CHAPTER XLII
The next morning very early when he stepped out of his room, he saw at the end of the hall a little group of three people, the half-grown burly boy who carried water-pitchers and blacked shoes, the tall, aproned, black-moustached house-servant who swept the rooms and waited on the table, and the girl he had seen on the roof the night before. He knew her at once although she was in a street-dress now, and he saw only her back and the gleaming coils of her hair. He found that he had no intention of doing anything in the world but of going to speak to her, somehow; and turning down the tiled corridor he walked towards the three. They had their backs towards him and were all talking Italian with extreme rapidity. "Oh!" it came to Neale with a shock, "she was an Italian!" Of course, with those dark eyes and hair. It had not once occurred to him, during the night, that she might be an Italian. He felt hot with vexation. Damn it! He spoke so little Italian!
He stopped short in the passage-way irresolute, suffering that most wretched and miserable of human embarrassments, the one that began with the Tower of Babel. He wasn't going to make an idiot of himself trying to talk to her in that horrible broken tourist-Italian of his. His disappointment was so acute that he could not for an instant collect himself enough to turn away, and stood glowering at the three backs.
They were talking far too rapidly for him to understand what they said, but by their pantomime it was plain that the girl was moved by something which left the two men quite unaffected, that she was making a low-toned agitated appeal to them, which they received with the shrugged shoulders and uplifted eyebrows of reasonable men before an unreasonable idea. She was pointing out, leaning forward, shrinking back, she was saying, "Oh! oh! oh!" her low voice rising to a little wail of distress that went to Neale's heart. He looked over their backs out of the window following the direction of the girl's hand, and saw at first only the beautiful, early-morning, myriad-winged swoop of the Roman swallows filling the bright air with their rhythmic wheelings. He had watched them for hours on his former visit, had thought them one of the most purely lovely elements of the city's charm.
"Oh!" cried the girl again, and covered her face with her hands.
Neale saw at last what she saw, a lean yellow cat crouching in ambush in a corner between a dormer window and a sky-light. As he looked the cat sprang up suddenly, a streak of murdering speed high into the air, and seized an incautious swallow swooping too low.
The two men at the window looked at the girl, shrugged their shoulders again and went back coolly to their work. The comedy was finished. What could any one do about it? Most evidently nothing. The man lifted his broom to sweep. The boy stooped to take up his water-pitcher. The girl took her hands from her face, and turned away from the window. Neale had expected to see her look agitated and excited; but her pale face was set in an expression of unsurprised endurance. It was evident that she too perceived that there was nothing to do about it.
"Well, there was something to do about it!" thought Neale wildly, feeling a fury of resentment at the two men. He'd show them!
He sprang past the girl with a great bound to the window and saw that, as he thought, a slope of tiled roof lay below it, the slope so gentle, the tiles so rough that it would be quite easy to keep his footing on it, although the drop to the court below would be dizzying if he stopped to look at it. But he did not stop to look at that, or anything but the cat, slinking slowly off across the roof beyond, the swallow in her mouth.
He took one long step out over the low window-sill and stood on the tiles. He heard the girl behind him give a cry, and it sped him forward. He ran along the narrow slope of tiles, one hand on the wall to steady himself till he could, with a leap, reach the roof where the cat was making off towards the ridge-pole with her prey. Here it was easier, a wide stretch of tiles over which he could really run.
The cat heard him, saw him, paused an instant, dazed by the suddenness of his appearance, turned her head and flattened herself for a leap forward. But his leap was quicker than hers. He reached her, and pounced on her with a swoop that was part of the forward rhythm of his running, pounced, seized her firmly, and forced open her jaws. The swallow dropped out on the tiles, wet and ruffled, its eyes closed, its poor, slim, gleaming head bent limply to one side as if its neck were broken.
Neale stooped and picked it up, stroking it pityingly and smoothing its pretty, rumpled plumes. He had been too late after all. But as it lay in his hand it seemed to him he felt its delicate body stir. Perhaps it was only half dead with fright. Did it move a little or had he imagined it? As he stood astride the ridge-pole of the roof, the level rays of the early sun shone straight into his eyes so that he could not see whether the bird's eyes had opened or not. He turned his back to the sun and held his hand, with the bird in it, closer to his face. Why, yes, the eyes were open, soft dark eyes that looked wildly and despairingly into his. The intensity of that sudden look gave him a start. He opened his fingers and the bird burst out of his hand with a loud beating flutter and soared up into the air. Neale threw back his head to watch it, moved almost to a shout of exultation as the twittering flock swooped past his head.
Then he saw that the cat was calmly making her way back to her ambush corner. "Hey, there!" he shouted gaily at her, and, sprinting along, snatched her up. "You're going back down cellar to catch rats, kitty mio," he told her aloud, laughing. He was astonished at his own high spirits. High up on the richly colored old roof, close to that glorious sun with the swallows dashing, twittering about his head, the rescued one among them, he could have flung his arms about and danced for sheer lightness of heart.
What he did was to tuck the protesting cat under his arm and make his way back with considerably more caution than he had gone up. The passage along the narrow slope of tile below the window was worse than he had thought, made him a little sick to face. A damn-fool performance anyhow, he reflected, picking his steps, looking carefully away from the sheer black drop to the stone-paved courtyard below him. A very damn-fool performance for a serious-minded man of twenty-six to go careering over roofs like that.
With a short, quickly-taken breath of relief, he stepped over the window-sill back into the corridor. The men and the girl who had been leaning tensely out, watching him, stepped back respectfully to give him room.
Before he could turn to the girl, the servant had snatched the cat from under his arm, and with a fine air of virtuous indignation was cuffing her savagely over the head, pouring out on her a loud, highly-articulate flood of vituperation. The boy lifted his hand to join in the game, crying out, "Bestia del diavolo," "animaluzzo dannato!" and the like.
"Oh, good Lord!" thought Neale impatiently. "Isn't that just like them! Hey, stop that!" he cried aloud, and as the man paid no attention to this he seized him somewhat roughly by the shoulder in a grip that paralyzed the arm. He caught the cat as she fell and held her up over his head. He was so tall, so long-armed, that she now dangled high in the air, quite out of reach, yowling at the top of her voice, a ridiculous scene altogether!
He tried sternly to explain his feelings and issue his commands, but as was to be expected his Italian gave way under the strain: "Troppo in ritardo punire il gatto … it's too late to jump on the cat now, you poor chump; she wouldn't have any idea what it's for. Gatto non capisce … it's not her fault anyhow. She doesn't know any better. Take her down cellar, dans la cave; she's all right catching rats. That's what she's for! And look here," he stopped his pitiful attempt at Italian and ended fiercely, trusting to a grim eye and a set jaw to make his meaning plain, "Don't you try any funny business on the cat when I'm not around, or I'll knock your heads together till you can't see."
He heard the girl speak to the men in an Italian that was so rapid it made him dizzy and at the end caught the phrase, "do you understand?" The men nodded, by no means pleased at the rebuff, the boy motioned Neale to give him the cat, and carried her off carefully down the corridor.
"That was the very most splendid thing for you to do," the girl said to him, with a soft energy of accent.
He whirled about towards her, the immensity of his relief flooding his face. "Oh, you do speak English! You're not Italian!" he cried, the intonation of his phrase seeming to indicate that she had lifted from his mind an apprehension of infinitely long standing.
"Oh, yes," she said, smiling and looking directly at him, "of course I speak English. I'm an American girl. My name is Marise Allen."
Neale was so affected by the sweetness of her smile on him, by the softness of her shining dark eyes, that he felt himself blushing and stammering like a little boy. "M-mine is Neale Crittenden," he answered.