CHAPTER XXXIX
Corona regretted the promise of secrecy which Vittoria had obtained from her, as soon as she found herself alone and able to think over the situation calmly. She had no secrets from her husband, and few of any kind, and it was hard to keep silence when Giovanni discussed Ippolito's position and the possibilities of obtaining the evidence necessary to clear Ippolito. She had, indeed, the sort of satisfaction which a woman feels all the more keenly when she feels it alone, with the certainty that everyone else will soon know what she knows, for she saw that Ippolito had behaved with almost heroic constancy. But she would soon begin to long for the moment when others would see that he was a hero.
Being naturally a calm woman, and somewhat reserved, even with her own family, her face did not betray her at first. Yet she hardly dared to look at Ippolito that evening, lest her happiness should break like light from her eyes.
Her difficulty was a considerable one, however, and puzzled her at first. In her own room she read and re-read the Moscio's letter, and her maturer judgment told her what neither Aliandra nor Vittoria had understood in their impetuosity. The law would look upon this so-called evidence as a piece of vengeance on the part of a brigand, and would attach little value to it. Why, the law would ask, since the brigand professed to hold proofs that could ruin his enemy, had he not sent them to the carabineers? The answer must take the very unsatisfactory form of a dissertation on Sicilian character in general, and on that of the Moscio in particular; whereas, while he was still at large, his character could be but an unknown quantity. It might be proved, of course, that the knife had belonged to Tebaldo. But it would be hard to show how the Moscio had come by it. To demonstrate Ippolito's innocence something more was necessary.
Corona made up her mind that she would see Tebaldo himself and force him to a confession of his crime. It did not occur to her to fear such a meeting, or even to hesitate, after she had once made up her mind. The difficulty lay in finding the man immediately. She did not believe that Vittoria had deceived her in saying that she did not know where her brother might be, but she supposed that he would soon come to Rome, and decided to wait for him. She sent frequently to enquire at the house where the Corleone had lived. The servants knew nothing. She wrote a note to Vittoria at Mrs. Slayback's, but Vittoria had no news.
Corona wrote to the Minister of Justice. She knew him very well, and told him that in the matter of the accusation against her son she wished to communicate with Don Tebaldo Pagliuca, but could not find out where he was. To her surprise the Minister's answer gave her the information she wished. Tebaldo, said the note, was dangerously ill in Messina at a certain hotel. Owing to the strong feeling which existed against him in Sicily, it had been thought necessary to protect him, and the government was, therefore, kept constantly apprised of his condition through the office of the prefect of Messina. He was very ill indeed, and was not expected to recover.
The information was clear, but the thought that Tebaldo might die without having cleared Ippolito was anything but reassuring. Corona's instinct was to start at once, but she remembered her promise to Vittoria, and did not see how she could make such a journey without informing her husband and giving some explanation of her conduct. She went to his room as soon as she knew what she must do.
'Giovanni,' she said, 'I wish you to go to Sicily with me at once. I must go to Messina.'
Giovanni looked at her sharply in surprise.
'Are you ill, my dear?' he enquired. 'Is it for a change? Is anything the matter?'
Corona laughed, for she had never been ill in her life. The mere idea seemed ludicrous to her.
'Can you imagine me ill?' she asked. 'No. I will tell you what I can. Someone has told me something, making me promise not to tell anyone else—'
'Your informant is a woman, dear,' observed Giovanni, smiling.
'Never mind who it was. But from what was told me I know that if I can go to Messina I can get evidence which will clear Ippolito completely. So I came to you.'
'Are you positively sure?' asked Sant' Ilario. 'It is a long journey.'
'We shall travel together,' answered Corona, as though that answered every objection.
'I should like it very much. Do you wish to start to-day?'
'Yes. The man is said to be dying at a hotel in Messina.'
It amused them both to make a mystery of going away together, though it was not the first time that they had done such a thing, and Sant' Ilario's presence lightened the anxiety which Corona still felt as to the result of the journey.
They reached Messina at evening and drove to the wretched hotel where Tebaldo lay dying, for there was no other in the city, in which they could have lodged at all.
Half an hour later Corona entered the sick man's room. The sister who was nursing him rose in surprise as the Princess entered, and laid her finger on her lips. Tebaldo appeared to be asleep.
'Is he better?' whispered Corona.
But the sister shook her head and pointed to his face. It was like a yellow shadow on the white pillow, in the soft light of the single candle, before which the nurse had set a book upright on the table, as a shade.
Corona stood still by the side of the bed and looked down at what remained of the man who had done such terrible deeds during the last month. The colourless lips were parted and displayed the sharp, white teeth, and the half-grown beard gave something wolfish to the face. The lids were not quite closed and showed the whites of the eyes. Corona felt suddenly that he was going to die in his unconsciousness without speaking. Even if he revived for a moment, he might not understand her. The candle flickered, and she thought the lids quivered.
