Guy Livingstone Part 29

No answer still, but the same desperate struggle to get loose. There was a savage, supernatural power in her writhings that taxed even his gigantic strength to hold her; as it was, he yielded unconsciously to her impulse so as to recede some paces till they issued out into the moonlight. He could scarcely recognize her features; they were all working and contorted, the lips especially horribly drawn back and tense. She bent her head down at last, and made her teeth meet in the arm that detained her.

Guy never flinched nor stirred, but spoke again in the same slow, deliberate tone.

"Isabel, come in. I swear that you shall see him when it is safe. They are bringing him back now."

She ceased struggling and stood straight up, shaking all over, straining her eyes forward to the turning in the path where the torches began to gleam.

"Is he not dead, then?" she said, in a strange, harsh voice, utterly unlike her own. Her cousin did not try to delude her; all the stern outline of his face softening in an intense pity told her enough.

Such a scream--weird, long drawn out, and unearthly, such as we fancy the Banchee's--as that which pierced through my very marrow (though I stood three hundred yards away, as if it had been uttered close at my ear), I trust I shall never hear again.

Then followed the contrast of a great stillness; for, as the last accents died away on her lips, Isabel sank down, without a struggle, into a dead swoon.

A sad satisfaction came into Guy's face. "It is best so," he muttered; "I hope she won't wake for an hour," and he carried her into the house.

They were trying to revive her, unsuccessfully, when I reached it with those who bore the corpse on a litter of pine branches. By Guy's directions, it was laid on his own bed; and there the Italian women rendered the last offices to the dead man, weeping and wailing over him as though he had been a brother or dear friend--only for his rare beauty--even as the Moorish girls mourned over that fair-faced Christian knight whom they found lying, rolled in blood, by the rock of Alpujarro.

Soon they came to tell Guy that Isabel was recovering from her swoon.

She was hardly conscious when he entered the room, and he heard her moaning, "I am so cold, so cold," s.h.i.+vering all over, though she was warmly wrapped in cloaks and shawls.

The village doctor, a mild, helpless-looking man, was sitting by her bedside. He tried to feel her pulse just then, I suppose to show that he could be of some use; but she shrunk away from him, and beckoned to her cousin to come near. He motioned to the others to leave them alone, and, kneeling down by her, took her hand in his.

"Guy, dear," she said, "I know I have been so very wicked and ungrateful to you; but you must not be angry. I have no one left to take care of me but you, now. I will try to be patient; indeed, indeed I will." Her voice was faint and exhausted, but as gentle as ever.

He held her hand faster, and bent his forehead down upon it.

"You are not wicked--only too weak to bear your sorrow. If I only knew what to do to comfort you! But I am so rough and harsh, even when I mean to be kind. I can say nothing, either. I suppose you ought to submit, but I can not tell you how; it is a lesson I have never been able to learn."

"You can do this," she said. "Let me go to him. Ah! don't refuse. I will be calm and good. Indeed I will. But I must go"--she sank her voice into a lower whisper yet--"I have not kissed him to-night."

There was something so unspeakably piteous in her tone and in her imploring eyes, that had grown quite soft again, though no tears had moistened them, that Guy could hardly answer her.

"I did not mean to refuse you, dear," he said, at last. "I won't even ask you to wait. If you are not strong enough to walk, I will carry you."

She rose slowly and painfully, as if her limbs were stiff with cold; but she could stand, and walk with his arm round her; and so these two moved slowly along the deserted pa.s.sages toward the room where the corpse lay.

There was nothing shocking in its appearance now. All the traces of murder had been washed away, and they had arranged the silky chestnut hair till it concealed the wound, and fell in smooth waves over the white forehead. That sweet calm which will sometimes descend on the face of the dead, even when their end has been violent--the sad _Alpen-gluth_ that comes only when the sun has set--was there in all its beauty. Save that the features were somewhat sharper than in life, there was nothing to mar their pure cla.s.sical outline. It was well, indeed, that Guy held her back two hours ago. If Isabel had looked on them then, I believe she would have gone mad with terror, if not with sorrow. It matters much, the expression of a face, when it is sure to mingle in our dreams for many after years.

