Читать книгу Musk and Amber - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 8

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A year later, almost to the day, Mr. Elliot drove away from Rome by the gate of St. John de Lateran. He had a tedious journey ahead of him which he might have beguiled by comparing it with the description written of it by Horace to his friend Lollius, had he possessed that knowledge of Latin which Henry Scoble thought the necessary accomplishment of a gentleman. But Mr. Elliot was not distressed by the dreariness of the scenery or its ruined towers. For every step of it, along the Appian way, the by-pass round the Pontine marshes, the Appian way again to Capua of the mild air and fertile soil, brought him nearer to the home of Italian music and his journey’s end—Naples. Elliot passed through the gate of San Januarius as the evening fell and drove to the great inn on the Corso between the Castel dell ’Ovo and Posilippo where he was accustomed to stay. Mr. Elliot was happy. The air was scented with lemons and oranges and all the fragrance of the Campagna Felice. The moon was rising and the great bay curved within its horns like a sheet of silver with the riding lights of the fishing boats gleaming like topazes upon its surface. The streets were crowded and noisy with laughter and talk. The day was the first Saturday of the month of May. That the dark flower of tragedy was opening amidst all the fragrance of this beloved city on this very evening, Mr. Elliot would never have believed.

There was always, he remembered, a small throng of curious idlers about this famous inn “The Golden Ox,” but to-night it was larger than he had ever known it to be, and, marvellously, it was silent. Up and down the Corso, voices chattered and clacked. A little way off someone was thrumming a two-stringed guitar. But here under the windows of “The Golden Ox” there was a crowded patch of silence. The little throng gave way politely as the carriage with its four horses dashed up to the inn door, but it closed in again round the equipage and Mr. Elliot noticed that all the faces, so white in the gloom of the night, were turned upwards and that from a suite of rooms upon the first floor the lights blazed out above their heads. For a moment Mr. Elliot conjectured that some great “milor” had suddenly arrived and astounded Naples by the magnificence of his retinue. But a phrase or two spoken by one of the crowd corrected him. A woman’s voice first. She threw back her hood and cried:

“Cristo Benedetto! Let him sing again.”

And a man answered her.

“Where’s the use if you squeal?”

Mr. Elliot was delighted. He understood now the reason for all this to-do. One of the great ones, one of the soprani, as famous for their vanity and parade as for their matchless voices, was giving his birth-town a free performance to celebrate his return. Farinelli perhaps from Madrid? No! One heard strange tales of his modesty. Senesino then? Certainly it would be Senesino, back from a season at the London Opera House in the Haymarket—Senesino, one pocket heavy with good gold English guineas and the other stuffed, strangely enough, with billets doux from the ladies.

But again Mr. Elliot was wrong. For the singer did sing again and he knew the song and the singer too well to remain in any doubt, even though he had heard the song but the once.

“She has eyes that are deeper and kinder than sapphires,

Her lips’ dark velvet defies the rose.

Oh, I can’t believe that other lads have fires

Fierce as the one which destroys my repose.

And so I wander by forest and boulder

Hoping that one day in spite of my fears

I shall wake with a golden head at my shoulder

Instead of a pillow wet with my tears.”

Again the magic of the notes twisted Elliot’s heart and brought a lump into his throat—the high lift and throb of passion snatching at happiness beyond reach and then declining in a long sustained curve upon a grief which the exquisite purity of the voice made at once intolerable and yet left an urgent longing that it should be repeated. The crowd in the street broke into cries of delight. It clapped its hands, it brandished its arms, it did not go so far as was the fashion in a theatre at Rome where enthusiastic youth was wont to take its shoes off and toss them over its shoulders, because most of it had no shoes upon its feet at all. But it clamoured for more and uttered one loud groan when swiftly the curtains were drawn across the windows and the light streaming out above its heads was darkened.

Mr. Elliot turned into his hotel. His bedroom had been reserved for him and whilst his landlord showed him into it and lit the candles, he ordered his supper.

“You have a great deal of company to-night,” he said.

The landlord smiled happily.

“The Feast of San Januarius always brings us company. There are great and splendid processions and the miracle of the blood to end the day. It is a very curious miracle, as your Excellency doubtless remembers.”

The landlord shrugged his shoulders and laughed rather sceptically.

“Yes, I do remember it now,” said Elliot, who up to this moment had not given a thought to it. “The first Sunday in May to be sure.”

