“I know,” I said, bitterly. “Love was never part of your nature! Our lives were but cups of wine for your false lips to drain; the flavor once pleased you, but now, don’t you think the dregs taste somewhat bitter?”
He shrunk in my glare, his head drooped.
“And what of poor Chiara? No heart, no conscience, no memory!” I cried. “That a despicable creature like you should live and call itself a man. The lowest beast of the field has more compassion for its kind. Before Beatrice died she knew me. Even my child, neglected by you, in her last agony knew me, her own mother. She being innocent, passed away in peace; but imagine if you can, the wrenching torture in which she died, knowing me, knowing everything! How her spirit must now curse you, her own father!”
He raised his head. There was a starving, hunted, almost furious look in his eyes, but he fixed them steadily on me.
“See, here is the proof that I tell the truth. These things were buried with me.” I threw the medallion and chain, the card-case and purse he himself had given me at his feet. “You will no doubt recognize them.” I showed him the monk’s crucifix. “This was laid on my breast in the coffin. It may be useful to you. You can pray to it very soon!”
He interrupted me with a gesture of his head. He spoke as though in a dream. “You escaped from this vault?” he said, in a low tone, looking from right to left searching eagerly. “Tell me how—and—where?”
I laughed scornfully, guessing his thoughts. “You must think I am stupid, but it doesn’t matter,” I replied. “The passage I discovered is now cemented closed. I have seen to that myself. No living creature left here can escape as I did. Escape is impossible.”
A stifled groan broke from him. He heedlessly kicked away the things I had tossed at his feet. “Carlotta! Please, take me out to the light, the air!” he pleased. “Let me live! Drag me through Vicenza. Let the world see see me dishonored, brand me with the worst of names, make me an outcast of society, only let me out of here. I will do anything, say anything, be anything, only let me live!” He shuddered. “I am so young! Am I truly so vile? There are men who count their lovers by the score, and yet they are not blamed; why should I suffer more than they?”
“Why? Why?” I echoed, fiercely. “Because for once a woman takes the law into her own hands. For once, a wronged woman insists on justice. For once she dares to punish the treachery that blackened her good name and humiliated her to the world. Were there more like me, there would be fewer like you! A score of lovers! It’s not your fault that you had only one! I have something else to say which concerns you. Not content with betraying two women, you tried again on a third. Ay, you wince at that! While you thought I was Contessa Corona, while you were betrothed to me in that character, you wrote to Beatrice Cardano in Rome. Very charming letters! Here they are,” and I flung them down to him. “I have no further use for them. I have read them all!”
The letters lay where they fell. His struggles to free himself had loosened his cloak so far that it hung back from his shoulders, showing a broach formed in the Mancini crest that flashed on chest neck like a point of living light.
I yanked it from him. “This is mine!” I cried, “As much as this ring I wear, which was your love-gift to Beatrice Cardano, and which you afterward returned to me, its rightful owner.” I glanced down at his bracelet. “The rest of the jewels that adorn you were my father’s. How dared you wear them? The ship pendant and the rest that I gave you are your only fitting ornaments—they are stolen goods, filched by the blood-stained hands of the blackest brigand in the country! I promised you more like them; behold them!”
And I threw open the coffin containing what remained of Cesare Negri’s spoils. It occupied a conspicuous position near where I stood, and I had myself arranged near it so that the gold and precious stones inside would be the first things to meet his eyes. “This is where Contessa Corona’s wealth came from. I found this treasure hidden here on the night of my burial. Little did I think then what dire need I would have for its use. It has served me well. It is not yet exhausted. All that remains is for you!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
At these words he looked at the brigand’s coffin, a faint light of hope as well as curiosity in his haggard face. I watched him in vague wonderment. He had grown old so suddenly. The youthful flush of his flesh had disappeared. His skin appeared drawn and dry as though parched from the sun and heat. His hair was mussed and disordered. Only his eyes showed his youth. A sudden wave of compassion swept over my soul.
