CHAPTER XIV.PHYSICIAN, AT LAST!
Tito was between love and death, or rather between death and life. Yes, because that dismal shadow which had come between him and the moon, clouding the splendor of passion in Elena’s countenance, was the divinity of darkness, our hero’s faithful companion ever since his first thought of suicide.
“How art thou, friend?” said he.
“Ah! hush!” murmured Tito, covering his face with his hands.
“What is it, my love?” questioned Elena, observing her husband’s anguish.
“Elena! Elena! do not leave me!” exclaimed the youth in despair, winding his left arm about her neck.
“I must speak to thee,” added Death, taking Tito’s right hand and drawing him gently towards him.
“Come, let us enter,” said the youth to Elena, retreating from Death toward the villa.
“No! come with me; we must go,” said Death, pointing toward the garden gate.
Elena neither saw nor heard him; this sad privilege was reserved for the Duke of Verity alone.
“Tito, I await thee,” added the sinister personage.
The unfortunate boy shivered to the marrow of his bones. Copious tears fell from his eyes, which Elena gently brushed away. He disengaged himself from her arms and ran wildly through the garden, exclaiming between heart-rending sobs:—
“To die! to die now!”
Elena wished to follow him, but doubtless, on account of the state into which the condition of her husband had thrown her, at the first step she fell senseless to the ground.
“To die! to die!” exclaimed the youth again with desperation.
“Fear not,” replied Death, approaching him gently. “It is useless for thee to fly from me.It has been decreed that we should meet, and I do not intend to abandon thee as thou wishest.”
“But why have you come here?” exclaimed Tito, furiously, wiping away his tears, as if relinquishing supplication and perhaps prudence, and addressing Death defiantly. “Why have you come here? Answer!” and he glanced about angrily as if seeking some weapon. Near to him was a large garden axe. He grasped it convulsively, and raised it in the air, as if it were a weak reed (for despair had doubled his strength), and repeated for the third time and with more fury than ever:—“Why have you come here?”
Death burst into a loud, cynical laugh, the echo of which resounded for a long time. It reverberated in the four corners of the garden, imitating with its strident sound the rattling of a skeleton’s bones when knocking against each other. “Thou wishest to kill me!” exclaimed the black spectre. “So, Life opposes itself to Death! Thisisinteresting. Let us fight, then.” Saying this he threw back his long black cape, exposing an arm whichgrasped a weapon resembling a scythe, and put himself on guard, in front of Tito.
The moon assumed a yellow, waxy color; a cold wind blew, which made the fruit-laden trees groan with sorrow; one heard the distant barking of many dogs, or they seemed rather long howls of funereal omen; and one even seemed to hear, high up in the region of the clouds, the jangling sound of many bells that tolled of death.
Tito, noting all these things, fell upon his knees before his antagonist.
“Pity! pardon!” he cried, with indescribable anguish.
“Thou art forgiven,” gently responded Death, hiding his weapon; and as if all that funereal pomp of nature might have arisen from the fury of the black divinity, no sooner had a smile appeared on his lips, than the atmosphere calmed, the bells ceased, the dogs stopped howling, and the moon shone as brightly as at the commencement of the night.
“Thou hast pretended to fight with me,” exclaimed Death with good humor. “Physician, at last! Arise unhappy one, and give methy hand. I have said that thou hast nothing to fear for this night.”
“But why do you come here?” repeated the youth with increasing anxiety. “For what have you come? Why do I find you in my house? You enter only where you have someone to kill. Whom do you seek?”
“I will tell thee all. Let us be seated a moment,” said Death, caressing Tito’s icy hands.
“But, Elena!” whispered the youth.
“Let her rest. She issleepingnow. I watch for her; therefore let us arrange our affairs. Tito, thou art an ingrate! but thou art likeallothers; once upon the summit, they kick the ladder by which they rose. Oh! thy conduct towards me deserves no pardon from God. How much thou hast made me suffer in these last days! how much! how much!”
