“A sweet, dark woman, with sad, holy eyes, Laid her cool hand upon my heart to-day, And touched the dear dead thing that’s buried there. Her saintly magic cannot make it live, Nor sting once more with passionate deep thrill The bright torn flesh where my lost love breathed last.
“She has no miracles for me — nor God Forgiveness, nor earth healing — nor death fear. I think I fear life more — and yet, to live Were easy work, could I but learn to die; As, if I learned to live, I should hate death. But I cannot hate death — not even death — Since that is dead which made death hateful once; Nor hate I anything; let all live on, Just and unjust, bad, good, indifferent, Sinner and saint, man, devil, angel, martyr — What are they all to me? Good night, sweet rest — I wish you most what I can find the least. We meet again soon. Have you heard the talk About the latest scandal of our town? No? Nor have I. I care less than I did About the men and women I have known. Good night — and thanks for being kind to me.”
CHAPTER XVI.
DONNA ADELE SAVELLI was ill. There was no denying the fact, though her husband had ignored it as long as possible, and was very much annoyed to find that he could not continue to do so until the usual time for moving to the country arrived. As has been said already, the world attributed her ill-health to some unexpected awakening of the family skeleton, and when the Savelli couple suddenly retired to Gerano, it was sure that Francesco had lost money and that they had gone for economy. But there was no lack of funds in Casa Savelli. That ancient and excellent house had, as a family, a keen appreciation of values great and small, and continued to put away more of its income in safe investments than any one knew of. Nor was there any other trouble to account for Adele’s illness, so far as any member of the household could judge. Every one else was well, including the children. Everybody was prosperous. It was not conceivable that Adele should have taken Herbert Arden’s death to heart in a way to endanger her own health. She might, perhaps, feel some remorse for having spoken of him as she had — for Savelli had discovered that something, at least, of the gossip could be traced to her — but she could not be supposed to care so much as to fall ill. What she suffered from was evidently some one of those mysterious nervous diseases which, in Francesco’s opinion, modern medical science had invented expressly in order that it might deal with them. Unfortunately, the particular man of learning who could cure Adele was not forthcoming. The doctors who were consulted said that something was preying on her mind, and when she assured them that this was not the case, they shrugged their shoulders and prescribed soothing medicines, country air, and exercise. She particularly dreaded the night, and could not bear to be left alone for a moment after dark. She said she saw things; when asked what things she saw, she seemed to draw upon her imagination. Francesco began to fear that she might go mad, though there was no insanity in the Braccio family. The prospect was not pleasing, and he would have greatly preferred that she should die and leave him at liberty to marry Laura Arden. He never dreamed that the latter would refuse to wed the heir of all the Savelli, if he were free to ask her hand, and in his cautious, unenterprising fashion he loved her still, while remaining religiously faithful to his wife — and not, on the whole, treating her unkindly. The consequence of all this was that he made her try the simple cure suggested by the doctors, and accompanied her to Gerano in the early spring.
The hereditary stronghold from which the head of the Braccio family took his principal title was a vast and gloomy fortress in the lower range of the Sabine mountains, situated in a beautiful country, and overlooking the broad Campagna that lay between it and the distant sea. The great dark walls were flanked by round towers, and were in some places ten and twelve feet thick, so that the deep embrasures of the windows were in themselves like little rooms opening off the great halls behind. The furniture was almost all old, and was well in keeping with the vaulted ceilings, the frescoed friezes, and the dark marble door-posts. Donna Adele’s sleeping-chamber was as large as most of the drawing-rooms in the Palazzo Braccio, and her dressing-room was almost of the same size. To reach the hall in which she and her husband dined, it was necessary to traverse five other rooms and a vaulted passage fifty or sixty yards long, in which the steps of any one who passed echoed and rang on the stone pavement, and echoed again during some seconds afterwards in a rather uncanny fashion. The sitting-room was next to the dining-hall, and consequently also at a great distance from the bedrooms. There was more of comfort in it than elsewhere, for the walls were hung with tapestries, and there was a carpet on the floor, whereas in the other apartments there were only rugs thrown down here and there, where they were most needed; here, too, the doors had heavy curtains. But, on the whole, a more ghostly and gloomy place than the castle of Gerano could hardly be imagined, especially at dusk when the blackness deepened in the remote corners and recesses of the huge chambers, and the sculptured corbels of grey stone, high up at the spring of each arch, grew shadowy and alive with hideous grimaces in the gathering dimness.
