The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 30, 1905, Page 7

’ THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. i the sixth installment of § e Castawal,” by Hallic § * R ¥ e of the most ¥ ¥ motable novels of the day. “The § § away” began on March 26 § and will be concluded at an ear with suffer- books on the herself down, magazine tongue slowly stake those lines, passionate, He had she had not this very ently, blotted beat rt tears returns no more » that wave shall b name or see, X rable sigh for her For whom had he longed when he wrote? For the woman whose child ~his child, denied him now-—was hidden in the convent below? No! The mist of anguish melted. She felt her bitterness ebbing fast away. What else mattered? Nothing! Not this convent hel Not all his L though even the worst of all e tales she had ever heard were " though what the pamphlet at her feet alleged were true a thousand times over—though it were the worst i 1 punished on earth! Nothing, At this moment she knew that, for all the dreams of God bred in her, without him, pray- ers and faith and life itself for naught as human hearts are made. Clasping her hands she read the end bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream— Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now; Mine canmot witness, even in a dream, at happy Wave Tepass me in its flow! to But thet which keepeth us apart is not Distance, mor depth of wave, mor space of earth, Fut the distraction of a various lot, As various as the climates of our birth. blood is sl meridian: were it mot, bad not % . mor should T be spite «© w'er to be forgot siave at least of thee! Xneeling over the fungus, absorbed, she quick sten be- hind nothing in her e —his voice—spoke her CHAPTER XXXIX. Barriers Burned Away. ‘eresa came to her feet with a cry. Her mingled emotions were yet so re- cent that she had had no time to re- cover pose. Gordon's face was as strangely moved. Surprise edged it but overlapping this was a something lambent, desirous, summoned by sight of her tears. In the fe the f swift glin 1 fro of ths bent above the fungus. the tokens of retur knew her present grief through cause nearer than the ca R na. These were not tears of mere omanly sensibility, called forth by the 1 written there, for a s of still lurking in her S, Was it grief for him? He tossed aside gloves and riding crop and drew her to a seat on the warm pine needlés before he shoke I did not imagine your eyes would ever see that!” She wipea away the telltale drops -8 mi ing a guilty relief to think read them old haunt of mine,” she ed it when I was-a girl— only a year ago, how long it seems!— in the convent there!” He started. The fact explained her presence to-day. She had known those walls that hid Allegra! It seemed to bring them immeasurably nearer. If he could only teil her! Reckless, uncaring as she knew a part of his past had been, could he bear to show her this concrete evidence of its dishonor? Looking up at the pallid comeline: under its slightly graying hair, Tere- sa was feeling a swift, clairvoyant sense of the struggle that had kept him from her,without understanding all its significance. “I am glad I came continued. *“A few days and the words will show no longer. 1 shall not need them then,” she went on, her face tinted. *I shall know them by heart. As soon as I read the first lines I knew the were yours—that you had been here.” “I am stopping at Bologna,” he told in time.” she h h, Madonna!” she said under her breath. “And you have been so near Ravenna!™ “Better it were a hundred leagues!” he exclaimed. “And yet—distant or near, it is the same. 1 think of you, Teresa! That is my punishment. Every day, as I have ridden through the pines, every hour as I have sat on this hill—and that has been of- ten—I have thought of you!” ‘I knew that”—she was gazing past him to the river and the far dusky r “when I read what is on the fungus.” Thereafter neither spoke for a mo- ment. A noisy cicala droned from a near chestnut bough and from some- where down the slope came the brooding coo of a wooddove. At length he said: “There were tears on your cheek when I first saw you. They were not for the verses, I know.” She shook héer head slowly. “It was something”—she could not tell him all the truth—"something I saw in that.” She pointed to the German magazine. He reached and retrieved it, but she put her hand on his restrainingly. ~“Is it about me?” “Yes,'" she admitted; “May I not see it?” “Nothing in it really matters,” she entreated. “It could not make any difference to me—now! Not even if it were true, Your past is as if it be- longed to some other person I never can know. You believe that? Tell me you do! “I d0,” he responded: “Then do not read it. “Rut suppose it is false. Either vay, T would tell you the truth.” “That is just it.” Her fingers clasped his on the cover. I know PONE—* “I do!” (<3 Jrra,@uickzy? JETS pd WOUNDED « < OO vou would. But I do not believe what it says! 1 cannot! You ecan never have done such things! ' Ah, is it not enough that I have had trust?