“A very important day for Naples, illustrious one! Were the miracle not to repeat itself, the lazzaroni would expect misfortunes and disasters. The Saint is their patron as your Excellency knows. They would look for a reason for his anger; an Archbishop of whom he did not approve; a heretic on a balcony over the square or in the crowd who had laughed—ah, ah, it might not be pretty that scene. But then,” and the sceptical landlord shrugged his shoulders, “the miracle never does fail—even with a new Archbishop as we shall have to-morrow.”

Mr. Elliot was only listening with half an ear. He did not believe at all in violences and outrage by the lazzaroni—those thirty thousand homeless, ragged, good-tempered vagabonds who roamed the city by day, cuffed out of the road by running footmen, willing to run an errand for a few soldi, picking up a living somehow and sleeping on doorsills by night. He took no interest in the miracle of the blood of San Januarius at the moment. But he knew his landlord, Gasparo Rossi, of old. He must have an excitement if he could whip it up, and he must be allowed to run on, until he ran down. So Elliot answered:

“You have a new Archbishop then?”

“His Grace, Signor Giovanni Rondella, a man of great holiness. Oh, the blood, my nobleman, will melt under his fingers, be assured.” After all it never paid to frighten your guests out of the town. “All will be well.”

Elliot saw a chance of asking his question at last.

“You have amongst your guests, Gasparo, old friends of mine, I think?”

Gasparo nodded his head vigorously.

“You were often here, my magnificence, with the old Earl of Linchcombe. We have now his daughter, the Lady Francesca, the Lord and his tutor, a Lady Fritton, the Lord’s great-aunt, maids, valets, a courier and a doctor.”

“Ah! A doctor?” said Elliot.

“A doctor,” Gasparo repeated admiringly.

So Lady Frances had called in the doctors. And they had recommended, as Henry Scoble had prophesied, a change of scene and a jaunt to Naples for one of them, with a nice fat fee no doubt to complete his enjoyment.

“Only the English milords travel in such state,” Gasparo added, wishing the world was full of them.

Mr. Elliot shrugged his shoulders. Well, if they could afford it, why not! He could not bring himself to believe that there was much wrong with the health of the boy Julian Linchcombe. The clear sound of his voice denied it. But at the same time he felt grateful to Frances for the loving care she was bestowing upon him; and he took his supper up there in his bedroom with a glow of friendship for her; of which he would give some little proof to her in the morning. But not to-night. Elliot was never in a hurry to exhaust a pleasure. Naples now! He had travelled in his coach throughout a long day. He was not going to spoil his first visit to an old friend or a theatre or a popular booth where a new farce was being staged by carrying his fatigue with him. He supped slowly, undressed with indolence, dismissed his servant and went sensibly to bed. But after he had extinguished his candles, he found by one of the contrarieties of nature that although he was tired, he was very wide awake. His windows were open, the curtains withdrawn, and the moonlight and the hum and chatter of the streets poured into the room. But the noise gradually died away and he was just turning over on to the other side, with the first languors of sleep descending delightfully upon him, when two voices speaking in low tones and speaking English rose to his ears.

Elliot’s room was on the second floor. These voices were rising from the balcony below it, the one of a woman in a panic, the other of a man trying to compose her, but none the less puzzled; and Elliot could not, after the first moment, doubt to whom the voices belonged. Nor could he help but overhear them.

It was Frances Scoble who began.

“I thought I would never live through this evening! Henry, we should have travelled under false names. Lots of people do. Incognito!”

“But, my dear, that could only have meant more trouble. Worse than trouble, questions. Worse than questions, suspicions. Once start people wondering, who knows what guess won’t hit the truth and the guesser thereafter know that he has hit it? But we have thought everything out—how often, you and I? Gone over every point. Made it all smooth and open and public and natural! You are overstrung to-night, Franky. So near—the last step to be taken—as easy and simple as the rest we have taken.”

“I know,” she broke in, and there was a pause. Elliot imagined her clinging desperately to her companion’s arm. Companion’s? No, lover’s, and smoothing her face against the breast of his coat. “Oh, I know, Henry, but to-night I am afraid.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. All those people standing beneath the window—listening whilst he sang.”

“But that was good.”

“It seemed to me that all Naples was listening.”

