Matilde Serao - The Land of Cockayne

Whilst she was away, Giovanni came back out of breath; he panted as he spoke.

'I have not found the Marquis anywhere, not at Don Crescenzio's lottery stand, nor at the Santo Spirito assembly, nor in Don Pasqualino the medium's house, where they meet every day.'

'Who meet?' asked the doctor distractedly, hardly listening to what he said.

'The Marquis's friends.... But I left word wherever he is to come back to the house, because her ladyship is ill.'

'Very good; send out this prescription,' said the doctor, who as usual wrote it with a pencil on a leaf from his pocket-book.

The old servant's pale face looked disturbed. The doctor, always taken up about his patient, did not notice him.

'Go, and get it,' he said, feeling Giovanni was still there.

'It is because ...' the poor man stammered out.

Then the doctor, just as he had done for Annarella, the glove-cutter's wretched wife, pulled ten francs out of his purse and gave them to him.

'... the master not being in and not being able to tell the mistress,' Giovanni muttered, wishing to account for the want of money.

'Very good—all right,' said the doctor, turning to his patient.

But a loud ring at the bell sounded all through the flat. A resounding step was heard, and the Marquis di Formosa came in. He seemed only to see his daughter stretched out on the bed. He began kissing her hand and forehead, speaking loudly in great anguish.

'My daughter, my daughter, what is the matter with you? Answer your father. Bianca, Bianca, answer! Where have you the pain? how did it come? My darling, my heart's blood, my crown, answer me! It is your father calling you. Listen, listen, tell me what it is! I will cure you, dear, dear daughter!'

And he went on exclaiming, crying out, sobbing, pale and red in the face, by turns, running his fingers through his white hair, his still graceful, strong figure bent, while the doctor looked at him keenly. In a silent interval the Marquis noticed Amati's presence, and recognised him as his celebrated neighbour.

'Oh, doctor,' he called out, 'give her something—this daughter is all I have!'

'I am trying what I can,' the doctor said slowly, in a low voice, as if he was chafing against the powerlessness of his science. 'But it is an obstinate faint.'

'Has she had it long?'

'About two hours. It came on in the Sacramentiste parlour.'

'Ah!' said the father, getting pale.

The doctor looked at him. They said no more. The secret rose up between them, wrapped in the thickest, deepest obscurity.

'Do something for her,' Formosa stammered, in a trembling voice.

But he was summoned; Giovanni whispered to him; the Marquis was undecided for a minute.

'I will come back at once,' he said as he went off.

The doctor had wrapped the invalid's little feet in warm clothes; now he wanted to wrap up her hands. All at once he felt a slight pressure on his hand: Bianca Maria with open eyes was quietly looking at him. The doctor's forehead wrinkled a little with surprise just for a moment.

'How do you feel?' he asked, leaning over the invalid.

She gave a tired little smile, and waved her hand as if to tell him to wait, that she could not speak yet.

'All right, very good,' the doctor said heartily. 'Don't speak;' and he made Margherita, who was coming in, keep silence, too.

The servant's poor tired eyes shone with joy when she saw Bianca Maria smiling.

'Are you better? Make a sign,' the doctor asked tenderly.

She made an effort, and very low, instead of a sign, she pronounced the word 'Better.' The voice was low, but quiet. With a medical man's familiarity, he took one of her hands in his to warm it.

'Thank you!' said she after a time.

'For what?' he said, rather put out.

'For everything,' she replied, smiling again.

Now, it seemed, she had quite got back the power of speaking. She spoke, but kept quite still, only living intensely in her eyes and smile.

'For everything—what do you mean?' he asked, piqued by a lively curiosity.

'I understood,' said she, with a profound look.

'You were conscious all the time?'

'All. I could neither move nor speak, but I understood.'

'Ah!' said he thoughtfully. He sent Margherita to let the Marquis know that his daughter had recovered consciousness.

'Were you in pain?'

'Yes, a great deal, from not being able to come out of my faint. I wept; I felt a pain at my heart.'

'Yes, yes,' he said. 'Don't speak any more—rest.'

The doctor made a sign to the Marquis, who was coming in, to keep silence. Formosa leant over his daughter's bed and touched her forehead with his hand, as if he was blessing her. Her eyelids fluttered and she smiled.

'Your daughter was conscious during her swoon—the rarest kind of fainting fit.'

'Was she conscious?' the Marquis asked in a strange voice.

'Yes; she saw and heard everything. It comes from sensitiveness carried to excess.'

Then he poured out more brandy in the teaspoon for Bianca Maria to take. Don Carlo Cavalcanti's face twitched. He leant over the bed, and asked:

'What did you see? Tell me—what did you see?'

The daughter did not answer. She looked at her father in such sad surprise that the doctor, turning round, noticed it and frowned. He had not heard what the father asked his daughter, and he again felt the great family secret coming up, seeing Bianca Maria's gentle, sad glance.

'Don't ask her anything,' the doctor said brusquely to the Marquis di Formosa.

The old patrician restrained a disdainful shrug. He brooded over his daughter's face, as if he wanted to get the secret out by magnetism. She lowered her eyelids, but suffering was in her face; then she looked at the doctor, as if she wanted help.

'Do you want anything?' he asked.

'There is a man at my door: make him go away,' she whispered in a frightened tone.

The doctor started; so did her father. In fact, outside the door, in his invariable wretched waiting attitude, was Pasqualino De Feo, dirty, ragged, with unkempt beard and pale, streaky red cheeks. The Marquis had left him in the drawing-room, but he slid along to Bianca Maria's room with the timid, quiet step of a beggar who fears to be chased from all doors.

'Who is that man?' said the doctor in that rough tone of his, going up to the door, as if to chase him away.

'He is a friend,' the Marquis answered, hurrying forward in a vague, embarrassed way.

'Send him away!' the doctor said sternly.

Outside the door the Marquis and Don Pasqualino chattered in a lively whisper. Bianca Maria looked as if she could hear what her father said outside; at one point she shook her head.

'Do you want that man sent away from the house?'

'Leave him,' she said feebly. 'It would annoy my father.'

Ah! the doctor knew nothing at all. Even now, on coming back to stern realities, he blamed himself for the sad, dark romance coming into his life; but an overmastering feeling entangled him, which he thought was scientific curiosity. Hours were passing, evening was coming on; he had made none of his visits, and he stayed on in that poor aristocratic sick lady's room, as if he could not tear himself away.

'I ought to go,' he said, as if to himself.

'But you will come back?' she asked in a whisper.

'Yes ...' he said, determined to conquer himself and not come back again.

'Do come back!' in a humble voice, beseechingly.

'I am here—just next door. If you are in pain, send for me.'

'Yes, yes,' she replied, quieted at the idea of being protected.

'Adieu, madame!'

'À Dieu!' she said, pointedly separating the two words.

Margherita went with him, thanking him softly for having saved her mistress; but he had again become an energetic, busy man, inimical to words.