'He is dying,' she said in a low voice. 'But he must speak to me before he dies.'
'Are you his mother, madam?' asked the sister, in a whisper.
'No!' Corona's great eyes blazed upon the nun's face. Then she spoke gently again. 'I am the mother of the priest he falsely accused. Before he dies he must tell the truth.'
A faint smile moved the wasted lips, and the lids slowly opened. Then he spoke, almost naturally.
'You have come to see me die. I understand.'
'No,' said Corona, speaking clearly and distinctly. 'I have come to hear the truth about my son, from your own lips, as I know it from others—'
The yellow face shivered and the eyes stared. There was a convulsive effort of the head to rise from the pillow.
'Who told you?' The question gurgled in the throat.
'Your sister told me—'
'I have no sister.' The head fell back again, and the twisting smile took possession of the lips.
'Vittoria is your sister. You are Tebaldo Pagliuca.' Corona bent down towards him anxiously, for she feared that he was wandering, and that the truth must escape her at last.
'Oh no! Vittoria is not my sister. I remember when she was brought to Camaldoli by the outlaws when I was a boy.'
Corona bent lower still and stared into the open eyes. Their expression was quite natural and quiet, though the voice was faint now.
'It is better that someone should know,' it said. 'I know, because I saw her brought. The brigands stole her from her nurse's arms. Vittoria is the daughter of Fornasco. They frightened my father and mother—they brought the child at night—in trying to get a ransom they were all taken, but none of them would tell—there is a paper of my father's, sealed—in Rome, among my things. He always said that we might be accused, though they managed to make people believe it was my mother's child, for fear of the brigands—I cannot tell you all that. You will find it in the papers.'
The eyelids closed again, but the lips still moved. Corona bent down.
'Water,' said the parched whisper.
They gave him drink quickly, but he could hardly swallow it. He was going fast.
'Call the doctor,' said Corona to the nurse. 'He is dying. Has he seen a priest? Call my husband!'
'I had sent for a priest,' answered the nurse, leaving the room hastily.
For many minutes Tebaldo gasped painfully for breath. In his suffering Corona raised the pillow with his head upon it, tenderly and carefully.
'You are dying,' she said softly. 'Commend your soul—pray for forgiveness!'
It was horrible to her belief to see him dying unconfessed in his many sins.
'Quickly—lose no time!' she urged. 'Think of God—think of one prayer! It may be too late in a moment—'
'Too late?' he cried suddenly, with a revival of strength. 'Too late? But I shall catch him on the hill! Gallop, mare, gallop—there, there! So! We shall do it yet. I am lighter than old Basili! One more stretch! There he is! Gallop, mare, gallop, for I shall catch him on the hill!'
One hand grasped the sheet like a bridle, the other patted it encouragingly. Corona stared and listened breathlessly, half in horror, half in expectation. She did not hear the door open, as someone came in. The dying man raved on.
'What? Down? He has killed his horse? It shied at the woman in black! He will try the church door—on, mare, gallop! We shall catch him there!'
A hideous glare of rage and hatred was in the burning eyes. The twisted and discoloured lips set themselves like blue steel. The right hand struck out wildly. Then the eyes fixed themselves upon the young priest who stood beside Corona, and whom she had not seen till then.
Tebaldo sat up as though raised by a spring, suddenly. He grasped the priest's ready hands and looked up into his face, seeing only him, though the doctor and the nurse were close by.
'I confess to Almighty God,' he began—
And word for word, as he had confessed to Ippolito alone in the little church, he went through the whole confession, quickly, clearly, in a loud voice, holding the priest's hands.
Who should say that it was not a true confession now? That at the last, the dream of terror did not change to the reality of remorse? The priest's voice spoke the words of forgiveness, and he bent down above Corona's kneeling figure, that the dying man might hear.
But before the last merciful word was spoken, the last of the Corleone lay stone dead on his pillow. He was buried beside his two brothers in the little cemetery of Santa Vittoria, for the sister had promised him that, when he knew that he was dying.
And outside the gate, when it was all over, a figure in black came and knelt down upon the rough, broken stones, and two white hands grasped the painted iron rails, and a low voice came from beneath the little black shawl.
'Mother of God, three black crosses! Mother of God, three black crosses!'
And there were three black crosses, side by side.
CHAPTER XL
It might have been a long and difficult matter to establish Vittoria's identity, if Maria Carolina had been really insane, as it had been feared that she might be. She was beyond further suffering, perhaps, when the third of her sons was dead, but her mind was clear enough under the intense religious melancholy that had settled upon her in her grief. The fact of her having been willing and anxious to leave Vittoria at such a time now explained itself. The girl was not her daughter, and in the intensity of her sorrow the bereaved mother felt that she was a stranger, if not a burden. Yet she kept the secret, out of a sort of fear that even after eighteen years the revelation of it might bring about some unimaginably dreadful consequence to herself, and as though the Duca di Fornasco could still accuse her of having helped to steal his child, by receiving her from the brigands.
