A MYSTERY.
They started by the earliest train to Victoria, and were half-way to
Pieve di Cadore before nightfall, taking great delight, each one of
them, in the wonderful beauty of the scenery through which they were
traveling. Philip was in that delicious state of convalescence, the
last stage of it, when health seems renewed to greater and fresher
vigor than before the illness came. He was in high spirits, and in his
inmost heart, if he had looked there, he would have discovered no
regret that Phyllis was absent. Her presence, charming as it was, with
the thousand little attentions she would have demanded from him, would
have interfered with the perfect freedom he enjoyed in the
companionship of his mother and Dorothy. They exacted nothing from
him, and were good travelers, complaining of no discomfort or
inconvenience. There was a good deal of discomfort which would have
fretted Phyllis considerably. But Dorothy was like a pleasant comrade,
whose society added another charm to the picturesque scenery. When
Margaret was too tired to leave the carriage, Dorothy was always ready
to climb the steep paths with him, by which they escaped the tedious
zigzags of the dusty roads.
To Dorothy, accustomed to a low horizon and wide sweep of upland with a
broad field of sky above it, the lofty peaks of gray rock rising for
thousands of feet into the sky, and hanging over the narrow valleys
with a threatening aspect, were at first oppressive. But the profusion
of flowers on the nearer slopes, which were in places blue with
forget-me-nots and gentians, and yellow with large buttercups, was
delightful to her, and she soon lost the sense of oppression.
It was the evening of the second day when they reached Cortina, having
crossed the Austrian frontier a few miles from it. They were the first
tourists of the season, said the custom-house officer, and would be
very welcome. The snow was not yet melted off the strangely shaped
rocks, towering upward so precipitously that it could lodge only in the
little niches and rough ledges of the surface, tracing with white
network the lines scored upon it by alternate frost and sunshine. The
valley was more open than those through which they had traveled, and
little groups of cottages were dotted about it, and for some distance
up the lower slopes of the mountains. The air was sharply cold and
nipping, for the sun was gone down behind the high ridge of rock, and
they were glad to get inside the hotel, and into the small, bare dining
room, which was the only room, except the kitchen, not used as a
bedchamber. They intended to stay here for some days, and Margaret,
who had written from Venice to Sidney, informing him of their proposed
journey, sent Philip to telegraph to him that they had reached Cortina.
It was a little town, and was quickly traversed. To Margaret's
telegram he added that they were all well and happy, smiling to himself
as he thought how his father would shake his head at the needless
extravagance of sending these two words. But Philip felt there was
something special in his sense of well-being which demanded explicit
acknowledgment. The young woman who copied his telegram looked at him
with an air of curiosity and interest.
"The signore is English?" she inquired.
"Yes, signora," he replied.
"The first English of the year," she continued, "and I must send word
to the padre. He was here yesterday, and at all the hotels, to say he
must speak with the first of the English who come to Cortina. Perhaps
the signore has heard so already?"
"No," answered Philip; "but I have not seen my landlord yet; he was out
of the way when we arrived."
He had learned Italian sufficiently to carry on a simple conversation;
but he was not very fluent, and he was obliged to pause and think over
his sentences.
"We are going to stay here some days," he resumed, "or possibly some
weeks. Is it necessary for me to call upon the priest? or will you
tell him where I am staying?"
"I will call him; it is urgent, I believe," she said, hastening to the
door, and running across a small, open space to a house near the
church. In a few minutes she returned, accompanied by a young priest
in a shabby cassock and worn-out broad-brimmed hat.
"I have the honor to speak to an English signore," said the priest,
bowing profoundly.
"I shall be most happy to serve the padre," answered Philip.
The young priest bade the telegraph clerk a courteous good-night, and
drew him a little on one side. A steep lane led down to the brawling
river which ran through the valley, and they descended it until they
were quite beyond any chance of being overheard. He then addressed
Philip in a low voice, and in tolerably good English.
"It is an affair of the confessional," he said slowly, and with an
evident effort of memory, as if he was repeating a statement he had
carefully composed beforehand; "it is the case of an old woman, a very
respectable old person. She dies at this moment, and she wills, before
dying, to behold a true Englishman, and to betray to him one great
secret, one important secret. I desired all the persons in the town to
announce to me the arrival of the first Englishman touring to this
place, and lo, it is the signore!"
It was great luck, thought Philip, to come in so immediately upon a
mystery. No young man would shrink, as older men might do, from being
intrusted with a secret, which might involve them in much trouble and
worry.
"I am ready to go with you at once," he said, smiling.
"Not to-night," answered the priest, "it is two hours up the mountain,
and it is already night. She dies not to-night; perhaps not to-morrow.
In the morning, if the signore will condescend his favor."
"What time shall I be with you?" asked Philip.
