A strong light was turned on my eyes. There was no sound in the room
save the muffled cry of the woman. The hands at my throat were released,
and I was ordered to stand up. Some elementary tests of my blindness
were tried, and I was told to give an account of my presence in the
house. My story seemed to satisfy the man who questioned me. I was
bidden to sit in a chair. I could hear the sound of men carrying a heavy
burden out of the room. Then the woman's moans ceased. A voice at my
side bade me drink something out of a glass, enforcing the demand with a
pistol at my temple. A heavy drowsiness came over me, and I sank into
unconsciousness.
When I came to myself I was in my own bed in my own room, having been
found, apparently in a state of helpless intoxication, lying in a street
some distance from where I lived.
_II.--Not for Love or Marriage_
Two years elapsed. The operation had given me back the use of my eyes. I
was in the city of Turin with a friend. The sight of a beautiful face
lured my companion and myself into the cathedral of San Giovanni. It was
the face of a young girl of about twenty-two; a face of entrancing
beauty. Seated with my friend, I watched her until she rose and left
with her companion, an old Italian woman. For a moment I caught a look
of her dark, glorious eyes as she mechanically crossed herself with holy
water. There was a dreamy, far-away look in them, a look that seemed to
pass over one and see what was behind the object gazed at.
We followed her out of the cathedral and saw the old woman speak to a
middle-aged, round-shouldered, bespectacled man of gentlemanly
appearance.
"Do English gentlemen stare at their own countrywomen in public places
like this?" said a voice at our elbows.
I turned to see a tall man of about thirty standing just behind us. His
face, with its heavy moustache, sneering mouth, and darkened, sullen
eyes, was not a pleasant one, and his impudent question annoyed me. My
friend, with a few sharp retorts, delivered to him a crushing snub, and
the man turned away, scowling. We saw him cross the road to the
middle-aged man who had been speaking to the old Italian woman and her
charge. And then we, too, went our way.
The girl's face haunted me, but we never saw her again in the city of
Turin.
Some weeks later, when I was wandering through London, I suddenly came
upon her in the company of her old nurse. I tracked her to her lodgings
and there engaged rooms myself. An accident to the nurse, whose name I
discovered was Theresa, gave me an opportunity of introducing myself.
The girl spoke to me, but her voice and her manner was strangely
apathetic. She seemed never to know me unless I spoke to her, and then,
unless I asked questions, our conversation died a natural death. To make
love to her seemed impossible, and yet I loved her passionately.
At last, by aid of bribes, I managed to secure the qualified assistance
of Theresa. She promised to place my proposals before the girl's
guardian. Of Pauline herself--such was the girl's name--Theresa would
say nothing. When I asked her if she thought the girl cared for me, she
replied mysteriously and enigmatically.
"Who knows? I do not know--but I tell you the _signorina_ is not for
love or marriage."
Theresa fulfilled her part of the bargain, and I received a visit from
the middle-aged man I had seen in Turin. His name was Manuel Ceneri. His
sister had married Pauline's father, an Englishman, March by name. He
consented readily to my marriage with Pauline on one condition. I was to
ask no questions, seek to know nothing of her birth and family, nothing
of her early days.
Pauline was called into the room. I took her hand. I asked her to be my
wife.
"Yes, if you wish it," she replied softly, without even changing colour.
She did not repulse me, but she did not respond to my affection. She
remained as calm and undemonstrative as ever.
At Dr. Ceneri's strange urgency, Pauline and I were married two days
later.
_III.--Calling Back the Past_
"Not for love or marriage!"
I learned all too soon the meaning of Theresa's words. Pauline, my wife,
my love, had no past. Slowly at first, then with swift steps, the truth
came home to me. The face of the woman I had married was fair as the
morn; her figure as perfect as that of a Grecian statue; her voice low
and sweet; but the one thing which animates every charm--the mind--was
missing. Memory, except for the events of the moment before, she had
none. Of all emotion she was incapable. She was sweet and docile, but
her whole existence was a negative one. Such was Pauline, my wife.
When I was convinced of the truth, I placed her in charge of Priscilla
and hastened to Geneva to seek an explanation from Ceneri. I should
never have found the doctor had not chance thrown me in the way of the
very Italian we had met outside the cathedral of San Giovanni. Knowing
that he knew Ceneri, I spoke to him. At first he refused to have
anything to do with me, but when I mentioned Pauline's name, he asked me
what concern I had with her.
