The end of the road

by H. de Vere Stacpoole

The End of the Road

 

By H. De Vere Stacpoole
Author of “Kadjaman,” “It Is Paris!” Etc.

 

A jest and a tragedy in Perugia

 

IN the year 1913 I was on a walking tour in Italy. If you want to see a country you must walk through it. Speed blinds, and every one traveling over four miles an hour wears goggles.

I had no special destination. Rome lay behind me and before me autumn and the Apennines; no luggage except a knapsack, no worries, no letters to follow me.

If you want to see a country you must not only walk through it, but walk through it alone. Then it talks to you without interruption. You must have no worries to join in the conversation, no present but that which lies around.

So, day after day, with no companions but the vineyards and olive groves, the hills and the blue sky and the berry-brown country folk, Italy became a reality for me; and the fact is that Italy, despite the railways and the doings of Marconi, is still the Italy that the Borgias knew—the same passions, the same blue skies, the same people; though maybe outwardly altered a bit. It has the same fleas, also, I should imagine, to judge from my experience of the taverns where I put up at nights.

One evening before sundown a turn of the road brought me to an inn, a solitary building, standing on the right-hand side of the way, with not another house in sight, and placed there as though in defiance of custom.

Buildings have for me almost as much personality as people. There are houses that repel, houses that attract and houses that leave me absolutely indifferent. This old inn standing there in its naked loneliness seized my imagination at once. Repelled me, yet attracted me. Over the door, in vague blue letters almost burned out by the sun, appeared the words Osteria del Sole; on a long bench to right of the door an old man was seated enjoying the afternoon warmth, and by his side was a black cat.

I asked for the landlord and he told me that he was the landlord, giving his full name as one gives a visiting card—Alfredo Paoli. With a half flask of Chianti to help the conversation we sat and talked in the warmth of that delightful sunset. We talked of Italy and the grape harvest and the taxes, and a reference to Garibaldi brought out the old fellow’s age. He was eighty-five. Then, when I discovered that the town for which I was making lay more than six English miles away, he proposed that I should stay at his inn for the night. “You are welcome,” said he, “and the place is clean as you will see for yourself. This is not an ordinary inn, and we who live here do not set ourselves out to entertain travelers except those who stop for a glass of wine, but your conversation pleases me, and I like you for yourself.”

Now that invitation in that lonely place to a traveler on foot and with money in his pocket might have savored of robbery and murder to a suspicious mind. But I am not suspicious by nature, and old Paoli was plainly and evidently a person who wanted to rob and murder no one.

All the same he robbed me of a night’s sleep and murdered my rest.

I agreed to his suggestion. He rapped on the bench with an empty glass and called out “Giovanna!” A woman’s voice replied from the house, and in a moment Giovanna appeared at the doorway in the last rays of the sunset, a woman bent with age and incredibly wrinkled.

He ordered supper, and “the room” to be prepared for a guest, and then, Giovanna vanishing, relapsed into conversation. about Garibaldi.

II.

Later that evening as we sat on the bench before the door, he told me his story, or rather the story of his youth. He spoke with the detachment of a man telling another man’s story, as though age had made him indifferent to all personal things, and yet with the vividness of an artist in words stirred by an interested audience and warmed by wine.

“I was born in Perugia,” he said. “A different city from the Perugia of to-day. My father was an antique dealer—his shop situated at the top of that steep street leading from the Piazza del Papa to a Piazzetta from where you can get a good view of the Umbrian Hills.

“His shop, at the top of this street, was in a bad position for business you will say. But my father was not a man to spread his net in a bad position; he reckoned to get as customers all the visitors—and they were many—who climbed the street to see the view. His family consisted of only two sons, myself and Arturo. We were twins, alike both in faces and dispositions; but Arturo was the more adventurous spirit and, having a passion for the sea, he became a sailor, while I, the eldest by some fifteen minutes, fell into the antique business as assistant to my father.

“That business requires a great deal of knowledge both of men and things, for who knows anything of tapestry who knows nothing of St. Florent of Saumur—or of bronzes who knows nothing of Gallien? But all knowledge is useless without the flair. This my father had and this in some measure I possessed. Things cried out to him their worth, and the most skillful forgery could have made itself known to him in the dark. Now why was this so? Very simply, because he had descended from generations of men who had dealt with art, both as artists and dealers. Old Italy lived in him, as in me. Old Italy with its passions and, alas! its power of hatred. So things went on till I had reached my twenty-second year.