"At six o'clock; will that do?" replied the priest. "I take the--what
you call the Sacrament--the Lord's Supper, is it? to the respectable
old person, and I cannot have any food till she receives it from my
hands. Will the hour of six be too early for the signore?"
"No, no!" he answered; "but I shall breakfast before starting on a two
hours' walk up the mountain."
"That, of course," said the priest, laughing low; "you are not a padre.
Moreover, the Protestants have the good things in this life, mark my
words!"
Margaret had already retired to her room when Philip returned to the
hotel; and when he knocked at her door to bid her good-night, she
called to him to come in. It was an immense chamber, with a red brick
floor, and several windows; but a fire had been kindled in a large
white-tiled stove in one corner of it, and a pleasant heat was diffused
through the room. His mother was lying down on a red velvet sofa,
which threw a tinge of rosy color upon her face, yet she looked to him
somewhat pale and sad.
"I may be a little overtired," she said, in answer to his anxious
question, "and I am somehow depressed--oddly depressed. We have been
so gay and happy these last few days, that I can hardly bear to feel
myself going down to a lower level. I feel a great longing for your
father to be with me. Philip, do you ever feel as if you had been in
some place before, even if you knew for certain that you never can have
been there?"
"I have felt it once," he replied.
"I feel it here," she continued, sighing; "I feel it very strongly. I
feel, too, as if your father had been here; of course that is possible,
though he never mentioned it to me. It seems almost as if I could see
him passing to and fro, and sitting here by my side, just as you are
sitting. And I have another sensation--as if for years I had been
traveling unconsciously toward one spot, and it is here, this valley,
this room. You know I am not superstitious, but if I cannot shake off
this feeling, we must go on somewhere else. It is foolish of me, but I
cannot stay here. I am positively afraid of going to bed, for I shall
not sleep. Look at that great bed in the corner; it frightens me. Yet
I never am afraid."
"You are overdone, mother," he said tenderly. "I have not taken care
of you, but left myself to be taken care of. Let Dorothy come and
sleep with you; you would not be afraid with her sweet, happy face
beside you."
"It is sweet and happy," answered Margaret, with a smile. "Yes, I will
have a bed made up for her here, and if I lie awake in the night I can
look across at her, sleeping as if she felt herself under the shadow of
God's wings."
"Ah, mother!" he cried, "if you only loved my Phyllis as you love
Dorothy!"
"I may do some day," she replied. "When she is your wife and my
daughter-in-law, she will be nearer to me even than Dorothy."
He put his arm round her and kissed her gratefully, but in silence. He
knew that she could never love Phyllis as she loved Dorothy. Phyllis,
with her little petulancies, her pretty maneuvers, her arch plottings
to get her own way, her love of ornament and display, all her pleasures
and her purposes, was too unlike Margaret ever to become the daughter
of her heart. But he must make up to Phyllis by a deeper devotion, a
more single attention to her wishes, even when they were opposed to his
own. Marrying her against the will and judgment of his father and
mother, he must make it evident to her, as well as to them, that he
never regretted acting on his own decision.
"I am going up the mountains to-morrow morning," he said before leaving
her, "with a priest, to hear some great secret from an old woman who is
dying. Some tale of robbery, I expect. We start at six, and it is two
hours' up the mountain; but I shall get back for twelve o'clock
breakfast."
The clock in the bell tower struck twelve before Margaret could resolve
upon lying down in the great square bed in the corner, which stood
almost as high as her own head. Dorothy had been fast asleep for some
time on the little bed that had been moved into the room, and the
girl's sweet, tranquil slumber in some measure dispelled her own
nervous fears. But the night was sleepless to her. She heard, every
quarter of an hour, the loud, single boom of the great bell, which
reassured the inhabitants of the valley that their watchman was awake
on his chilly tower, and looking out for any cause of alarm. Was it
possible that she had never listened to it before, so familiar the
sound was? Could this be the first night she had lain awake in this
weary chamber, longing for Sidney's presence, and watching with weary
eyes the gray light of the morning stealing through the chinks of the
shutters? Had she never wept before as she did now, with tears slowly
forcing themselves beneath her heavy eyelids? It was all a nervous
illusion, she told herself, proceeding from overstrain and fatigue; but
if it continued through the day, she must go on to some other place.
There would be no chance of rest for her here.
She lay as still almost as if she had been stretched out in death, her
arms folded across her breast, and her eyelids closed. If she could
not take rest in sleep, she would commune with her own heart upon her
bed, and be still. "Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety,"
she said. She reminded herself that nothing could befall her that God
had not willed. Death she had never feared since the day when she had
all but crossed the threshold of another life. The death of her
beloved ones would be an unspeakable sorrow to her, but not an
unendurable one. What else, then, was there to dread?