“You are my husband and I loved you; my husband who I would have died for. Why did you betray me? I thought you were honest and a man of honor. If you had waited for the day after my death to take Beatrice as your lover, I might have forgiven you. Though risen from the grave, I would have left and told no one I was alive to allow you to be together. Si, if only you had waited, if only you had grieved for me even a little. But when you confessed your crime with your own lips, when I knew that within three months of the day we married, you had already cheated on me, when I learned that my love, my name, my position, were used to hide your affair with the woman I called my friend—God! Who could forgive such a betrayal? I am no different than anyone else, but I loved you, and in proportion to my love, so is the greatness of the wrongs you have done me!”
He listened and a faint smile dawned on his pallid lips. “Carlotta!” he whispered. “Carlotta!”
I looked at him. Unconsciously my voice dropped into a tender sadness.
“Yes, my name is Carlotta, and I am not a ghost. Does saying my name seem strange to you, Dario, my husband whom I loved as few women love a man? You who gave me no love at all? You who broke my heart and made me what I am?” A hard, heavy sob rose in my throat and choked my utterance. I was young, and the cruel waste and destruction of my life seemed more than I could bear.
He heard me, and a smile brightened his countenance. “Carlotta,” he murmured. “Forgive me! I spoke in haste. I do not hate you. I will make amends for all the suffering I caused you. I love you and will be true to you. I will be yours and yours alone.” His eyes searched my face for the reply to his words.
I gazed down at him with grief-stricken sternness. “Forgiveness? You ask too late! A wrong like mine can never be forgiven.”
A strange silence followed. His eyes roved over me as if he was searching for some lost thing. The wind tore furiously among the branches of the cypresses outside, and screamed through the small holes and crannies of the stone-work, rattling the iron gate at the summit of the stairway with a clanking sound, as though the famous brigand, Negri, had escaped with all his chains upon him, and was clamoring for admittance to recover his buried property.
Suddenly Dario’s face lightened with an expression of cunning intensity, and before I could understand what he was about to do, he tripped me with swift agility. The stiletto I carried fell loose.
Before I could react, he gripped it with his feet and raised them to his bound hands. With the stiletto now in his grip, he began through the silk as if it were water. “Too late!” he cried, with a wild laugh as he flung himself free of the ties and rose to his feet. “Now it’s you who will die, bitch!”
For one second the bright steel flashed in the wavering light as he poised it to strike. I dodged him. He turned toward me, the stiletto raised in his murderous hand. He held it with a desperate grip as he stepped closer.
A memory of that ravenous owl, that unclean bird I had fiercely fought off on the night of my living burial returned. My anger surged to new heights. It seemed I was possessed of intense strength, abundant courage. I raised my knee and kicked him hard in the groin. The knife fell from his grip. As he tumbled to the ground, his head struck a stone coffin. His glazed eyes looked up at me as I brandished the stiletto above him. Blood dripped from his head.
“Who talks of murder now” I screamed with bitter derision as he writhed on the ground in pain. “What a victory for you if you could have stabbed me and left me here for dead. T
hen a new world of lies would have been yours with the stain of my blood on your soul. You would have fooled the world, you with the stink of death upon you. And you dared to ask my forgiveness!” I stopped short.
A strange, bewildered expression suddenly passed over his face. He looked about in a dazed, vague way. Then his gaze became suddenly fixed, and he pointed toward a dark corner and shuddered. “Hush!” he said, in a low, terrified whisper. “She is here!” He stretched out his arms. “Beatrice,” he said.
With a sudden chilled awe, I looked at the corner of the vault that riveted his attention. All was shrouded in deep gloom.
With a moan he crawled backward as though the ghost he saw threatened him. He paused, his wild eyes gazed upward.
Did he see some horror there? Had the blow to his head struck him senseless?
He raised both hands as if to shield himself from an imminent strike, and then he uttered a moan and lost consciousness. Or dead?
