CHAPTER XXXII.
LUCIA GUISCARDINI’S MADNESS.
The prince was waiting impatiently the arrival of Lucia at the Russian embassy. A tall, graceful man, some fifteen years older than his bride, with a somber yet gentle face, jet-black eyes and beard, and dressed to perfection.
A friend on whom he could rely was his only companion. He did not at present wish his relatives or any one of his large circle of friends and acquaintances to know anything about this union.
The ceremony was gone through, the necessary signatures given, and Lucia Gilardoni, widow of the man scarce above the rank of peasant, child of parents hardly equal to petty farmers, was the lawful wife of this proud Russian noble on whose arm she leaned.
Exultant, yet weighed down by an inexplicable dread of approaching evil, the newly made princess swept down the aisle of the little chapel, on her way to his carriage. Suddenly she clutched the prince’s arm, and drew back, as if horror-stricken. With her disengaged hand she pointed to a dim corner, her great black eyes widely opened, the pupils distended.
The prince looked to see what caused her overwhelming terror. Nothing was visible, as far as he could descry.
“What is it, my dearest love?” he tenderly asked, stooping to gaze into her pallid face.
“There—there!” she whispered. “He is there. They said he was dead. They pretended I killed him. But he is there. He is not dead—or is it his spirit?”
“Of whom do you speak, my own dear one?” asked the prince.
“My husband—Gilardoni. He stands there, and gazes at me with eyes of fire. Is he dead or living?”
She continued to point with her finger, her armstretched out, her neck craned, her eyes full of a horror too great for words.
“There is no one here but ourselves,” said the prince, a vivid terror seizing on his heart with a viselike grip.
The others regarded her with consternation, but could not venture to obtrude themselves on her notice—the prince’s friend, and the girl Finette.
A deathly silence succeeded. The bride dropped her pointing finger, while retaining her clutch on her newly wedded husband’s arm, but she continued to gaze at the phantom conjured up by her disordered fancy.
“He is gone,” she whispered, with a great, gulping sigh. “Did you not see? He melted away into the shadows. Take me away before he returns.”
The prince hurried her to the door, then down the steps, and into his carriage. His friend placed the girl Finette in her mistress’ carriage and directed the coachman to take her as quickly as his horses would go to the Hotel Fleury, in the Rue de Richelieu, where the newly married couple were to sojourn in a magnificent suite of apartments for a couple of days previous to starting for Switzerland.
With a fear too deep for expression the prince watched his lovely idol as she lay trembling within his encircling arm. Her face was of a ghastly pallor, and her eyes were fixed with an absolutely vacant look on the opposite side of the carriage, but it was difficult to conjecture whether she was consciously thinking or not.
Those betraying words of hers: “They said he was dead—they pretended I had killed him—my husband—Gilardoni!” echoed in the brain of the prince like a beating pulse. Had she, then, committed some fearful crime, and had her reason given way under the sting of conscience?
But no—no, a thousand times no! It was impossible. With a love, a loyalty wasted on its object, he refused to believe anything ill of his beloved one.
“My own—my wife!” he murmured fondly.
Lucia shivered, but made no response. They drove fast, and were soon at the gates of the stately pile where the bride was to be lodged suitably to her rank.
The prince lifted her from the carriage, and drawing her hand once more within his arm, led her up to the wide, richly carpeted staircase to the suite on the first floor.
Finette had preceded her mistress by five or ten minutes, and was waiting with the other servants near the entrance. The newly married pair walked through the bowing files of lackeys, and passed into the principal sitting-room—a long, lofty salon, glowing with softly modulated colors, rare china, mirrored panels, rich draperies, and flowers.
The prince closed the door, and sat down on a stool by the trembling Lucia.
“My dear love,” he said, with the deepest anxiety, yet resolved on giving her the opportunity of granting some explanation, “what happened to you in the chapel just now?”
“I don’t know,” she vacantly replied. “What?—how?—I do not recollect. I felt very ill.”
“You are not well now.”
“No; I am not.”
“You seem totally different from your usual self.”
“I feel so—I feel like—I cannot say how I feel—my brain is on fire.”
“What did you mean by——”
“By what?” she sharply demanded, turning on him the full gleam of her resplendent eyes, to which the light of reason for a moment returned.
“In the chapel you fancied you saw some one.”
“I fancied? How strange! I forget,” Lucia replied, laughing gaily. “Whom did I fancy I beheld?”
“You said some very singular words, my dear love.”
“What did I say?”
But before he could speak a word in reply, her glance became again wild and uncertain. She shuddered as if seized with ague, and then leaned forward, as if she again saw the phantom conjured up by her disordered brain in the chapel.
“He is here!” she whispered, half to herself. “He has followed to claim me. I can never escape him now. There is blood upon his wrist, where——It is uselessto struggle. I must give way to my destiny. But I will never go with you,” she exclaimed, raising her voice. “Never—never!”
The prince caught her hand, which she snatched away, as if terrified, looking at him with a vacant eye, that evidently did not recognize him.
“You shall not take me,” she fiercely cried. “I did not do it—I swear I did not! I was not there.”
The prince rose, and, approaching a table heaped with elegant and costly trifles, rang a hand-bell sharply.
Almost instantly the violet velvet portière of the chief entrance was raised, and an obsequious lackey stood waiting his lord’s commands.
“Send Mademoiselle Finette here,” was the brief order.
In a moment the girl had replaced her fellow servant. A brief, searching glance showed her that something was wrong; butwhatshe could scarcely tell.
“Come here,” said the prince.
He placed her in front of his bride, who was now leaning her head on her hand, resting against the stool, apparently lost to all around her.
