THE DEVIL'S CANDLE.
The revolution of our legend brings us once more round to that same
direful boundary hour, with which it was commenced between midnight
and the first born of the day. But on the hills a gibbet stands that
stood not there before, a beacon to the minions of the moon. Alas
for the misguided youth that hangs there helpless and unhouseled.
His brave attire the cupidity of his topsmen had appropriated to
their own use. His body they had arrayed for the sake of decency in
rags stripped from the verminiferous trunks of his several supposed
followers, and these huddled him like the swathings of some
dismantled mummy. A gorged carrion bird dozes upon each of his
shoulders. The hinds, whom their business brought upon the road even
so late as twilight, had run afield copiously crossing themselves.
Who, then, is this--a woman, too--that comes at the awfullest hour of
all, and to the very foot of the gallows? Nothing but her eyes can
be seen from under her hood. Are those the eyes of Vergilia that
Tosca dreams of and deems unfathomable as the Bottomless Lake itself?
Is the intuition of her sex, then, unfailing after all, and she a
witch, that with love philtres works her syren spell, and seeks at
this dread hour for the wherewithal? And what, then, can she peer
for about the foundations of a gibbet, save alone that fetid and
fearsome white-flowered orange-berried Devil's Candle mandragora that
is engendered in the womb of earth from a gibbeted murderer's
drippings on the midnight of his death? The Illyrian bravo had been
seven times a murderer (if not seventy times seven), and many a lost
soul rejoiced in Hell that night over the weird that the witch woman
was to work. She has found it at last, the favourable specimen, by
her long sought through fruitless years. She has found the root in
human form complete--two armed, two legged--the Microcosm
caricaturing man. And now her low whistle brings her black hound
forward out of the black night. Even she is affected as she kisses
him for the last time. Iscariotical kiss! With a cord from her
youthful waist she attaches animal and plant together, and flees from
thence, stopping her ears as she runs. The hound (whose faith is to
strike his death-knell) seeks to follow her, and finds himself held
back. He wrestles with the invisible obstacle and conquers, but to
die, for as the unholy mannikin root is perforce torn out of its
mother earth it utters a piercing shriek that makes rattle the chains
of its father above, and the hound, in an instant foaming at the
mouth, in fits expires. Then, and then only, turns the murderess
back on her blood-stained steps. The carcase of her sole unvenial
follower she casts falteringly apart, The girdle is already attached
by one end to the gruesome plant. By throwing round to it the other
end she completes the circuit of her shapely throat, and held fast by
this improvised necklace tucks the loathsome herb creature into her
lovely bosom, which no being of its sex had ever yet been free of.
Hence now to develop him, for to this is that secret chamber destined
that had never seen denizen but herself before. There is her
laboratory, and there shall this earth child be magically tendered
and nourished, and most magically grow to more and more of man's
resemblance. Since in a manner by his mystical birth he is one flesh
and blood with the murderer that begot him, he is perforce of Hell,
and can Hell's secrets impart to the enchantress that holds him in
her power. To what her cravings tend, which by his means or any
other that affords itself, she must and will by hook or crook attain,
we now shall shortly see. In spite of her evident youth, Vergilia
was far too accomplished an actress, of course, to reveal by word or
sign her secret studies to the gilded youth that continue to throng
her halls. But Tosca visited her upon a different footing. Spending
his days with her in the body, and his nights with her in the
spirit--spacing out with drink and dice the unutterable intervals
when he could do neither one nor the other--he neglected his
professional avocations altogether, and existed absolutely for her.
On her part she had shown him, as we have seen, particular favour
from the first moment she saw him, and this became continuously more
and more after she had wormed his story from him--as much as he chose
to tell, and which of course excluded entirely the existence of the
Illyrian--until at length she requited him with like confidence.
What the butterflies that sought their own purposes about her chose
to think of her preference she cared not, but her modesty at length
obliged her to account for it in private to the preferred one himself
by alleging the similarity of their descent (for that she also came
of old necromantic stock), and to explain her refusal of all suitors
(even to coronets) on the grounds that none of them could satisfy,
till Tosca came, her yearnings for the occult. To an archimage alone
would she give her right hand, and his right hand she meant to be.
