Saint Lucy Of The Eyes

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Title:     Saint Lucy Of The Eyes
Author: S. R. Crockett [More Titles by Crockett]

[Taken from the Journals of Travel written by Stephen
Douglas, sometime of Culsharg in Galloway.]

I.

O mellow rain upon the clover tops;
O breath of morning blown o'er meadow-sweet;
Lush apple-blooms from which the wild bee drops
Inebriate; O hayfield scents, my feet

Scatter abroad some morning in July;
O wildwood odours of the birch and pine,
And heather breaths from great red hill-tops nigh,
Than olive sweeter or Sicilian vine;--

Not all of you, nor summer lands of balm--
Not blest Arabia,
Nor coral isles in seas of tropic calm.
Such heart's desire into my heart can draw.

II.

O scent of sea on dreaming April morn
Borne landward on a steady-blowing wind;
O August breeze, o'er leagues of rustling corn,
Wafts of clear air from uplands left behind,

And outbreathed sweetness of wet wallflower bed,
O set in mid-May depth of orchard close,
Tender germander blue, geranium red;
O expressed sweetness of sweet briar-rose;

Too gross, corporeal, absolute are ye,
Ye help not to define
That subtle fragrance, delicate and free,
Which like a vesture clothes this Love of mine.

"Heart's Delight."

CHAPTER I

THE WOMAN OF THE RED EYELIDS

It was by Lago d'Istria that I found my pupil. I had come without halt from Scotland to seek him. For the first time I had crossed the Alps, and from the snow-flecked mountain-side, where the dull yellow-white patches remained longest, I saw beneath me the waveless plain of Lombardy.

The land of Lombardy--how the words had run in my dreams! Surely some ancestor of mine had wandered northwards from that gracious plain. On one side of me, at least, I was sib to the vineyards and the chestnut groves. For strange yearnings thrilled me as I beheld white-garlanded cities strung across the plain, the blue lakes grey in the haze, like eyes that look through tears.

Yet hitherto a hill-farm on the moors of Minnigaff had been my abiding-place. There I had played with the collies and the grey rabbits. There I had listened to the whaup and the peewits crying in the night; and save the cold, grey, resonant spaces of Edinburgh, whither I had gone to study, this was all my eyes had yet known. But when Giovanni Turazza, exile from the city of Verona, paused in his reading of the sonorous Italian to rebuke my Scots accent, and continued softly to give me illustrations of the dialects of north and south, something moved within me that sickened me to think of the Lombard plain sleeping in the gracious sunshine--which I might never see.

Yet I saw it. I trod its ways and stood by its still waters. And already they are become my life and my home.

Now, I who write am Stephen Douglas, of the moorland stock of the northern Douglases--kin to Douglaswater, and on the wrong side of the blanket to Drumdarroch himself. It has been the custom that one of the Douglases should in every generation be sent to the college to rear for the kirk.

For the hand of the Douglas has ever been kind to kin; and since patronage came back--in law or out law, the Douglases have managed to put their man into Drumdarroch parish and to have a Douglas in the white manse by the Waterside. And so it is like to be when, as they say, the rights of patron shall again pass away.

Now, I was in process or manufacture for this purpose, though threatening to turn out somewhat over tardy in development to profit by the act of patronage. But the Douglas dourness stood me in good stead, as it has done all the Douglases that ever lived since the greatest of the race charged to the death, with the point of his spear dropped low and the heart of his lord thrown before him, among the Paynim hordes.

The lad to undertake whose tutelage I went abroad was a Fenwick of Allerton in the Border country--the scion of a reputable stock, sometime impoverished by gambling in the times of the Regent, and before that with whistling "Owre the water to Charlie"; but now, by the opening-up of the sea-coal pits, again gathering in the canny siller as none of the Fenwicks had done in the palmiest days of the moss-trooping.

Well I knew when I set out that I had my work before me, and that I should earn my two hundred pounds a year or all were done. For I had but a couple of years more than my pupil to boast myself upon; and he, having grown up on the Continent, chiefly in Latin cities and German watering-places, was vastly superior to me in the knowledge which comes not easily to the lads from the moors, who at all times know better how to loup a moss-hag than how to make a courtly bow.

Yet for all that I did not mean to be far behind any Border Fenwick when it came to making bows. Nor, as it happened, was I when all was done. This confidence was partly owing to full feeding on fine porridge and braxy, but more to that inbred belief of Galloway in itself which the ill-affected and envious nominate its conceit.

Henry Fenwick was abiding in this city of Vico Averso, as I had been informed by his uncle and guardian, for the baths. He had been advised of my coming, and, like the kindly lad that he proved to be, I found him waiting for me when the diligence arrived.

We met with few words on either side, but I think with instant hearty liking. My pupil was tall and dark, his hair a little long, yet not falling to his shoulders--somewhat feminine in type of feature and Italianate in complexion. But the mouth shewed breeding, the eyes kindliness; and, after all, these are the main features. I was especially glad to find myself taller than he by a span of inches.

He took me to the hotel where a room had been ordered for me--not one of the common Italian inns, but a hotel built for the accommodation of foreigners. As we went up the steps, we passed a lady sitting in the shade with a book. She was a large fair woman, with sleepy eyes and a mane of bronzed gold hair. She had been looking at us as we came, I will be bound; but when we passed she became absorbed and unconscious upon her book.

As Henry raised his hat she bowed slightly to him, lifting at the same time her heavy eyelids and glancing at me. I had once seen that look before--in a spectacle of wild beasts when I happened to stand close to a drowsing tigress that twitched an eyelid and flashed a yellow eye at me. In that eye-shot on the verandah of the hotel in Vico Averso, the crossing of glances was like a challenge, and thrilled me as when one is called to fight. I think we hated one another on the spot; yet for the life of me I could not tell why, save that the woman of the tiger's glance had a red edge to her heavy eyelids, and no eyelashes that I could see--which things are not the marks of a good woman, as I take it. Yet there was no real cause for the bitter and sudden dislike, for, as it chanced, she came but little into our adventures. For youth, for the sake of change, turns as readily away from evil as from good.

So eager was I to be down and out of doors, that I had hardly time to make disposition of my goods in the room which had been reserved for me. I threw open the casement. I hung half out of the window, and satisfied myself with looking upon the still, calm blue of Lago d'Orta beneath, flecked with heavy-bodied craft with deep yellow sails. My heart all the while was crying out hungrily, "At last! at last!"

The precipices of hills, coloured like amethysts, fronted us, where the southern Alps threw themselves downwards to the lake-shore. Half-a-dozen hotels with white walls and green blinds clung about the outside of the little town, and specially about the baths, which ever since the time of the Romans had given the place its reputation. Few English people went there, but many Italians, some Austrians, especially women--German men, and cosmopolitan Russians, to whom all outside their native country was a Fatherland.

"Come," said Henry as soon as we had become a little familiar, "let us go to the baths."

Entering a low stone door, we ran up a flight of steps and found ourselves in a circular building of ancient marble. It was to me the strangest sight. We looked down on a great number of people up to their necks in a kind of thick, coffee-coloured fluid, which steamed and gave off strange odours. Men and women were there, old and young. All were clad in full suits of light material, and comported themselves towards each other as in a drawing-room. The sight of so many heads all bobbing about on the coffee-coloured mud, like a hundred John the Baptists on one large charger, was to me exceedingly diverting.

Little tables were floating about on the muddy water, and some pairs in quiet corners played chess and even cards. But there was a constant circulation among the throng. Introductions were effected in form, save that no one shook hands, at least above the water; only the detached heads bowed ceremoniously. It was a new canto of the Inferno--the condemned playing dully at human society in the bubbling caldrons of the place of evil shades. Henry proposed to go down and take a bath, but my stomach rose against the fumes and the slimy brown stuff.

"It is not nearly so bad when you are once in!" he said, for he had tried it. But though I had reason to believe that to be true, I had no heart to make the test for myself.

As we came out, Henry made me an introduction to the Lady of the Red Eyelids.

"Madame von Eisenhagen!" So that is your name, thought I; and I wonder what may be your intentions! I had never seen the breed before, but the side of me that was sib to the South seemed to leap to a comprehension.

As Madame and I crossed our glances again, I am sure we both knew that it was to the knife. For Henry Fenwick, being a lad, had laid his boy's heart in her hands. Yet not seriously, but as a boy will when a woman twice his age thinks it worth her while to spread a net for him, flattering him with her eyes.

So for a while we sat on the terrace, and a kind of scentless, spineless whitethorn wept sprays of flowers upon us. We spoke French, in which my pupil, as I found, had greatly the advantage of me, and thought extremely well of himself in consequence. But within me I said, "My friend, wait till I have you a week at Greek!"

And this indeed came to pass, for over the intricacies of that language I made him presently to sweat consumedly.

Of the matter of our talk there is not much to say. Henry spoke freely and well, Madame interjecting leading questions, and holding him with her eyes. I, on the contrary, spoke little, being occupied with the scenes going on beneath me--the men in the piazza piling the fine grain for the making of macaroni--the changing and chaffering groups about the kerchiefed market-women--the dark-faced, gypsy-like men with beady eyes. The murmur of the conversation came to me only at intervals, like voices in a dream; and sometimes for whole sentences together I lost its meaning completely.

Indeed, I had more pleasure in looking at the houses in Vico Averso, which were tangled together without the semblance of a plan. Each house, or part of a house, struggled upward to occupy its own patch of sky-line, in a hundred different heights and breadths. Each had a scrap of garden clinging to it along the lake-side, in which the green of the magnolias contrasted with the grey aspens and the warmer oleanders. There was a bright and laughing charm about the whole which drew my heart, and I longed to spend a lifetime in these white and foliage-fringed places.

But I found very soon that the face of Vico Averso was her fortune. For the side of our hostel which was turned to a dark and narrow Street of Smells took away my desire to dwell there. There came out clear in my mind the thought and sight of our hill-farm of Culsharg, set on the edge of its miles of heather, the free airs blowing about it, and all the wild birds crying. My mother would be coming to the door to look for my grandfather as he came off the hill from the sheep. A disgust at the bubbling devil's-caldron, a horror of the smiling, monosyllabic Woman of the Red Eyelids, filled my heart. I resolved to battle it out with Henry that very night, and to leave Vico Averso at once. If he would not do so much for me, I knew that I might take the diligence back again the way I came, and report my failure. But, for all that, I did not mean thus lamely to fail or go home with my finger in my mouth.

That night I drew from the lad his heart. He had been here for two months--indeed, ever since his Swiss tutor, Herr Gunther, had departed for Zurich suddenly, having been ignominiously thrashed by his own pupil. I gathered from him that he had intended to perform the like for me, but had given up the idea after seeing me leap from the top of the diligence.

Yet he was not unwilling to be taught that there are better things out under the free sunshine than to dream away good days with a woman like Madame Von Eisenhagen, who after all had perhaps done nothing worse than encourage the lad to philander and to waste his time. Then I cunningly painted the joys of a walking tour. We should take our packs on our backs, only a few pounds' weight; and, our staves in our hands, like student lads of clerkly learning in the ancient times, we should go forth to seek our adventures--a new one every hour, a new roof to sleep under every night, and maids fairer than dreams waving hands to us over every vineyard wall. Thus cunningly I baited my trap.

So had I gone many a time in mine own country, and so I meant to lead my pupil now. Henry Fenwick rose joyously at the thought. Madame had made his service a little hard, and, what is worse, a little monotonous. He was but a boy, and needed not, she thought, the binding distractions which usually accompany such allegiances.

CHAPTER II

THE WORD OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE

Betimes in the morning we were afoot--long before Madame was awake; and having committed our heavier luggage to the care of our Swiss landlord, we set each a knapsack on our backs, and with light foot passed through the market-place among the bright and chattering throng of Italian folk, whose greetings of "Buone feste, buon principio, e buona fine" told of the birth of another day of joy for them under the blue of their sky.

Before we were clear of the town, Henry turned, and as he glanced at the green valanced windows of the Hotel Averso he drew a long breath which was not quite a sigh. And this was all his farewell to the allegiance of half a score of weeks. For my part, I was not easy till we swung out of sight along the dusty road, and had skirted the first two or three miles of old wall and vineyard terrace, where the lizards were already flashing and darting in the sun.

But indeed it takes much to chain a young man's fancy, when the road of life runs enticingly before him, dappled with laurel and carpeted with primrose.

It was our vagabond year, and, as I had foretold, a fair maid stood at every door, smiling at us and leading us on. We did not keep long by the dusty road. Presently we turned up byways, over which the prickly-pear and red valerian broke in profuse and unprecise beauty--fleshy-leaved creepers, too, as of a house-leek turned passion-flower, over-crowned all with scarlet blotches of cunningly placed colour.

We wandered into woodland paths and across fields. A peasant or small farmer ran out to stay us. Something was forbidden, it appeared. We were trampling his artichokes or other precious crop. We understood him not over well, nor indeed tried to. But a touchingly insignificant piece of silver induced him to think more kindly of our error, and he showed us a sweet path, by the side of which a brook tinkled down from the cliffs above. It led us into another scene--and, I am of opinion, upon another man's property. For at the door of a low, square-roofed house stood a man with his hands clasped behind him. He frowned, for he had seen his neighbour of the itching palm lead us to his gate and there leave us. And of the silver that lay within that palm he had not partaken.

