CHAPTER XIV.

A NOCTURNAL VISIT.

The improvement in the poor saint and martyr’s condition continued all day; but in the evening she was worse again. María had a headache and became dull and melancholy. Paoletti had been with her most of the afternoon, but had talked very little, and only of unimportant trifles. Leon too, had been in her room for some length of time, and more than once.

“Listen to me,” María said to him. “I do not know whether my fancy is disturbed by fever, or whether it is an illusion of the senses but I feel....”

“What do you feel?”

“As though somewhere--I do not know where, there were a number of people walking about.... It seems to me that I can hear a bustle of servants and the rattling of crockery--I even smell the steam of food which sickens me.”

Leon tried to coax her out of these notions but could not succeed; she was not satisfied till Paoletti, whom she trusted as the incarnation of truth, said:

“My dear daughter, this noise and these smells are perhaps merely over-excitement....” This time the cock did not crow.

“I must pray,” said María. “But do not go away Leon, stay here. Seeing me so ill, I imagine you will not laugh at me because I say my prayers. I want you to hear me, and to be silent and listen--it is your duty to do so. If you do not believe you can listen and be silent. Do not go, do not leave the room....”

“I am here.”

“Sit down, and do not look at the floor, look at me. Padre Paoletti and I will pray; and you--there, close there--and keep quiet. Every word we utter will be a lash--but keep quiet and do not move, look at me--there, so; so that I can see you.”

And taking hold of his hand she looked tenderly in his face.

“You ought not to try to pray,” said Leon. “Our kind friend Señor Paoletti will pray--listen only, and do not exhaust yourself.”

“Very well,” said María taking a medal which Rafaela had brought her from under her pillow. “Now, to please me, kiss this medal.”

Leon kissed it, not once but again and again. María did the same; then she murmured:

“Mother of God! save my atheist; and if he will not be saved, save me, and so long as I live enable me to be faithful.”

Quite unconsciously she had revealed her whole nature in this brief supplication. The sum total of her ideas was: “Let me be saved, even if to secure my salvation I must trample underfoot the first law of married life; while I neglect every human duty in order to aspire and rise to ecstasy, let my husband, the man whom the Church has bound to me, love me devotedly and passionately, and never even look at another woman.” In a word: she wanted for herself, as being in possession of the truth, the fullest liberty while he, as the slave of error, was to bear all the burthen.

The room gradually grew darker--sank into funereal gloom pierced only by the cadenced tones of the priest as he repeated the prayers. It was strange, but true; the voice which was exquisitely modulated in conversation sounded rather harsh as he went through the droning round of _Paternosters_ and _Ave Marias_.

Rafaela brought in a light just as the Padre ended, and the sudden transition from the monotonous sound to the lighter tones of conversation was like coming out of a sepulchral vault into life and day. Paoletti, after a few cheerful words to his saintly daughter, took his leave, promising to return on the morrow. Leon, bent on politeness, conducted him as far as the “Hall of Hymen.”

“God grant,” said the priest with some acrimony, “that her health may allow of my telling her the truth. This farce is ceasing to be an act of charity!”

Leon watched the confessor as he carefully descended the steps and got into a carriage, and as he heard the wheels crunching the gravelled road across the park he turned to go into the house.

“The truth--the truth!” he said to himself. “Yes, let her know it and live! It is my sincerest wish.”

The rest of the party were spending a gay evening in the tapestried drawing-room--so called because it was hung with such works of art, in which the faded hues and ghastly faces seemed to represent a world of consumptive victims. Leon had no desire to join them; he went back to his wife. During the evening nothing occurred worthy of mention, excepting that the doctor, not yet quite satisfied as to the issue, insisted more stringently than ever on complete rest, and put a positive veto on prayers and religious excitement. It was about ten o’clock when María, after a little calm sleep became restless and eager to talk. Leon in obedience to her wishes, had placed the sofa by the side of her bed and was trying to get some repose. But María began asking him a hundred questions about himself and others, mixed up with the old familiar homilies, the old impertinences that had so often annoyed him in former days: He was called an atheist, a hardened materialist, an enemy to God, a man of pride and sin--though all this vituperation was accompanied and sweetened by María’s pretty hand coaxingly stroking the infidel’s beard, patting his cheek or pinching his throat, so sharply indeed, now and then, that her husband exclaimed: “Oh! you are hurting me!”

“You deserve worse than that.--But much will be forgiven you if you only do your sacred duty by me.”

After this there was a long pause when both seemed to be sleeping, but suddenly María awoke with a start saying:

“Come now Leon--which of us is more worthy?”

“Why you of course; there cannot be a doubt of that.”

“Help me to remember. Did I really tell you that I did not love you, and did you tell me that you did not love me?”

Leon was puzzled and did not know what to say.

“I remember nothing of it,” he said at last.

“What do you mean? You do not remember? Did I dream it?”

“I do not remember. I have made it my business to cultivate oblivion.”

“But do not leave me.”

“I have not moved.”

