CHAPTER XXIII
FETTERS STRUCK OFF
WHEN they all had gone Hera groped on the wall for the electric key, found it, and redeemed the darkness with a flood of light. There was Tarsis, ashen to the lips, prostrate on the table, one arm hanging limp over the side. She threw open all the casements, and the smoke poured out. Her next impulse was to go for aid, but she turned first to her husband, lifted him to a sitting position, and by a supreme effort bore his sheer weight to a lounge. Then, obeying a motion of his hand, she bowed her head and heard him whisper:
“I—am—dying.”
His lips continued to move, but so feeble was his voice that only fragments of what he said were audible. Seeing her strive to hear, he exerted himself pitifully to speak louder, and she made out the words:
“You will be glad when I am gone.”
Even to give him comfort in his last moments she could not deny the truth of his words. “Destiny has served us cruelly,” she said. “I am sorry—sorry for all that has come and gone. If I have acted harshly, ungenerously, forgive, oh, forgive me!”
A smile that chilled her blood just curved his lip. “If you had not been so bitter against me,” he answered, his voice gaining strength, “destiny would have been kinder.”
“God help me if that is true!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I tried to be—yes, I was—all that I promised. If there was bitterness in my heart before, believe me, it is not so now. If I have wronged you grant me your pardon.”
A grimace that frightened her came over his face, where death hues began to show. He rose a little on one elbow, but sank back again, making a gesture of distress.
“I will go for aid,” she said, and would have left him, but he spoke, and she paused to listen.
“If I go he shall not live—he for whom you hated me,” he said, with a passion of malice that shook his frame. “He shall not live!”
She thought he meant that Mario would die from his wound.
“He will die by my command. His end is decreed—decreed by me,” Tarsis went on with a hideous chuckle.
Now she thought it the raving of a delirious brain.
“You do not believe me,” he said, striving to laugh. “But you will believe when you see his white face in the night. By my hand he will die within the hour.”
She turned away to shut out the sight of his face.
“Still you do not believe,” she could hear him saying. “You think I do not know; but I know. You think he is safe. He is not. I saw him go by. Yes; with my own eyes I saw him pass—a moment before you came to the door. Now he is on the way to the monastery—the monastery where you held your trysts and deceived me; the monastery where a knife awaits his heart.”
She wheeled suddenly, fearful now that he spoke the truth. “What do you mean?” she asked.
A paroxysm of agony stifled the words he tried to speak. When it had passed somewhat he answered, straining every resource of his ebbing powers to the effort:
“I lured him to the monastery to-night. The Panther will not fail. Not he! I did it—I!”
She comprehended, she believed. At her heart a heavy aching began, the sinking sense of an irreparable loss. She strangled a cry, and fell upon her knees before the chair and buried her face in her hands. And Tarsis, seeing her thus affected, shook and choked with gloating laughter.
“I wrote the letter,” he went on, in a pitiful effort. “I copied your hand; the letter that bid him go to you—and he has gone,—fool, dog that bit me!—and you will not have him when I am gone. I saw him pass—pass to his doom! He thinks you are there awaiting him with your kisses. The knife will be there! The kiss of steel will greet him!”
She could not credit her senses. The man lying there in the last breath of his life was choking and laughing—a mocking, malevolent laughter, as hideous a sound as human ear ever heard. She shrank from him; she wished to flee where neither eye could see that face, twitching in hateful glee, nor ear know the horror of such dying words. But soon enough his features and tongue became composed. The voices of the street had dwindled to a dull rumble. She drew near to him, and looked upon his face. On his lip lingered a foam that no breath disturbed; and in his open, staring eyes she read the message that set her free.
She kneeled again and prayed, asking mercy for him and pardon for herself if, in following the light of conscience, she had wronged her husband. When a little time had passed she rose and went on the balcony to stand in the coolness of the night. From the street came no longer sounds of strife or pain; order reigned again in the dwelling quarter of the well-to-do; with bullets and bayonets the revolution had been driven across Cathedral Square, back to the Porta Ticinese. The quieter phase checked her whirling thoughts, helped her to take facts at a clearer value. She had seen the chain that held her parted, as a silken thread might have been snapped, but only to give her into a new bondage, that of despair, if what Tarsis said was truth; nor could she doubt those terrible words. Mario was well on his way. More than half an hour before he had set out for the monastery. It was too late, she perceived, to overtake him, unless—unless she rode like the gale.
She thought of her horse and the hard-ridden miles he had done that afternoon, and knew that with him it would be impossible; but there was the palace stable with its long rows of horses, and some of them fleet-footed under the saddle, as she knew. The thought kindled a beautiful hope. Her lips set in the firmness of resolve; she threw a glance toward the lounge with its silent occupant, and started for the door. Over the wreckage of the grand saloon she made her way without mischance, for the moon was sending its flood through the glass dome; there was a streaming of light, too, from the corridor, and she beheld a man standing in the doorway arch wringing his hands. It was Beppe, quaking from causes other than fright.
He assured her Excellency that he was not one of those who had deserted the palace; he had done no more than observe the precaution to secrete himself in the wine cellar that he might be at hand when the master wanted him. The velvet had gone from his voice and the steadiness from his speech. Plainly he had not been idle while hiding amid the bottles. With an upward roll of the eyes and more wringing of the hands, he gasped the wish that no harm had befallen Signor Tarsis.
Hera pointed across the great hall to where the light poured from the library, and kept on her way. In her veins there was a new leaping of life—hopeful, eager. The invaders had swung their axes and bludgeons at the corridor mirrors, and she had to choose her steps over broken glass and shattered woodwork. The grand staircase was illuminated; there and in the portico she met servants returning because assured that the storm had passed.
In the rear court she looked around for her horse. The shapes of things all about were visible in the moonlight, but of her horse there was no sign. Lamps were lit in the stables, and she heard the excited voices of hostlers. When she told the head man to saddle the swiftest horse, he asked her Excellency’s pardon and pointed to the rows of empty stalls. While the rioters within the palace were reforming society by destroying art objects and baiting their owner, their brothers below had been plundering the stable. Every horse was gone.