The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg/Chapter 13
MR. WINNERY, listening to the tale, grew more and more bewildered. This woman whom he had expected to find sensible he saw was no different from all the others. He saw that she believed all that she was telling him and that he could never persuade her that it was all nonsense. She too was like all the others, the prey of superstition, the victim of ancient legends. It was simply another kind of superstition, different and more ancient and more deeply rooted than the superstitions which led Sister Annunziata to believe that she was chosen by Saint Francis as the elect of God. Sister Annunziata was more than half crazy, and they were right perhaps in shutting her up, but this shrewd hard peasant woman was clearly not mad. To Sister Annunziata Miss Annie Spragg was a white saint and to Signora Bardelli the old maid was a black saint.
He said to her, "But the Stigmata? How can a witch have received the miracle of the Stigmata?"
She looked at him mysteriously and replied, "That I do not know."
"It is all very strange."
"I do not know," observed Signora Bardelli, "unless it is the work of the Devil. Perhaps it is a joke played on the Church by something that is older than the Church, older even than Christianity. I have been told that things like that are the oldest things in the world."
She was stubborn and would not be shaken from her beliefs into the admission that her sister-in-law and her husband might have imagined such a story, or that there had really been none of the marks of the Stigmata on the body of Miss Annie Spragg. She had seen the scars with her own eyes.
A figure suddenly filled the doorway, throwing a blue shadow across the earthen floor. It was a tall, heavy woman, a peasant with a light shawl thrown over her head to keep off the sun. She spoke to Signora Bardelli. She had walked down from the mountains twenty-seven miles to sleep in the bed of Miss Annie Spragg. She had been married for thirteen years and had never had a child.
Mr. Winnery, with a sense of intruding a second time upon a delicate situation, rose and gave Signora Bardelli ten lira for the consultation. Then he bade her good-by, aware that she had disapproved of him as one who sought to meddle in things he could not understand. The tall heavy peasant woman sat wearily down on the chair he had left, and he walked out again into the blazing square where the battered fiacre and the bony horses stood waiting for him in the shadow of an enormous fig tree. For a moment the light blinded him. He felt weary and hot. And then he saw the deep cool valley of Monte Salvatore coming into form and on its side the distant black patch of cypresses that marked the Villa Leonardo.
A sense of the immense futility of everything swept over him and he thought, "Why should I trouble myself about these things? Let them believe what they like. That peasant woman is happier in the hope that a night on the Spragg woman's bed will give her the power of bringing more brats into an over-crowded world. She is happier than if she had stayed in her village without any hope. Life is short and I have wasted most of it. It is time that I began to bring my life to something."
Suddenly he wasn't interested in miracles and other natural phenomena. He wanted to see Miss Fosdick. The heat, the smell of the fig tree, the sight of the former janitress doing her best to make the world a fertile place made him feel languorous. He became the prey of his own imagination. He, a respectable man of fifty-three who had led a virginal existence, was becoming amorous.
He wakened the sleeping driver and said, "Go to the Villa Leonardo." And pointing with the malacca stick he had purchased to celebrate the passing of Aunt Bessie and the beginning of his courtship he added, "It is yonder. That patch of cypresses."
He would face Mrs. Weatherby again and tell her the truth—that he proposed to marry her companion, and that nothing could stop him, not even the famous twenty years of devotion.
As he drove up the long avenue between the rows of grotesque and ancient oaks he was stirred again by the villa's sense of loneliness and utter isolation. The windows were again tightly shuttered and this time there was no red and black motor standing before the door. The white flame of yucca set among swords had turned brown and dead and withered away. He got down—it had become a habit with him, as if he were an old friend of the household—and went through the dark tunnel of greenery. The garden had an unkempt look, for the dry heat of early autumn had detached the yellow leaves of the plane trees and left them dead and drifted in little piles along the colonnades of mottled trunks. The grave where the statue had been reburied had sunk now so that there was a little hollow instead of a mound. Then he discovered that the back of the villa presented the same appearance as the front. It was closed. Every door and shutter was fastened. They had gone away (he saw) and Miss Fosdick was perhaps lost forever.
With the malacca stick he pounded on the door. A kind of recklessness entered his soul. He called out the name of Miss Fosdick but no one answered. He was about to leave when he saw emerging from the decaying stables the abundant figure of Margharita. The girl came toward him and when she was near enough to speak she said that Signora Wetterbee had gone away, not only for this season but forever. She did not know where she had gone but she supposed she had gone back to her house in Brinoë. When he asked her why she had gone away the girl said that she had taken a dislike to the place. The villa itself had been sold over Signora Wetterbee's head. The truth, she added, was that she had been driven out.
