The frightened servants were gone, half coaxed and half scolded into silence by Artois. He had taken the lemon from Peppina, and it lay now in his hand.
“It is what the people of Naples call a death-charm.”
“A death-charm?”
In her eyes superstition dawned.
“Why do they call it that?”
“Because it is supposed to bring death to any one—any enemy—near whom it is placed.”
“Who can have put it in the house to-night?” Vere said. Her voice was low and trembling. “Who can have wished to bring death here to-night?”
“I don’t know, Vere.”
“And such a thing—could it bring death?”
“Vere! You can ask me!”
He spoke with an attempt at smiling irony, but his eyes held something of the awe, the cloudy apprehension that had gathered in hers.
“Where is your mind?” he added.
She answered: “Are you going to Madre’s room, Monsieur Emile?”
He put the death-charm down quickly, as if it had burned his hand.
“I am going now. Gaspare!”
At this moment Gaspare came into the room with a face that was almost livid.
“Who is it that has brought afattura della mortehere?” he exclaimed.
His usually courageous eyes were full of superstitious fear.
“Signore, do you—”
He stopped. He had seen the death-charm lying on the little table covered with silver trifles. He approached it, made a sign of the cross, bent down his head and examined it closely, but did not touch it.
Artois and Vere watched him closely. He lifted up his head at last.
“I know who brought thefattura della mortehere,” he said, solemnly. “I know.”
“Who?” said Vere.
“It was Ruffo.”
“Ruffo!”
Vere reddened. “Ruffo! He loves our house, and he loves us!”
“It is Ruffo, Signorina. It is Ruffo. He brought it, and it is he that must take it away. Do not touch it, Signorina. Do not touch it, Signore. Leave it where it is till Ruffo comes, till Ruffo takes it away.”
He again made the sign of the cross, and drew back from the death-charm with a sort of mysterious caution.
“Signore,” he said to Artois, “I will go down to the Saint’s Pool. I will find Ruffo. I will bring him here. I will make him come here.”
He was going out when Artois put a hand on his shoulder.
“And the Padrona?”
“Signore, she is always there, in her room, in the dark.”
“And you have heard nothing?”
“Signore, I have heard the Padrona moving.”
The hand of Artois dropped down. He was invaded by a sense of relief that was almost overwhelming.
“You are certain?”
“Si, Signore. The Padrona is walking up and down the room. When Peppina screamed out I heard the Padrona move. And then I heard her walking up and down the room.”
He looked again at the death-charm and went out. Vere stood for a moment. Then she, too, went suddenly away, and Artois heard her light footstep retreating from him towards the terrace.
He understood her silent and abrupt departure. His fear had been hers. His relief was hers, too, and she was moved to hide it. He was left alone with the death-charm.
He sat down by the table on which it lay among the bright toys of silver. Released from his great fear, released from his undertaking to force his way into the darkness of that room which had been silent, he seemed suddenly to regain his identity, to be put once more into possession of his normal character. He had gone out from it. He returned to it. The cloud of superstition, in which even he had been for a moment involved with Vere and with the servants, evaporated, and he was able to smile secretly at them and at himself. Yet while he smiled thus secretly, and while he looked at the lemon with its perforating nails, he realized his own smallness, helplessness, the smallness and the helplessness of every man, as he had never realized them before. And he realized also something, much, of what it would have meant to him, had the body of his fear been the body of a truth, not of a lie.
If death had really come into the Casa del Mare that night with the death-charm!
He stretched out his hand to the table, lifted the death-charm from among the silver ornaments, held it, kept it in his hand, which he laid upon his knee.
If Ruffo had carried death in his boy’s hand over the sea to the island, had carried death to Hermione!
Artois tried to imagine that house without Hermione, his life without Hermione.
For a long time he sat, always holding the death-charm in his hand, always with his eyes fixed upon it, until at last in it, as in a magic mirror, among the scars of its burning, and among the nails that pierced it, as the woman who had fashioned it, and fired it, and muttered witch’s words over it, longed to pierce the heart of her enemy, he saw scenes of the past, and shadowy, moving figures. He saw among the scars and among the nails Hermione and himself!
They were in Paris, at a table strewn with flowers. That was the first scene in the magic mirror of thefattura della morte, the scene in which they met for the first time. Hermione regarded him almost with timidity. And he looked at her doubtfully, because she had no beauty.