"She is my wife," I replied.
"Your wife!" he shouted. "You lie!"
I rose furiously, and bade him choose his words more carefully. After a
few moments he apologised, asking me whether Ceneri knew of our
marriage. "Traditore," I heard him whisper fiercely to himself when I
replied in the affirmative.
After some further remarks, he consented to take me to Dr. Ceneri,
telling me that his name was Macari. My interview with the doctor was
somewhat unsatisfactory. Pauline had had a shock, but the nature of that
shock he refused to disclose. Macari, before her illness, had imagined
himself in love with her, and was furious at my marriage. One thing,
however, the doctor told me, just as I left, which partially explained
his consent to our union. He had been her guardian, and the fortune of
£50,000 to which she was entitled he had spent in the cause of Italian
freedom. Though he had betrayed his trust, he considered the cause
justified the act; but he had been glad, none the less, to make her some
compensation by marrying her to a wealthy Englishman.
When I left Dr. Ceneri, I met Macari lurking outside. He declared that
in a few weeks he would come to England and explain much that Ceneri had
left unsaid.
Several months later he kept his promise. Ceneri, he told me, had been
arrested in St. Petersburg for participation in some anarchist plot, and
was on his way to Siberia. Of his own personal history he discoursed at
length. His name, it appeared, was really March, and he was Pauline's
brother. In common with his sister, he had been robbed by Ceneri of his
fortune.
He asked to see his sister, but when they met, Pauline showed no
recollection of him. He called often, and she watched him, I noticed,
with an eager, troubled look. One night, after dinner, as he described
how, in a battle, he had killed a white-coated Austrian, he seized a
knife from the table, and illustrated the downward blow with which he
had saved his own life. I heard a deep sigh behind me, and turning, I
saw Pauline in a dead faint. I carried her to her room. When she came to
herself again, or rather when she rose in her bed and turned her face to
mine, I saw in her eyes, what, by the mercy of God, I shall never again
see there.
With eyes fixed and immovable, and dilated to their utmost extent, she
rose and passed out of the room. I followed her. Swiftly she passed out
of the house into the street, and without the slightest hesitation,
turning at right angles, moved swiftly up a long, straight road. After
turning once more she stopped at a three-storeyed house. Going up to the
door, she laid her hand upon it. I tried to lead her gently away, but
she resisted. What was I to do? The house was an empty one. I paused.
Once before my latch-key had opened a strange door. Would it open this
one? I tried it. It fitted exactly.
Without waiting for me, Pauline ran in ahead. I shut the door. All was
darkness. I could hear Pauline moving about on the first floor. I
followed her, and, striking a match, found myself in a room with
folding-doors. It was furnished, but the dust lay deep everywhere.
Pauline stood in the middle of the room, holding her head in her hands,
striving, it seemed, to remember something. I entered the back room with
the candle I had found. There was a piano there. Something induced me to
sit down at it and to play the first few notes of the song I had heard
that terrible night.
A nervous trembling seemed to seize Pauline. She crossed the floor
towards me, and I made room for her at the piano. With a master hand she
played brilliantly the prelude of the song of which I had struck a few
vagrant notes. I waited breathlessly, expecting her to sing. Suddenly
she started wildly to her feet and, uttering a wild cry of horror, sank
into my arms. I laid her on a sofa close by. As I held her there, a
strange thing happened.
The room beyond the folding-doors was lit with a brilliant light.
Grouped round a table were four men. One of them was Ceneri, the other
Macari. The third man was a stranger to me. These three men were looking
at a fourth man--a young man who appeared to be falling out of his
chair, clutching convulsively the hilt of a dagger, the blade of which
had been buried in his heart, clearly by Macari, who stood over him.
I cannot explain this vision. I only saw it when I held Pauline's hand.
When I let her hand drop the scene vanished. You may call it cataleptic,
clairvoyant, anything you will; it was as I relate.
_IV.--Seeking the Truth in Siberia_
Macari called on me the day after this strange scene to ask me about the
memorial to Victor Emanuel.
"Before I consent to help you," I said, "I must know why you murdered a
man three years ago in a house in Horace Street."