“Come closer--so. How pale you are and your eyes are hollow. Come quite close and lay your head by mine.”

Then she fell asleep again, her hand still clutching her husband’s hair, as painters represent an executioner holding the head of a traitor up to public view.

The sickly, tremulous glimmer of the night-light, in the porcelain shade with its opalescent and pearly transparency, throwing a broad quavering circle on the ceiling, gave light enough to cast ill-defined shadows of their forms and faces. The sad twilight, suggesting that which must prevail in Limbo, gave a doubtful solidity to everything in the room, and soothed the senses to a torpid state verging on stupor. Leon lay neither waking nor sleeping; fatigue kept him from thorough wakefulness and anxious thoughts prevented sleep. The night was far advanced when he heard a slight noise in the room, and looked up much startled, for it seemed impossible that any one should come in at that hour. His blood ran chill as he saw a form, a shape, a shade slowly coming towards him. It looked no more substantial than an optical illusion caused by the mysterious light in the china shade. Happily he had no belief in ghosts. He wanted to examine the phantom, which he immediately perceived to be a living human creature, but he could not stir. María’s fingers held his hair, and the slightest movement would have disturbed his wife who was sleeping peacefully. He raised his arm to gesticulate a warning as he could not express himself in any other way, but the figure paid no heed; it came up to the bed and leaned over it with evident curiosity, not unmingled with fear. Leon could feel himself enveloped, so to speak, in a gaze of melancholy pathos. His heart throbbed as violently as a maniac struggling in a strait waistcoat. He was furious--he dared not speak, dared not move to exorcise this nightmare visitation; he saw that the phantom--to give it this childish appellation--moved its head as if in reproach, or disapprobation, or despair. Then it fled hastily and incautiously, making more noise than at its entrance, and leaving a sort of chill on its passage, like that of a sudden draught of air.

María woke with a start.

“Leon, Leon,” she cried, “I saw....”

“What? Do not talk wildly.”

“I saw--and I heard a noise like that of a silk gown--some one running....”

“Compose yourself. No one has been in the room.”

“But I saw it,” said María, covering her eyes with her hands. “I thought a woman went out at that door.”

“Go to sleep again, and do not see and hear things that do not exist.”

“Was it Padre Paoletti?”

“How could it be my child? It is midnight.--He will come to-morrow.”

“Oh! I want him to explain it to me; no one can explain it but he.”

She went to sleep again with her hands piously folded, thus leaving her husband’s head free. Leon, finding it impossible to sleep when his mind was in such a turmoil, feeling sure too that he heard some movement in the adjoining room, rose with the greatest caution, and walking softly and slowly left the room. As he went into the next room he heard the sound--impossible to mistake for any other--of the swift rustle of a silk dress. He followed it from room to room, but the noise fled before him--like some prowling creature that feels itself hunted and flies to hide its prey in the darkness. At last, in a room called the _Incroyable_, the fugitive dropped exhausted into a seat. There was no lamp or candle in the room, but through a ventilator that opened above one of the doors a broad beam of light fell from the lamp that burned all night in the corner of one of the wide corridors. This partial and somewhat romantic light, though insufficient for reading, for looking at prints, or for examining the china, was enough to recognise, or even to study a face by, if need be.

Pepa Fúcar, for it was she who was flying through her father’s house like a soul in torment, sat huddled in a chair with her face hidden in her clasped hands and bent down almost to her knees. She moaned rather than spoke:

“I know what you are going to say to me--I know; do not speak to me.”

“For Heaven’s sake!” murmured Leon standing in front of her. “How imprudent!”

“I will not come again; I will not do it again. I know I have no right--that it is my fate to be wretched and forsaken--always forsaken. I have nothing to complain of--I can demand no explanations--I dare ask nothing. Even to love you is forbidden.”

Leon sat down by her side. She did not cease her heart-broken rocking, nor take her hands down from her face. But presently, drawing herself up as though to give herself courage, and conquer her heart by trampling it down--and she even stamped on the floor with her feet--she wiped away her tears with her trembling hands, for she was not collected enough to take out her handkerchief--nay, as a matter of fact she had lost it--and said with an effort:

“It is over--I am not wanted here--I feel so much, and I have no rights--I am a disgraced woman. Your wife might strike me and only be applauded for it.... Good-bye.”

Leon pointed to the door, but he did not speak.

She looked at him with pathetic devotion, but suddenly lifting her hand she laid it on his head and with the strength of intense passion she grasped his hair and pulled him down. He was forced to bend--lower, lower; she held his head with both hands for an instant, and then she hit it--as if it were a thing she could break.

“It is my turn,” she said in a broken voice--“mine, to--pull your hair!” Leon pulled himself up--half-angry, half-forgiving.

“Go,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied, “good-bye. I do not wish to bring disgrace upon you. I will go at once. My heart is bursting--it chokes me to cry and to run. Do not follow me.”

She slipped a key into the lock of the museum door, which opened from one corner of the room they were in, and vanished in the darkness. Leon departed by the way by which he had come, returning to his post like a faithful soldier.