Then they were in another part of Paris, in his “Morocco slipper of a room,” crammed with books, and dim with Oriental incense and tobacco smoke, his room red and yellow, tinted with the brilliant colors of the East. And he turned to her for sympathy, and he received it in full measure, pressed down and running over. He told her his thought, and he told her his feelings, his schemes, his struggles, his moments of exaltation, his depressions. Something, much indeed of him was hers, the egotistic part of a man that does really give, but that keeps back much, and that seeks much more than it gives. And what he sought she eagerly, generously gave, with both hands, never counting any cost. Always she was giving and always he was taking.
Then they were in London, in another room full of books. He stood by a fire, and she was seated with a bundle of letters in her lap. And his heart was full of something that was like anger, and of a dull and smouldering jealousy. And hers was full of a new and wonderful beauty, a piercing joy.
He sighed deeply. He stirred. He looked up for a moment and listened.
But all the house was silent. And again he bent over the death-charm.
He stood by a door. Outside was the hum of traffic, inside a narrow room. And now in the magic mirror a third figure showed itself, a figure of youth incarnate, brave, passionate, thrilling with the joy of life. He watched it, how coldly, although he felt its charm, the rays of fire that came from it, as sunbeams come from the sun! And apprehension stirred within him. And presently in the night, by ebony waters, and by strange and wandering lights, and under unquiet stars, he told Hermione something of his fear.
Africa—and the hovering flies, and the dreadful feeling that death’s hands were creeping about his body and trying to lay hold of it! A very lonely creature lay there in the mirror, with the faint shadow of a palm-leaf shifting and swaying upon the ghastly whiteness of its face—himself, in the most desolate hour of his life. As he gazed he was transported to the City of the Mosques. The years rolled back. He felt again all, or nearly all, that he had felt then of helplessness, abandonment, despair. It was frightful to go out thus alone, to be extinguished in the burning heat of Africa, and laid in that arid soil, where the vipers slid through the hot crevices of the earth, and the scorpions bred in the long days of the summer. Now it was evening. He heard the call to prayer, that wailing, wonderful cry which saluted the sinking sun.
He remembered exactly how it had come into his ears through the half-opened window, the sensation of remoteness, of utter solitude, which it had conveyed to him. An Arab had passed under the window, singing in a withdrawn and drowsy voice a plaintive song of the East which had mingled with the call to prayer. And then, he, Artois being quite alone, had given way in his great pain and weakness. He remembered feeling the tears slipping over his cheeks, one following another, quickly, quickly. It had seemed as if they would never stop, as if there would always be tears to flow from those sources deep within his stricken body, his stricken soul.
He looked into the mirror. The door of the room was opened. A woman stood upon the threshold. The sick man turned upon his pillow. He gazed towards the woman. And his tears ceased. He was no longer alone. His friend had come from her garden of Paradise to draw him back to life.
In the magic mirror of thefattura della morteother scenes formed themselves, were clearly visible for a moment, then dispersed, dissolved—till scenes of the island came, till the last scene in the mirror dawned faintly before his eyes.
He saw a dark room, and a woman more desolate than he had been when he lay alone with the shadow of the palm-tree shifting on his face, and heard the call to prayer. He saw Hermione in her room in the Casa del Mare that night, after she knew.
Suddenly he put his hand to his eyes.
Those were the first tears his eyes had known since that evening in Africa years and years ago.
He laid the death-charm down once more among the silver toys. But he still looked at it as he sat back now in his chair, waiting for Gaspare’s return.
He gazed at the symbol of death. And he began to think how strangely appropriate was its presence that night in the Casa del Mare, how almost more than strange had been its bringing there by Ruffo—if indeed Ruffo had brought it, as Gaspare declared. And Ruffo, all ignorantly and unconsciously, had pierced the heart of Hermione.
Artois knew nothing of what had happened that day at Mergellina, but he divined that it was Ruffo who, without words, had told Hermione the truth. It must have been Ruffo, in whom the dead man lived again. And, going beyond the innocent boy, deep into the shadows where lies so much of truth, Artois saw the murdered man stirring from his sleep, unable to rest because of the lie that had been coiled around his memory, making it what it should not be. Perhaps only the dead know the true, the sacred passion for justice. Perhaps only they are indifferent to everything save truth, they who know the greatest truth of all.
And Artois saw Maurice Delarey, the gay, the full-blooded youth, grown stern in the halls of death, unable to be at peace until she who had most loved him knew him at last as he had been in life.