The sun was broad and high. Here were flats of hay, greyish-green, blue in parts--but with none of that moist and emerald velvet which would have flashed upon the burnside meadows at home. Again by the water we brushed against the asters, which had no business to be growing here in the spring. Among the young wheat the poppies were flaming--red-coat officers of the Sower of Tares, with flaunting feather leading on to the inquisition of fires, when the reapers edge their keen sickles and fall-to, and the tares are separated from the wheat.

For pence judiciously tendered, we had the young Pan himself for leader--an Italian boy of sixteen, fair as a god of Greece. He went before with the most innocent grace in the world, and looked at us over his shoulder. He called his sister to come also, and as a stimulant he held up his penny. But she hung back, smit with sudden maidenly modesty at the sight of two such proper young men; and so her brother danced on without her.

Looking back, we saw that she had called her mother, and now peeped out wistfully from behind the shelter of the skirt maternal. Perhaps she regretted that she had not gone with us, for there, far ahead, was her brother skipping upon his quest. And suddenly there was no interest in the dull farmyard and the cattle. For that is a way of women--to be willing too late.

As we go, we talk with the young Pan--Henry Fenwick freely, I slowly, yet with comprehension greater than speech.

Will Pan sit down and eat with us? we ask.

Surely! There is no doubt whatever that he will, and that gladly. But we must wait till we come to a spring of hill-water, so that we may have the true and only apostolic baptism for our red wine.

There presently we arrive. The place is verily an inspiration. It is a natural well in the shadow of a great rock. Overhead is the virgin cup rudely cut in the stone. A shelf for sitting on while you drink, and the rocky laver brimming with clear and icy water. Little grains of fine white sand dance at the bottom, where from its living source the pure brew wells up. It is indeed a proper place to break bread.

Here, with Pan talking to us in a speech soft as the Italian air, we eat and are refreshed. Pan himself willingly opens his heart, and tells us of the changes that are coming--an Italy free from lagoon to triangle-which is to say, from Venice to Messina. But there is much dying to be done before then. The tears must fall from many mothers' eyes--from his own, who knows? Will he fight? Ay, surely he will fight! And the face of Pan hardens, till one understands how he could have been so cruel one day to the reeds which grew in the river.

But the distance beckons us, and the sun draws himself upward to his strength. We have on us the English itch for change. The breeze comes and goes as we plunge among the groves of Virgilian ilex, and through the interstices of the trees we see on a hill-slope above us thirty great horned oxen, etched black against the sky.

Here Pan leaves us, saying farewell with tears in his woman's eyes; with silver also in his pocket, which, to do him justice, does not comfort him wholly. Before he goes, for love and gratitude he tells us of a rhyme with which to please the children and to cause the good wives to give us a lodging.

At the next village we try its efficacy upon a company by the well--a group with those oriental suggestions which are common to all villages south of the Alps. The effect is instantaneous. The shy maidens draw nearer, the boys gather from their noisy game, the bambinos stretch to us from many a sisterly shoulder. We sit down, a couple of wayfarers, dusty and hot. But no sooner is the rhyme said than, lo! a tin is dipped for our drinking, and the Rebekah of the well herself expects her kiss, nor, spite of a possible knife, is she disappointed. For the rhyme's sake we are friends of the fairies and can put far the evil eye. It is good to entertain us. Thanks be to Pan! We shall offer him a garland of enduring ivy, or it may be half a kid. The cry that was heard over the waters was not true! Pan is not dead. Perhaps he too but sleeps a while, and in the likeness of young goatherds the god of the earlier time, reborn in dew, comes out still to tell his secrets to wandering lads who, asking no favour, go a-wayfaring with strong hearts as in the ancient days.

Round the corner peeps a laughing face. An urchin of surpassing impishness, one who has come too late to hear our password, taunts us in evil words.

"Ha, Giuseppe, beware of the Giant Caranco! Behold, he has the great teeth of the English. At the water-trough this morning I saw him sharpening them to eat thee, thou exceeding plump one! In the bag at his back he carries the bones of sixteen just as fat as thou art!"

And the rascal flees with a cry of pretended fear. So contagious is terror, that more than half our band flees away a dozen paces, halting there upon one foot, balancing our evil and our good.

But we have wiles as well as rhymes, and great in all places of the earth is the fascination of ready money.

"The Giant Caranco! forsooth," we say; "what lack of sense! Does the Giant Caranco know the good word of the Gentle Folk whose song brings luck? Can the Giant Caranco tell the tale that only the fairies know? Has the Giant Caranco those things in his wallet which are loved of lads and maids? Of a surety, no! Was ever such nonsense heard!"

In vain rings the shout of the maligner on the rocks above, as the circle gathers in again closer than ever about us.

"Beware of his thrice-sharpened teeth, Giuseppe! I saw him bite a fair half-moon out of the iron pipe by the fountain trough this morning!" he cries.

It is worse than useless now. Not only does the devil's advocate lack his own halfpenny; but with a swirl of the hand and a cunning jerk at the side, a stone whizzes after this regardless railer upon honest giants. Wails and agony follow. It is a dangerous thing to sit in the scorner's chair, specially when the divinity has the popular acclaim, with store of sweetmeats and soldi as well.

Most dangerous of all is it to interfere with a god in the making, for proselytism is hot, and there are divine possibilities.

CHAPTER III

THE STORY OF THE SEVEN DEAD MEN

And the stories! There were many of them. The young faces bent closer as we told the story of Saint Martin dividing his cloak among the beggars. Then came our own Cornish giant-killer, adapted for an Italian audience, dressed to taste in a great brigand hat and a beltful of daggers and pistols. Blunderbore in the Italian manner was a distinguished success. It was Henry who told the tales, but yet I think it was I who had the more abundant praise. For they heard me prompt my Mercurius, and they saw him appeal to me in a difficulty. Obviously, therefore, Henry was the servant of the chief magician, who like a great lord only communicated his pleasure through his steward.

Then with a tale of Venice[1] that was new to them we scared them out of a year's growth--frightening ourselves also, for then we were but young. It was well that the time was not far from high noon. The story told in brief ran thus. It was the story of the "Seven Dead Men."

[Footnote 1: For the origin of this and much else as profitable and pleasant, see Mr. Horatio Brown's Life on the Lagoons, the most charming and characteristic of Venetian books.]

There were once six men that went fishing on the lagoons. They brought a little boy, the son of one of them, to remain and cook the polenta. In the night-time he was alone in the cabin, but in the morning the fishermen came in. And if they found that aught was not to their taste, they beat him. But if all was well, they only bade him to wash up the dishes, yet gave him nothing to eat, knowing that he would steal for himself, as the custom of boys is.

But one morning they brought with them from their fishing the body of a dead man--a man of the mainland whom they had found tumbling about in the current of the Brenta. For he had looked out suddenly upon them where the sea and the river strive together, and the water boils up in great smooth, oily dimples that are not wholesome for men to meddle with.

Now, whether these six men had not gone to confession or had not confessed truly, so that the priest's absolution did them no good, the tale ventures not to say. But this at least is sure, that for their sins they set this dead thing that had been a man in the prow of the boat, all in his wet clothes. And for a jest on the little boy they put his hand on his brow, as though the dead were in deep cogitation.

As this story was in the telling, the attention of the children grew keen and even painful. For the moment each was that lonely lad on the islet, where stood the cabin of the Seven Dead Men.

So as the boat came near in the morning light, the boy stood to greet them on the little wooden pier where the men landed their fish to clean, and he called out to the men in the boat--

"Come quickly," he cried; "breakfast is ready--all but the fish to fry."

He saw that one of the men was asleep in the prow; yet, being but a lad, he was only able to count as many as the crows--that is, four. So he did not notice that in the boat there was a man too many. Nor would he have wondered, had he been told of it. For it was not his place to wonder. He was only sleepy, and desired to lie down after the long night alone. Also he hoped that they had had a good catch of fish, so that he would escape being beaten. For indeed he had taken the best of the polenta for himself before the men came--which was as well, for if he had waited till they were finished, there had been but dog's leavings for him. He was a wise boy, this, when it came to eating. Now, eating and philosophy come by nature, as doth also a hungry stomach; but arithmetic and Greek do not come by nature. To which Henry Fenwick presently agreed.

The men went in with a good appetite to their breakfast, and left the dead man sitting alone in the prow with his hand on his brow.

So when they sat down, the boy said--

"Why does not the other man come in? I see him sitting there. Are you not going to bring him in to breakfast also?" (For he wished to show that he had not eaten any of the polenta.)

Then, for a jest upon him, one of the men answered--

"Why, is the man not here? He is indeed a heavy sleeper. You had better go and wake him."

So the little boy went to the door and called, shouting loud, "Why cannot you come to breakfast? It has been ready this hour, and is going cold!"

And when the men within heard that, they thought it the best jest in a month of Sundays, and they laughed loud and strong.

So the boy came in and said--"What ails the man? He will not answer though I have called my best."

"Oh" said they, "he is but a deaf old fool, and has had too much to drink over-night. Go thou and swear bad words at him, and call him beast and fool!"

So the men put wicked words into the boy's mouth, and laughed the more to hear them come from the clean and innocent lips of a lad that knew not their meaning. And perhaps that is the reason of what followed.

So the boy ran in again.

"Come out quickly, one of you," said the lad, "and wake him, for he does not heed me, and I am sure that there is something the matter with him. Mayhap he hath a headache or evil in his stomach."

So they laughed again, hardly being able to eat for laughing, and said--

"It must be cramp of the stomach that is the matter with him. But go out again, and shake him by the leg, and ask him if he means to keep us waiting here till doomsday."

So the boy went out and shook the man as he was bidden.

Then the dead man turned to him, sitting up in the prow as natural as life, and said--

"What do you want with me?"

"Why in the name of the saints do you not come?" said the boy; "the men want to know if they are to wait till doomsday for you."

"Tell them," said the man, "that I am coming as fast as I can. For this is Doomsday!" said he.

The boy ran back into the hut, well pleased. For a moment his voice could not be heard, because of the noisy laughter of the men. Then he said--

"It is all right. He says he is coming."

Then the men thought that the boy was trying in his turn to put a jest on them, and would have beaten him. In a moment, however, they heard something coming slowly up the ladder, so they laughed no more, but all turned very pale and sat still and listened. And only the boy remembered to cross himself.

The footsteps came nearer. The door was pushed stumblingly open, as by one that fumbles and is not sure of his way. Then the man that had been dead and drowned, of whom they had made their sport, came in and sat down at the boy's place, the seventh at the table. Whereupon there was a great silence. None spoke, but all looked; for none, save the boy only, could withdraw his eyes from those of the dead man. Colder and chillier flowed the blood in their veins, till it ceased to flow at all, and froze about their hearts.

Whereat the boy flung himself shrieking into a boat and rowed away by the power of his own saint, Santa Caterina of Siena. He met some fishermen in a sailing boat, but it was the third day before any dared row to the lonely Casa on the mud bank. When they did go, three men climbed up the posts at different sides, for the ladder had fallen away. They went not in, but only looked through the window. They saw indeed six men, who sat round the platter of cold polenta. But the seventh, who sat at the bottom in the boy's place, shone as though he had been on fire, leaning back in his chair as one that laughed and made merry at a jest. But the six were fallen silent and very sober.

So the three men that looked fell back from off the platform into the water as dead men; and had not their companions been active men of Malamocco, they too had been drowned. So there to this day in the lonely Casa of the Seven Dead Men the six are sitting, and the fiery seventh at the table-foot, in the boy's place--until the Day comes that is Doomsday, which is the last day of all.

CHAPTER IV

THE SINFUL VILLAGE OF SPELLINO

This was the story we told, and there was not a face among the audience that did not blanch, and in that village there were undoubtedly some who that night did not sleep.

Now, the success of the story of the Seven Dead Men was great, surprising, embarrassing. For as soon as we ceased the children ran off to their homes to bring their mothers, who also had to hear. So we had to tell as before, without the alteration of a word.

Then home from the meadow pastures where they had been mowing, past the ripening grain, the fathers came, ill-pleased to find the dinner still not ready. Then these in their turn had to be fetched, and the story told from the beginning. Yea, and did we vary so much as the droop of a hair on the wet beard of the drowned man as he tumbled in the swirl of the lagoon where the Brenta meets the tide, a dozen voices corrected us, and we were warned to be careful. A reputation so sudden and tremendous is, at its beginning, somewhat brittle.

The group about the well now included almost every able-bodied person in the village, and several of the cripples, who cried out if any pushed upon them. Into the midst of this inward-bent circle of heads the village priest elbowed his way, a short and rotund father, with a frown on his face which evidently had no right there.

"Story-tellers!" he exclaimed. "There is no need for such in my village. We grow our own. Thou, Beppo, art enough for a municipality, and thou, Andrea. But what have we here?"

He paused open-mouthed. He had expected the usual whining, mumping beggar; and lo, here were two well-attired forestieri with their packs on their backs and their hats upon their heads. But we stood up, and in due form saluted the father, keeping our hats in our hands till he, pleased at this recognition and deference before his flock, signed to us courteously to put them on again.

After this, nothing would do but we must go with him to his house and share with him a bottle of the noble wine of Montepulciano.