The blessing of the Church would be a curse to such a pair. Heedless
then of what, in their position, they needs must deem the degradation
of any such ceremony, she had herself devised her own test piece by
which a favoured suitor could be at the same time tried, and by its
failure or success dismissed or indissolubly wedded. She had sworn
in fact to bestow herself without reserve upon the student (his
person being also to her fancy) who could call up for her substantial
from the vasty deep a magical palace in which her fantastic
imagination had long run riot, and in which carnal love and
cabalistic lore should wander hand in hand the livelong day without
let or hindrance from the outer world well lost. Prone to such
thoughts from her cradle, this aerial architecture of hers had taken
final shape in the first days of her visit to that town, when
disdaining the legend of the boors, she had penetrated the precincts
of the Bottomless Lake, and quickened her brain with the idea of how
suitable to a lover and his mistress would be retreat into a
never-visited seclusion such as that. Then the thing grew. She
pictured and demolished one after another various enchanted buildings
floating upon the waters themselves (and that was the common thread
that ran through them all) sailing to the shore upon the wish of the
dwellers in them, but entirely inaccessible to any outward authority,
either human or divine. Now that she had discovered the Venetian to
be the one man to whom she would accord permission to substantialise
her dreams (supposing he could find the power) she submitted to him
with much shy laughter her latest ground plan of this castle in the
air. She had borrowed from the sensuous East its key-hole arches and
quadrangular bowers built round, and enclosing court yards glowing
with flowers from every region of the earth, and never the same at
two successive visits. Birds interchanged at every inspection in
like manner were to agitate the air with their antiphonies. And the
fountains in the centres of all the court yards (fed from the waters
of the Bottomless Lake) when lapped into the beakers of the lovers
would become the rarest wine. The outermost waters would glister
with gold and silver fish, shot through with the plungings of white
aquatic birds. Within the building, the rooms kaleidoscopically
should never meet them twice with the same face. Their servants
should be automata scattered through every chamber, and ready at a
touch to fly to master or mistress like genii of the Arabian Nights,
but instantly relapsing after service into their first stony
insensibility. Of much more Vergilia whispered such as at times
frenzied in Tosca the knowledge of his impotence to win her upon her
terms. Had he but inherited the secrets of his fathers! Had he but
the knowledge stored up in the grey brain of that hairless blear-eyed
Hell-sent hag of Illyria! Could he but solve the enigma of the Seven
Sigils, that at any rate might bring him somewhat nearer to his end!
And his rivals envied him. Closer and closer there seemed to flutter
to him the moth they thought he had singed. But never close enough.
Then came an event that led up to his climax of fruition found green
in the mouth. Stated in short, it fell somewhat as follows: At the
end of her daily banquet she was wont to leave her guests to their
wine, while she paid one of her frequent visits to that unseen
chamber. One of those disappointed suitors of hers (as it chanced,
or was fated on a certain day), inspired with the valour of much wine
imbibed after she had left her table, swore roundly that he would
follow her, and pluck out at any hazard the heart of that mystery.
Before he could be stopped by fellow guest or flunkey he had stumbled
up the stairway, and burst open the door she had but lately closed
behind her. The next moment a most frightful shriek resounded
through every corner of the house. It was not Vergilia's. It was
uttered by the fool-hardy intruder. The company started from their
seats. But before they could do anything he staggered into the room
again with hair as white as snow, and lips that gibbered loathsomely.
Amid a scene of indescribable confusion he was carried off by his
friends insane and inpenetrable as to the cause of his fright, nor
did he ever recover sufficiently to give an explanation of it. When
all the rest of the terrified crowd of loungers and lackeys had
hustled pell mell from the house, Tosca alone remained. His hour he
thought had come. But it was only in a measure so. The lady of the
house re-appeared, it is true, after the hurried exodus of masters
and servants, and agitated as he had expected, but not to his
surprise by their defection. She babbled brokenly, instead, of some
one else whom she had lost through the unexpected intrusion of that
venturesome drunkard, now sobered for good and all. Thus she rooted
from that moment in the mind of Tosca the horrible suspicion that the
story of the concealed lover might have some truth in it after all.
How could he know aught of her experimental mandrake culture, for of
course it was the mandrake she referred to? The only creature
besides herself that had witnessed her infernal arcana had just been
borne a mouthing maniac from the seat of her operations, and perhaps
not even had time enough to notice the nature of the disaster, which
his untimely interference had brought about. However, for the time
Tosca dismissed his suspicions when she fell into his arms and
telling him between laughter and tears that he was now the only hope
that remained to her, she begged him at once to summon together all
his scattered occult acquirements, and make an incantation that very
night that should yield them both their heart's desire. He swore to
do so, hardly knowing what he swore, and fled from her in a wind of
excited passion and passionate resolve. For some time after this he
endeavoured to put his ideas coherently together by dint of pacing
madly through the streets. It was already dusk, and at first he
elicited no remark. But presently he noticed that his footsteps were
being dogged. He was a connoisseur in such matters. This must be a
rival more fixed than the remainder of the craven herd that had so
readily taken flight, and one that had watched the bravo during the
time that he stayed behind. Or perchance nothing more mysterious
than a dunning creditor, for Tosca had lately run out of ready money,
and while exercising no trade still maintained a splendid appearance.