As no one else would tell Hermione the truth, the dead man himself, speaking through his son, the fruit of his sin, had told her the truth that day. He, too, had been perhaps a spirit in prison, through all these years since his death.
Artois saw him in freedom.
And at that moment Artois felt that in the world there was only one thing that was perfectly beautiful, and that thing was absolute truth. Its knowledge must make Hermione greater.
But now she was hanging on her cross.
If he could only comfort her!
As she had come to him in Africa, he longed now to go to her. She had saved him from the death of the body. If only he could save her from another and more terrible death—the death of the spirit that believes and trusts in life!
He had been absorbed in thought and unconscious of time. Now he looked up, he was aware of things. He listened. Surely Gaspare had been away a long while. And Vere—where was she?
He had a strange desire to see Ruffo now. Something new and mystic had been born, or had for the first time made itself apparent, within him to-night. And he knew that to-night he would look at Ruffo as he had never looked at him before.
He got up and, leaving the death-charm lying on the table, went to the door. There he hesitated. Should he go to the terrace, to Vere? Or should he go up-stairs to that dark room and try to speak to his friend? Or should he go out to the cliff, to seek Gaspare and Ruffo?
Ruffo drew him. He had to go to the cliff.
He went out by the front door. At first he thought of descending at once by the steps to the Pool of San Francesco. But he changed his mind and went instead to the bridge.
He looked over into the Pool.
It was a very clear night. San Francesco’s light was burning brightly. Very sincerely it was burning beneath the blessing hands of the Saint. A ray of gold that came from it lay upon the darkness of the Pool, stealing through the night a little way, as if in an effort to touch the Casa del Mare.
In the Pool there was one boat. Artois saw no one by the sea’s edge, heard no voices there, and he turned towards the crest of the island, to the seat where Vere so often went at night, and where Hermione, too, had often sought out Ruffo.
Gaspare and Ruffo were near it. Almost directly he saw their forms, relieved against the dimness but not deep darkness of the night, and heard their voices talking. As he went towards them Gaspare was speaking vehemently. He threw up one arm in a strong, even, and excited gesture, and was silent. Then Artois heard Ruffo say, in a voice that, though respectful and almost deprecatory, was yet firm like a man’s:
“I cannot take it away, Gaspare. When I go home my mamma will ask me if I have put it in the house.”
“Dio mio!” cried Gaspare. “But you have put it in the house! Is it not there—is it not there now to bring death upon the Signora, upon the Signorina, upon us all?”
“It was made for Peppina. My mamma made it only against Peppina, because she has brought evil into our house. It will hurt only Peppina! It will kill only Peppina!”
He spoke now with a vehemence and passion almost equal to Gaspare’s. Artois stood still. They did not see him. They were absorbed in their conversation.
“It will not hurt the Signora or the Signorina. Thefattura della morte—it is to harm Peppina. Has she not done us injury? Has she not taken my Patrigno from my mamma? Has she not made him mad? Is it not for her that he has been in prison, and that he has left my mamma without a soldo in the house? The Signora—she has been good to me and my mamma. It is she who sent my mamma money—twenty lire! I respect the Signora as I respect my mamma. Only to-day, only this very day she came to Mergellina, she came to see my mama. And when she knew that my Patrigno was let out of prison, when I cried out at the door that he was coming, the Signora was so glad for us that she looked—she looked—Madre di Dio! She was all white, she was shaking—she was worse than my poor mamma. And when I came to her, and when I called out, ‘Signora! Signora!’ you should have seen! She opened her eyes! She gave me such a look! And then my Patrigno came in at the door, and the Signora—she went away. I was going to follow her, but she put out her hand—so, to make me stay—she wanted me to stay with my mamma. And she went down the stairs all trembling because my Patrigno was let out of prison. Per dio! She has a good heart. She is an angel. For the Signora I would die. For the Signora I would do anything! I—you say I would kill the Signora! Would I kill my mamma? Would I kill the Madonna? La Bruna—would I kill her? To me the Signora is as my mamma! I respect the Signora as I respect my mamma. Ecco!”
“Thefattura della mortewill bring evil on the house, it will bring death into the house.”
Gaspare spoke again, and his voice was dogged with superstition, but it was less vehement than before.
“Already—who knows what it has brought? Who knows what evil it has done? All the house is sad to-night, all the house is terrible to-night.”