"It is the wine of my brother, who is there in the cure of souls," he said. "Ah, he is a judge of wine, my brother. It is a fine place, not like this beast of a village, inhabited by bad heretics and worse Catholics."

"Bad Protestants--who are they?" I said, for I had been reared in the belief that all Protestants were good--except, perhaps, they were English Episcopalians. Specially all Protestants in the lands of Rome were good by nature.

The priest looked at us with a question in his eye.

"You are of the Church, it may be?" asked he, evidently thinking of our reverence at the well-stoop.

We shook our heads.

"It matters not," said the easy father; "you are, I perceive, good Christians. Not like these people of Spellino, who care neither for priest nor pastor."

"There he goes," said the priest, pointing out of the window at a man in plain and homely black who went by--the sight of whom, as he went, took me back to the village streets of Dullarg when I saw the minister go by. I had a sense that I ought to have been out there with him, instead of sitting in the presbytery of the Pope's priest. But the father thought not of that, and the Montepulciano was certainly most excellent. "A bad, bad village," said the father, looking about him as if in search of something.

"Margherita!" he cried suddenly.

An old woman appeared, dropping a bleared courtesy, unlike her queenly name.

"What have you for dinner, Margherita?

"Enough for one; not enough for three, and they hungry off the road," she said. "If thou, O father, art about to feed the lazzaroni of the north and south thou must at least give some notice, and engage another servant!"

"Nay, good Margherita," answered the priest very meekly, "there is enough boiled fowl and risotto of liver and rice to serve half a score of appetites. See to it," he said.

Margherita went grumbling away. What with beggars and leaping dogs, besides children crawling about the steps, it was ill living in such a presbytery--one also which was at any rate so old that no one could keep it clean, though they laboured twenty-four hours in the day--ay, and rose betimes upon the next day.

As the lady said, the place was old. Father Philip told us that it had been the wing of a monastery.

"See," he said, "I will show you."

So saying, he led us through a wide, cool, dusky place, with arched roof and high windows, the walls blotched and peeling, with the steam of many monkish dinners. The doors had been mostly closed up, and only at one side did an open window and archway give glimpses of pillared cloisters and living green. We begged that we might sit out here, which the priest gladly allowed, for the sight of the green grass and the tall white lilies standing amid was a mighty refreshment in the hot noontide. Sunshine flickered through the mulberry and one grey cherry-tree, and sifted down on the grass.

Then the priest told us all the sin of the villagers of Spellino. It was not that a remnant of the Waldenses was allowed to live there. The priest did not object to good Waldensians. But the people of Spellino would neither pay priest nor pastor. They were infidels.

"A bad people, an accursed people!" he repeated. "I have not had my dues for ten years as I ought. I send my agent to collect; and as soon as he appears, every family that is of the religion turns heretic. Not a child can sign the sign of the Cross, not though I baptized every one of them. All the men belong to the church of Pastor Gentinetta, and can repeat his catechism."

The priest paused and shook his head.

"A bad people! a bad people!" he said over and over again. Then he smiled, with some sense of the humour of the thing.

"But there are many ways with bad people," he said; "for when my good friend, Pastor Gentinetta, collects his stipend, and the blue envelopes of the Church are sent round, what a conversion ensues to Holy Church! Lo, there is a crucifix in every house in Spellino, save in one or two of the very faithful, who are so poor that they have nothing to give. Each child blesses himself as he goes in. Each bambino has the picture of its patron saint swung about its neck. The men are out at the festa, the women not home from confession, and there is not a soldo for priest or pastor in all this evil village of Spellino!"

Father Philip paused to chuckle in some admiration at such abounding cleverness in his parish.

"How then do you live, either of you?" I asked, for the matter was certainly curious.

The father looked at us.

"You are going on directly?" he said, in a subdued manner.

"Immediately," we said, "when we have tired out your excellent hospitality."

"Then I shall tell you. The manner of it is this. My friend Gentinetta;--he is my friend, and an excellent one in this world, though it is likely that our paths may not lie together in the next, if all be true that the Pope preaches. We two have a convention, which is private and not to be named. It is permitted to circumvent the wicked, and to drive the reluctant sheep by innocent craft.

"Now, Pastor Gentinetta has the advantage of me during the life of his people. It is indeed a curious thing that these heretics are eager to partake of the untransformed and unblessed sacraments, which are no sacraments. It is the strangest thing! I who preach the truth cannot drive my people with whips of scorpions to the blessed sacraments of Holy Church. They will not go for whip or cord. But these heretics will mourn for days if they be not admitted to their table of communion. It is one of the mysterious things of God. But, after all, it is a lucky thing," soliloquised Father Philip; "for what does my friend do when they come to him for their cards of communion, but turns up his book of stipend and statute dues. Says he--'My friend, such and such dues are wanting. A good Christian cannot sit down at the sacrament without clearing himself with God, and especially with His messenger.' So there he has them, and they pay up, and often make him a present besides. For such threats my rascals would not care one black and rotten fig."

"But how," said I in great astonishment, "does this affect you?"

"Gently and soothly," said the priest. "Wait and ye shall hear. If the pastor has the pull over me in life, when it comes to sickness, and the thieves get the least little look within the Black Doors that only open the one way--I have rather the better of my friend. It is my time then. My fellows indeed care no button to come to holy sacrament. They need to be paid to come. But, grace be to God for His unspeakable mercy, Holy Church and I between us have made them most consumedly afraid of the world that is to come. And with reason!"

Father Philip waited to chuckle.

"But Gentinetta's people have everything so neatly settled for them long before, that they part content without so much as a 'by your leave' or the payment of a death-duty. Not so, however, the true believer. He hath heard of Purgatory and the warmth and comfort thereof. Of the other place, too, he has heard. He may have scorned and mocked in his days of lightsome ease, but down below in the roots of his heart he believes. Oh, yes, he believes and trembles; then he sends for me, and I go!

"'Confession--it is well, my son! extreme unction, the last sacraments of the Church--better and better! But, my son, there is some small matter of tithes and dues standing in my book against thy name. Dost thou wish to go a debtor before the Judge? Alas! how can I give thee quittance of the heavenly dues, when thou hast not cleared thyself of the dues of earth?' Then there is a scramble for the old canvas bag from its hiding-place behind the ingle-nook. A small remembrance to Holy Church and to me, her minister, can do no harm, and may do much good. Follows confession, absolution--and, comforted thus, the soul passes; or bides to turn Protestant the next time that my assessor calls. It matters not; I have the dues."

"But," said I, "we have here two things that are hard to put together. In a time of health, when there is no sickness in the land, thou must go hungry. And when sickness comes, and the pastor's flock are busy with their dying, they will have no time to go to communion. How are these things arranged?"

"Even thus," replied Father Philip. "It is agreed upon that we pool the proceeds and divide fairly, so that our incomes are small but regular. Yet, I beseech thee, tell it not in this municipality, nor yet in the next village; for in the public places we scowl at one another as we pass by, Pastor Gentinetta and I."

"And which is earning the crust now?" said I.

The jovial priest laughed, nodding sagely with his head.

"Gentinetta hath his sacraments on Tuesday, and his addresses to his folk have been full of pleasant warnings. It will be a good time with us."

"And when comes your turn?" cried Henry, who was much interested by this recital.

"There cometh at the end of the barley harvest, by the grace of God, a fat time of sickness, when many dues are paid; and when the addresses from the altar of this Church of Sant Philip are worth the hearing."

The old priest moved the glass of good wine at his elbow, the fellow of the Montepulciano he had set at ours.

"A bad town this Spellino," he muttered; "but I, Father Philip, thank the saints--and Gentinetta, he thanks his mother, for the wit which makes it possible for poor servants of God to live."

The old servant thrust her head within.

"Tonino Scala is very sick," she said, "and calleth for thee!"

The priest nodded, rose from his seat, and took down a thick leather-bound book.

"Lire thirty-six," he said--"it is well. It begins to be my time. This week Gentinetta and his younglings shall have chicken-broth."

So with heartiest goodwill we bade our kind Father Philip adieu, and fared forth upon our way.

CHAPTER V

THE COUNTESS CASTEL DEL MONTE

After leaving Spellino we went downhill. There was a plain beneath, but up on the hillside only the sheep were feeding contentedly, all with their broad-tailed sterns turned to us. The sun was shining on the white diamond-shaped causeway stones which led across a marshy place. We came again to the foot of the hill. It had indeed been no more than a dividing ridge, which we had crossed over by Spellino.

We saw the riband of the road unwind before us. One turn swerved out of sight, and one alone. But round this curve, out of the unseen, there came toward us the trampling of horses. A carriage dashed forward, the coachman's box empty, the reins flying wide among the horses' feet. There was but little time for thought; yet as they passed I caught at their heads, for I was used to horses. Then I hung well back, allowing myself to be jerked forward in great leaps, yet never quite loosing my hold. It was but a chance, yet a better one than it looked.

At the turn of the road towards Spellino I managed to set their heads to the hill, and the steep ascent soon brought the stretching gallop of the horses to a stand-still.

It seemed a necessary thing that there should be a lady inside. I should have been content with any kind of lady, but this one was both fair and young, though neither discomposed nor terrified, as in such cases is the custom.

"I trust Madame is not disarranged," I said in my poor French, as I went from the horses' heads to the carriage and assisted the lady to alight.

"It serves me right for bringing English horses here without a coachman to match," she said in excellent English. "Such international misalliances do not succeed. Italian horses would not have startled at an old beggar in a red coat, and an English coachman would not have thrown down the reins and jumped into the ditch. Ah, here we have our Beppo"--she turned to a flying figure, which came labouring up hill. To him the lady gave the charge of the panting horses, to me her hand.

"I must trouble you for your safe-conduct to the hotel," she said. Now, though her words were English, her manner of speech was not.

By this time Henry had come up, and him I had to present, which was like to prove a difficulty to me, who did not yet know the name of the lady. But she, seeing my embarrassment, took pity on me, saying--

"I am the Countess Castel del Monte," looking at me out of eyes so broadly dark, that they seemed in certain lights violet, like the deeps of the wine-hearted Greek sea.

By this time Beppo had the horses well under control, and at the lady's invitation we all got into the carriage. She desired, she said, that her brother should thank us.

We went upwards, turning suddenly into a lateral valley. Here there was an excellent road, better than the Government highway. We had not driven many miles when we came in sight of a house, which seemed half Italian palazzo and half Swiss cottage, yet which had nevertheless an undefined air of England. There were balconies all about it, and long rows of windows.

It did not look like a private house, and Henry and I gazed at it with great curiosity. For me, I had already resolved that if it chanced to be a hotel, we should lodge there that night.

The Countess talked to us all the way, pointing out the objects of interest in the long row of peaks which backed the Val Bergel with their snows and flashing Alpine steeps. I longed to ask a question, but dared not. "Hotel" was what she had said, yet this place had scarcely the look of one. But she afforded us an answer of her own accord.

"You must know that my brother has a fancy of playing at landlord," she said, looking at us in a playful way. "He has built a hostel for the English and the Italians of the Court. It was to be a new Paris, was it not so? And no doubt it would have been, but that the distance was over great. It was indeed almost a Paris in the happy days of one summer. But since then I have been almost the only guest."

"It is marvellously beautiful," I replied. "I would that we might be permitted to become guests as well."

"As to that, my brother will have no objections, I am sure," replied the Countess, "specially if you tell your countrymen on your return to your own country. He counts on the English to get him his money back. The French have no taste for scenery. They care only for theatres and pretty women, and the Italians have no money--alas! poor Castel del Monte!"

I understood that she was referring to her husband, and said hastily--

"Madame is Italian?"

"Who knows?" she returned, with a pretty, indescribable movement of her shoulders. "My father was a Russian of rank. He married an Englishwoman. I was born in Italy, educated in England. I married an Italian of rank at seventeen; at nineteen I found myself a widow, and free to choose the world as my home. Since then I have lived as an Englishwoman expatriated--for she of all human beings is the freest."

I looked at her for explanation. Henry, whose appreciation of women was for the time-being seared by his recent experience of Madame of the Red Eyelids, got out to assist Beppo with the horses. In a little I saw him take the reins. We were going slowly uphill all the time.

"In what way," I said, "is the Englishwoman abroad the freest of all human beings?"

"Because, being English, she is supposed to be a little mad at any rate. Secondly, because she is known to be rich, for all English are rich. And, lastly, because she is recognised to be a woman of sense and discretion, having the wisdom to live out of her own country."

We arrived on the sweep of gravel before the door. I was astonished at the decorations. Upon a flat plateau of small extent, which lay along the edge of a small mountain lake, gravelled paths cut the green sward in every direction. The waters of the lake had been carefully led here and there, in order apparently that they might be crossed by rustic bridges which seemed transplanted from an opera. Little windmills made pretty waterwheels to revolve, which in turn set in motion mechanical toys and models of race-courses in open booths and gaily painted summer-houses.

"You must not laugh," said the Countess gravely, seeing me smile, "for this, you must know, is a mixture of the courts of Italy and Russia among the Alps. It is to my brother a very serious matter. To me it is the Fair of Asnieres and the madhouse at Charenton rolled into one."

I remarked that she did the place scant justice.

"Oh," she said, "the place is lovely enough, and in a little while one becomes accustomed to the tomfoolery."