I asked myself this question uncaringly, as I looked down on his inanimate body. The flavor of vengeance was hot in my mouth, and filled me with delirious satisfaction. True, I had been glad, when my poison had coursed through Beatrice’s body and carried her to death, but my gladness had also been mingled with a touch of regret. Now, not one throb of pity stirred inside me; not the faintest emotion of tenderness. Beatrice’s sin was great, but Dario had been the one to tempt her. His crime outweighed hers. And now, there he lay, white and silent in death and I did not care. Had his lover’s ghost indeed appeared before the eyes of his guilty conscience? I did not doubt it. I would not have been surprised if I had seen her poor pale spirit myself, as I gazed down at the lifeless body of the traitor who had wrecked both our lives.
“Oh, Chiara,” I muttered, half aloud. “We are avenged. You can rest in peace now, my beautiful child. Your father will go to hell for the wrongs he did to us, but is hell black enough to accept his malevolent soul?”
And I slowly moved toward the stairway. It was time to leave him. Possibly he was dead. If not, then he soon would be, for he had struck his head hard. I paused irresolute. The wild wind battered ceaselessly at the iron gateway, and wailed as though the voices of a hundred creatures lamented.
The candles were burning low, the darkness of the vault deepened. Its gloom concerned me little. I had grown familiar with its unsightly things, its crawling spiders, its strange uncouth beetles, the clusters of blue fungi on its damp walls. The scurrying noises made by bats and owls, who, scared by the lighted candles, were hiding in holes or corners of refuge, startled me not at all. In my current state of mind, an emperor’s palace was less beautiful to me than this brave charnel house; this stone-mouthed witness of my struggle back to life with all of its misery.
The bell outside the cemetery struck one. We had been absent from the masquerade ball nearly two hours already. No doubt we were being searched for everywhere. It mattered not. They would never come here to look for us.
I walked to the stairs. As I placed my foot on the first step, I heard my husband stir. He seemed to come awake from his unconsciousness. I turned to observe him knowing he could not see me where I stood, ready to depart.
I watched as he murmured something to himself in a low voice, and groaned as he placed his hand on the back of his head, and pulled it away bloodied. He broke out into a laugh—a laugh so out of all keeping with his surroundings, that it startled me more than his attempt to murder me.
Slowly, with great difficulty, he managed to rise to his feet; and straightened his disordered clothes. He stumbled to the brigand’s coffin, placed both hands on it to steady himself, and stared down into its contents of silver, gold, and a rainbow of gems. He took them carefully in his hands, seeming mentally to calculate their cost and value. Necklaces, bracelets and rings, he pulled out, one after the other, till his hands were overloaded with them. Against the candlelight, they blazed with lustrous color.
I marveled at his strange conduct, but did not understand it. I moved away from the staircase and drew nearer to him. Then I heard a strange, low rumbling like a distant earthquake, followed by a sharp cracking sound. A gust of wind rushed round the mausoleum shrieking wildly like some devil in anger. The strong draught extinguished two of the flaring candles.
My husband, entirely absorbed in examining Cesare Negri’s treasures, apparently saw and heard nothing. Suddenly he broke into a laugh. A chuckling, mirthless laugh such as might come from the lips of the aged and senile. The sound curdled the blood in my veins. It was the laugh of a madman!
“Dario!” I called to him with an earnest, distinct voice.
He turned toward me still smiling. His eyes were bright, his face had regained its color, and as he stood in the dim light, with the clustering gems massed together in a glittering fire against his skin, he looked unnaturally, wildly handsome. He nodded to me, half graciously, half haughtily, but gave me no answer.
“Dario!” I called out again, moved with pity.
He laughed again; the same terrible laugh.
“Beatrice? Do you love me?” Then he began to hum a mournful tune.
As the melody echoed through the dreary vault, my bitter wrath against him partially lessened. Compassion stirred my soul. He was no longer the same man who had wronged and betrayed me. He had the helplessness and fearful innocence of madness. In that condition I could not have hurt a hair of his head. I stepped forward, resolved to lead him out of the vault. After all, I would not leave him like this, but as I approached, he pulled away from me, and early stumbled backward, while a dark frown furrowed his brows. “Who are you?” he yelled. “You are dead! How dare you come out of your grave!”