“It is Peppina who has looked on the house with the evil eye,” said Ruffo. “It is Peppina who has brought trouble to the house.”
There was silence. Then Gaspare said:
“No, it is not Peppina.”
As he spoke Artois saw him stretch out his hand, but gently, towards Ruffo.
“Who is it, then?” said Ruffo.
Moved by an irresistible impulse to interpose, Artois called out:
“Gaspare!”
He saw the two figures start.
“Gaspare!” he repeated, coming up to them.
“Signore! What is it? Has the Signora—”
“I have not heard her. I have not seen her.”
“Then what is it, Signore?”
“Good-evening, Ruffo,” Artois said, looking at the boy.
“Good-evening, Signore.”
Ruffo took off his cap. He was going to put it back on his dark hair, when Artois held his arm.
“Wait a minute, Ruffo!”
The boy looked surprised, but met fearlessly the eyes that were gazing into his.
“Va bene, Ruffo.”
Artois released his arm, and Ruffo put on his cap.
“I heard you talking of thefattura della morte,” Artois said.
Ruffo reddened slightly.
“Si, Signore.”
“Your mother made it?”
Ruffo did not answer. Gaspare stood by, watching and listening with deep, half-suspicious attention.
“I heard you say so.”
“Si, Signore. My mamma made it.”
“And told you to bring it to the island and put it in the house to-night?”
“Si, Signore.”
“Are you sure it was Peppina your mother wished to do evil?”
“Si, Signore, quite sure. Peppina is a bad girl. She made my Patrigno mad. She brought trouble to our house.”
“You love the Signora, don’t you, Ruffo?”
His face changed and grew happier at once.
“Si, Signore. I love the Signora and the Signorina.”
He would not leave out Vere. Artois’s heart warmed to him for that.
“Ruffo—”
While he had been on the crest of the island an idea had come to him. At first he had put it from him. Now, suddenly, he caressed it, he resolved to act on its prompting.
“Ruffo, the Signora is in the house.”
“Si, Signore.”
“I don’t think she is very well. I don’t think she will leave the house to-night. Wouldn’t you like to see her?”
“Signore, I always like to see the Signora.”
“And I think she likes to see you. I know she does.”
“Si, Signore. The Signora is always glad when I come.”
He spoke without conceit or vanity, with utterly sincere simplicity.
“Go to the house and ask to see her now—Gaspare will take you.”
As he spoke he looked at Gaspare, and Gaspare understood.
“Come on, Ruffo!”
Gaspare’s voice was rough, arbitrary, but the eyes that he turned on Ruffo were full of the almost melting gentleness that Hermione had seen in them sometimes and that she had always loved.
“Come on, Ruffino!”
He walked away quickly, almost sternly, towards the house. And Ruffo followed him.
Artois did not go with them. Once again he was governed by an imperious feeling that held him inactive, the feeling that it was not for him to approach Hermione—that others might draw near to her, but that he dared not. The sensation distressed and almost humiliated him, it came upon him like a punishment for sin, and as a man accepts a punishment which he is conscious of deserving Artois accepted it.
So now he waited alone on the crest of the island, looking towards the Casa del Mare.
What would be the result of this strange and daring embassy?
He was not long to be in doubt.
“Signore! Signore!”
Gaspare’s voice was calling him from somewhere in the darkness.
“Signore.”
“I am coming.”
There had been a thrill of emotion in the appeal sent out to him. He hurried towards the house. He crossed the bridge. When he was on it he heard the splash of oars below him in the Pool, but he took no heed of it. What were the fishermen to him to-night? Before the house door he met Gaspare and Ruffo.
“What is it?”
“The Signora is not in her room, Signore.”
“Not—? How do you know? Is the door open?”
“Si, Signore. The Signora has gone! And thefattura della mortehas gone.”
“Thefattura della mortehas gone!” repeated Ruffo.
The repetition of the words struck a chill to the heart of Artois. Again he was beset by superstition. He caught it from these children of the South, who stared at him now with their grave and cloudy eyes.
“Perhaps one of the servants—” he began.
“No, Signore. I have asked them. And they would not dare to touch it.”
“The Signorina?”
He shook his head.
“She is in the garden. She has been there all the time. She does not know”—he lowered his voice almost to a whisper—“she does not know about the Signora and thefattura della morte.”
“We must not let her know—”
He stopped. Suddenly his ears seemed full of the sound of splashing oars in water. Yet he heard nothing.
