Pietro Ghisleri Part 31

The gloom deepened, and Adele came from her place at the window, evidently in some sort of distress. She sat down close to her husband--almost cowering at his side. He could not see her face clearly, but he understood that she was frightened.

"I wish you would tell me what it is you see in the dark," he said, with a sort of good-natured impatience.

"Oh, please do not talk about it!" she cried. "Talk to me of something else--talk, for Heaven's sake, talk, until they bring the lamps! I sometimes think I shall go mad when there is no light."

It is not a particularly easy affair to comply, at short notice, with such a request for voluble conversation, especially when there is no extraordinary sympathy between two people, nor any close community of ideas. But it chanced that Savelli had been reading the papers he had brought with him, and he began to tell Adele the news he had read, so that he managed to keep up a fairly continuous series of sentences until the first lamp was placed on the table.

"Thank you, Carissimo," she said. "No shade!" she exclaimed quickly, as the man was about to slip one over the light.

"Do you feel better now?" inquired Francesco, with some amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Yes--much better," she answered, drawing a long breath, and seating herself by the table in the full glare of the unshaded lamp. "I only ask one thing," she continued: "Do not leave me if you can help it, and go with me when we go to our room. I am ashamed of it, but I am so nervous that I am positively afraid to be alone."

"Would it not be better to have a nurse out, to stay with you all the time?" inquired Francesco, who had an eye to his own liberty and comfort, and had no idea of spending several weeks in perpetual attendance on his wife. "And there is your maid, too. She might help."

"I have taken such a dislike to that woman that I hate the sight of her."

"I suppose that is a part of your illness," answered her husband philosophically.

On that first evening he scrupulously fulfilled her wishes, and followed her closely when she went from room to room. He was in a certain degree anxious, for her allusion to possible madness coincided with his own preconceived opinion of her case, and he dreaded such a termination very greatly. He saw that what she said was quite true, and that she was unaffectedly frightened if he left her side for a moment. On the following day he sent a messenger to the city to procure a nurse, for he saw that he could not otherwise count on an hour's freedom. Being a careful man, he wished that Adele might have been contented to be followed about by her maid and a woman from the place, but she refused altogether to agree to such an arrangement. In her nervous condition, she could not bear the constant presence of a person for whom she felt an unreasoning repulsion. Moreover, she had almost decided to send Lucia away and to get some one more congenial in her place.

Several days pa.s.sed in this way, and if she was no better she was not worse. She drove and walked in the spring suns.h.i.+ne, and felt refreshed by the clear air of the country, but the nights were as unbearable as ever,--endless, ghostly, full of imaginary horrors, although the lamps burned brightly in her room till sunrise, and the patient nurse sat by her bedside reading to herself, and sometimes reading aloud when Adele desired it. Occasionally, and more often towards morning, s.n.a.t.c.hes of broken sleep interrupted the monotony of the long-drawn-out suffering.

Adele had implored the doctor who had charge of her case to give her opiates, or at least chloral; but he had felt great hope that the change to a country life would produce an immediate good effect, and had represented to her in terms almost exaggerated the danger of taking such remedies. The habit once formed, he said, soon became a slavery, and in nervous organisations like hers was very hard to break. People who took chloral often ended by taking morphia, and Donna Adele had doubtless heard enough about the consequences of employing this drug to dread it, as all sensible persons did. Adele was very far from being persuaded, but as she could not procure what she wanted without a doctor's order, which she could not obtain, she was obliged to fall back on the sulphonal which Ghisleri had recommended to her. She took it in large quant.i.ties, but it had almost ceased to produce any effect, though she attributed the little rest she got to its influence. The doctor was to come out and see her at the end of a week, unless sent for especially.

Before the seven days were out, however, a crisis occurred, brought about by a slight accident, which made his presence imperatively necessary.

One evening, immediately after dinner, Adele had seated herself in a low chair by the table in the drawing-room, and had taken up a novel. For a wonder, it had interested her when she had begun it in the afternoon, and she returned to it with unwonted delight, looking forward to the prospect of losing herself in the story during a few hours before going to bed. Not far from her Savelli sat with that day's papers, gleaning the news of the day in an idle fas.h.i.+on, and smoking a cigarette. He rarely smoked anything else, but for some reason or other, he had, on this particular night, discovered that only a cigar would satisfy him.

