Part 13 (2/2)

”_Cielo!_” she exclaimed. ”How beautiful!”

He placed the carving on a stand of red cloth, and then, going over to the balcony, gathered a handful of orange blossoms and crimson azalias.

”We must decorate our altar with flowers, Margherita,” he said, smiling.

”Fetch me those two white vases from the chimney-piece in the anteroom.”

The vases were brought, and he arranged his bouquets as tenderly and gracefully as a woman might have arranged them. This done, he stole to the bedroom door, opened it noiselessly, and peeped in.

All within was wrapt in a delicious, dreamy dusk. The jalousies were closed and the inner blinds drawn down; but one window stood a few inches open, admitting a soft breath of morning air, and now and then a faint echo from the world beyond. He advanced very cautiously. He held his breath--he stole on a step at a time--he would not have roused her for the world till all was ready. At the dressing-table he paused and looked round. He could just see the dim outline of her form in the bed.

He could just see how one little hand rested on the coverlet, and how her hair lay like a l.u.s.trous cloud upon the pillow. Very carefully he then removed her dressing-case and desk from a tiny table close by, carried it to the side of the bed, and placed it where her eyes must first meet it on waking. He next crept back to the salon for the ivory carving; then for the flowers; and then arranged them on the table like the decorations of a miniature shrine.

And all this time she neither woke nor stirred.

At last, his pretty little preparations being all complete, the young husband, careful even now not to startle her too rudely, gently unclosed the jalousies, drew aside the blinds, and filled the room with suns.h.i.+ne.

”Ethel,” he said. ”Ethel, do you know how late it is?”

But Ethel still slept on.

He moved a step nearer. Her face was turned to the pillow; but he could see the rounded outline of her cheek, and it struck him that she looked strangely pale. His heart gave a great throb; his breath came short; a nameless terror--a terror of he knew not what--fell suddenly upon him.

”Ethel!” he repeated. ”My darling--my darling!”

He sprang to the bedside--he hung over her--he touched her hand, her cheek, her neck--then uttered one wild, despairing cry, and staggered back against the wall.

She was dead.

Not fainting. No; not even in the first horror of that moment did he deceive himself with so vain a hope. She was dead, and he knew that she was dead. He knew it with as full and fixed a sense of conviction as if he had been prepared for it by months of anxiety. He did not ask himself why it was so. He did not ask himself by what swift and cruel disease--by what mysterious accident, this dread thing had come to pa.s.s.

He only knew that she was dead; and that all the joy, the hope, the glory of life was gone from him for ever.

A long time, or what seemed like a long time, went by thus; he leaning up against the wall, voiceless, tearless, paralysed, unable to think, or move, or do anything but stare in a blank, lost way at the bed on which lay the wreck of his happiness.

By-and-by--it might have been half an hour or an hour later--he became dimly conscious of a sound of lamentation; of the presence of many persons in the room; of being led away like a child, and placed in a chair beside an open window; and of Margherita kneeling at his feet and covering his hands with tears. Then, as one who has been stunned by some murderous blow, he recovered by degrees from his stupor.

”Salimbeni,” he said, hoa.r.s.ely.

It was the first word he had spoken.

”We have sent for him, Signore,” sobbed Margherita. ”But--but--”

He lifted his hand, and turned his face aside.

”Hus.h.!.+” he replied. ”I know it.”

Signor Salimbeni was a famous Florentine surgeon who lived close by in the Piazza Barberini, and with whom Hugh Girdlestone had been on terms of intimacy for the last four or five months. Almost as his name was being uttered, he arrived;--a tall, dark, bright-eyed man of about forty years of age, with something of a military bearing. His first step was to clear the place of intruders--of the English family from the first floor, of the Americans from the second, of the Italian tenor and his wife, and of the servants who had crowded up _en ma.s.se_ from every part of the house. He expelled them all, civilly but firmly; locked the door behind the last; and went alone into the chamber of death. Hugh Girdlestone followed him, dull-eyed, tongue-tied, bewildered, like a man half roused from sleep.

The surgeon bent silently over the corpse; turned the poor white face to the light; held a mirror to the lips; touched the pa.s.sive hand; lifted first one eyelid, then the other; and felt for the last lingering spark of vital heat on the crown of the head. Then he shook his head.

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