The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 16, 1905, Page 3

(This is the fourth installment $; of “The Castaway,” the novel of 3 3% Yord Byron, by Hallie Erminie ¢ Rives, which, because of its % poetical grasp of a truly ro- 3 { mantic theme, and ils strong # & and vivid portrayal of the char- & acter of onc of the most remark- 3¢ 2ble of all of the great English- § men of letters, has taken a high i place in popular fiction.) | O TP pyright, 1905, Bobbs-Merrill RDON had distinguished e a note of pi the bit- they k, but had been the resentment ago's shri echoed An and the flush had cut him fe. The s of ravage he the m or her inno- C In the olive wood wretchedness, here sorry index, sometimes, mine the world may not his tone to light- 1 tense-drawn, e impulsive ng hard is pain, not t not all your feelings hrew out gesture under- nate never * he your world i, either. It is on inter- would ; here as pure as urned the tint wild straw- translucent light in world to- Tita's voice spoke the waterside. She through the gath- lows, saw her father's form anding in the door of the caffe across he piazzetta the lyric i confusedly, and turn- sed the pavement to swung vigorously on the ount Gamba was in haste. le, but Teresa, as she ugh the curtains, was tive. y as they went, a gondola out- them on the canal. It held the ved carpenter whom Tita had ed in the shop. In addition to suy tious mind, the carpenter sessed a malicious tongue and loved sensation. He knew that the father asquale was at work that day Giludecca. As thé doctor had save the mother from the e was little profit to be got ining. He therefore hastened r the news to the quay where emasons labored overtime. He wn his own conclusions. The s mortally hurt—dying, doubt- 1 as he revolved in his mind with which he should make nouncement to_the father, the i milord and his evil eye entered I their dramatic values. noted the speed of the gondola ssed to tie to the rising wall, gesticulations of the blue-clad as the man it bore told his ven in the failing light she saw the gesture of grief and despair which one, the center of all eyes, v up his arms and sank down on stom: his head in his hands. father's gondola swept by, the all th As her figure sprang up and his brown hand flew to h ‘My Pasquale—dead shouted; “ri the Ingl Teresa heard a stified cry. Her fath- er had seen and heard also, though he dia mot know the explanation. Nor could he have guessed what an icy fear had gripped the heart of the girl beside him. ‘An ugly look!” he muttered, as the frantic form scrambled into the car- penter’s craft Teresa could not speak. Her horri- fied gaze was on the sinister face, the red cap like a sans-culotte, the eye gizncing under it tigerishly. Little Pasquale was dead then! The father blamed the Englishman. His look was one of murder! He would kill him— of whom she had thought and dreamed, the man in whose heart had been only tenderness! Kill him? A panging dread seized her. She feit as if she must cry out; and all the time Tita’s oar swept her on through the dusk, farther away from him whom danger threatened—him whom, in some way, no matter haw, she must warn! A strange helplessness descended upcon her. She did not even know his name, or his habitation.” To her he was but one of the hundreds Tita had said were in Venice. That the gondolier himself could have enlightened her did not cross her mind. She feit the im- possibility of appealing to her father— she had not even dared tell him she had left the gondola. What could she do? Trust to Tita to find him? Could he knpw every line of that face as did she? Even in the dark—in crowds—she told herself that she would know him, would somehow feel his presence. But how to do it? How to elude the surveillance at home? And if she could do so, where to look for him? Her reverie was broken by the gon- dola’s bumping against the landing. Her father's talk had been running on like a flowing spout. “A palazzo in Ravenna finer than this,” he was saying, “and you the Contessa Guiccioli! Shall we not be proud—eh, my Teresa? She realized suddenly of what he had been babbling. As she disembarked at the water-stairs, she looked up at the balcony. There, beside the statély Con- tessa Albrizzi, an old man, was lean- ing, hawk-eyed, white-haired and thin. He blew her a kiss from his sallow fingers. Her nervous tension relaxed in a sud- den quiver of aversion. “No, n¢!” she said in a choked voice, with clinched fingers. ‘I will not marry till I choose! Why must every one be in such haste?” . And with these broken sentences, that left her father standing in blank as- THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. tonishment, she hurried before him into the house. CHAPTER KVIIL The Haunted Man. The majestic gateway of the Palazzo Mocenigo was dark as Gordon entered save for the ‘single lamp always lit at nightfall. Fletcher served his master’s supper in the great upper room, but to-night, as too often happened, it was scarcely tasted. Long aften the valet had retired, his watchful ear heard the uneven step pacing dp .and down, up and down, on the echoing floor. A restless mood was upon Gordon, the restlessness of infinite yearning