“Then one day my life changed. One day in the Via dei Bontempi I met a girl.

“Now I had met this girl many times before. She was, indeed, distantly related to my family, and lived in a street close to where is now the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Her name was Giovanna Batista. She was of Genoese extraction, blonde, like so many of the Genoese women, and very beautiful. Hers was the beauty of a spring morning—the beauty of youth.

“Yet, though I knew her, it seemed to me that till that day I had never met her before. Though I had recognized her beauty it had never given me more than a passing thought. But to-day she looked at me differently. She had, in fact, suddenly chosen me. Just one glance of her eyes and her beauty fell on me like an avalanche, and I was hers. A moment before if I had heard of her death it would have left me almost unmoved.

“But I said nothing that day to her. I was like a man who has suddenly found a treasure in the street and who hides it under his cloak and hurries home with it.

“Next day I met her again, and again her eyes told me what I dared scarcely believe. I was new to the business. I did not know what to do. Alone with her in some country place I could no doubt have brought things to a conclusion very quickly, and almost without speaking, but, as I was, there in Perugia, there was nothing for me left but to call at the house where she lived or tell her of my love for her in the street —in cold blood! Anything seemed easier than that, and so I let things drift. And then she left Perugia.

“She had only gone away for a holiday of a month, but her leaving nearly killed me, and increased my love for her tenfold, if that were possible. Every place where I had seen her became for me a place of torture, and, at night, under a moon, full as it is now, I would stand on the opposite side of the way before her house, torn between sorrow, hope and passion. Surely love is a madness!”

He ceased for a moment to drink, and as he raised his glass in the light of the great broad moon, the old woman’s croaking voice came from some room in the interior of the inn.

“Alfredo, the hour is late.”

He laughed, called out to her to be still and leave him to his own affairs, and went on:

“Love had so completely taken me and eaten me that I was not more than the shell of a man. I had no head for business, nor eyes for art. I quarreled with my father, who could not make out what was wrong with me, and I lost five hundred lire over a deal on a spurious bronze that was palmed off on me by a trader from Florence.

“If things had gone on like this, I would have left Perugia and my home and business. But one day I recovered. Giovanna returned to Perugia and seemed to set all the bells ringing and the whole town en féte. I had news of her return through my relations. I met her in the street and I no longer delayed. I told her of my love for her, and she listened with head half turned away, then she turned to me and looked me in the eyes and smiled. She was mine.

“After that I was a new man. My prospects were good, and there was no opposition from Giovanna’s parents; we would meet of an evening and stroll outside the town, always in the same direction, toward a grove which was a veritable lover’s walk, filled as it was with paths leading nowhere. Here we would sit on a fallen tree trunk we had made our own, not minding if the weather was cold, and talk of the future, of our love for one another, and of the hundred nothings that make up the conversation of lovers.

III.

“We were to be married in the summer. And meanwhile came Carnival.

“In those old days Carnival was perhaps a more joyous affair even than now. There was more joy in the old world, I think, than in the new. Men forgot their businesses and women their houses and children their toys. King Carnival ruled them all and made them forget even Lent.

“it was the last evening of Carnival, and I was to meet Giovanna at a selected spot near the Duomo. She had chosen a Spanish costume, and as for myself I had chosen a suit of motley and a crimson mask.

“Now mark how things happen in life.

“My father, who had not been very well for some time, remained at home that day. Knowing of his ill health and wishing to be in touch with him without returning home, I had given him the places where I could be found at certain hours. I would be at my friend Manfridi’s at noon, I would be in such-and-such a place at two o’clock, and at ten minutes to six I would be at the Fonte Maggiore close to the Duomo to meet Giovanna. You would have said that this last appointment would have found me at the place before the time, and yet I was late.

“The clock at Manfridi’s house was slow. There were many robbers about, that year, and I had left my watch at home rather than trust it among the crowd of Carnival, and, as a result, when I finally reached the Fonte Maggiore the bells were striking. I had not heard the quarter chime, and I could scarcely believe my ears at hearing the hour strike nor my eyes when they did not show me Giovanna.

