In Maremma/Volume 3/Chapter 61
CHAPTER XLI.
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HEN she returned to any consciousness and sense of sight or hearing, she was alone with her faithless lover; he knelt beside her as he had kneeled on that night of storm when he had found her on the shore beneath the Sasso Scritto.
'Forgive me, forgive me!'—that was all he could think of to say.
He loathed his sins, and he abhorred himself.
Little by little she recovered breath and power and remembrance; she had only swooned from long fatigue and terror, and the effort made to save him.
For awhile she lay quite still, letting the deep delight of his touch, his voice, his presence, steep all her being in unutterable, dream-like ecstasy.
'My love, my love!' she murmured, and smiled, and leaned her head against his breast, and was at peace at last.
He kissed her again and again and again, and in that moment loved her and said only the same words, 'Forgive me! forgive me!' and then was still and leaned his lips upon her hair in silence.
For awhile she rested so; so motionless he might have thought her dead but for the close clinging pressure of her unwounded hand on his.
She lay as in a trance: a trance of more than mortal joy.
Suddenly a great fear seized her.
'Saturnino,' she murmured, 'where is he?'
'He is gone, dear; never mind him,' he answered her. He could not bear to tell her that this man was dead.
'Gone—gone where? He may come back. He may try to kill you. He hates you; I cannot tell why———'
She had started from his hold and was trembling with terror. Este shuddered with his own memories.
He had understood the dying words of Saturnino: he had understood that this poor brute had been her father.
'He is gone where he will harm no one any more,' he said to her, with tears in his own eyes. 'He is dead, dear. He had a rush of blood over the brain that killed him. Let us leave him to God.'
'Is he dead?' she said; but it moved her little. He had been nothing to her, this outlawed man, who first had stolen her gold and last had striven to slay the only life she loved. She had pitied him because men had hunted him; that was all.
Suddenly again she raised herself and looked in Este's eyes, and a wave of hot colour went over all her face.
'My child died,' she murmured timidly as if afraid he would rebuke her.
'Yours!—-mine!'
A great pang of remorse went through him. Had she suffered thus, he knowing nothing, living in pleasure and in oblivion!
'Ours,' she said softly under her breath. 'He lived a few little days; I did all I could.'
Her eyes closed, and large tears rolled slowly off her lashes and fell upon his hand. He kissed them as they fell; a poignant repentance made him ready to curse himself, though she would never curse him.
'I would not have come,' she murmured, 'you know that; you are sure of that? Only I feared he wished to hurt you, and I could warn you no other way. Oh love, oh my dear love! you do believe me? Never, never would I have come to remind you of—of———'
'Of my debt,' he murmured. 'Ah, I believe! You are the most generous and the most pure of living souls, and I am the most base.'
'No, no,' she said softly, 'I am nothing; it was natural you should forget. You have the world now; you have no need of me. Never would I have come for any lesser thing than this.'
'How do you live?' he said, with his voice broken and hoarse.
He was ashamed; greatly ashamed.
'I live as we did,' she said simply, and thought she would not tell him of all her sufferings, lest he should hear in them a reproach.
'In the tombs? In those tombs still?'
'Where else?' she said in wonder that he should ask.
'When I drink from what you called the skyphos that you drank out of,' she added simply, 'it seems almost as if you kissed me still———'
He leaned his face upon her breast to hide his shame.
'Whatever was I that you should adore me thus?' he cried. 'Nothing to you but a bringer of burden and shame.'
'I love you,' she murmured, with her old trouble at finding any words large enough to tell the great emotions that swelled her heart. Who that loves can ever find them?
She loved him, indeed, and he———
A passionate remorse was on him. Why had he been faithless, treacherous, more thankless than a cur that bit what fed it? Nay, he thought, no beast but what was human could ever have been ingrate thus.
Suddenly she freed herself from his embrace, and raised herself erect upon her couch.
'I will go now,' she said, all her soul in her eyes as they dwelt on his. 'I have saved you, I have seen you; night and day I will thank God. I will go now; I am not tired. I shall be always there, and if you wish for me ever, you will call me. But that will not be.'
Her eyes were full of tears which did not fall. She put her arms about his throat and kissed him, as though he lay dying, and was leaving her for evermore.
'My love—my love—my love!' she murmured.
Then she rose; her face was very pale, her head swam, her limbs trembled still, her hand was wounded and wrapped in linen, and throbbed and ached, but she was ready to go.
He should not think that she had come to call him back to any memory of his debt, or of her sacrifice.
The old heroic light shone in her eyes, the old high courage rose in her heart. She would go back and live in solitude and silence, and if he wished for her he knew the way over the wild thyme and the dewy wood-moss to the moors. She would be always there.
Perhaps some day, when the world had tired him, or strength had failed him, he would remember.
Este held her to his breast.
'You must not go!' he cried passionately. 'You must never go! What do you think me? Could ever we part now? If I had known———'
Then he was silent; a cruel knowledge was in his mind, a cruel dilemma beset him; he remembered other ties, other passions. She loved him as no other did indeed, but he———
The tapestry at the further wall of the great painted chamber in which they were alone wavered and moved; a hand pushed it with petulance aside; from the gloom behind it there came a woman as white as the swan's throat is, with hair that was about her like a golden nimbus, and a collar of old jewels set in silver at her throat. She moved with calm, slow, undulating grace; she wore some soft and shining texture, white, too, with lights and shadows in it as the swan's whiteness has; she had a knot of crimson roses at her breast.
She had cruel eyes. She had a beautiful mouth, that laughed as children's do. She came forward and looked, smiling, at Este.
She was only a base, venal, wanton thing enough, who had but one love, gold; yet the world had taught her all its sorcery, and she had its grace, its skill, its power. She was the Venus Pandemos which in all time has triumphed.
She put her hand upon his shoulder, and laughed a little, noiselessly.
She glanced at the poor grey, dust-stained, travel-tired form that she saw there.
'He is mine,' she said with a smile. 'Was he yours once? Well! why have you let him go?'
He shivered under the hold of the courtesan, but he said nothing. His head drooped; he was ashamed, bitterly ashamed.
He envied that dead carrion which lay in the lower chamber of his palace. He, at least, living, had been a man.
Musa stood mute; her eyes fastened on this beautiful soulless white and golden thing that held him there.
Then all at once she understood.
With one cry she turned and fled.
When he shook off his sorceress, and followed her down his great marble stairs into the darkness of the night, she was gone: lost to him in the wilderness of Rome.
Then perhaps, at last, he loved her.