It was all the doing of the statue, she said. It ought never to have been buried again. It was taking vengeance on Signora Wetterbee. No sooner was it buried than strange things began to happen. Signora Wetterbee had been unable to sleep and in the middle of the night she had heard music and sounds of wild gayeties in the garden. She, Margharita, had heard none of the sounds nor any of the other servants, but Signora Wetterbee insisted there were sounds and accused them of disturbing her rest, although, said Margharita, they had all been sleeping soundly. It went on night after night and then one morning Signora Wetterbee packed all her belongings and got into the Ford with her dogs and the parrot Anubis without even saying good-by, and Giovanni drove her back to Brinoë. Signora Wetterbee, she said, was a strange woman and imagined things. It was her belief that perhaps Signora Wetterbee was a witch. She had seen her standing on her head on the terrace in the moonlight clad only in a pair of man's trousers. Surely such goings-on could be indulged in only by a witch. What did the Signor think?
Mr. Winnery, who by now had begun to think that he was losing his reason, said that perhaps she was a witch or perhaps she was only doing the exercises that were part of a certain religious cult. Who, he asked, had bought the villa?
It was the Principessa d'Orobelli. Margharita had heard that she had bought it suddenly without even asking the price and that she meant to retire to it and spend the rest of her life there. She had not even come to see the place. She had heard that the Principessa planned to install bathrooms. That, thought Margharita, would be exciting. She had never seen a bathroom. Was it true that the Principessa was an American lady?
And then quite suddenly Margharita said, "Signora Wetterbee went away three days ago but Signorina Fosdeek returned this morning."
"Where?" cried Mr. Winnery. "Where is she?"
Margharita said she did not know it was Signorina Fosdeek he wanted to see. She thought it was Signora Wetterbee. She even (and here she became arch) thought that perhaps there was a romance with Signora Wetterbee. Signorina Fosdeek had arrived on foot carrying her bag.
"On foot?" exclaimed Mr. Winnery. "In this heat?"
"Si, si. And she ran away on foot."
"Ran away?" repeated Mr. Winnery.
"She ran away. Signora Wetterbee did not know she was going."
A great light burst on Mr. Winnery. He wasted no more time talking with Margharita. Leaving her astonished in the midst of a long recital, he went to the villa and this time without knocking he pushed open the door. There was a rustle of dried leaves in the hallway and a rat scurried off into the shadows. He did not like rats. The sight of them made his hair rise up on end. But he pushed bravely on, calling out, "Miss Fosdick! Miss Fosdick!" again and again. But there was no answer. The name simply echoed through the empty house. Perhaps, he thought wildly, she has killed herself and I shall find the body. He went from room to room. All were closed and the only light filtered in dimly from the cracks in the shutters. The big salon overlooking the valley was empty and the bare dining room and the small room under the stairway. He started up the stairs and was half way to the top when he heard below him a slight scuffling sound, among the dead leaves. Turning he saw Miss Fosdick. She had come out of the salon and was trying to escape before he discovered her.
"Miss Fosdick," he called out. "I've been searching for you."
She halted and stood against the wall without looking at him. She had in her hand the worn handbag. The black dress was covered with dust to the knees and her hat had slipped a little over one ear. She was flushed and trembling and her brown hair was all in disarray.
He came down the stairs toward her. "I've been looking for you," he said. "I've been twice before to call at the villa. Mrs. Weatherby told me you had gone off on a holiday." He tried to put her at her ease by behaving as if there was nothing in the least strange in finding her thus. "I really wanted to see you again."
She began suddenly to cry. "I don't want to see you. I don't want to see anyone. I only want to die. I'm useless and no good to anyone. I'm better out of the way. I ought to kill myself but I can't even do that properly."
He had arrived in time. She had been thinking of suicide.
Without quite knowing what he was doing he slipped an arm gently about her shoulders. She did not protest or draw away from him.
"You're not useless, Miss Fosdick," he said gently. "None of God's creatures are useless. Come, let's sit down somewhere and talk. I've been looking for you for days."
She seemed too tired either to protest or speak and he led her gently into the big salon. He did not think of his own feelings, for in the excitement he had forgotten to be literary. Miss Fosdick seemed plumper and prettier than he had ever imagined, and in her distress far more charming.
