CHAPTER XXI
"Who is it that is missing?" Peppino had asked of Rinaldo as their boat was finally coaxed round the corner of Via Santafede into the Ripetta, shipping a good deal of muddy water in the process.
Rinaldo did not reply till this was bailed out; then, straightening himself and resuming his rowing, he replied, "Old Bianchi. You know him, boys, the archæologist. Those poor women think he is drowning somewhere. It is only on their account that I care what becomes of him."
"Bianchi? Bianchi?" came the chorus of scorn from three cheerful youths with a wholesome contempt for age and learning. "Ber Bacco!" "It requires a face! To take us off real work to look for that old bat!" "Know him, who doesn't? And who would so much as cross the street to help him?"
Rinaldo waited till he could make himself heard, then he said laughing at their protests, "You need not even do that. He is down there in Palazzo Cestaldini, with the Cardinal. See, it is on this side and quite near."
"Put about," came Peppino's sharp command, and Rinaldo was obliged to obey with the rest, who were executing the manœuver with much alacrity. "Now," Peppino continued, when they were once more heading down stream, "we will go where we are wanted, to help the bakers save their bread and the butchers their meat. Are we to let the city starve to-morrow, because old 'Brontolone' is sitting in peace and comfort with the Cardinal in the piano nobile of Palazza Cestaldini? What do those females take us for? Pull for Piazza Navora."
"As you will, heartless one," Rinaldo replied, "only we were so near that it would not have taken five minutes to assure ourselves that the old brigand was still there, and I could have called up to the women that he was safe."
"Of course he is safe," snorted Peppino. "The women must learn sense and have patience. There is man's work to do now. Look out."
They were turning a corner again and bumped into a big boat full of "guardie," the semi-military police who were responsible for the order of the city. The leader hailed them joyfully and at once attached them to his force for the rest of the day, a day of uncommonly hard work for the easy-going young men.
A strange sight met their eyes when they reached Piazza Navona. In spite of yesterday's warnings, flower sellers, fruit vendors, dealers in secondhand wares of every kind had installed themselves at break of day in their usual spots; and when, a few hours later, the sewers had suddenly gushed with improvised torrents, the unwary market people had lost their heads, and, unfortunately, a good deal of their property. The pyramid of huge water-melons piled round the base of the central obelisk now rose like a green island in a muddy sea. The two rococo fountains, fed from far away in the country through uncontaminated conduits, tossed their spray into the air and flung down sheets of pure crystal to meet the turbid, evil-smelling contributions which had submerged their basins; Bernini's grotesque Tritons grinned fixedly on the ever increasing disaster below them; and the long florid porch of the church of Sant' Agnese, raised on its marble steps above the danger level, was covered from end to end with salvage over which the owners were weeping and wringing their hands. One old crone stood leaning far out, fishing valiantly with her umbrella for a basket of lace which wobbled round just out of reach, its bundles of heavy, handmade edgings unrolling on the wavelets, while a bit of priceless old Venetian—such as collectors would love and the uninitiated regard as a rag—was twisting itself round the loosening laths of a towel-horse which had been its neighbor on the paving stones. Old books and engravings, prints of saints in prayer and goddesses in flirtation, danced along shoulder to shoulder with plucked chickens and bobbing lemons; some urchins on the church steps were daring each other to wade after the spoils of the frying stall, which still wafted entrancing odors of hot oil to their discriminating little noses.
After the first stress had been relieved Peppino and his comrades, known as they were for expert watermen, were told off to go through the lowlying streets nearest the river, where the inhabitants, driven, some hours earlier, from the ground floors to upper stories, might be in need of supplies. Well loaded with provisions they set out, stopping below the windows whence they were hailed, and sending up rations in the baskets which came swinging down on strings, the coppers for the food rattling inside them. Women called out, entreating the rescuers to go and look for missing men of the family; but there was no delaying for these appeals, and each and all received the truly Roman answer, "He is safe, we have just seen him." That not one of the party knew the name or face of the absent one made no difference at all. No loss of life had been reported or was likely to be, so the statement as to safety would probably be justified, while as to the other—well, distressed females must be pacified, and a good common-sense lie was the only practical means of doing that.
There were other calls, however, which were instantly responded to. In one house there was sudden sickness; a terrified woman screamed to the men, and Rinaldo caught the word "Miserere," the synonym for the fruit season scourge which slays in twelve hours. With all their might they pulled for the nearest apothecary, threatened him with instant death if he did not find his remedies in the twinkling of an eye, and then laid violent hands on him and bore him back to the stricken house, where they left him, disregarding his crazed entreaties that they would wait and take him home again.
