Page images
PDF
EPUB

far beyond Peretola. He was not dead, but a physician from a neighboring hamlet had said that he could not possibly recover. A priest had already administered the Santissimo.

While the young man was speaking, a cart drove into the flying-field with the new propeller from Paris.

CHAPTER XV

A SCENT OF DYING FLOWERS, MELTING WAX, AND DUST

THE moment he learned that Camillo Olivuzzi was still alive, Mr. Goodchild ordered the coachman to drive at full speed to the place where the aëroplane had fallen. They had not gone far, however, when they met a mechanic returning on a borrowed bicycle. The man told them that Camillo had already been taken to the military hospital in Florence. So the barouche went racketing toward the city.

Frossie stared straight ahead. She was unaware of Thallie's arms about her, of Mr. Goodchild's broken utterances, of the warning cries that rose from the wayside. Her soul had rushed on, was now striving to mingle once more with the soul of Camillo.

"Faster!" shouted Aurelius.

Once more the coachman railed at his horses and laid on the whip. The bony hacks, extended like a runaway team, raced through the suburbs.

Mr. Goodchild groaned:

"If I had started in the first place, we would be with him now! But I was afraid! I wanted to spare you!"

She did not hear him.

The barouche careened through the broad Viale Principessa Margherita and into Via Cavour. The goal came into view, a long building set opposite a little. park. Before the gate stood Campoformio's motor-car and half a dozen cavalryhorses. The noon sunshine gilded the threshold, worn smooth by the passage of much pain and grief.

They found themselves in a cool, white, stone-paved vestibule, trying to evade the extended arms of a door-porter.

A sur

geon, clad in duck, came forward protesting. ing. At that moment there passed in quickly, behind their backs, an elderly man, smooth-shaven, in a peculiar uniform-the chaplain of the Magenta Cavalry. Then they saw, in a corner of the vestibule, a young officer sitting on a stool, his cap on the pavement, his face buried in his hands. It was Toto Fava.

Mr. Goodchild, escaping the doorporter, ran to the lieutenant.

"Fava! For goodness' sake, sir, speak to these people! Make them let us pass!"

Toto Fava slowly raised a countenance the color of clay. A sigh issued from his throat.

"No use. The doctors are busy. None of us can see him now."

"But it is for Frossie! Surely they won't keep Frossie from him!"

Fava looked up at Aurelius in vague

amazement.

"But they keep me out, too, SignoreI, who was his classmate at Modena, at Pinarolo, at Tor di Quinto, who have loved him for many years. I have shared his mess and his tent, his joys and sorrows; we have had one purse and one heart, and now I am not allowed to touch his hand. They say it makes too many in the room!"

His squinting eyes grew moist, and suddenly a tear ran down his bony visage on each side of his rat-tail mustaches. But he spoke so quietly, there was in his voice so simple a tenderness, that a hush descended over all of them. And even Frossie, leaning on Thallie's shoulder, bowed her head as if listening to the words of eulogy that are spoken over a tomb when he went on:

"Think of it! He has always been the best of us. His sword was not brighter than his honor; there was about him something that we others did not have-something strong and sweet, like the breath of the clean mountains. And so I say, Why should it have come to him? Why should it not have been I, who am not worth his little finger? But no; it must be the good one, while the idler, the wastrel, the buffoon, is left to grow old. That is how

our famous Heaven manages the earth! Ah! ah! Do I not understand to-day the feelings of that poor Rinaldeschi, who threw mud at the fresco of the Annunciation long ago in Via del Corso!"

And he began to swear softly and ferociously, glaring before him, quivering all over with a sacrilegious fury. But soon, realizing that there were ladies present, he stopped, and rose to his feet. His cheekbones smeared with tears, he went to Frossie, supported her to a bench that stood against the wall, and, when he had seated her, reverently kissed her hand, as though she were Camillo's wife.

Even at this unexpected homage, she was not able to weep. For a long while she sat there, her back against the cold wall of stucco, her foot on the cold stone pavement, till her limbs seemed permeated by the chill of death. The door-porter, a wizen veteran who wore the Garibaldi medal, gazed at her with the expression of an aged dog that wishes to display his sympathy. At the end of a long, bleak corridor one saw Azeglio and some other lieutenants pacing back and forth.

