"Did he love you? Did he love you?" He pressed closer to me, with parted
lips and quickening breath.
Then I bent towards him, and a thrill such as I have never felt passed
through me. "Swear--on the dead--that you will kill that man."
"I swear it," he gasped. "Terrible woman that you are, I swear it."
"Go," I whispered. "Go ... at once." But he sprang towards me and
fastened his lips upon mine.
Amid all the horrors that haunt my memory, all the spectral visions
which drift darkly through the labyrinth of my life, that frenzied
embrace among the tombs in the crepuscular cemetery, still rises before
me--a ghost of darkness and of shame.
He turned and left me. I heard his footsteps running along the gravel
path, I saw his tall shadowy figure vanish in the gloom.... He was gone.
I was alone in the nocturnal churchyard, alone by Stahl's desolate
grave.
"Nicolas Naumoff!" I cried. But no one answered me, and fear ran into my
heart with thudding steps.
I hurried forward, down the narrow path bordered with tombs and turned
to the right, down another wider avenue among other endless rows of the
dead.... Where was I? In which direction lay the gate?... I turned and
ran back. I must find Stahl's grave again, and then go to the left
through the unconsecrated burial-ground of those who had died by their
own hand.... With shuddering breath I stumbled forward, but nowhere
could I find the dreary field of the unshriven dead. Tall sepulchers and
mausoleums loomed dimly on either side of me, limitless rows of
tombstones and statues ... but Stahl's low, dreary mound was nowhere to
be seen. Stay--behind the willows on the right, was that not the white
cross standing on my mother's grave?... To reach it quickly I left the
pathway and ran diagonally across the burial ground trampling the graves
in my haste to reach that large cross shimmering in the gloom.... No, it
was not my mother's grave. But further on, and further, other crosses
glimmered and beckoned--and I ran on, crazed and terror-stricken,
stumbling over mounds and hillocks, tripping in iron railings, trampling
over flowers and wreaths ... until I fell in the darkness and lay
unconscious and silent amid the silent and unconscious dead.
* * * * *
A breath of soft morning air awoke me. I opened my eyes. Elise was
bending over me with pale and anxious face. The room--my bedroom--whirled
and swam before my dizzy sight.
"Elise!"...
Elise Perrier clasped her hands. "Thank God!" she murmured. "I feared
you would never wake again." Her face worked strangely, and she burst
into tears.
"Elise--what has happened? What is to-day?" Before she could answer,
another question sprang to my lips: "Where is Naumoff?"
"He has left, my lady," whispered Elise in awestruck tones.
"Left?" A long silence held us. "Left? Where has he gone?"
Elise looked down at me with blanched and quivering countenance.
"To Venice," she said in low tones.
I started up. "To Venice?" To Venice! My memory darted to and fro like a
child playing hide and seek. "Elise! Elise! Elise!" I stretched out my
hands like one sinking and drowning in the darkness. Elise wept. I
watched the strange faces that Elise always made when she wept: funny,
pitiful grimaces with puckered brow and chin.
"To Venice." My memory flickers like a feeble light, then blazes into
sudden flames that sear my soul with fire. "Elise! He must be stopped.
He must not reach Venice! Elise, stop him, stop him--!"
"It is impossible, my lady."
Yes, it is impossible.
(_By this time the train which is carrying Naumoff on his mission of
death has passed Warsaw and is hastening towards Brünn; hastening, ever
hastening through the dawning hours and the noonday sunshine, hastening
on into the twilight--and at dusk it rumbles and pants into the station
at Vienna_.)
I fall fainting back upon my pillows, and all through the day and the
night I dream that I am speeding after the rushing train, catching up
with it and losing it again, sweeping through the air, tearing along the
unending rails, reaching it at last, and being struck down and crushed
under its rolling wheels.
Day dawns once more.
"Elise, Elise, bring Naumoff back. Telegraph to him. Elise, for heaven's
sake, bring him back!"
"It is hopeless, my lady."
Yes, it is hopeless.
(_At this hour the train is hurrying from Bozen to Verona, from Verona
to Vicenza, from Vicenza to Padua._)
Night falls on my despair.
"Elise, Elise! Where are you? What is the time?"
"It is nearly dawn, my lady."
"Elise, what day is this?"
"It is the third day of September."
The third day of September!
"Elise," I scream suddenly, "Elise! Telegraph to Kamarowsky. Warn
him.... Quickly, oh, quickly! Why, why did we not do so before?"
"Hush, my lady, hush! You were delirious; you could only rave and weep."
"Elise, Elise, telegraph to Kamarowsky...."
"It is too late, my lady."
Yes, it is too late.
(_At this very hour of dawn the train has reached Venice. Nicolas
Naumoff is hastening from the Riva degli Schiavoni, across the empty
piazza and the deserted streets. He hails a gondola. "Campo Santa Maria
del Giglio!"_
_And the gondola, with soft plash of oar, glides slowly towards the
doomed sleeper._
_What dreams may the angel of rest have sent to him for the last time?
Perhaps the tender vision of little Grania has gladdened him, while
silent and inexorable in the closed gondola the youth with the golden
eyes steals towards him through the mazes of the clear canals._
"_Santa Maria del Giglio._"
_Nicolas Naumoff springs from the gondola, crosses the empty Campo and
reaches the house. He ascends the steps quickly, knocks, enters--and
closes the door behind him._)
Yes, it is too late.
I hear myself shrieking with laughter as I fall back on my pillows. Soon
I am surrounded by strangers who hold me down, who thrust opiates
between my lips, who lay soothing hands and cooling compresses on my
brow. Then I know nothing more.
* * * * *
Elise Perrier's terrified face surges out of the darkness: she is
speaking quickly, she is bending over me, imploring and urging.... What
does she say? She weeps despairingly, and ever through her tears she
speaks, urging and imploring.
Finally, in her thin arms, she drags me from my bed; she dresses me; she
wraps a cloak about me, and hurries backwards and forwards with
traveling-bags and satchels. Now we are in a carriage--no, we are in a
train. Elise Perrier sits opposite me, with ashen face and her hands in
gray cotton gloves tightly folded. Her lips move. She is praying.