Adele had never been subject to any fear of the supernatural, and the old place was so familiar to her from childhood, that she had looked forward with pleasure to seeing it again. She was attached to almost everything connected with it, to the walls themselves, to her own rooms, to the ugly corbels, to the lame old warder, Giacomo, and to his wife who helped him to take care of the rooms. She was a woman quite capable of that sort of feeling, and capable, indeed, of much more, had it fallen in her path. She could not have hated as she did, if she had not had some power to love also. Circumstances, however, had developed the one far more than the other, for her first great passion had been jealousy.
She and Francesco reached the castle in the afternoon of the day following their visit to Laura Arden. The weather was fine and the westering sun streamed through the broad windows and lent everything a passing air of life and almost of gaiety. During the first hours, Adele felt that she must soon be better, and that she could find some rest at last in the atmosphere which recalled her childish days and all her peaceful girlhood.
But when the sun was low and the golden light turned to purple and then to fainter hues, and died away into twilight, she shivered as she sat in the deep window-seat, and she called to her husband, telling him to order the lamps.
“You used to like the dusk,” he observed, as he tugged at the old-fashioned bell-rope. “I cannot imagine what makes you so afraid of being in the dark.”
“Nor I,” she said nervously. “It must be part of my illness. Please have as much light as possible, and lamps in the passage and in our rooms as well.”
“I suppose candles will do,” answered Savelli. “I do not believe there are more than half a dozen lamps out here. Your people always bring them when they come.”
“Oh, candles, then — anything! Only let me have plenty of light. If there were no night, I should get well.”
“Unfortunately, nature has not provided that form of cure for invalids,” said Savelli, with a laugh. “But we will do our best,” he added, always willing to humour his wife in anything reasonable.
The servants’ quarters were very far away, and several minutes elapsed before a man appeared, and Francesco could give the necessary orders. The gloom deepened, and Adele came from her place at the window, evidently in some sort of distress. She sat down close to her husband — almost cowering at his side. He could not see her face clearly, but he understood that she was frightened.
“I wish you would tell me what it is you see in the dark,” he said, with a sort of good-natured impatience.
“Oh, please do not talk about it!” she cried. “Talk to me of something else — talk, for Heaven’s sake, talk, until they bring the lamps! I sometimes think I shall go mad when there is no light.”
It is not a particularly easy affair to comply, at short notice, with such a request for voluble conversation, especially when there is no extraordinary sympathy between two people, nor any close community of ideas. But it chanced that Savelli had been reading the pap
ers he had brought with him, and he began to tell Adele the news he had read, so that he managed to keep up a fairly continuous series of sentences until the first lamp was placed on the table.
“Thank you, Carissimo,” she said. “No shade!” she exclaimed quickly, as the man was about to slip one over the light.
“Do you feel better now?” inquired Francesco, with some amusement.
“Yes — much better,” she answered, drawing a long breath, and seating herself by the table in the full glare of the unshaded lamp. “I only ask one thing,” she continued: “Do not leave me if you can help it, and go with me when we go to our room. I am ashamed of it, but I am so nervous that I am positively afraid to be alone.”
“Would it not be better to have a nurse out, to stay with you all the time?” inquired Francesco, who had an eye to his own liberty and comfort, and had no idea of spending several weeks in perpetual attendance on his wife. “And there is your maid, too. She might help.”
“I have taken such a dislike to that woman that I hate the sight of her.”
“I suppose that is a part of your illness,” answered her husband philosophically.