Many men are familiar with that craving, but the satisfaction of it rarely leads to distinct and important results. Francesco rose from his seat, laid down his paper, and went in search of what he wanted, well knowing that he could get it much faster than by a servant, and forgetting that he must leave his wife alone for a few minutes in order to go to his dressing-room where he kept the box. As has been said, the drawing-room was carpeted, and his step made very little noise. Adele, intensely interested in what she was reading, paid less attention to his movements than usual, and indeed supposed that he had only risen to get something from another table. The heavily curtained door which opened upon the great vaulted pa.s.sage before mentioned was behind her as she sat, and she did not realise that Francesco was gone until she heard his echoing footsteps on the stone pavement outside. Then she started, and almost dropped her book. She held her breath for a moment and then called him. But he walked quickly, and was already out of hearing. Only the booming echo reached her through the curtains, reverberated, and died away. There was nothing to be done but to wait, for she had not the courage to face the dim pa.s.sage alone and run after him. She clutched her book tightly and tried to read again, p.r.o.nouncing almost aloud the words she saw. A minute or two pa.s.sed, and then she heard the echo again. Francesco was returning. No, it was not his walk. She turned very pale as she listened. It was the step of a very lame man, irregular and painful. The novel fell to the ground, and she grasped the arms of her chair. It was exactly like Arden's step; she had heard it before, in the gallery at her father's palace, where the floor was of marble. Nearer and nearer it came, in a sort of triple measure--two shorts and a long, like an anapaest--and the sharp click of the stick between. She tried to look behind her, but her blood froze in her veins, and she could not move. Every instant increased her agony of fear. A moment more and Herbert Arden would be upon her. Suddenly a second echo, that of Francesco Savelli's firm, quick step reached her ears. Then she heard voices, and as the curtain was lifted she recognised the tones of old Giacomo, the lame warder, who had met her husband in the pa.s.sage, and was asking for the orders to be given to the carter who started for Rome every other night and brought back such provisions as could not be obtained in Gerano.

Adele sank back in her chair, almost fainting, in her sudden relief from her ghostly fears. Savelli talked some time with Giacomo. With a great effort at self-command, Adele took up her novel again and held it before her eyes, while her heart beat with terrible violence after having almost stood still while the fright had lasted. Then Francesco came in, with a lighted cigar between his teeth.

"Do you wish to send anything to Rome--any message?" he asked. "Nothing else, Giacomo," he said, as he saw that she shook her head.

"Good rest, Excellency," she heard Giacomo say. Then the curtain dropped, the door was closed from without, and she listened once more to the lame man's retreating footsteps--terribly like Herbert Arden's walk, though she was not frightened now.

"I asked you not to leave me alone," she said, as Savelli resumed his seat and took up the paper again.

"It was only for a minute," he answered indifferently. "I wanted a cigar. I hope you were not frightened this time."

"No. But I might have been. Another time, please ring for what you want."

Savelli, who was already deep in the local news about Rome, made an inarticulate reply intended for a.s.sent, and nothing more was said. Adele took up her book again and did her best to read, but without understanding a word as she followed the lines.

That night, in despair, she swallowed a larger dose of sulphonal than she had ever taken before. The consequence was that towards two o'clock she fell asleep and seemed more quiet than usual, as the nurse watched her. An hour pa.s.sed without her waking, then another, and then the dawn stole through the panes of the deep windows, and daylight came at last.

The room was quite light, and Adele was generally awake at that hour.

But this morning she slept on. The nurse was accustomed to take away the lamps as soon as Adele needed them no longer, not extinguis.h.i.+ng them in the room on account of the disagreeable smell they made. It chanced on this occasion--or fate had decreed it--that one of these gave signs of going out. The nurse rose very softly and took it away, moving noiselessly in her felt slippers, pa.s.sing through the open door of the dressing-room in order to reach the corridor in which the lamps were left to be taken and cleaned at a later hour. She set the one she carried upon a deal table which stood there, and tried to put it out, so as to leave no part of the wick still smouldering, lest it should smoke.

She was a very careful and methodical woman, and took pains to be neat in doing the smallest things. Just now, too, she was in no hurry, for it was broad daylight, and Adele would not be nervous if she awoke and found herself alone.

