Stories by American Authors Volume III Part 17

"What's the matter with you?" he asked with as lively an air as he could attain, for the ominous and inexplicable sadness of the situation was fast taking hold on him.

"I have a bullet through the lungs and a pain in the heart."

"But men do not die of a bullet in the lungs and a pain in the heart,"

was Larry's encouraging response.

"I shall."

"Why should you more than others?"

"Because there is something else--something mysterious, some unknown malady--which bears me down and burns me up. There is no use trying to deceive me, Larry. My papers are made out, and I shall get my discharge from the Army of the Living in a very few days now. But I must not waste the little breath I have left in talking about myself.

I sent for you to ask a favor."

Larry held out his hand, and John Manning took it and seemed to gain strength from the firm clasp.

"I knew I could rely on you," he said, "for much or for little. And this is not much, for I have not much to leave. This worn old house, which belonged to my grandmother, and in which I spent the happiest hours of my boyhood, this and a few shares of stock here and there, are all I have to leave. I do not know what the house is worth--and I shall be glad when I am gone from it. If I had not come here, I think I might perhaps have got well. There seems to be something deadly about the place." The sick man's voice sank to a wavering whisper, as though borne down by a sudden weight of impending danger against which he might struggle in vain; he gave a fearful glance about the room as though seeking a mystic foe, hidden and unknown. "The very first day we were here the cat lapped its milk by the fire and then stretched itself out and died without a sign. And I had not been here two days before I felt the fatal influence: the trouble from my wound came on again, and this awful burning in my breast began to torture me. As a boy, I thought that heaven must be like this house; and now I should not want to die if I thought h.e.l.l could be worse!"

"Why don't you leave the place, since you hate it so?" asked Larry, with what scant cheeriness he could muster; he was yielding himself slowly to the place, though he fought bravely against his superst.i.tious weakness.

"Am I fit to be moved?" was the sick man's query in reply.

"But you will be better soon, and then--"

"I shall be worse before I am better, and I shall never be better in this life or in this place. No, no, I must die in my hole like a dog.

Like a dog!" and John Manning repeated the words with a wistful face.

"Do you remember the faithful beast who always welcomed me here when we came up before we went to Europe?"

"Of course I do," said Larry, glad to get the sick man away from his sickness, and to ease his mind by talk on a healthy topic; "he was a splendid fellow, too. Cesar, that was his name, wasn't it?"

"Cesar Borgia I called him," was Manning's sad reply. "I knew you could not have forgotten him. He is dead. Cesar Borgia is dead. He was the last living thing that loved me--except you, Larry, I know--and he is dead. He died this morning. He came to my bedside as usual, and he licked my hand gently and looked up in my face and laid him down alongside of me on the carpet here and died. Poor Cesar Borgia--he loved me, and he is dead! And you, Larry, you must not stay here. The air is fatal. Every breath may be your last. When you have heard what I want, you must be off at once. If you like, you may come up again to the funeral before your leave is up. I saw you had three weeks."

Laurence Laughton moved uneasily in his chair and swallowed with difficulty. "John," he managed to say after an effort, "if you talk to me like that, I shall go at once. Tell me what it is you want me to do for you."

"I want you to take care of my wife and of my child, if there be one born to me after my death."

"Your wife?" repeated Larry, in staring surprise.

"You did not know I was married? I knew it at the time, as the boy said," and John Manning smiled bitterly.

"Where is she?" was Larry's second query.

"Here."

"Here?"

"In this house. You shall see her before you go. And after the funeral I want you to get her away from here with what speed you can. Sell this house for what it will bring, and put the money into government bonds. You may find it hard to persuade her to move, for she seems to have a strange liking for this place. She breathes freely in the deadly air that suffocates me. But you must not let her remain here; this is no place for her now that a new life and new duties are before her."

"How was it I did not know of your marriage?" asked Larry.

"I knew nothing about it myself twenty-four hours before it happened,"

answered John Manning. "You need not look surprised. It is a simple story. I had this shot through the breast at Gettysburg last Fourth of July. I lay on the hill-side a day and a night before relief came.

Then a farmer took me into his house. A military surgeon dressed my wounds, but I owed my life to the nursing and care and unceasing attention of a young lady who was staying with the farmer's daughter.

She had been doing her duty as a nurse as near to the field as she could go ever since the first Bull Run. She saved my life, and I gave it to her--what there was of it. She was a beautiful woman, indeed I never saw a more beautiful--and she has a strange likeness to--but that you shall see for yourself when you see her. She is getting a little rest now, for she has been up all night attending to me. She _will_ wait on me in spite of all I say; of course I know there is no use wasting effort on me now. She is the most devoted nurse in the world; and we shall part as we met--she taking care of me at the last as she did at the first. Would G.o.d our relation had never been other than patient and nurse! It would have been better for both had we never been husband and wife!" And John Manning turned his face to the wall with a weary sigh; then he coughed harshly and raised his hand to his breast as though to stifle the burning within him.

