CHAPTER x.x.xI
AN OLD MAN"S HATE
"Margharita! You have come at last. It is done, then. Say that it is done!"
She stood quite still in the humble red-tiled sitting-room, and looked at him with a great compa.s.sion shining out of her dark, clear eyes. He was worn almost to a shadow, and his limbs were shaking with weakness, as he half rose to greet her. Only his eyes were still alight and burning. Save for them he might have been a corpse.
Something of the old pa.s.sionate pity swept through her as she stood there, but its fierceness had died away. Her heart leaped no longer in quick response to the fire in those still undimmed eyes. She had been a girl then, a girl with all the fierce untrained nature of her mother"s race; she was a woman now, a sad-faced, sorrowful woman. He was quick to see the change.
"Margharita, my child, you have been ill."
Still she did not answer. Silently she knelt down by the side of his armchair and took his withered, delicate hand in hers. A great bowl of white hyacinths stood on a table by the window, and the air was faint with their perfume.
"I am not ill," she said gently. "I was frightened on my way here, and had to run. There was a fire last night at the lunatic asylum at Fritton, and some of the mad people have escaped. I saw one of them in the distance, and the keepers after him. They wanted me to go back, but I would come."
He stooped down and kissed her forehead, with cold, dry lips.
"I knew that you would be here soon," he said. "My letters reached you safely?"
"Yes."
She shuddered at the gathering strength in his tone, and the fierce light which had swept into his face.
"It is done, child. Say that it is done!"
"No."
Something in her sad tone and subdued manner seemed to strike a note of fear in his heart. He leaned forward, grasping the sides of his chair with nervous, quivering fingers, and looked hurriedly into her face.
"No; you have had no chance, then? But you will have soon? Is it not so?
Soon, very soon?"
She threw her arms around his neck. He made no response, nor did he thrust her away. He remained quite pa.s.sive.
"It is not that, uncle. Oh, listen to me. Do not thrust me away. I cannot do this thing."
He sat as still as marble. There was no change, no emotion in his face.
Yet her heart sank within her.
"Oh, listen to me," she pleaded pa.s.sionately. "You do not know her as she is now. She is good and kind--a gentle-hearted woman. It was so long ago; and it was not out of malice to you, but to save the man she loved.
You hear me, do you not? You are listening. She has not forgotten you.
Often she sorrows for you. It was cruel--I know that it was cruel--but she was a woman, and she loved him. Let us steal away together and bury these dark dreams of the past. I will never leave you; I will wait upon you always; I will be your slave. Forgiveness is more sweet than vengeance. Oh, tell me that it shall be so. Why do you not speak to me?"
He sat quite still, like a man who is stunned by some sudden and unexpected blow. He seemed dazed. She wondered, even, whether he had heard her.
"Uncle, shall it not be so?" she whispered. "Let us go away from here and leave her. I am not thinking about him. I will not see him again. I will never dream of marrying him. Let us go this very day, this very hour!"
Then he turned slowly toward her, thrust her hand from around his neck, and stood up.
"You have been false to me, Margharita," he said, in a slow, quiet tone.
"After all, it is only natural. When you first came to me, I thought I saw your mother"s spirit blazing in your dark eyes, and I trusted you. I was to blame. I forgot the tradesman"s blood. I do not curse you. You do not understand, that is all. Learn now that the oath of a Marioni is as deathless and unchangeable as the hills of his native land. Will you go away at once, please? I do not wish to see you again."
His speech so quiet, so self-contained, bewildered her. There was not a single trace of pa.s.sion or bitterness in it. She stretched out her hands toward him, but she felt chilled.
"Uncle, you----"
"Will you go away, please?" he interrupted coldly.
She turned toward the door, weeping. She had not meant to go far--only out on to the garden-seat, where she might sit and think. But he saw another purpose in her departure, and a sudden pa.s.sion fired him. She heard his step as he rose hastily, and she felt his cold fingers upon her wrist.
"You would go to warn her!" he cried, his voice trembling with anger; "I read it in your face. You are as false as sin, but you shall not rob me of the crown of my life! No one shall rob me of it! Vengeance belongs to me, and by this symbol of my oath I will have it!"
