CHAPTER LIVTHE PYRE

Over the hillocks, under the robed boughs of the Pisan forest, went a barouche, drawn by four post-horses ready to drop from the intensity of the noonday sun. In it were Gordon and Dallas. They had been strangely silent during this ride. From time to time Dallas wiped his forehead and murmured of the heat. Gordon answered in monosyllables.

They had reached a lonely stretch of beach-wilderness, broken by tufts of underwood, gnawed by tempests and stunted by the barren soil. Before it curved the blue windless Mediterranean, cradling the Isle of Elba. Behind, the view was bounded by the Italian Alps, volcanic crags of white marble, white and sulphury like a frozen hurricane. Across the sandy extent, at equal distances, rose high, square battlemented towers, guarding the coast from smugglers.

Gordon’s gaze, though it was fixed on the spot they were approaching, saw only a woman’s desolated form clasped in Teresa’s sympathizing arms.

At a spot marked by the withered trunk of a fir-tree, near a ramshackle hut covered with reeds—a flimsy shelter for night patrols—the vehicle stopped and Gordondescended. A little way off was pitched a tent, by which stood a group of mounted dragoons and Italian laborers, the latter with mattocks in their hands. A single figure came from the group and greeted him.

It was Trevanion. Gordon had not seen him since the hour of that Sabbath service from which Shelley had fled—to the fatal storm whose wrecks strewed the sand where they now stood. Since Mary Shelley had rushed into the Lanfranchi Palace with that cry of terror and foreboding, days had passed: days of sick search, hurrying couriers, wild speculation and fearful hope. All this had ended with the message from Trevanion which had sent the laborers and brought the barouche to-day to the lonely spot where the sea had given up its dead.

The man who had sent this message was unkempt and unshaven, his swarthy face clay-pale, his black eyes bloodshot. He had searched the coast day and night, sleepless and savage. There had been desperation in his toil. In his semi-barbaric blood had raged a curious conflict between his hatred of Gordon and something roused by the other’s act in delivering him from Cassidy’s marines. He was by instinct an Oriental, and instinct led him to revenge; but his strain of Welsh blood made his enemy’s magnanimity unforgettable and had driven him to this fierce effort for an impersonal requital. Because Shelley had been the friend of the man he hated but who had aided him, the deed in some measure satisfied the crude remorse that fought with his vulpine enmity.

Almost touching the creeping lip of surf, three wands stood upright in the sand. Trevanion beckoned thelaborers and they began to dig in silence. At length a hollow sound followed the thrust of a mattock.

Gordon drew nearer. He heard leadenly the muttered conversation of the workmen as they waited, leaning on their spades—saw but dimly the uniforms of the dragoons. He scarcely felt the hot sand scorching his feet.

Was the object they had unearthed that whimsical youth whom he had seen first in the Fleet Prison? The unvarying friend who had searched him out at San Lazzarro—true-hearted, saddened but not resentful for the world’s contumely, his gaze unwavering from that empyrean in which swam his lustrous ideals? This battered flotsam of the tempest—could this be Shelley?

From the pocket of the faded blue jacket a book protruded. He stooped and drew it out. It was the “Œdipus” of Sophocles, doubled open.

“Aidoneus! Aidoneus, I imploreGrant thou the stranger wend his wayTo that dim land that houses all the dead,With no long agony or voice of woe.For so, though many evils undeservedUpon his life have fallen,God, the All-Just, shall raise him up again!”

“Aidoneus! Aidoneus, I implore

Grant thou the stranger wend his way

To that dim land that houses all the dead,

With no long agony or voice of woe.

For so, though many evils undeserved

Upon his life have fallen,

God, the All-Just, shall raise him up again!”

He lifted his eyes from the page as Trevanion spoke his name. He followed him to the tent. Beside it the laborers had heaped a great mass of driftwood and fagots gathered from a stunted pine-growth.

Shuffling footsteps fell behind him—he knew they were bearing the body. He averted his eyes, smelling the pungent, aromatic odors of the frankincense, wine and salt that were poured over all.

Trevanion came from the tent with a torch and put it into his hands. Gordon’s fingers shook as he held it to the fagots, but he did the work thoroughly, lighting all four corners. Then he flung the torch into the sea, climbed the slope of a dune and sat down, feeling for an instant a giddiness, half of the sun’s heat and half of pure horror.

The flames had leaped up over the whole pyre, glistening with wavy yellow and deep indigo, as though giving to the atmosphere the glassy essence of vitality itself. Save for their rustle and the shrill scream of a solitary curlew, wheeling in narrow fearless circles about the fiery altar, there was no sound.

Sitting apart on the yellow sand, his eyes on the flame quivering upward like an offering of orisons and aspirations, tremulous and radiant, the refrain of Ariel came to Gordon:

“Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls, that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.”

“Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls, that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.”

Had Shelley been right? Was death, for Christian or pagan, only a part of the inwoven design, glad or sad, on that veil which hides from us some high reality? Was Dallas—was Padre Somalian—nearer right than his own questioning that had ended in negation? Had Sheridan found the girl-wife he longed for—beyond the questioning and the stars? And was that serene soul, whose body now sifted to its primal elements, walking free somewhere in a universe of loving intelligencewhich to him, George Gordon, had been at most only “The Great Mechanism”?

At length he rose. The group in the lee of the tent had approached the pyre. He heard wondering exclamations. Going nearer, he saw that of Shelley’s body there remained only a heap of white ashes—and the heart. This the flames had refused to touch.

He felt a strange sensation dart through every nerve. Trevanion thrust in his hand and took it from the embers.

Gordon turned to the barouche, where Dallas leaned back watching, pale and grave. He had brought an oaken box from Pisa, and returning with this to the beach, he gathered in it the wine-soaked ashes and laid the heart upon them. His pulses were thrilling and leaping to a wild man-hysteria.

As he replaced the coffer in the carriage he saw Trevanion wading knee-deep in the cool surf. He settled the box between his knees and the horses toiled laboriously toward the homeward road.

A sound presently rose behind them. It was Trevanion, shouting at the curlew circling above his head—a wild, savage scream of laughter.

Gordon clenched his hands on the edge of the seat and a great tearless sob broke from his breast. It was the release of the tense bow-string—the scattering of all the bottled grief and horror that possessed him.

He became aware after a time that Dallas was reading aloud. The latter had picked up the blistered copy of the “Œdipus” and was translating.

As he listened to the flowing lines, a mystical change was wrought in George Gordon. With a singular accuracyof estimation, his mind set the restless cravings of his own past over against Shelley’s placid temperament—his long battle beside the other’s acquiescence. He had been the simoon, Shelley the trade-wind. He had razed, Shelley had reconstructed. His own doubts had pointed him—where? Shelley had been meditating on immortality when he met the end.

The end? Or was it only the beginning? “God, the All-Just, shall raise him up again!”—the phrase was running in his mind as they reëntered the palace that afternoon.

Fletcher handed him a card in the library.

“The gentleman came with Prince Mavrocordato,” he said. “They wished me to say to your lordship they would return this evening.”

The card read:

’LIEUTENANT EDWARD BLAQUIEREThe GreekRevolutionary CommitteeLondon

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