and discontent. He was tasung anew the gall and wormwood of self-reproach. He had féit the touch of Teresa's hand as it lay against the couch ‘in that squalid = room—had known it trembled—and the low words she had spoken in the street, standing, as it seemed to him, with that forest shrine ever for background, were still in his ears, He had seen her but twice, for but a few brief moments. Once she had come to him on the wings df a prayer; and again to-day over the hurt body of a child. Each meeting had touched the raw nerve in him which had first throbbed to anguish at sight of her miniature. Bach time he had heard a voice call to him as if it were the ghost of some buried thing he had one day known and lost, speaking a tungue sweet though untranslatable. Hours went by. Gordon’s step flag- ged. - He. approached the desk on which were scattered distraught leaves of manuscript, blotted and in- terlined. He swept these. into . his hand ‘and read for a moment. Be- neath the outér crust of flippancy. and satire a strange new- development had begun. But the mental habit had per- sisted strong during the moral boule- versement, as the polar glaze spreads its algld mockery. above the warm currents of an Arctic spring. How his muse had bemocked him, he thought. A drama of madness, whose dramatis personae were magicians and spirits of the nether world-—stanzas hover- ing between insane laughter and heartbroken sobs, betweén supplica- tions and blasphemles—cantos whose soul was license, though their sur- passing ‘music thrilled like the laugh- ter of a falling” Lucifer! He flung the sheets down, went to the window and threw it open, lean- ing out across the,balcony that hung over the canal. It was a night of Italian sorcery, the sky an infinite wistaria canopy nailed with white- blown stars; of musical water shim- mering into broken bits of moon; of misty silver air. Around and beneath him spread the enchanted city, a mar- vel of purple and mother-of-pearl, a jewel in verd and porphyry. Gondo- las, dim in the muffled shadow, or ablaze with strung lanterns and echo- ing with tinkling virginals and softer laughter, glided below on their way {o the masked ball of the Cavalchina. The fleeting thrill, the bubble pageant; what did they all—what did anything mean now for him? Lopking out, Gordon's gaze went far. He had a vision of England as he had last seen it across the jasper channel—green fields: and white cliffs in a smother of vapors; of Lon- don with its pomp, its power, its cal. umnies, its wicked magical vitality. And he spoke of it, murmuring sen- tences not sneering now, but broken with a stranger soft emotion:. ““What you have done—you island of home! If I could tell you! T had the immortal flame—the touch of the di- vine! It was mine—all mine, for the world! You took mé—my boyhood and embittered it, my youth and debauched it, my manhood and rebbed it! You jeered my. first songs and it stung me, and when I cried out in pain' you Jaughed and flattered. When you tired of me yqQu branded me with this mark and cast me out!” He turned again to the desk where lay the manuscript. “What I write now has the mark.of the beast! - It is'the seraph’s song with the satyr laugh cutting up through-it, and the cloven hoof of the devil -@f hatred that will not down in me! ‘And yet I wrote the poem that she loves! 1 wrote that—I! My God! It was only two years ago! And now—shall I never hear that voice singing in my _soul again? Shall I never write so ag‘dn? Never—never—never 2"’ : 1 . A pungent, heavy smell of flowers filled his nostrils. He turned from the window, quivering. Fletcher had en- tered behind him and’ was arranging a mass of blooms in a Bowl. The Fornarina! She had returned -opera - of- Rossini “the AND GRIFFED TEFEILS WERIS) FINGERS. WL SHARTNG <> < from Naples then. It was her barbaric way of announcing her coming, for she could not write. She had been absent a month—how much had happened in that month! The man, with the excoriate surface of recollection exposed, with the quick of remorse laid open suddenly, could not bear it. He threw a cloak about him . and wen} rapidly down to the water-stairs. The gondolier came running to the steps, catching up the long oar as he sprang to position. “Whither, Excellence?” he asked. A burst of music, borne on the air across roofs and up echoing canals, came faintly to Gordon from the far- away Square of St. Mark, *“To the Piazza,” he said. CHAPTER XXIX. Teresn’'s Awakening. Teresa, meanwhile, had been facing her problem—how to warn the Eng- lishman of his danger. During the slow hours while Gordon sat gazing into the distorted mirror of his own thought, she had traversed every causeway of risk, sounded every well of possibility.. To a young girl of the higher class in ‘Venice, a night trip, uncavaliered, held elements of grave peril., Discovery spelled lasting dis- grace perhaps, certainly the anger of her father. All this she was ready to hazard. But beyond was the looming probability'that she gould net! find the object of her search after all. How- ever, it. was a.chance, and fear, with another sentiment ‘that she. did not analyzeé;-impelled: her to take it. It was an easy task to win