The furniture had been stacked into one corner. He selected one of the uncomfortable chairs and bade her sit in it. She obeyed him meekly as a rabbit. Then he opened the shutters and in a blaze of golden light the whole length of the glorious valley opened up before them. Drawing up another uncomfortable chair he seated himself and said, "Tell me now. Perhaps I can help you." But she seemed unable to do anything but sob. "Margharita," he said, "told me you had run away. She told me the whole story."
Then the flood gates burst and the whole torrent poured forth. She told him the long story of her twenty years' devotion to Mrs. Weatherby and how in the end when she could stand it no longer she had run away. And she had come back because her money had given out and at the pension they would keep her no longer unless she paid in advance. She had tried to get work as a companion. She had even advertised in the papers but there had only been three replies. One was from a clergyman's widow who required that she know how to crochet and do tatting. Another was from an elderly spinster who wanted to be read to in Italian, and the third was from a retired army officer with an invalid wife who required a woman who was young and pretty and who had been trained as a nurse.
"And I," said Miss Fosdick, "can do none of these things. So I came back. . . . I came back to Aunt Henrietta and now she has gone. I don't know what I'm to do. I haven't any more money and I don't know how to do anything but be a companion to Aunt Henrietta. I ought to die."
Mr. Winnery, feeling very masculine and mediæval, told her that they must first of all be practical. She must go back to Brinoë in the fiacre with him. He would lend her money until they worked out her problem. He told her about Aunt Bessie's death and how he was now a rich man. He had a feeling for her, he said, from the very beginning. He had known all along that she was unhappy with the seeress.
But Miss Fosdick suddenly grew respectable and unfeminine. "No," she said, "I couldn't do that. I couldn't accept any money from a gentleman I barely know. A lady can't do such things."
For a moment Mr. Winnery was irritated, and then he remembered that of course she was in trouble and he must be gentle with her. He tried to make her understand that it was purely a business matter and that she could pay him back. But beneath his arguments Miss Fosdick only grew more and more respectable. He might have been a lecherous old man planning the ruin of a young virgin. He wanted to say, "Well, if you don't borrow money from me what on earth are you going to do?" He would have said it if he had not thought her so charming with her plump face flushed and her eyes damp with tears. And then he thought of a solution.
"You can pay me back by going to work for me."
"But how can I work for you? There is nothing I can do."
Nevertheless at this shadow of hope she grew more quiet and took a handkerchief from her handbag and began to dry her eyes.
Mr. Winnery explained to her all about Miracles and other Natural Phenomena and the state of confusion in which the vast amount of notes, copyings and references continually found themselves. It would be her task to keep them in order, tied into little bundles and ticketed. It was not a difficult task, he pointed out, nor one that required training. All it needed was a clear head.
"But I haven't a clear head," echoed Miss Fosdick. "I always muddle everything."
"Well, well. In any case we must make a try. It will be a help to me and will provide money for you."
While he was speaking Mr. Winnery made a remarkable discovery. It was this—that during the period Miss Fosdick had apparently been drying her tears her flushed face had grown perceptibly paler. For a moment he thought with alarm that perhaps she meant to faint. And then suddenly he understood the phenomenon. Undoubtedly there was a powder puff concealed in the folds of the handkerchief. The discovery touched him. As a means of powdering the nose it was a fashion so much more refined than that used by women like, well, like the d'Orobelli, who simply extracted an apparatus from her bag and sent boldly the powder flying in all directions.
Again he touched Miss Fosdick's hand. "There now," he said, "you're feeling better, aren't you? There's no need of ever going back to Mrs. Weatherby. Never again."
Miss Fosdick admitted almost grudgingly that there did seem to be hope.
"And now we can start back to Brinoë. I have a fiacre outside. I will pay you a week's wages in advance and you can go back to the pension."
Miss Fosdick thought perhaps she had better take less than that. She doubted whether she would last a week. But Mr. Winnery reassured her. "Mrs. Weatherby," he said, "always preaches self-confidence is the first of the virtues. Besides, I am certain that you are just the secretary I've been seeking. I'm sure," he added with meaning, "that you'll last for months and for years."
They went through the empty hall where the dead leaves still rustled in the draught from the open door, and on the steps leading down into the garden Mr. Winnery halted a moment to regard the view.