—even,” she ended hurriedly, “though it would make no difference? His pulses were beating painfully. He drew her fingers gently from their hold and opened the magazine to a page turned down lengthwise. It was a4 critique of his drama of ‘“‘Cain’— sole fruit of that last year in Ven- —which he had himself called a “drama of madness,” and in sheer, mucking bravado had posted to Johu Murray, his publisher. He saw at a glance that the article was signed with the name of Germany's greatest mind, the famous Goethe. She was trembling. “Remember,” she said. “I have not asked you! I should never have asked you!” Gordon translated the cramped text with a strange lurid feeling, like com- ing in touch with an ancient past: “The character of the author's life permits with difficulty a just apprecia~ tion of his genius. Scarcely any one compassionates with the suffering which cries out laboriously in his poenis, since it arises from the phan- toms of his own evil acts, which trou- ble him. When a bold and impetuous youth he stole the affections of a Flor- entine lady of quality. Her husband discovered the affair and slew his wife. But the murderer on the next night was found stabbed in death on the street, nor was there any one save the lover on whom it seemed suspicion could attach. The poet removea from Florence, but these unhappy spirits have haunted his, whole life since, He raised his eyes from the page. Her face was turned away, her hand pulling up the grass-spears in a pa- thetic apprehension. “Teresa,” he said. in _a smothered voice; “it is not true. I have - never been in Florence.” “I knew—I knew!” she cried. and all her soul looked into his. She had not really credited. But the tangible allegation ., coming at the moment when her heart was wrenched with that convent discovery and warped from its orbid of instinct, had . dis- mayed and disconcerted her. The balm she had lofiged for was not proof, it-was only reassurance. He closed the magazine." The feel- ing that had choked his utterance was swelling in his throat. For the rest gr the world he cared little, but for er! a She leaneéd toward him, her eyes shining. - “I-know how you have suf- fered! You have not deserved int. I have Jearned so much, since I saw you last, of your life in England!” His tone shook. *“Have youlearned all? That my wife left me in the night and robbed me of my child? That soclety shuts its doors upon me? That T was driven from London like a wild beast—a scapegoat at which any man might cast a stone?” ; 5 “Yes,” she breathed, “all that, and more! 1 have not understood it quite, for our Italy is so different. But you have helped me understand it now! It was like this.” She picked up the Bible from where it ‘had fallen and turned the pages quickly. *“Listen,” she said, and be- gan to read: “And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two pgoats * * * But the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. “And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them uvon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into, the wilderness. ““And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not in- habited; and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.” He had risen and now stodd move- lessly before her. She looked up as she finished. *So it was with you.” “Yes,” he said in a low yoice. “And so I have lived ever since, a murder- less Cain with a mark on my brow! So shall I live and die, hated and avoided by all men!” “No!" she contradicted, coming to him. “That will not be! I see fur- ther and clearer than that! It is not for such an end that you have lived and written and suffered! But for something nobler, which the world that hates you now will honor! I see it! I know it!” “Stop!” ‘he exclaimed, “I cannot bear it. T am not a murderer, Teresa, but all of the past you forgive with such divine compassion, vou do not know. There is a silence yet to break which I have kent, a-chapter unlovely to Jook upon that you have not seen.” hing!” she interrupted. e went on with dry lips. “You shal it all, to the dregs. In that convi ‘eresa—"" She puta |d over his lips. . “You need not.. For—I already know.” He looked in dazed wonder. *“You know? And—you do not condemn?” at other woman—do you love “No, Teresa. "I have not seen her for two years.”