And Adele was awake. She opened her eyes wearily, realised that there was no one beside her, and sat up staring at the bright window. Being nervous, restless, and never at any time languid, she got up, threw a wrapper over her, and went to the door of the dressing-room, meaning to look at the rising sun, which was visible from the window on the other side, the dressing-room itself being at one of the angles of the castle, with a door leading from the corner of it into the tower.

Adele paused on the threshold, started, stared at something, turned, and uttered a piercing scream of terror. A moment later she fell in a heap upon the floor. She had distinctly seen Herbert Arden's figure standing at one of the windows, his head and hands alone concealed by the inner shutter which, by an accident, was not wide open, but was turned about half-way towards the panes. He was dressed in dark blue serge, as she had often seen him in life, with rather wide trousers almost concealing the feet, and a round jacket. She had even seen how the cloth was stretched at the place where his shoulder was most crooked, and how it hung loosely about his thin figure below that point. He was standing close to the window, with his back almost quite turned towards her, apparently looking out, though the shutter hid his face. The whole att.i.tude was precisely as she had often noticed it when he was alive, and chanced to be looking at something in the street--the misshapen, protruding shoulder, the right leg bent in more than the other, not a detail was missing as she came upon the vision suddenly in the cold morning light.

The nurse was at her side almost instantly, bending over her and raising her as well as she could. A moment later the maid rushed in,--she slept on the other side of the corridor where the nurse had left the lamp,--and then Francesco Savelli himself, who temporarily occupied a room next to Adele's and who appeared, robed in a wide dressing-gown of dark brown velvet, and showing signs of considerable anxiety. He reached the door before which his wife had fainted and lifted her in his arms.

As he regained his upright position, his eyes naturally fell upon the figure standing at the window. His sight was not remarkably good, and from the fact of the shutter being half closed the dressing-room was darker than the sleeping-chamber. The impression he had was strong and distinct.

"Who is that man?" he asked, staring at what he saw, while he held Adele's unconscious form in his arms.

The nurse and the maid both started and looked round. The latter laughed a little, involuntarily.

"It is not a man, Excellency," she said. "It is Donna Adele's serge driving cloak. I hung it there last night because there are not enough hooks in the dressing-room for all her Excellency's things."

She went to the window and took the mantle, which had been hung upon the k.n.o.b of the old-fas.h.i.+oned bolt by the two tapes sewn under the shoulders for the purpose. The folds of the lower part had taken the precise shape of a man's wide trousers, and the cape, falling half way only, hung exactly like a jacket, the fulness caused by gathering the upper portion together at one point, giving the appearance of a hump on a man's back.

"That was what frightened her," said Savelli, as he turned away with his burden. "I do not wonder--the thing looked just as Lord Herbert did when he used to stand at the window."

Adele came to herself in a state of the utmost prostration. Her husband explained to her carefully what had happened, and tried to persuade her that she had been the victim of an optical illusion, but though she did not deny this, he could see that the occurrence had produced a very deep impression on her mind, and had perhaps had an even more serious effect on her nerves. He despatched a messenger to Rome for the doctor, and after doing all he could left her to the care of her nurse and maid and went out for a walk in the hills, glad to be free for a while from the irksome task imposed upon him when he remained at home.

While making the most desperate attempts to control herself, Adele was in a state of the wildest and most conflicting emotion. Her strength returned, indeed, in a certain measure after a few hours, but her distress seemed rather to increase than to diminish, when she was able to walk about the room and submit to being dressed. Her maid irritated her unaccountably, too, and at last, giving way to the impulse she had felt so long, she told her that she must go at the end of the month.

The maid, Lucia by name, had for some time expected that her days in Casa Savelli were numbered, for Adele had shown her dislike very plainly of late, so that the woman did not show much surprise, and accepted her dismissal respectfully and quietly, promising herself to tell tales in her next place concerning Adele's toilette which, though without the slightest foundation, would be repeated and believed all over Rome.

Later in the day Adele shut herself up in her room, at the time when the suns.h.i.+ne was streaming in and making everything look bright and cheerful. She stayed there a long time, and the thoughtful Lucia, watching her through the keyhole, saw with surprise that her mistress spent almost an hour upon her knees before the dark old crucifix which hung above the prayer-stool opposite to the door of the dressing-room.