And he stared at me defiantly and then he seemed to address some invisible being at his side. “She is dead, Beatrice! Are you not glad?” He paused, apparently expecting some reply, for he looked about him in wonder. “You did not answer me. Why are you so pale?” He muttered, his words rambled forth in disjointedly. “When did you come back from Rome? What have you heard? That I have betrayed you? Oh, no! I love you. Oh, but I forgot. You also are dead, Beatrice! I remember now. You cannot hurt me anymore. I am free once more!”
The strike on his head must have caused him to act like this, or had it suddenly released a madness he had long disguised?
Again I heard a hollow rumbling and crackling sound overhead. What could it be?
Dario hummed as he plunged his arm down into the coffin of treasure. He gave a shout of pleasure. He had found the old mirror set in its frame of pearls and it seemed to please him. He did not seem conscious of where he was anymore, for he sat down on the upturned coffin that had once held my living body. With complete apathy he gazed into the mirror at his reflection. What a strange and awful picture he made, vainly gazing at himself while surrounded by the mouldering coffins that silently announced how little his vanity was worth, staring at himself in this alcove of skeletons.
I gazed at him as one might gaze at a dead body; not with loathing anymore, but mournfully. My vengeance was satiated. I could not wage war against this vacant, smiling, mad creature, out of whom the spirit of a devilish intelligence and cunning had been torn, and who therefore was no longer the same man. His loss of wit would compensate for my loss of love.
I tried to attract his attention again. I opened my lips to speak, but before the words could form themselves, that odd rumbling noise broke again, this time with a loud reverberation that rolled overhead like the thunder of artillery. Before I could understand where it was coming from, before I could advance one step toward my husband, who still sat on the upturned coffin looking at himself in the mirror, before I could utter a word or move an inch, a tremendous crash exploded through the vault, followed by a stinging shower of stones, dust, and pulverized mortar! I stepped backward amazed, bewildered, speechless, instinctively shutting my eyes.
When I opened them again, everything was in complete darkness. All was silence! The wind howled outside more frantically than ever. A sweeping gust whirled thr
ough the vault, blowing some dead leaves against my face, and I heard the boughs of trees creaking noisily in the fury of the storm.
I thought I heard a faint moan? Quivering in every limb, and sick with a nameless dread, I searched for my tinderbox. Then mastering my shaking hands, I struck a light. The flame was so dim that for an instant I could see nothing. “Dario!” I called loudly. “Dario!”
There came no answer.
Nearby, I saw one of the extinguished candles. Reaching for it, I lighted it and held it up with trembling hands. I could not stop my horror at what I saw and shrieked with shock. An enormous block of stone dislodged by the violent storm had fallen from the roof down over the exact place where Dario had been sitting a minute or two before. Crushed under the huge mass, crushed into the very splinters of my own empty coffin, he lay, and I could see nothing, except one white hand protruding—the hand on which his wedding ring glittered! Even as I looked, that hand quivered violently, beat the ground, and then lay still.
It was horrible.
To this day, in my dreams I still see that quivering white hand, the jewels on it sparkling with scornful luster. It appeals, it calls, it threatens, it prays, and when my time comes to die, I know it will beckon me to my grave.
A portion of Dario’s mantle was visible. A slow stream of blood oozed thickly from beneath the stone; a boulder that could never be moved and that forever sealed him in his awful burial place. How fast the crimson stream of life trickled, staining his mantle with a dark and dreadful hue! Staggering feebly, half delirious with anguish, I approached and touched the white hand that lay stiffly on the ground. I bent my head and almost kissed it, but some strange revulsion rose up inside me and prevented me.
In a stupor of agony I found the monk’s crucifix that had fallen to the floor. I closed Dario’s still warm finger-tips around it and left it there. An unnatural calmness froze my strained nerves. “This is all I can do for you!” I muttered. “May God forgive you because I cannot!”
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