THE OATH ON THE KRISS
Teresa stood chained with horror--the cry frozen on her lips. As the
silver flash had flown she had seen a dark, oriental face disappear
between the bracken and had recognized it.
Gordon had shuddered as the blow struck, then stood perfectly still,
his arms about her. In that instant he remembered the scene he had
witnessed at the Ravenna osteria, and his heart said within him: “Hast
thou found me, O mine enemy?”
Her voice came then in a scream that woke the place and brought Tita
rushing up the path.
When he reached them, her fingers had drawn out the wet blade and were
striving desperately to stanch the blood with her handkerchief, as,
white to the lips with pain, Gordon leaned against a tree. After that
first cry, in which her whole being had sounded its terror, she had not
spoken. Now she turned to Tita, who stood dumfounded.
“Tita, quickly! You and I must help his lordship to the road. He is
wounded.”
“Teresa,”--Gordon sought for words through the dizziness that was
engulfing him,--“leave me. My horse is in the edge of the forest. At
Bologna I shall find a surgeon.”
“You cannot ride. It would kill you. My carriage is near the convent
gate.”
He shook his head. “You have risked enough for me. Tita,--”
“He can bring the horse around,” she answered. “Come!” She drew one
of Gordon’s arms about her shoulder, feeling him waver. “That is
right--so!”
With Tita on the other side, they began the descent. She walked
certainly along the difficult path, though every nerve was thrilling
with agony, her mind one incessant clamor. At the expense of his own
heart he had stayed away. And this was what their chance meeting to-day
had brought him. This!
Gordon was breathing hard at the foot of the hill. He had fought
desperately to retain consciousness, but a film was clouding his eyes.
“It is only a few steps now,” she said, “to the carriage.”
He stopped short.
“You must obey me,” she insisted wildly, her voice vibrating. “It is
the only way! You must go to Ravenna!”
“Tita--bring my horse!”
It was the last stubborn flash of the will, fainting in physical
eclipse. With the words his hand fell heavily from her shoulder and
Tita caught him in his arms.
At a sign from Teresa, the servant lifted him into the carriage.
“Home!” she commanded, “and drive swiftly.”
Through the miles of rapid motion under the ebon shadows deepening to
twilight she sat chafing Gordon’s hands, her eyes, widened with a great
suspense, upon the broadening stain crimsoning his waistcoat.
In that interminable ride her soul passed through a furnace of
transformation. The touch of his lips upon hers had been the one
deathless instant of life’s unfolding. In that kiss she had felt poured
out all the virginal freshness of a love _renaissant_ and complete, no
more to be withheld than a torrent leaping to the sea. But the awful
instant that followed, with its first glimpse into the hideous limbo of
possibilities, showed her all else that might lie in that love, of the
irreparable, the disastrous, the infinitely terrifying. Her marriage
had been a baleful bond of ring and book, seasoned with hate, empty
of sanctity. His had been sunk somewhere in the black slough of the
past, a stark dead thing. That they two should love each other--she had
imagined no further. She had known her own heart, but that hour on the
hill had been the complete surety that Gordon loved her fully in return.
Born of his extremity, there swelled in her now the wondrous instinct
of the lioness that is a part of every woman’s love. It lent her its
courage. All fear, save the one surpassing dread that gnawed her heart,
slipped from her.
Dark fell before they reached the town, and in the quiet street the
freight of the carriage was not noted. Before the entrance of Casa
Guiccioli stood her father’s chaise.
Count Gamba met her in the hall, to start at her a strained look and at
the pallid face of the man Tita carried--a face unknown to him. Paolo
was behind him; by this she knew her husband was returned.
She scarcely heeded her father’s ejaculations. “Bring linen and water
quickly to the large chamber in the garden wing,” she directed, “and
send for Doctor Aglietti.”
Paolo went stealthily to inform his master.
* * * * *
When Count Guiccioli crossed the threshold of the candle-lighted room
he came upon a strange scene. Teresa bent over the bed, her face
colorless as a mask. Her father, opposite, to whom she had as yet told
nothing, was tying a temporary bandage. Between them lay the inert form
of the man against whom his own morbid rage had been amassing. His eyes
flared. Where had she found him? Had Trevanion bungled or betrayed? Did
she guess? And guessing, had she brought him to this house, in satanic
irony, to die before his very sight?
At the suspicion the fever of his moody eyes flew to his face. His
countenance became distorted. He burst upon them with a crackling
exclamation: “The Venetian dog! Who has dared fetch him here?”
“_Zitto!_” said Count Gamba pettishly. “Don’t you see the man is
wounded?”
“Wounded or whole, by the body of Bacchus! He shall go back to-night to
Bologna!” He took a menacing step forward.
“How did you know he was lodged there?”
Teresa’s steely inquiry stayed him. She had lifted her face, calm as a
white moon. He stopped, nonplussed.