Nor had this also been altogether without weight with him when he
accepted the challenge of his bewitching mistress. Not wishing to
embroil himself with the person whom he supposed to be shadowing him,
he entered a tavern and called for wine. He had scarcely seated
himself when a masked stranger of short stature and somewhat uncouth
appearance entered the same inn, and sat down at the same table,
giving the same order. The nerves of our Venetian were more shaken
by the extraordinary episode of the afternoon than he would himself
have cared to own. Not liking the looks of his would-be boon
companion, and conjecturing some connexion between that individual
and the counter of his paces, Tosca got up and left the tavern
without awaiting the execution of his command. To his consternation
the stranger followed him. An exciting chase ensued. The bravo
entered house after house, seating himself in each case, and always
closely hugged by his mysterious hanger on, who as regularly seated
himself by the bravo's side, and as soon as he withdrew followed him
out into the street. A kind of panic seized the fearless swordsman.
A challenge to the inexplicable stranger stuck again and again in his
throat. At last the houses began to close their shutters. The
baffled fugitive struck desperately out of the town into the open
country, and made his way in the direction of the Bottomless Lake.
As the footfalls of his ghostly visitant pattered still behind him he
consoled himself with the grim reflection that right up to that
ill-omened shore, at any rate, the spy would not dare to venture.
But he was mistaken. As he paused breathless on the brink of that
Stygian sea and faced round boldly on to what he deemed to be
invisibility, he found it was instead the form of his fear that stood
there as before. He was seized with the boldness of desperation, and
addressed the mysterious and still masked being with a voice of
tolerable calm.
"Who are you, and what is your need of me?"
"I am Magloire, a necromancer of France, and it is you that have need
of me."
"You are over bold to say so."
"I say what I know. Dare you deny that you entertain the intention
of making an incantation here this very night, and that you lack only
the means to do so? A scheme of geomancy acquainted me with your
design, and being entangled in your fate, for reasons that you must
not know (for you will know them if anything too soon) I sped from
afar upon wings of wind to conduct your conjuration for you."
"You have a price for this?"
"I see you are a man of the world, and are aware that nothing is
usually given for nothing. I ask you merely to sign this bond."
"I understand your interest in me better than you seem to think, and
on no account will I barter away my immortal soul."
"Your immortal soul, do you say? By the Nine Legions of Hell, does
the man think that the cross was stretched on Calvary for any such
scum as he? Your immortal soul, of which you hug yourself the
possessor, was lost irredeemably from your cradle up. The signature
to the bond is a matter of form."
"You do not think so since you ask me to sign it. But ask of me
anything else, and it shall be given to you."
"By the tie of which I spoke, that is stronger than blood as blood is
thicker than water (so they say), I will help you, though you
vouchsafe me a mere keepsake. Make over to me that amulet that you
wear around your neck, and the bargain is firm and true. The dawn
shall caress a tenement based on the shifting foundation of these
waters, such as even shall satisfy the caprices of Vergilia."
The bravo had recovered himself, as we have said, but these evidences
of an intimate knowledge of his affairs filled him again with
apprehension. And the stranger still continued masked. After a
short deliberation, however, Tosca decided not to let slip an
opportunity as welcome as unexpected, and granted apparently in
exchange for a trinket of no worth to him whatever, though he was not
unaware that it might be of inestimable value to any one who knew (as
this Frenchman presumably did) the secret of the Seven Sigils. With
a parting sigh for its enigma still unsolved, so often the toy of his
leisure hours, he detached it from his neck, and passed it on to the
Gaul, who fastened it about his own. That he was a wizard of his
word became immediately apparent. Taking up a piece of chalk he
scored out rapidly a double circle, one circumference within the
other, upon the shelf of rock upon which they stood. Between the two
circumferences he drew a ring of symbols of purport to the Venetian
unknown, but which he endeavoured to retain in his memory for
possible future use. Within the innermost of these two lines of
defence the sorcerer collected a quantity of brushwood, and after
having ignited these materials he entrusted the bravo with sundry
perfumes, some in the shape of evil smelling dried stuffs, and some
sealed up in phials, with minute instructions as to the order and
quantities in which (the incantation having commenced) they were to
feed the fire. To Magloire would fall the duty of reciting the
continuous charge which for the whole duration of the work was to
hold the evil angels in thrall. Lastly, the Gaul drew his