We ascended the steps. At the top stood a small dark man, with a flash in his eyes which I recognised as kin to the glance which Madame the Countess shot from hers, save that the eyes of the man were black as jet.

"These gentlemen," said the Countess, "are English. They are travelling for their pleasure, and one of them stopped my stupid horses when the stupider Beppo let them run away, and jumped himself into the ditch to save his useless skin. You will thank the gentlemen for me, Nicholas."

The small dark man bowed low, yet with a certain reserve.

"You are welcome, messieurs," he said in English, spoken with a very strong foreign accent. "I am greatly in your debt that you have been of service to my sister."

He bowed again to both of us, without in the least distinguishing which of us had done the service, which I thought unfair.

"It is my desire," he went on more freely, as one that falls into a topic upon which he is accustomed to speak, "that English people should be made aware of the beauty of this noble plateau of Promontonio. It is a favourable chance which brings you here. Will you permit me to show you the hotel?"

He paused as though he felt the constraint of the circumstances. "Here, you understand, gentlemen, I am a hotel-keeper. In my own country--that is another matter. I trust, gentlemen, I may receive you some day in my own house in the province of Kasan."

"It will make us but too happy," said I, "if in your capacity as landlord you can permit us to remain a few days in this paradise."

I saw Henry look at me in some astonishment; but his training forbade him to make any reply, and the little noble landlord was too obviously pleased to do more than bow. He rang a bell and called a very distinguished gentleman in a black dress-coat, whose spotless attire made our rough outfit look exceedingly disreputable, and the knapsacks upon our backs no less than criminal. We decided to send at once to Vico Averso for our baggage.

But these very eccentricities riveted the admiration of our distinguished host, for only the mad English would think of tramping through the Val Bergel in the heart of May with a donkey's load on their backs. Herr Gutwein, a mild, spectacled German, and the manager of this cosmopolitan palace, was instructed to show us to the best rooms in the house. From him we learned that the hotel was nearly empty, but that it was being carried on at great loss, in the hope of ultimate success.

We found it indeed an abode of garish luxury. In the great salon, the furniture was crimson velvet and gold. All the chairs were gilt. The very table-legs were gilded. There were clocks chiming and ticking everywhere, no one of them telling the right time. In the bedrooms, which were lofty and spacious, there were beautiful canopies, and the most recent improvements for comfort. The sitting-rooms had glass observatories built out, like swallows' nests plastered against the sides of the house. Blue Vallauris vases were set in the corners and filled with flowers. Turkey carpets of red and blue covered the floor. Marvellous gold-worked tablecloths from Smyrna were on the tables. Everywhere there was a tinge of romance made real--the dream of many luxuries and civilisations transplanted and etherealised among the mountains.

Then, when we had asked the charges for the rooms and found them exceedingly reasonable, we received from the excellent Herr Gutwein much information.

The hotel was the favourite hobby of Count Nicholas. It was the dream of his life that he should make it pay. While he lived in it, he paid tariff for his rooms and all that he had. His sister also did the same, and all her suite. Indeed, the working expenses were at present paid by Madame the Countess of Castel del Monte, who was a half-sister of Count Nicholas, and much younger. The husband of Madame was dead some years. She had been married when no more than a girl to an Italian of thrice her age. He, dying in the second year of their marriage, had left her free to please herself as to what she did with her large fortune. Madame was rich, eccentric, generous; but to men generally more than a little sarcastic and cold.

At dinner that night Count Nicholas took the head of the table, while Dr. Carson, the resident English physician, sat at his left hand, and Madame at his right. I sat next to the Countess, and Henry Fenwick next to the doctor. We made a merry party. The Count opened for us a bottle of Forzato and another of Sassella, of the quaint, untranslatable bouquet which will not bear transportation over the seas, and to taste which you must go to the Swiss confines of the Valtellina.

"Lucia," said Count Nicholas, "you will join me in a bottle of the Straw wine in honour of the stopping of the horses; and you will drink to the health of these gentlemen who are with us, to whom we owe so much." Afterwards we drank to Madame, to the Count himself, and to the interests of science in the person of the doctor. Then finally we pledged the common good of the hotel and kursaal of the Promontonio.

The Countess was dressed in some rose-coloured fabric, thickly draped with black lace, through whose folds the faint pink blush struggled upward with some suggestion of rose fragrance, so sheathed was she in close-fitting drapery. She looked still a very girl, though there was the slower grace of womanhood in the lissom turn of her figure, slender and svelte. Her blue-black hair had purple lights in it. And her great dark violet eyes were soft as La Valliere's. I know not why, but to myself I called her from that moment, "My Lady of the Violet Crown." There was a passion-flower in her hair, and on her pale face her lips, perfectly shaped, lay like the twin petals of a geranium flower fallen a little apart.

Dinner was over. The lingering lights of May were shining through the hill gaps, glorifying the scant woods and the little mountain lake. Henry Fenwick and the Count were soon deep in shooting and breechloaders. Presently they disappeared in the direction of the Count's rooms to examine some new and beautiful specimens more at their leisure.

In an hour Henry came rushing back to us in great excitement.

"I have written for all my things from Lago d'Istria," he said, "and I am getting my guns from home. There is some good shooting, the Count says. Do you object to us staying here a little time?"

I did not contradict him, for indeed such a new-born desire to abide in one place was at that moment very much to my mind. And though I could not conceive what, save rabbits, there could be to shoot in May on a sub-Alpine hillside, I took care not to say a word which might damp my pupil's excellent enthusiasms.

CHAPTER VI

LOVE ME A LITTLE--NOT TOO MUCH

I stood by the wooden pillars of the wide piazza and watched the stars come out. Presently a door opened and the Countess appeared. She had a black shawl of soft lace about her head, which came round her shoulders and outlined her figure.

I knew that this must be that mantilla of Spain of which I had read, and which I had been led to conceive of as a clumsy and beauty-concealing garment, like the yashmak of the Turks. But the goodliness of the picture was such that in my own country I had never seen green nor grey which set any maid one-half so well.

"Let us walk by the lake," she said, "and listen to the night."

So quite naturally I offered her my arm, and she took it as though it were a nothing hardly to be perceived. Yet in Galloway of the hills it would have taken me weeks even to conceive myself offering an arm to a beautiful woman. Here such things were in the air. Nevertheless was my heart beating wildly within me, like a bird's wings that must perforce pulsate faster in a rarer atmosphere. So I held my arm a little wide of my side lest she should feel my heart throbbing. Foolish youth! As though any woman does not know, most of all one who is beautiful. So there on my arm, light and white as the dropped feather of an angel's wing, her hand rested. It was bare, and a diamond shone upon it.

The lake was a steel-grey mirror where it took the light of the sky. But in the shadows it was dark as night. The evening was very still, and only the Thal wind drew upward largely and contentedly.

"Tell me of yourself!" she said, as soon as we had passed from under the shelter of the hotel.

I hesitated, for indeed it seemed a strange thing to speak to so great a lady concerning the little moorland home, of my mother, and all the simple people out there upon the hills of sheep.

The Countess looked up at me, and I saw a light shine in the depths of her eyes.

"You have a mother--tell me of her!" she said.

So I told her in simple words a tale which I had spoken of to no one before--of slights and scorns, for she was a woman, and understood. It came into my mind as I spoke that as soon as I had finished she would leave me; and I slackened my arm that she might the more easily withdraw her hand. But yet I spoke on faithfully, hiding nothing. I told of our poverty, of the struggle with the hill-farm and the backward seasons, of my mother who looked over the moorland with sweet tired eyes as for some one that came not. I spoke of the sheep that had been my care, of the books I had read on the heather, and of all the mystery and the sadness of our life.

Then we fell silent, and the shadows of the sadness I had left behind me seemed to shut out the kindly stars. I would have taken my arm away, but that the Countess drew it nearer to herself, clasping her hands about it, and said softly--

"Tell me more--" and then, after a little pause, she added, "and you may call me Lucia! For have you not saved my life?"

Like a dream the old Edinburgh room, where with Giovanni Turazza I read the Tuscan poets, came to me. An ancient rhyme was in my head, and ere I was aware I murmured--

"Saint Lucy of the Eyes!"

The Countess started as if she had been stung.

"No, not that--not that," she said; "I am not good enough."

There was some meaning in the phrase to her which was not known to me.

"You are good enough to be an angel--I am sure," I said--foolishly, I fear.

There was a little silence, and a waft of scented air like balm--I think the perfume of her hair, or it may have been the roses clambering on the wall. I know not. We were passing some.

"No," she said, very firmly, "not so, nor nearly so--only good enough to desire to be better, and to walk here with you and listen to you telling of your mother."

We walked on thus till we heard the roar of the Trevisa falls, and then turned back, pacing slowly along the shore. The Countess kept her head hid beneath the mantilla, but swayed a little towards me as though listening. And I spoke out my heart to her as I had never done before. Many of the things I said to her then, caused me to blush at the remembrance of them for many days after. But under the hush of night, with her hands pressing on my arm, the perfume of flowers in the air, and a warm woman's heart beating so near mine, it is small wonder that I was not quite myself. At last, all too soon, we came to the door, and the Countess stood to say good-night.

"Good-night!" she said, giving me her hand and looking up, yet staying me with her great eyes; "good-night, friend of mine! You saved my life to-day, or at least I hold it so. It is not much to save, and I did not value it highly, but you were not to know that. You have told me much, and I think I know more. You are young. Twenty-three is childhood. I am twenty-six, and ages older than you. Remember, you are not to fall in love with me. You have never been in love, I know. You do not know what it is. So you must not grow to love me--or, at least, not too much. Then you will be ready when the True Love that waits somewhere comes your way."

She left me standing without a word. She ran up the steps swiftly. On the topmost she poised a moment, as a bird does for flight.

"Good-night, Douglas!" she said. "Stephen is a name too common for you--I shall call you Douglas. Remember, you must love me a little--but not too much."

I stood dull and stupid, in a maze of whirling thought. My great lady had suddenly grown human, but human of a kind that I had had no conception of. Only this morning I had been opening the stores of very chill wisdom to my pupil, Henry Fenwick of Allerton. Yet here, long ere night was at its zenith, was I, standing amazed, trying under the stars to remember exactly what a woman had said, and how she looked when she said it.

"To love her a little--yet not to love her too much."

That was the difficult task she had set me. How to perform I knew not.

At the top of the steps I met Henry.

"Do you think that we need go on to-morrow morning?" he said. "Do you not think we are in a very good quarter of the world, and that we might do worse than stop a while?"

"If you wish it, I have no objections," I said, with due caution.

"Thank you!" he said, and ran off to give some further directions about his guns.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEW DAY

It need not be wondered at that during the night I slept little. It seemed such a strange thing which had happened to me. That a great lady should lean upon my arm--a lady of whom before that day I had never heard--seemed impossible to my slow-moving Scots intelligence.

I sat most of the night by my window, from which I looked down the valley. The moonlight was filling it. The stars tingled keen and frosty above. Lucent haze of colourless pearl-grey filled the chasm. On the horizon there was a flush of rose, in the midst of which hung a snowy peak like a wave arrested when it curves to break, and on the upmost surge of white winked a star.

I opened the casement and flung it back. The cool, icy air of night took hold on me. I listened. There came from below the far sound of falling waters. Nearer at hand a goat bleated keenly. A dull, muffled sound, vast and mysterious, rose slumberously. I remembered that I was near to the great Alps. Without doubt it was the rumble of an avalanche.

But more than all these things,--under this roof, closed within the white curtains, was the woman who with her well-deep, serene eyes had looked into my life.

"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow!" I said to myself, seeing the possibilities waver and thicken before me. So I went to my bed, leaving the window open, and after a time slept.

But very early I was astir. The lake lay asleep. The shadows in its depths dreamed on untroubled. There was not the lapse of a wavelet on the shore. The stars diminished to pin-points, and wistfully withdrew themselves into the coming mystery of blue. Behind the eastern mountains the sun rose--not yet on us who were in the valley, but flooding the world overhead with intense light. On the second floor a casement opened and a blind was drawn aside. There was nothing more--a serving-maid, belike. But my heart beat tumultuously.

Nova dies indeed, but I fear me not nova quies. But when ever to a man was love a synonym for quietness? Quietness is rest. Rest is embryonic sleep. Sleep is death's brother. But, contrariwise, love to a man is life--new life. Life is energy--the opening of new possibilities, the breaking of ancient habitudes. Sulky self-satisfactions are hunted from their lair. Sloth is banished, selfishness done violence to with swiftest poniard-stroke.

Again, even to a passionate woman love is rest. That low sigh which comes from her when, after weary waiting, at last her lips prove what she has long expected, is the sigh for rest achieved. There is indeed nothing that she does not know. But, for her, knowledge is not enough--she desires possession. The poorest man is glorified when she takes him to her heart. She desires no longer to doubt and fret--only to rest and to be quiet. A woman's love when she is true is like a heaven of Sabbaths. A man's, at his best, like a Monday morn when the work of day and week begins. For love, to a true man, is above all things a call to work. And this is more than enough of theory.

Once I was in a manufacturing city when the horns of the factories blew, and in every street there was the noise of footsteps moving to the work of the day. It struck me as infinitely cheerful. All these many men had the best of reasons for working. Behind them, as they came out into the chill morning air, they shut-to the doors upon wife and children. Why should they not work? Why should they desire to be idle? Had I, methought, such reasons and pledges for work, I should never be idle, and therefore never unhappy. For me, I choose a Monday morning of work with the whistles blowing, and men shutting their doors behind them. For that is what I mean by love.