On that first evening he scrupulously fulfilled her wishes, and followed her closely when she went from room to room. He was in a certain degree anxious, for her allusion to possible madness coincided with his own preconceived opinion of her case, and he dreaded such a termination very greatly. He saw that what she said was quite true, and that she was unaffectedly frightened if he left her side for a moment. On the following day he sent a messenger to the city to procure a nurse, for he saw that he could not otherwise count on an hour’s freedom. Being a careful man, he wished that Adele might have been contented to be followed about by her maid and a woman from the place, but she refused altogether to agree to such an arrangement. In her nervous condition, she could not bear the constant presence of a person for whom she felt an unreasoning repulsion. Moreover, she had almost decided to send Lucia away and to get some one more congenial in her place.
Several days passed in this way, and if she was no better she was not worse. She drove and walked in the spring sunshine, and felt refreshed by the clear air of the country, but the nights were as unbearable as ever, — endless, ghostly, full of imaginary horrors, although the lamps burned brightly in her room till sunrise, and the patient nurse sat by her bedside reading to herself, and sometimes reading aloud when Adele desired it. Occasionally, and more often towards morning, snatches of broken sleep interrupted the monotony of the long-drawn-out suffering.
Adele had implored the doctor who had charge of her case to give her opiates, or at least chloral; but he had felt great hope that the change to a country life would produce an immediate good effect, and had represented to her in terms almost exaggerated the danger of taking such remedies. The habit once formed, he said, soon became a slavery, and in nervous organisations like hers was very hard to break. People who took chloral often ended by taking morphia, and Donna Adele had doubtless heard enough about the consequences of employing this drug to dread it, as all sensible persons did. Adele was very far from being persuaded, but as she could not procure what she wanted without a doctor’s order, which she could not obtain, she was obliged to fall back on the sulphonal which Ghisleri had recommended to her. She took it in large quantities, but it had almost ceased to produce any effect, though she attributed the little rest she got to its influence. The doctor was to come out and see her at the end of a week, unless sent for especially. Before the seven days were out, however, a crisis occurred, brought about by a slight accident, which made his presence imperatively necessary.
One evening, immediately after dinner, Adele had seated herself in a low chair by the table in the drawing-room, and had taken up a novel. For a wonder, it had interested her when she had begun it in the afternoon, and she returned to it with unwonted delight, looking forward to the prospect of losing herself in the story during a few hours before going to bed. Not far from her Savelli sat with that day’s papers, gleaning the news of the day in an idle fashion, and smoking a cigarette. He rarely smoked anything else, but for some reason or other, he had, on this particular night, discovered that only a cigar would satisfy him. Many men are familiar with that craving, but the satisfaction of it rarely leads to distinct and important results. Francesco rose from his seat, laid down his paper, and went in search of what he wanted, well knowing that he could get it much faster than by a servant, and forgetting that he must leave his wife alone for a few minutes in order to go to his dressing-room where he kept the box. As has been said, the drawing-room was carpeted, and his step made very little noise. Adele, intensely interested in what she was reading, paid less attention to his movements than usual, and indeed supposed that he had only risen to get something from another table. The heavily curtained door which opened upon the great vaulted passage before mentioned was behind her as she sat, and she did not realise that Francesco was gone until she heard his echoing footsteps on the stone pavement outside. Then she started, and almost dropped her book. She held her breath for a moment and then called him. But he walked quickly, and was already out of hearing. Only the booming echo reached her through the curtains, reverberated, and died away. There was nothing to be done but to wait, for she had not the courage to face the dim passage alone and run after him. She clutched her book tightly and tried to read again, pronouncing almost aloud the words she saw. A minute or two passed, and then she heard the echo again. Francesco was returning. No, it was not his walk. She turned very pale as she listened. It was the step of a very lame man, irregular and painful. The novel fell to the ground, and she grasped the arms of her chair. It was exactly like Arden’s step; she had heard it before, in the gallery at her father’s palace, where the floor was of marble. Nearer and nearer it came, in a sort of triple measure — two shorts and a long, like an anapæst — and the sharp click of the stick between. She tried to look behind her, but her blood froze in her veins, and she could not move. Every instant increased her agony of fear. A moment more and Herbert Arden would be upon her. Suddenly a second echo, that of Francesco Savelli’s firm, quick step reached her ears. Then she heard voices, and as the curtain was lifted she recognised the tones of old Giacomo, the lame warder, who had met her husband in the passage, and was asking for the orders to be given to the carter who started for Rome every other night and brought back such provisions as could not be obtained in Gerano.
