The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 23, 1905, Page 2

Call Maga- 3 i C It will be » policy aord fts m of high-class & CHAPTER XXXIIL Passing of Jane Clermont. stor clouds were gone. An painting the hills Myrtle hedges had lusty creepers The embling ane- olive copses of leaves. woods that w the s were winged y with of the balsamic afternoon, from avallo into Ra- d been driven. , young, dark- e who n of the de slight piquant eeper of tone and perhaps a little o t her black eyes and sparkled with all their t the high- town. At € ous osteria arbors, squares : house, than the held g comn ding position. The -road that passed its door curved rd toward Pisa; northward it tched to Venice. From both di- through Ravenna, lumbered and chaise. At the osteria the wagonette halted, de a detour and was finally drawn in the shadow of the arbors, where was unobserved from the. inn and t had a screened view of both roads, or hours the vehicle sat there while e driver dozed, the occupant nesting her chin in her gloved hand and from time to time restlessly shifting her po- Her patience was at last rewarded. Two r 1 on horseback had paused at rossroad. One was Shelley, e the lank beast that had borne 1 from Pisa to Venice. The other 18 George Gordo: So he did come!” she muttered, peering through the screen of silver t “I thought he would. I won- der what he will say when he finds nged my- mind and settled rs another way.” watched the pair they The drooping sun danced in from the br buttol world ith your found you Well, every one onder why you always If about George Gor- Shell lue coat oor philoso- I iy soliloquized with pitying tole e. “You going back to your humdrum Pis our books and Mary money in vere out of sight w into the high- Llermont rode ooking curiously on, humming at the vari- the king 1 lo. h: t of Shelley's trip to knowledge had not at 1 and self-ab- was a ma- a gratuitous nging more from nce than from rage that had inspired to the convent. The led her to sure s fruitless journey town her reflec- stopped. g horse was approaching. e showed a certain = would possibl for his gaze w t when have ‘passed ber t straight ahead, ful into his eyes. at her without a . Uve But fous dull. I aught yet for m the navy. Is that whv in London Tell me,” ddenly; “where is George Her voice had a kind of nockery that did not cloak And yvet I hear of his do- any other p —Lucca, Bo- From the changed, and made no reply. said, scorn suddenly “Don’ showing. ou think I guessed? Guilling a few ers jin the pos houses with a brawling imperso: tion! Suppose a million should think George Gordon the tasteless roust- lan you make him out? u gain? One of these days some tourist friend of his—Mr. Hob- house, for instance; he used to be a great traveler—will put a sharp end to your play.” “I'll risk that!” he threw her. k more!” “How you hate him!” He laughed—a hard, dare-devil sound. “Haven’t I cause enough?” “Not so far as I know. you luck, “And But I wish if the game pleases you.. It's me.” s something to you, once,” he said, “wasn’t it?” She smiled amusedly. “How tragic e! He was never more she snapped her “Constancy is too heavy a role. preferred lighter parts. I am going to play in America. Why don’t you turn stroller and act to some purpose? Why not try New York?” While she spoke her tone had changed. It had become softer, more musical. Her lashes drooped with well- gauged coquetry. ‘Look,” she said, in a lower key; “am I as handsome as I used to be at Drury Lane—when you said youw'd like to see the world with me?” A smoldering fire kindled in his eyes as he gazed at her. He half leaned from the saddle—half put out his hand. But at his movement she dropped the mask. She laughed in open scorn. “A fig for your hate!” she exclaimed con- temptuously. “I have no liking for George Gordon, but he was never a sneak at any rate!” The man to whom she spoke struck savage spurs to his horse. As he wheeled, she swept him a curtsy from the carriage seat. “Joe to your task!” she cried, and drove on with her lips curled. “He doesn’t know .Gordon is near Ravenna,” she thought presently. “If he gives one of his free entertainments at the inn to-night, there may be an interesting meeting. What a pity I shall miss it!” and she laughed. A little further on the carriage turn- ed to the westward toward the Swiss frontier. ¢ As Trevanion reined the animal he be- strode to its haunches at the porch of the osteria, where Jane Cler- nont’s wagonette had waited, he lodked back along the road with a muttered curse. Then he kicked a sleeping hound from the step and went in with an assumed limp and n"E‘waghger. s W0 hours later, when the early dusk had fallen and the ghostly dlsi that had hung all day in the sky was vel- lowing above the olive trees, George Gordon flung