and to secure greater certainty had put it into another envelope and directed it in his own business-like way. The consequence was that it was mistaken for a common business letter, and handed to Marcantonio with the rest.
It seemed to be the last blow that an evil fate could strike at the unhappy man, and it was a terrible one in itself and in its consequences.
He sat at his table by the window, opening one letter after another, and looking over the contents with a pleased expression, a little vacant perhaps, but not altogether without intelligence. There was a lacuna in his mind, and sometimes he was conscious of being confused by faces and things about him, but he was still capable of understanding the questions about his estates, and farms, and buildings, though he always seemed to lack the energy to write the directions with his own hand.
He turned over the sheets and folded each one neatly and put it back into its particular envelope. Then he opened the one from the steward, and found in it a letter directed to Rome in a strange hand.
He held it in his fingers with a puzzled look for a moment; it seemed as though one letter had suddenly become two. Then he understood and smiled a little sadly at his own weakness of comprehension, and broke the seal.
The effect was not instantaneous. He read it over again, and a third time, his face still vacant, and he put his hand to his head trying and striving with all his might to remember. The week of insanity had done its work and Diana need not have feared that he could be easily recalled to an understanding of the past. But it was not wholly gone yet; he would try to remember. He rose to his feet, and perhaps the slight physical effort helped to stir his dull mind.
Suddenly he trembled violently from head to foot, and his colour changed from the natural complexion it had taken of late to a deadly pallor. For an instant his whole nature seemed to be convulsed, he reeled to and fro and caught himself by the heavy frame of his bedstead, staring wildly about, and fell backwards across the pillows, clutching the counterpane to right and left of him with his two hands, his face distorted and horrible to see.
It only lasted for a moment, and he regained his feet, stood still for a few seconds, and pa.s.sed his hands across his eyes and seemed at once to recover his faculties. He took Batis...o...b..'s letter again and read it over, as though fixing the few words and the address in his mind. The vacant expression of ten minutes ago had changed to a look of supernatural intelligence and cunning. He put the letter in his pocket and sat down at the table. He opened some of the envelopes again and scattered the papers about, eying the effect rather critically. He then took his dressing-case, opened it, and removed one small tray, and then a second. In the bottom of the box was a revolver, bright and ready, with all its appurtenances, a few cartridges lying loose in their little compartment. The weapon was loaded, but he carefully opened it and examined each chamber, turning it round slowly by the light. It was not a large pistol, and when he was sure that it was in order, he put it carefully into the inside pocket of his coat, and surveyed the effect in the gla.s.s. No one would have suspected that he was armed.
He saw that his hat was ready in its place, and he rang the bell and sat down at his table once more, holding a letter in his hand, as though reading. The confidential servant appeared.
”Will you please to bring me a lemonade?” said Marcantonio, with perfectly natural intonation. The man bowed and retired to execute the order. His master seemed better than usual, he thought; the appearance of the papers and Carantoni's bland smile had completely deceived him.
As soon as he was alone he took his hat, felt that he had his purse in his pocket, and opened the door to the sitting-room. Diana was not there, for she generally wrote her own letters until Marcantonio appeared with his correspondence, asking her to answer it for him. The servant was gone to get the lemonade and Marcantonio slipped quietly out on tiptoe.
Once upon the main staircase of the hotel he ran nimbly down, humming a little tune in a jaunty fas.h.i.+on, to show everybody that he was at his ease. Of course the people in the house had no idea that he was insane.
It had been Diana's chiefest care to conceal the fact from every one; and Marcantonio walked calmly past the porter's lodge into the street, and took a cab. It was nearly midday and the thoroughfares were less crowded than in the morning and evening; the cab flew rapidly over the smooth pavement to the station.
There are many trains to Cuneo in the summer season, and before very long Carantoni found himself in a smoking-carriage with three or four men, all reading the papers and smoking long, black cigars with straws in them. He lit a cigarette, bought a paper just as the guard was closing the doors, and he rolled out of the station, looking just like anybody else. He pretended to read, and no one noticed him.
When the servant returned with the lemonade and found that Marcantonio was gone, he did not suspect what was the matter, but put the gla.s.s on the table and went back to the antechamber and waited at his post. He waited a few minutes and then knocked at Diana's door, and asked if the signore were with her.
”No,” said Diana quickly, and came out into the sitting-room in her loose morning gown. ”Where is he? Is he not in his room? He never comes into mine.”
”He is not there,” said the man, who by this time was thoroughly frightened. ”He sent me for a lemonade. He looked better than usual, and was sitting just there, at his table, reading his letters. When I came back he was gone. He seemed entirely himself, better than I have ever seen him.”
Diana was frightened and puzzled. After all it was quite possible that Marcantonio had taken it into his head to go out by himself. He had never suggested such a thing yet, and always seemed unwilling to cross the threshold alone; but since he was so much better that day, he might have gone out. It was possible. She would not have believed that without some immediate cause he could have fallen back into a remembrance of his troubles; for she had studied his moods very carefully, and was convinced that, as the doctor said, there would always be a blank in his mind now, destroying the memory of those three or four days. She glanced hastily over the papers on the table. They were all of the usual sort, for Marcantonio had taken Batis...o...b..'s letter with him.
Nevertheless, she was very much frightened, and was angry with the confidential servant for not having sent some one else to get the lemonade. She lost no time in dispatching him to make inquiries. He was really an active man, and understood his business thoroughly, but Marcantonio's manner had completely deceived him, and he had conscientiously thought his charge perfectly safe. Maniacs have more than once deceived their keepers, and their doctors, and Marcantonio seemed to have fallen into a very different sort of madness--rather foolish and gentle than cunning and dangerous.
The servant soon discovered that Marcantonio had pa.s.sed the porter's lodge and had taken a cab, not many minutes earlier; but no one had heard the order he gave to the driver. There were no more carriages on the stand. The man lost no time but ran down the street till he found one, and was driven to the station, as he was, bareheaded and clothed in a dress-coat and a white tie, after the manner of hotel servants in the morning. His experience told him that crazy people generally made for the railway when they escaped. But he was too late. A train had just left--he made anxious inquiries of every one, describing Marcantonio's clothes and jewelry, which he knew by heart. No one had noticed him. He might not have come to the station after all.
But a dirty little boy elbowed his way through the crowd of railway porters and guards that soon surrounded the man, and the boy listened.
”Had that signore a great ring on his finger, with a black stone in it, and a red one on each side?” he asked.
”Yes,” cried the confidential servant. ”You have seen him?” He seized the small boy by the arm and held him fast.
”Yes,” said the little fellow; ”but you have no need to pinch me like that. I sold him a paper, and he gave me a silver half-franc, and I noticed his fingers and his ring.”
The servant released him.
Some one else had noticed the ring, which was very large and brilliant,--a great sapphire with a ruby on each side of it. The individual remembered hearing the gentleman ask for the train to Cuneo.