. . .5 4 “Did she ever love you?” “Never in her life,” he answered, his face again averted. . = Her own was glowing with a strange light. “Look at me,” she said softly. He turned to her, his eyes—golden- gray like seaweed glimpsed throgh deep water—cored with a hungry, hopeless fire which seemed to trans- form her whole frame to thirsty tin- der. £ 4 ““Ah,” she whispered. it could matter, then?’ do you think . ing him—"leave me. My horse 2E— CASTATAY | - HALLIE-ERMINIE - An overmastering emotion, blent of bitterness and longing, surged through him, beating down constraint, blotting out all else, all that thrilled him find- ing its way Into broken speech. In that moment he forgot himself and the past, forgot the present and what the convent held—forgot what bound them both—forgot grief and danger. Lom- don and Venice, Annabel, the master of Casa Guiccioli drew far off. There was nothing but this fragrant, Italian forest, this whispering glade above the blue rushing of the arrowy river, this sun-drenched afternoon—and Teresa there beside him. With an impulse wholly irresistible he caught her to him, feeling her form sway toward him with fierce tumultuous gladness. “Amor mio!"” she breathed, and their lips clung into a Kiss. As she strained back in his embrace, letting the tide of love ripple over het, looking up into his face in desperate Joy, something swift and flashing like a silver swallow darted through the air. It sung between them—a Malay kriss —and struck Gordon above the heart. CHAPTER XL. The Oath on the Kriss. Teresa stood chained with horror— the cry frozen on her lips. As the sil- ver flash had flown she had seen a dark, oriental face disappear between the bracken and had recognized it. Gordon had shuddered as the blow struck, then stood perfectly still, his arms about her. In that instant he remembered the scene he had witnessed at the Ravenna osteria, and his heart satd within him: ‘“‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?” Her voice came then in a scream that woke the place and brought Tita rushing up the path. ‘When " he reached them, her fingers had drawn out the wet blade and were striving desperately to stanch the blood with her handkerchief, as, white to the lips with pain, Gordon leaned against a tree. After that first cry, in which her whole being had sounded its terror, she had not spoken. Now she turned to Tita, who stood dum- founded. “Tita, quickly! You and I must help lelés lordship to the road. He is-wound- “‘Teresa”’—Gordon sought for words through the dizziness that was or;‘nlr- s at At Bologna' I the edge of the forest. shall find a surgeon.” “You cannot ride. It would kill _My carriage is near the céonvent He shook his head. “You have, risked enough for me. "Tita—" “He can bring the horse around,” _she answered. “Come!” She drew one of Gordon’s arms about her shul- feeling him waver., “That is right—so!"” - ‘With Tita on the other side they be- gate. > BY < 5 ~RIVES - < o > gan the descent. She walked certainly along the difficult path, though every nerve was thrilling with agony, her mind-one incessant clamor. At the expense of his own heart he had stayed away. And\this was what their chance meeting to-day had brought him. This! Gordon was breathing hard at the foot of the hill. He had fought des- perately to retain consciousness, but a film was clouding his eves. “It is only a few steps now,” she said, “to the carriage.” He stopped short. “You must obey me,” she insisted wildly. “It is the only way! You must go to Ravenna!” “Tita—bring my horse!” It was the last stubborn flash of the will, fainting in physical eclipse. With the words his hand fell heavily from her shoulder and Tita caught him in his arms. At a sign from Teresa the servant lifted him into the carria, ‘Home!"” she commanded, swiftly.” Through the miles of rapid motion under the ebon shadows deepening to twilight she sat chafing = Gordon's hands, her eves, widened with a great suspense. upon the broadening stain crimsoning his waistcoat. In that interminable ride her soul passed through a furnace of trans- formation. The touch of his lips upon ners had been the one deathless in- stant of life’'s unfoldi she had felt poured out all ginal freshness of a love and complete, no mere to b held than a torrent leaping to the sea. But the awful instant that followed, with its first glimpse into the hideous limbo of possibilities, showed her all else that might lie in that love, of the irreparable, the disastrous, the in- finitely terrifying. Her marriage had been a baleful bond of ring and book, seasoned with hate, empty of sanctity. His had been sunk somewhere in the black slough of the past, a stark dead thing. That they two should / love each other—she had imagined no fur- ther. She had known her own heart, but that hour on the hill had been the complete surety that Gordon loved her fully in return. Born of his extremity, there swelled in her now the wondrous instinct of the lioness that is a vart of every woman's love. It lent her its cour- age. All fear, save the one suppress- ing dread that gnawed her heart, slipped