Part 9 (1/2)

”On the Lido?”

”And she spoke to me. I heard her voice--heard it as distinctly as I hear my own at this moment.”

The rabbi stroked his beard thoughtfully, and looked at me. ”You think you heard her voice!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”That is strange. What said she?”

I was about to answer. I checked myself--a sudden thought flashed upon me--I trembled from head to foot.

”Have you--have you any reason for supposing that she died a Christian?”

I faltered.

The old man started and changed colour.

”I--I--that is a strange question,” he stammered. ”Why do you ask it?”

”Yes or no?” I cried wildly. ”Yes or no?”

He frowned, looked down, hesitated.

”I admit,” he said, after a moment or two,--”I admit that I may have heard something tending that way. It may be that the maiden cherished some secret doubt. Yet she was no professed Christian.”

”_Laid in earth without one Christian prayer; with Hebrew rites; in a Hebrew sanctuary!_” I repeated to myself.

”But I marvel how you come to have heard of this,” continued the rabbi.

”It was known only to her father and myself.”

”Sir,” I said solemnly, ”I know now that Salome da Costa is dead; I have seen her spirit thrice, haunting the spot where....”

My voice broke. I could not utter the words.

”Last evening at sunset,” I resumed, ”was the third time. Never doubting that--that I indeed beheld her in the flesh, I spoke to her. She answered me. She--she told me this.”

The rabbi covered his face with his hands, and so remained for some time, lost in meditation. ”Young man,” he said at length, ”your story is strange, and you bring strange evidence to bear upon it. It may be as you say; it may be that you are the dupe of some waking dream--I know not.”

He knew not; but I.... Ah! I knew only too well. I knew now why she had appeared to me clothed with such unearthly beauty. I understood now that look of dumb entreaty in her eyes--that tone of strange remoteness in her voice. The sweet soul could not rest amid the dust of its kinsfolk, ”unhousel'd, unanointed, unanealed,” lacking even ”one Christian prayer”

above its grave. And now--was it all over? Should I never see her more?

Never--ah! never. How I haunted the Lido at sunset for many a month, till Spring had blossomed into Autumn, and Autumn had ripened into Summer; how I wandered back to Venice year after year at the same season, while yet any vestige of that wild hope remained alive; how my heart has never throbbed, my pulse never leaped, for love of mortal woman since that time--are details into which I need not enter here.

Enough that I watched and waited; but that her gracious spirit appeared to me no more. I wait still, but I watch no longer. I know now that our place of meeting will not be here.

IN THE CONFESSIONAL.

The things of which I write befell--let me see, some fifteen or eighteen years ago. I was not young then; I am not old now. Perhaps I was about thirty-two; but I do not know my age very exactly, and I cannot be certain to a year or two one way or the other.

My manner of life at that time was desultory and unsettled. I had a sorrow--no matter of what kind--and I took to rambling about Europe; not certainly in the hope of forgetting it, for I had no wish to forget, but because of the restlessness that made one place after another _triste_ and intolerable to me.

It was change of place, however, and not excitement, that I sought. I kept almost entirely aloof from great cities, Spas, and beaten tracks, and preferred for the most part to explore districts where travellers and foreigners rarely penetrated.

Such a district at that time was the Upper Rhine. I was traversing it that particular Summer for the first time, and on foot; and I had set myself to trace the course of the river from its source in the great Rhine glacier to its fall at Schaffhausen. Having done this, however, I was unwilling to part company with the n.o.ble river; so I decided to follow it yet a few miles farther--perhaps as far as Mayence, but at all events as far as Basle.