All this came back to me as I walked alone by the lake while the day was breaking behind the mountains.

As though she had heard the trumpet of my heart calling her, she came. I did not see her till she was near me on the gravel path which leads to the chalet by the lake. There was a book of devotion in her hand. It was marked with a cross. I had forgotten my prayers that morning till I saw this.

Yet I hardly felt rebuked, for it was morning and the day was before me. With so much that was new, the old could well wait a little. For which I had bitterly to repent.

She looked beyond conception lovely as she came towards me. Taller than I had thought, for I had not seen her--you must remember--since. It seemed to me that in the night she had been recreated, and came forth fresh as Eve from the Eden sleep. Her eyelashes were so long that they swept her cheeks; and her eyes, that I had thought to be violet, had now the sparkle in them which you may see in the depths of the southern sea just where the sapphire changes into amethyst.

Did we say good-morning? I forget, and it matters little. We were walking together. How light the air was!--cool and rapturous like snow-chilled wine that is drunk beneath the rose at thirsty Teheran. The ground on which we trod, too, how strangely elastic! The pine-trees give out how good a smell! Is my heart beating at all, or only so fine and quick that I cannot count its pulsings?

What is she saying--this lady of mine? I am not speaking aloud--only thinking. Cannot I think?

She told me, I believe, why she had come out. I have forgotten why. It was her custom thus to walk in the prime. She had still the mantilla over her head, which, as soon as the sun looked over the eastern crest of the mountains, she let drop on her shoulders and so walked bareheaded, with her head carried a trifle to the side and thrown back, so that her little rounded chin was in the air.

"I have thought," she was saying when I came to myself, "all the night of what you told me of your home on the hills. It must be happiness of the greatest and most perfect, to be alone there with the voices of nature--the birds crying over the heather and the cattle in the fields."

"Good enough," I said, "it is for us moorland folk who know nothing better than each other's society--the bleating sheep to take us out upon the hills and the lamp-light streaming through the door as we return homewards."

"There is nothing better in this world!" said the Countess with emphasis.

But just then I was not at all of that mind.

"Ah, you think so," said I, "because you do not know the hardness of the life and its weary sameness. It is better to be free to wander where you will, in this old land of enchantments, where each morning brings a new joy and every sun a clear sky."

"You are young--young," she said, shaking her head musingly, "and you do not know. I am old. I have tried many ways of life, and I know."

It angered me thus to hear her speak of being old. It seemed to put her far from me I remembered afterwards that I spoke with some sharpness, like a petulant boy.

"You are not so much older than I, and a great lady cannot know of the hardness of the life of those who have to earn their daily bread."

She smiled in an infinitely patient way behind her eyelashes.

"Douglas," she said, "I have earned my living for more years than the difference of age that is between us."

I looked at her in amazement, but she went on--

"In my brother's country, which is Russia, we are not secure of what is our own, even for a day. We may well pray there for our daily bread. In Russia we learn the meaning of the Lord's Prayer."

"But have you not," I asked, "great possessions in Italy?"

"I have," the Countess said, "an estate here that is my own, and many anxieties therewith. Also I have, at present, the command of wealth--which I have never yet seen bring happiness. But for all, I would that I dwelt on the wide moors and baked my own bread."

I did not contradict her, seeing that her heart was set on such things; nevertheless, I knew better than she.

"You do not believe!" she said suddenly, for I think from the first she read my heart like a printed book. "You do not understand! Well, I do not ask you to believe. You do not know me yet, though I know you. Some day you will have proof!"

"I believe everything you tell me," I answered fervently.

"Remember," she said, lifting a finger at me--"only enough and not too much. Tell me what is your idea of the place where I could be happy."

This I could answer, for I had thought of it.

"In a town of clear rivers and marble palaces," I answered, "where there are brave knights to escort fair ladies and save them from harm. In a city where to be a woman is to be honoured, and to be young is to be loved."

"And you, young seer, that are of the moorland and the heather," she said, "where would you be in such a city?"

"As for me," I said, "I would stand far off and watch you as you passed by."

"Ah, Messer Dante Alighieri, do not make a mistake. I am no Beatrice. I love not chill aloofness. I am but Lucia, here to-day and gone to-morrow. But rather than all rhapsodies, I would that you were just my friend, and no further off than where I can reach you my hand and you can take it."

So saying, because we came to the little bridge where the pines meet overhead, she reached me her hand at the word; and as it lay in mine I stooped and kissed it, which seemed the most natural thing in the world to do.

She looked at me earnestly, and I thought there was a reproachful pity in her eyes.

"Friend of mine, you will keep your promise," she said. I knew well enough what promise it was that she meant.

"Fear not," I replied; "I promise and I keep."

Yet all the while my heart was busy planning how through all the future I might abide near by her side.

We turned and walked slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles with a pleasant clapping sound.

"See," she said, "here is my brother coming to meet us. Tell me if you have been happy this morning?"

"Oh," I said quickly, "happy!--you know that without needing to be told."

"No matter what I know," the Countess said, with a certain petulance, swift and lovable--"tell it me."

So I said obediently, yet as one that means his words to the full--

"I have been happier than ever I thought to be this morning!"

"Lucia!" she said softly--"say Lucia!"

"Lucia!" I answered to her will; yet I thought she did not well to try me so hard.

Then her brother came up briskly and heartily, like one who had been a-foot many hours, asking us how we did.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CRIMSON SHAWL

Henry Fenwick and the Count went shooting. He came and asked my leave as one who is uncertain of an answer. And I gave it guiltily, saying to myself that anything which took his mind off Madame Von Eisenhagen was certainly good. But there leaped in my heart a great hope that, in what remained of the day, I might again see the Countess.

I was grievously disappointed. For though I lounged all the afternoon in the pleasant spaces by the lake, only the servants, of the great empty hotel passed at rare intervals. Of Lucia I saw nothing, till the Count and Henry passed in with their guns and found me with my book.

"Have you been alone all the afternoon?" they said, innocently enough. And it was some consolation to answer "Yes," and so to receive their sympathy.

Henry came again to me after dinner. The Count was going over the hills to the Forno glacier, and had asked him; but he would not go unless I wished it. I bade him take my blessing and depart, and again he thanked me.

There was that night a band of thirty excellent performers to discourse music to the guests at the table--being, as the saw says, us four and no more. But the Count was greatly at his ease, and told us tales of the forests of Russia, of wolf-hunts, and of other hunts when the wolves were the hunters--tales to make the blood run cold, yet not amiss being recounted over a bottle of Forzato in the bright dining-room. For, though it was the beginning of May, the fire was sparkling and roaring upwards to dispel the chill which fell with the evening in these high regions.

There is talk of mountaineering and of the English madness for it. The Count and Henry Fenwick are on a side. Henry has been over long by himself on the Continent. He is at present all for sport. Every day he must kill something, that he may have something to show. The Countess is for the hills, as I am, and the elan of going ever upward. So we fall to talk about the mountains that are about us, and the Count says that it is an impossibility to climb them at this season of the year. Avalanches are frequent, and the cliffs are slippery with the daily sun-thaw congealing in thin sheets upon the rocks. He tells us that there is one peak immediately behind the hotel which yet remains unclimbed. It is the Piz Langrev, and it rises like a tower. No man could climb that mural precipice and live.

I tell them that I have never climbed in this country; but that I do not believe that there is a peak in, the world which cannot in some fashion or another be surmounted--time, money, and pluck being provided wherewith to do it.

"You have a fine chance, my friend," says the Count kindly, "for you will be canonised by the guides if you find a way up the front of the Langrev. They would at once clap on a tariff which would make their fortunes, in order to tempt your wise countrymen, who are willing to pay vast sums to have the risk of breaking their necks, yet who will not invest in the best property in Switzerland when it is offered to them for a song."

The Count is a little sore about his venture and its ill success.

The Countess, who sits opposite to me to-night, looks across and says, "I am sure that the peak can be climbed. If Mr. Douglas says so, it can."

"I thank you, Madame," I say, bowing across at her.

Whereat the other two exclaim. It is (they say) but an attempt on my part to claim credit with a lady, who is naturally on the side of the adventurous. The thing is impossible.

"Countess," say I, piqued by their insistency, "if you will give me a favour to be my drapeau de guerre, in twenty-four hours I shall plant your colours on the battlements of the Piz Langrev."

Certainly the Forzato had been excellent.

The Countess Lucia handed a crimson shawl, which had fallen back from her shoulders, and which now hung over the back of her chair, across the table to me.

"They are my colours!" she said, with a light in her eye as though she had been royalty itself.

Now, I had studied the Piz Langrev that afternoon, and I was sure it could be done. I had climbed the worst precipices in the Dungeon of Buchan, and looked into the nest of the eagle on the Clints of Craignaw. It was not likely that I would come to any harm so long as there was a foothold or an armhold on the face of the cliff. At least, my idiotic pique had now pledged me to the attempt, as well as my pride, for above all things I desired to stand well in the eyes of the Countess.

But when we had risen from table, and in the evening light took our walk, she repented her of the giving of the gage, and said that the danger was too great. I must forget it--how could she bear the anxiety of waiting below while I was climbing the rocks of the Piz Langrev? It pleased me to hear her say so, but for all that my mind was not turned away from my endeavour.

It was a foolish thing that I had undertaken, but it sprang upon me in the way of talk. So many follies are committed because we men fear to go back upon our word. The privilege of woman works the other way. Which is as well, for the world would come to a speedy end if men and women were to be fools according to the same follies.

The Countess was quieter to-night. Perhaps she felt that her encouragement had led me into some danger. Yet she had that sense of the binding nature of the "passed word," which is perhaps strongest in women who are by nature and education cosmopolitan. She did not any more persuade me against my attempt, and soon went within. She had said little, and we had walked along together for the most part silent. Methought the stars were not so bright to-night, and the glamour had gone from the bridge under which the water was dashing white.

I also returned, for I had my arrangements to make for the expedition. The weather did not look very promising, for the Thal wind was bringing the heavy mist-spume pouring over the throat of the pass, and driving past the hotel in thin hissing wisps on a chill breeze. However, even in May the frost was keen at night, and to-morrow might be a day after the climber's heart.

I sought the manager in his sanctum of polished wood--a comptoir where there was little to count. Managers were a fleeting race in the Kursaal Promontonio. The Count was a kind master. But he was a Russian, and a taskmaster like those of Egypt, in that he expected his managers to make the bricks of dividends without the straw of visitors. With him I covenanted to be roused at midnight.

Herr Gutwein was somewhat unwilling. He had not so many visitors that he could afford to expend one on the cliffs of the Piz Langrev.

I looked out on the lake and the mountains from the window of my room before I turned in. They did not look encouraging.

Hardly, it seemed, had my head touched the pillow, when "clang, clang" went some one on my door. "It is half-past twelve, Herr, and time to get up!"

I saw the frost-flowers on the window-pane, and shivered. Yet there was the laughter of Henry and the Count to be faced; and, above all, I had passed my word to Lucia.

"Well, I suppose I may as well get up and take a look at the thing, any way. Perhaps it may be snowing," I said, with a devout hope that the blinds of mist or storm might be drawn down close about the mountains.

But, pushing aside the green window-blind, I saw all the stars twinkling; and the broad moon, a little worm-eaten about the upper edge, was flinging a pale light over the Forno glacier and the thick pines that hide Lake Cavaloccia.

"Ah, it is cold!" I flung open the hot-air register, but the fires were out and the engineer asleep, for a draft of icy wind came up--direct from the snowfields. I slammed it down, for the mercury in my thermometer was falling so rapidly that I seemed to hear it tap-tapping on the bottom of the scale.

Below there was a sleepy porter, who with the utmost gruffness produced some lukewarm coffee, with stale, dry slices of over-night bread, and flavoured the whole with an evil-smelling lamp.

"Shriekingly cold, Herr; yes, it is so in here!" he said in answer to my complaints. "Yes--but, it is warm to what it will be up there outside."

The pack was donned. The double stockings, the fingerless woollen gloves were put on, and the earflaps of the cap were drawn down. The door was opened quietly, and the chill outer air met us like a wall.

"A good journey, my Herr!" said the porter, a mocking accent in his voice--the rascal.

I strode from under the dark shadow of the hotel, wondering if Lucia was asleep behind her curtains over the porch.

CHAPTER IX

THE PIZ LANGREV

Past the waterfall and over the bridge--our bridge--ran the path. As I turned my face to the mountain, there was a strange constricted feeling about one corner of my mouth, to which I put up a mittened hand. A small icicle fell tinkling down. My feet were now beginning to get a little warm, but I felt uncertain whether my ears were hot or cold. There was a strange unattached feeling about them. Had I not been reading somewhere of a mountaineer who had some such feeling? He put his hand to his ear and broke off a piece as one breaks a bit of biscuit. A horrid thought, but one which assuredly stimulates attention.

Then I took off one glove and rubbed the ear vigorously with the warm palm of my hand. There was a tingling glow, as though some one were striking lucifer matches all along the rim; soon there was no doubt that the circulation was effectually restored. En avant! Ears are useless things at the best.