from her. Day fell before they reached the town, and in the «uiet street the freight of the carriage was not noted. Before the entrance of Casa Guicciolll stood her father’s chaise. Count Gamba met her in the hall, to start at her strained look and at the pallid face of the mamn Tita car- ried—a face unknown to him. Paola was behind him; by this she knew her husband was returned. She scarcely heeded her father's ejaculations. Bring linen and water quickly to the large chamber in the garden wing,” she directed, “and send for Doctor Aglietti.” Paolo went stealthily his master. ‘When Count Guiccioli crossed the threshold of the candle-lighted room he came upon a strange scene. Teresa bent over the bed, her face colorless as a mask. Her father, opposite, to whom she had as yet told nothing, was tying a temporary bandage. Be- tween them lay the inert form of the man against whom his own morbid rage had been amassing. His eyes flared. Where had she found him? Had Trevanion bungled or betrayed? Did she guess? And guessing, had she brought him to this house, in satanic irony, to die before his very sight? At ‘the suspicion the fever of his moody eyes flew to his face. His countenance became distorted. He burst upon them with a crackling ex- clamation: “The Venetian dog! who has dared fetch him here?” “Zitto!” said Count Gamba pettish- ly. “Don’t you see the man is wound- ed?” nd drive g. In that kiss the vir- to inform J‘Wounded or whole, by the body of Bacchus! shall go back to-night to Bologna He took a menacirg step forward. “How did you know he was lodged there?” « Teresa’s steely inquiry stayed him. She had lifted her face, calm as a white moon. He stopped, nonplused. “You had good reason to kno She drew from her belt a Malay kri: its blade stained with red. “This is what struck him. It belonged to you. Am I to learn what it means to bear the name of a murderer 2" Her father red his amazement. “Dio santissimo!” he exclaimed. Was this why she had been so pale? Before her movement her husband had shrunk involuntarily. “I Kknew nothing of it,” he said in a muffled fury; “I am just come from Faenza.” “I saw whose hand struck the blow.” She spcke with deadly quiet- ness. “B have seen him more than once under this roof. But whose was the brain? Who furnished him this weapon? It was gone from the arras the day after you brought him to the casa to be your sicario—to do what you dared not do yourself! Fool!” Her voice rose. “Do you think a peer of England common clay for your clean-handed bravos? Are English nobles stabbed abroad without an ac- counting to the last soldo? Do yeu suppose no Romagnan mnoble ever went to the fortress with confiscated estates? Is your reputation sc clean that if he dies you think to escape what I shall say?” A greenish hue had overspread the fiery sallow of the old Count's face, ghastly under the candles. She had touched two vulnerable points at once —cupidity and fear. Something, too, in what she said brought a swift un- welcome memory. He recalled an- other—a poet, also—Manzoni, the Italian, dea@ by a hired assassin in Forli years before; in the night some- times still that man's accusing look came before him. Beads of sweat started on his forehead. “Cheeks of the Virgin!" cried Count Gamba, who had maintained a rigid silence. ‘“‘Have you no word to this?” “He was her lover! She knew where to find him to-day. It is not the first time. He was her lover before I mar- ried her.” The other’s hands clenched. Tere- sa’'s accusation had astonished and shocked him- But as he saw that cow- ering look, speaking its own condem- nation, he credited for the first time the story of that other slain man. At this affront, his gaunt, feeble form straightened with all the dignity and pride of his race. Teresa's answer rang with a subtle, electric energy. “That is false! You never asked—you only accused. Be- lieving all falsehood of me, you have made every day of my life In your house a separate purgatory. 1 have kept silent thus long, even to my fa- ther. Now I speak before him. Fa= ther,” she said with sudden passion, e has believed this since my wedding day. There is scarcely an hour since then that he has not heaped insult and humiliation upon me. I will bear it r! I have already appealed to Her eyes transfixed her husband- “By the law I may not leave your roof to nurse this man, so I have brought him here. What you have believed of myself and of him is false. But now, it yeu will hear the truth, I will tell you! I Go love him! I love him as L jove my lite—and more, the blessed Virgin knows!—a million times more!™ As she spoke her passion made her beauty extraordinary. It smote her father with appealing force and with & pang at his own ambitious part in her wedding. He had thought of rank and station, not 'of her happiness. u shall answer to me, Count, for this!" he said sternly. No, father!