companion's attention to the fact that as soon as midnight sounded
the conjuration was to commence, and before one must end. For that
hour alone would signatory protectors avail him against the furies he
evoked. But this Tosca already knew. He was, as we have seen, no
such novice in the worship of powers retrograde as this schooling
showed his colleague to believe. The distant clock now struck (how
well the bravo remembered all the circumstances in which he had heard
that sound from this spot before), and the sorcerer began in a
thunderous voice to recite his litanies. Couched throughout in
somewhat dubious Latinity they were by the bravo only partially
understood, but he perceived that commencing with extravagant bead
roll of the Heavenly powers with which they two had fortified
themselves, and with impudent encomiums of their own matchless
courage and endurance among men, Magloire proceeded to eulogise the
nine princes of the lower world in terms the most complimentary,
exhorting them to satisfy their good friends the exorcists in the
mere trifle they demanded. As this modest request was not responded
to, the reciter gradually changed his tone. The compliments became
thinned by degrees and beautifully less, and were fairly well mixed
with horrible threats, and approbrious epithets, which again meeting
with no recognition, the theme of the chant now ceased to contain any
allusion whatever of a gratifying character. All was menace piled on
menace and insult piled on insult, Pelion upon Ossa till the riotous
whirl of words merged into one continuous curse, in the midst of
which reverberated again and again (amid the shudders of the waters
and the trembling of the earth) that ineffable sacred and secret Name
of Names, at which the celestials and the terrestrials and the
infernals do shake together and are troubled and confused. And with
that there rumbled thunders round the skirts of earth and belched
forth lightnings from their midst. And the lightnings continued to
lighten without pause, until they seemed all one meteor of fire that
hovered over the surface of the Bottomless Lake. And the meteor
burst and shot forth myriads upon myriads of shapeless forms down
towards the surface, whilst upwards from the surface rose a sort of
scum or mist. And this scum or mist, meeting those shapeless forms,
they seemed to seize upon it--and work it--and make it build as it
were walls. But all was seen as through a glass darkly, and,
besides, the bravo was still employed in casting priceless balsams
upon hissing flames that many a time and oft became half extinguished
(to his terror) by the sweat that rained from his brow. By his side
the French enchanter still swayed his arms towards on high, and on
high unceasingly rolled his incomprehensible cabala. The slightest
fear or the slightest hesitation, and what might not be their fate?
For such a slip innumerable infernal skirmishers were hovering hard
by in readiness. But now the danger is almost over. The gangs have
done their grudging work, and a palace hangs between wind and water
seductive and serene where nothing hung before. The last odours are
burning. The weird wailing of the magus is slackening into the
majestic formulæ of dismissal. Without this termination to the
ritual the magicians on leaving their sanctuary would have been torn
limb from limb by the awaiting fiends. But being expelled as
ceremoniously as they had been evoked, the filmy hosts had no choice
for it but to crumble into the nothingness from which they came.
"Go in peace unto your place! Peace be between you and us! Be you
ready to come when you are called."
These culminating words of the oration were uttered at the very
moment that the faithful distant watchman proclaimed it the hour of
one. As the two daring trespassers upon realms forbid stepped out
from their double breast-work, the bravo in vain endeavoured to make
out the exact architectural details of his palace in the darkness.
It was pretty clear to him, however, that instructions given had been
faithfully fulfilled. He considered that he had done a very good
night's work. How unexpected when he left Vergilia's house was this
chance rencounter that fate had in store for him. He began to have
some regard for Providence. He paid no attention to the wizard who
was commencing to obliterate his signs. Magloire had done his work
well, but he had been paid for it in advance. So much for Monsieur
Magloire (of France), who, he presumed, would now be off again about
his own affairs. Tosca strolled towards the city. His business was
to wait upon his betrothed (for such she now surely was), and drag
her off at once to the castle of her behest. A day of luxury
followed by a night of love. That was his bill of fare. But he had
reckoned without his host. He was ignorant that, in exchange for the
palace, he had bartered the true key to the situation and most
stringent claim of all upon the regard of his Vergilia. He was far
from suspecting that essential clue to the labyrinth which Janko had
recovered only just before his death, but which world without end
would never have wrung from him to the advantage of his assassin.