"It is a beautiful place," he said. "It would be a splendid place to live, only I hear the Princess d'Orobelli has bought it for herself."
They drove back to Brinoë, where Mr. Winnery escorted her to her pension, and the next morning at ten she appeared for work. She lasted one week, and then two and then three, tasting for the first time the sweets of a woman's economic independence. She muddled the mass of notes and papers hopelessly so that Mr. Winnery was unable to find anything he wanted, whereas before he had been able to find at least a few things. But it did not seem to annoy Mr. Winnery and at the beginning of the fourth week he asked Miss Fosdick quite suddenly to marry him and quite suddenly she accepted.
It was agreed that they were to go to Iowa on their honeymoon because Mr. Winnery had a desire to see America and Mrs. Winnery wanted to revisit Winnebago Falls. Not the least of her motives was a desire to exhibit her rich and distinguished husband. As a kind of second thought Mr. Winnery said that it would give him an opportunity to go into the very beginnings of the strange case of Miss Annie Spragg.
A week before Mr. Winnery paid Signora Bardelli the only visit he ever made her, the Principessa gave in Venice the famous fête which each year marked the peak of the season. It attained a new measure of splendor and magnificence and attracted the fashionable and the notorious from every part of Europe. Millionaires, decayed royaltry, gigoloes, actresses, demi-mondaines; even two ministers of state enjoying pompous holidays were present. It went off in a blaze of triumph with Bengal lights and three orchestras and a whole fleet of decorated gondolas. Anna d'Orobelli and Oreste, Duke of Fonterrabia, appeared in the costumes of the Countess Guiccioli and Lord Byron, and Father d'Astier was seen moving about wearily and looking old and tired in the robes of Mazarin, which suited him to perfection. It was the first ball in years which Mr. Winnery had not described at second hand in his correspondence to the Ladies' Own World.
And two days later when the curtains of Anna d'Orobelli's bedchamber were pulled back to let the morning sun stream in, there was a letter on the lacquered tray beside her chocolate. It was the letter in the handwriting of the Duque de Fonterrabia which she had been awaiting for nearly two years. It was quite short and rather cold. It said simply that he had been forced to undertake a voyage to the Argentine and that he regretted not having had a chance to bid his beloved Anna farewell. He would write her and see her on his return. But she knew well enough that it was the end. Voyez, c'est elle la vieille Princesse!
For two days she was not seen and on the third day she left Venice mysteriously and appeared with equal mystery in Brinoë, where she quickly set about restoring and preparing the Villa Leonardo. Because it was lonely and because it was in a state of ruin, it had been waiting for years a purchaser who saw its virtues. With a kind of mad vitality she attacked the refitting of the villa. Masons came and plumbers and painters. To Margharita and the other servants who lived on the place it all seemed a strange proceeding for one who was simply preparing a spot where she might retire from the world. Four bathrooms were installed and much furniture, not furniture like that Mrs. Weatherby had strewn about during her tenancy, but expensive and beautiful pieces that should have been in museums. The old chapel was opened again and put in order for religious ceremonies. There was such a confusion as the old villa had not seen since the great days of the Spanish Ambassador. And at last when the Principessa came herself (dressed handsomely all in black by Worth) to examine the progress of the work she asked what had become of the statue they found in the garden, and Margharita told her that it had been buried again. The Principessa herself superintended the reopening of the grave, but they dug and dug without ever finding a trace of the statue and at last Margharita confessed that she knew all along it was not there. It had already been dug up a second time and carted down the hillside where it was set up in the barren rocky little garden of Pietro the goatherd. The Principessa flew into a wild rage and said that the statue was her own and that she meant to have it. She herself went to Pietro's hut to recover it.
And when the palace was finished Anna d'Orobelli drove one day into Brinoë and sought out Father d'Astier to show him the place she had prepared for her retirement.
It was a warm day in April when the hillside beyond Monte Salvatore was blue with violets and wild hyacinths and the whole valley, that was by nature so bleak and barren, had turned fresh and green from the thin stream at the bottom to the wild woods on its crest. But in her black and red motor the Princess drove so fast that it was impossible to appreciate the beauties of the burgeoning countryside. They entered the villa by the main door and went from room to room, from the great salon with the anatomical paintings to the tiny room in the top fitted as a cell, with a hard iron bed, a crucifix and a wooden bench, where Anna d'Orobelli planned to retire for days at a time in prayer. They had very few words to say to each other. Father d'Astier from time to time murmured banal compliments upon her taste and the Princess showed the rooms with indifference as if it were a duty, as if she were saying all the while, "It is because of you that I have come to this. It is because of you that I must end my life in barren loneliness here in this solitary villa." When he asked her why she had troubled to put in so many bathrooms, she replied that she thought God would not mind if sometimes she had friends come to stop with her, and Father d'Astier murmured that he supposed God would not mind, though that was scarcely the Church's idea of a religious retirement.
