To Leeward

by F. Marion Crawford

There are doubtless people in the world who take a morbid and unwholesome delight in the contemplation of sorrow. They can amuse themselves for many hours in studying the effect of grief upon their friends,—and they can even find a curious diversion in their own troubles, so long as they can keep them far enough away to secure their bodily comfort. They have neither the strength to sin, the honesty to be good, nor the common sense to be happy. And so they feebly paddle in their shallow puddles of woe, neither dry nor wet, and very muddy, when they might just as well sit on the clean, hard ground and enjoy the cleanliness and solidity of it, if they can enjoy nothing else. But they will not. They will lie in the mud, and kick and scream and swear that they are shipwrecked, when they are a hundred miles from the sea, and would take to their heels on the first sight of it.

One of the favourite hobbies of these individuals is a mysterious thing they call a "sweet sadness." Their ideas about sorrow are not even artistic. They might at least understand that even the intensest grief, apart from its causes, has no grandeur. The contemplation of sorrow is not elevating unless it breeds a strong desire to alleviate it; nor is the study of vice and crime in the least edifying unless it exhibits the nobility and power of purity in a highly practical light. No vicious criminal was ever reformed by realistic pictures of wickedness, any more than he can be improved by daily association with other vicious criminals. And a very little realism will throw a great ideal into the shade, as far as most people are concerned.

Marcantonio may therefore be allowed to go to Rome without being watched on the journey. His bitter suffering had settled about him and taken a shape and a complexion of its own, thinking its own thoughts and acting its own acts, without reference to the real Marcantonio, the easy, cheerful, happy man of a few short weeks ago. It was no change of character now, but rather the entire disappearance of the character beneath the flood of strong passions that had come from without, sweeping away the landmarks and beacons of all moral responsibility. One idea had taken possession of him, and destroyed his consciousness of good and evil, and his comprehension of the common things of life; his body and intelligence had become the mere tools of this idea, and would strain their strength to carry it out until one or the other gave way. Man is said to be a free agent, and so long as he remembers the fact, he is; but when he forgets it, the freedom is gone.

That morning, when the blow first struck him, he had still some vague thought that there was a course to follow which should be right as well as brave and honourable; it was the fast vanishing outline of his former self, used always to the ways of honour; it was vague and uncertain, and he had no time nor inclination to think about it, but it was present. The day wore on, bringing a fuller realisation of his desperate case, and the possibility of good in so much evil disappeared. When he was at last in the express train on his way to Rome he was only conscious of one thing—the determination to find Julius Batiscombe, and to kill him ruthlessly, be the consequences what they might.

Rome looked much as usual when he at last came out of the great ugly station upon the Piazza dei Termini. It was morning, and not yet eight o'clock, but the pitiless August sun drove its fire through everything—through flesh and bone and marrow of living things, through the glaring stones and dusty trees, and even the great jet of water looked like bright melting metal that would burn if it touched one.

But Marcantonio Carantoni was past feeling heat or cold or bodily hurt. He did not even remember that he had a servant with him, and he mechanically hailed a cab and was driven to his own house. They put a telegram into his hand; it was from Diana, in answer to his of the day before. It was briefer than his and breathed authority.

"Have left Pegli. Wait for me in Rome."

That was all. He read it stupidly over two or three times. He would not have telegraphed to her if he had waited till to-day. Some instinct told him that she would prevent and hinder his vengeance. Yesterday he wanted help; to-day he wanted nothing but freedom from restraint and an opportunity of meeting Julius Batiscombe. She would not aid him in that, he was sure.

But she could not arrive to-day,—it was a long journey from Pegli to Rome; he did not know exactly how long it took,—his memory would not serve him with any details. He should have time in Rome to do the things he meant to do, and he would go to Turin that very night and watch that box of Batiscombe's. He would send for it, of course, wherever he was, and the box would betray him at last, if all other means failed. But meanwhile there were the police—there were detectives to be had, and plenty of them; money could do much, and his high position could do more. He would set a whole pack of sharp-scented human hounds at Batiscombe's heels—they should find him, and bring word, never fear. He laughed at the idea of employing the law to hunt his prey, in order that he might bid the law defiance and destroy his man alone.

He threw down the telegram and went to his room, followed closely by his servant, who had arrived in mad haste in a second cab, believing that his master was going to be insane, unless he had a stroke of apoplexy, which seemed not unlikely. The man was a skilled valet, and Marcantonio suffered himself to be dressed and combed and smoothed, in perfect silence; and when it was over he ate something that they brought him, without the slightest idea of what he was doing. He knew it was yet early, and that his business could not be done until the officials he needed were in their offices.