This essential clue consisted in the recognition of the hag of
Illyria and the beautiful Vergilia as one and the same person. Now
Janko had been her kinsman, and her intimate in her former existence,
and had been privy and assistant (as we know) to the rite by which
her youth was to be renewed. To him the inheritance was destined of
the seal which she had constructed for this end, and by the existence
of which alone her rejuvenescence could be effected. Upon the
success of her experiment, after seven days of seeming death, it was
intended that he should restore it to her; but we are already aware
that, through the interference of the Venetian, that success he had
never seen. The memory of his obligation being destroyed by the drug
of the poisoner, the talisman that was bound up with it became the
plaything of the bravo. The plaything of the bravo we repeat, and it
could never be anything else to him, so long as he remained in
ignorance of the peculiar power it exerted over the transfigurated
witch. For the amulet was the invisible load-stone that at the
moment when first they met had drawn her head down irresistibly to
his breast, where it lay concealed. Hold out as she might, she must
nevertheless infallibly have ultimately yielded to the spell by which
the Seven Sigils gave its holder power over her life. And Tosca had
unwittingly exchanged it for Dead Sea fruit. The fantastical
personage calling himself Magloire was, on the other hand, well aware
(for reasons which, for the moment, we leave in the dark) of the
power of the pawn he thus obtained. His proffer of the bond, in the
first instance, was a ruse (for he knew it would not be signed), and
it served very well its end of diverting suspicion from his real
purpose by making that appear an after thought. Now that he had
obtained the long-sought-for prize, he stopped in his work of
demolishing his geometry (the bravo being no longer in sight), and
stood for a long time collecting in the jewel every possible ray of
light. Then he did a most extraordinary thing, even for him, whose
every deed was extraordinary. He took it off its chain, which he
threw carelessly away, and conveying the glittering heptagon to his
mouth, he swallowed it. There was method in his apparent madness.
Its virtues would not suffer in the slightest from its imprisonment.
The fortunes borne by its Seven Sigils for good or for evil were
henceforth indissolubly bound up with his being. In this way he
avoided any possible chance of its ever passing out of his
possession. But the most urgent reason for his caution was the
imminent return of his late assistant. He had gauged the character
of that individual too deeply to feel safe while in his company. And
in his company he evidently intended to remain. The sun had now
risen, and the structure he had wrought by a word out of nothing was
at last entirely visible. And he saw that it was good. The waters
around it swarmed with love and feud between fishes gold and silver
and white aquatic birds. Other feathered life hopped the countless
little streamers which adorned the shining turrets. A broad landing
stage fronted the chief gate which was the higher of it to the extent
of a magnificent flight of steps. As to the interior the Moorish
lattices were inscrutable. But curiosity need not long remain
unsatisfied. The handsome pair for whom this casket was destined
were already joyously approaching. The bravo started when he came in
sight of the secretive Gaul still masked, and as at the moment when
he left him rubbing out the traces of his circles. Vergilia started,
as if in recognition of some acquaintance perchance of her youth.
The vaguely mysterious Seven Sigils had launched their erotic work.
The bravo surprised the attention which the Frenchman had
excited--remembered that he had never liked him from the first--and
began to look upon him as a possible rival. But the desire to take
French leave of him begot the bewildering discovery that although the
castle floated, complete as per contract, he was powerless himself by
any exertion of wish or will to cause it to sail to shore that they
might enter in according to the original plan sketched out by its
fair young architect. In this dilemma the Gaul came bowing and
scraping to his aid, and showed that by a simple signal of his hand
he could attract it to him as a magnet attracts iron. And now Tosca
began to suspect the lurking of some design in all this. His
suspicions were confirmed when Magloire stepped with them upon the
threshold of their new home, and the palace immediately resumed its
place in the centre of the Bottomless Lake. There was now no chance
for it but to admit the unwelcome guest. Their feet were lost to the
ankles in the carpet that covered the nakedness of that royal flight
of stairs we have already alluded to. They passed into a banqueting
hall of exquisite proportion, and sculpt with a fairy chisel.
Through keyhole arches that overlooked a central court, the melodies
of all kinds of singing birds were wafted contrapuntally across the
strains of the equally invisible musicians inside the banqueting hall
itself, while the sun-litten flashings of a fountain formed the organ
point that threaded through the whole--so much as this the Venetian
came, and saw, and enjoyed; but as to the laced and liveried
semblances of life with which the banqueting hall was alive, they
were semblances of death for all the service which the wish and will
of Tosca sought to exact from them. And here again the Frenchman
came to his aid, and these genii, at his command, throbbed with
obsequious ichor. Tables (in a second, magnificently clothed)
groaned under the newest of foods and beakers filled at the central
spring (fed from the waters of the Bottomless Lake) brimmed with the
oldest of wines. Vergilia and Magloire appeared infused with perfect
life, but to the bravo all was bitter in the mouth. He saw by the
action of the genii of the place that the contract agreed to, and
possibly only too literally carried out, had not been sufficiently
comprehensive. The day had dawned, it is true, upon a tenement that
eminently satisfied the caprices of Vergilia. But the bravo was only
in name its master and hers. The castle that mocked his efforts to
move it came and went at the motion of his rival, the servants that
were automata to Tosca were alive to the bidding of Magloire, and
Vergilia had forsaken her old love and beamed only upon the new.