I kept my head down, climbing steadily. But with the tail of my eye I could see that the hills had a sprinkling of snow--the legacy of the Thal wind which last night brought the moisture up the valley. Only the crags of the Piz Langrev were black above me, with a few white streaks in the crevices where the snow lies all the year. The cliffs were too steep for the snow to lie upon them, the season too far advanced for it to remain on the lower slopes.

The moon was lying over on her back, and the stars tingled through the frosty air. The lake lay black beneath on a grey world, plain as a blot of ink on a boy's copybook.

Yet I had only been climbing among the rocks a very few moments when every nerve was thrilling with warmth and all the arteries of the body were filled with a rushing tide of jubilant life. "This is noble!" I said to myself, as if I had never had a thought of retreat. A glow of heat came through my woollen gloves from the black rocks up which I climbed.

But I had gradually been getting out of the clear path on the face of the rocks into a kind of gully. I did not like the look of the place. There was a ground and polished look about the rocks at the sides which did not please me. I have seen the like among the Clints of Minnigaff, where the spouts of shingle make their way over the cliff. In the cleft was a kind of curious snow, dry like sand, creaking and binding together under foot--amazingly like pounded ice.

In the twinkling of an eye I had proof that I was right. There was a kind of slushy roaring above, a sharp crack or two as of some monster whip, and a sudden gust filled the gully. There was just time for me to throw myself sideways into a convenient cleft, and to draw feet up as close to chin as possible, when that hollow which had seemed my path, and high up the ravine on either side, was filled with tumbling, hissing snow, while the rocks on either side echoed with the musketry spatter of stones and ice-pellets.

I felt something cold on my temple. As the glove came down from touching it, there was a stain on the wool. A button of ice, no larger than a shilling, spinning on its edge, had neatly clipped a farthing's-worth out of the skin--as neatly as the house-surgeon of an hospital could do it.

At this point the story of a good Highland minister came up in my mind inopportunely, as these things will. He was endeavouring to steer a boat-load of city young ladies to a landing-place. A squall was bursting; the harbour was difficult. One of the girls annoyed him by jumping up and calling anxiously, "O, where are we going to? Where are we going to?" "If you do not sit down and keep still, my young leddy," said the minister-pilot succinctly, "that will verra greatly depend on how you was brocht up!"

The place at which I remembered this might have been a fine place for an observatory. It was not so convenient for reminiscence. Here the path ended. I was as far as Turn Back. I therefore tried more round to the right. The rocks were so slippery with the melted snow of yesterday that the nails in my boots refused to grip. But presently there, remained only a snow-slope, and a final pull up a great white-fringed bastion of rock. Here was the summit; and even as I reached it, over the Bernina the morning was breaking clear.

I took from my back the pine-branch which had been such a difficulty to me in the narrow places of the ascent; and with the first ray of the morning sun, from the summit of Langrev the pennon of the Countess Lucia streamed out. I thought of Manager Gutwein down there on the look-out, and I rejoiced that I had pledged him to secrecy.

Gutwein--there was a sound as of cakes and ale in the very name.

A little way beneath the summit, where the Thal wind does not vex, I sat me down on the sunny eastern side to consult with the Gutwein breakfast. A bottle of cold tea--"Hum," said I; "that may keep till I get farther down. It will be useful in case of emergency--there is nothing like cold tea in an emergency. Imprimis, half a bottle of Forzato--our old Straw wine. How thoughtless of Gutwein! He ought to have remembered that that particular sort does not keep. We had better take it now!" There was also half a chicken, some clove-scented Graubuendenfleisch, four large white rolls, crisp as an Engadine cook can make them, half a pound of butter in each--O excellent Gutwein--O great and judicious Gutwein!

But no more--for the sun was climbing the sky, and I must go down with a rush to be in time for the late breakfast of the hotel.

The rocks came first--no easy matter with the sun on them for half an hour; but they at last were successfully negotiated. Then came the long snow-slope. This we went down all sails set. I hear that the process is named glissading in this country. It is called hunker-sliding in Scotland among the Galloway hills--a favourite occupation of politicians. It added to the flavour that we might very probably finish all standing in a crevasse. Snow rushed past, flew up one's nose and froze there. It did not behave itself thus when we slid down Craig Ronald and whizzed out upon the smooth breast of Loch Grannoch. I was reflecting on this unwarrantable behaviour of the snow, when there came a bump, a somersault, a slide, a scramble. "Dear me!" I say; "how did this happen?" Ears, eyes, mouth, nose were full of fine powdered snow--also, there were tons down one's back. Cold as charity, but no great harm done.

The table was set for the dejeuner in the dining-room of the hotel. The Count was standing rubbing his hands. Henry, who had been shooting at a mark, came in smelling of gun-oil; and after a little pause of waiting came the Countess.

"Where," said the Count, "is our Alpinist?" Henry had not seen him that day. He was no doubt somewhere about. But Herr Gutwein smiled, and also the waiter. They knew something. There was a crying at the door. The porter, full of noisy admiration, rang the great bell as for an arrival. Gutwein disappeared. The Count followed, then came Lucia and Henry. At that moment I arrived, outwardly calm, with my clothes carefully dusted from travel-stains, all the equipment of the ascent left in the wayside chalet by the bridge. I gave an easy good-morning to the group, taking off my hat to Madame. The Count cried disdainfully that I was a slug-a-bed. Henry asked with obvious sarcasm if I had not been up the Piz Langrev. The Countess held out her hand in an uncertain way. Certainly I must have been very young, for all this gave me intense pleasure. Especially did my heart leap when I took the Countess to the window a little to the right, and, pointing with one hand upwards, put the Count's binocular into her hands. The sun of the mid-noon was shining on a black speck floating from the topmost cliff of the Piz Langrev. As she looked she flung out her hand to me, still continuing to gaze with the glass held in the other. She saw her own scarlet favour flying from the pine-branch. That cry of wonder and delight was better to me than the Victoria Cross. I was young then. It is so good to be young, and better to be in love.

CHAPTER X

THE PURPLE CHALET

Our life at the Kursaal Promontonio was full of change and adventure. For adventures are to the adventurous. In the morning we read quietly together, Henry and I, beginning as soon as the sun touched our balcony, and continuing three or four hours, with only such intermission as the boiling of our spirit-lamp and the making of cups of tea afforded to the steady work of the morning.

Then at breakfast-time the work of the day was over. We were ready to make the most of the long hours of sunshine which remained. Sometimes we rowed with Lucia and her brother on the lake, dreaming under the headlands and letting the boat drift among the pictured images of the mountains.

Oftener the Count and Henry would go to their shooting, or away on some of the long walks which they took in company.

One evening it happened that M. Bourget, the architect of the hotel, a bright young Belgian, was at dinner with us, and the conversation turned upon the illiberal policy of the new Belgian Government. Most of the guests at table were landowners and extreme reactionaries. The conversation took that insufferably brutal tone of repression at all hazards which is the first thought of the governing classes of a despotic country, when alarmed by the spread of liberal opinions.

I could see that both the Count and Lucia put a strong restraint upon themselves, for I knew that their sympathies were with the oppressed of their own nation. But the excitement of M. Bourget was painful to see. He could speak but little English (for out of compliment to us the Count and the others were speaking English); and though on several occasions he attempted to tell the company that matters in his country were not as they were being represented, he had not sufficient words to express his meaning, and so subsided into a dogged silence.

My own acquaintance with the political movements in Europe was not sufficient to enable me to claim any special knowledge; but I knew the facts of the Belgian dispute well enough, and I made a point of putting them clearly before the company. As I did so, I saw the Count lean towards me, his face whiter than usual and his eyes dark and intense. The Countess, too, listened very intently; but the architect could not keep his seat.

As soon as I had finished he rose, and, coming round to where I sat, offered me his hand.

"You have spoken well," he said; "you are my brother. You have said what I was not able to say myself."

On the next day the architect, to show his friendship, offered to take us all over a chalet which had been built on the cliffs above the Kursaal, of which very strange tales had gone abroad. The Count and Henry had not come back from one of their expeditions, so that only the Countess Lucia and myself accompanied M. Bourget.

As we went he told us a strange story. The chalet was built and furnished to the order of a German countess from Mannheim, who, having lost her husband, conceived that the light of her life had gone out, and so determined to dwell in an atmosphere of eternal gloom.

To the outer view there was nothing extraordinary about the place--a chalet in the Swiss-Italian taste, with wooden balconies and steep outside stairs.

M. Bourget threw open the outer door, to which we ascended by a wide staircase. We entered, and found ourselves in a very dark hall. All the woodwork was black as ebony, with silver lines on the panels. The floor was polished work of parquetry, but black also. The roof was of black wood. The house seemed to be a great coffin. Next we went into a richly furnished dining-room. There were small windows at both ends. The hangings here were again of the deepest purple--so dark as almost to be black. The chairs were upholstered in the same material. All the woodwork was ebony. The carpet was of thick folds of black pile on which the feet fell noiselessly. M. Bourget flung open the windows and let in some air, for it was close and breathless inside. I could feel the Countess shudder as my hand sought and found hers.

So we passed through room after room, each as funereal as the other, till we came to the last of all. It was to be the bedroom of the German widow. M. Bourget, with the instinct of his nation, had arranged a little coup de theatre. He flung open the door suddenly as we stood in one of the gloomy, black-hung rooms. Instantly our eyes were almost dazzled. This furthest room was hung with pure white. The carpet was white; the walls and roof white as milk. All the furniture was painted white. The act of stepping from the blackness of the tomb into this cold, chill whiteness gave me a sense of horror for which I could not account. It was like the horror of whiteness which sometimes comes to me in feverish dreams.

But I was not prepared for its effects upon the Countess.

She turned suddenly and clung to my arm, trembling violently.

"O take me away from this place!" she said earnestly.

M. Bourget was troubled and anxious, but I whispered that it was only the closeness of the rooms which made Madame feel a little faint. So we got her out quickly into the cool bright sunshine of the Alpine pastures. The Countess Lucia recovered rapidly, but it was a long while before the colour came back to her cheeks.

"That terrible, terrible place!" she said again and again. "I felt as though I were buried alive--shrouded in white, coffined in mort-cloths!"

CHAPTER XI

THE WHITE OWL

To distract her mind I told her tales of the grey city of the North where I had been colleged. I told of the bleak and biting winds which cut their way to the marrow of the bones. I described the students rich and poor, but mostly poor, swarming into the gaunt quadrangles, reading eagerly in the library, hasting grimly to be wise, posting hotfoot to distinction or to death. She listened with eyes intent. "We have something like that in Russia," she said; "but then, as soon as these students of ours become a little wise, they are cut off, or buried in Siberia." But I think that, with all her English speech and descent, Lucia never fully understood that these students of ours were wholly free to come or go, talk folly or learn sense, say and do good and evil, according to the freedom of their own wills. I told of our debating societies, where in the course of one debate there is often enough treason talked to justify Siberia--and yet, after all, the subject under discussion would only be, "Is the present Government worthy of the confidence of the country?"

"And then what happens? What does the Government say?" asked Lucia.

"Ah, Countess!" I said, "in my country the Government does not care to know what does not concern it. It sits aloft and aloof. The Government does not care for the chatter of all the young fools in its universities."

So in the tranced seclusion of this Alpine valley the summer of the year went by. The flowers carpeted the meadows, merging from pink and blue to crimson and russet, till with the first snow the Countess and her brother announced their intention of taking flight--she to the Court of the South, and he to his estates in the North.

The night before her departure we walked together by the lake. She was charmingly arrayed in a scarlet cloak lined with soft brown fur; and I thought--for I was but three-and-twenty--that the turned-up collar threw out her chin in an adorable manner. She looked like a girl. And indeed, as it proved, for that night she was a girl.

At first she seemed a little sad, and when I spoke of seeing her again at the Court of the South she remained silent, so that I thought she feared the trouble of having us on her hands there. So in a moment I chilled, and would have taken my hand from hers, had she permitted it. But suddenly, in a place where there are sands and pebbly beaches by the lakeside, she turned and drew me nearer to her, holding me meantime by the hand.

"You will not go and forget?" she said. "I have many things to forget. I want to remember this--this good year and this fair place and you. But you, with your youth and your innocent Scotland--you will go and forget. Perhaps you already long to go back thither."

I desired to tell her that I had never been so happy in my life. I might have told her that and more, but in her fierce directness she would not permit me.

"There is a maid who sits in one of the tall grey houses of which you speak, or among the moorland farms--sits and waits for you, and you write to her. You are always writing--writing. It is to that girl. You will pass away and think no more of Lucia!"

And I--what could or did I reply? I think that I did the best, for I made no answer at all, but only drew her so close to me that the adorable chin, being thrown out farther than ever, rested for an instant on my shoulder.

"Lucia," I said to her--"not Countess any more--little Saint Lucy of the Eyes, hear me. I am but a poor moorland lad, with little skill to speak of love; but with my heart I love you even thus--and thus--and thus."

And I think that she believed, for it comes natural to Galloway to make love well.

In the same moment we heard the sound of voices, and there were Henry and the Count walking to and fro on the terrace above us in the blessed dark, prosing of guns and battues and shooting.

