Chapter XIX.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4880, 20 February 1894, Page 1

Chapter XIX.

""AT, DEAD LOVES ABE THE POTENT."

It was their last day at San Eemo. Everything bad been packed for tbe journey, and the drawing-room at Lauterfcrunnen had a dreary look now that it was stripped of all those decorations and useful prettinesses with which Allegra had made it so gay and home like. The morning had been brilliant, and Martin, Allegra and Captain Hnlbert had set off at nine o'clock upon a long-deferred expedition to San Romolo. Tbey would bo home iv good time for the eight o'clock dinner ; and laola had promised to amuse herself all day, and to be in good spirits to welcome them on their return.

" You have a duty to do for your sister," she eaid, when her husband felt compunction at leaving her. "Think of ail she has done foi us, her devotion, her unselfishness. The least wo can do is to help her to be happy with her lover ; and all the burden of that duty haß fallen npon you. I think you ought ts be called Colonel Gooseberry."

She looked a bright and happy creature as she stood on the male path in the olive wood, waving her hand to them as they went away-— Allegra riding a donkey, the two men walking, one on each side of her bridle, and' the driver striding on ahead, leading a riderless donkey which was to serve as an occasional help by and by, if either of the pedestrians wanted a lift. Her cheeks Were flushed with walking, and her eyes were bright with a new gladnesß.

She wa3 ; fu'l of a childish pleasure in the idea of their journey, and the realisation of a dream which most of us have dreamt ifor years before 'it j'assumed^the shape of earthly things— the dream of Borne.

Isola Btood listening to their footsteps, as they passed the little painted shrine on the hill path; She heard them give the time of day'to a party of peasant women, with empty baskets pn their heads, going np to gather the las. -of the olives. Then she roamed about the -wooded valley and the slope of the hill towards Colla for over an hour f and then, growing suddenly tired, she crept home, in time to Bit beside her baby while he slept his placid noontide sleep. She bent over the; little rosebud month and kissed it, in a rapture of maternal love.

"So young to see Rome," she murmured, " and to think that those star-like eyea will see and take no heed ; to think that snch a glorious vision will pa-s before him, and yet he will remember nothing." The day was very Ion?, something like one of those endless days at Trelasco, when her husband was in Burmah and she had only the dog -and the cat for her companions. She thought of those fond friends to-day with a regretful sigh— the sleepy Shah, so calm and undemonstrative in hia attachment, but with a placid, purring delight in her society, which seemed to mean a great deal; 'the fox terrier, so active and intense in his affection, demanding so mnoh attention, intruding himself npon her walks and reveries with such eager, not-to-be denied devotion. She had no four-footed friends here; and the want of them 'made an empty space in her life. In the afternoon the weather changed suddenly. The sky became overcast, the sea a leaden colour ; and the mistral came whistling np the valley with a great rustling snd shivering of the silver-green foliage and creaking of old beat branches, like the withered arms of witch or sorceress. All the glory of the day was gone, and the white villas on the crest of the eastward hill stood out with a livid distinctness against the. blackened sky.

Isola wandered up the hill-path, past the little shrine where the way divided, the point at whioh she had seen her husband and his party vanish in the Bunny morning. She felt a sudden sense of loneliness now the sun-was gone ; a childish longing for the return of her friends, for evening and lamplight, and the things that make for cheerfulness. She was cold and dull, and out of spirits. She had left the hous9 while the sun was shining, and she had come without shawl or wrap of any kind, and the mistral made her shiver. Yet she had no idea of hurrying home. The loneliness of the house had become oppressive before she left it ; and she knew it must be some hours before the return of the excursionists. So she mounted the steep mulepath slowly and painfully, till she had gone two-thirds of the way to Colla j and then she sat down to rest 6 1 the ler stone wall which enclosed a little garden in a break of the wood, from which point there was a far-stretching view seaward.