Nay, she cast upon Magloire the self-same love light which had fired
Tosca's blood in her defence when he snatched her from her ravishers,
that never to be forgotten day when first they met. He had thought
his valour saved her from a fortune worse than death, which now he
feared would have affected her not at all. For he saw that all the
signs of an apparently virgin love could rise up like phoenix from
the ashes of a past one. And he shuddered to think how often this
process might have been repeated. Had all her lovers then enjoyed
her perchance save Tosca alone? And yet all the more she sank in his
estimation, the fuller swelled the tide of his desire. The long
luxurious banquet was a torture to him with this death's head at his
feast. His rage increased steadily with the jealousy it fed upon.
The long drawn courses were no sooner over than he seized upon some
trifling pretext (we know not what) to leave Vergilia alone for a few
moments while he drew his rival to that central court, whence
perfumed zephyrs blew. The stranger still continued masked. To this
Tosca first alluded laying his hand upon the hilt of that famous old
sword of his.
"Unmask your face that I may know you."
"You shall know me too well ere long."
"Restore me that amulet unearned by your accursed jugglery."
"You will never see it again."
"Then let this sword of justice decide between us that has settled
many a case for me before, and the Devil help his own! But first
reveal to me your real style and title (and a fig for the assumed one
that you go by), that I may learn with what enemy I have to deal that
has cause to hunt me down as you have hunted me."
"You deal with the Resenter and Avenger of the murder of the
Illyrian."
A shiver ran down the spine of the Venetian. Yet his blade
nevertheless flashed from its sheath, and he motioned to the stranger
to take up a position opposite to him. Magloire turned round for one
second to do so, and in that second the sword of his faithless foe
was plunged remorselessly through his back. The point protruded
through his breast. The next instant the sword had been withdrawn,
and the still unexplained Frenchman lay prone upon the ground by the
self-same stratagem that had availed with the man of whom he styled
himself avenger. And this time also the Venetian took the trouble to
assure himself of the death of his victim before returning his sword
to its scabbard. That done, he proceeded next to ascertain the real
identity of this mysterious being whom he had supposed to be one of
his numerous enemies working out a long delayed vendetta. With a
clutch the mask was torn to ribbons, and with a shriek the bravest of
the brave recoiled from the Mandrake it revealed; and, as the
shrieker heard his shriek, he recognised its kind. It was fellow to
that one he had heard the day before from the chamber of Vergilia,
never deeming that he himself in turn would be frighted with the same
basilisk face. But it frighted him (after all) with a difference.
The soul of the pot valiant courtier had been reft from its silken
frame, but the tempered ribs of the Man of War held fast their trust
within. His brain whirled and steadied itself--his blood shot forth
and back again--his eye grew dark and cleared. On to his knees he
sank, indeed, that never had bent to conquered (or unconquered) foe
before, but that was the only abatement from his pride of place.
That was his only homage to the escaped familiar of the sorceress'
privacy, that grim guardian whose gorgon glimpse had yesterday
sobered the drunkard and petrified the itching flesh of lust. And
the situation brought its panacea. Ignorant still of the effect of
the Seven Sigils, he fancied he had discovered now why the sorceress
had favoured the Mandragorean watchman with the love glance once
reserved for Tosca. It must be because that monster also had
rendered service to her virtue as the bravo had rendered it before.
One question still remained unanswered. Had Vergilia herself never
seen the face of this awful animated root? Or had she, by daily
touch, kept up from the very first plucking of the plant, so grown up
along with its progressing hideosity as to feel no inception of
abhorrence? At any rate, his Mandrakeship was now placed finally
_hors de boudoir_. And the bravo reflected that he laughs best who
laughs the last. Take heed, though, Tosca, there rests one yet
unslain till the day of final doom, in whose danger you still stand,
and whose claws are creeping towards you from the dark places of the
earth! Who sups with the Devil had need have a very long spoon. But
now there flashes like a sunbeam through the court the golden-haired
vision of whose destiny he now hoped himself sole arbiter. Roused by
that fell shriek, her anxiety nevertheless was far from being for the
utterer of it. With a cry of agonised acute despair she flung past
the outstretched arms of the bravo on to the prostrate body of the
lover still bound to her in death by the magic of the talisman he had
swallowed with so justified a foresight. The bravo knelt no longer
to the Mandrake, but to her, and with a cry plucked up the thoughts
of his deepest soul.
"Thou wanton and thing of many lovers, yet whom still I madly love!
