“I?” exclaimed Taquisara, taken entirely off his guard. “If I were in your place? Why—” he recovered himself— “I should get married again, as soon as possible, of course. What else should any one do?”
But the bold eyes for once looked down a little, their steadiness broken.
“You would do nothing of the sort,” said Gianluca.
“What do you mean?” Again Taquisara started almost imperceptibly, and his brows contracted as he looked up sharply.
“If you were in my place,” said Gianluca, “you would cut your throat rather than ruin the life of the woman you loved, by tying your misery to her for life, a load for her to carry.”
“Do not say such things!” exclaimed the Sicilian, turning suddenly from the table and resuming his walk. “You are mad!”
“No — not mad. But not cowardly either. There is not much left of me, but what there is shall not be afraid. I am not truly married to her. I will not be. I will not die with that on my soul.”
“Gianluca — for God’s sake do not say such things!” Taquisara turned upon him, staring.
He sat in his deep chair, his fair angel head thrown back, the dark blue eyes bright, brave, and daring — all the rest, dead.
“I say them, and I mean them,” he answered. “I love her very much. I love her enough for that. I love her more than you do.”
“Than I?” Taquisara’s voice almost broke, as the blow struck him, but there was no fear in his eyes either. He drew a breath then, and spoke strong words. “Now may Christ forget me in the hour of death, if I have not been true to you!”
“And me and mine if I blast your life and hers,” came back the unflinching answer.
A deep silence fell upon them both. At last Gianluca spoke again, and his voice sank to another tone.
“She loves you, too,” he said.
“Loves me?” cried Taquisara, his brows suddenly close bent. “Oh no! Unsay that, or — no — Gianluca — how dare you even dream the right to say that of your wife?”
It was beyond his strength to bear.
“She is not my wife,” said Gianluca. “You have told me so — she is not my wife. She has done what no other living woman could have done, to be my wife and to love me. But she is not my wife, and what I say is true, and right as well, your right and hers.
“No — not that — not hers.” Taquisara turned half round, against the table, where he stood, and his voice was low and broken.
“Yes, hers. You will know it soon — when I have taken my love to my grave, and left her yours on earth.”
“Gianluca!”
Taquisara could not speak, beyond that, but he laid his hand upon his friend’s arm and clutched it, as though to hold him back. His dark eyes darkened, and in them were the terrible tears that strong men shed once in life, and sometimes once again, but very seldom more.
Gianluca’s thin fingers folded upon the hand that held him.
“You have been very true to me,” he said. “She will be quite safe with you.”
For a long time they were both silent. It began to rain, and the big drops beat against the windows, melancholy as the muffled drum of a funeral march, and the grey morning light grew still more dim.
“I will not go into the other room just yet,” said Gianluca, quietly. “I would rather be alone for a little while.”
Their eyes met once more, and Taquisara went away without a word.
That had been almost the last act of the strange tragedy of love and death which had been lived out in slow scenes during those many weeks. It was needful that it should come, and inevitable, soon or late. It began when Gianluca made that one last desperate effort to move, in sudden certainty of hope that ended in the instant foreknowledge of what was to be. A little thing swayed him then — such a little thing as the accident of a sharp foil, a rent in a jacket, the woman’s blinding fear for the man she loved. There are many arrows in fate’s quiver, and the little ones are as keen as the long shafts, and quicker to find the tender mark.
The man was born to suffer, but he had in him that something divine by which martyrs made death the witness of life and turned despair of earth to sure hope of heaven.
He had ever been a man tender and gentle. His nature did not fail him now. With exquisite devotion and thought for Veronica’s happiness, and with a love for her that penetrated the short future of near death, he would not say to her what he had said to Taquisara. He would not let one breath of doubt disturb her only satisfaction while he still lived, nor trouble her with the least fear lest she had not done all her fullest to give him happiness while she could. In the end, it was his love that cut short his living, and no one knew what hours and days and nights of pain he bore, till the end came. He made of his love and his death a way for her life. She had given him all she had. He gave it back to her a hundred-fold, but she should not know, while he lived, that her great gift had not been to him more than she could make it, all that she wished it might be, all that she knew it was not.
He had not far to carry his burden; but except his friend, no one should know the heaviness of his heart, neither his father nor his mother, and least of all, Veronica. He could not hide that he was dying, but he could hide the cost of it, and its bitterness. After that day, his life went from him, as the strength falls away from a ship’s sails when the breeze is softly dying on a summer’s evening. In fear Veronica watched him, and in fear she met Taquisara’s eyes. In the long nights, when it rained and there was no moon, the darkness of death’s wings was in the air, and she held her breath, alone in her dim room.
They all knew it, and none said it, though shadow answered shadow in one another’s faces when they met. It was as though another element than air had descended amongst them, dull, unresonant, hushing word and tread.
For each life we love is a sun, in our lives that would be dark if there were no love in them, and when it goes down to its setting in our hearts, the last light of love’s day is very deep and tender, as no other is after it, and the passionate, sad twilight of regret deepens to a darkness of great loneliness over all, until our tears are wept, and our souls take of our mortal selves memories of love undying.
