A Spirit in Prison Part 139

Gaspare bent almost furiously to the oars. Then sharply he turned his head.

"What is it?"

"I can see the boat! I can see the Signora!"

The words struggled out on a long breath that made his broad chest heave. Instinctively Artois put his hands on the gunwale of the boat on either side of him, moving as if to stand up.

"Take care, Signore!"

"I'd forgotten--" He leaned forward, searching the night. "Where is the Signora?"

"There--in front! She is rowing to the village. No, she has turned."

He stopped rowing.

"The Signora has seen, or she has heard, and she is going in to sh.o.r.e."

"But there are only the rocks."

"The Signora is going in to the Palazzo of the Spirits."

"The Palazzo of the Spirits?" Artois repeated.

"Si, Signore."

Gaspare turned and looked again into the darkness.

"I cannot see the Signora any more."

"Follow the Signora, Gaspare. If she has gone to the Palazzo of the Spirits row in there."

"Si, Signore."

He drew the oars again strongly through the water.

Artois remembered a blinding storm that had crashed over a mountain village in Sicily long ago, a flash of lightning which had revealed to him the gaunt portal of a palace that seemed abandoned, a strip of black cloth, the words "_Lutto in famiglia_." They had seemed to him prophetic words.

And now--?

In the darkness he saw another darkness, the strange and broken outline of the ruined palace by the sea, once perhaps, the summer home of some wealthy Roman, now a mere sh.e.l.l visited in the lonely hours by the insatiate waves. Were Hermione and he to meet here? To-day he had thought of his friend as a spirit that had been long in prison. Now he came to the Palace of the Spirits to face her truth with his. The Palace of the Spirits! The name suggested the very nakedness of truth. Well, let it be so, let the truth stand there naked. Again, mingling with a certain awe, there rose up in him a strong ardor, a courage that was vehement, that longed at last to act. And it seemed to him suddenly that for many years, through all the years that divided Hermione and him from the Sicilian life, they had been held in leash, waiting for the moment of this encounter. Now the leash slackened. They were being freed. And for what?

Gaspare plunged his right oar into the sea alone. The boat swung round obediently, heading for the sh.o.r.e.

One of the faint lights that gleamed in the village was extinguished.

"Signore, the Signora has left the boat!"

"Si?"

"Madonna! She has let it go! She has left it to the sea!"

He backed water. A moment later the little boat in which Vere loved to go out alone grated against theirs.

"Madonna! To leave the boat like that!" exclaimed Gaspare, bending to catch the tow-rope. "The Signora is not safe to-night. The Signora's saint will not look on her to-night."

"Put me ash.o.r.e, Gaspare."

"Si, Signore."

The boat pa.s.sed before the facade of the palace.

Artois knew the palace well by day. This was the first time he had come to it by night. In daylight it was a small and picturesque ruin washed by the laughing sea, lonely but scarcely sad. Leaping from its dark and crumbling walls the fisher-boys often plunged into the depths below; or they lay upon the broad sills of the gaping window-s.p.a.ces to dry themselves in the sun. Men came with rods and lines to fish from its deserted apartments, through which, when rough weather was at hand, the screaming sea-birds flew. The waves played frivolously enough in its recesses. And their voices were heard against the slimy and defiant stones calling to teach other merrily, as perhaps once the voices of revellers long dead called in the happy hours of a vanished villeggiatura.

But the night wrought on it, in it, and about it change. Its solitude then became desolation, the darkness of its stones a blackness that was tragic, its ruin more than a suggestion, the decisive picture of despair.

At its base was a line of half-discovered window-s.p.a.ces, the lower parts of which had become long since the prey of the waves. Above it were more window-s.p.a.ces, fully visible, and flanking a high doorway, once, no doubt, connected with a staircase, but now giving upon mid-air. Formerly there had been another floor, but this had fallen into decay and disappeared, with the exception of one small and narrow chamber situated immediately over the doorway. Isolated, for there was no means of approach to it, this chamber had something of the aspect of a low and sombre tower sluggishly lifting itself towards the sky. The palace was set upon rock and flanked by rocks. Round about it gra.s.s grew to the base of a high cliff at perhaps two hundred yards distance from it. And here and there gra.s.s and tufts of rank herbage pushed in its crevices, proclaiming the triumph of time to exulting winds and waters.

As Gaspare rowed in cautiously and gently to this deserted place, to which from the land no road, no footpath led, he stared at the darkness of the palace with superst.i.tious awe, then at the small, familiar boat, which followed in their wake because he held the tow-rope.

"Signore," he said, "I am afraid!"

"You--Gaspare!"

"I am afraid for the Signora. Why should she come here all alone with the _fattura della morte_? I am afraid for the Signora."

The boat touched the edge of the rock to the right of the palace.

"And where has the Signora gone, Signore? I cannot see her, and I cannot hear her."

He lifted up his hand. They listened. But they heard only the sucking murmur of the sea against the rocks perforated with little holes, and in distant, abandoned chambers of the palace.

"Where has the Signora gone?" Gaspare repeated, in a whisper.

"I will find the Signora," said Artois.

He got up. Gaspare held his arm to a.s.sist him to the sh.o.r.e.

"Thank you."

He was on the rocks.

"Gaspare," he said, "wait here. Lie off the sh.o.r.e close by till I come back."

"Si, Signore."

Artois hesitated, looking at Gaspare.

"I will persuade the Signora to come back with us," he said.