By the love you once bore me, have pity on me now and vouchsafe me
but the leavings of this man or monster. A living dog is better than
a dead lion, so they say. Call me your dog or what you will, so that
you call me yours. For you I placed my soul in pledge, and would you
now desert me in my indignity? Nay then, if your choice be
irrevocably riveted to this carrion, so be it! But you shall share
the fate of him whom you so fancy. The Grand Seignieur is
connoisseur in the art of fittest punishing the faithless. With my
own eyes I have seen his favourite odalisques sewn up in sacks, and
dropped into the Bosphorus. And with my own hands I will deal with
you even so. You shall have your fill of local colour ere you have
done with your palace of the East."
The bravo was now crouching instead of kneeling, and gathering
himself up into a spring as of a panther he plunged upon the still
disconsolable mourner. Twining his fingers recklessly about the
golden hair he oft had kissed, he dragged her, not without difficulty
from the corpse of the Thing, whose fall she wept, jerking her
spasmodically into the hall and overturning its furniture right and
left. Amid the crashing of shattered bric-a-brac, he grabbed at the
nearest cushion from a divan that stood hard by, and ripping out its
entrails with the ferocity of an attack upon a living thing, he
felled the shrieking girl to the ground with a blow that would have
startled an ox, and forced his contrived receptacle somehow and
anyhow over her body, she uttering never a syllable the while. Did
she think that he had no heart to carry to a finish such a deed? Or
was it still the eccentric influence of the Seven Sigils that made
death to her preferable to life apart from the one beloved? This we
cannot answer. Enough that Tosca seemed in deadly earnest as he
shook together the members of his mistress, and compressing the mouth
of his improvised sarcophagus, tied it up with the belt from his
waist. This done he left it on the couch, and returned to the
central court drowsy with incense laden flowers. He intended to
yield Vergilia one more chance. Left to herself, and already wrapped
in her winding sheet, the present expectation of a painful death
would surely lead to second thoughts, and induce her to lavish less
carelessly the future of her youth and beauty--the splash that
heralded the committal of her paramour to the water would be echoed
by her appeal for mercy--and he had resolved in that case to forgive
her the worst she dared confess to him. But now to the work. Not
entirely without spasms of fresh fear he re-entered the courtyard of
the fateful duel, and where the duellist who had fallen lay. His
body the bravo now conveyed down the steps to the landing stage in
front of the main building. It did not fail to occur to the
practical mind of the Venetian as he strained under the repulsive
corpse of his quondam adversary that somewhere upon "his person (as
he thought) must lie concealed the talisman of the Seven Sigils. He
did not know that to find it he should have to search for it within
and not without. The consequence naturally was that his search was
unrewarded by any trace whatever of the coveted gem. But the more he
searched and pondered--and pondered and searched again--the more he
became convinced of the necessity for finding it, and the clearer
became to him the momentous part it had played in recent events. He
remembered now too late that while he had it in his possession his
suit with Vergilia had prospered, whereas Heaven had begun to frown
upon him as soon as he had parted with it to Magloire. He was too
shrewd a conjuror to fail to connect the one fact with the other, and
with them both the anxiety of the Mandrake to possess the talisman of
whose virtues he had obviously knowledge. Yet still it could not be
found upon his person. With a fearful oath the Venetian at length
gave up the search, and consigned the fruitless body to the
Bottomless Lake. He would find the bauble yet (he swore) by all his
left hand gods in whatsoever nook of earth it lay. And with that
very oath upon his lips he cast it off unwittingly for ever, deep
buried in the body that he spurned. Flotsam and jetsam whatsoever
touched the surface of those Stygian waves became the forfeit of the
Fiend. Such was the fate of body and gem. No more to appear in
substance in our story, the seal of the Seven Sigils shall,
nevertheless, ride through it to the end, completing the curse of the
Illyrian. The Venetian (ignorant as we have said of the loss he had
inflicted upon himself) once more re-entered the banqueting hall.
His purpose, before dealing with the question of his lady-love, was
to order up a second collation accompanied by fresh founts of wine.
This _tete-a-tete_ (as he ordained it in his mind) should obliterate
the memory of the previous banquet with its presence of an
inconvenient third. He gave his order roundly to the servants, quite
forgetting how impotent his commands. The automata remained unmoved,
save for the fancy of the bravo that they leered somewhat upon him
with an unmistakeable expression of contempt. Stung to sudden rage
he drew his keen ancestral blade, and made a lunge at the vitals of
the nearest one. In a moment he saw his mistake. The steel shivered
into a thousand fragments, and shattered in its flight all the
mirrors of the room. The hilt alone remained in his hand, which was
jarred through and through by the shock. But the mental effect was
even worse. For the first time a sense of impending Nemesis began to
steal upon him. This unique companion of all his vicissitudes had
been beloved of his inmost soul. From his jeopardous early days up
he had been accustomed never to sleep without it, until it had become
almost necessary to his slumbers that he should clap it to his
breast. Slowly he recovered, and even comforted himself. What could
his ancient hanger on avail him in his imprisonment on that island of
enchantment? And had he not at hand metal far more
attractive--damaskeened with gold--and suppler than Damascus steel?