“Then I knew. I had offended her. She had come and, not finding me, had gone away. If I had thought for a moment, I would have seen the impossibility of a young girl waiting there by the Fonte Maggiore alone, and I could have put the blame entirely upon myself. Instead, anger and bitterness filled my heart.

“I knew for a fact that Giovanna, for all her soft ways and looks, had a temper sharp as steel. I stood there looking about me filled with this thought and the anger of a disappointed man. People were passing, all making for the Corso, all talking, laughing and with an air of festivity and enjoyment that increased my anger and irritation till it seemed to flow against the whole world. I crossed the way and entered a wine shop. Here I took my seat and called for drink, heedless of the other drinkers.

“I did not notice a dark, slim man seated at a table near by. I drank. In those days a very little wine was sufficient for me. I had not a good head for the drink, but this evening it seemed to me that were I to drink a tun, it would not drown my wits; and I was not drinking wine but Lambec. It was a Gambrinus—Lambec laced with cognac.

“Men talk of magicians, but where will you find a magician like to alcohol? In ten minutes I had passed from anger to a sort of despair and from that to recklessness. Then of a sudden I had all but forgotten Giovanna. I was talking to the thin, dark man who had recognized me and who spoke to me by name. He was an art dealer from Piza. I had seen him at my father’s shop, and he had called there that day to do business despite Carnival time, but could not gain admittance owing to my father’s illness.

“He had several things to dispose of at a marvelously low price—things most likely the product of some robbery received by him and dangerous to traffic within Pisa. We had often customers like this. It was not our business to inquire into other men’s morals or the morality of their transactions, and as long as we did not suspect them to be robbers themselves, we took their goods.

“He had with him, this man Bodini, a cross of pure gold studded with small stones, a pair of earrings, and a dagger of Florentine work with a silver hilt. He offered them and told me the price. I had not that amount of money with me, but that did not matter to Bodini; our business was as good as a bank and our name good for a thousand times the amount he asked for—which was seventy lire for the cross and earrings and twenty for the dagger. I placed the jewelry in my bosom, and the dagger in its sheath I placed in the single pocket that the costume maker allowed a fool. Then Bodini took his departure and, just as though a cord had snapped, I plunged back into trouble and misery of mind. I left the tavern.

“The lights were now springing alive and the stars breaking out overhead. The noise of the Carnival rose through the evening like the sound of a sea.

“I stood undecided. Should I go to Giovanna’s house on the chance of finding her there? Then still undecided I turned toward the Corso. Perugia seemed mad that evening. The spirit of Carnival had flared up like the flame of a lamp, all sorts of conditions of people went to make up the mob into which I now plunged, but they were all in the same condition of mind—gay to the point of madness. Bullfighters jostled fools and Pierrots soldiers. In the crush I half forgot Giovanna for a moment and, carried along by the stream, I acted the part of Folly though I had forgotten my jester’s bauble.

“Then, of a sudden, the crowd parting slightly before me, I saw Giovanna.

“She was with a man. Their backs were toward me, they could not see me, though I could almost have touched them. He wore the coat of a Pierrot and a false nose tied behind the ears; taking advantage of the crush, his arm was about her waist. They were laughing. The sound of the last trumpet could not have stricken me as that sight did.

“Now, in my dealings with Giovanna, I had always forgotten one thing, and that was the fact that I was not the only man in Perugia. She had chosen me from a score of lovers and that fact had made me forget the score. I remembered them now.

“The dagger in my pocket jumped into my hand. A moment more and it would have been plunged in the back of the Pierrot, but that moment did not come. A horse, loose and garlanded, came racing down the Corso, the crowd swayed and rushed back carrying me with it, and separating me from my revenge.

“Giovanna and her companion were nowhere to be seen. They had been swallowed up by the crowd.

“You can fancy my position—rage in my heart and a dagger in my hand—jostled by laughing fools—carried hither and thither against my will. But my will was strong, and, though unable to command the movements of the people around, it enabled me to return the dagger to my pocket, to grip the situation with my teeth as you may say, and to regain my calm. I resigned myself to the situation and, though now I could have escaped from the crowd, which had thinned, I let myself drift with the stream.

“Then I had my reward. Close to the Via Piccolo Umberto I saw my quarry. I saw Giovanna and her Pierrot. I came upon them so suddenly that I could have counted the hairs on the back of her neck or untied the tape that held his false nose to his face, yet my hand did not fly to the dagger in my pocket. I was cooler now, I could wait my time, and do my business without running the risk of death by the executioner.