Lucia trembled and drew away from me, but I put my finger to her lip and drew her nearer the wall, where the creepers had turned into a glorious wine-red. There we stood hushed, not daring to move; but holding close the one to the other as the feet of the promenaders waxed and waned above us. Their talk of birds and beasts came in wafts of boredom to us, thus standing hand in hand.

I shivered a little, whereat the Countess, putting a hand behind me, drew a fold of her great scarlet cloak round me protectingly as a mother might. So, with her mouth almost in my ear, she whispered, "This is delightful--is it not so? Pray, just hearken to Nicholas: 'With that I fired.' 'Then we tried the covert.' 'The lock jammed.' 'Forty-four brace.' Listen to the huntsmen! Shall we startle them with the horn, tra-la?" And she thrilled with laughter in my ear there in the blissful dark, till I had to put that over her mouth which silenced her.

"Hush, Lucy, they will hear! Be sage, littlest," I said in Italian, like one who orders, for (as I have said) Galloway even at twenty-three is no dullard in the things of love.

"Poor Nicholas!" she said again.

"Nay, poor Henry, say rather!" said I, as the footsteps drew away to the verge of the terrace, waxing fine and thin as they went farther from us.

"Hear me," said she. "I had better tell you now. Nicholas wishes me greatly to marry one high in power in our own country--one whose influence would permit him to go back to his home in Russia and live as a prince as before."

"But you will not--you cannot--" I began to say to her.

"Hush!" she said, laughing a little in my ear. "I certainly shall if you cry out like that"--for the footsteps were drawing nearer again. We leaned closer together against the parapet in the little niche where the creepers grew. And the dark grew more fragrant. She drew the great cloak about us both, round my head also. Her own was close to mine, and the touch of her hair thrilled me, quickening yet more the racing of my heart, and making me light-headed like unaccustomed wine.

"Countess!" I said, searching for words to thrill her heart as mine was thrilled already.

"Monsieur!" she replied, and drew away the cloak a little, making to leave me, but not as one that really intends to go.

"Lucia," I said hastily, "dear Lucy--"

"Ah!" she said, and drew the cloak about us again.

And what we said after that, is no matter to any.

But we forgot, marvel at it who will, to hearken to the footsteps that came and went. They were to us meaningless as the lapse of the waves on the shore, pattering an accompaniment above the soft sibilance of our whispered talk, making our converse sweeter.

Yet we had done well to listen a little.

"... I think it went in there," said the voice of the Count, very near to us and just above our heads. "I judge it was a white owl."

"I shall try to get it for the Countess!" said Henry.

Then I heard the most unmistakable, and upon occasion also the most thrilling, of sounds--the clicking of a well-oiled lock. My heart leapt within me--no longer flying in swift, light fashion like footsteps running, but bounding madly in great leaps.

Silently I swept the Countess behind me into the recess of the niche, forcing her down upon the stone seat, and bending my body like a shield over her.

In a moment Henry's piece crashed close at my ear, a keen pain ran like molten lead down my arm; and, spite of my hand upon her lips, Lucia gave a little cry. "I think I got it that time!" I heard Henry's voice say. "Count, run round and see. I shall go this way."

"Run, Lucy," I whispered, "they are coming. They must not find you."

"But you are hurt?" she said anxiously.

"No," I said, lying to her, as a man does so easily to a woman. "I am not at all hurt. Have I hurt you?"

For I had thrust her behind me with all my might.

"I cannot tell yet whether you have hurt me or not," she said. "You men of the North are too strong!"

"But they come. Run, Lucy, beloved!" I said.

CHAPTER XII

A NIGHT ASSAULT

And she melted into the night, swiftly as a bird goes. Then I became aware of flying footsteps. It seemed that I had better not be found there, lest I should compromise the Countess with her brother, and find myself with a duel upon my hands in addition to my other embarrassments. So I set my toes upon the little projections of the stone parapet, taking advantage of the hooks which confined the creepers, and clutching desperately with my hands, so that I scrambled to the top just as the Count and Henry met below.

"Strike a light, Count," I heard Henry say; "I am sure I hit something. I heard a cry."

A light flamed up. There was the rustling noise of the broad leaves of the creeper being pushed aside.

"Here is blood!" cried Henry. "I was sure I hit something that time!"

His tone was triumphant.

"I tell you what it is, Monsieur," said the calm voice of the Count: "if you go through the world banging off shots on the chance of shooting white owls which you do not see, you are indeed likely to hit something. But whether you will like it after it is hit, is another matter."

Then I went indoors, for my arm was paining me. In my own room I eagerly examined the wound. It was but slight. A pellet or two had grazed my arm and ploughed their way along the thickness of the skin, but none had entered deeply. So I wrapped my arm in a little lint and some old linen, and went to bed.

I did not again see the Countess till noon on the morrow, when her carriage was at the door and she tripped down the steps to enter.

The Count stood by it, holding the door for her to enter--I midway down the broad flight of steps.

"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand, from which she deftly drew the glove. "We shall meet again."

"God grant it! I live for that!" said I, so low that the Count did not hear, as I bent to kiss her hand. For in these months I had learned many things.

At this moment Henry came up to say farewell, and he shook her hand with boyish affectation of the true British indifference, which at that time it was the correct thing for Englishmen to assume at parting.

"Nice boy!" said the Countess indulgently, looking up at me. The Count bowed and smiled, and smiled and bowed, till the carriage drove out of sight.

Then in a moment he turned to me with a fierce and frowning countenance.

"And now, Monsieur, I have the honour to ask you to explain all this!"

I stood silent, amazed, aghast. There was in me no speech, nor reason. Yet I had the sense to be silent, lest I should say something maladroit.

A confidential servant brought a despatch. The Count impatiently flung it open, glanced at it, then read it carefully twice. He seemed much struck with the contents.

"I am summoned to Milan," he said, "and upon the instant. I shall yet overtake my sister. May I ask Monsieur to have the goodness to await me here that I may receive his explanations? I shall return immediately."

"You may depend that I shall wait," I said.

The Count bowed, and sprang upon the horse which his servant had saddled for him.

But the Count did not immediately return, and we waited in vain. No letter came to me. No communication to the manager of the hostel. The Count had simply ridden out of sight over the pass through which the Thal wind brought the fog-spume. He had melted like the mist, and, so far as we were concerned, there was an end. We waited here till the second snow fell, hardened, and formed its sleighing crust.

Then we went, for some society to Henry, over to the mountain village of Bergsdorf, which strings itself along the hillside above the River Inn.

Bergsdorf is no more than a village in itself, but, being the chief place of its neighbourhood, it supports enough municipal and other dignitaries to set up an Imperial Court. Never was such wisdom--never such pompous solemnity. The Burgomeister of Bergsdorf was a great elephant of a man. He went abroad radiating self-importance. He perspired wisdom on the coldest day. The other officials imitated the Burgomeister in so far as their corporeal condition allowed. The cure only was excepted. He was a thin, spare man with an ascetic face and a great talent for languages. One day during service he asked a mother to carry out a crying child, making the request in eight languages. Yet the mother failed to understand till the limping old apparator led her out by the arm.

There is no doubt that the humours of Bergsdorf lightened our spirits and cheered our waiting; for it is my experience that a young man is easily amused with new, bright, and stirring things even when he is in love.

And what amused us most was that excellent sport--now well known to the world, but then practised only in the mountain villages--the species of adventure which has come to be called "tobogganing." I fell heir in a mysterious fashion to a genuine Canadian toboggan, curled and buffalo-robed at the front, flat all the way beneath; and upon this, with Henry on one of the ordinary sleds with runners of steel, we spent many a merry day.

There was a good run down the road to the post village beneath; another, excellent, down a neighbouring pass. But the best run of all started from high up on the hillside, crossed the village street, and undulated down the hillside pastures to the frozen Inn river below--a splendid course of two miles in all. But as a matter of precaution it was strictly forbidden ever to be used--at least in that part of it which crossed the village street. For such projectiles as laden toboggans, passing across the trunk line of the village traffic at an average rate of a mile a minute, were hardly less dangerous than cannon-balls, and of much more erratic flight.

Nevertheless, there was seldom a night when we did not risk all the penalties which existed in the city of Bergsdorf, by defying all powers and regulations whatsoever and running the hill-course in the teeth of danger.

I remember one clear, starlight night with the snow casting up just enough pallid light to see by. Half a dozen of us--Henry and myself, a young Swiss doctor newly diplomaed, the adventurous advocate of the place, and several others--went up to make our nightly venture. We gave half a minute's law to the first starter, and then followed on. I was placed first, mainly because of the excellence of my Canadian iceship. As I drew away, the snow sped beneath; the exhilarating madness of the ride entered into my blood. I whooped with sheer delight.... There was a curve or two in the road, and at the critical moment, by shifting the weight of my body and just touching the snow with the point of the short iron-shod stick I held in my hand, the toboggan span round the curve with the delicious clean cut of a skate. It seemed only a moment, and already I was approaching the critical part of my journey. The stray oil-lights of the village street began to waver irregularly here and there beneath me. I saw the black gap in the houses through which I must go. I listened for the creaking runners of the great Valtelline wine-sledges which constituted the main danger. All was silent and safe. But just as I drew a long breath, and settled for the delicious rise over the piled snow of the street and the succeeding plunge down to the Inn, a vast bulk heaved itself into the seaway, like some lost monster of a Megatherium retreating to the swamps to couch itself ere morning light.

It was the Burgomeister of Bergsdorf.

"Acht--u--um--m!" I shouted, as one who, on the Scottish links, should cry "Fore!" and be ready to commit murder.

But the vision solemnly held up its hand and cried "Halt!"

"Halt yourself!" I cried, "and get out of the way!" For I was approaching at a speed of nearly a mile a minute. Now, there is but one way of halting a toboggan. It is to run the nose of your machine into a snow-bank, where it will stick. On the contrary, you do not stop. You describe the curve known as a parabola, and skin your own nose on the icy crust of the snow. Then you "halt," in one piece or several, as the case may be.

But I, on this occasion, did not halt in this manner. The mind moves swiftly in emergencies. I reflected that I had a low Canadian toboggan with a soft buffalo-skin over the front. The Burgomeister also had naturally well-padded legs. Eh bien--a meeting of these two could do no great harm to either. So I sat low in my seat, and let the toboggan run.

Down I came flying, checked a little at the rise for the crossing of the village street. A mountainous bulk towered above me--a bulk that still and anon cried "Halt!" There was a slight shock and a jar. The stars were eclipsed above me for a moment; something like a large tea-tray passed over my head and fell flat on the snow behind me. Then I scudded down the long descent to the Inn, leaving the village and all its happenings miles behind.

I did not come up the same way. I did not desire to attract immodest attention. Unobtrusively, therefore, I proceeded to leave my toboggan in its accustomed out-house at the back of the Osteria. Then, slipping on another overcoat, I took an innocent stroll along the village street, in the company of the landlord.

There was a great crowd on the corner by the Rathhaus. In the centre was Henry, in the hands of two officers of justice. The Burgomeister, supported by sympathising friends, limped behind. There is no doubt that Henry was exercising English privileges. His captors were unhappy. But I bade him go quietly, and with a look of furious bewilderment he obeyed. Finally we got the hotel-keeper, a staunch friend of ours and of great importance in these parts, to bail him out.

On the morrow there was a deliciously humorous trial. The young advocate was in attendance, and the whole village was called to give evidence. But, curiously enough, I was not summoned. I had been, it seemed, in the hotel changing my clothes. However, I was not missed, for everybody else had something to say. There were excellent plans of the ground, showing where the miscreant assaulted the magistrate. There, plain to be seen, was the mark in the snow where Henry, starting half a minute after me, and observing a vast prostrate bulk on the path, had turned his toboggan into the snow-bank, duly described his parabola, discuticled his nose--in fact, fulfilled the programme to the letter. Clearly, then, he could not have been the aggressor. The villain has remained, up to the publication of this veracious chronicle, unknown. No matter: I am not going back to Bergsdorf.

But something had to be done to vindicate the offended majesty of the law. So they fined Henry seventeen francs for obstructing the police in the discharge of their duty.

"Never mind," said Henry, "that's just eight francs fifty each. I got in two, both right-handers."

And I doubt not but the officers concerned considered that he had got his money's worth.

CHAPTER XIII

CASTEL DEL MONTE

It was March before we found ourselves in the Capital of the South. The Countess was still there, but the Count, her brother, had not appeared, and the explanation to which he referred remained unspoken. Here Lucia was our kind friend and excellent entertainer; but of the tenderness of the Hotel Promontonio it was hard for me to find a trace. The great lady indeed outshone her peers, and took my moorland eyes as well as the regards of others. But I had rather walked by the lake with the scarlet cloak, or stood with her and been shot at for a white owl in the niche of the terrace.

In the last days of the month there came from Henry's uncle and guardian, Wilfred Fenwick, an urgent summons. He was ill, he might be dying, and Henry was to return at once; while I, in anticipation of his return, was to continue in Italy. There was indeed nothing to call me home.

Therefore--and for other reasons--I abode in Italy; and after Henry's departure I made evident progress in the graces of the Countess. Once or twice she allowed me to remain behind for half an hour. On these occasions she would come and throw herself down in a chair by the fire, and permit me to take her hand. But she was weary and silent, full of gloomy thoughts, which in vain I tried to draw from her. Still, I think it comforted her to have me thus sit by her.