his bridle wearily to a groom at the inn. His face was set and thwarted. He had been to the convent, to find that a wall had sud- ngs were of ostentatious The face of the man it swa y and mustachioed g had the effect of} d disordered bragga- on!” she med with of surprise, She had not two s, ghe AN N o Yor WOULD 7AKE, HER AWAY" RO HIM, 1O Yorze OWN c‘am; o PTAYVEF, * denly rearcd between him and the pos- session of his child. To surmount this would mean publicity, an appeal to British authority, red tape, a million Italian delays—perhaps failure then. As he stood listening to the stir of the inn he was about to enter, a low voice suddenly spoke from the shadow of a hedge: ‘'Excellence!” Turning he recognized the huge frame of the gondolier who had borne Teresa from the Piazza San Marco on the night shé had come to warn him. His heart leaped into his throat. Had the man followed him from Venfce? Did he bring a message from her? “Excellence! 1 heard in the town that you were at the inn. I would like speech with you, but I must not be seen. Will you follow me” Even in his surprise Gordon felt an instant's wonder. He himself had not yet entered the osteria. How had the other heard of his presence? The won- der, however, was lost in the thought of Teresa. He turned fromithe inn and followed the figure silently through the falling shadows. CHAPTER XXXIV. Tita Intervenes. Under the treés, as Gordon listened to the gondolier, the night grew.deep- er. The moonlight that mellowed over the pine forests spectrally outspread, the burnished river and the town be- fore them, misted each hedge and tree with silver. A troubadour nightingale bubbled in the middle distance from some palazzo ' garden and from the nearer osteria came sounds of bustle. Through all breathed the intimate soft wind of the_south bearing the smell of lime blossoms and of sleeping bean- fields. ‘Wonder at Tita's appearance had melted into a great wave of gladness that swept him at the sudden knowl- edge that she, Teresa, was there in Rayvenna near him, mistress of Casa Guiccioli, whose very portal he had passed that afternoon. But the joy had died speedily; thereafter every word had seemed to burn itself into his_heart, . “If he hated her why did he wish to make her his contessa? Tell me that, Excellence! It has been so all these weeks, ever since her wedding. Some- times I have heard him sneer at her— always about you, Excellence—how he knew she ever saw you I cannot tell! His servants go spying—spying, al- ways when she is out of the casa.” The man who listened turned his head with a movement of physical pain, as Tita went on resentfully: “And she is a Gamba, born to be a great lady! If she left him he would bring her back unless she went from Italy. And who is to help her do that? Her brother is in another land. Her father is sick and she will not tell him anything. There is nome but me in Casa Guiccioli who does not serve the signore too well! I thought—" he fin- ished, twisting his red cap in his great fingers, "I thought—if I told you—you would take her away from him, to your own country, maybe.” Gordon almost smiled in his anguish. To the simple soul of this loyal serv- ant, on whom conventional morals sat with Italian lightness, here was an un- complex solution! Turn household highwayman and fly from the States of the church to enjoy the plunder! And of all places—to England! Open a new domestic chapter In some pro- vincial British coungryside as “Mr. Smith,” perhaps, “a worthy retired merchant of Lima!” The bitter hu- mor couched in the fancy made sharper his pang of utter impotence. Italy was not England, he thought grimly. In that very difference had lain ship- wreck for them both. Teresa could not leave her husband openly as Annabel had left him! The church of Rome knew no divorce and inside its bond only a'papal decree could give her the right to live apart from -her husband under her own father’s roof. Tita’s voice spoke again eagerly: “You will come, Excellence? The sig- nore is from Ravenna now at one of his estates in Romagna—you can see her! None shall know if you come with me. You will, Excellence?” To see her agaln! Gordon had not realized how much it meant till to- night, when the possibility found him quivering from his disappointment at the convent. A stolen hour with her! Why not? Yet—discovery.. Her hus- band’s servants, spies upon her every moment! To steal secretly to her thus unbidden and perhaps crowd upon her a worse catastrophe than that at San Lazzarro! He shook his head. “No. Not unless she knows I am here' and bids me will go_and tell her, Excellence!” “Tell her I did not know she was in Ravenna, but that—that I would die to serve her. Say that!” .You will wait here, Excellence?” “Yes Tita swung round and disappeared. It seemed an