He s.n.a.t.c.hed a handful of white blossoms from the bowl, and crushed them in his fingers. Then he threw them upon the ground and trampled upon them.
"Thus did she betray the sacred bonds of our Order when, for her lover"s sake, she added treachery to cunning, and wrecked my life, made Leonardo, Count of the Marionis, the lonely inmate of prison walls, the scorn and pity of all men. Thus did she write her own fate upon a far future page of the tablets of time. Talk to me not of forgiveness or mercy, girl! My hate lives in me as the breath of my body, and with my body alone will it die!"
His withered figure seemed to have gathered strength and dignity, and his appearance and tone, as he gazed scornfully down at the girl at his feet, was full of a strange dramatic force. Her heart sank as she listened to him. This was no idle, vulgar pa.s.sion, no morbid craving for evil, which animated him. It was a purpose which had become hallowed to him; something which he had come to look upon as his sacred right. She understood how her drawing back must seem to him. As though a flash of light had laid bare his mind, she saw how weak, how pitifully weak, any words of hers must sound, so she was silent.
He had commenced walking up and down the room; and, watching him fearfully, she saw that his manner was gradually changing. The unnatural calm into which he had momentarily relapsed was leaving him, and he was becoming every moment more and more excited. Fire flashed in his eyes, and he was muttering broken words and sentences to himself. Once he raised his clasped hands to the roof in a threatening gesture, and in the act of doing so she saw the blue flash of a stiletto in his breast pocket. It frightened her, and she moved toward the door.
It seemed almost as though he read her purpose in her terror-stricken face, and it maddened him. He caught her by the wrist and thrust her back.
"You shall not leave this room, girl!" he cried. "Wait, and soon I will bring you news!"
She stood, still panting, overcome for a moment by the strength of his grip. Before she could recover herself, he had caught up his hat and was gone. Outside, she heard the sound of a key in the lock. She was a prisoner!
Her first thought was the window. Alas! it was too small even for her to get her head through. She cried out. No one answered; there was no one to answer. She was alone in the cottage, and helpless, and away over the cliffs, toward Mallory Grange, she could see a small, dark figure walking steadily along, with bent head and swift steps. The cottage stood by itself, a mile from the village, and was approached only by a cliff path. She turned away from the window in despair. It seemed to her then that the time for her final sacrifice had indeed come.
It was a warm, drowsy morning, and the air which floated in through the open lattice window was heavy with the perfume of flowers, mingled with the faint ozone of the sea. Outside, the placid silence was broken only by the murmurous buzzing of insects and the soft lapping of the tide upon the shingly sands. Within the room, a pale-faced girl knelt upon the floor, with her long, slim fingers stretched upward, and the pa.s.sionate despair of death in her cold, white features. The sunshine laughed upon her hair, and glanced around her, bathing her beautiful face in its fresh, bright glory. Was it an answer to her prayer, she wondered--her prayer for peace and forgiveness? Oh, that it might be so!
G.o.d grant it!
There was no fear in her face, though only a moment before she had taken out and swallowed the contents of that little packet of poison which had burned in her bosom for those last few days. But there had been just one pa.s.sing shade of bitterness. Her life had been so short, so joyless, until there had come to her that brief taste of wonderful, amazing happiness. She was young to die--to die with the delirium of that pa.s.sionate joy still burning in her veins.
"Yet, after all, it is best!" she whispered softly, at the end of that unspoken prayer; and with those words of calm resignation, a change crept softly in upon her face. It seemed almost as though, while yet on earth, there had come to her a touch of that exquisite spiritual beauty which follows only upon the extinction of all earthly pa.s.sion, and the uplifting into a purer, sweeter life. And her eyes closed upon the sunlight, and darkness stole in upon her senses. She lay quite still upon the floor; but the smile still lingered upon her lips, making her face more lovely even in its cold repose than when the glow of youth and life had shone in her dark, clear eyes, and lent expression to her features. Saints like St. Francis of a.s.sisi may die thus, but seldom women.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
THE KEEPING OF THE OATH
"Help! For G.o.d"s sake, help!"