Part 49 (1/2)

”Take me away, take me away!” she moaned, hiding her face against my breast. ”'Tis a vault--oh, Santissima Madonna!--a place for the dead!

Quick--quick! take me out to the air--let us go home--home--”

She broke off abruptly, her alarm increasing at my utter silence. She gazed up at me with wild wet eyes.

”Cesare! Cesare! speak! What ails you? Why have you brought me here?

Touch me--kiss me! say something--anything--only speak!”

And her bosom heaved convulsively; she sobbed with terror.

I put her from me with a firm hand. I spoke in measured accents, tinged with some contempt.

”Hush, I pray you! This is no place for an hysterical scena. Consider where you are! You have guessed aright--this is a vault--your own mausoleum, fair lady!--if I mistake not--the burial-place of the Romani family.”

At these words her sobs ceased, as though they had been frozen in her throat; she stared at me in speechless fear and wonder.

”Here,” I went on with methodical deliberation, ”here lie all the great ancestors of your husband's family, heroes and martyrs in their day.

Here will your own fair flesh molder. Here,” and my voice grew deeper and more resolute, ”here, six months ago, your husband himself, Fabio Romani, was buried.”

She uttered no sound, but gazed at me like some beautiful pagan G.o.ddess turned to stone by the Furies. Having spoken thus far I was silent, watching the effect of what I had said, for I sought to torture the very nerves of her base soul. At last her dry lips parted--her voice was hoa.r.s.e and indistinct.

”You must be mad!” she said, with smothered anger and horror in her tone.

Then seeing me still immovable, she advanced and caught my hand half commandingly, half coaxingly. I did not resist her.

”Come,” she implored, ”come away at once!” and she glanced about her with a shudder. ”Let us leave this horrible place; as for the jewels, if you keep them here, they may stay here; I would not wear them for the world! Come.”

I interrupted her, holding her hand in a fierce grasp; I turned her abruptly toward a dark object lying on the ground near us--my own coffin broken asunder. I drew her close to it.

”Look!” I said in a thrilling whisper, ”what is this? Examine it well: it is a coffin of flimsiest wood, a cholera coffin! What says this painted inscription? Nay, do not start! It bears your husband's name; he was buried in it. Then how comes it to be open? WHERE IS HE?”

I felt her sway under me; a new and overwhelming terror had taken instant possession of her, her limbs refused to support her, she sunk on her knees. Mechanically and feebly she repeated the words after me--

”WHERE IS HE? WHERE IS HE?”

”Ay!” and my voice rang out through the hollow vault, its pa.s.sion restrained no more. ”WHERE IS HE?--the poor fool, the miserable, credulous dupe, whose treacherous wife played the courtesan under his very roof, while he loved and blindly trusted her? WHERE IS HE? Here, here!” and I seized her hands and forced her up from her kneeling posture. ”I promised you should see me as I am! I swore to grow young to-night for your sake!--Now I keep my word! Look at me, Nina!--look at me, my twice-wedded wife!--Look at me!--do you not know your HUSBAND?”

And throwing my dark habiliments from me, I stood before her undisguised! As though some defacing disease had swept over her at my words and look, so her beauty suddenly vanished. Her face became drawn and pinched and almost old--her lips turned blue, her eyes grew glazed, and strained themselves from their sockets to stare at me; her very hands looked thin and ghost-like as she raised them upward with a frantic appealing gesture; there was a sort of gasping rattle in her throat as she drew herself away from me with a convulsive gesture of aversion, and crouched on the floor as though she sought to sink through it and thus avoid my gaze.

”Oh, no, no, no!” she moaned, wildly, ”not Fabio!--no, it cannot be=-Fabio is dead--dead! And you!--you are mad!--this is some cruel jest of yours--some trick to frighten me!”

She broke off breathlessly, and her large, terrified eyes wandered to mine again with a reluctant and awful wonder. She attempted to arise from her crouching position; I approached, and a.s.sisted her to do so with ceremonious politeness. She trembled violently at my touch, and slowly staggering to her feet, she pushed back her hair from her forehead and regarded me fixedly with a searching, anguished look, first of doubt, then of dread, and lastly of convinced and hopeless certainty, for she suddenly covered her eyes with her hands as though to shut out some repulsive object and broke into a low wailing sound like that of one in bitter physical pain. I laughed scornfully.

”Well, do you know me at last?” I cried. ”'Tis true I have somewhat altered. This hair of mine was black, if you remember--it is white enough now, blanched by the horrors of a living death such as you cannot imagine, but which,” and I spoke more slowly and impressively, ”you may possibly experience ere long. Yet in spite of this change I think you know me! That is well. I am glad your memory serves you thus far!”

A low sound that was half a sob and half a cry broke from her.

”Oh, no, no!” she muttered, again, incoherently--”it cannot be! It must be false--it is some vile plot--it cannot be true! True! Oh, Heaven! it would be too cruel, too horrible!”

I strode up to her. I drew her hands away from her eyes and grasped them tightly in my own.

”Hear me!” I said, in clear, decisive tones. ”I have kept silence, G.o.d knows, with a long patience, but now--now I can speak. Yes! you thought me dead--you had every reason to think so, you had every proof to believe so. How happy my supposed death made you! What a relief it was to you!--what an obstruction removed from your path! But--I was buried alive!” She uttered a faint shriek of terror, and looking wildly about her, strove to wrench her hands from my clasp. I held them more closely. ”Ay, think of it, wife of mine!--you to whom luxury has been second nature, think of this poor body straightened in a helpless swoon, packed and pressed into yonder coffin and nailed up fast, shut out from the blessed light and air, as one would have thought, forever!