The end came soon, in the night, for it was his will to live that had kept him with them so long. Taquisara was with him. One by one the others came, hastily muffled and wrapped in dark robes, for the night was cold and damp even within doors. One after another they came, and they stood and knelt beside him on the right and left. He spoke to them all, — to his father and his mother first, for he felt the tide ebbing. With streaming eyes Veronica bent down and looked for the fading light in his, through her fast-falling tears. And close to her his mother stretched out weak hands that trembled with every breaking sob. His father knelt there, burying his face against the pillow, shaking all over, his arms hanging down loose and helpless by his sides, bent, bowed, crushed, as a weak old lion, stricken in age and cruelly wounded to death. And above them all, Taquisara’s sad, deep-chiselled face looked down, as the face of a bronze statue beside a grave. Without, the winter’s rain beat a low dead-march on the great windows, and the southwest wind sighed out its vast breath along the castle walls.
It was long since he had spoken, and they thought that they should never hear his voice again. But still the last light lingered in his eyes. Very little was left for him to do.
He moved Veronica’s right hand, that was in his, drawing it a little, and she let it move; and his other held Taquisara’s, and he drew it also, they yielding, till the two touched, and at his dying will clasped one another. Then he smiled faintly, his last smile on earth. And as it faded forever, there came back to them from beyond all pain the words of his blessing upon their two strong young lives.
“Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus—” and the angels heard the rest.
Thus died Gianluca della Spina.
THE END
A Rose of Yesterday
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER I
“I WONDER WHAT he meant by it,” said Sylvia, turning again in her chair, so that the summer light, softened and tinted by the drawn blinds, might fall upon the etching she held.
“My dear,” answered Colonel Wimpole, stretching out his still graceful legs, leaning back in his chair, and slowly joining his nervous but handsome hands, “nobody knows.”
He did not move again for some time, and his ward continued to scrutinize Dürer’s Knight. It was the one known as ‘The Knight, Death, and the Devil,’ and she had just received it from her guardian as a birthday present.
“But people must have thought a great deal about it,” said Sylvia, at last. “There must be stories about what it means. Do tell me. I’m sure you know.”
She laid the unframed print upon her knees, still holding it by the edges, lest the fitful breeze that came in through the blinds should blow it to the floor. At the same time she raised her eyes till they met the colonel’s.
Her earnest young face expressed something like veneration as she gazed at him, and perhaps he thought that it was undeserved, for he soon looked away, with a faint sigh. She sighed, too, but more audibly, as though she were not ashamed of it. Possibly she knew that he could not guess what the sigh meant, and the knowledge added a little pain to what she felt just then, and had felt daily of late. She began to study the etching again.
“To me,” she said softly, “the Knight is a hero. He is making Death show him the way, and he has made the Devil his squire and servant. He will reach the city on the hill in time, for there is still sand enough in the hour-glass. Do you see?” She held out the print to the colonel. “There is still sand enough,” she repeated. “Don’t you think so?”
Again, as she asked the question, she looked at him; but he was bending over the etching, and she could only see his clear profile against the shadows of the room.
“He may be just in time,” he answered quietly.
“I wonder which house they lived in, of those one can see,” said Sylvia.
“Who are ‘they’? Death, the Devil, and the Knight?”
“No. The Knight and the lady, of course, — the lady who is waiting to see whether he will come in time.”
The colonel laughed a little at her fancy, and looked at her as the breeze stirred her brown hair. He did not understand her, and she knew that he did not. His glance took in her brown hair, her violet eyes, her delicately shaded cheek, and the fresh young mouth with its strange little half-weary smile that should not have been there, and that left the weariness behind whenever it faded for a time. He wondered what was the matter with the girl.
She was not ill. That was clear enough, for they had travelled far, and Sylvia had never once seemed tired. The colonel and Miss Wimpole, his elderly maiden sister, had taken Sylvia out to Japan to meet her father, Admiral Strahan, who had been stationed some time with a small squadron in the waters of the far East. He had been ordered home rather suddenly, and the Wimpoles were bringing the girl back by way of Europe. Sylvia’s mother had been dead three years, and had left her a little fortune. Mrs. Strahan had been a step-sister, and no blood relation, of the Wimpoles; but they had been as a real brother and a real sister to her, and she had left her only child to their care during such times as her husband’s service should keep him away from home. The girl was now just eighteen.
Colonel Wimpole wondered whether she could be destined for suffering, as some women are, and the thought linked itself to the chain of another life, and drew it out of his heart that he might see it and be hurt, for he had known pain in himself and through one he loved. He could not believe that Sylvia was forefated to sorrow, and the silent weariness that of late was always in her face meant something which he feared to learn, but for which he felt himself vaguely responsible, as though he were not doing his duty by her.
He was a man of heart, of honour, and of conscience. Long ago, in his early youth, he had fought bravely in a long and cruel war, and had remained a soldier for many years afterwards, with an old-fashioned attachment for arms that was dashed with chivalry, till at last he had hung up his sword, accepting peace as a profession. Indeed he had never loved anything of war, except its danger and its honour; and he had loved one woman more than either, but not against honour nor in danger, though without any hope.