She was very cold, but she was so tired as to be glad to rest at any hazard of after-suffering. She was drowsy from sheer exhaustion, and leaned her head against a great rugged olive, whose roots were mixed np with the wall, and fell fast asleep. She awoke shivering, from a comfnsad dream of sea and woods, Soman temples and mined palaoeß. She had been dreaming of a place that was here in the woods below Colla, and which yet was half Borne and half Trelasco. There was a classic temple npon a hill that was like the Mount, and the day was bleak, and dark, and rainy, and she was walking on the footpath through Lord Lostwithiel's park, with the storm-driven rain beating against her face, just as on that autumn evening, when the owner of the Boil had taken compassion upon her and had given her shelter. The dream had been curiously vivid — a dream which brought the past back as if it were the present, and blotted out all had come afterwards. She woke bewildered, forgetting that her hushad come back from India, and that she was in Italy, thinking of herself as she had been on tbat October evening when she and Lostwithiel met for the first time.

The sea was darker than when Bhe fell asleep. There was the dull Crimson of a stormy sunset yonder, behind the jutting promontory of Bordighera, while the sky above was barred with long, black clouds, and the wind was howling across the great deep valley like an evil spirit tortured ahd imprisoned, striving in anguish for release. Exactly opposite her, as she stood in the deep cleft of the hill., a solitary vessel was labouring under prass of canvas towards the point upon whose dusky summit the chapel of the Madonna do la Guardia gleamed whitely in the dying day. The vess.l was a schooner yacht, of considerable tonnage, certainly larger than the Vendetta.

Isola stood, still as marble, watching that labouring boat, the straining sails, the dark hull beaten by the stormy dash of the waves. She watched with wide, open eyes, and parted lip 3, that quivered with an over-mastering fear, watched in momentary expectation of seeing those straining sails dip for the last time, that labouring hull capsize and go down in an abyss of angry waters. She watched in motionless attention till the boat vanished behind the shoulder of the hill ; and then, shivering, nervous, and altogether overstrung, sho hurried homeward*, feeling that she had stayed out much too long, and that Ehe had caught a chill whi.h might be the causie of new trouble".

If those narrow mule paths had been less familiar, she might have lost her way in the dusk j but she had trodden them too

often to ba in any difficulty, and she reached the villa without losb of time, but not before the return of the picnic party.

Allegra and Captain Hulbert were at the gate watching for her. Colonel Disney had gone into the wood to look for her, and had naturally taken the wrong direction.

" Oh, I.ola ; how could you Bfcop out so late, and on such a stormy evening?" remonstrated Allegra. I fell asleep before the storm came on." " Fell asleep— out of doors — and at sunset ! What dreadful imprudence." "I wont out too late, I'm afraid; but I was so tired. A kind of horror of the house and the silence came upon me — and I felt I must go out into the woods. I walked too far— and fell asleep from sheer fatigue : and when I woke I saw a yacht battling with the wind. I'm afraid she'll go down."

"What, you noticed her too?" exclaimed Hulberfc. "I didn't think you cared enough abont yachts to take notice of her. • I was watching her as we came down the hill; rather too much canvas; but she's right enough. She'B past Anna di Taggia by this time, 1 daresay. I'll go and look for Disney, and tell him you're safe and sound. Perhaps I shall miss him in tbe wood. It's like a Midsummer Night's Dream, isn't it Allegra?" he said, laughing, as he went out of the gate.

"If it were only midsummer, I shouldn't care," answered bis sweetheart, with her arm round Isola, who stood beside her pale and shivering. " Come in, dear, and let me make you warm, if I can."

"If they should all go down in the darkness," said Isola in a low, dreamy voice. "The boat looked as if it might capsize at any moment."

Allegra employed all her arts as a sick nurse in the endeavour to ward off any evil consequence from that imprudent slumber in the chill hour of sunset ; but her cares were unavailing. Isola was restless and feverish all night, but she insisted on getting np at her usual hour next morning, and declared horself quite capable of the journey to Genoa. Allegra and her brother, however, insisted on her resting for a day or two, So the departure was postponed, and the doctor sent for. He advised at least three days' rest, with careful nursing; and he reproved his patient severely for her imprudence in expoeing herself to the evening air.

Captain Hnlbert appeared at tea-time, just returned from a railway journey to Allassio.

"I've a surprise for you, Mrs Disney," he said, seating himself by the sofa where Isola was lying, surrounded by invalid luxuries, books, lemonade, fan, and eau de Cologne flask, her feet carefully covered with a silken rug.

