CHAPTER XXIII

“A STRUGGLE ’TWIXT LOVE AND DEATH”

And now you shall hie with me to Italy. I had missed the over-night Engadine Rapide to Lucerne, and Hooper’s enthusiasm sent me to Dover two hours too early. As it happens, I take a lasting delight in getting the better of the terrible line between London and the channel, which any man may do by catching a fast train slightly in advance of the boat express and carrying his grip from the town station to the pier. He thus avoids the scandalous over-charge of the boat trains, and lays the unction to his soul that he is not a holder of “Doras.”

All day long I was looking at scenes familiar to my eyes. Lille, Douai, St. Quentin, Laon--how the old cities of French Flanders and Picardy brought the ghosts of past years trooping before me. Then, as night fell, began that interminable running into and out of frontier stations on rails laid in crescents, so that you are seldom certain where the engine is, and it is hard to persuade your nervous fellow-passenger, who has never taken the journey before, that he or she is not in the wrong train.

Thus, accompanied by the babel of funny noises inseparable from French railways, I dozed through a rumbling journey and reached Basle in the early morning. It will perhaps scarce be credited (seeing that I have posed, and justly, as an experienced _voyageur_) that I quitted London without ascertaining the exact locality of the Castello Rondo. At Lucerne I purchased a guide-book to the Italian Lakes, virgin territory to me, notwithstanding all my jaunts in strange lands. I discovered, to my dismay, that the shores of Lake Como cover nearly a hundred miles, while towns cluster round its “efflorescent loveliness” in a fine profusion. Bellagio, Cadenabbia and Como I had heard of, but who was to distinguish Domaso from Dongo, or Colico from Cremia?

To add to my annoyance, the writer of the guide-book spread himself on the fact that each jutting peninsula or verdant slope held “castles with turreted towers, peeping out, ever and anon, from the sylvan woods which hide them.” Cheerfully could I have wrung his neck for that sentence. It tortured me until the slow Italian train deposited me at Como at eleven o’clock, which, allowing for mid-Europe time, was slightly in advance of the hour Frank Hooper called at Sandilands House.

You will remember that Nora had gone out, meaning to drive Mrs. Grier and Karl to Hurlingham. Karl, of course, was then asleep in the Pall Mall Hotel, so the two ladies went together, and a fine fencing-match they indulged in, without a doubt. But they, at least, used words which they understood, even if they tried to cloak their meaning, while I used a language which I did not understand in striving to wrest from several voluble Italians the whereabouts of the Castello Rondo and the Signora Hutchinson. One brigandish person reeled off fourteen likely places, so I quitted the terminus in wrath, found the English-speaking proprietor of a hotel, and luckily ascertained from him that the lady and mansion I was in search of would surely be in the neighborhood of Bellagio.

I believed him, and took a steamer for a two hours’ journey on the lake. When I saw the superb panorama opening up in front, when the Villa d’Este spread its wondrous array of terraces, temples, waterfalls, gardens, and fountains before my astonished eyes, I forgave the guide-book man. Some day I mean to ramble along those enchanted shores--some day, ere the world grows dim--if only to visit that sixty-foot monument erected at Laglio by Joseph Frank to his own memory and in grateful acknowledgment of his own worth. His was a noble idea. If the rich and distinguished people we know would but adopt it, and justly appraise themselves at their own valuation, the face of the earth would soon be covered with costly memorials.

The lake is shaped somewhat on the lines of the Three Legs of the Isle of Man, with Bellagio perched on a dividing promontory. I reached the landing-stage at exactly 6.45 P.M., Greenwich time.

At no great distance, I noticed the round towers of a castellated building nestling among the trees of a rock-guarded point. _Pace_ Shakespeare, there is a good deal in a name.

An intelligent-looking vetturino seized me, but, ere I yielded, I pointed to the building which caught my eye.

“Castello Rondo?” I cried.

“Si, signor.” He smiled.

“Signora Hutchinson?”

“Per certo, signor.” He grinned all over his face. No doubt you have noticed the stupid habit of foreigners (when you do not know their language) in not replying “Yes” or “No” to your questions.

