ad in him; Tor di Rocca watched,
with a sort of cruel, boyish interest in the creature he had maimed,
as slowly, painfully, Jean dragged himself a little nearer to where
the girl lay, tried to rise, and fell heavily. Surely he was dead
now--but no; his hands still clawed at the carpet, and when Tor di
Rocca stamped on his fingers he moaned as he tried to draw them away.
Olive lived too, but her breathing was so faint that it would be
easily stifled; the pressure of his hand even, but Filippo shrank from
that. He could not touch the flesh that would be dust presently
because of him. He hesitated, and then, muttering to himself, went to
take one of the cushions from the window seat.
Out in the garden the nightingale had not ceased to sing; the
cypresses swayed in the winds that shook the promise of fruit from
the trees; the green and rose and gold of a rainbow made fair the
clouds' processional. The world was still full of music, of transitory
life and joy, of dreams that have an ending.
CHAPTER IX
"_Via!_" said Vincenzo, and his black, oily forefinger, uplifted, gave
emphasis to his words. "There are no such things as ghosts. This
princess of yours cannot be seen at moonrise, or at any other time."
There is no room for faith in the swelled head of young Italy, but the
waiter was a middle-aged man. He paused in the act of re-filling the
customer's cup. "You do not believe, then?"
The Tuscan looked at him with all the scarcely-veiled contempt of the
North for the South. "You tell me you are a Calabrian. _Si vede!_ You
listen to all the priests say; you go down on your knees in the mud
when the _frati_ are carrying a wax doll about the roads; you think a
splinter of bone from the ribs of some fool who would not enjoy life
while it lasted will cure a dropsy or a broken leg; you hope the rain
will stop because a holy toe-nail is exposed on the altar. Ghosts,
visions, miracles!"
Vincenzo Torrigiani was the son of a stone-cutter in the village of
Settignano, and he had worked as a boy in the gardens of the Villa
Fiorelli. After a while the master had noticed and had taken a fancy
to him, chiefly on account of his ever-ready and unusually dazzling
and expansive smile, and he had been sent to a garage in Milan for six
months. The quick-witted Florentine learned a great many things in a
short time besides the necessary smattering of mechanics and the
management of cars, and on his return he displayed many new
|