Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/262

254 recover herself after some overpowering emotion. She clasped her hands together with a gesture of passionate sorrow, and then entered. After the door had closed I was moving onwards when my attention was attracted by something glittering on the ground. I picked it up. It was a bracelet. I went to one of the lamps and held it up to the light. It was an old-fashioned silver chain. It was clasped by a cross, anchor, and heart entwined together. On these was written in large letters,—“Volere,” “Sapere,” “Ardire.” On the anchor, in pearls, “Volere;” on the cross, in sapphires, “Sapere;” on the heart, in carbuncles, “Ardire.” “To know, to will, to dare.” “I will dare,” I said to myself, and went to the door. Before I could look about for a bell to ring, or a fastening to undo, it suddenly opened, and Madame Rabenfels stood before me.

“My bracelet!” she exclaimed.

I put it into her hand.

“You do not know how you have served me,” she said. “This is a talisman; but how did you know it was mine?”

I felt that I crimsoned to the very temples.

“I have observed it on your arm—I was passing—”

We were standing near the door of the garden. At that moment a quick step ran up the path, and a woman servant rushed up to us and spoke to her mistress in Italian. She was evidently the bearer of some important and unpleasant news, for she was crying and in the greatest agitation. Though I understand Italian perfectly, she spoke so low and so rapidly that I could only hear that some one had arrived.

“My brother!” exclaimed Madame Rabenfels, and put out her hand as if for support.

She trembled from head to foot. I placed her arm in mine, and she moved on almost unconsciously, as it seemed to me, towards the house.

My presentiments were true. We were in what seemed the crisis of her fate—together! The dark sky stooped low over us, and held a pall as it were over both; the thick trees waved their branches around us, and united us in their embrace; the weeds over which we trod, and which continually impeded our progress, grasped at us as they would have linked us in one chain.

She did not speak. We soon reached the house. She still leant upon my arm, and I accompanied her up-stairs. The landing-place of the stairs was a gallery into which several doors opened. One of these doors was suddenly and violently opened, and a man in the dress of a Roman ecclesiastic met us.

“I have come, Santa,” he said, but stopped when he saw me. He took her from me, looked at me from head to foot, re-entered the room he had left, and would have shut the door in my face I believe, but she recovered herself with an effort, and almost drew me in after her. Alas! she instinctively clung to the presence which was friendly to her.

“Santa—” he again exclaimed, and then paused.

“When did you arrive, Giovanni?”

“Shortly after midnight. I sent for Annunziata, and after a thousand subterfuges and lies, discovered you were out, and—”

“Here I am; but what has caused this sudden journey, and why did you wait for me? They would have prepared a room for you in a moment.”

“Your husband has sent for you—he has been dangerously ill—he is willing—” but he interrupted himself almost fiercely—“I do not think it necessary to include a stranger in our conversation. Is this Rupert Rabenfels? If so, I have a message for him also.”

“It is not Rupert Rabenfels; this is a friend. But I agree with you he should be spared this miserable scene which I foresee.”

She bade me farewell—her hand lingered in mine for a moment, it was as cold as ice.

As I slowly descended the stairs, I saw a woman seated on one of the steps, apparently in a convulsion of grief. It was the maid Annunziata. She started up as I approached her.

“My good sir, why did you leave them? He will kill her with his violence: she is so good—an angel—and to be tribolata così—un vero martirio—they are all devils, all of them—husband, brother, Rupert, all of them.”

A question rose within me—who is Rupert? but I suppressed it.

“Now that her husband is ill, he wants her.” And she sobbed with childish impetuosity.

I tried to console her. She suddenly started up.

“I will not let you go, till he has left her.”

She seized my hand and dragged me after her, before I could prevent her, through a corridor, up and down various passages, till she brought me into a small, dark room. To my surprise she closed the door, locked it, and put the key into her pocket.

“There,” she said in a breathless undertone, and moved slightly a heavy curtain which masked a door; the door was open, and to my horror—for playing the eaves-dropper was not my vocation—I found myself next to the room in which were Madame Rabenfels and her brother.

I turned away: Annunziata had seated herself on the ground, covered her face with her apron to stifle her sobs, and was rocking herself to and fro. If I tried to pass her she would be sure to make a disturbance, and thus create the difficulty I would have laid down my life to avoid. Yet it was terrible to become the secret witness of this scene, although there was a kind of fatal fascination in it, I confess. Two human beings of such strong passions and energies, struggling in what seemed a storm of fate, so much sorrow and beauty in one, so much anger and reproach in the other, and both giving free scope to their feelings with Italian eloquence and demonstrativeness, would have interested the most indifferent spectator. What must it have been to me, who felt my love (I had at last acknowledged to myself that it was love) was being tried there, as before a tribunal, to be dismissed as guilty, or acquitted as innocent? Was she married? Had she been divorced? Was she free? Their voices reached me distinctly as if I had been in the same room.

“Ferdinand will forgive the past.”

“Forgive—grant me patience;—do not mistake me for a moment, Giovanni; I stand where the condemnation or absolution of Ferdinand cannot