“I followed them along the Via Piccolo Umberto. They never once turned, so interested were they in one another. But, one moment, monsieur a——”

He rose and took the empty wine flask and went into the house. I heard him lighting a lamp and poking about, and then I heard his voice asking Giovanna what she had done with the key of the cellar, and Giovanna’s voice replying that it was on its nail by the door.

The old woman seemed angry at being disturbed, and I could hear her grumbling. What an hour to be sitting up talking! Had he no sense—and with his rheumatism drinking with strangers like that? And he was telling her that his rheumatism was his own and that if he chose to feed it no one had any right to interfere. Then he came back with a wicker-covered flask and, taking his seat, continued:

“I followed them along that street and then through another leading in the direction of her home.

“Then they entered the street where she lived, and right before her door they parted. Hiding across the way, I could not believe my eyes. True it was dark, and there were few about, yet it was known in the whole quarter, nay in all Perugia, that she and I were engaged to be married; and here, a few months before our wedding and for a trifling offense on my part, she was saying good night to a stranger, a man who had placed his arm round her waist, a man she had picked up in the Carnival. I saw their heads pressed together, and I heard the kiss. He had removed his false nose to enable him to kiss her, and now she was tying it on again for him.

“They were laughing, then they parted. She went into her house and he turned down the street walking swiftly, gay, and whistling a tune.

“I let him get thirty paces ahead, and then I slipped after him. In those few moments while hiding in a dark entry and watching the parting of those two, I had tried them in my own mind, judged them, and it was now for me to carry out the sentence of the judge. The man with the false nose had to die, the woman with the false heart had to die. But the man first.

“It was quite easy for me to kill him right there in the street. But were I to do so, I would be captured to a certainty, and then the woman would escape. You see my point, monsieur.”

He uncorked the flask as he spoke and poured out the wine with a hand as steady as the hand of a young man, albeit the moonlight, now strong almost as the light of day, showed the metacarpal bones separately and distinctly as though it were the hand of a skeleton.

“You see my point, monsieur. I had to be careful, I had to treasure my life till my revenge was complete, and my revenge could not be complete till Giovanna had paid as well as he.

“Meanwhile I followed. My gentleman had picked up a jester’s bauble from somewhere and now as he went he used it, striking here and there on the backs of folk with the bladder, laughing and jesting as he went, unconscious of the jester who was following in his footsteps armed with a dagger.

“He seemed to draw mirth and attention to himself just as a magnet draws iron. Girls, young men, old men, clowns, harlequins, monks, all had a word or a laugh for him or a handful of confetti. No one had a word or a laugh for me, eclipsed by his gayety and content to follow.

“Then my gentleman, not content with his affair with Giovanna, must seize upon another girl, taking her by the waist and whirling her off into a restaurant by the Corso. Several of her companions followed, but that made no difference to him. He had plenty of money and meant to spend it, and in a moment the Asti Spumante was flowing.

“You can see me outside, with death in my heart, watching the merrymakers and drinkers. I could not see my man’s face for his back was turned toward me, but I could see that he was the life and soul of that party.

“Then it broke up and they all left, departing this way and that, he alone and taking the Via Andria Doria.

“It was there I did the deed. The street was deserted, there was no one to watch; it was so dark between the lamps that as I seized him by the shoulder, I could only see his face as a whiteness, something without form, something to destroy. I was mad. The whole events of the day and evening had come to a point. My love for Giovanna, my jealousy, my hatred—and under all the alcohol working like a serpent. He struggled with me, something stung me in the left shoulder as we fought, it was a knife he had drawn and which he dropped on the pavement as I drove my dagger through his heart.

“He fell and lay at my feet, a white heap. The dagger was still in his body, but I thought nothing of that, my only idea was to hide him.

“Now that was the strangest thing, for my mind was made up to kill Giovanna and then myself. So why should I wish to hide him, why should I trouble to hide him? I do not know, I only know that the mind of man is beyond the comprehension of man, and that in moments of great trial and tragedy it works in ways of its own.