Anyhow, the words had a reassuring sound. I gave him the name of the hotel, and he appeared to regard my advent as a license to kill all who dared to cross his path. I think I heard every bad word in the Italian tongue before the vehicle deposited me, with a series of wild bounds up hill and down dale, at the hotel portico. The coachman swore at his horse, at pedestrians, chickens, dogs, and other charioteers, and interlarded his scurrility with appeals to the saints.

I believe he informed me that if I patronized him exclusively during my stay in Bellagio he would always drive like that. To do him justice, he kept his contract. I only saw him twice again, and in the second drive we bagged a hen, an apple-barrow, and the crutch of a cripple, who recovered miraculously when our fiery steed snorted down his neck.

A tub and a change of raiment removed the dust of empires. Now that I was actually in the same locality as Maggie Hutchinson, the means whereby I was to achieve my object were not so clear as the object itself. By hook or by crook I hoped to bring Miss Margaret and her mother back with me to London. The first train, in reason, left Como the following afternoon, and was timed to reach Victoria twenty-nine hours later.

So two whole days must pass before Hooper (to whom I had telegraphed my arrival) could expect relief. Would it be too late? And, in any event, would the ladies consent to accompany me? I was consumed with impatience, so perplexed and worried that I despatched a second telegram to Hooper, asking him to wire me news of some sort. I strove to eat, but I was too eager for action to sit through a dinner of many courses.

Ultimately, I resolved to visit the Castello Rondo much earlier than politeness permitted, on the supposition that its occupants dined at the usual hour.

Outside the hotel my vetturino was watching for me, vulture-like, as his ancestors for many a generation had watched for the passing of unwary travelers through Cis-Alpine gorges. I have already recounted the exciting nature of our transit across Bellagio. The man was evidently mad with the joy of securing an Englishman.

The killing of the hen, the frenzy of the apple-vender, the curses of the cured cripple, each in its way tended to fend off the weight which a difficult task imposed on my spirits. Nevertheless, my heart sank in my boots when I raised a ponderous knocker, a wrought-iron ring in the mouth of a beautifully modeled lion’s head, and delivered the first note of my mandate to Karl’s lady-love.

That was a lasting peculiarity of my friend’s sixth sense. Once removed from its aura, the mind began to deny it, faith wavered, the familiar things of life forbade its acceptance. Its nature and influence stood apart from all accepted theories of existence. It was inexplicable, insoluble, more nebulous than the Nirvana of the Buddhists. One felt as awkward as a professed scientist who purposed addressing a critical audience on the demonstrable truths of astrology or the doctrines of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy.

My Jehu promised to await me _tutta via_, and I was admitted into a medieval courtyard--ancient in architectural design, that is--because the building was not old. Troubled though I was, a glance showed that the mansion was modern enough in its luxuries and equipment. Beyond a Grecian colonnade lay a smooth carpet of grass. Behind it, a series of terraces stretched down to the lake. Although the water was crimson with the glory of the setting sun, although clipped shrubs and ornamental flower-beds were still glorious in the light of day, I was positively startled to see that the nearest lawn was the identical spot I had visited during the momentary spell Karl had cast upon me when we dined together on the night of my return from Heidelberg.

The knowledge shocked distrust out of my heart. I was thrice armed now. The whole crowd of extraordinary experiences which I had undergone since the uneventful picnic in the Schonau Forest rushed in on my memory. To lose belief in Karl was to account myself insane.

In popular idiom, we speak of certain events serving to “stiffen our backbone.” The phrase has an added peculiarity when examined in its telegnomic significance, but, whatever its inward meaning, it had a salutary force for me just then. I had scarce noted the landscape of my waking dream when a tall elegant-looking young man came to me. I recognized him at once. He was the third figure of that uncanny moonlit scene--the “Italian, of good birth, madly in love with Maggie.”

“I regret to say Miss Hutchinson is indisposed,” he said in excellent English.