“Ah! but I adore her,” cried Tito.
“Thou adorest her, that is it; but thou hadst lost her forever; thou wert a miserable shoemaker, and she was about to marry a person of rank; I intervened, I made thee rich, noble, famous; I freed thee of thy rival; I reconciledthee with thine enemy and carried her to the other world. Finally I gave thee Elena’s hand; and here, at this moment, thou turnest thy back upon me, triest to forget me, and coverest thine eyes so as not to see me. Thou art as stupid as the rest of men. They who should always see me in their thoughts, blind themselves with the vanities of this world, and live without devoting one thought to me, until I come to claim them. My lot is a very unfortunate one. I do not remember of ever approaching one mortal, without having surprised and frightened him as though he had never expected me. Even those of five score years believe that they can do without me. Thou, for thy part, who hast the privilege of actually seeing me, and who art not able to forget me as thou wouldst, placed before thine eyes, the other day, a means of forgetfulness, a bandage of cloth; and to-day thou hidest in a lonely garden, imagining thyself secure from me forever. Fool! Ingrate! False friend!Man!!And that tells all!”
“Well,” stammered Tito, whose confusion and shame had not quieted his suspicious curiosity,“for what reason do you come to my house?”
“I come to complete the mission, which the Eternal One has charged me with, concerning thee.”
“But you do not come to kill us?”
“By no means.”
“Ah! Then—,”
“But now that I do see thee, or, rather, that thou seest me, I must take precaution to prevent thee from forgetting me again.”
“And what are these precautions?” said Tito, trembling more than ever.
“I must also make thee several important revelations.”
“Ah! return to-morrow.”
“No! impossible; our meeting to-night is providential.”
“Oh, my friend!” exclaimed the poor youth.
“And because I am thy friend, thou must follow me,” responded Death.
“Where?”
“To my house.”
“To your house! Then youhavecome to kill me! Ah, cruel! And this is your friendship! Frightful sarcasm! You give me happiness and then snatch it from me. Why did you not let me die that night?”
“Hush, unfortunate boy!” replied Death, with solemn sadness. “Thou sayest that thou knowest happiness. How thou dost deceive thyself! This I ask thee. How dost thou know it?”
“Elena is my happiness, I renounce all else.”
“To-morrow thou wilt see more clearly.”
“Kill me, then!” shrieked Tito, with desperation.
“It would be useless.”
“Killherthen! Kill us both!”
“Thou ravest!”
“To go to your house! my God!”
“Tito, compose thyself.”
“Let me at least take leave of her. Let me bid her farewell!”
“I accede to that. Awake, Elena, awake! I command thee to come. Behold! she is there.”
“What shall I say to her? At what hour to-night may I return?”
“Tell her that at daylight she will see thee.”
“Oh, no! I do not wish to stay with you so many hours. To-day I have more fear than ever.
“Be careful!”
“Do not be angry!” exclaimed the unhappy bridegroom. “Do not be angry, but tell me the truth. We will see each other truly at daybreak, Elena and I?”
Death solemnly raised his right hand, and looking up to heaven, his sad voice answered:—
“I swear it!”
“Oh, Tito! what is this?” exclaimed Elena, advancing through the trees, pale, graceful and luminous as a mythological personification of the moon.
Tito, ghastly pale also, his hair dishevelled, his gaze stern, his heart troubled, kissed Elena’s forehead, saying with hoarse accent:—
“Farewell until to-morrow. My life! await me!”
“His life!” repeated Death, with deep compassion.
Elena raised her eyes to heaven, bathed in sad tears, and overcome with a mysterious anguish, she clasped her hands, and repeated in a voice not of this world, “Until to-morrow.”
Tito and Death disappeared, and she was left standing there among the trees, her hands clasped in front of her body. Immovable, magnificent, in the full light of the moon, she looked like some noble statue without a pedestal, forgotten, in the midst of the garden.