Whosoever Shall Offend Part 42

"What is it?" he asked quickly, and making a step after her.

"I am going to dress," she answered.

She turned her head and smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in the look, as if she was saying good-bye. He partly understood, and her expression was reflected in his own face. They had been so happy in the little house in Trastevere.

When the door had closed Marcello went to find Kalmon. He met him at the foot of the stairs.

"The fellow is alive, and will probably recover," said the Professor, in answer to the unasked question in Marcello's eyes.

"It would simplify matters if he died," said Marcello. "Will you walk up to the villa with me and have coffee? We cannot get a cab at this hour on this side of the Tiber."

"Thank you," Kalmon answered, "but I must go home. The house is in charge of the police, and there is nothing more to be done here. They have already taken the woman's body to San Spirito, and they will move Corbario in a few hours. He is badly mauled, but no big arteries are torn. I must go home and write a letter. The Contessa must not hear what has happened through the newspapers."

"No. Certainly not. As for me, I am going to take Regina away at once. I shall bring my own carriage down from the villa."

"By the bye," Kalmon said, "I had thought of that. The house in which I live is divided into many small apartments. There is a very good one to let, decently furnished. I thought of taking it myself, and I looked at it yesterday. You might put the young lady there until you can find what you may prefer. She can move in at once."

"Nothing could be better. If you are going home, will you say that I take the place and will be there in an hour? No. 16, Via Sicilia, is it not?"

"Yes. I'll see to it. Shall I take the lease in your name?"

"No. Any name will do better. The reporters would find her at once under mine."

"I'll use my own," said the Professor. "I'll say that she is a lady who has arrived to consult me--I daresay she will--and that I'm responsible for her."

"Thank you," answered Marcello gratefully. "And thank you for all that you have done to help me."

"My dear Marcello," Kalmon said, smiling cheerfully, "in the first place, I have done nothing to help you, and secondly, through excess of zeal, I have got you into a very unpleasant situation, by indirectly causing a woman to be murdered in your house, and the murderer almost mauled to death by that very singular wild beast which your man calls a dog, and which I had often noticed in old times at the cottage. So there is nothing at all to thank me for, though I am most heartily at your service."

The Professor was positively in high spirits just then, and Marcello envied him as they parted and took opposite directions.

Though the Via Sicilia was a long way from the Janiculum, Marcello had been only too glad to accept Kalmon's suggestion at such a moment.

Regina would feel that she was protected by Marcello's friend, and though she might rarely see him, it would be better for her than to be lodged in a house where she knew no one. Kalmon was a bachelor and a man of a.s.sured position, and it had cost him nothing to undertake to give Regina his protection; but Marcello was deeply grateful. He had already made up his mind as to what he would do next.

It had stopped raining at last, and the wind had fallen to a soft breeze that bore the morning mist gently away towards the sea, and hardly stirred the wet leaves that strewed the road all the way up to San Pietro in Montorio. Marcello found the gate of the villa already open, for it was nearly eight o'clock by the time he got there.

He summoned the servants to the library, told them briefly what had happened, and warned them that they might be summoned as witnesses at the coming trial, as most of them had been in his mother's service. In the days before Corbario had lost his head, and when he had controlled the household, it had been a part of his policy to have really respectable servants about him, and though some of them had never quite trusted him, they had all been devoted to the Signora and to Marcello.

They listened in respectful silence now, and waited till he was out of the house before meeting to discuss the tragedy and to decide that Corbario had got his deserts at last.

In a few hours Regina was installed in her new lodging with such belongings as she needed immediately. Kalmon, having finished writing his letter to the Contessa, left nothing undone which could contribute to the comfort of the "lady who had arrived to consult him." He had a respectable old woman servant, who had been with him for years, and who came from his native town. He took her into his confidence to some extent, and placed her in charge of Regina. As she thought that everything he did must be right, she accepted his statement that the young gentleman who would often come to see the young lady was deeply interested in the latter's welfare, and that, as the poor young lady had no relations, he, the Professor, had taken her under his protection while she remained in Rome.

