senior mathematical master at a second-rate suburban school. For
Saunders has had to earn a living in a way which other men might reckon
less congenial than his old manner of life. I had mentioned by chance
the name of Adrian Borlsover, and wondered at the time why he changed
the conversation with such unusual abruptness. A week later, Saunders
began to tell me something of his own history--sordid enough, though
shielded with a reserve I could well understand, for it had to cover
not only his failings but those of a dead friend. Of the final tragedy
he was at first especially loath to speak, and it was only gradually
that I was able to piece together the narrative of the preceding pages.
Saunders was reluctant to draw any conclusions. At one time he thought
that the fingered beast had been animated by the spirit of Sigismund
Borlsover, a sinister eighteenth-century ancestor, who, according to
legend, built and worshipped in the ugly pagan temple that overlooked
the lake. At another time Saunders believed the spirit to belong to a
man whom Eustace had once employed as a laboratory assistant, "a
black-haired spiteful little brute," he said, "who died cursing his
doctor because the fellow couldn't help him to live to settle some
paltry score with Borlsover."
From the point of view of direct contemporary evidence, Saunders's story
is practically uncorroborated. All the letters mentioned in the
narrative were destroyed, with the exception of the last note which
Eustace received, or rather which he would have received had not
Saunders intercepted it. That I have seen myself. The handwriting was
thin and shaky, the handwriting of an old man. I remember the Greek "e"
was used in "appointment." A little thing that amused me at the time was
that Saunders seemed to keep the note pressed between the pages of his
Bible.
I had seen Adrian Borlsover once. Saunders, I learnt to know well. It
was by chance, however, and not by design, that I met a third person of
the story, Morton the butler. Saunders and I were walking in the
Zoological Gardens one Sunday afternoon, when he called my attention to
an old man who was standing before the door of the reptile house.
"Why, Morton!" he said, clapping him on the back. "How is the world
treating you?"
"Poorly, Mr. Saunders," said the old fellow, though his face lighted up
at the greeting. "The winters drag terribly nowadays. There don't seem
no summers or springs."
"You haven't found what you were looking for, I suppose?"
"No, sir, not yet; but I shall some day. I always told them that Mr.
Borlsover kept some queer animals."
"And what is he looking for?" I asked, when we had parted from him.
"A beast with five fingers," said Saunders. "This afternoon, since he
has been in the reptile house, I suppose it will be a reptile with a
hand. Next week it will be a monkey with practically no body. The poor
old chap is a born materialist.
"It's a queer coincidence, by the way, that you should have known Adrian
Borlsover and that you should have received a blessing at his hand. Has
it brought you any luck?"
"No," I answered slowly, as I looked back over a life of inconspicuous
failure, "I don't think it has. It was his right hand, you know."
[B] Reprinted by permission of Robt. M. McBride & Co.
VI
SISTER MADDELENA
RALPH ADAMS CRAM
Across the valley of the Oreto from Monreale, on the slopes of the
mountains just above the little village of Parco, lies the old convent
of Sta. Catarina. From the cloister terrace at Monreale you can see its
pale walls and the slim campanile of its chapel rising from the crowded
citron and mulberry orchards that flourish, rank and wild, no longer
cared for by pious and loving hands. From the rough road that climbs the
mountains to Assunto, the convent is invisible, a gnarled and ragged
olive grove intervening, and a spur of cliffs as well, while from
Palermo one sees only the speck of white, flashing in the sun,
indistinguishable from the many similar gleams of desert monastery or
pauper village.
Partly because of this seclusion, partly by reason of its extreme
beauty, partly, it may be, because the present owners are more than
charming and gracious in their pressing hospitality, Sta. Catarina seems
to preserve an element of the poetic, almost magical; and as I drove
with the Cavaliere Valguanera one evening in March out of Palermo, along
the garden valley of the Oreto, then up the mountain side where the
warm light of the spring sunset swept across from Monreale, lying golden
and mellow on the luxuriant growth of figs, and olives, and
orange-trees, and fantastic cacti, and so up to where the path of the
convent swung off to the right round a dizzy point of cliff that reached
out gaunt and gray from the olives below,--as I drove thus in the balmy
air, and saw of a sudden a vision of creamy walls and orange roof,
draped in fantastic festoons of roses, with a single curving palm-tree
stuck black and feathery against the gold sunset, it is hardly to be
wondered at that I should slip into a mood of visionary enjoyment,
looking for a time on the whole thing as the misty phantasm of a summer
dream.