He had lived simply, as some men can and as a few do live, in the midst of the modern world, parting with an illusion now and then, and fostering some new taste in its place, in a sort of innocent and simple consciousness that it was artificial, but in the certainty that it was harmless. He was gentle in his ways, with the quiet and unaffected feeling for other people which not seldom softens those who have fought with their hands in the conviction of right, and have dealt and received real wounds. War either brutalizes or refines a man; it never leaves him unchanged. Colonel Wimpole had travelled from time to time, more for the sake of going to some one place which he wished to see, than of passing through many places for the sake of travelling. There is a great difference between the two methods. Wherever he went, he took with him his own character and his slightly formal courtesy of manner, not leaving himself at home, as some people do, nor assuming a separate personality for Europe, like a disguise; for, such as he was, he was incapable of affectation, and he was sure that the manners which had been good enough for his mother were good enough for any woman in the world, as indeed they were, because he was a gentleman, that is, a man, and gentle at all points, excepting for his honour. But no one had ever touched that.
He looked what he was, too, from head to foot. He was a tall, slender man, of nervous strength, with steady grey eyes, high features, smooth, short and grizzled hair; simple and yet very scrupulous in his dress; easy in his movements; not old before his time, but having already something of the refinement of age upon the nobility of his advanced manhood; one of whom a woman would expect great things in an extremity, but to whom she would no longer turn for the little service, the little fetching and carrying, which most women expect of men still in prime. But he did such things unasked, and for any woman, when it seemed natural to do them. After all, he was only fifty-three years old, and it seems to be established that sixty is the age of man’s manumission from servitude, unless the period of slavery be voluntarily extended by the individual. That leaves ten years of freedom if one live to the traditional age of mankind.
But Sylvia saw no sign of age in Colonel Wimpole. In connexion with him the mere word irritated her when he used it, which he sometimes did quite naturally, and he would have been very much surprised could he have guessed how she thought of him, and what she was thinking as she sat looking from him to Dürer’s Knight and from the etched rider to the living man again. For she saw a resemblance which by no means existed, except, perhaps, between two ideals.
The Knight in the picture is stern and strong and grim, and sits his horse like the incarnation of an unchanging will, riding a bridled destiny against Death and Evil to a good end. And Death’s tired jade droops its white head and sniffs at the skull in the way, but the Knight’s charger turns up his lip and shows his teeth at the carrion thing and arches his strong neck, while the Knight looks straight before him, and cares not, and his steel-clad legs press the great horse into the way, and his steel-gloved hand holds curb and snaffle in a vise. As for the Devil, he slinks behind, an evil beast, but subdued, and following meanly with a sort of mute, animal astonishment in his wide eyes.
And beside Sylvia sat the colonel, quiet, gentle, restful, suggesting just then nothing of desperate determination, and not at all like the grim Knight in feature. Yet the girl felt a kinship between the two, and saw one and the same heroism in the man and
in the pictured rider. In her inmost heart she wished that she could have seen the colonel long ago, when he had fought, riding at death without fear. But the thought that it had been so very long ago kept the wish down, below the word-line in her heart’s well. Youth clothes its ideals with the spirit of truth and hides the letter out of sight.
But in the picture, Sylvia looked for herself, since it was for a lady that the Knight was riding, and all she could find was the big old house up in the town, on the left of the tallest tower. She was waiting somewhere under the high-gabled roof, with her spinning-wheel or her fine needlework, among her women. Would he ever come? Was there time before the sand in Death’s hour-glass should run out?
“I wish the horse would put his fore foot down, and go on!” she said suddenly.
Then she laughed, though a little wearily. How could she tell the colonel that he was the Knight, and that she was waiting in the tall house with the many windows? Perhaps he was never to know, and forever the charger’s fore foot would be lifted, ready for the step that was never to fall upon the path.
But Colonel Wimpole did not understand. It was unlike her to wish that an old print should turn into a page from a child’s movable picture-book.
“Why do you wish that the horse would go on?” he asked half idly.
“Because the sand will not last, if he waits,” said Sylvia, quietly; and as she spoke a third time of the sand in the hour-glass, she felt a little chill at her heart.
“There will always be time,” answered the colonel, enigmatically.
“As there will always be air, I suppose; and that will not matter to us, when we are not here to breathe it any more.”
“That is true. Nothing will matter very much a hundred years hence.”
“But a few years matter much more than a hundred.” Her voice was sad.
“What are you thinking of?” asked Colonel Wimpole, changing his position so as to see her face better.
He resented her sadness a little, for he and his sister were doing their best to make her happy. But Sylvia did not answer him. She bent her white forehead to the faint breeze that came through the closed green blinds, and she looked at the etching. The colonel believed that she was thinking of her dead mother, whom she had loved. He hesitated, choosing his words, for he hated preaching, and yet it seemed to him that Sylvia mourned too long.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 861