“You had good reason to know.” She drew from her belt a Malay kriss,
its blade stained with red. “This is what struck him. It belonged to
you. Am I to learn what it means to bear the name of a murderer?”
Her father stared his amazement. “_Dio santissimo!_” he exclaimed. Was
this why she had been so pale?
Before her movement her husband had shrunk involuntarily. “I knew
nothing of it,” he said in a muffled fury; “I am just come from Faenza.”
“I saw whose hand struck the blow.” She spoke with deadly quietness. “I
have seen him more than once under this roof. But whose was the brain?
Who furnished him this weapon? It was gone from the arras the day after
you brought him to the casa to be your _sicario_--to do what you dared
not do yourself! Fool!” Her voice rose. “Do you think a peer of England
common clay for your clean-handed _bravos_? Are English nobles stabbed
abroad without an accounting to the last _soldo_? Do you suppose no
Romagnan noble ever went to the fortress with confiscate estates? Is
your reputation so clean that if he dies you think to escape what I
shall say?”
A greenish hue had overspread the fiery sallow of the old count’s face,
ghastly under the candles. She had touched two vulnerable points at
once--cupidity and fear. Something, too, in what she said brought a
swift unwelcome memory. He recalled another--a poet, also--Manzoni, the
Italian, dead by a hired assassin in Forli years before; in the night
sometimes still that man’s accusing look came before him. Beads of
sweat started on his forehead.
“Cheeks of the Virgin!” cried Count Gamba, who had maintained a rigid
silence. “Have you no word to this?”
“He was her lover! She knew where to find him to-day. It is not the
first time. He was her lover before I married her.”
The other’s hands clenched. Teresa’s accusation had astonished and
shocked him. But as he saw that cowering look, speaking its own
condemnation, he credited for the first time the story of that other
slain man. At this affront, his gaunt, feeble form straightened with
all the dignity and pride of his race.
Teresa’s answer rang with a subtle, electric energy. “That is false!
You never asked--you only accused. Believing all falsehood of me, you
have made every day of my life in your house a separate purgatory. I
have kept silent thus long, even to my father. Now I speak before him.
Father,” she said with sudden passion, “he has believed this since
my wedding day. There is scarcely an hour since then that he has not
heaped insult and humiliation upon me. I will bear it no longer! I have
already appealed to the Curia.”
Her eyes transfixed her husband. “By the law I may not leave your roof
to nurse this man, so I have brought him here. What you have believed
of myself and of him is false. But now, if you will hear the truth, I
will tell you! I _do_ love him! I love him as I love my life--and more,
the blessed Virgin knows!--a million times more!”
As she spoke her passion made her beauty extraordinary. It smote her
father with appealing force and with a pang at his own ambitious
part in her wedding. He had thought of rank and station, not of her
happiness.
“You shall answer to me, Count, for this!” he said sternly.
“No, father!”
Count Gamba looked at her questioningly. He faced Count Guiccioli as
Teresa went on:
“This is what I demand. If he lives he shall stay here till he is well.
Not as a guest; he would accept no hospitality from this house. He
shall hold this wing of the casa under rental.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“So be it.” The assent was grudging and wrathful.
“One thing more. So long as he is in the casa you will cause him no
physical harm--neither you nor your servants.”
While he hesitated a sound came from the bed. Gordon’s eyes were open;
they held faint but conscious knowledge.
From the abyss of nothingness those voices had called to him, like
conversation in a dream. Sight had opened more fully and he had stared
at the gilded rafters, puzzled. This was not the Hotel Pellegrino in
Bologna. He stirred and felt a twinge of pain. With the voices grown
articulate, it came flashing back--that one kiss; the flying dart of
agony; the dizzy descent; Tita and--Teresa. He suddenly saw a face: the
old man at San Lazzarro, Teresa’s husband! He shut his eyes to drive
away the visions, and her clear tones called them wide again.
He heard fully and understandingly then; knew that Trevanion and Count
Guiccioli had made common cause; realized the courage with which Teresa
had brought him to her husband’s casa--all with a bitter-sweet pain of
helplessness and protest against the logic of circumstances that had
thrust him into the very position that by all arguments looking to her
ultimate happiness he must have avoided. He heard her voice demand that
grudging promise of his safety. It was then he had moaned--less with
physical than mental pain.
Teresa leaned to the bed, where Gordon had lifted himself on his elbow.
The effort dislodged the bandage and its edges reddened swiftly. He
strove to speak, but the effort sickened him and he fell back on the
pillows.
Teresa turned again upon Count Guiccioli. “Swear it, or all I know
Ravenna shall know to-morrow!” She held the kriss toward him, hilt up,
like a Calvary, and half involuntarily his bent fingers touched his
breast.
“I swear,” he said in a stifled voice.
“Father, you hear?”
“I am witness,” said Count Gamba grimly.