The Cavaliere had introduced himself to us,--Tom Rendel and me,--one
morning soon after we reached Palermo, when, in the first bewilderment
of architects in this paradise of art and colour, we were working nobly
at our sketches in that dream of delight, the Capella Palatina. He was
himself an amateur archaeologist, he told us, and passionately devoted to
his island; so he felt impelled to speak to anyone whom he saw
appreciating the almost--and in a way fortunately--unknown beauties of
Palermo. In a little time we were fully acquainted, and talking like the
oldest friends. Of course he knew acquaintances of Rendel's,--someone
always does: this time they were officers on the tubby U. S. S.
_Quinebaug_, that, during the summer of 1888, was trying to uphold the
maritime honour of the United States in European waters. Luckily for us,
one of the officers was a kind of cousin of Rendel's, and came from
Baltimore as well, so, as he had visited at the Cavaliere's place, we
were soon invited to do the same. It was in this way that, with the luck
that attends Rendel wherever he goes, we came to see something of
domestic life in Italy, and that I found myself involved in another of
those adventures for which I naturally sought so little.
I wonder if there is any other place in Sicily so faultless as Sta.
Catarina? Taormina is a paradise, an epitome of all that is beautiful in
Italy,--Venice excepted. Girgenti is a solemn epic, with its golden
temples between the sea and hills. Cefalu is wild and strange, and
Monreale a vision out of a fairy tale; but Sta. Catarina!--
Fancy a convent of creamy stone and rose red brick perched on a ledge of
rock midway between earth and heaven, the cliff falling almost sheer to
the valley two hundred feet and more, the mountain rising behind
straight toward the sky; all the rocks covered with cactus and dwarf
fig-trees, the convent draped in smothering roses, and in front a
terrace with a fountain in the midst; and then--nothing--between you and
the sapphire sea, six miles away. Below stretches the Eden valley, the
Concha d'Oro, gold-green fig orchards alternating with smoke-blue
olives, the mountains rising on either hand and sinking undulously away
toward the bay where, like a magic city of ivory and nacre, Palermo
lies guarded by the twin mountains, Monte Pelligrino and Capo Zafferano,
arid rocks like dull amethysts, rose in sunlight, violet in shadow:
lions couchant, guarding the sleeping town.
Seen as we saw it for the first time that hot evening in March, with the
golden lambent light pouring down through the valley, making it in
verity a "shell of gold," sitting in Indian chairs on the terrace, with
the perfume of roses and jasmines all around us, the valley of the
Oreto, Palermo, Sta. Catarina, Monreale,--all were but parts of a dreamy
vision, like the heavenly city of Sir Percivale, to attain which he
passed across the golden bridge that burned after him as he vanished in
the intolerable light of the Beatific Vision.
It was all so unreal, so phantasmal, that I was not surprised in the
least when, late in the evening after the ladies had gone to their
rooms, and the Cavaliere, Tom, and I were stretched out in chairs on the
terrace, smoking lazily under the multitudinous stars, the Cavaliere
said, "There is something I really must tell you both before you go to
bed, so that you may be spared any unnecessary alarm."
"You are going to say that the place is haunted," said Rendel, feeling
vaguely on the floor beside him for his glass of Amaro: "thank you; it
is all it needs."
The Cavaliere smiled a little: "Yes, that is just it. Sta. Catarina is
really haunted; and much as my reason revolts against the idea as
superstitious and savouring of priestcraft, yet I must acknowledge I see
no way of avoiding the admission. I do not presume to offer any
explanations, I only state the fact; and the fact is that to-night one
or other of you will, in all human--or unhuman--probability, receive a
visit from Sister Maddelena. You need not be in the least afraid, the
apparition is perfectly gentle and harmless; and, moreover, having seen
it once, you will never see it again. No one sees the ghost, or whatever
it is, but once, and that usually the first night he spends in the
house. I myself saw the thing eight--nine years ago, when I first bought
the place from the Marchese di Muxaro; all my people have seen it,
nearly all my guests, so I think you may as well be prepared."
"Then tell us what to expect," I said; "what kind of a ghost is this
nocturnal visitor?"
"It is simple enough. Some time to-night you will suddenly awake and see
before you a Carmelite nun who will look fixedly at you, say distinctly
and very sadly, 'I cannot sleep,' and then vanish. That is all, it is
hardly worth speaking of, only some people are terribly frightened if
they are visited unwarned by strange apparitions; so I tell you this
that you may be prepared."