immeasurable time that Gordon waited, striding fiercely up and down, listening to every sound. At the inn a late diligence had unloaded its contingent of chattering tourists for the night. He could hear phrases spoken in English. The words bore a myriad- voiced suggestion, yet how little their appeal meant to him at that moment! All England, save for Ada, was less to him then than a single house there in Ravenna—and a convent buried in the forest under that moon. On such an- cther perfect day and amber night, he thought, he had found Teresa's minia- ture and had fled with Jane Clermont. Now substance and shadow had re- pldced one another. To-day Jane had touched his life vaguely and painfully in passing from it! Teresa was the sole reality. What would she say? . What word would Tita bring? Long as it seemed, it was in fact less than an hour before the gondolier stood again before him. ‘en minutes later they were in the streets of the town, avoiding its lighted thoroughfares, walking swiftly, Tita in the lead. At length, threading a lane between walled gardens flanking great houses” whose fronts frowned on wider avenues, they stood before a columned gate. This Gordon’s guide unlocked. “I will watch here,” he said. “You will not tell her I came to you first of my . own thoughts, .Excellence?” he added anxiously. = “I will not tell her,” answered Gor- jon. He entered with a loudly beating heart. E 3 CHAPTER XXXV, In the Casa Garden. The close was still—only the flutter o moths and the splash of a fountain tinkling wetly. Here and there in the deeper shades of cloisteral walks the moonlight, falling through patches of young leaves, flecked bloodless bac- chantes and bronze Tritons nestling palely in shrub tangles of mimosa. This wag all Gordon distinguished at first as he moved, his hands before him, his feet feeling their way on the cool, sward, 7 Suddenly a low breath seemed to plerce ‘the stillness. A sense of near- ness rushed upon him. His arm, out- stretched,” touched something yielding. “Teresa!” he ecried,- and his hands found hers and drew her close to him. In that first moment of silence he was keenly conscious of her breath against his cheek, hurried and warm. “I know—I know,” he sald in choked voice. “Tita toid me all. I would give my body ineh by inch, my blood drop by drop to give back to your life what I have taken from it!” She shooK her head. “You have taken nothing from it. Before that night on the square it held nothing—I have learned that since.” She was feeling a sense of expecta- tion. "Since the day at San Lazarro she had never expected to see him again. To her he had been a glorious spirit, struggling for lost foothold on the causeways of redemption. In her mental ‘picture -he had stood always as she had seen him on the monastery path, pale, clad in a mqnk's coarse robe, the vesture of earthly penance. This picture had blotted out his past. whatever it had been, whatever of ru- mor was true or false, . whatever she may for a time have believed. Every word he had spoken remained a living iterate memory. And the thought that her hand had drawn him to his better self had filled her with a painful eec- stasy. “Teresa,” he said unsteadily, “I long ago forfeited every right to hope and happiness. - And if this were not true, by a tie that holds me, and by a bond you believe in, I have still no right to stand here now. But fate drew me here to-day—as it drew me to you that morning at La Mira. It is stronger than I—stronger than us both. Yet I have brought you. nothing but mis- e “You have brought me much more than that,” she interrupted.. “I knew nothing of life when I met you. I have learned it now as you must have known it to write as you have. I know that it is’ vaster than I ever dreamed—more sorrowful, but sweeter, too.” A stone bench-showed near, wound with moonbeams, and she sat down. making room beside her. In the white light she seemed unreal—a fantasy in wild-rose brocade. A chainof dull gold girdled her russet hair, dropping a sin- gle.emerald to gquiver and sparkle on her forehead. Her face was pale, but with a shadowy 'semething: born 'of those weeks. ~ What he saw there was awaken self-reliance and mettle, the birthrigh of clean inheritance. The wedding gon- dola that had borne a girl to San La< zarro had carried back a woman, re- belllous, agonized, flushed - to every nerve. She had opposed a woman's pride to the hatred ' that otherwise would have made the ensuing time a slow unrolling nightmare; had taken her place passively as mistress of the gloomy casa with its atmosphere of cold grandeur and miserliness, thank- ful that its host was niggardly of en- tertainment, enduring as best she might the petty persecution with which the old count surrounded her. His an- ger, soured by the acid sponge of