Tita, for hé would hdve denied her nothing: To him, however, she told only a part of the truth—that he wished once to see the Plazza by night. Only an hour.in the music' and lights in his car, and then quick and safe return to the Palazzo Albrizzi. The house servants she could answer for. Who would be the wiser? % So, a little- while after Gordon had been set down that night at the Molo, another gondola, lampless and with drawn - tenda, stole swiftly to a side landing, and Teresa, closely veiled, with Tita by her side, stepped into the square, beneath the flare of its flam- beaux, into its currents of ' eddying maskers where the white fazzioli of the lower order mingled with the rich costumes ‘of patricians, all alike stung by the tarantula of gayety; a flashing sea of motion and color surging end- lessly beneath a sky alive with winged spots of gray and black—the countless pigeons that circled there undisturbed. She had chosen the Piazza after much delibération. It was ‘the last night of the carnival, when all the world of Venice was on the streets. At the new Fenice Theater the latest 0 was playing, and there was the ball of the Cavalchina, the - final throb before the dropping of the pall of ‘Lent. The sadness in Gor- don's face, she felt, had no part in these things. She felt instinctively that he would be spectator rather than actor, would choose the open. air. of the square rather than the indoors. The danger she Teared for him. would not seek him in a crowd; it would lurk in some silent byway and strike ' unseeh. ~The thought made her trem- ble as she peered about her. Y The center of the Piazza was a pool. fed and emptied by three streams of < people; one flowing under the clock- tower with its blue and gold dial and bronze figures, one through the west entrance under the Bocca di Piazza, and still.another rounding the Doges’ Palace and meeting the thronged Riva. It was on the fringe of this second stream that she saw him, when the hour- was almost ended. He was standing in the shadow of the pillars, watching, she thought, yet abstracted. With a whispered word to Tita she ran and touched the moveless figure on the arm. Gordon turned instantly, and turn- ing, spoke her name half-aloud. “Ter- est!” The utterance was almost auto- matic, the lips, startled, voicing the word that was in his mind at the moment. e She thought he recognized her through the veil, and answered with a ecry expressing at one time her re- lief at finding him, and a quick delight that thrilled her at the sound of her name on his lips. Many things had wrought together to produce this new miracle of gladness. The strangeness and romance of their first meeting, the tragedy of loneliness she had guessed in the scene at the shop, her dread and the physical risk entailed in her adventure of this night, all had com- bined ‘with cunning alchemy. When he spoke she forgot to be surprised that he had called her by name, for- got that she did not know his, forgot everything save his presence and her errand. He leaned forward, breathing deep- ly. It was she! She put her veil aside quickly—her eyes were like sapphire stones!—and told him hurriedly of the threat she'had heard, of her dread, all in a rush of sentences incoherent and unstudied. . “And o you came to warn me?” “He would do it, Signore! Ah, I saw his face when he said it. You must be guarded. You must not go abroad alone!"” His mind was busy. How much she had jeopardized to reach him in that fancied danger! She, in Venice, a young girl of noble rank, with no es- cort save a gondolier! Risk enough for her in any case; what an endur- ing calamity if she should be seen and recognized there, with him! . He led her back between the pillars, put out his hand and drew the veil again across her face, speaking grave- ly and gently: “What you have done is a brave and nable thing; one I shall be glad of always. It was no less courageous, nor am I less graoteful, though what you heard was a mistake. Little Pas- quale is not dead. I spoke with the surgeon here less than a half-hour ago. He had just come from the piaz- zetta. ‘The child will recover.” “Oh, thank God!"” she breathed. She ¢lasped her hands iIn very abandon- mE?s. “The blessed Virgin has heard A . His heart seemed suddenly to cease beating. ' The exclamation was a reve- lation ‘far deeper than she divined. It was not._joy at the life of the child that’ was deepest in it—it was some- thing. else: a great relief for him. He felt the blood tingle to his finger-tips. Only one emotion could speak in such an accent—only one! ‘With. an uncontrollable imoulse he leaned to her a}:d clasped both her hands, ¥ 3 “You cared, Teresa,” he said. risked so much—for me?" “You He had spoken her name again. Again ghe felt the stab of that quiver- ing spear of gladness. Her fingers fluttered in h she whispered. The the music, the surge and laughter around faded. She felt her- self, ynafraid, drifting on a sea of unplummeted depths. A shock of fright brought her to herself. A man bent and dressed richly, with an affectation of youth, Wwas passing. attended by a servant. As they approached, the keen-eyed servitor had pointed out Gordon. “That is the evil