™ Count Gamba locked at her question- ingly. He faced Count Guiccioli as Teresa ‘vent on: “This is what T demand: IT he lives he shall stay here till he is well. Not a guest; he would accept no hospi- tality from this hous He shall hold this wing of the casa under remntal.” There was a moment's pause. “So be it.” assent was grudg- ing and wrathful “One thing more. So long as he is in the casa you will cause him no phys- ical harm—neither you nor your ser- vants.” While he hesitated a sound came from the bed. Gordon's eyes were open; they held faint but conscious knowledge. From the abyss of nothingness®those voices had called to him, like comver- sation in a dream. Sight had opened more fully and he had stared at the gilded rafters, puzzled. This was not the Hotel Peilegrino in Bologna: He irred and felt a twinge of pain. With the voices grown articulate, it came flashing back—that one kiss; the flying dart of agony; the dizzy descent; Tita and—Teresa. He suddenly saw a face: the old man at San Lazzarve, Teresa's husband! He shut his eyes to drive awav the visions, and hey clear tones called them wide again. He heard fully and understandingly then: knew that Trevanion and Count Guiccioli had made common cause: realized the courage with which Teresa had brought him to her husband's casa—all with a Dbitter-sweet> pain of helplessness and protest against the logic of circumstances that had thrust him into the very pesition that by all arguments looking to her ultimate hap- piness he must have avoided. He heard her voice demand that grudging promise of his safety. It was then he had moan: less with physical than mental pain. 2 Teresa leaned to the bed, where Gor- don had lifted himself on his elbow. The effort dislocged the pandage and its edges reddened swiftly. He strove to speak. but the effort sickened him and he fell back on the pillows. Teresa turned again upon Count Guiccioll. “Swear it, or all I know Ravenpa shall know to-morrow!” She held the kriss toward him, hilt up, like a Calvary, and half involuntarily his bent fingers touched his breast. “T swear " he said in a stifled volee. “Father,” you hear?" “I am witness,” said Count Gamba grimly. : CHAPTER XLIL Ashes of Denial. Days went by. Summer was merg- ing into full-bosomied autumn of tur- quoise heavens, more luscious follage and ripening olives. Gordon's wound had proven deep, but luckily not too serious, thanks to a rough fragment of stone in his pocket, which the surgeon declared had turned the heavy blade, and which Teresa had covered with secret kisses and put carefully away. But to his weakness from loss of blood a tertian ague had added its high temperature, and strength had been long in returning. He had hours of delirium when Te- resa and Fletcher—whom Tita had brought from Bolegna with Gordon belongings—alternately sat by his bed side. Sometimes, then, he dictated strange yet musical stanzas which she was able to set down. It was a sub- conscious bubbling up from the silt- choked well of melody within him; a clouded rivulet, finding an unused way along turgid channels of fever. More ofter Gordon seemed to be living again in his old life—with Hob- house in the Greece that he had loved— in London at White's Club with Beau Brummell, or with Sheridan or Tom Moore at the Cocoa-Tree. At such times Teresa seemed to compre- hend all his strivings and agonies, and ‘wept tears of pity and yearning. Often, too, he muttered of Annabel and Ada, and then the flerce jealousy that had once before come to her as- sailed her anew. It was not a jealousy now, however, of any one person; it was a stifling, passionate resentment of that past of his into which she could net enter, lying instinct and alive in some locked chamber of his brain to defy and outwit her. Early in his betterment a subtle in- ducement not to hasten the going he knew was inevitable ambushed Gor- don. He found folded in his writing tablet a six months’ lease of the apart- ments he occupied. The signature was his oyn, added, Je readily guessed, durihg his fever. The stu- pendous rental with which the old Count had comforted his covetous soul was a whet to the temptation. The thought to which he yielded, however, was the reflection that to depart with- out showing himself to Ravenna— whose untraveled gossips had made of his illness at the casa a topic of inter- est—would neither conceal the real situation nor make easier Teresa’s po- sition. He prolonged his stay, there- fore, riding with her at the hour of the corso in the great coach and six, and later appearing at the conversa- zioni of the vicelegate's and at the provincial opera, to hear the “Barber of Seville” or Alfleri's “Filippo.” One day a child in Teresu's care rode from™ the convent of Bagnaca- vallo to & father whom she had neves