jeal- ousy, had fed itself daily with this balt- ing. He believed sne had come smirched from the very altar to- His name and place. Yet he had no proof, and to make the scandal public—to put her away—would have seared his pride, laid hitn open to the wrath of her kin. brought her brother back™to Italy to avenge the slight upon their house, and, most of all to be'dreaded, would have necessitated the repayment of her dowry. A slow and secret satisfaction was all he had, and under it her spirit had galled and chafed him. In this strait she had had no confidant, for her father, aging rapidly and faillng, she would not sadden, and whenever he drove to Casa Guiccioli from his villa, some miles from the town—sole relic of his wasted properties—had striven to conceal all evidence of un- happiness. Even when she had deter- mined on a momentous step—a secret appeal to the papal court for such a measure of freedom as was possible— she had determined not to tell him yet. Grief and repression had called to the surface the latent capabilities which in the girl had been but promises, and these spoke now to Gordon in a beauty strong, eager and far-divining. “What I have known of life is not its sweets,” he answered in bitterness. “I have gathered its poison-flowers and their perfume clings to the life I live now." “But it will not be so,” she said ear- nestly. ‘I belleve more than you told me at La Mira—when you said it had been one of your faults that you had never justified yourself. You were never all they said. Something tells me that. If you did evil it was not because you chose it or took pleasure in it. For a while I doubted every- thing, but that day at San Lazzarro, when I saw you—the moment you spoke—it came back to me. No mat- ter what I might think or hear again, in my heart I should always believe that now!" He put out his hand, a gesture of hopelessness and protest. His mind was crying out against the twin im- placables, time and space. If man could but push back the now to then, enweave the there ‘and here! If in such a reformed universe he and she might this hour be standing—no ir- revocable past, only the new now! What might not lifé yield up for him, of its burgeoning, not of its corrup- tion, its hope, not of its despair! “That day!” he repeated. “I saw you in the gondola. I would have spared at meeting.” yo"‘Y‘e‘: that was what told me. 1if I had not seen you there—" She paused. The chains of his repression eclung about him like the load of broken wings. The knowledge that had come as he walked the floor of his monas- tery-room with the burn of a‘blow on his forehead had spelled abnegation. She must never know the secret he car- ried—must in time forget .her own. Once.out he could never shackle it again. He completed her sentence: “You woulé have forgotten the soon- er - > - “I should never have forgotten,” she said softly. ¢ He was silent. He dared not look at her face, but he saw her hands, outstretched, clasping her knee. Presently—he could not guess 'the dear longing for denial that made her tone shake now!—she said: “Tita. told me that—when you came to Ravenna—you had not known—" He rose to his feet, feeling the chains weakening, the barriers of all that had lain unspokenm, yet not unfelt, burning away. “It' wag true,” he answered, confront- ing her. “T-did mot kmow it. But if I had known all I know to-might I would have crossed seas and mountains to ccme to you! New that I have se you—what can I do? Teresa! Teresa The exclamation held trenchant pain —something else, tgo, that for the lite of him he could not repress. It pierced her with a darting rapture. Since that hour at the monastery, with 'its pang and itS reassurance, as she felt budding those new, myste ous flowers of faith and heart expe ence, she had felt a deeper unguessed want. Over and cver she had repeat- ed to herself the last words he had said betore that painful interruption: “Be- cause it was a prayer of yours for me.” Her soul had been full of a vague, unphwased . yearning for all the mean- ings that might lie unexpressed in the coupling of those two words. So now as she heard him speak her name in that shaken accent her heart thrilled. “Ah,” she breathed, “them you care— so much?” His fingers clenched. He was torn with two emotions: Self-abasement and a hungry desire, lashed by propinquity, to take her ih his arms, to defy vow and present, be the consequence what it might. There came upon him again the feeling that had gripped him when she stood with him among the circling maskers. violet-eyed, llac-veined, bright with néw impulses, passionate and lovely. He leaned toward her. If she but knew how he cared! A sound startled them both. Her hand grasped his with apprehensive fingers as she listened. “Look! There beyond the hedge. A shadow moved.” He looked. Only an acacia stirred in the light air. “It is nothing,” he reassured her. “Tita is at the gate.” “Oh,” she. said fearfully, “I should not have said come. There is risk for you here.” “What would I not have risked?” “Listen!