The old servant's name was Teresa, and she belonged to a certain type of elderly old maids who take a very kindly interest in the love affairs of the young. She smiled, shook her head in a very mild disapprobation, and did much more than Kalmon had asked of her; for she took the very first opportunity of informing Regina that the Professor was the greatest, wisest, best, and kindest of mankind; and Regina recognised in her a loyal soul, and forthwith liked her very much.

It was late in the November afternoon when Marcello ascended the stairs and stopped before the door of the little apartment. He realised that he had no key to it, and that he must ring the bell as if he were a mere visitor. It was strange that such a little thing should affect him at all, but he was conscious of a sort of chill, as he pulled the metal handle and heard the tinkling of one of those cheap little bells that feebly imitate their electric betters by means of a rachet and a small weighted wheel. It was all so different from the little house in Trastevere with its bright varnished doors, its patent locks, its smart windows, and its lovely old garden. He wished he had not brought Regina to Via Sicilia, though Kalmon's advice had seemed so good. To Kalmon, who was used to no great luxury in his own life, the place doubtless seemed very well suited for a young person like Regina, who had been brought up a poor child in the hills. But the mere antic.i.p.ation of the dark and narrow entry, and the sordid little sitting-room beyond, awoke in Marcello a sense of shame, whether for himself or for the woman who loved him he hardly knew.

Old Teresa had gone out for something, and Regina opened the door herself.

CHAPTER XX

"I have come to see if you need anything," Marcello said, when they were in the sitting-room. "I am sorry to have been obliged to bring you to such a wretched place, but it seemed a good thing that you should be so near Kalmon."

"It is not a wretched place," Regina answered. "It is clean, and the things are new, and the curtains have been washed. It is not wretched.

We have been in worse lodgings when we have travelled and stopped in small towns. Professor Kalmon has been very kind. It was wise to bring me here."

He wished she had seemed discontented.

"Have you rested a little?" he asked.

"I have slept two or three hours. And you? You look tired."

"I have had no time to sleep. I shall sleep to-night."

He leaned back in the small green arm-chair and rested his head against a coa.r.s.e netted antimaca.s.sar. His eyes caught Regina's, but she was looking down thoughtfully at her hands, which lay in her lap together but not clasped. Peasant women often do that; their hands are resting then, after hard work, and they are thinking of nothing.

"Look at me," Marcello said after a long time.

Her glance was sad and almost dull, and there was no light in her face.

She had made up her mind that something dreadful was going to happen to her, and that the end was coming soon. She could not have told why she felt it, and that made it worse. Her eyes had the indescribable look that one sees in those of a beautiful sick animal, the painful expression of an unintelligent suffering which the creature cannot understand. Regina, roused to act and face to face with danger, was brave, clever, and quick, but under the mysterious oppression of her forebodings she was the Roman hill woman, apathetic, hopeless, unconsciously fatalistic and sleepily miserable.

"What is the matter?" Marcello asked. "What has happened?"

"I shall know when you have told me," Regina answered, slowly shaking her head; and again she looked down at her hands.

"What I have come to tell you will not make you sad," Marcello replied.

"Speak, heart of my heart. I listen."

Marcello leaned forward and laid his hand upon hers. She looked up quietly, for it was a familiar action of his.

"I am going to marry you," he said, watching her, and speaking earnestly.

She kept her eyes on his, but she shook her head again, slowly, from side to side, and her lips were pressed together.

"Yes, I am," said Marcello, with a little pressure of his hand to emphasise the words.

But she withdrew hers, and leaned far back from him.

"Never," she said. "I have told you so, many times."

"Not if I tell you that nothing else will make me happy?" he asked.

"If I still made you happy, you would not talk of marriage," Regina answered.

For the first time since she had loved him he heard a ring of bitterness in her voice. They had reached that first node of misunderstanding in the love relations of men and women, which lies where the one begins to think and act upon a principle while the other still feels and acts from the heart.