THE PYRE
Over the hillocks, under the robed boughs of the Pisan forest, went a
barouche, drawn by four post-horses ready to drop from the intensity of
the noonday sun. In it were Gordon and Dallas. They had been strangely
silent during this ride. From time to time Dallas wiped his forehead
and murmured of the heat. Gordon answered in monosyllables.
They had reached a lonely stretch of beach-wilderness, broken by tufts
of underwood, gnawed by tempests and stunted by the barren soil.
Before it curved the blue windless Mediterranean, cradling the Isle of
Elba. Behind, the view was bounded by the Italian Alps, volcanic crags
of white marble, white and sulphury like a frozen hurricane. Across
the sandy extent, at equal distances, rose high, square battlemented
towers, guarding the coast from smugglers.
Gordon’s gaze, though it was fixed on the spot they were approaching,
saw only a woman’s desolated form clasped in Teresa’s sympathizing arms.
At a spot marked by the withered trunk of a fir-tree, near a ramshackle
hut covered with reeds--a flimsy shelter for night patrols--the vehicle
stopped and Gordon descended. A little way off was pitched a tent,
by which stood a group of mounted dragoons and Italian laborers, the
latter with mattocks in their hands. A single figure came from the
group and greeted him.
It was Trevanion. Gordon had not seen him since the hour of that
Sabbath service from which Shelley had fled--to the fatal storm whose
wrecks strewed the sand where they now stood. Since Mary Shelley
had rushed into the Lanfranchi Palace with that cry of terror and
foreboding, days had passed: days of sick search, hurrying couriers,
wild speculation and fearful hope. All this had ended with the message
from Trevanion which had sent the laborers and brought the barouche
to-day to the lonely spot where the sea had given up its dead.
The man who had sent this message was unkempt and unshaven, his swarthy
face clay-pale, his black eyes bloodshot. He had searched the coast
day and night, sleepless and savage. There had been desperation in
his toil. In his semi-barbaric blood had raged a curious conflict
between his hatred of Gordon and something roused by the other’s act in
delivering him from Cassidy’s marines. He was by instinct an Oriental,
and instinct led him to revenge; but his strain of Welsh blood made his
enemy’s magnanimity unforgettable and had driven him to this fierce
effort for an impersonal requital. Because Shelley had been the friend
of the man he hated but who had aided him, the deed in some measure
satisfied the crude remorse that fought with his vulpine enmity.
Almost touching the creeping lip of surf, three wands stood upright in
the sand. Trevanion beckoned the laborers and they began to dig in
silence. At length a hollow sound followed the thrust of a mattock.
Gordon drew nearer. He heard leadenly the muttered conversation of the
workmen as they waited, leaning on their spades--saw but dimly the
uniforms of the dragoons. He scarcely felt the hot sand scorching his
feet.
Was the object they had unearthed that whimsical youth whom he had seen
first in the Fleet Prison? The unvarying friend who had searched him
out at San Lazzarro--true-hearted, saddened but not resentful for the
world’s contumely, his gaze unwavering from that empyrean in which swam
his lustrous ideals? This battered flotsam of the tempest--could this
be Shelley?
From the pocket of the faded blue jacket a book protruded. He stooped
and drew it out. It was the “Œdipus” of Sophocles, doubled open.
“Aidoneus! Aidoneus, I implore
Grant thou the stranger wend his way
To that dim land that houses all the dead,
With no long agony or voice of woe.
For so, though many evils undeserved
Upon his life have fallen,
God, the All-Just, shall raise him up again!”
He lifted his eyes from the page as Trevanion spoke his name. He
followed him to the tent. Beside it the laborers had heaped a great
mass of driftwood and fagots gathered from a stunted pine-growth.
Shuffling footsteps fell behind him--he knew they were bearing the
body. He averted his eyes, smelling the pungent, aromatic odors of the
frankincense, wine and salt that were poured over all.
Trevanion came from the tent with a torch and put it into his hands.
Gordon’s fingers shook as he held it to the fagots, but he did the work
thoroughly, lighting all four corners. Then he flung the torch into the
sea, climbed the slope of a dune and sat down, feeling for an instant a
giddiness, half of the sun’s heat and half of pure horror.
The flames had leaped up over the whole pyre, glistening with wavy
yellow and deep indigo, as though giving to the atmosphere the glassy
essence of vitality itself. Save for their rustle and the shrill scream
of a solitary curlew, wheeling in narrow fearless circles about the
fiery altar, there was no sound.
Sitting apart on the yellow sand, his eyes on the flame quivering
upward like an offering of orisons and aspirations, tremulous and
radiant, the refrain of Ariel came to Gordon:
“Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls, that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”
Had Shelley been right? Was death, for Christian or pagan, only a part
of the inwoven design, glad or sad, on that veil which hides from us
some high reality? Was Dallas--was Padre Somalian--nearer right than
his own questioning that had ended in negation? Had Sheridan found the
girl-wife he longed for--beyond the questioning and the stars? And was
that serene soul, whose body now sifted to its primal elements, walking
free somewhere in a universe of loving intelligence which to him,
George Gordon, had been at most only “The Great Mechanism”?
At length he rose. The group in the lee of the tent had approached
the pyre. He heard wondering exclamations. Going nearer, he saw that
of Shelley’s body there remained only a heap of white ashes--and the
heart. This the flames had refused to touch.
He felt a strange sensation dart through every nerve. Trevanion thrust
in his hand and took it from the embers.
Gordon turned to the barouche, where Dallas leaned back watching, pale
and grave. He had brought an oaken box from Pisa, and returning with
this to the beach, he gathered in it the wine-soaked ashes and laid
the heart upon them. His pulses were thrilling and leaping to a wild
man-hysteria.
As he replaced the coffer in the carriage he saw Trevanion wading
knee-deep in the cool surf. He settled the box between his knees and
the horses toiled laboriously toward the homeward road.
A sound presently rose behind them. It was Trevanion, shouting at the
curlew circling above his head--a wild, savage scream of laughter.
Gordon clenched his hands on the edge of the seat and a great
tearless sob broke from his breast. It was the release of the tense
bow-string--the scattering of all the bottled grief and horror that
possessed him.
He became aware after a time that Dallas was reading aloud. The latter
had picked up the blistered copy of the “Œdipus” and was translating.
As he listened to the flowing lines, a mystical change was wrought in
George Gordon. With a singular accuracy of estimation, his mind set
the restless cravings of his own past over against Shelley’s placid
temperament--his long battle beside the other’s acquiescence. He had
been the simoon, Shelley the trade-wind. He had razed, Shelley had
reconstructed. His own doubts had pointed him--where? Shelley had been
meditating on immortality when he met the end.
The end? Or was it only the beginning? “God, the All-Just, shall raise
him up again!”--the phrase was running in his mind as they reëntered
the palace that afternoon.
Fletcher handed him a card in the library.
“The gentleman came with Prince Mavrocordato,” he said. “They wished me
to say to your lordship they would return this evening.”
The card read:
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| ’LIEUTENANT EDWARD BLAQUIERE |
| |
| The Greek |
| Revolutionary Committee LONDON |
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