Guy led her up to the bedside, and left the room as she sank down on her knees. He remained outside the closed door, for he thought she might need help if her strength failed suddenly; and I joined him there.

For some time we heard only the quick, stormy sobs, and the kisses showering down; then came the piteous, heart-broken wail that called upon her husband's name; and then the great gush of tears that saved her. After that there was a murmur, often broken off but always renewed: we both bowed our heads reverently, for we knew the widow was praying.

She came forth at length, her head buried in her hands; but she could walk to her room una.s.sisted, and allowed them to undress her there, without a word but thanks. Before long nature would have her way, and she was sleeping quietly.

While we were waiting the return of the men who had gone out in pursuit, Livingstone went alone into the death-chamber. He staid there some minutes. When he came out his face was paler than ever, and there was a sort of horror in his eyes.

He took my arm and led me into the room without speaking. "Do you see that?" he asked, lifting the hair gently that fell over the left check of the corpse.

Distinctly and lividly marked on the waxen flesh were the five fingers of a man's _open hand_.

"Do you think that was a brigand's work?" he went on, his gripe tightening till I could scarcely bear the pain. "They always strike with a weapon or with the clenched fist. Shall I tell you whose mark that is?

Bruce's. If he did not murder him himself, he struck him after he was dead."

"Impossible," I said; "how could he? He has never--"

Livingstone cast my arm loose somewhat impatiently. "We shall know all some day," he growled, his whole face black with pa.s.sion. "I am convinced of it. If he's on earth I'll find him; and when I do, if I show him mercy or let him go--" The imprecation that followed was not less solemn and terrible because it was muttered to his own heart.

"We must never let Isabel guess the truth," he said, when he became calmer. "It would be worse than all. She would always think she had caused this, and she has enough to bear up against already. G.o.d help her!"

Soon Aglae came to tell us that her mistress was asleep. The Frenchwoman's first impulse had been to be hysterical and helpless; it was only her terror of Guy prevailing over all others that made her, as she was, very useful.

He went to the door for an instant, and looked at Isabel. Dreamland was kinder and pleasanter to her than real life, poor child, for there was a smile on her lips that, when she was waking, would be long in visiting them. How would s.h.i.+ps or men ever last out if there were not some harbors of refuge to rest in before going out into the wild weather again? Truly she had won hers for the moment; it looked as if an angel had come down to smooth, this time, instead of troubling the waters.

The pursuers came back empty-handed; they had not come upon the faintest trace, nor could they hear of any suspicious character having been seen in the neighborhood.

Guy betrayed no impatience when he heard this; but he went out himself with some of the best men, and spent the rest of the night and all the following morning on the quest. All to no purpose. He returned about noon, with his companions quite f.a.gged out; but fatigue and sleeplessness seemed to have no grasp upon his frame.

Isabel was up, and had been asking for him several times. When he saw her, she offered no opposition to his wish to go on straight to Rome the next day. Neither then nor at any future time did she ever ask for any particulars of her husband's death.

Her old child-like dependence and trust in her cousin had come back, and all through the journey she was quite tranquil. It is true, we hardly ever saw her face, for her veil was closely drawn. Her grief was not the less painful to witness because it was so little demonstrative. Very old and very young women, in the plenitude of their benevolence, are good enough to sympathize with any tale of woe, however absurdly exaggerated; but men, I think, are most moved by the simple and quiet sorrows. We smile at the critical point of a spasmodic tragedy, complacently as the Lucretian philosopher looking down from the cliff on the wild sea; we yawn over the wailings of Werter and Raphael, but we ponder gravely over the last chapters of the _Heir of Redclyffe_, and feel a curious sensation in the throat--perhaps the slightest dimness of vision--when we read in _The Newcomes_ how that n.o.ble old soldier crowned the chivalry of a stainless life, dying in the Gray Brother's gown.

There were many at Rome who had known Forrester and loved him well, and all these followed him to his grave. I do not think he had an enemy on earth except the man who slew him.