At length Azeglio came and whispered to Fava. All followed him through the corridor to a dim room, smelling of iodoform, where several persons were standing round a bed. Frossie sank down, leaned close, pierced the gloom with a poignant look. But the shadowy head on the pillow did not move.

A physician whispered in her ear that Camillo, because of his vitality, would probably live till the arrival of his parents.

They lifted her up and gave her into Mr. Goodchild's charge. As Aurelius led her to the door, she passed close to one who turned his face away. nized the old shooting-coat of Baron di Campoformio.

She recog

Outside the sick-room she became aware that somebody was kneeling before her, kissing her skirt and sobbing; she saw at her feet, through a black mist, a man in a private's uniform, with the appearance of a peasant.

"Pray for him, Signorina! Pray for him!"

"Who is this?" she cried out, recoiling with a convulsive shudder.

In a hoarse voice the fellow answered: "You don't recognize me, Signorina? Why, I am his orderly! Many a time I held his horse at your door. It is I who was to serve you when you were married." All down the corridor the sobs followed

her:

"Pray for him, Signorina!"

Afterward she remembered begging them to let her stay in the hospital; surely there was some little corner where she might wait until the end? But she seemed so weak, and looked so strange, that the doctors objected to this course. Aurelius took her back for the present to the Pension Schwandorf. The news of any alteration for the worse would be telephoned immediately.

Her bedroom seemed odd, like the room of another person sure of a happy fate. She felt, indeed, confused in regard to her identity: how could it be she upon whom this tragedy had descended? When finally they left her alone as she desired, she rose, went to the mirror, scrutinized her reflected features, and said: "Who are you? What wrong have you done to deserve this?" The face in the mirror, extremely pale, so ravaged by these few hours that it seemed the countenance of an unknown, returned her look inscrutably. She reflected, "Perhaps I 'm losing my mind?"

How tired she was! Dropping down. again upon the bed, she stared at the painted griffins, harpies, and mermaids. which composed the decoration of the ceiling. Every figure recalled some thought that had come to her while lying on this bed, when the morning sunshine crept through the shutters to herald another day of joyous expectations.

She felt her heart pulsating slowly, even steadily. She laid a hand against her breast and wondered: "Why should it go on beating? Does n't it know that everything is over, that my life is finished?" And presently, "I must have a black dress." And after a longer period of torpor: "Violets were his favorite

flower. But how shall I get violets late in May? They must be all gone, every one." She was scarcely suffering now; her mind was numb. Nature often provides for the victim of a great mental shock such an anesthetic as was stupefying Frossie.

A breeze stole in through the window. She seemed to float, half-disembodied, in the perfume of the garden. At least, that afternoon in the Cascine he had pressed one kiss upon her lips.

But as the sun declined, this lethargy wore off; her senses awoke to the nightmare of reality. He was there, on the point of leaving her forever, perhaps already gone, and she not with him! How could they have been so cruel as to trick her into this desertion! Struggling to her feet, she perceived that she was not alone: Mr. Goodchild and Thallie rose quickly from the chairs covered with butterflies and monkeys.

"What is it, dear?"

"I am going to him now!" And when they protested, she wailed, in a voice that they had never heard before, "Get me a cab, or I'll run all the way through the streets!"

Aurelius implored her:

"My little girl, you don't know your condition! At any rate, drink this bromide of potassium

"Ah, my God!"

She pushed past him. There was nothing for the others to do but follow. In the cab Thallie drew a scarf around her sister's bare head-the same scarf that Frossie had once used to see what sort of bridal-veil best suited her. Mr. Goodchild, on the folding-seat, still clutched in his hand the tumbler half full of potassium bromide.

They regained the hospital.

This time they were ushered into an anteroom boasting an uncomfortable-looking leather couch, on which the surgeon in charge advised Frossie to lie down. It would be impossible, he said, to see Camillo at present. The patient was still unconscious; to disturb him might be immediately fatal. Aurelius pleaded that

Frossie only wanted to sit beside the bed in silence. But the surgeon, after glancing at her again, clicked his tongue by way of polite refusal.