Adele sank back in her chair, almost fainting, in her sudden relief from her ghostly fears. Savelli talked some time with Giacomo. With a great effort at self-command, Adele took up her novel again and held it before her eyes, while her heart beat with terrible violence after having almost stood still while the fright had lasted. Then Francesco came in, with a lighted cigar between his teeth.
“Do you wish to send anything to Rome — any message?” he asked. “Nothing else, Giacomo,” he said, as he saw that she shook her head.
“Good rest, Excellency,” she heard Giacomo say. Then the curtain dropped, the door was closed from without, and she listened once more to the lame man’s retreating footsteps — terribly like Herbert Arden’s walk, though she was not frightened now.
“I asked you not to leave me alone,” she said, as Savelli resumed his seat and took up the paper again.
“It was only for a minute,” he answered indifferently. “I wanted a cigar. I hope you were not frightened this time.”
“No. But I might have been. Another time, please ring for what you want.”
Savelli, who was already deep in the local news about Rome, made an inarticulate reply intended for assent, and nothing more was said. Adele took up her book again and did her best to read, but without understanding a word as she followed the lines.
That night, in despair, she swallowed a larger dose of sulphonal than she had ever taken before. The consequence was that towards two o’clock she fell asleep and seemed more quiet than usual, as the nurse watched her. An hour passed without her waking, then
another, and then the dawn stole through the panes of the deep windows, and daylight came at last. The room was quite light, and Adele was generally awake at that hour. But this morning she slept on. The nurse was accustomed to take away the lamps as soon as Adele needed them no longer, not extinguishing them in the room on account of the disagreeable smell they made. It chanced on this occasion — or fate had decreed it — that one of these gave signs of going out. The nurse rose very softly and took it away, moving noiselessly in her felt slippers, passing through the open door of the dressing-room in order to reach the corridor in which the lamps were left to be taken and cleaned at a later hour. She set the one she carried upon a deal table which stood there, and tried to put it out, so as to leave no part of the wick still smouldering, lest it should smoke. She was a very careful and methodical woman, and took pains to be neat in doing the smallest things. Just now, too, she was in no hurry, for it was broad daylight, and Adele would not be nervous if she awoke and found herself alone.
And Adele was awake. She opened her eyes wearily, realised that there was no one beside her, and sat up staring at the bright window. Being nervous, restless, and never at any time languid, she got up, threw a wrapper over her, and went to the door of the dressing-room, meaning to look at the rising sun, which was visible from the window on the other side, the dressing-room itself being at one of the angles of the castle, with a door leading from the corner of it into the tower.
Adele paused on the threshold, started, stared at something, turned, and uttered a piercing scream of terror. A moment later she fell in a heap upon the floor. She had distinctly seen Herbert Arden’s figure standing at one of the windows, his head and hands alone concealed by the inner shutter which, by an accident, was not wide open, but was turned about half-way towards the panes. He was dressed in dark blue serge, as she had often seen him in life, with rather wide trousers almost concealing the feet, and a round jacket. She had even seen how the cloth was stretched at the place where his shoulder was most crooked, and how it hung loosely about his thin figure below that point. He was standing close to the window, with his back almost quite turned towards her, apparently looking out, though the shutter hid his face. The whole attitude was precisely as she had often noticed it when he was alive, and chanced to be looking at something in the street — the misshapen, protruding shoulder, the right leg bent in more than the other, not a detail was missing as she came upon the vision suddenly in the cold morning light.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 617