What are the qualifications of a general favorite? Good looks, good birth, good-humor, and good a.s.surance will do much; but the want of one or more of these will not invalidate the election, nor the union of all four insure it. It must be very pleasant to serve in the _compagnie d'elite_. They have privileges to which the Line may not aspire. It does not much matter what they do. Their victories make them no enemies, and their defeats raise them up hosts of sympathizers and apologists. When they err gravely, if you hint at the misdemeanor, a "true believer"

looks at you indignantly, not to say contemptuously, and says, "What could you expect? It's only poor--" Yes, it is a great gift--Amiability; and when the possessor dies, it is profoundly true that better men might be better spared.

Very soon Raymond came to take his daughter back to England. That calm old calculating machine was more deranged and shocked by the catastrophe than I should have thought it possible he would have been by any earthly disaster. He was getting older now, and more broken, it is true, and so, perhaps, was more accessible to the weakness of sympathy. At all events, nothing could be kinder and more considerate than his conduct to Isabel.

Guy and I still lingered on in Rome. He was untiring in his researches, but quite unsuccessful. Yet it was not that the police were remiss, or the country people inclined to s.h.i.+eld the murderer. The best of them would have sold his own father to the guillotine for half the reward offered by Livingstone, for he lavished as much gold in trying to clear up that crime as in old days the Cenci or Colonna did to smother theirs.

At length we were forced to give it up, and returned home in the _Petrel_. I own I despaired of ever being more successful; but my companion evidently had not done so, for I heard him, more than once, mutter to himself, in the same low, determined tone, "If he is on earth, I'll find him."

Immediately on our arrival, Guy went up to Bruce's home in Scotland. He only learned that the latter had not been there for a long time; but that some months back, Allan Macbane, a sort of steward and old dependent of the family, had left suddenly, summoned, it was supposed, by his master. More the people could not or would not tell.

At his banker's it was discovered that, immediately after the Forresters' marriage, he had drawn out a very large sum--not in letters of credit, but in bank-notes--and had not been heard of since. After much trouble, we did find out that one of the large notes had been changed at Florence about the time of the murder, but the description of the person did not answer in the least to that of Bruce or the man who was supposed to be his attendant. All trace stopped there. So the months rolled away. I constantly saw Guy, and sometimes was with him both in town and at Kerton, where Isabel was staying with Lady Catharine. He still appeared to have no doubt of the ultimate result of the search, which, personally or by deputy, he never intermitted for a day.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

"He threw His wrathful hand aloft, and cried 'Away!

Earth could not hold us both, nor can one heaven Contain my deadliest enemy and me.'"

We were sitting in Livingstone's chambers one night in the following March, and dinner was just over, when the detective was announced who for months had been in Guy's pay and on Bruce's track.

He was a stout, hale man, rather past middle age, with a rosy face, a cheerful, moist eye, and full, sensual lips--just the proper person to return thanks for "The Successful Candidates" at an agricultural meeting. Originally of a kindly convivial nature, he had grown familiar with crime till he despised it. The reward set upon the criminal's capture was his only standard of guilt. He took a real pleasure in the chase, I imagine, but had no preference for any game in particular, and was quite indifferent whether the cover he had to draw was a saloon or a cellar. He would hunt a fraudulent bankrupt or a parricide with equal zeal, and, when he had caught him, be just as jocularly affable with the one as with the other. In a drama of life and death, the fierce pa.s.sions of the actors were only so many gleams of light showing him where the right path lay, for which a.s.sistance he thanked them heartily. The foulest mysteries of the sinful human heart touched and shocked him no more than the evidences of disease do the dissecting surgeon: with both it was a simple question of defective organization. The possession of secrets, far less weighty than some that he never told, have made men look worn, and miserable, and gray; but he would pat his corpulent leather pocket-book with a self-sufficient satisfaction, scarcely hinting that the publication of its contents would have caused more devastation in some well-regulated families than the bursting of a ten-inch sh.e.l.l in their front drawing-room.

His lips and eyes wore a smile pleasantly significant as he entered, and, before he could speak, Guy leaped up, waving his hand high in irrepressible triumph. "I told you so, Frank. I knew we should find him.

Come--come quickly." He was more excited than I had seen him in the last dozen years.