"Later," he promised, "when the signorina is in a calmer state of mind."

Somehow Aurelius had got hold of a time-table. Running his finger along the lines of type, he murmured:

"The telegram must have been delivered hours ago. If they caught the three o'clock train-"

But the time-table shook in his hand so that he could no longer read it.

Shadows crept into the anteroom: dusk was falling on this day that had been longer than a century. The old doorporter brought in a lighted lamp, and, carefully lifting up his feet, withdrew with a sigh. Out of doors, young men passed, singing, from their work, gay, brisk, assured of many years of vigor.

Those in the anteroom became aware that the surgeon was standing before them.

"He is conscious. I see no reason to hope that his parents can arrive in time. Signorina, I am not going to keep you from him any longer. You would like to see him alone for a few moments, perhaps? Then for the present I will ask you, Signore, and the other young lady, to wait here. Give yourself the trouble to come with me, Signorina."

Again she passed through the long corridor. She reëntered the sick-room.

Camillo was stretched on his back, the coverlet pulled up to his chin, his head turned toward the door. In his countenance, unscarred, but curiously emaciated, and whiter than the pillow, his large, dark eyes, wide-open, burned with a desperate anxiety. But when he perceived that it was Frossie who had come to him, his look changed; the lines across his brow relaxed, on his ashen lips appeared the vague likeness of a smile.

Now her face leaned close to his; his eyes expressed something more awesome than an earthly ardor; their breath mingled as the almost inaudible utterance was exchanged:

"Once more!"

And she pressed on his half-open mouth the second kiss, which evoked, in the midst. of their dolor, a thousand whirling scenes of bliss that they were never to attain.

"My Camillo! My Camillo!"

She wrapped her hands around his head; she kissed him again and again, with a frantic greediness that strove to wrest from Death enough sweet agony to last a lifetime. Her breath entered his throat she wanted to inform his shattered body with all that was vital in her, so that he might live and she die, or, at least, so that he, in passing on, might take something of her with him. Then she fastened her mouth to his as if in that way she could keep his spirit from escaping. But soon, raising her head, she cast upward a glare of wild defiance, ready to match her love against those great invisible forces that were loosening his mortal bonds. She encountered the eyes of another.

Beyond the bed a nun was sitting, coiffed in white linen, a prayer-book in her hands. The restricted oval of that face divulged a puerile beauty wherein worldly experience had left no mark; one saw the features of a congenital devotee, who had made contact with the violent passions only in such hours as this. Now, however, one surprised in her a look more complex than pitying, more subtle than remonstrative-a look of rapt, frightened speculation, as who should dare to say, "This that I see is terrible, yet is it nothing more?" But the pale young nun was no sooner aware of Frossie's gaze than she averted her eyes dilated with that forbidden wonderment. And before the other could have read her thoughts, her lips, which trembled slightly, were once more forming the Latin phrases of the prayerbook.

Smoothing from Camillo's brow the crisp, black curls, Frossie whispered:

"I want you to know that there will never be another! I swear to you that these kisses are the last!"

His voice, as if coming, by a miracle, from far away, responded:

[ocr errors]

"No, you are young."

"I have always been yours. I shall be yours forever. There are not two loves like this in life."

"You are young. I make you free. I want you to be happy."

"I shall never be happy again."

All his remaining strength seemed to permeate his voice as he replied, louder than before:

"How can I go with that thought? I have brought you so much misery when I meant only happiness! I must think that some time it may be repaired. A little home, an honest man, good children-you were made for that. I am not jealous. I am past such things. There is nothing left in me now but love and anxiety for you."

As a result of this speech his forehead was beaded with sweat. The light in his eyes seemed to flicker and grow dim, till she cried in breaking accents:

"I shall come to you as I am!"

"Yes," he panted, "let us hope for that meeting. But, after all, who knows what lies over there? Perhaps I can believe, if you will hold my hand. Ah, I forgot—”

And he cast a blind glance downward toward his body, inert, seemingly diminished beneath the coverlet, shrouded to the shoulders.