The fact was that the outlaws had terrified the Corleone at the time, threatening them with total destruction if they refused to conceal the infant. They were poor and lived in an isolated neighbourhood, more or less in fear of their lives, at a time when brigandage was the rule, and when the many bands that existed in the island were under the general direction of the terrible Leone. They had yielded and had kept the secret with Sicilian reticence. Tebaldo alone had been old enough to partly understand the truth, but his father had told him the whole story before dying, and had left him a clearly-written account of it, in case of any future difficulty. But Maria Carolina was alive still, and sane, and she told the truth clearly and connectedly to a lawyer, for she was glad to sever her last tie with the world, and glad, perhaps, that the stolen child should go back to her own people after all. Among her possessions were the clothes and tiny ornaments the infant had worn.
Vittoria's first sensation when she knew the truth was that of a captive led into the open air after years of confinement in a poisonous air.
She had been the daughter of a race of ill fame, fatherless, and all but motherless. Her three brothers had come to evil ends, one by one. She had been left alone in the world, the last representative of what so many called 'the worst blood in Italy.' She had been divided from the man she loved by a twofold bloodshed and by all the horror of her last surviving brother's crimes. Many and many a time she had stared into her mirror for an hour at night, not pleased by her own delicate loveliness, but asking herself, with heart-broken wonder, how it was possible that she could be the daughter of such a mother, the sister of such brothers, the grandchild of traitors and betrayers to generations of wickedness, back into the dim past. She had never been like them, nor felt like them, nor acted as they did, yet it had seemed mad, if not wicked, to doubt that she was one of them. And each morning, meeting them all again and living with them, there had come the shock of opposition between her inheritance of honour and their inborn disposition to treachery and crime.
And now, it was not true. There was not one drop of their blood in her veins. There was not in her one taint of all that line of wickedness. It had all been a mistake and a dream and an illusion of fate, and she awoke in the morning and was free—free to face the world, to face Corona Saracinesca, to marry Orsino, without so much as a day of mourning for those who had been called her brothers.
The fresh young blood came blushing back to the delicate cheeks, and the radiance of life's spring played on the fair young head.
'How beautiful you are!' exclaimed Miss Lizzie, throwing her arms round her.
And Vittoria blushed again, and her eyes glistened with sheer, unbounded happiness.
'But I shall never know what to call you,' laughed Miss Lizzie.
'I am Vittoria still,' answered the other. 'But I am Vittoria Spinelli—and I come of very respectable people!' She laughed happily. 'I am related to all kinds of respectable people! There is my father, first. He is on his way to see me—and I have a brother—a real brother, to be proud of. And I am the cousin of Taquisara of Guardia—but I am Vittoria still!'
Rome went half mad over the story, for the Romans had all been inclined to like Vittoria for her own sake while distrusting those who had composed her family. The instinct of an old and conservative society is very rarely wrong in such matters. The happy ending of the tragedy of the Corleone was a sincere relief to every one; and many who had known the Duca di Fornasco in the days when his infant daughter had been carried off and had seen how his whole life had been saddened during eighteen years by the cruel loss, rejoiced in the vast joy of his later years. For he had many friends, and was a man honoured and loved by those who knew him.
'I have always believed that I should find you, my dear child,' he said, when his eyes had cleared and he could see Vittoria through the dazzling happiness of the first meeting. 'But I have often feared to find you, and I never dared to hope that I should find you what you are.'
It seemed to her that the very tone of his voice was like her own, as his brown eyes were like hers.
And later, he took Orsino's hand and laid it in his daughter's and pressed the two together.
'You loved more wisely than you knew,' he said. 'But I know how bravely you loved, when you would not give her up, nor yield to anyone. Your father will not refuse to take my daughter from my hands, I think.'
'He will be as proud to take her as I am,' said Orsino.
'Or as I am to give her to such a man as you.'
So Orsino was married at last, and this tale comes to its happy end. For he was happy, and his people took his wife to themselves as one of them, and loved her for her own sake as well as for his; and they loved her, too, for the many troubles she had so bravely borne, under the disgrace of a name not her own. But neither were her sorrows hers, any more.
'Such things can only happen in Italy,' said Mrs. Slayback, after the wedding.
'I am glad that nothing worse happened,' answered her niece, thoughtfully. 'To think that I might have married that man! To think that I cared for him! But I always felt that Vittoria was not his sister. If I ever marry, I shall marry an American.'
She laughed, though there was a little ache left in her heart. But she knew that it would not last long, for she had not been very desperately in earnest, after all.
THE END
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