Very swiftly, but equally as lightly, Don Luis lifted the child from the knees of Lucia and lowered it into the bag. He closed it, and avoiding giving it the slightest jar, tiptoed to the door. He turned on the doorstep to look back, Lucia was asleep. Only the top of her high comb showed over the back of her chair. In the other room the candles still burned at the foot of Maria's bed. As he closed the door the draught blew them out. Moving silently through the deep snow he lifted the bag into the coach, climbed up, and closed himself in.
Sancho put the mules in motion. Through the silent drifts where even the iron hoofs were muffled they moved upward toward the crest of the pass. Presently the sun, which had already for some hours been looking at the plains of Tuscany, dazzled their eyes. Sancho leaned forward gazing with his hand to his forehead. The morning clouds had not yet lifted. All that was going on upon the busy plains below still remained withheld from him by their ghostly veil. To one passenger of the coach at least the future was equally mysterious. He was still riding as he had been for many months before, completely in the dark. Indeed, it was not until many hours later that the marquis was disturbed by the faint voice in the bag. Don Luis also slept soundly. The small charcoal footstove imparted a somnolent warmth to the coach. It had in fact slightly tainted the air. But it was now burnt out, and they had long left the regions of snow behind them. By the time they began to pass through the villages in the foothills the protests of the young gentleman in the bag were too strenuous to be much longer ignored.
At Aulla the marquis was forced to descend to attend to several vital necessities. They remained till next day, the marquis at the inn, and the child with a wet nurse. She found the baby nursed vigorously, tended him, and wrapped him about with long bands after the manner of her kind. Some hours of the morning were passed procuring four decent horses. The marquis had no intention of entering his own country drawn by mules. Hearing the child reported thriving, Don Luis decided to chance deferring its baptism for some hours.
Indeed, as they rapidly approached his own feudal domains his self-confidence returned apace. His bodily movements became more confident, his gestures more imperious, and he no longer worried much about his soul. As they crossed the bridge over the Arno the obsequiousness of the officer in charge of the Tuscan troops at the little guardhouse reminded Don Luis forcefully not only where, but who he was. In short the Marquis da Vincitata was himself again. The experience through which he had passed had shaken him more than he cared to admit. But for that reason his mind all the more began to thrust the memory into oblivion. Every revolution of the wheels left it further in the past.
Into the future, to which every revolution of the same wheels was also carrying him and the child, Don Luis did not need to look very far. After a few miles he would take care that their respective paths in life should never be the same again. And he would continue to see to that. Should they ever meet it would always be at right angles, and on different levels. The marquis felt sure of his own. But the probability of their meeting was, he assured himself, and for excellent reasons, extremely remote. When the cries of the baby annoyed him he closed the bag.
They turned south at Pontedera from the main route to Florence and took the road to Livorno. Don Luis had two small items of business to transact there before returning to the main highway from which, he told himself, he had been turned aside after all only temporarily.
Towards nightfall of an evening unusually warm for that time of year the coach came to a standstill on a lonely piece of road on the hills overlooking Livorno. Presently it drove on for a little and halted again. But to the eyes of its driver, who could see remarkably well in the dark, it was plain that a figure had emerged from it at the first halting place carrying something in one hand. The man with the bag turned down a quiet lane bordered by poplars and proceeded rapidly through the dusk as if the place were familiar to him. Presently he was passing along the high white wall of some ecclesiastical establishment.
The Convent of Jesus the Child was indeed familiar to Don Luis, for his family had aided greatly in its establishment. Of its present financial condition he was not aware. There was apparently no gate into the lane. The straight lines of the stone walls continued for some distance. At last he came to what was in fact merely a hole in the wall. He placed the bag upon the sill and fumbling about in the blackness finally felt a cold metal handle and pulled it. At a seemingly vast distance within arose the jangle of a small bell. He retreated some way off and stood listening in the darkness.
The child began to cry. In the tense silence of the last twilight its feeble voice continued minute after minute in a thin wail. He was about to return and pull the bell again when the noise of a sliding shutter prevented him. A light stabbed out from the wall and across the lane. The bar of it remained for some seconds as if suspended in darkness. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it came. With it the cries of the child were also extinguished. For some minutes Don Luis listened intently. A bell tolled calling the nuns within to prayer. He sighed unconsciously and turned away. It was, he knew, a custom of the pious souls who thus received unfortunate orphans to baptize them immediately. A great weight was now lifted from him.
He returned to Sancho in a cheerful mood. "You can light the lamps now," said he, and continued speaking, while the lanterns were being kindled, in low, familiar tones.
"Si, si, Señor, I understand," said the curious little man coming to the door and laying his hand sympathetically on his master's arm. "Always I shall serve you." His whip cracked and they drove away.
Don Luis leaned back and closed his eyes. His hand felt the hollow in the cushions where Maria had once sat beside him. It would not be easy to break the news of the death of an only daughter to her father. "Buried in the Alps, buried do you understand?" he said, "buried!" He repeated it aloud as though rehearsing a scene in which he would soon have to take a difficult part.
Only Sancho remained. One faithful servant! But what more could a man expect of life? He shrugged his shoulders. The sound of hoofs and the grinding noise of the wheels died away in the darkness toward Livorno.
The child in the convent awoke and cried out as the bag was opened and the light dazzled it. At the sight of a raw male infant one of the nuns screamed and caught her breath.
What was to be done with it ?
BOOK TWO
In Which the Roots of the Tree Are Exposed
Chapter IX. THE CONVENT OF JESUS THE CHILD
IN THE Convent of Jesus the Child, Contessina, the lay portress, moved about the central courtyard of the place as quietly as her wooden pattens would permit. She came every morning and evening to perform certain tasks for the nuns, and she was now as busy as usual about the hour of matins. Since she was the only able-bodied person in attendance upon ten querulous old women and a boy infant her work was exacting enough and would have exhausted the patience of several men.
But to the young peasant woman, who had children of her own at home, and had no inclination to question her lot, her acceptable labours seemed merely a form of natural service in an immutable scheme. Her position as "lay portress" was hereditary. It went with the land upon which she dwelt. The convent had always been on the little hill in the valley; her husband's broad vineyards lay just below it, and as long as anyone could remember there had always been a wife or daughter from the white house in the vine-lands to serve as a maid-of-all-work to the sisterhood on the hill.