When they had finished the house, they went down into the garden. The colonnades of plane trees were no longer yellow and brown as they had been nine months earlier when they last walked together in the garden. The whole place was covered by a canopy of fresh green leaves that in the spring sunlight appeared luminous, giving off a pure green light. The roses that climbed over the ancient stone balustrade above the valley were covered with white and yellow blossoms.
Once Anna d'Orobelli said, "This is a haunted garden. Margharita says at night they sometimes hear sounds of singing and dancing although the place is quite empty. It was the ghosts that drove away that preposterous Mrs. Weatherby. I don't mind that. I've never been afraid of ghosts."
They found themselves suddenly at the end of one of the colonnades before a niche let recently into the mouldering wall. It was a niche such as one finds in the gardens of Italy sheltering images of the Virgin, only the image was not that of the interceding Mary but of a figure more ancient. It was the statue that had been dug up out of the cesspool. On the slab of stone beneath it there was an inscription. Father d'Astier had need to read only the first line to know what it was.
"Dans la damnation le feu est la moindre chose; le supplice propre au damné est le progrès infini dans le vice et dans le crime, l'âme s'endurcissant, se dépravant toujours, s'enfoncant nécessairement dans le mal de minute en progression géométrique pendant l'éternité."
Father d'Astier never saw her again, and after that people said that he had suddenly grown old. The women whom he had once entertained by his wit and helped with his worldly advice and solaced by his spiritual comfort no longer found him either interesting or good company. He ceased to be amused by their vanities and even while they were talking to him his gaze would have a strange way of wandering off as if in search of something or someone whom he would never find. At times he would pull himself up with a great effort and try again to be what he had once been, but in the end he was too weary. People who had once included him in dinners and week-ends began to neglect him. He went about bravely as usual in search of converts, following the season from London to Venice, to Paris, to Vienna, but clearly there was no longer any heart in his journeys.
And so he came one night in July to be staying with the head of a great English Roman Catholic family. There had been people for dinner and after dinner, feeling a hunger to be alone, he withdrew into the great library where the old Duke kept his famous collection. There he left the other men and hid himself behind a great globe mounted in silver and mahogany to turn quietly, half-dreaming, the pages of an eighteenth century translation of Horace. And presently when he had wearied of reading he allowed the book to slip into his lap and sat with his eyes closed. It was through the mists of sleep that he became aware of the voices.
Two men had seated themselves on the opposite side of the globe and were talking. One of them was English and the other spoke with an Italian accent. The Italian, he knew, was the cousin of Faustino d'Orobelli. He was a middle-aged man and rich with the profits of an automobile factory. The Englishman he thought must be Admiral Burnham, whom he had not seen in more than twenty years until tonight—not, he thought, since he had gone to Malta on Nina's yacht on the voyage that ended in meeting Anna.
The two men were gossiping. He heard the Italian say, "After all, my cousin Faustino was never much of a husband for a woman like that." And "She has kept remarkably young. She is quite extraordinary."
And then the Englishman answering. "I knew her when she was first married. I met her in Malta. Do you remember her?"
The voice of the Italian. "That was a long time ago. Even her second son, . . . the one who is quite all right . . . is a grown man. But I hear she has come to the same end as most of them."
There was a sound of the admiral stirring in his chair, as if he were sitting up with interest.
"She's found someone to console her," continued the Italian voice. . . . "A young Italian. He calls himself a duke, but there are so many dukes. He makes ends meet by gambling. . . ." There was a slight pause, and then, "By doing what he can. But he won't need to worry for some time. She's very rich. It was her money that saved Faustino's family. She's an odd woman. She has no sense of the value of money. It's lucky she's always had so much. She met the gigolo at Nina de Paulhac's."
The voice of the admiral sounded suddenly gruff and ill-tempered. "I could never see why Nina has such people about."
"She has a list of them, for dances and week-ends. When a woman gets to be Nina's age, young men don't flock about for love."