He sprang to his feet and grasping my arm, looked intently into my eyes.
I saw that he recognised me in spite of the great change that blindness
makes in a face.
"Why should I deny the affair to an eye-witness? To others I would deny
it fast enough. Now, my fine fellow, my gay bridegroom, my dear
brother-in-law, I will tell you why I killed that man. He had insulted
my family. That man was Pauline's lover!"
He saw what was in my face as I rose and walked towards him.
"Not here," he said hastily, "what good can it do here--a vulgar scuffle
between two gentlemen?"
"Go," I cried, "murderer and coward. Every word you have spoken to me
has been a lie, and because you hate me you have to-day told me the
greatest lie of all."
He left me with a look of malicious triumph in his face. I knew he lied,
but how could I prove that he lied? Only Ceneri could tell me the truth.
He was in Siberia, and, mad as the scheme seemed, thither I determined
to go to get the whole truth from his lips.
I exerted all the influence I possessed. I spent money freely, and with
a special passport signed by the Czar himself, which placed all the
resources of the Russian police at my disposal, I passed across Russia
into Siberia. At last, after travelling thousands of miles, I came up
with the gang of wretched prisoners in which the doctor was. Showing my
papers to the officer in command, I was taken at once to the awful
prison-house. I had him brought to me in a private room, and placed
before him food and drink.
"I want to ask you some questions," I said, "questions which you alone
can answer."
"Ask them. You have given me an hour's release from misery. I am
grateful."
"The first question I have to ask is--who and what is that man Macari?"
Ceneri sprang to his feet. "A traitor! a traitor!" he cried.
It was Macari who had betrayed him. Macari was no more Anthony March,
the brother of Pauline, than I was, and Pauline had never had a lover in
the sense in which Macari had used the word.
Pauline was an innocent as an angel. The lie I had come so far to
destroy had dissolved. There was one other question I had to ask. Who
was the man Macari had killed, and what had he to do with Pauline?
Ceneri's face turned ashen as I asked him the question. It was some
moments before he understood that I was the man who had stumbled into
the room. Then he told me all.
The murdered man was Anthony March, the brother of Pauline. As he had
already confessed, Ceneri had spent all the trust-money of which he was
guardian for Pauline and her brother, in the cause of Italian freedom.
When the young man grew up, the time drew near when Ceneri must explain
all and take the consequences. The evil day was delayed by providing him
with money. That money ran out. Ceneri and the two other men, fearful of
the consequences to all of them, decided upon a plan to silence Anthony.
He was to be lured to the house in Horace Street, and to leave it as a
lunatic in charge of a doctor and keepers. But Macari ruined the plot.
He was in love with Pauline, and Anthony had spoken contemptuously of
such a match for his sister. A few insolent words at the house in Horace
Street, and the passionate Italian's knife had found its way into the
young man's heart. It was Ceneri who had saved my life when I stumbled
upon the scene. The third sharer in the tragedy, who had drowned
Pauline's shrieks in a sofa cushion, had since died raving mad in a
cell. That was the story.
I hastened back to England, leaving money behind me to provide a few
comforts for the unfortunate prisoner. I went direct to the little
village where Pauline was staying with Priscilla. I could see that she
remembered me but as a person in a dream. I had to woo her now. Of our
marriage she seemed to have forgotten everything. Though all the old
apathy had disappeared, and her mind had once more awakened in her
beautiful body, she did not remember that. I despaired at last of
winning her, and I determined to bid her good-bye forever. As I sat in
the woods with her for the last time, gloom in my heart, I fell into a
doze. I was awakened by kisses on my cheeks. I sprang to my feet. In
front of me stood Pauline, and looking into her eyes, I saw that she
loved me.
She had realised on my first return that I was her husband, but had
determined to find out if I loved her. As I said nothing, so she too had
remained silent.
"Gilbert," she said, "I have wept, but now I smile. The past is passed.
Let the love I bore my brother be buried in the greater love I give my
husband. Let us turn our backs on the dark shadows and begin our lives."
Have I more to tell--one thing only. We went to Paris for our real
honeymoon. The great war was over, and the Commune had just ended. In
the company of a friend I saw some Communists led out to be shot, and
among their faces I recognised Macari.
* * * * *