“Gaspare,” he said quickly, “have you looked everywhere for the Signora?”
“I have looked in the house, Signore. I have been on the terrace and to the Signorina in the garden. Then I came to tell you. I thought you should know about the Signora and thefattura della morte.”
Artois felt that it was this fact of the disappearance of the death-charm which for the moment paralyzed Gaspare’s activities. What stirring of ancient superstition was in the Sicilian’s heart he did not know, but he knew that now his own time of action was come. No longer could he delegate to others the necessary deed. And with this knowledge his nature seemed to change. An ardor that was almost vehement with youth, and that was hard-fibred with manly strength and resolution, woke up in him.
Again his ears were full of the sound of oars in water.
“Ruffo,” he said, “will you obey me?”
He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Si, Signore.”
“Go into the garden. Stay with the Signorina till I come.”
“Si, Signore.”
“If it is a long time, if the Signorina is afraid, if she wants to do anything, you are to say that Don Emilio said she was not to be afraid, and that she was to wait.”
“Si, Signore.”
The boy paused, looking steadily at Artois, then, seeing that he had finished, turned away and went softly into the house.
“Gaspare, come with me.”
Gaspare said nothing, but followed him down to the foot of the cliff. One of the island boats was gone. When Gaspare saw that he ran to pull in the other. He held out his arm to help Artois into the boat, then took the oars, standing up and looking before him into the night.
“Row towards the village, Gaspare.”
“Si, Signore.”
At that moment Gaspare understood much of what was in Artois’s mind. He relied upon Artois. He trusted him—and this fact, of Gaspare’s trust and reliance upon him, added now to that feeling of ardor that had risen up in Artois, gave him courage, helped to banish completely that punishing sensation which had condemned him to keep away from Hermione as one unworthy to approach her, to touch even the hem of her grief.
No need to tell Gaspare to row quickly. With all his strength he forced the boat along through the calm sea.
“Keep near the shore, Gaspare!”
“Si, Signore.”
Only the first quarter of the young moon was visible in the sky. It cast but a thin and distant glint of silver upon the waters. By the near shore the dimness of this hour was unbroken by any light, unstirred by any sound except the withdrawn and surreptitious murmur of the sea. The humped shapes of the low yellow rocks showed themselves faintly like shapes of beasts asleep. In the distance, lifted above the sea, two or three flames shone faintly. They were shed by lamps or candles set in the windows of the fishermen’s cottages in the village.
Had Hermione gone to the village?
She might have left the island with some definite purpose, or moved by a blind impulse to get away, and be alone. Artois could not tell. But she had taken thefattura della morte.
He wondered whether she knew its meaning, with what sinister intention it had been made. Something in the little worthless thing must have attracted her, have fascinated her, or she would not have taken it. In her distress of mind, in her desire for solitude, she would have hastened away and left it lying where it was.
Perhaps she had a purpose in leaving the island with thefattura della morte.
Her taking of it began to seem to Artois, as it had evidently seemed to Gaspare, a fact of profound significance. His imagination, working with an almost diseased rapidity and excitement, brought before him a series of scenes in which the death-charm figured as symbol. In one of these there were two women—Hermione and Maddalena.
Hermione might have set out on some wild quest to Mergellina. He remembered the face at the window, and knew that to-night everything was possible.
“Row quickly, Gaspare!”
Gaspare bent almost furiously to the oars. Then sharply he turned his head.
“What is it?”
“I can see the boat! I can see the Signora!”
The words struggled out on a long breath that made his broad chest heave. Instinctively Artois put his hands on the gunwale of the boat on either side of him, moving as if to stand up.
“Take care, Signore!”
“I’d forgotten—” He leaned forward, searching the night. “Where is the Signora?”
“There—in front! She is rowing to the village. No, she has turned.”
He stopped rowing.
“The Signora has seen, or she has heard, and she is going in to shore.”
“But there are only the rocks.”
“The Signora is going in to the Palazzo of the Spirits.”
“The Palazzo of the Spirits?” Artois repeated.
“Si, Signore.”
Gaspare turned and looked again into the darkness.
“I cannot see the Signora any more.”
“Follow the Signora, Gaspare. If she has gone to the Palazzo of the Spirits row in there.”
“Si, Signore.”
He drew the oars again strongly through the water.