I have encountered several well-born Italians who are warranted to get up a frantic passion in five minutes for any nice young lady dowered with great wealth. I am glad to say I took this cavalier’s measure at a glance. Perhaps, by and by, I may cultivate a sixth sense of my own. At any rate, I was quite sure he had snatched my card from the stupid domestic who came with him to the courtyard, and was interposing a barrier between Maggie and me.

“Did Miss Hutchinson send that message to me?” I asked.

“No; not exactly. She does not receive at this hour.”

“You have mistaken an urgent matter for a mere social call,” I answered. “I have come straight to this house from London. I must see Miss Hutchinson immediately. Kindly send my card to her. She knows my name.”

To avoid a scene, I let him down lightly. But when one man wishes to tell another that he is a cur, there are many varieties of speech. He flushed darkly, yet he had the wit to take the _via media_ I offered.

“I am sorry,” he said, with a bow of excessive courtesy. “The servant did not explain matters.”

He gabbled some instructions in Italian, handed over my pasteboard, and proceeded to question me politely about my business. I found this amusing, but I had no wish to quarrel with him, so I gave him verbally what my old friend, Toff Wall, the “Brummagem Pet,” used to call a “steadier on the breadbasket” by hinting at falling stocks, and followed it up with a “smasher on the snuff-box” in the shape of lachrymose comment on the sad reverses of fortune some people were subjected to.

This by-play was ended by the appearance of Maggie herself. In the rich half-light of that evening in wonderland, I thought I had never seen a woman so ethereally beautiful.

The plump school-girl contour had given place to a delightfully piquant femininity. Surprise, pleasure, a vague feeling of alarm, enlivened her mobile face and incardinated her pale cheeks with a delicious rose tint.

I was quick to note, too, that she glanced at the Italian with some astonishment, even as she flitted towards me with outstretched hands, nor did she pay heed to the explanatory lie he murmured rapidly in his own language. I learnt afterwards that it was _his_ presence for which she was “indisposed.” But let him pass. I only set eyes on him once again--at the railway station.

“I am delighted to see you,” she cried. “Remember you? Of course I do. But is it true what Baptisto said--that you have traveled from London on some errand of importance to me?”

“It is quite true,” I said.

“Oh, come this way. It is nothing serious, I hope? Is--is Mrs. Grier ill?”

“No. It is on Karl’s behalf I am here.”

“Karl! Why Karl? I have not--met him for many years.”

The slight pause, with its distinctive choice of a word, did not escape me. She was leading me through the house, a treasury of art in canvas and stone, and she had now ushered me into a room which, as I fully anticipated, was the boudoir-studio in which I had already seen her.

We were alone. I last beheld her on her knees in that identical apartment, and the memory of her tear-stained face surged in on me. It was no time to pick and choose expressions. The stereotyped language which I had framed to convey my thoughts was wholly inadequate to the demands of an interview fraught with such a momentous result.

I placed a hand on her shoulder, and I fear there was somewhat of a break in my voice as I said:

“I know much about you two. I cannot hold back my message. Karl, in this instant, is engaged in a desperate struggle between love and death. I come to you for him if not from him. I want you to return with me to England and save him.”

“Save him!” she repeated, her large brown eyes dilating with a terror the true cause of which I did not divine instantly.

“Yes. I am speaking from my heart. Karl is at death’s door. I, and another acquainted with all the circumstances, believe that you can bring him back to life. But you must come quickly. Even now you may be too late.”

She faced me with a vehemence that was altogether unexpected.

“What do you mean?” she cried. “You speak in riddles. What is Karl to me? I have driven him out of my heart, crushed his very image in my brain. He is nothing to me.”

Her excited protest aroused my resentment.

“You, too, are using words which are meaningless if judged only by the common laws of entity. Yet it is not a week since you knelt here, in a passion of tears, and wrapped Karl in your innermost soul. Do not deceive yourself any longer. He is your preordained mate, and he is pining for you. Yet he is giving his life to rescue you from emotions which cause you poignant suffering. Go to him! Clasp him in your arms! You cannot, you must not, continue to resist him.”