" A surprise ! " she echoed, faintly, as if life held no surprises for her. "What can that be P"

" You remember the yacht'you saw last night?" " Yes," she cried, roused in an instant, and c'aiping her hands excitedly. "Did she go down ? "

"Not the least little bit. She is safe and sound at Allas.io. She is called the Eurydice, she hails laßt from. Syracuse, and my brother is on bestfd her. He wired to me this morning to go over and see him. I'm very glad I went, for he is off to Corfu to-morrow. The Flying Dutchman isn't in it with him."

There wa3 a curious silence. Martin Disney was sitting on the other side of his wife's sofa, where he had been- reading selected bits of the Times, such portions of the news of men and nations as he fancied might interest her. Allegra was busy with a piece of delicate needlework, and did not immediately reply • but ib was she who wag first to Bpsak.

" How frightened you would have been yesterday evening had you known who was on board the boat," she said.

" I don't know about being frightened, but he wa3 certainly carrying too much canvas. I told him bo this morning."

" What did he say ? '

"Laughed at me. 'You sailors never believe that a landsman can sail a ship,' he said. I wanted to talk to his sailingmaster, but he told me he was his own sailing-master. If his Bhip was doomed to go down, he would be at the helm himself."

" That sounds as if he were very reckless," said Allegra.

"I told him I did not like the rig of his boat, nor the name, and I reminded him how I saw the Eurydice off Portland with all her canvas spread the day she went down. I was with the Governor of the Prison, a naval man, who had been commander on my first ship, and we stood side by side on the cliff, and watched ber as she went by. 'If this wind gets much stronger that ship will go down,' said my old captain. ' unless they take in some of their canvas.' And a few hour's later thoße poor fellowß had all gone to the bottom. I asked Lostwithiel why he called his boat the Eurydice. ' Fancy,' he said. He had a fancy for the name. • I've never forgotten the old lines we used to hammer out when we were boys/ he said — " Ah, miaeram, Eurydicen, anima fugiente vocabat ; Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripae."

" I don't think the name matters if ehe is a good boat," said Allegra with her calm commonsense.

" Well, she is and Bhe isn't. She is a finer hoat than the Vendetta, bnt I'd sooner navigate the Vendetta in a storm. There are points about hia new boat that I don't quite like. However, he had her built by ooe of the fiaest builders on the Clyde, and it wiil be hard if she goes wrong. He hes givea me the Vendetta as a wedding present— in advance of tbe event —on condition that 1 sink her when I'm tired of her, and he said he hoped she'd be luckier to me tban she has been to him."

Martin Dieney sat silent by bis wife's sofa. He could never hear Lord Lostwithiel's name without a touch of pain. His only objection to Hulbert as a brother* in-law was the thought that the two men were of the same race; that he must needs hear the hated name from time to time. And yet he believed his wife's avowal that she was pure and true. His hatred of the name came only from the recollection tbat she had been slandered by a man whom he despised. He looked at the wasted profile ou the satin pillow, so wan, so transparent in its waxen pallor, the heavy eyelid drooping languidly, the faintly coloured lips drawn a9if v ith pain— a broken lily. Was this the kind of women to ba suspected of evil; thi. fair and fragile creature in whom the spiritual so predominated over the Bensual ? Ho hated himself for having bean for a moment influenced by that underbred Ecoundrel at GlenaveHl — for having baen bise enough to doubt his wife's purity.

He had pained and humiliated her, and now th _ stamp of dsath was on tbe f *cc he adored ; and before him lny the prosp cb of a life's remoise.

They left San Esmo three days afterwards, Isola being pronounced able to bear the journey, though her cough had been considerably increased by that imprudent slumber in the wood. She was anxious to po, end doctor and husband gave way to her oacerneas for new scenep. "lam so tirel of thi* plftc?, "tha paid piteously 3 "it 13 lOTt-Iy, but i*i is a love'inesa that makea mo melancholy. I want to be in a great city where there are lots of people moving about. I have never lived in a city, but always in quiet places— beautiful, very 1 beautiful, but so still— so still— so full of onesel. and one's own thoughts."

(To be continued).