There was a pause and Father d'Astier was aware that he must be very still lest they discover that he was sitting there, for he knew that two men will gossip and say things of a woman that they would not say if a third were present. Honor to which he himself had sacrificed so much was, he thought, an artificial thing, like the clothes one put on before appearing in public. He found himself praying that they would not speak of her again. And then the voice of Faustino's cousin.
"They say that Oreste Fonterrabia went away on her account."
"Yes, she was always reluctant to give up love." A sigh. "But a magnificent woman."
"We must remember what she was."
"I am glad to have news of her. I haven't seen her in years."
And then the cracked voice of the childish old duke moving toward them. "I think, gentlemen, that we will join the ladies."
When they had gone Father d'Astier replaced the volume of Horace, came out from his hiding place and fixing his mouth into a worldly smile went through the big door into the drawing-room where the daughter of Admiral Burnham who was the half-sister of Victor d'Orobelli was playing Chopin quietly in the far corner. He noticed that she had the same fine red hair and clear skin that Victor had. She was young and very beautiful, and in his weariness and confusion it seemed to him for a moment that she might have been his own daughter if he had chosen differently. He had only Fulco.
That night when he was alone again in his room over the Georgian doorway that faced the park he closed and locked his door and then sat down before the fire they had made for him, because he sometimes had chills at night, even in July. All through the interminable evening he had been thinking in the back of his mind, behind all the talk and chatter and the music made by the Burnham girl, of Fulco, and he made the astounding discovery that Fulco hadn't any longer the power of irritating him. He had begun to think of Fulco as Poor Fulco in the way he thought of Anna as Poor Anna. That meant, he knew, that he was really an old man and at the end of things. He saw that he alone was responsible for Fulco's very existence and that he had in a way always shirked that responsibility. He saw poor Fulco in his checked suit and umbrella wandering from village to village in Italy, trying to "purify Christianity," and trying to free it of all the centuries of tiresome accumulations and growths. Fulco who hadn't the power or the dignity or the presence to convince anyone of anything. Fulco attempting a new Reformation. . . .
He turned away from the fire and began to undress. His hands trembled a little, like those of a very old man. They had never trembled before. He was tired, but not too tired to make a resolution. He would go back to Italy tomorrow and go from town to town, searching out Fulco, and when he had found Fulco he would reason with him to return to the Church. He would even use his influence to help him and he would tell Fulco that he was his son and the only relative who remained in the world. Together they would perhaps work something out and when that was done he would retire into the monastery at Monte Salvatore and never come out again, not even in death. They could bury him in the end in the warm sunny garden above the valley. The old conflict in his ravaged soul seemed dead at last. The Church was his mother to whom he might return now that he had finished with life. The world had nothing better to offer. And he was tired of this world.
He left suddenly saying that he had been called back to Brinoë on business of the Church. It was in Bologna while his train was awaiting the train from Venice that he bought the newspaper and read the small paragraph at the bottom of the page. In Milan, said the paper, a man later identified as a renegade priest named Baldessare had been found on a street corner preaching Communism, and twelve vigilant and heroic young men in black shirts had pulled him down from the steps where he was speaking and beaten him and dosed him with castor oil. The offender had died the same night of his injuries. "It is by such vigilance and heroic conduct," read the last florid sentence of the brief account, "that our leader and our sacred Italy are preserved daily from the corruptions of those who would destroy both. It is hoped that the watchful young men will be properly rewarded for their service."
Father d'Astier closed his eyes and leaned back in the heat of the compartment. "Communism," he thought. "Poor Fulco had probably never heard of Communism." They had killed him for preaching what Christ taught.
In another day they would have made him a martyr and a saint.
That night when he arrived at Brinoë he went to the two bare small rooms and taking a few books from them he locked the door, and hiring a fiacre, drove up the long hill to Monte Salvatore. They were awaiting him for he had sent a telegram ahead from Bologna. Inside the monastery they told him that the Principessa d'Orobelli had not returned to the Villa Leonardo. She had leased it, they said, to some English people named Winnery who were recently married. For a moment Father d'Astier wondered whether it could be the pompous and common little man he had met on the day they found the statue in the garden, and then he told himself that a man like Mr. Winnery would scarcely be enjoying a honeymoon at his age. From the window of his room high up in the monastery above the house of Signora Bardelli, Father d'Astier could see the distant lights of the villa twinkling like stars in the darkness. He knew what he had known all along, that she would never return there.