"This was a Carmelite convent, then?" I said.
"Yes; it was suppressed after the unification of Italy, and given to the
House of Muxaro; but the family died out, and I bought it. There is a
story about the ghostly nun, who was only a novice, and even that
unwillingly, which gives an interest to an otherwise very commonplace
and uninteresting ghost."
"I beg that you will tell it us," cried Rendel.
"There is a storm coming," I added. "See, the lightning is flashing
already up among the mountains at the head of the valley; if the story
is tragic, as it must be, now is just the time for it. You will tell it,
will you not?"
The Cavaliere smiled that slow, cryptic smile of his that was so
unfathomable.
"As you say, there is a shower coming, and as we have fierce tempests
here, we might not sleep; so perhaps we may as well sit up a little
longer, and I will tell you the story."
The air was utterly still, hot and oppressive; the rich, sick odour of
the oranges just bursting into bloom came up from the valley in a gently
rising tide. The sky, thick with stars, seemed mirrored in the rich
foliage below, so numerous were the glow-worms under the still trees,
and the fireflies that gleamed in the hot air. Lightning flashed
fitfully from the darkening west; but as yet no thunder broke the heavy
silence.
The Cavaliere lighted another cigar, and pulled a cushion under his head
so that he could look down to the distant lights of the city. "This is
the story," he said.
"Once upon a time, late in the last century, the Duca di Castiglione
was attached to the court of Charles III., King of the Two Sicilies,
down at Palermo. They tell me he was very ambitious, and, not content
with marrying his son to one of the ladies of the House of Tuscany, had
betrothed his only daughter, Rosalia, to Prince Antonio, a cousin of the
king. His whole life was wrapped up in the fame of his family, and he
quite forgot all domestic affection in his madness for dynastic glory.
His son was a worthy scion, cold and proud; but Rosalia was, according
to legend, utterly the reverse,--a passionate, beautiful girl, wilful
and headstrong, and careless of her family and the world.
"The time had nearly come for her to marry Prince Antonio, a typical
_roue_ of the Spanish court, when, through the treachery of a servant,
the Duke discovered that his daughter was in love with a young military
officer whose name I don't remember, and that an elopement had been
planned to take place the next night. The fury and dismay of the old
autocrat passed belief; he saw in a flash the downfall of all his hopes
of family aggrandizement through union with the royal house, and,
knowing well the spirit of his daughter, despaired of ever bringing her
to subjection. Nevertheless, he attacked her unmercifully, and, by
bullying and threats, by imprisonment, and even bodily chastisement, he
tried to break her spirit and bend her to his indomitable will. Through
his power at court he had the lover sent away to the mainland, and for
more than a year he held his daughter closely imprisoned in his palace
on the Toledo,--that one, you may remember, on the right, just beyond
the Via del Collegio dei Gesuiti, with the beautiful ironwork grilles at
all the windows, and the painted frieze. But nothing could move her,
nothing bend her stubborn will; and at last, furious at the girl he
could not govern, Castiglione sent her to this convent, then one of the
few houses of barefoot Carmelite nuns in Italy. He stipulated that she
should take the name of Maddelena, that he should never hear of her
again, and that she should be held an absolute prisoner in this
conventual castle.
"Rosalia--or Sister Maddelena, as she was now--believed her lover dead,
for her father had given her good proofs of this, and she believed him;
nevertheless she refused to marry another, and seized upon the convent
life as a blessed relief from the tyranny of her maniacal father.
"She lived here for four or five years; her name was forgotten at court
and in her father's palace. Rosalia di Castiglione was dead, and only
Sister Maddelena lived, a Carmelite nun, in her place.
"In 1798 Ferdinand IV. found himself driven from his throne on the
mainland, his kingdom divided, and he himself forced to flee to Sicily.
With him came the lover of the dead Rosalia, now high in military
honour. He on his part had thought Rosalia dead, and it was only by
accident that he found that she still lived, a Carmelite nun. Then
began the second act of the romance that until then had been only sadly
commonplace, but now became dark and tragic. Michele--Michele
Biscari,--that was his name; I remember now--haunted the region of the
convent, striving to communicate with Sister Maddelena; and at last,
from the cliffs over us, up there among the citrons--you will see by the
next flash of lightning--he saw her in the great cloister, recognized
her in her white habit, found her the same dark and splendid beauty of
six years before, only made more beautiful by her white habit and her
rigid life. By and by he found a day when she was alone, and tossed a
ring to her as she stood in the midst of the cloister. She looked up,
saw him, and from that moment lived only to love him in life as she had
loved his memory in the death she had thought had overtaken him.
