Never had Vanno seen any one sleep so soundly. There was no flicker of
the eyelids, no quivering of the nostrils, no rising and falling of the
breast. He laid his hand over her heart, and could not feel it beating,
yet he was not sure that it did not beat very faintly. There were
bounding pulses in his hand as he touched her. He could not tell whether
it was his own blood that throbbed, or whether hers spoke to his,
through living veins.
Very gently he lifted her head, and laying it down again, higher on the
pillow whence it seemed to have slipped, he moved the arm that had
supported it. Then kneeling beside the bed, he kissed her hand again and
again. It was very cold, cold as a lily, he thought, yet not so cold as
a lily killed by the frost.
If some one had come to him at that moment and said, "Mary is dead," he
would have believed that it was the truth, for she looked as if her eyes
had seen the light beyond this world. She was not smiling, yet there was
a radiance on her face which did not seem to be given by the sunset.
Rather did the light appear to come from within. Yet, because no one
said aloud the words that went echoing through his heart, Vanno would
not believe that Mary was dead.
"If I have lost you in this world," he said aloud, as though she could
hear him, "I will follow where you are, to tell you that we belong to
one another through all eternity, and nothing can part us. But you
haven't gone. You could not leave me so."
As he spoke to her, on his knees, her cold hand pressed against his warm
throat, he kept his eyes upon her face, hungrily, watching for some sign
that her spirit heard him from very far off. But there was no change.
The dark, double line of her lashes did not break. Her lips kept their
faint, mysterious half-smile.
Vanno resolved that if she had gone, he too would go, for without her
the world was empty and dead.
It was then that Peter stole to the open door with Apollonia, and looked
in. Her impulse was to cry out, and run into the room to sob at her
friend's feet; but something held her back. It was as if she caught a
strain of music; and she remembered the air. It came from the opera of
"Romeo è Giuletta," which she had heard in New York a year ago. The
music was as reminiscently distinct as if her brain were a gramophone.
She had seen a tableau like this, of two lovers, while that music played
in the theatre; and with tears in her eyes she had thought, "If only
Romeo had waited, if he had had faith, he could have called her back
again."
She did not enter the room, but standing by the door she said softly yet
clearly, "Don't let her go. Call her spirit. Maybe it is near. Tell her
that you are calling her back to happiness and love. I believe she will
come to you, because you are her heart and her soul. I am going, and I
will bring a doctor. But you are the only one who can save her now."
The girl's voice had no personality for Vanno. He did not turn his mind
for an instant to Peter. It was as if his own thoughts spoke aloud and
gave him counsel what to do.
He rose from his knees, and sitting on the side of the bed gathered Mary
up into his arms. He held her closely against his breast, her hair
twined in his clasping fingers. Then he bent his head over the upturned
face, and whispered.
"Darling," he said, "heart of my heart, wherever you are have mercy and
come back to me. I can't live without you. You are my all. God will
give you to me if you will come. You look so happy, but you will be
happier with me, for you can't go and leave everything unfinished. Best
and dearest one, I need you. Come back! Come back!"
Mary's spirit had crossed the threshold and stood looking out into the
unknown, which stretched on and on into endlessness, like a sea of light
ringing round the world; and in this sea there was music which seemed to
be part of the light. She thought that she had been almost engulfed in a
terrible storm with waves mountain-high arising over her head in a great
darkness, and explosive noises of machinery loud in her ears as when
Carleton took her through the water of the harbour in his
hydro-aeroplane. But the noise had ceased, and the darkness was gone.
All was light and peace. She was conscious that she had struggled and
suffered, that she had borne a burden of unhappiness which had been too
heavy for her shoulders. The burden had fallen off. She was no longer
unhappy, and though her heart was empty of joy, dimly she seemed to hear
an assurance that soon it would be filled to overflowing. The promise
was in the music that was part of the light, and of the great sea over
which she was passed. She knew that she was far above it now, and rising
higher, as she had risen in the aeroplane when she had felt the wonder
after the shrinking. But something which had been herself lay under the
sea, down in the storm and the darkness she had left behind.
Then, suddenly, the music was disturbed. Through it she listened to a
vague undertone of sorrow; and she became aware that some one was
suffering as she had suffered, some one whom she had loved--some one
whom she would always love. Out of the darkness a voice was calling her
to come back. Indistinct and far away at first, it became clear,
insistent, irresistible.
* * * * * * *
A faint shiver ran through Mary's body, and Vanno's heart leaped against
her breast, as if he sent his life to warm her heart.
"Come back to me, if you loved me!" he called her.
Very slowly she opened her eyes, dazzled still with the light she had
seen through the open door.
"Mary, come back and save me!" he cried to her out of the darkness.
"I am coming," she whispered, not sure if she was answering in a dream
to a voice in a dream. But the light of the wondrous sea was dimmed to
the light of an earthly sunset. Through it Vanno's eyes called to her as
his voice had called--those eyes which had been her stars of love--and
she forgot the brighter light, just seen and lost.
"You!" she said. "It's like--heaven----"
"It is heaven--now," he answered, as he held her closely.
* * * * * * *
When Mary was well again, the curé married her to her Prince, and the
two went together into the desert that Vanno loved. There it did not
matter to them that Angelo was thinking coldly and harshly of them
both; and perhaps there was even an added sweetness in Mary's happiness
because a sacrifice of hers could spare pain to one very near to Vanno.
She would not let her husband say that he could not forgive his brother.
"But if our love is to be perfect, we must forgive Angelo, and poor
Marie too," she told him.
Late in the summer (they had left Egypt long ago, and were in the high
mountains of Algeria), one day a letter came to Vanno, forwarded on from
place after place, where it had missed him. Angelo had written at last.
"Perhaps you may have seen," he said, "in some paper, that in giving me
a little daughter my wife died. She left a letter to be handed me after
her death, if a presentiment she had were fulfilled. If she had lived, I
would have forgiven her. Will you and Mary forgive me?"
There was no question as to what their answer would be.
"When two people love each other as we do," Vanno said, "I see now that
there can be no room for any bitterness in their hearts."