A Spirit in Prison Part 140

"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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage.

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 pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+vered, 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 quant.i.te 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, rus.h.i.+ng 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 the _fattura della morte_, and for a moment the superst.i.tious 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 the _fattura 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--pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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!"