Then came a still more urgent call; a woman was dying and wanted the priest. Noting the street and number they promised the scared relatives to bring one. Pausing for a moment they consulted as to the position of the nearest. Peppino remembered his topography while the others were still looking round them, and issued his orders. Some ten minutes later the crew pulled up before the front steps of San Severino, and agile Peppino bounded up them, three at a time, to summon the sacristan. Rinaldo was tired of sitting on the narrow thwart, and he too sprang out and stood on the steps, holding the boat with the boathook. All was so changed by the strange aspect of the flood that he at first failed to recognize the spot. His acquaintance with his parish church had been chiefly carried on through the back entrance, but as he stood looking up at the sky, which was clearing now, with sulky shafts from the low sun tearing red rifts in the inky clouds, a sense of familiarity came over him. Baring his heated brow he looked up, down, around. Why, of course, it was Giannella's church, and Giannella herself was only a few hundred yards away, waiting, with that adorable anxiety for him still in her eyes; weeping, perhaps, in her fear lest harm had come to him. He must get to her somehow, and tell her that he had not forgotten her for a moment (a brazen untruth, but how could any woman understand that even the most faithful masculine heart has no room for sentiment in the midst of action?), but that every oar and every pair of hands had been urgently needed throughout that long trying day. How glad she would be to see him. Though of course she would pretend to be still concerned about that animal, Bianchi, of whose society the Cardinal must be horribly tired by this time if he had not managed to ship him home already. There had not been a moment in which to attend to him, but Rinaldo felt that he could not go back to Giannella without having called at Palazzo Cestaldini at least: well, the day was drawing in, the boys were all tired and hungry; they must quit work soon. After this expedition with the priest, he himself would be free to go and execute the belated commission.
Ah, here he came, the good Father, reverently carrying the veiled chalice, accompanied by a frightened acolyte with a lighted taper, and Fra Tommaso, looking very serious and having much ado to hold up the umbrella canopy and not slip on the wet steps. As they approached, Rinaldo knelt with bared head; then he was on his feet, helping the priest to bestow himself and his precious burden safely. The sacristan knelt in the boat behind him, still sheltering him with the canopy, and the boy climbed in, grinning and delighted now with the novelty of the situation.
It made an impressive picture as the young men, bare-headed and silent, rowed fast down the yellow waterway, where the wavelets were crested with bronze gold in the low rays of the sunset. The priest, looking neither to right nor left, was praying in whispers, Fra Tommaso's deep tones striking in with Amens and responses; the lurid sunbeams glowed on his tonsured head, on the gold fringes of the canopy, on the young men's faces stilled to worship by the careful honor of their mission. It was not far to the house of death, a mean, discolored building in a narrow alley, where pale watchers looking out from the doorway told them they were still wanted, still in time.
The neighbors gathered at their windows, sympathetic and curious. Two or three women lighted candles and held them out in honor of the Santissimo. Then the rowers waited in silence for some twenty minutes, after which the padre reappeared, wrapped and prayerful as before, and he and his attendants were conveyed home.
"Now for supper," exclaimed Peppino. "I die of hunger."
"One moment," said Rinaldo. "We are close to Palazzo Cestaldini, I would just like to make an inquiry there."
There was another outcry from his companions, and at that moment they were all hailed by a passing boat, full of their friends of the River Society. "Come on, boys," they called, "we are all dismissed for the night. We are going to supper in Piazza Colonna—you follow us."
"In a moment," Rinaldo answered, "we have one little thing to do first."
"Nonsense!" protested the others. But Rinaldo was firm this time and the malcontents, calling the other boat alongside, clambered into it and shoved away. Peppino had remained with his friend.
"You could not get this clumsy thing along by yourself, you pig-headed brigand," he growled. "My poor outraged inside is crying for food, but I will come with you. Pull now—mind that pillar. Here we are, but the portone is closed, and God knows how we are going to get in. Good heavens, what is that?" The current, carrying them swiftly along, had flung the boat-side against the protruding grating of a window just above its tide, and at the same instant a dripping object, apparently a corpse in spectacles, rose behind the bars, a clawlike hand caught at the gunwale, and a yell of entreaty assailed the rowers' ears.
"For the love of God, take me out! Take me out! I perish, I die! Madonna mia Santissima! Take me out!"
"Stop dragging at the boat," cried Peppino when he had recovered his breath. "Who are you? How did you get shut up here?"
