Taquisara. F. Marion Crawford
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Bosio uttered a loud exclamation of alarm and astonishment, for this was altogether beyond anything in his experience.
"Is it so?" asked Giuditta Astarita.
"Yes. It is true," said Bosio, in uncertain tones. "And I wish to know—whether—" he stopped.
"Whether the grey-faced man and the handsome woman whose eyes are near together will really kill her?" asked the spirit voice.
Bosio felt his soft hair rising on his head. "Do you know who I am?" he asked nervously.
"No," replied the voice of Giuditta. "The spirits know everything, but I do not. They only speak through me with another voice. I do not know what they are going to say. You need have no apprehension. This is more sacred than the confessional, Signore, more secret than the tomb."
The phrase sounded as though it had been carefully studied and often repeated, but the dramatic tone in which it was uttered produced a certain reassuring effect upon Bosio, in his half-frightened state.
"Do you wish to tell whether they will really kill Veronica?" inquired Giuditta. "If you have any question to ask, you must put it quickly. I cannot keep the spirits waiting. They exhaust me when they are impatient."
"What shall I do to avoid marrying her?" asked Bosio, suddenly springing to the main point of his doubts.
"The handsome woman whose eyes are near together will make you marry
Veronica," said the spirit voice.
"But if I refuse? If I say that I will not? What then? Is her life really in danger?"
"Yes. They wish to kill her to get her money. The handsome woman has her will leaving her everything if she dies."
"But will they really kill her?" insisted Bosio, half breathless in his fear and nervous excitement.
The spirit voice did not answer. In the silence Bosio heard Giuditta
Astarita's breathing opposite to him.
"Will they really kill her?" he asked again.
Still there was silence, and Bosio held his breath. Then Giuditta spoke hoarsely.
"The spirit is gone," she said. "He will not answer any more questions to-day."
"Can you not call it back?" asked Bosio, anxiously, and peering into the blackness before him, as though hoping to see something.
"No. When he is gone he never comes back for the same person. He answered you many things, Signore. You must have patience."
He heard her rise, and a moment later the light dazzled him as he looked up and met her china blue eyes. He was dazed as well as dazzled, for there had been an extraordinary directness and accuracy about the few questions and answers he had heard in the clear voice which was so utterly unlike Giuditta's, though quite human and natural. He was certain that he had not heard the door open after she had drawn the curtains. He looked about the scantily furnished room, in search of some corner in which some third person might have been hidden. Giuditta Astarita's chronic smile was momentarily intensified.
"There was no one else here," she said, answering his unspoken question.
"You heard the spirit's voice through my ears."
"How can that be?"
"I do not know. But what the spirit says is true. You may rely upon it. I do not know what it said, for when I return from the trance state I remember nothing I have heard or seen while I have been in it. If you wish to ask more, you must have the kindness to come again. It is very fatiguing to me. You can see that I am not in good health. The hours are from ten till three."
The smile had subsided within its usual limits, and the china blue eyes stared coldly. She was evidently waiting to be paid.
"What do I owe you?" asked Bosio, with a certain considerateness of tone, so to say.
"It is twenty-five lire," answered Giuditta Astarita. "I have but one price. Thank you," she added, as he laid the notes upon the polished walnut table. "Do you wish a few of my cards? For your friends, perhaps. I shall be grateful for your patronage."
"Thank you," said Bosio, taking his hat and going towards the door. "I have one of your cards. It is enough. Good morning."
As he opened the door, he found the one-eyed serving-woman in the passage, ready to show him out. Instinctively he looked at the single eye as he glanced at her face, and he was surprised to notice that it was of the same uncommon china blue colour as Giuditta's own. The woman who did duty as a servant to admit visitors was undoubtedly Giuditta's mother or elder sister, or some very near relative. It would be natural enough, amongst such people, as Bosio knew, but he wondered how many more of the same family lived in the rooms beyond the one in which he had received spirit-communications, and whether Giuditta Astarita supported them all by her extraordinary talents.
He descended the damp stone stairs and passed out into the street again, dazed and disturbed in mind. He had been to such people before, as has been said, and he had generally seen or heard something which had either interested or amused him. He had never had such an experience as this. He had never heard a voice of which he had been so certain that it did not come from any one in the room, and he had never found any somnambulist who had so instantly grasped his most secret thoughts, without the slightest assistance or leading word from himself. Yet at the crucial test—the question of a certainty in the future, this one had stopped short as all stopped, or failed in their predictions of what was to come. He had been startled and almost frightened. Like many Southern Italians, he was at once credulous and sceptical—a superstitious unbeliever, if one may couple the two words into one expression. His intelligence bade him deny what his temperament inclined him to accept. Besides, on the present occasion, no theory which he could form could account for the woman's knowledge of his life. She had never seen him. He had no extraordinary peculiarity by which she might have recognized him at first sight from hearsay, nor was he in any way connected with public affairs. He had come quite unexpectedly and had not given his name, and the spirit, or whatever it might be, had instantly told him of Veronica, of her danger, of his brother and sister-in-law and of the will. Moreover, the friends who had spoken to him of Giuditta Astarita had told him similar tales within a few days.
The spirit had said that the handsome woman would make him marry Veronica. But what had the silence meant, when he had asked more? That was the question. Did it mean that the spirit was unwilling to affirm that Veronica must die if he refused to marry her? He passed his hand over his eyes as he walked. This was the end of the nineteenth century; he was in Naples, in the largest city of an enlightened country. And yet, the situation might have been taken from the times of the Medici, of Paolo Giordano Orsini, of Beatrice Cenci, of the Borgia. There was a frightful incongruity between civilization and his life—between broad, flat, comfortable, every-day, police-regulated civilization, and the hideous drama in which he was suddenly a principal actor.
More than once he told himself that he was mistaken and that such things could not possibly be; that it was all a feverish dream and that he should soon wake to see that there was a perfectly simple, natural and undramatic solution before him. But turn the facts as he would, he could not find that easy way. If he refused to marry Veronica and attempted to get legal protection for her, the inevitable result would be the prosecution, conviction, and utter ruin of his brother and of the woman he loved. If he refused to marry Veronica and did nothing to protect her, Matilde's eyes had told him what Matilde would do to escape public shame and open infamy. If he married Veronica and saved his brother—he was still man enough to feel that he could not do that. He could die. That was a possibility of which he had thought. But would his death, which would save him from committing the last and greatest baseness, save Veronica? She would have one friend less in the world, and she had not many.
With a half-childish smile on his pale face, he wondered what such a man as Taquisara would do, if he were so placed, and the Sicilian's manly face and bold eyes rose up contemptuously before him. To such a depth as Bosio had already reached, Taquisara could never have fallen. Bosio's instinct