"With the utmost craft they arranged their plans together. They could
not speak, for a word would have aroused the other inmates of the
convent. They could make signs only when Sister Maddelena was alone.
Michele could throw notes to her from the cliff,--a feat demanding a
strong arm, as you will see, if you measure the distance with your
eye,--and she could drop replies from the window over the cliff, which
he picked up at the bottom. Finally he succeeded in casting into the
cloister a coil of light rope. The girl fastened it to the bars of one
of the windows, and--so great is the madness of love--Biscari actually
climbed the rope from the valley to the window of the cell, a distance
of almost two hundred feet, with but three little craggy resting-places
in all that height. For nearly a month these nocturnal visits were
undiscovered, and Michele had almost completed his arrangements for
carrying the girl from Sta. Catarina and away to Spain, when
unfortunately one of the sisters, suspecting some mystery, from the
changed face of Sister Maddelena, began investigating, and at length
discovered the rope neatly coiled up by the nun's window, and hidden
under some clinging vines. She instantly told the Mother Superior; and
together they watched from a window in the crypt of the chapel,--the
only place, as you will see to-morrow, from which one could see the
window of Sister Maddelena's cell. They saw the figure of Michele
daringly ascending the slim rope; watched hour after hour, the Sister
remaining while the Superior went to say the hours in the chapel, at
each of which Sister Maddelena was present; and at last, at prime, just
as the sun was rising, they saw the figure slip down the rope, watched
the rope drawn up and concealed, and knew that Sister Maddelena was in
their hands for vengeance and punishment,--a criminal.
"The next day, by the order of the Mother Superior, Sister Maddelena was
imprisoned in one of the cells under the chapel, charged with her guilt,
and commanded to make full and complete confession. But not a word would
she say, although they offered her forgiveness if she would tell the
name of her lover. At last the Superior told her that after this fashion
would they act the coming night: she herself would be placed in the
crypt, tied in front of the window, her mouth gagged; that the rope
would be lowered, and the lover allowed to approach even to the sill of
her window, and at that moment the rope would be cut, and before her
eyes her lover would be dashed to death on the ragged cliffs. The plan
was feasible, and Sister Maddelena knew that the Mother was perfectly
capable of carrying it out. Her stubborn spirit was broken, and in the
only way possible she begged for mercy, for the sparing of her lover.
The Mother Superior was deaf at first; at last she said, 'It is your
life or his. I will spare him on condition that you sacrifice your own
life.' Sister Maddelena accepted the terms joyfully, wrote a last
farewell to Michele, fastened the note to the rope, and with her own
hands cut the rope and saw it fall coiling down to the valley bed far
below.
"Then she silently prepared for death; and at midnight, while her lover
was wandering, mad with the horror of impotent fear, around the white
walls of the convent, Sister Maddelena, for love of Michele, gave up her
life. How, was never known. That she was indeed dead was only a
suspicion, for when Biscari finally compelled the civil authorities to
enter the convent, claiming that murder had been done there, they found
no sign. Sister Maddelena had been sent to the parent house of the
barefoot Carmelites at Avila in Spain, so the Superior stated, because
of her incorrigible contumacy. The old Duke of Castiglione refused to
stir hand or foot in the matter, and Michele, after fruitless attempts
to prove that the Superior of Sta. Catarina had caused the death, was
forced to leave Sicily. He sought in Spain for very long; but no sign of
the girl was to be found, and at last he died, exhausted with suffering
and sorrow.
"Even the name of Sister Maddelena was forgotten, and it was not until
the convents were suppressed, and this house came into the hands of the
Muxaros, that her story was remembered. It was then that the ghost began
to appear; and, an explanation being necessary, the story, or legend,
was obtained from one of the nuns who still lived after the suppression.
I think the fact--for it is a fact--of the ghost rather goes to prove
that Michele was right, and that poor Rosalia gave her life a sacrifice
for love,--whether in accordance with the terms of the legend or not, I
cannot say. One or the other of you will probably see her to-night. You
might ask her for the facts. Well, that is all the story of Sister
Maddelena, known in the world as Rosalia di Castiglione. Do you like
it?"