"Go to the devil," retorted the shuddering apparition. "Is this a moment for questions? I have been in this sepulcher since the morning. Get me out, I say."
"Santo Dio," gasped Rinaldo, turning nearly as pale as the distracted suppliant, "you—you are Professor Bianchi. Oh, assassin that I am! Yes, I will get you out, instantly. Let go, let go, I can't pull you through the grating."
They had to tear his fingers off the gunwale, for the man was half delirious in his terror of being abandoned. Then with two or three strokes they reached the closed front door and pounded on it, shouting for the porter. Their cries attracted heads to the first-floor windows; Domenico, with the chaplain looking over his shoulder, leaned far out and asked what this scandalous uproar meant. Did they know where they were, these audacious ones? This was the Palazza Cestaldini, and the Eminenza was within. If they did not depart at once, the police should be summoned.
Rinaldo shouted down Domenico's reproofs, explaining with extraordinary fluency of invective that some dog, fathered by brigands and mothered by wolves, and doomed with twenty generations of picked ancestors, to eternal fires had kept Professor Bianchi imprisoned, in peril of death, in a flooded crypt, since the morning. Let some Christian, if there was one in that many times cursed household, open the portone and let him come to their victim's rescue.
Then indeed the faces above turned pale with consternation. Domenico vanished, and the chaplain, nearly falling out in his earnestness, clasped his hands and implored the gentleman to be quiet, to moderate the transports of his just indignation. The Eminenza was ill—to learn of this accident suddenly might be fatal to him. But at this point Rinaldo, still calling down the wrath of Heaven on all implicated in the tragedy, heard the heavy bolts withdrawn, and, through the slowly opening portal, saw men standing up to their knees in water and the steep ascent to the courtyard crowded with terrified servants.
Leaving Peppino to take care of the boat, he sprang out and landed among them like a firebrand. In five minutes he had picked out some likely assistants and had them under orders, carrying ladders, ropes and lanterns down the dark stairway which led from a corner of the courtyard to the subterranean regions.
When they had followed him down to the last step above water in the crypt Rinaldo raised his lantern high above his head and peered across an inky sea to locate the Professor, but all he could make out was a crumpled heap sunk together on the stone platform beneath a window; and no glad cries came from it to answer his encouraging shouts. He tried the depth of the water at his feet and found some seven or eight feet of it; so there was only one thing to do: he coiled a rope round his body, placed one end in the hand of a trembling domestic, with frightful threats of what would overtake him should he let go, and then swam across to the outer wall. There he ran lightly up the steps and lifted the Professor, who had fallen on his face in collapse and unconsciousness at last. The reaction of relief when he had caught at the boat, the agony of disappointment on seeing himself, as his dazed senses told him, again forsaken, had been too much after the horrible experience of the day, and he lay in Rinaldo's arms an inert and heavy mass which it would be by no means easy to carry back. It would be better to have help, so Rinaldo shouted to the men on the steps to go and fetch his friend—and to see that the boat was made fast. A few minutes later Peppino's cheery call sounded up in the echoing darkness of the vaults, and the splash of his stroke as he shot through the water struck pleasantly on Rinaldo's ear.
Peppino turned white and shrank back when he touched Bianchi's clay-cold hand, but Rinaldo assured him that the man had only fainted—his heart was still beating. Between them they roped him to themselves, slipped smoothly into the water, and swam in perfect unison to the foot of the stairs. There Domenico and the chaplain fell on their necks almost weeping in their thankfulness and their admiration of what they called the young gentlemen's amazing courage. The boys shook them off, laughing, for the little feat was ease and simplicity itself; and then Rinaldo, picking up the still unconscious Professor, imperiously demanded a warm bed for his patient. In an incredible short time the poor chilled victim was rolled up in heated blankets, surrounded by scalding bricks, and Rinaldo made him swallow a draught, the hottest and fieriest that had ever passed his abstemious lips.
He was quite alive now, but a little light-headed. He shed copious tears of relief and weakness while he clung to and kissed Rinaldo's hand, called him Hermes, and vowed that if only he would grow a beard nobody would ever notice the place where his head was joined to his body.
Before all this was accomplished, the Cardinal's bell had been ringing repeatedly, and at last the chaplain and Domenico, the latter quaking with apprehension, presented themselves before him.
"What is this commotion that I have been hearing?" the prelate asked quite sternly. "Twice and three times have I rung the bell and no one has come. I had never imagined that such remissness was possible. Explain."