“Alas, all Naples will have forgotten it to-morrow. A pity! Such a picture! The family group by Kneller. The boy singing at the harpsichord—the admiring relations—the old lady beating time with her hands—the doctor trying to keep awake! My dear, we wanted a pet spaniel or two to make a picture for the great drawing-room at Grest.”

And now Mr. Elliot was sitting up in his bed, his nightcap all awry, his ears strained. A love affair between Henry and Frances? Certainly he had not guessed it on his one visit to Grest since Frances Scoble had held authority there. But why shouldn’t it be? There was no obstacle to prevent it, no reason for secret plans—unless there was some provision in the daughter’s jointure of which he knew nothing. But even so? A clandestine arrangement between them—could it need all these wild fears of hers, and all these reassurances of his?

But she pushed aside his rallyings.

“Henry,” she cried in a low, urgent voice. “All this evening the thought’s been growing—wouldn’t it be better if we waited——?” and there followed a pause as though he turned to her and her voice trailed away to silence.

“Not unless,” he said quietly but firmly, “there is something you have planned of which you have never told me.”

“No!” she exclaimed. “Henry! How could there be anything?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, half in rough jest and half in all seriousness. “You are a crafty little piece, my dear. I am not sure that I trust you, once you’re t’other side of the hedge.”

“Henry!” and her voice was all reproach.

“Swear it!”

“Oh! You hurt me!”

“Swear it, my pretty bird!”

“Henry, of course, nothing that you don’t know. I swear.”

It seemed that he let her go.

“Very well!” he said. “Now listen. There never will be, if we live till we’re a hundred, an opportunity so well prepared, so sure of its result. If we don’t take it now, I have done.”

Again a silence followed upon his words. And after it, she spoke in a small and humble voice, as though she was once more at his side.

“It shall be as you say. I know your last word, my dear.”

Her skirt rustled, she laughed and had gone. For a little while Henry Scoble stayed where she had left him. Did he doubt her? Mr. Elliot neither knew nor cared. He had a little scheme in his mind but he dared not put it into action until Henry Scoble had left the balcony and he began to wonder whether the fellow wasn’t going to stand on watch there till the morning broke. Henry went in the end, walking slowly and heavily, a man dissatisfied. Elliot lit his candles and, after slipping on his dressing-gown, sat down at a writing-table between the windows. His writing case was already laid out for his use. He wrote down on a fair sheet of paper word for word the conversation to which he had listened. He read it through when he had finished.

He too was dissatisfied.

Some words were missing. Of importance? He did not know. It was no business of his, of course, if a pair of lovers chose to discuss—an elopement perhaps—some unravelling of a tangle in which they were caught. But he felt an imperative demand upon him to put down in black, undeniable ink, an exact copy; and reading and re-reading he discovered the missing phrases.

“Not unless there is something you have planned of which you have never told me.”

“No! Henry. How could there be anything?”

He inserted them in their proper place, locked the paper away in a secret drawer of his writing case and returned to his bed. He was perplexed and uneasy but he fell asleep at last; and when he awakened and saw the sunlight playing upon the bay and his morning chocolate at his elbow and felt his body rested, he was like a man who wakes with the meaningless fringes of a nightmare still not quite faded from his recollections. Against them he set a memory, vivid and pleasant—the memory of a woman holding a sleeping boy against her breast and trying by her warm, firm clasp and her will to drive out from him, whilst he still slept, some haunting and troubled dream. That was the Frances Scoble he remembered on this friendly morning and he took himself to task.

“James, this will never do. You are Paul Pry. You are Tom-the-butler-at-the-keyhole. I shall hear of you next as a romantic.”

Mr. Elliot rose and dressed. He sauntered out along the Via Chiaia, he bought a great many flowers and he sent them with a note to Frances Scoble, praying that he might be allowed to wait upon her at a convenient hour. The streets were crowded with processions of monks bearing their great silver crosses and the banners of their Order, all on their way to do homage to San Januarius at the Duomo.

Mr. Elliot sauntered up the great Via di Toledo, listening to the chants of the monks and admiring the splendour of their appurtenances, deafened and jostled and thoroughly happy. When he got back to the inn, he found that his messenger had brought him back a charming letter from Frances Scoble inviting him to dine with her at three that afternoon. He presented himself at her apartment to accept the invitation and found that all of her party were taking the air. His young Lordship? His young Lordship was sailing out in the bay with his tutor and the courier. Mr. Elliot watched the boats swooping over the water in the sunlight. A change of air. There was a good deal to be said for the prescription.