"It is admirable," said Rendel, enthusiastically. "But I fancy I should
rather look on it simply as a story, and not as a warning of what is
going to happen. I don't much fancy real ghosts myself."
"But the poor Sister is quite harmless"; and Valguanera rose,
stretching himself. "My servants say she wants a mass said over her, or
something of that kind; but I haven't much love for such priestly
hocus-pocus,--I beg your pardon" (turning to me), "I had forgotten that
you were a Catholic: forgive my rudeness."
"My dear Cavaliere, I beg you not to apologize. I am sorry you cannot
see things as I do; but don't for a moment think I am hypersensitive."
"I have an excuse,--perhaps you will say only an explanation; but I live
where I see all the absurdities and corruptions of the Church."
"Perhaps you let the accidents blind you to the essentials; but do not
let us quarrel to-night,--see, the storm is close on us. Shall we go
in?"
The stars were blotted out through nearly all the sky; low, thunderous
clouds, massed at the head of the valley, were sweeping over so close
that they seemed to brush the black pines on the mountain above us. To
the south and east the storm-clouds had shut down almost to the sea,
leaving a space of black sky where the moon in its last quarter was
rising just to the left of Monte Pellegrino,--a black silhouette against
the pallid moonlight. The rosy lightning flashed almost incessantly, and
through the fitful darkness came the sound of bells across the valley,
the rushing torrent below, and the dull roar of the approaching rain,
with a deep organ-point of solemn thunder through it all.
We fled indoors from the coming tempest, and taking our candles, said
"good-night," and sought each his respective room.
My own was in the southern part of the old convent, giving on the
terrace we had just quitted, and about over the main doorway. The
rushing storm, as it swept down the valley with the swelling torrent
beneath, was very fascinating, and after wrapping myself in a
dressing-gown I stood for some time by the deeply embrasured window,
watching the blazing lightning and the beating rain whirled by fitful
gusts of wind around the spurs of the mountains. Gradually the violence
of the shower seemed to decrease, and I threw myself down on my bed in
the hot air, wondering if I really was to experience the ghostly visit
the Cavaliere so confidently predicted.
I had thought out the whole matter to my own satisfaction, and fancied I
knew exactly what I should do, in case Sister Maddelena came to visit
me. The story touched me: the thought of the poor faithful girl who
sacrificed herself for her lover,--himself very likely, quite
unworthy,--and who now could never sleep for reason of her unquiet soul,
sent out into the storm of eternity without spiritual aid or counsel. I
could not sleep; for the still vivid lightning, the crowding thoughts of
the dead nun, and the shivering anticipation of my possible visitation,
made slumber quite out of the question. No suspicion of sleepiness had
visited me, when, perhaps an hour after midnight, came a sudden vivid
flash of lightning, and, as my dazzled eyes began to regain the power
of sight, I saw her as plainly as in life,--a tall figure, shrouded in
the white habit of the Carmelites, her head bent, her hands clasped
before her. In another flash of lightning she slowly raised her head and
looked at me long and earnestly. She was very beautiful, like the Virgin
of Beltraffio in the National Gallery,--more beautiful than I had
supposed possible, her deep, passionate eyes very tender and pitiful in
their pleading, beseeching glance. I hardly think I was frightened, or
even startled, but lay looking steadily at her as she stood in the
beating lightning.
Then she breathed, rather than articulated, with a voice that almost
brought tears, so infinitely sad and sorrowful was it, "I cannot sleep!"
and the liquid eyes grew more pitiful and questioning as bright tears
fell from them down the pale dark face.
The figure began to move slowly toward the door, its eyes fixed on mine
with a look that was weary and almost agonized. I leaped from the bed
and stood waiting. A look of utter gratitude swept over the face, and,
turning, the figure passed through the doorway.
Out into the shadow of the corridor it moved, like a drift of pallid
storm-cloud, and I followed, all natural and instinctive fear or
nervousness quite blotted out by the part I felt I was to play in giving
rest to a tortured soul. The corridors were velvet black; but the pale
figure floated before me always, an unerring guide, now but a thin mist
on the utter night, now white and clear in the bluish lightning through
some window or doorway.
Down the stairway into the lower hall, across the refectory, where the
great frescoed Crucifixion flared into sudden clearness under the fitful
lightning, out into the silent cloister.