He gathered together lingeringly the shards of his faithful
bedfellow, that he might cast those also into that Bottomless Lake
that had just received their latest victim. But when he had them all
embraced together in his arms, and had thrown aside the portal that
he might descend the steps to the landing stage--he was blasted with
a shock not so easy to rebound from as this matter of a broken
weapon--there existed no longer a landing stage at all! Where it
formerly stood the remorseless tide of the Bottomless Lake now swept
the foot of the steps! The bravo reeled. For a moment the air was
thick with curses loud and deep upon the day when the Seven Sigils
had first flashed its baleful light athwart his path. He now saw the
full significance of the fact that Magloire alone could shift the
castle's site, and vivify its phlegmatic flunkeydom. The castle
having been created by Magloire, for him alone existed. The handing
over of his body to Beelzebub, of which the bravo himself had been
the unthinking agent, had finally snapped the charm which held the
building in existence. It was now slowly sinking into the waters
from which it rose, and would continue to slowly sink till not a
stone of it was visible above the surface of the darkling deep.
Tosca reeled at this slap in the face that his fortune dealt him. He
never knew how he found himself once more within the central court, a
beaker in his hand, filling it to the brim with a vintage of the
fountains of which we made mention before. He raised the vessel to
his lips. The next moment it fell from his palsied hand and dashed
into a thousand pieces. The fluid he had tried to drink slobbered
over his knees as he rolled ignominiously upon the tesselated
pavement. It was no longer wine that the fountain had yielded, but
the fetid water of the Bottomless Lake! And this also resulted from
the breaking of the charm by burial of the body of Magloire. The
curse of the Illyrian was closing in upon its victim. The fate of
the Venetian was written large upon his forehead. Abrupt Despair
gripped upon his heart-strings. Yet still the honour of the bout
remained with Tosca. For he remembered in his extremity that the
bundle on the couch with all its possibilities was his. In despite
of all that Doom had done he still remained the owner of a wallet
that beggared Forturiatus. He sprang to his feet like an Antæus, all
the tenser for his momentary lapse to earth. He stretched out his
arms towards the Bottomless Lake, and roared in tones of thunder:--
"Hell from beneath is moved for me to meet me at my coming! Now runs
my sand apace, and I am ripe for my enrolment in the legions that
eternally curse God and do not die! Yet still the victory of
victories is mine, and eyeless Death shall not outstare me from it!
Is it for this you work (you who sit in the High Places of the Pit),
that I should flaunt in your faces the most fragrant hour of Life?
Oh, how you have wrought your work awry! And you--you myriad victims
of the dagger or the bowl that I have ushered unannealed to the
account--I invite you every one to my bridal! Is this then your
vengeance (oh, viperine Magloire!) that fruition should wait on my
desire? And you, Illyrian Janko, is this then your revenge that you
watch my wedding eve from the impotent other side of that great gulf
fixed between? Here, on this side, I exact value in advance for the
eternal price I pay. Here shall our ardent heat outblaze your fires,
and when your ruffian waters reach our level shall the floor above
receive us--and still the floor above--till on the roof itself at
last we still out-laugh you! Hours must elapse or ever your icy
billows reach our hearts, and wash them to the portal of Infinity!
These hours shall be mine (though all Gehenna gnash its teeth), and
our content shall give the lie to Hell."
Firm as a rock, he strode to his bag and cast off the belt from its
mouth. A head appeared. But not a golden one. Its scanty hair was
grey. Tosca recoiled. The ground reeled beneath him. His brain was
furnace, and his blood arterial snow. With a mighty effort he
recovered himself, and leaped like a madman into the sack, rending it
seam from seam. The whole fabric parted, and disclosed, not the
nonpareil that he had placed in its safe keeping, but the withered
stubs of limbs and yellow disjected trunk of that ancient harridan of
Illyria, whom he had seen on that never to be forgotten former
occasion anatomised by the hand of Janko. And as he stared dead eyed
upon that death, he was mercifully unaware that his feet were being
swept by the inexorable waves of the advancing Bottomless Lake.
THE HAND OF GLORY.