The Net - Rex Beach

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had put lines into his face. Instead, he scanned the officer's countenance with fearful eyes to see if by any chance he had guessed the truth. Blake had found himself looking thus at every one since the tragedy, and it was a source of constant wonder to him that his secret had remained his own. It seemed that they must know and loathe him as he loathed himself. But on the contrary he was treated with sympathy on all sides, and it was taken merely as an example of the outlaws' cunning that they had refrained from injuring a foreigner. To illustrate how curiously the Sicilian mind works on these subjects, there were some who even spoke of it as demonstrating the fairness of the bandits, thus to exclude Savigno's friend from any connection with their quarrel.

      During the long hours since the night of his friend's death Blake had looked at himself in all his nakedness of soul, and the sight was not pleasant. He could never escape the thought that if he had acted the part of a man, if he had resisted with the promptness and vigor of his companions, the result might have been different and Martel might at this moment be on his way to Rome with his bride, alive and well. On such occasions he felt like a murderer. But his mind was not always undivided in this self-condemnation; there were times when with some show of justice he told himself that the result would have been the same or even worse if he had fought; and he tried to ease his conscience by dwelling on the possibility that under other circumstances he might not have proved a coward. He had been physically tired, worn out; his nervous force had been spent. At the moment of ambush his mind had been far away and he had had no time in which to gather his wits. Moral courage, he knew, is quite different from physical courage, which may depend upon one's digestion, one's state of mind, or the amount of sleep one has had. It is sometimes present in physical weaklings, and men of great daring may entirely lack it. A man's behavior when suddenly attacked and overpowered is a test of his nerve rather than his true nature. Still, at the last, he was always faced by the stark, ugly fact that he had been tried and found wanting. Conversation with Neri he found rather a relief.

      "I wonder what the Countess will do?" he said.

      "What would any one do? She will grieve for a long while, but time will gradually rob her of her sorrow. She will remember Martel as a saint and marry some sinner like you or me."

      "Marry? Never!"

      "Never?" The Colonel raised his brows. "She is young, she is human, she is full of fire. It would be a great pity if she did not allow herself to love—a great pity indeed."

      "I'm afraid she's thinking more of vengeance than of love."

      "Perhaps, but hatred is short-lived, while love grows younger all the time. The world is full of great loves, but great hates usually consume themselves quickly. I hope she will leave all thoughts of such things to us who make a business of them."

      "If you fail, as you fear, she might feel bound to take up the task where you leave it."

      "And she might succeed. But—"

      "But what?"

      "Revenge is a cold bedfellow, and women are designed to cherish finer sentiments. As for Lucrezia, she will doubtless swear a vendetta, like those Sardinians."

      "She has."

      "Indeed! Well, she is the kind to nourish hatred, for she is like her father, silent, somber, unforgiving, whereas the Contessa is all sunshine. But hear me talk! I am dying of fatigue. The funeral is at twelve? It will be very sad and the poor girl will be under the greatest strain then, so we must be with her, you and I. And then I must be off again upon the trail of this infamous Cardi, who is, and who is not. Ah, well!" He yawned widely. "We may accomplish the impossible, or if not we may press him so closely that he will sail for your America, which would not be so bad, after all."

      Of course the country people turned out for the funeral, but for the most part they came from curiosity. To Norvin the presence of such spectators at the last sacred rites for the dead seemed sacrilegious, indecent, and he knew that it must add to Margherita's pain. It was an endless, heart-rending ordeal, a great somber, impressive pageant, of which he remembered little save a tall, tawny girl crushed beneath a grief so great that his own seemed trivial in comparison.

      She was in such a state of physical collapse after the service that she did not send for him until the second day following. He came timidly even then, for he was at a loss how to comfort her, vividly conscious as he was of his own guilt and shame. He found her crouched upon one of the old stone benches in the garden in the full hot glare of the sun. It relieved him to find that she had lost her unnatural self-control, having fallen, it seemed, into much the same mood he would have expected in any woman. It had been so hard to find what to say heretofore—for she was braver than those about her and her grief was so deep as to render words of comfort futile. Her eyes now were heavy and full of haunting shadows, her ivory cheeks were pale, her lips tremulous, and she seemed at last to crave sympathy.

      "I do not know why I have summoned you," she said, leaving her hand in his, "unless it is because my loneliness has begun and I lack the courage to face it."

      "I have been waiting. It will always be so, Contessa. I shall come from across the world whenever you need me."

      She smiled listlessly. "You are very good. I knew you were waiting. It seems so strange to know that he is gone"—her voice caught, her eyes filled, then cleared without overflowing—"and that the world is moving on again in the same way and only I am left standing by the wayside. You cannot wait with me; you must move on with the rest of the world. You had planned to go home, and you must, for you have your work and it calls you."

      "Please don't think of it. I sha'n't leave you for a long time. I promised Martel—"

      "You promised? Then he had reason to suspect?"

      "He would not acknowledge the possibility, and yet he must have had a premonition."

      "Oh, why will men trust themselves when women know! If he had told me, if he had confided his fears to me, I could have told him what to do."

      "I couldn't leave now, even if I wished, for I might be needed by the—the law. You understand? It isn't finished with me yet."

      "The law will not need you," she told him bitterly. "The law will do nothing. The task is for other hands."

      After a pause he said, "I had news from home to-day,—rather bad news." Then at her quick look of inquiry he went on: "Nothing serious, I hope, nothing to take me away. My mother is ill and has cabled me to come."

      "Then you will go at once, of course?"

      "No. I've tried to explain to her the situation here, and the necessity of my remaining for a time at least. Unless she grows worse I shall stay and try to help Neri in his search."

      "It is a great comfort to have you near, for in you I see a part of—Martel. You were his other half. But there are other aching hearts, it seems. That mother calls to you, and you ought to go. Besides, I must begin my work."

      "What work?"

      She met his eyes squarely. "You know without asking. Neri will fail; no Italian could succeed; no one could succeed except a Sicilian. I am one."

      "You mean to bring those men to justice?"

      She nodded. "Certainly! Who else can do it?"

      "But, my dear Signorina, think what that means. They are of a class with which you can have no contact. They are the dregs; there is the Mafia to reckon with. How will you go about it?"

      "I will become one of them, if necessary."

      He answered her in a shocked voice. "No, no! You are mad to think of it. If you were a man you might have some chance for success, but you—a girl, a gentlewoman!"

      "I am a Sicilian. I am rich, too. I have resources." She took him by the arm as she had done that first time when the thought of Martel's danger had roused her. "I told you no power could save them; no hiding-place could be so secret, no lies so cunning that I would not know. Well! Those soldiers have failed and will continue to fail. But you see they did not love Martel. I shall live for this thing."

      "I

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