Englishman, Excel- lence, of whom you have heard,” he had sald, and the old noble he led had set his keen eves on the other with a chuckling relish. Teresa, in the momentary pause they made, hardly repressed a cry, for [:hal moment discovery seemed to her immident. The old man was the Count Guiccioli—he who had leaned that afternoon from the palazzo bal- cony. Her pulses leaped to panic. She feit as if that sharp gaze must go through the veil, and pressed closer to Gordon. But master and servant passed om, and her fear fainted out. The man beside her had felt that Quick pressure, and instinctively the touch of his arm reassured her, though he had not surmised her alarm, In that instant Gordon had been thinking like lightning. A temptation had sprung full-statured before him: In a flash he had d the dawning secret behind those e , the sweet unspoken things beneath those tr ing lips crimson-sof poppy le To pos- sess this h t fc tell her who he was her purity would shrink—to this budding regard with meetings like this, stolen trom fate—to cherish it till it burst into flower for him, all en- grossing, supreme! T ake this love, fluttering to him unsought in the pur- lieus of his soul's despair, his solace and his sanctuary Coincidence grappled with him—a stealthy persuasion. In the crisis of his madness, when at Geneva he had cursed every good thing, her pictured face had sought him out to go with him. Into the nadir of his degradation there in Venice it had dropped like a falling star to call him to himself. Fate had led him to her in the woods of La Mira—had brought them beth face to face at the shop in the piaz- zetta—and now had her to him again her in the midst of the maskers. It was Kismet! “I did net think there was mere than one in all the weorld who would have done what you have to-night!™ he said; “that would have cared if I lived or died! Why do you care?” “Al she answered hurriedly. “Is there one who would not? 1 do net know why. One does not reason of such things. One feels. I know I have cared—ever since that merning in the wood, when you found the book, when I gave you the prayer He started, releasing her hands. “Intercede and obtain for me of thy Son, our Lord, this grac It seemed to come to him from the air, a de moniac echo to his desire. His breath choked him. She had prayed for him, purely, unselfishly. How should he requite? To-night, for his sake she had risked reputation. How did he purpose to repay? Would not the doing of this thing sink him a thou- sand black leagues below the sky she breathed? No matter how much she might come to love, could it recom- pense for what he would take away? Between those two lay a gulf as deep as that which stretched between cool water and a tortured Dives. What had Re, George Gordon, dragging the chain and ball of a life sentence of despair, to do with her in her purity? He yearned for her because she was an immaculate thing; because she re- incarnated for him all the white, un- spotted ideals that he had thrown away, that he longed to touch again. it was the devil tempting in the plea of an angel! The mist fell from his eyes. “Child!” he said. What you have done to-night I can never repay. I shall remember it until I die. But I am not worthy of your thought—not worthy of a single throb of that heart of yours!™ She shook her head protesting. “That cannot be true,” she contend« ed. “But if it were, Signore, one can- not say ‘I will,” or ‘I will not care” when one chooses.” Her tone was naive, and arch with a smiling, shy rebellion. “Listen,” he went on. “Do not think me jesting. What I say now I say be- cause I must. I want you to promise me you will do something—something only for your good, I swear that!™ The smile faded from her lips, chilled by his earnestness. “When you gofrom here you must forget that day at La Mira, forget that you ecame to-night—that we have ever met! Will you Promise this?” Her whole mind was a puzzled ques- tion now. Did he mean she should see him no more? Was he quitting Venice? The thought came like a Bit to forget! Could she if she would? Why did he say it was for her good? A fear, formless and vague, ran thmough her. “Why do you ask that, Signore?” He turned his face away. It was so much harder than he thought. Must he tell her who he was? Could he not carry with him this one mem- cory? Must he drink this cup of abnegation to its last dregs? The very kindness of silence would be cruelty for her! The seed fate had sown, watered by mystery, would germinate in thorns! He must tell her—tell her now! The press of maskers flooding the square circled nearer, and she drew close. Her hand from under her cloak, found his own, suddenly fearful, feeling bold looks upon them. “Bravo la Fornarina!” rose a jeering cry. An exclamation broke from Gor< don’s lips. A woman had burst from the throng like a beautiful embodled storm. Teresa shrank with,a sob of dismay at the vision of flashing black eyes and dark hair streaming aeross Jjealous brows. The crowd laughed. “It is VInglese: maligno!” sald =z voice. Evading Gordon's arm, with a spring like a tiger’'s, the infuriate fig- ure reached the girl, snatching at the veil. - “So he prefers you for his donnal™ pang.