XXI

To the last hour of his life Clive will never forget that swift yet tedious journey to the south undertaken under such strange conditions. Had anyone said to him only yesterday, “Out of the whole human race can you single out your enemy?” he would at once have replied affirmatively with the name of Sefton Culvers. Yet here was he today playing the part of a sworn friend to this man, the part, indeed, that could be expected of none but a sworn friend, starting, at a moment’s notice, on a quest out of which all he could hope to receive by way of payment would be the pleasure of looking upon another man’s happiness.

For, stifle the thought as he might, again and again would it present itself: “By-and-by you will have to stand by and see this husband and wife kiss each other on the lips, and join hands in reconciliation, and then nothing more will fall to your share but to drop out of their lives forever.”

During the long night hours of their journey, with his nerves strung to their tightest, and his brain active in conjuring up terrors and horrible possibilities, Clive tried to face this thought in its bare hideousness, and, as it were, look it out of countenance. The effort was futile. Face it as much as he liked, he could never look away its ugliness. The mere endeavour to do so was something equivalent to running the point of a stiletto into his flesh, and crying out, “See here! The farther I send it in the less I shall feel it.”

Perhaps, after all, what gave the sting to these bitter thoughts was the knowledge of Sefton Culvers’s unworthiness. Clive’s worst enemies had never accused him of priggishness, he had been known to stand up for more than one man who had, as the phrase goes, “gone under,” and plead “extenuating circumstances” where most men would have said “serve him right.” Those, however, had been cases which had not come so nearly home to him. He had seen the unworthiness of other men, he felt the unworthiness of Sefton Culvers⁠—therein lay the whole of the difference.

It was not, then, surprising that with thoughts such as these he could throw but little warmth into his intercourse with the man to whom he had been thus suddenly called upon to act the comrade.

Sefton, on his part, showed no disposition to bridge the distance between them.

His demeanour throughout the journey was gloomy and abstracted, broken now and again by sudden fits of stormy, reckless defiance, in which he talked a good deal about being a first-rate shot; and threatened to teach those skulking, cowardly vagabonds a sharp lesson. These fits, however, grew rarer as the journey progressed, and his demeanour became less that of a man nerving himself to meet a crisis with energy and decision, than of one compelling himself to stoicism and despair.

Clive noting this change of manner set it down to the conviction⁠—gaining strength in his own mind⁠—that it was to Ida’s dying bed they had been summoned, and that the ring to be resigned was a wedding-ring which she judged ought never to have been placed upon her finger.

A wild, irrepressible feeling that could be called exultation compared with other moods filled his mind at the thought. To see Ida on her deathbed resigning a ring she had never prized to its unworthy donor, would be to see her soul set free from bondage. That would be a sorrow that became a joy beside the thought of a peace patched up between this uncongenial husband and wife, and years of dreary companionship to be passed together.

“The fever is the greatest danger she runs, there can be no other,” he blurted out once, impetuously, as he and Sefton paced the platform at Naples waiting for the train that was to bear them on the latter half of their journey. “She is an Englishwoman⁠—the daughter of an English peer. She is staying in the house of an Italian nobleman. They would never dare to offer her insult or even annoyance.”

Sefton’s reply contradicted every one of his suppositions.

“To my mind,” he said, gloomily, “fever is the very least of her dangers. Take the facts of the case and judge for yourself. Supposing that you had offended past forgiveness, not one person only, but a whole community, a set of lawless, insolent, ill-conditioned people, glad of any excuse to execute a vendetta⁠—a vendetta, believe me, is far from being a thing of the past in Italy, in some places the authorities take no notice whatever of its perpetration. Tell me, would you like the person who had partly been the cause of this offence to be planted in the midst of such a set of ruffians without any protection whatever?”

There could be but one answer to such a question, and for a few minutes there fell a pause, which the two men made busy with gloomy thoughts.