"Eminenza," Domenico wailed, "there has been trouble, just a little trouble. Nothing serious. Let the Eminenza not be alarmed." This last in compliance to the young priest's grip of his arm and a frowning reminder that the Cardinal must not be agitated.
But Paolo Cestaldini was more than agitated, he was terribly incensed, when the whole miserable story, wrapped in palliations and excuses, was laid before him.
"What?" he cried, his usually gentle face lighted up with a flame of anger, "you actually left that good and illustrious man to suffer, to drown, to accuse you of his death before his Maker? You, Domenico, you never took the trouble to assure yourself that he had left the vault. It is only by Heaven's mercy and that brave young stranger's charity that you are not a murderer to-day. Coward, pagan, without heart, without conscience—how can I ever endure to have you near me again?"
"Eminenza, forgive him," the chaplain besought, "he could not know, he did not reflect. He has served you faithfully for so many years."
"Let the Eminenza have pity upon me!" Domenico implored, falling on his knees with uplifted hands. "I have sinned, yes—but indeed no reasoning person could have figured to himself that the Signor Professore was still there. The Signor De Sanctis, the two workmen, they went away in the first moment of danger. Was he an infant that he could not follow them? And why did they leave him? Could they not have dragged him with them? Is he not old and thin? Eminenza mia buona, the fault is with them, not with me."
The Cardinal still frowned on his contrite retainer, but he was too just not to see that there was sense in his expostulations. He turned to the chaplain who was standing silently by. "Caro mio," he said, "do me the favor to return to our poor friend's bedside—he may require something. I must say a word to Domenico here." When they were left alone he addressed the major-domo: "You have been guilty of the gravest neglect and disobedience, my poor Domenico, for I sent you downstairs with express orders to ascertain whether the Professor was still below. You gave one look from the upper step, you saw water, you returned, very frightened, without having even asked the porter whether he had seen him go out. I shall forgive you this time, and I must in justice admit that you were not the only culprit. Certainly Signor De Sanctis should have let someone know that the other gentleman had remained behind. But I suppose that he was too alarmed and thought only of himself. See, my son, what comes of selfishness! It is the ugliest of all the sins, the one which Satan finds ready to his hand in every human heart. It makes a man of education as stupid and cruel as the beasts. Hell would be to let in a day but for selfishness."
"Yes, indeed, Eminenza," said Domenico quickly. He always knew that he was forgiven when his master embarked on a sermon and that light of charity and sorrow began to shine in his eyes. But the sermons were apt to be long, and just now the old man knew that he might be wanted elsewhere. The Cardinal's physician had been summoned to attend the Professor, remedies would be ordered, a servant would have to be dispatched somehow to the apothecary—and what with the flood and the accident, the servants were like a pack of frightened children this evening! Oh, a dozen matters were certainly requiring his attention at the other end of the house; he was the central wheel of the big solemn establishment, the channel for every order, the paymaster for every bill—and so jealous of his proud cares that no other member of the household was ever allowed to act on his own initiative for a moment. Everything began and ended with Sor Domenico—so the beloved Eminenza must be induced to dismiss him promptly, or a lot of stupid mistakes would be made. With the deftness of long habits he seized the first opportunity of taking up the parable against himself.
"Oh yes, Eminenza," he said very earnestly, "we are all—except your illustrious self, of course—dreadful sinners in that way—egoists of the most evil kind. The Eminenza will pray for me, and I will humbly try to correct the fault in future. Meanwhile my heart is anxious about the Signor Professore. The young gentleman who so nobly rescued him may require my presence—"
"Go, go, my son," exclaimed the Cardinal, "let Signor Bianchi want for nothing. It will be an eternal remorse to me that this terrible accident should have happened in my house, and we cannot do enough to repair our fault. Meanwhile please ask that young man to come to me here that I may thank him for his most valuable help. God was truly merciful to send him to us. I shall not know how to express my gratitude."
Domenico departed, and in a few minutes the chaplain came to say that Signor Goffi (he had ascertained his name) had asked permission to withdraw at once, being very wet and not in a proper condition to present himself before the Eminenza. If he might be allowed, he would come and pay his respects to-morrow. And the doctor, who had now arrived, entreated the Cardinal not to visit the Signor Professore this evening. He must be kept very quiet, a sleeping draught, which should have a most beneficent effect, had been administered, and the doctor would remain through the night if necessary. He was confident that the patient would be much better in the morning. Let the Eminenza lay all anxiety aside and remember to take another dose of quinine himself at nine o'clock, also the orange-flower water in order to sleep peacefully after this deplorable shock to his nerves.