“Madam!” exclaimed the waiting-maid, in consternation at her vacant yet wild aspect.
“What is the matter with her?” demanded the prince. “Has she ever been like this before?”
“No, monseigneur—no, no, never. Something has happened,” replied the trembling maid.
“Something terrible—something awful,” cried the unhappy prince, in an agony of despairing love and fear. “Do you know if anything has occurred to overthrow her reason?”
“I know nothing, monseigneur. Madam has always been so quiet in her life, although perhaps a little passionate in her ways, sometimes. Madam—madam, speak to me—to your poor Finette,” pleaded the girl, taking the passive hand that lay in her mistress’ lap.
A dumb spirit seemed to have seized upon the miserable victim of her own sins and crimes. With a swift glance at the maid, she averted her head coldly, and resumed her gaze into empty space.
Some crude idea had got into her dazed brain that shewould betray herself if she spoke, and she had resolved on keeping utterly silent. The prince she had apparently forgotten.
“Remain with her,” said he. “I shall return presently.”
He went to his own private sitting-room, and, going to a desk, wrote a few lines to the most eminent doctor among those who devoted their sole attention to the study of lunacy. Then he rang for his valet—an elderly, severely respectable-looking man, with a tranquil manner.
“Do you know where to find this medical man?” the prince asked, showing him the envelope.
“I believe, monseigneur, he lives in the Rue de Rivoli—but I can easily find out,” answered the valet.
“Do so. Take the brougham, and do not return without him. It is a matter of life and death for me. Do not lose a moment—but wait for him if he should be absent.”
The doctor was not absent. He returned with the confidential servant within a quarter of an hour, and presented himself in the sitting-room, which the prince had not quitted, for he dared not go back to the presence of his distraught bride.
Accustomed as the medical man was to every variety of painful case of lunacy, his face betrayed some signs of surprise and compassion as he listened to the story of the unhappy Lucia’s loss of reason, but he expressed no opinion, simply bowing as he rose to obey the entreaty of the bridegroom that he would see the princess.
“Pardon me, if I stay here until you come back to me,” said the prince, his ashy face showing only too plainly the suffering at his heart. “I dare not accompany you. I love my wife ardently, passionately—and——”
“Remain here,” gently replied the medical man. “I shall not keep you long in suspense.”
The prince flung himself face downward on a lounge as his valet conducted the doctor from the room. He began to fear that this awful shock would end in depriving him of reason. Throbbing pulses surged like waves in his ears, and his senses threatened to desert him.
The slow-dragging minutes went on, on, on, steadily,monotonously, and at length the prince felt he could not remain thus supinely waiting any longer. In reality, half an hour had elapsed from the moment he was left alone, but it seemed like many hours.
Rising, he was about to go to the salon, but as he raised himself, the portière was drawn aside, and the physician stood again before him.
The sad, grave face told its own tale, but the prince could not be satisfied.
“Doctor, how have you found her? What news do you bring me?” he cried desperately.
“The worst. Reason has utterly fled, never, I fear, to return. There has been some fearful pressure on the brain and nervous system. It would be as well to have a consultation, however, for sometimes these difficult cases are deceptive.”
But his judgment was only too firmly established on further inquiry. Lucia adhered to her crazed resolve not to utter a word, though her frequent terror and fixed look showed that she still believed herself closely watched by the figure she imagined she had seen in the chapel at the Russian embassy.
But she had caused a terrible suspicion of the truth to dawn in the mind of the last victim of her ruthless ambition. The prince reflected upon the subject until he arrived at a tolerably correct surmise of the facts of the case.
A man of prompt resolve and speedy action, he at once settled in his mind the course he should pursue, when he had recovered from the stunning effects of his first horror. For a few days Lucia was to remain in her own apartments while the further inquiry was conducted, then he would take her to Switzerland, and there place her in a pretty, secluded villa among the mountains, guarded and waited upon by a trustworthy band of servants, under the immediate direction of Finette, who agreed to accompany her ill-fated mistress.
This was done. From time to time, the prince went to see her; but she displayed the most utter indifference toward him, and never once gave the slightest sign of recognition.
A strange fancy seized her after a while—that this Swiss retreat was the villa and garden at Florence, where she had pursued her studies for the stage, and where she had lived until she made her escape, through the intervention of Paul Desfrayne, to Paris.
But she always remained totally dumb. Not the most strenuous effort could induce her to break that terrible silence. Even in singing, which she practised with the assiduity of her early student-days, she would use no words, only the vowels employed in the chromatic and diatonic scales. Her voice was infinitely richer, fuller, sweeter than it had ever been, and frequently the prince would enjoy a melancholy pleasure in listening beneath the window to the dulcet waves of birdlike melody.
She loved to deck herself with the splendor of a queen; and in this fancy the prince freely indulged her, though he never employed the slightest portion of her large fortune for this object. The horror which might have crushed his love when he was forced to believe that she might have committed the crime of which she had accused herself was tempered by the most profound pity for her distraught state.
Happily, no other love came to make the life of this betrayed man a burden to him, therefore the chains with which he had been so treacherously bound did not gall as they might have done.
A few were trusted with the terrible secret of Lucia’s loss of reason—the director of the London opera-house, and one or two others.
When the emissaries of justice came to seek for her—to accuse her of her sacrilegious theft, they found her forever beyond the reach of earthly law.
The Supreme Judge had seen fit to allot her a punishment before which her accusers drew back in solemn awe and dread.
Thus ended the race upon which the lovely and gifted Lucia Guiscardini had entered with such a high heart and iron nerve.