“Yes, that is true,” he agreed.
“Did the thing you’re thinking of happen long ago?”
“You are right,” he said. “I am thinking of something definite. You have clear perceptions.” He was surprised. “It’s four years ago. I was motoring with two friends in the south of Italy.” He hesitated. The words were so lame. But the lovely compulsion of Ruth’s glances drew them from their hiding-places, and they gradually came forth more willingly.
On a beautiful day of May he and his friends had reached the city of Acquapendente in the Abruzzi. They had really intended to proceed to Viterbo, but the little mountain town pleased his friends, and they persuaded him to stay. He stopped in his story. “I seemed always to want to race from one spot to another,” he said. His friends kept on urging him, but when they stopped in front of the inn, it seemed so dirty that he hated to think of passing the night there. At that moment there came down the steps of the near-by church a girl of such majestic loveliness as he had never seen before; and that vision determined him to stay. The innkeeper, when he was asked who the girl was, pronounced her name full of respect. She was the daughter of a stone-mason named Pratti. Christian bade the innkeeper get ready a supper and invite Angiolina Pratti to it. The innkeeper refused. Thereupon Christian bade him invite the girl’s father, and this the man agreed to do. His friends sought to dissuade Christian, telling him that the women of this land were shy and proud, and that their favours were not easily won. He would, at least, have to go about the business more delicately than he was doing. Christian laughed at them. They reasoned and argued, so that finally he grew stubborn, and declared to them that he would bring about what they held to be quite impossible—that he would accomplish it without artfulness or adroitness or exertion, but simply through his knowledge of the character of these people.
The girl’s father came to wait upon the foreign gentlemen. He had white hair and a white beard and a noble demeanour. Christian approached and addressed him. He said that it would give him and his friends pleasure if the Signorina Pratti would sup with them. Pratti wrinkled his forehead and expressed his astonishment. He had not, he said, the honour of the gentleman’s acquaintance. Christian looked sharply into his eyes, and asked for how much money he would, that evening at eight, conduct his daughter Angiolina naked into their room and to their table. Pratti stepped back and gasped. His eyes rolled in his head, and Christian’s friends were frightened. Christian said to the old man: “We are perfectly decent. You may depend on our discretion. We desire merely to admire the girl’s beauty.” With wildly raised arms Pratti started to rush at him. But he was prepared for that, and said: “Will five thousand suffice?” The Italian stopped. “Or ten thousand?” And he took ten bank notes of a thousand lire each out of his wallet. The Italian grew pale and tottered. “Twelve thousand?” Christian asked. He saw that the sum represented an inconceivable treasure to the old man; in a long life of toil he had never had so much. The perception increased Christian’s madness, and he offered fifteen thousand. Pratti opened his lips, and sighed: “Oh, Signore.” The sound should have touched him, Christian said to Ruth. But nothing touched him in those days; all that he cared for was to have his will. The man took the money, and went away falteringly.
That evening the young men took their places at the charmingly arranged table in some suspense. The innkeeper had brought forth old silver vessels and cut-glass goblets. Roses were placed in vases of copper, and thick candles had been lit. The room was like one in a castle. Eight o’clock came, and then a quarter past eight. The conversation lagged; they gazed at the door. Christian had commanded the innkeeper not to appear until he was summoned, so that the promised discretion should be observed. At last, at half-past eight, old Pratti appeared carrying his daughter in his arms. He had wrapped her in a cloak. He beckoned the young men to close the doors. When they had done so, he pulled the cloak away and they beheld the naked body of the beautiful girl. Her hands and feet were fettered. Her father placed her on the empty chair beside Christian. Her eyes were closed; she was asleep. But it was no natural sleep; she had been drugged, probably with the juice of poppies. Pratti bowed and left.
The three friends looked at that lovely form, the gently inclined head, the rosy face, the streaming hair. But their triumph and arrogant delight had died within them. One went into the bed-room, fetched a coverlet, and covered the girl with it; and Christian was grateful to him for the action. Hastily they ate a few bites; the wine remained untouched. Then they went down, paid their reckoning, summoned their chauffeur, and drove through the night along the road to Rome. No one spoke during the drive; none of them ever mentioned Angiolina Pratti later. But Christian found it difficult to escape the picture in his mind—the fettered, drugged girl alone in the room with the roses and the yellow candle-light. But at last he forgot, for so many other images crowded the old one out. “But just now,” he said, “as we left the house, that image was as clear to me as it was that day in Acquapendente. I had to keep thinking of it, I don’t know why.”
“How strange,” Ruth whispered.
They walked on and on.
“Where are we going?” Ruth asked.