"Poor Campoformio! Do not blame him!" Presently, lifting his eyelids, he went on more rapidly, in staccato tones: "I telephoned to the railroad station: they said it had not arrived. But mama will bring it. She must hurry, though, for I'm going to confer with the king. Hark! Is that he already? Turn out, the whole platoon! Plotone, presentat' arm! Trumpeters, the royal fanfare! His Majesty is coming with my brevet!"

The nun rose to her feet. Camillo's roving stare was arrested by her white coif. He said gently:

"What are you doing here, Sister? You ought to be back in the field ambulance. Here the bullets are as thick as bees. Aim lower, ragazzi! A carbine is n't a telescope; there are no Arabs in the moon! Ha! There it goes at last: saddles and

lances! Now, then! Stirrup to stirrup! Avanti! Savoia!"

The nun went quickly to the door and called the surgeon. Frossie turned Camillo's head between her hands, so that his wandering gaze might rest on her. His glistening visage softened at her touch. He murmured:

"As late as that? We have been happy enough for one time, is it not so? Now, dear, let us go to sleep."

His eyes closed. His breathing was almost imperceptible.

The physician remained aloof, leaning against the door-post. The nun, kneeling down on the stone pavement, repeated the prayers for the dying. There entered through a window, from the darkness, the faint hubbub of the city. Near at hand, a confused, pervasive rustling swelled forth, the sound of many branches swaying in the evening breeze, like the rumor of innumerable softly moving wings. After a while, from the artillery-barracks to the west, came faintly a bugle-call, the ritirata. But even at this sound Camillo did not stir.

So finally Frossie gave the last kiss of all, a kiss so long, so clinging, so full of the agony of loneliness, that Camillo, wherever he had gone, must certainly have felt it.

All that night and all the next day she lived in a daze. Faces appeared and disappeared before her; voices whispered, "If only she would cry!" They brought her food, which she refused, and visitingcards. She read the names, "Tenente Benevenuto Fava, Cavalleria di Magenta; Tenente Ruggero Azeglio, Cavalleria di Magenta; Colonnello delle Bande Rosse, Cavalleria di Magenta," and so on. But when she saw the card marked with a baron's coronet and inscribed, "Di Campoformio," she slowly tore up the bristol. and let the fragments flutter to the floor. The old Count and Countess Olivuzzi had arrived in Florence. Aurelius asked Frossie if she could bear to meet Camillo's mother.

"Is it necessary?" she asked. "Can't I see her at the funeral?"

Aurelius told her that there was to be a military service in the duomo, and afterward a cortège through the city to the cemetery; but among the Italian nobility it was not the custom for ladies to attend such obsequies.

Frossie pondered this information for a while.

"So they want to shut us out from that? But the man who killed him will be present, I suppose?" Soon she asked, "Is his mother with him now?"

"Yes, poor woman!"

"Then I won't disturb her. I had him living; I ought to let her have him dead. Besides, he is not there."

The second night, also, Frossie scarcely slept. The dawn found her at the window, listening for the duomo bells. There she suffered a collapse; for Thallie, waking, found her huddled in her night-dress on the red tiles. Reviving, she asked for her slippers and a kimono, so that she could go to him at once. They put her to bed and sent for a physician. When the latter had gone, she asked:

"Did you send the flowers?"
After that she seemed to doze.

But when Mr. Goodchild had been absent for an hour, all at once she sat up in bed, alert, staring at Thallie. "Hark!"

She had heard the faint tolling of the bells.

"Come, help me to dress. I am going to the church."

"Oh, Frossie! You heard what dad said!"

"What are rules of etiquette to me?" Ten minutes later she was on her way to the duomo in a cab.

The bells were still tolling when the cab reached the center of the city. But suddenly the coachman reined in his horse. Down the street, from the direction of the duomo, was wafted a muffled blare, the sound of a military band.

The cortège had already left the church. There came scuffling along the roadway a herd of shabby men and children in advance of the procession. Behind them followed the band of the Magenta Cav

« PreviousContinue »