Poor girl! She looked wildly into my eyes, and then shrank away from me with a heartbreaking sob. She could not choose but believe me. In some respects, I was as thoroughly unstrung as she. I did not stop to consider whether or not I had taken the best way to win her to my point of view. Yet I endeavored most desperately, and it is somewhat to my credit, I fancy, to rescue the situation from the tornado into which it was plunged so suddenly.

“Try and listen to me calmly,” I said, for Maggie was crumpled up in a low chair, and gasping, without tears, in that agonizing manner of women when misery vanquishes them. “Karl loves you, and you love him. The sovereign passion has made a battle-ground of your hearts. You are at once happy and miserable, conscious of a superhuman ecstasy, yet self-condemned to separation from the one being who is all in all to you. The tension cannot endure. For five years the voluntary screen erected by you placed him and you in a spiritual trance. It has fallen now, and forever, yielding to the rude assault of those who dare to sever the bond which unites you until death. Is it not time you flew to your lover’s embrace? Do you hold your scruples dearer than his life?”

“No, no, not that,” she whispered. “None can be to Karl what I have been. But I am fearful of myself, fearful that I may destroy what I cannot create. Oh, what shall I say to make you understand that I have withheld myself from him not for my own sake but for his?”

“Let me reassure you there. Though Karl has never spoken to me of his love for you, I am sure he appreciates your self-sacrifice to the uttermost degree. And I, too, vaguely yet sincerely as I conceive a life beyond the grave, have formed some idea of the burthen you have borne. You are an inseparable element of Karl’s existence. Owing to you, and through you, he developed faculties whose potency now threatens to overwhelm him. You are part of his very being, the spontaneous Eve of his earthly Paradise. Joined with you, he rises beyond the clouds of our present knowledge. Bereft of you, he sinks back to the level of every-day humanity. Do not force me to say harsh things of an obstinacy which keeps you apart.”

“It was through me that Constantine died. I saw him torn to pieces. I heard his last cry. Would you have me eternally branded with a crime?”

Were it not for the tragic consequences of her decision, I could have smiled at this despairing effort to divert me from the track of the shadowy truth I was pursuing.

“You know full well that Constantine paid the penalty of the heedless man who touches a live wire,” I protested. “You must blame his folly, not the relentless force which he incredulously despised. Come, now, Miss Hutchinson, I have said sufficient to prove to you that one other in the world, besides you and Karl, has probed the depths of the enigma which has terrified you for years. You are a woman to-day, not the timid girl who first saw visions on board the _Merlin_, and you have all a woman’s capacity for boundless love. The fight and the dread are ended. You must come with me to Karl, and all will be well.”

Going back to-day to the memories of that astounding scene, when I, to rescue my friend, flung prudence and a great many other wise restraints to the winds, I am guiltily conscious that the possible effect on Nora Cazenove of a marriage between Karl and Maggie did not weigh greatly in the scale of my argument. A man who sees a ghost may be pardoned if he uses certain extravagant expressions and entertains one-sided views on the subject of specters. I was nearer to the mysterious essence of telegnomy than I knew. Here, in the actual presence of the fair creature who was symbolic of the everlasting revivification of nature, I was carried out of myself, rapt to the skies in a mystical mood of awestricken exaltation. “My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled.” I seemed to be hovering on the very lip of knowledge. That which is sown in weakness and raised in power, sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body--that which men loosely style eternity--was clothing its enduring divinity with the perishable garments of earth.

How long I stood there, dazed with the immensity of this new intellectual horizon, I know not. The need of further speech had gone. Maggie, clasping her hands on her knees, was gazing at me with eyes which saw not, and I was waiting as though for some dread sentence which should snap invisible chains of wondrous strength, when a great change came over her face.

From abounding melancholy her aspect altered to that of transfixed horror. She sprang from the chair in which she was sitting and caught my arm with the tenacious strength of partial dementia.

“It is too late!” she muttered in a terrible voice. “Steindal has murdered Karl! And I, too, have helped to kill him! Oh, may Heaven forgive me!”

She herself sank as one dead. I held her while I cried in a frenzy for help. The wonder is that I did not collapse by her side.