"It seems to me, John, that you ought not to talk like that of the woman you loved," said Laurence Laughton, with unusual seriousness.

"I never loved her," answered Manning, coldly. Then he turned and asked hastily, "Do you think I should want to die, if I loved her?"

"But she loves you," said Laurence.

"She never loved me!" was Manning's impatient retort.

"Then why were you married?"

"That's what I would like to know. It was fate, I suppose. What is to be, is. I never used to believe in predestination, but I know that of my own free will I could never have done what I did."

"I confess I do not understand you," said Larry.

"I do not understand myself. There is so much in this world that is mysterious--I hope the next will be different. I was under the charm, I fancy, when I married her. She is a beautiful woman, as I told you, and I was a man, and I was weak, and I had hope. Why she married me that early September evening, I do not know. It was not long before we both found out our mistake. And it was too late then. We were man and wife. Don't suppose I blame her--I do not. I have no cause of complaint. She is a good wife to me, as I have tried to be a good husband to her. We made a mistake in marrying each other, and we know it--that's all!"

Before Laurence Laughton could answer, the door opened gently and Mrs. Manning entered the room. Laurence rose to greet his friend's wife, but the act was none the less a homage to her resplendent beauty. In spite of the worn look of her face, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She had tawny tigress hair and hungry tigress eyes. The eyes indeed were fathomless and indescribable, and their fitful glance had something uncanny about it. The hair was nearly of the true Venetian color, and she had the true Venetian sumptuousness of appearance, simple as was her attire.

She seemed as though she had just risen from the couch whereon she reclined before t.i.tian or Tintoretto, and, having clothed herself, had walked forth in this nineteenth century and these United States. She was a strange and striking figure, and Laurence found it impossible to a.n.a.lyze exactly the curious and weird impression she produced on him.

Her voice, as she greeted him, gave him a peculiar thrill; and when he shook hands with her he seemed to feel himself face to face with some strange being from another land and another century. She inspired him with a supernatural awe he was not wont to feel in the presence of woman. He had a dim consciousness that there lingered in his memory the glimmering image of some woman seen somewhere, he knew not when, who was like unto the woman before him.

As she took her seat by the side of the bed, she gave Laurence Laughton a look that seemed to peer into his soul. Laurence felt himself quiver under it. It was a look to make a man fearful. Then John Manning, who had moved uneasily as his wife entered, said, "Laurence, can you see any resemblance in my wife to any one you ever saw before?"

Their eyes met again, and again Laurence had a vague remembrance as though he and she had stood face to face before in some earlier existence. Then his wandering recollections took shape, and he remembered the face and the form and the haunting mystery of the expression, and he felt for a moment as though he had been permitted to peer into the cabalistic darkness of an awful mystery, though he failed wholly to perceive its occult significance--if significance there were of any sort.

"I think I do remember," he said at last. "It was in Venice--at the church of Santa Maria Madalena--the picture there that--"

"You remember aright!" interrupted John Manning. "My wife is the living image of the Venetian woman for whose beauty Marco Manin was one day stabbed in the back with a gla.s.s stiletto and Giovanni Manin fled from the place of his birth and never saw it again. It is idle to fight against the stars in their courses. We met here in the New World, she and I, as they met in the Old World so long ago--and the end is the same. It was to be ... it was to be!"

Laurence Laughton gave a swift glance at his friend's wife to see what effect these words might have on her, and he was startled to detect on her face the same enigmatic smile which was the chief memory he had retained of the Venetian picture. Truly, the likeness between the painting and the wife of his friend was marvellous; and Laurence tried to shake off a morbid wonder whether there might be any obscure and inscrutable survival from one generation to another across the seas and across the years.

"If you remember the picture," said John Manning, "perhaps you remember the quaint goblet of Venetian gla.s.s I bought the same day?"

"Of course I do," said Larry, glad to get Manning started on a topic of talk a little less personal.

"Perhaps you know what has become of it?" asked Manning.

"I can answer 'of course' to that, too," replied Larry, "because I have it here."

"Here?"

"Here--in a little square box, in the hall," answered Larry. "I had it in my trunk, you know, when we took pa.s.sage on the _Vanderbilt_ at Havre that May morning. I forgot to give it to you in the hurry of landing, and I haven't had a chance since. This is the first time I have seen you for nearly three years. I found the box this morning, and I thought you might like to have it again, so I brought it up."

John Manning rang the bell at the head of his bed. The black crone answered it, and soon returned with the little square box. Manning impatiently broke the seals and cords that bound its cover and began eagerly to release the goblet from the cotton and tissue paper in which it had been carefully swathed and bandaged. Mrs. Manning, though her moods were subtler and more intense, showed an anxiety to see the goblet quite as feverish as her husband's. In a minute the last wrapping was twisted off and the full beauty of the Venetian gla.s.s was revealed to them. a.s.suredly no praise was too loud for its delicate and exquisite workmans.h.i.+p.

"Does Mrs. Manning know the story of the goblet?" asked Larry; "has she been told of the peculiar virtue ascribed to it?"