Artois remembered a blinding storm that had crashed over a mountain village in Sicily long ago, a flash of lightning which had revealed to him the gaunt portal of a palace that seemed abandoned, a strip of black cloth, the words “Lutto in famiglia.” They had seemed to him prophetic words.
And now—?
In the darkness he saw another darkness, the strange and broken outline of the ruined palace by the sea, once perhaps, the summer home of some wealthy Roman, now a mere shell visited in the lonely hours by the insatiate waves. Were Hermione and he to meet here? To-day he had thought of his friend as a spirit that had been long in prison. Now he came to the Palace of the Spirits to face her truth with his. The Palace of the Spirits! The name suggested the very nakedness of truth. Well, let it be so, let the truth stand there naked. Again, mingling with a certain awe, there rose up in him a strong ardor, a courage that was vehement, that longed at last to act. And it seemed to him suddenly that for many years, through all the years that divided Hermione and him from the Sicilian life, they had been held in leash, waiting for the moment of this encounter. Now the leash slackened. They were being freed. And for what?
Gaspare plunged his right oar into the sea alone. The boat swung round obediently, heading for the shore.
One of the faint lights that gleamed in the village was extinguished.
“Signore, the Signora has left the boat!”
“Si?”
“Madonna! She has let it go! She has left it to the sea!”
He backed water. A moment later the little boat in which Vere loved to go out alone grated against theirs.
“Madonna! To leave the boat like that!” exclaimed Gaspare, bending to catch the tow-rope. “The Signora is not safe to-night. The Signora’s saint will not look on her to-night.”
“Put me ashore, Gaspare.”
“Si, Signore.”
The boat passed before the façade of the palace.
Artois knew the palace well by day. This was the first time he had come to it by night. In daylight it was a small and picturesque ruin washed by the laughing sea, lonely but scarcely sad. Leaping from its dark and crumbling walls the fisher-boys often plunged into the depths below; or they lay upon the broad sills of the gaping window-spaces to dry themselves in the sun. Men came with rods and lines to fish from its deserted apartments, through which, when rough weather was at hand, the screaming sea-birds flew. The waves played frivolously enough in its recesses. And their voices were heard against the slimy and defiant stones calling to teach other merrily, as perhaps once the voices of revellers long dead called in the happy hours of a vanished villeggiatura.
But the night wrought on it, in it, and about it change. Its solitude then became desolation, the darkness of its stones a blackness that was tragic, its ruin more than a suggestion, the decisive picture of despair.
At its base was a line of half-discovered window-spaces, the lower parts of which had become long since the prey of the waves. Above it were more window-spaces, fully visible, and flanking a high doorway, once, no doubt, connected with a staircase, but now giving upon mid-air. Formerly there had been another floor, but this had fallen into decay and disappeared, with the exception of one small and narrow chamber situated immediately over the doorway. Isolated, for there was no means of approach to it, this chamber had something of the aspect of a low and sombre tower sluggishly lifting itself towards the sky. The palace was set upon rock and flanked by rocks. Round about it grass grew to the base of a high cliff at perhaps two hundred yards distance from it. And here and there grass and tufts of rank herbage pushed in its crevices, proclaiming the triumph of time to exulting winds and waters.
As Gaspare rowed in cautiously and gently to this deserted place, to which from the land no road, no footpath led, he stared at the darkness of the palace with superstitious awe, then at the small, familiar boat, which followed in their wake because he held the tow-rope.
“Signore,” he said, “I am afraid!”
“You—Gaspare!”
“I am afraid for the Signora. Why should she come here all alone with thefattura della morte? I am afraid for the Signora.”
The boat touched the edge of the rock to the right of the palace.
“And where has the Signora gone, Signore? I cannot see her, and I cannot hear her.”
He lifted up his hand. They listened. But they heard only the sucking murmur of the sea against the rocks perforated with little holes, and in distant, abandoned chambers of the palace.
“Where has the Signora gone?” Gaspare repeated, in a whisper.
“I will find the Signora,” said Artois.
He got up. Gaspare held his arm to assist him to the shore.
“Thank you.”
He was on the rocks.
“Gaspare,” he said, “wait here. Lie off the shore close by till I come back.”
“Si, Signore.”
Artois hesitated, looking at Gaspare.
“I will persuade the Signora to come back with us,” he said.
“Si, Signore. You must persuade the poor Signora. The poor Signora is mad to-night. She gave me a look—” His eyes clouded with moisture. “If the poor Signora had not been mad she could not have looked at me like that—at another, perhaps, but not at me.”