She noticed that Adele from time to time beat her breast, and then buried her face in her hands for many minutes. The nurse was asleep far away and Lucia was quite safe. At last Adele rose, and as though acting under an irresistible impulse sat down at a table on which she kept her own writing materials, and began to write rapidly. For a long time she kept her seat, and her hand moved quickly over the paper. Then, when she seemed to have finished, she took up the sheets as though she meant to read them over, and did in fact read a few lines. She dropped the paper suddenly, and Lucia saw the look of horror that was in her white face.

She seemed to hesitate, rose, turned, and made two steps towards the crucifix, then returned, and hastily folded up the lengthy letter and slipped it into a large envelope, on which she wrote an address before she left the table a second time. When she opened the door of the dressing-room to call Lucia, the maid was quietly seated by a window with a piece of needle-work, and rose respectfully as her mistress entered.

"Send me Giacomo," said Adele, holding the letter in her hand, but as Lucia went towards the door, she stopped her. "No," she said suddenly.

"Take this to him yourself; tell him to have it registered at once, and to bring me back the receipt from the post-office. Tell him to be careful, as it is very important. I am going to lie down. Come to me some time before sunset."

Lucia took the letter and went out into the corridor. Adele listened a moment, then went back into her room, bolting the door behind her, as well as turning the key in the lock. Since her fright in the morning, she instinctively barricaded herself on that side. But at present the suns.h.i.+ne was so bright and the place was so cheerful that her fears seemed almost groundless.

She lay down and closed her eyes. In spite of all the emotions of terror she had suffered on the previous evening and to-day, and although the writing of any letter so long as the one she had just finished must necessarily be very tiring, she felt better than she had been for a long time, and would perhaps have fallen asleep if the doctor had not arrived from Rome soon afterwards.

On learning all that had happened, he yielded at last to necessity, and gave her chloral to take in small doses, showing her how to use it. It was evident that unless she slept she must break down altogether before long, and it was no longer safe to let nature have her own way. He had brought the medicine with him, and gave it into Francesco's keeping, cautioning him not to let her use it in larger quant.i.ties than he had prescribed. After giving various pieces of good advice he returned to the city.

Lucia gave her mistress the receipt for the registered letter, and Adele put it away in the small jewel-case she had brought with her to the country. That night she took the chloral, and fell asleep peacefully before half-past eleven o'clock, not to awake until nearly nine on the following morning. She felt so much better for the one night's rest that she went for a long walk with her husband, ate well for the first time in many weeks, and went to bed again almost without having felt a sensation of fear all day nor during the evening. Once more the chloral had the desired effect, and on the second morning she began to imagine that she was recovering. The world looked bright and cheerful, the swallows wheeled and darted before her windows, and the thrushes and blackbirds sang far down among the fruit-trees. Even Francesco was less tiresome and unsympathetic than usual. She was in such a good humour that she almost repented of having dismissed Lucia.

Then the blow came. The post brought her a letter addressed in a small, even handwriting, very plain and entirely without flourish or ornament--such a hand as learned men and theologians often write. The contents read as follows:

"MOST EXCELLENT PRINCESS, I have to inform you that I have just received, registered, and evidently addressed by your most excellent hand, an envelope bearing the Gerano postmark, but containing only four blank sheets of ordinary writing paper. As I cannot suppose that your Excellency has designed to make me the object of a jest, and as it is to be feared that the blank paper has been subst.i.tuted for a writing of importance, by some malicious person, I have immediately informed your Excellency of what has occurred. Awaiting any instruction or enlightenment with regard to this subject which it may please you, most Excellent Princess, to communicate, I write myself

"Your Excellency's most humble, obedient servant,

"BONAVENTURA, R.R. P.P.O. Min."

Now Padre Bonaventura of the Minor Order of St. Francis was Adele's confessor in Rome. After the long struggle which Lucia had watched through the door, Adele's conscience had got the upper hand, aided by the belief that in following its dictates she would be doing the best she could towards recovering her peace of mind. Not being willing to go to the parish priest of Gerano, who had known her and all her family from her childhood, and who was by no means a man able to give very wise advice in difficult cases, and being, moreover, afraid of rousing her husband's suspicions if she insisted upon going to Rome merely to confess, she had written out a most careful confession of those sins of which she accused herself, and, as is allowable in extreme cases, had sent it by post to Padre Bonaventura.

The news that such a doc.u.ment had never reached its destination would have been enough to disturb most people.