One morning, while I was idly leaning upon the bridge, and looking towards the hills with their white marble palaces set amid the beauty of the Italian spring, one touched me on the shoulder. I turned, and lo--Lucia! Not any more the Countess, but Lucia, radiant with brightness, colour in her cheek for the first time since I had seen her in the Court of the South, animation sparkling in her eye.

"So I have found you, faithless one," she said. "I have been seeking for you everywhere."

"And I, have I not been seeking for you all these weeks--and never have found you till now, Lucia!"

I thought she would not notice the name.

"Why, Sir Heather Jock," she returned, "did you not part with me last night at eleven of the clock?"

"Pardon me," I replied, letting the love in my heart woo her through my eyes, and say what I dared not--at least, not here upon the open bridge over which we slowly walked. "Pardon me, it is true that I parted at eleven of the clock last night with Madame the Countess of Castel del Monte. But, on the contrary, this morning I have met Lucia--my little Saint Lucy of the Eyes."

"Who in Galloway taught you to make such speeches?" she said. "It is all too pretty to have been said thus trippingly for the first time."

"Love," I made answer. "Love, the Master, taught me; for never before have I known either a Countess or a Lucia!"

"'Douglas, Douglas, tender and true,' does not your song say?" said she. "Will you ever be true, Douglas?"

"Lucy, will you ever be cruel? I dare you to say these things to-night when I come to see you. 'Tis easy to dare to say them in the face of the streets."

"Ah, Douglas, you will not see me to-night! I have come to bid you farewell--farewell!" said she, as tragically as she dared, yet so that I alone would hear her. Her eyes darted here and there, noting who came near; and a smile flickered about her mouth as she calculated precisely the breaking strain of my patience, and teased me up to that point. I can easily enough see her elvish intent now, but I did not then.

"I go this afternoon," she said. "I have come to bid you farewell--'Farewell! The anchor's weighed! Remember me!'"

"Is that why you are so happy to-day, because you are going away?" I asked, putting a freezing dignity into my tones.

She nodded girlishly, and I admit, as a critic, adorably.

"Yes," she said, "that is just the reason."

We were now in the Public Gardens, and walking along a more quiet path.

"Good-bye, then," I said, holding out my hand.

"No, indeed!" she said; "I shall not allow you to kiss my hand in public!"

And she put her hands behind her with a small, petulant gesture. "Now, then!" she said defiantly.

With the utmost dignity I replied--"Indeed, I had no intention of kissing your hand, Madame; but I have the honour of wishing you a very good day."

So lifting my hat, I was walking off, when, turning with me, Lucia tripped along by my side. I quickened my pace.

"Stephen," she said, "will you not forgive me for the sake of the old time? It is true I am going away, and that you will not see me again--unless, unless--you will come and visit me at my country house. Stephen, if you do not walk more slowly, I declare I shall run after you down the public promenade!"

I turned and looked at her. With all my heart I tried to be grave and severe, but the mock-demure look on her face caused me weakly to laugh. And then it was good-bye to all my dignity.

"Lucy, I wish you would not tease me," I said, still more weakly.

"Poor Toto! give it bon-bons! It shall not be teased, then," she said.

Before we parted, I had promised to come and see her at her country house within ten days. And so, with a new brightness in her face, Saint Lucy of the Eyes came back to my heart, and came to stay.

It was mid-April when I started for Castel del Monte. It was spring, and I was going to see my love. The land about on either side, as I went, was faintly flushed with peach-blossom shining among the hoary stones. By the cliff edge the spiny cactus threw out strange withered arms. A whitethorn without spike or spine gracefully wept floods of blonde tears.

At a little port by the sea-edge I left the main route, and fared onward up into the mountains. A mule carried my baggage; and the muleteer who guided it looked like a mountebank in a garb rusty like withered leaves. Like withered leaf, too, he danced up the hillside, scaling the long array of steps which led through the olives toward Castel del Monte. Some of his antics amused me, until I saw that none of them amused himself, and that through all the contortions of his face his eyes remained fixed, joyless, tragic.

Castel del Monte sat on the hill-top, eminent, far-beholding. Vine-stakes ran up hill and down dale, all about it. White houses were sprinkled here and there. As we ascended, the sea sank beneath, and the shining dashes of the wave-crests diminished to sparkling pin-points. Then with oriental suddenness the sun went down. Still upward fared the joyless farceur, and still upon the soles of my feet, and with my pilgrim staff in my hand, I followed.

Sometimes the sprays of fragrant blossom swept across our faces. Sometimes a man stepped out from the roadside and challenged; but, on receiving a word of salutation from my knave, he returned to his place with a sharp clank of accoutrement.

White blocks of building moved up to us in the equal dusk of the evening, took shape for a moment, and vanished behind us. The summit of the mountain ceased to frown. The strain of climbing was taken from the mechanic movement of the feet. The mule sent a greeting to his kind; and some other white mountain, larger, more broken as to its sky-line, moved in front of us and stayed.

"Castel del Monte!" said the muleteer, wrinkling all the queer puckered leather of his visage in the strong light which streamed out as the great door opened. A most dignified Venetian senator, in the black and radiant linen of the time, came forth to meet me, and with the utmost respect ushered me within. In my campaigning dress and broad-brimmed hat, I felt that my appearance was unworthy of the grandeur of the entrance-hall, of the suits of armour, the vast pictures, and the massive last-century furniture in crimson and gold.

CHAPTER XIV

AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT

I had expected that Lucia would have come to greet me, and that some of the other guests would be moving about the halls. But though the rooms were brightly lit, and servants moving here and there, there abode a hush upon the place strangely out of keeping with my expectation.

In my own room I arrayed me in clothes more fitted to the palace in which I found myself, though, after all was done, their plainness made a poor contrast to the mailed warriors on the pedestals and the scarlet senators in the frames.

There was a rose, fresh as the white briar-blossom in my mother's garden, upon my table. I took it as Lucia's gage, and set it in my coat.

"My lady waits," said the major-domo at the door.

I went down-stairs, conscious by the hearing of the ear that a heart was beating somewhere loudly, mine or another's I could not tell.

A door opened. A rush of warm and gracious air, a benediction of subdued light, and I found myself bending over the hand of the Countess. I had been talking some time before I came to the knowledge that I was saying anything.

Then we went to dinner through the long lit passages, the walls giving back the merry sound of our voices. Still, strangely enough, no other guests appeared. But my wonder was hushed by the gladness on the face of the Countess. We dined in an alcove, screened from the vast dining-room. The table was set for three. As we came in, the Countess murmured a name. An old lady bowed to me, and moved stiffly to a seat without a word. Lucia continued her conversation without a pause, and paid no further heed to the ancient dame, who took her meal with a single-eyed absorption upon her plate.

My wonder increased. Could it be that Lucia and I were alone in this great castle! I cannot tell whether the thought brought me more happiness or discontent. Clearly, I was the only guest. Was I to remain so, or would others join us after dinner? My heart beat faint and tumultuously. At random I answered to Lucia's questionings about my journey. My slow-moving Northern intelligence began to form questions which I must ask. Through the laughing charm of my lady's face and the burning radiance of her eyes, there grew into plainness against the tapestry the sad, pale face of my mother and her clear, consistent eyes. I talked--I answered--I listened--all through a humming chaos. For the teaching of the moorland farm, the ethic of the Sabbath nights lit by a single candle and sanctified by the chanted psalm and the open Book, possessed me. It was the domination of the Puritan base, and most bitterly I resented, while I could not prevent, its hold upon me.

Dinner was over. We took our way into a drawing-room, divided into two parts by a screen which was drawn half-way. In the other half of the great room stood an ancient piano, and to this our ancient lady betook herself.

The Countess sat down in a luxurious chair, and motioned me to sit close by her in another, but one smaller and lower. We talked of many things, circling ever about ourselves. Yet I could not keep the old farm out of my mind--its simple manners, its severe code of morals, its labour and its pain. Also there came another thought, the sense that all this had happened before--the devil's fear that I was not the first who had so sat alone beside the Countess and seen the obsequious movement of these well-trained servants.

"Tell me, Douglas," at last the Countess said, glancing down kindly at me, "why you are so silent and distrait. This is our first evening here, and yet you are sad and forgetful, even of me."

What a blind fool I was not to see the innocence and love in her eyes!

"Countess--" I began, and paused uncertain.

"Sir to you!" she returned, making me a little bow in acknowledgment of the title.

"Lucia," I went on, taking no notice of her frivolity, "I thought--I thought--that is, I imagined--that your brother--that others would be here as well as I--"

I got no further. I saw something sweep across her face. Her eyes darkened. Her face paled. The thin curved nostrils whitened at the edges. I paused, astonished at the tempest I had aroused by my faltering stupidities. Why could I not take what the gods gave?

"I see," she said bitterly: "you reproach me with bringing you here as my guest, alone. You think I am bold and abandoned because I dreamed of an Eden here with friendship and truth as dwellers in it. I saw a new and perfect life; and with a word, here in my own house, and before you have been an hour my guest, you insult me--"

"Lucia, Lucia," I pleaded, "I would not insult you for the world--I would not think a thought--speak a word--dishonouring to you for my life--"

"You have--you have--it is all ended--broken!" she said, standing up--"all broken and thrown down!"

She made with her hands the bitter gesture of breaking.

"Listen," she said, while I stood amazed and silent. "I am no girl. I am older than you, and know the world. It is because I dreamed I saw that which I thought truer and purer in you than the conventions of life that I asked you to come here--"

"Lucia, Lucia, my lady, listen to me," I pleaded, trying to take her hand. She put me aside with the single swift, imperious movement which women use when their pride is deeply wounded.

"That lady"--she pointed within to where the silent dame of years was tinkling unconcernedly on the keys--"is my dead husband's mother. Surely she abundantly supplies the proprieties. And now you--you whom I thought I could trust, spoil my year--spoil my life, slay in a moment my love with reproach and scorn!"

She walked to the door, turned and said--"You, whom I trusted, have done this!" Then she threw out her hands in an attitude of despair and scorn, and disappeared.

I sat long with my head on my hands, thinking--the world about me in ruins, never to be built up. Then I went up to my room, paused at the wardrobe, changed my black coat to that in which I had arrived, and went softly down-stairs again. The waning moon had just risen late, and threw a weird light over the ranges of buildings, the gateways and towers.

I walked swiftly to the outer gate, and, there leaping a hedge of flowering plants, I fled down the mountain through the vineyards. I went swiftly, eager to escape from Castel del Monte, but in the tangle of walls and fences it was not easy to advance. At the parting of three ways I paused, uncertain in which direction to proceed. Suddenly, without warning, a dark figure stepped from some hidden place. I saw the gleam of something bright. I knew that I was smitten. Waves of white-hot metal ran suddenly in upon my brain, and I knew no more.

When I awoke, my first thought was that I was back again in the room where Lucia and I had talked together. I felt something perfumed and soft like a caress. It seemed like the filmy lace that the Countess wore upon her shoulder. My head lay against it. I heard a voice say, as it had been in my ear, through the murmuring floods of many waters--"My boy! my boy! And I, wicked one that I was, sent you to this!"

All the time she who spoke was busy binding something to the place on my side where the pain burned like white metal. And as she did so she crooned softly over me, saying as before--"My poor boy! my poor boy!" It was like the murmuring of a dove over its nestling. Again and again I was borne away from her and from myself on the floods of great waters. The universe alternately opened out to infinite horrors of vastness, and shrank to pinpoint dimensions to crush me. Through it all I heard my love's voice, and was content to let my head bide just where it lay.

Ever and anon I came to the surface, as a diver does lest he die. I heard myself say--"It was an error in judgment!" ... Then after a pause--"nothing but an error in judgment."

And I felt that on which my head rested shake with a little earthquake of hysterical laughter. The strain had been too great, yet I had said the right word.

"Yes," she said softly, "my poor boy, it has been indeed an error in judgment for both of us!"

"But a blessed error, Lucia," I said, answering her when she least expected it.

A dark shape flitted before my dazzled eyes.

The Countess looked up. "Leonardi!" she called, "tell me, has one of your people done this?"

"Nay," said the man, "none of the servants of the Bond nor yet of the Mafia. Pietro the muleteer hath done it of his own evil heart for robbery. Here are the watch and purse!"

"And the murderer--where is he?" said again Lucia. "Let him be brought!"

"He has had an accident, Excellency. He is dead," said Leonardi simply.

Then they took me up very softly, and bore me to the door from which I had fled forth. Lucia walked with me. In the dusk of the leaves, while the bearers were fumbling with the inner doors, which would swing in their faces, Lucia put her hot lips to my hand, which she had held kindly in hers all the way.

"Pardon me, Douglas," she said, and there was a break in her voice. I felt the ocean of tears rising about me, and feared that I could not find the words fittingly to answer. For the pain had made me weak.

"Nay," I said at last, just over my breath, "it was my folly. Forgive me, little Saint Lucy of the Eyes! It was--it was--what was it that it was?--I have forgotten--"

"An error in judgment!" said Saint Lucy of the Eyes, and forgave me, though I cannot remember more about it.

I suppose I could take the title if I chose, for these things are easily arranged in Italy; but Lucia and I think it will keep for the second Stephen Douglas.

[The end]
S. R. Crockett's Short Story: Saint Lucy Of The Eyes

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