“What’s the matter with you? Have you seen a ghost?” asked Cosmo, who ceased laughing suddenly and fixed the valet with distracted eyes.
“No, sir, certainly not. I was wondering whether you hadn’t better dine in your room.”
“What do you mean? Am I not fit to be seen?” asked Cosmo captiously, glancing at himself in the mirror as though the crisis through which he had passed in the last three or four minutes could have distorted his face. Spire made no answer. The sound of that laugh had made him lose his conventional bearing; while Cosmo wondered what had happened to that imbecile and glared at him suspiciously.
“Give me my coat,” he said at last. “I am going downstairs.”
This broke the spell and Spire, getting into motion, regained his composure.
“Noisy company down there, sir. I thought you might not like it.”
Cosmo felt a sudden longing to hear noise, lots of it, senseless, loud, common, absurd noise; noise loud enough to prevent one from thinking, the sort of noise that would cause one to become, as it were, insensible.
“What do you want?” he asked savagely of Spire, who was hovering at his back.
“I am ready to help you with your coat, sir,” said Spire, in an apathetic voice. He had been profoundly shocked. After his master had gone out, slamming the door behind him, he busied himself with a stony face in putting the room to rights, before he blew out the candles and left it to get his supper.
“Didn’t you advise me this morning to go to Livorno?” asked Cosmo, falling heavily into the chair. Doctor Martel was already at table, and, except that he had changed his boots for silk stockings and shoes, he might not have moved from there all the afternoon.
“Livorno,” repeated that strange man. “Did I? Yes. The road along the Riviera di Levante is delightful for any person sensible to the beauties of Italian landscapes.” He paused with a sour expression in the noise of voices filling the room, and muttered that no doubt Cantelucci found that sort of thing pay but that the place was becoming impossible.
Cosmo was just thinking that there was not half enough uproar there. The naval officers seemed strangely subdued that evening. The same old lieutenant with sunken cheeks and a sharp nose, in the same shabby uniform, was at the head of the table. Cantelucci, wearing a long-skirted maroon coat, now glided about the room, unobtrusive and vigilant. His benefactor beckoned to him.
“You would know where to find a man with four good horses for the signore’s carriage?” he asked; and accepting Cantelucci’s low bow as an affirmative, addressed himself to Cosmo. “The road’s perfectly safe. The country’s full of Austrian troops.”
“I think I would prefer to go by sea,” said Cosmo, who had not thought of making any arrangements for the journey. Instantly Cantelucci glided away, while the doctor emitted a grunt and applied himself to his dinner. Cosmo thought desperately, “Oh, yes, the sea, why not by sea, away from everybody?” He had been rolling and bumping on the roads, good, bad, and indifferent, in dust or mud, meeting in inns ladies and gentlemen for days and days between Paris and Genoa, and for a moment he was fascinated by the notion of a steady gliding progress in company of three or four bronzed sailors over a blue sea in sight of a picturesque coast of rocks and hills crowded with pines, with opening valleys, with white villages, and purple promontories of lovely shape. It was like a dream which lasted till the doctor was heard suddenly saying, “I think I could find somebody that would take your travelling carriage off your hands”—and the awakening came with an inward recoil of all Cosmo’s being, as if before a vision of irrevocable consequences.
The doctor lowered his eyelids. “He is changed,” he said to himself. “Oh yes, he is changed.” This, however, did not prevent him from feeling irritated by Cosmo’s lack of response to the offer to dispose of his travelling carriage.
“There are many people that would consider themselves lucky to have such an offer made to them,” he remarked, after a period of silence. “It is not so easy at this time to get rid of a travelling carriage. Nor yet to have an opportunity to hire a dependable man with four good horses if you want to go by land. I mean at a time like this when anything may happen any day.”
“I am sure I am very much obliged to you,” said Cosmo, “but I am really in no hurry.”
The doctor took notice of Cosmo’s languid attitude and the untouched plate before him.
“The trouble is that you don’t seem to have any aim at all. Isn’t that it?”
“Yes. I confess,” said Cosmo carelessly. “I think I want a rest.”
“Well, Mr. Latham, you had better see that you get it, then. This place isn’t restful, it is merely dull. And then suppose you were suddenly to perceive an aim, such for instance as a visit to Elba—you may be too late if you linger unduly. You know, you are not likely to see a specimen like that one over there again in your lifetime. And even he may not be with us very long.”
“You seem very positive about that,” said Cosmo, looking at his interlocutor searchingly. “This is the third or fourth time that I hear that sort of allusion from you. Have you any special information?”
“Yes, of a sort. It has been my lot to hear much of what is said in high places, and the nature of my occupation has given me much practice in appreciating what is said.”
“In high places!” interjected Cosmo.
“And in low, too,” retorted the