It seemed as if at last his long reserve was breaking down. He put up his hand to his eyes.
“I did not think that my Padrona—”
He stopped. Artois remembered the face at the window. He grasped Gaspare’s hand.
“The Signora does not understand,” he said. “I will make the Signora understand.”
“Si, Signore, you must make the poor Signora understand.”
Gaspare’s hand held on to the hand of Artois, and in that clasp the immense reserve, that for so many years had divided, and united, these two men, seemed to melt like gold in a crucible of fire.
“I will make the Signora understand.”
“And I will wait, Signore.”
He pushed the boat off from the rocks. It floated away, with its sister boat, on the calm sea that kissed the palace walls. He gave his Padrona’s fate into the hands of Artois. It was a tribute which had upon Artois a startling effect.
It was like a great resignation which conferred a great responsibility.
Always Gaspare had been very jealous, very proud of his position of authority as the confidential servant and protector of Hermione. And now, suddenly, and very simply, he seemed to acknowledge his helplessness with Hermione—to rely implicitly upon the power of Artois.
Vere, too, in her way had performed a kindred action. She had summoned “Monsieur Emile” in her great trouble. She had put herself in his hands. And he—he had striven to delegate to others the burden he was meant to bear. He had sent Vere to Hermione. He had sent Gaspare to her. He had even sent Ruffo to her. Now he must go himself. Vere, Gaspare, Ruffo—they were all looking to him. But Gaspare’s eyes were most expressive, held more of demand for him than the eyes of the girl and boy. For the past was gathered in Gaspare, spoke to him in Gaspare’s voice, looked at him from Gaspare’s eyes, and in Gaspare’s soul waited surely to know how it would be redeemed.
He turned from the sea and looked towards the cliff. Now he had the palace on his left hand. On his right, not far off, was a high bluff going almost sheer into the sea. Nevertheless, access to the village was possible by the strip of rocks beneath it. Had Hermione gone to the village by the rocks? If she had, Gaspare’s keen eyes would surely have seen her. Artois looked at the blank wall of the palace. This extended a little way, then turned at right angles. Just beyond the angle, in its shadow, there was a low and narrow doorway. Artois moved along the wall, reached this doorway, stood without it, and listened.
The grass here grew right up to the stones of the ruin. He had come almost without noise. Before him he saw blackness, the blackness of a passage extending from the orifice of the doorway to an interior chamber of the palace. He heard the peculiar sound of moving water that is beset and covered in by barriers of stone, a hollow and pugnacious murmur, as of something so determined that it would be capable of striving through eternity, yet of something that was wistful and even sad.
For an instant he yielded his spirit to this sound of eternal striving. Then he said:
“Hermione!”
No one answered.
“Hermione!”
He raised his voice. He almost called the name.
Still there was no answer. Yet the silence seemed to tell him that she was near.
He did not call again. He waited a moment, then he stepped into the passage.
The room to which it led was the central room, or hall, of the palace—a vaulted chamber, high and narrow, opening to the sea at one end by the great doorway already mentioned, to the land beneath the cliff by a smaller doorway at the other. The faint light from without, penetrating through these facing doorways, showed to Artois a sort of lesser darkness, towards which he walked slowly, feeling his way along the wall. When he reached the hall he again stood still, trying to get accustomed to the strange and eerie obscurity, to pierce it with his eyes.
Now to his left, evidently within the building, and not far from where he stood, he heard almost loudly the striving of the sea. He heard the entering wave push through some narrow opening, search round the walls for egress, lift itself in a vain effort to emerge, fall back baffled, retreat, murmuring discontent, only to be succeeded by another eager wave. And this startling living noise of water filled him with a sensation of acute anxiety, almost of active fear.
“Hermione!” he said once more.
It seemed to him that the voice of the water drowned his voice, that it was growing louder, was filling the palace with an uproar that was angry.
“Hermione! Hermione!”
He strove to dominate that uproar.
Now, far off, through the seaward opening, he saw a streak of silver lying like a thread upon the darkness of the sea. And as he saw it, the voice of the waves within the palace seemed to sink suddenly away almost to silence. He did not know why, but the vision of that very distant radiance of the young and already setting moon seemed to restore to him abruptly the accuracy of his sense of hearing.