“Then,” said Clive, presently, “you imagine Ida’s letter to you was written under compulsion? I imagined it to be⁠—”

He broke off abruptly, remembering to whom he was talking.

The finish of his sentence would have been:

“The natural outburst of indignation that a high-spirited girl would feel at a sudden revelation of treachery.”

“Perhaps written under compulsion, or perhaps under persuasion, for they are a wily people these south Italians,” answered Sefton. “But, in any case, however written, it serves their purpose⁠—”

He broke off abruptly; his face, on which a gas-lamp overhead threw a flickering light, showed white and rigid.

“What purpose?” asked Clive, for Sefton’s voice had an odd, jarring note in it.

“Of a decoy,” answered Sefton, shortly; and then he turned on his heel, and left Clive to ruminate over a new train of thought.

It was a train of thought which stirred the very depths of his nature, and made him feel that the angels of darkness were coming about him in new shapes now. Great Heavens! The monsters with which the Greek heroes did battle in old time were comely compared with these.

He rallied his forces, and resolved to beat them down.

“I am a man,” he cried, in spirit. “There is such a thing as duty! I will sweep my heart clean of all thoughts rather than entertain such monsters as these. If danger threaten Culvers I will stand by him as if he were my dearest friend.”

And it so chanced that at the very moment that Clive was making up his mind, in spite of all temptations and adverse circumstances, to listen to the voice of duty, Ida, by another road, was arriving at the conclusion that life was intended to be something other than a playground where people could pluck flowers and chase butterflies to their hearts’ content.

Death had speeded more quickly on his way to Alta Lauria than had these travellers on theirs; and as the two men stood waiting for their train at Naples, Violante’s wayward, lovesick soul had struggled forth from its worn and wasted tenement.

Her eyes had been fixed upon the door, waiting for it to open and admit the man who had played her so ill a turn, and her ears had strained for the sound of his footsteps to her very last breath.

Francesca’s grief took a strange form. She was a passionate, impetuous woman, apt to speak her thoughts as they rose in her mind, and noisy alike in grief and in joy, yet when she stood beside the white, lifeless form, not a sound passed her lips, not a tear stood in her eye.

She went silently from the chamber of death to the room where Ida was preparing to go to rest for the night, and laying her hand on the girl’s arm, said only:

“Come, see his work!”

Ida understood her, and silently followed the way she led.

It was the first time the girl had ever stood beside a bed of death, and a great awe filled her soul as she stood looking down on the beautiful, rigid face, and thin hands clasped as if in prayer. The priest had administered the last rites of the Church early in the day, and naught remained to be done but to dress the maiden for her last long sleep.

The great candles placed on either side of the bed had not yet been lighted; nevertheless, the room was not dark. A glorious summer’s moon, which filled in the windowpanes with a landscape of sky and mountain of surpassing grandeur, poured a flood of silver light on Violante’s girlish features, impressing upon them a supernatural and spiritual beauty that in life they had never known.

“How beautiful! How awful!” exclaimed Ida.

Then, moved by a sudden impulse, and heedless of Francesca’s presence, she knelt down beside the dead girl, covering her face with her hands.

It was an act of homage⁠—of submission alike to the great law and to the greater Lawgiver.

And as she knelt thus in that dread presence, with senses sealed to all outward things, a rush of thoughts came to her.

How vain seemed life with its passions and longings! This girl was but one of thousands who, as it were, beat out their souls with their hopes and dreads. Had not she herself been doing the same thing, though in another fashion? Were not her feet bent on running much the same course? Where would it land her at last? To gratify her pride⁠—her dignity, as she had called it⁠—had she not in a moment of passion tossed all her solemnly-undertaken obligations to the four winds of heaven?

Now when Death came to her side⁠—as come he must⁠—with his weights and scales, how light and poor a thing that pride and dignity would seem! Ah, how poor and contemptible everything in life would seem, except that which, begun in Time, finds its fruition in Eternity⁠—duty!