™ Another sound came to both now, the pounding of horses’ hoofs, borne over the roof from the street—the rumble of heavy coach wheels. It ceased all at once and lights sprang into windows across the shrubbery. She came to her feet as Tita hugried toward them. “It is the sigmore,” warned the gondolier. “Dio mio!” she whispered. '“Go—go quickly!” He .caught her hands. “If omly I could help you, serve you!” “You can,” she said hurriedly. *“I have a letter on which much depends —for the Contessa Albrizzi at Venice. I cannot trust a messenger.” “It shall start to-night.” “It is in my room. I will send it after you by Tita. Ah—hasten!™ He bent and touched his lips to a curl that had blown like litten gold against her shoulder. Her eyes met his"an instant in fluttering. happy con- fusion. - Then, as he followed Tita quickly to the gate, she turned and ran toward the house. She had pot seen a man, crouched in the shadow of a hedge, who had hur- rled within doors to greet the master of the casa so unexpectedly returned. She; did ‘not_see tHe rage that colored her husband’s shrunken. cheeks in his chamber as Paole, his Corsican secre- tary, imparted to him two pieces of in- formation: The presence of the stran- ger In the garden and the arrival that afternoon at the osteria of him Venice called “the wicked milord.” The old Count pondered with shak- ing fingers. He hated the Englishman of-Venice; hated him for robbing him of the youth and beauty he had gloat- ed over, for the arrow to his pride— with a hatred that had settled deeper each day, fanatical and demented. The story of the garden trespasser inspired now: an-unholy craving for reprisal, unformed and but half conceived. He summoned his secretary. In a few moments more—a half-hour after Teresa’'s letter had started on its way to the Inn—his coach, with its six white horses, bearing Paolo, and fol- lowed by four of the casa servants afoot, was being driven thither by a roundabout course. CHAPTER XXXVL The Face at the Window. The osteria, as Gordon approached, seemed gurgling with hilarity. At its side the huge unhitched diligence yawned, a dark bulk waiting for the morrow’s journey. Some of the pas- sengers it had carried were gathered on the porch before the open windows list- ening, with postures that indicated a more than ordinary curiosity and in- terest, to sounds from the taproom. There were women's forms among them. Tourists wers little to Gordon’s Nk- ing. They had bombarded his balcony at Diodat! with spyglasses, had am- bushed him at Venice when he went to opera or ridotto. To him they stood for the insatiable taboo of public dis- esteem—the chuckling fetishism that mocked him still. from beyond blue water. He skirted the inn in the shade of the cypresses and passed to an arbor which the angle of the building screened from the group. On its edge he paused and gazed out over the flelds and further forest asleep.. With what bitterness he had ridden scarce three hours before from those woods! Now it was shot through with an arrow of cardinal joy whose very rankle was a painful delight. In the jar of conflicting sensations he had not reasoned or presaged; he could only feel. What was the import of Teresa's let- ter, he wondered. Much depended on it, she had said in that agitated mo- ment. A thought flitted to him. The Contessa Albrizzi had lived much in Rome—was, he remembered, cousin to & Cardinal. Could this message be an appeal for deliverance from an impos- sible position? Might Teresa yet be free—not from her marriage bond, but at least from this hourly torture in Casa Guiccioli? With the quick feeling of relief for her, wound a sharp sense of personal vantage. For him that would mean the right to see her often and unopposed. Yet, he argued in- stantly with self-reproach, was not this the sole right he could not possess, then or ever? would it be but tempting her love on and on, only to leave it.naked and ashamed at last? A gust of noise rose behind him. It issued from a window opening out of the taproom into the arbor. On the heels of the sound he caught shattered comments from the peering group on the front porch—feminine woices speak- ing English: “T've always wanted to see him. We watched three whole days in Venice, How young he looks!” “What a monster! And to think he is'a peer and once wrote poetry. There! See—he’s looking this way!™ Gordon started and half-turned, but he had not been observed; the angle of the wall hid him effectually. J Just then a single vociferate voice, rose to dominant speech in the 32 (Continued on Page 7.) ’