He again went forward a few steps, descending in the chamber towards the doorway by the worn remains of an almost effaced staircase. Reaching the bottom he stood still once more. On either side of him he could faintly discern openings leading into other rooms. Perhaps Hermione, hearing him call, had retreated from him through one of them. A sort of horror of the situation came upon him, as he began thoroughly to realize the hatred, hatred of brain, of nerves, of heart, that was surely quivering in Hermione in this moment, that was driving her away into the darkness from sound and touch of life. Like a wounded animal she was creeping away from it and hating it. He remembered Gaspare’s words about the look she had cast upon perhaps the most truly faithful of all her friends.
But—she did not know. And he, Artois, must tell her. He must make her see the exact truth of the years. He must win her back to reason.
Reason! As the word went through his mind it chilled him, like the passing of a thing coated with ice. He had been surely a reasonable man, and his reasonableness had led him to this hour. Suddenly he saw himself, as he had seen that palace door by lightning. He saw himself for an instant lit by a glare of fire. He looked, he stared upon himself.
And he shivered, as if he had drawn close to, as if he had stood by, a thing coated with ice.
And he dared to come here, to pursue such a woman as Hermione! He dared to think that he could have any power over her, that his ice could have any power over her fire! He dared to think that! For a moment all, and far more than all, his former feelings of unworthiness, of helplessness, of cowardice, rushed back upon him. Then, abruptly, there came upon him this thought—“Vere believes I have power over Hermione.” And then followed the thought—“Gaspare believes that I have power over her.” And the ice seemed to crack. He saw fissures in it. He saw it melting. He saw the “thing” it had covered appearing, being gradually revealed as—man.
“Vere believes in my power. Gaspare believes in my power. They are the nearest to Hermione. They know her best. Their instincts about her must be the strongest, the truest. Why do they believe in it? Why do they—why do they know—for they must, they do know, that I have this power, that I am the one to succeed where any one else would fail? Why have they left Hermione in my hands to-night?”
The ice was gone. The lightning flash lit up a man warm with the breath of life. From the gaunt door of the abandoned palace the strip of black cloth, the tragic words above it, dropped down and disappeared.
Suddenly Artois knew why Vere believed in his power, and why Gaspare believed in it—knew how their instincts had guided them, knew to what secret knowledge—perhaps not even consciously now their knowledge—they had travelled. And he remembered the words he had written in the book at Frisio’s on the night of the storm:
“La Conscience, c’est la quantite de science innee que nous avons en nous.”
He had written those words hurriedly, irritably, merely because he had to write something, and they chanced—he knew not why—to come into his mind as he took hold of the pen. And it was on that night, surely, that his conscience—his innate knowledge—began to betray him. Or—no—it was on that night that he began to defy it, to deny it, to endeavor to cast it out.
For surely he must have known, he had known, what Vere and Gaspare innately knew. Surely his conscience had not slept while theirs had been awake.
He did not know. It seemed to him as if he had not time to decide this now. Very rapidly his mind had worked, rushing surely through corridors of knowledge to gain an inner room. He had only stood at the foot of the crumbling staircase two or three minutes before he moved again decisively, called again, decisively:
“Hermione! Hermione! I know you are here. I have come for you!”
He went to the right. On the left was the chamber which had been taken possession of by the sea. She could not have gone that way, unless—he thought of thefattura della morte, and for a moment the superstitious horror returned upon him. But he banished it. That could not be. His heart was flooded by conviction that cruelty has an end, that the most relentless fate fails at last in its pursuing, that thefattura della morte, if it brought death with it, brought a death that was not of the body, brought, perhaps, a beautiful death of something that had lived too long.
He banished fear, and he entered the chamber on the right. It was lit only by an opening looking to the sea. As he came into it he saw a tall thing—like a tall shadow—pass close to him and disappear. He saw that, and he heard the faint sound of material in movement.
There was then still another chamber on this side, and Hermione had passed into it. He followed her in silence, came to the doorway of it, looked, saw black darkness. There was no other opening either to sea or land. In it Hermione had found what she sought—absolute blackness.
But he had found her. Here she could not escape him.
He stood in the doorway. He remembered Vere’s trust in him. He remembered Gaspare’s trust. He remembered that Gaspare was waiting in the boat for him—for them. He remembered the words of Gaspare:
“You must make the poor Signora understand!”
That was what he had to do: to make Hermione understand. And that surely he could do. Surely he had the power to do it now.
For he himself understood.