“I dragged the body to the entry of a court and propped it up half sitting in a doorway. There in the half light given by an oil lamp swinging from the wall it looked like a man drunk who had fallen asleep. Then I walked off, marking the court and where it lay, in my mind, and went home to change to my ordinary clothes—for I had now to meet Giovanna—and then die, and I had no mind to die in motley. I was careful not to wake my father.

“Then I went quickly to Giovanna’s house, knocked and was admitted. Her family were still out, keeping up the last of the Carnival, but Giovanna was at home, and had not retired yet. After a moment’s waiting she came down.

“I was standing in the room into which I had been shown—standing by the table facing the door. She came in and looked at me in surprise.

“‘Why have you come back?’ she asked. ‘And so changed?’

“I laughed out loud and looked at her and said not a word.

“Then she drew back and I saw that she was frightened. But what a strange thing is expression. It was driven in upon me at once that her fear was not of the consequence of her infidelity to me. I saw at once that her dread was that I had been drinking or had gone wrong in my mind. I had no weapon, only my hands, but they were strong enough. I looked at her.

“I said, ‘What was his name?’ She answered, ‘Whose name?’ I laughed. I said again, ‘Where did you pick him up?’ She answered, ‘Who?’ This enraged me and I said, ‘Who? Why, the man who left you at this door not an hour ago.’ She answered, ‘I have met no man this evening but yourself.’ I saw at once that she spoke the truth, yet I had seen what I had seen with my own eyes. There could be only one meaning to the business, some man must have impersonated me.

“I said so, and she laughed me to scorn. ‘You were with me,’ said she, ‘and you alone, dressed as a Pierrot, with a false nose which you took off when you met me by the Fonte Maggiore.’

“‘But God in Heaven!’ I cried, ‘I did not meet you there. I was late for the appointment and you were gone.’

“I saw that she either believed me a liar or mad. I felt mad indeed, just then. I found myself doubting my own mind. Had all this been a dream?

“I stood without speaking, feeling absurd, my eyes fixed on the floor. Then I thought of the man in the dark entry leaning against the door with the dagger in his heart, and at that recollection, as though a hand had been placed on each of my shoulders turning me, I turned, rushed to the door of the room, and left the house.

“I had entered that house to kill Giovanna, I left it half crazed, balked of my purpose, not knowing what to do.

“Then I found myself at my own door.

“The house was still in darkness, as before. But as I turned the key in the lock and entered, I heard my father’s voice calling to know if it was me. He was lying in bed in his own room at the right of the passage, and as I entered I saw him there on his pillows propped up, a shaded lamp beside him and a book on his knees.

“‘Ah, it is you,’ said he. ‘Where is Arturo?’

“You will remember that I said I had a twin brother, a sailor, as like to myself as one pea is like another.

“What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Arturo is at sea.’ Even as I said the words a fear like the hand of death seized my heart.

““Arturo returned to-day,’ said my father, ‘seeking you. I told him he would find you at the Fonte Maggiore at six o’clock where you were due to meet Giovanna.’

“Then I sat down beside the bed and, leaning an elbow on it, I said to my father:

“‘I was late in reaching the Fonte Maggiore. Arturo got there before me. Giovanna mistaking him for me spoke to him and he, knowing that she must be my fiancée, and, for a jest, did not undeceive her. He was wearing a false nose and spending his money like a sailor. He saw her to her house, still keeping the jest up, and then when he had left her he made for home, reckoning to meet me and have the laugh on me. He did not know that I was following him, thinking him a stranger, with rage devouring me——’

“My father suddenly, as though a bullet had struck him, gave a leap on the bed and cast the book to the floor.

“‘What are you saying?’ he cried. ‘Where is Arturo?’

‘Dead!’ I replied, ‘with my dagger in his heart.’

“I said the words as though I were repeating them from some other person’s lips. I was quite calm. I could not seize what had happened at all with my real mind.

“Yes—that is the whole affair. They did scarcely anything to me, the pity of it was so great. I told the whole story just as I have told it to you.

“Then I married Giovanna. We went to Pisa to live; that was many years ago. So we have gone through the world never prospering greatly, coming at last to this.

“Well, at the end of the road what does it matter?”

We finished the wine and he showed me to my bedroom, and then lying awake and watching the white bars of moonlight on the bare wall of the room and listening to the wind in the olive trees, 1 could hear Giovanna’s grumbling voice—“Well, you have come to bed at last. A nice thing, truly, keeping me awake like this.”