CHAPTER VII.
"SHALL EVIL BE THY GOOD?"
Where the Greek faced her on the sea-shore there was a long silence between them—a silence breathless and pregnant, like that which precedes the first low muttering of a storm, the first dropping shots of a battle. Many times their strength had come in conflict, and many times the variable, unstable, serpentino will of the man had been crushed under the straight, scornful, fearless will of the woman. Now, for the first time, he had his vengeance, and she could not strike back on him, because for the first time he had found weakness in her, and could reach her through the life of another.
He laughed aloud in his victory.
"Choose, Miladi! Your favourite Maxims say, after the first passion all women love the love, not the lover. If you indulge the first you will slay the last. Choose!"
For all answer she swept with a sudden movement so close to him, that he fell back with the coward's instinct of physical fear.
"You have been often bought for murder. What price will buy you from it?"
The words left her lips with a scorn that burnt like name, with a bitterness that cut like steel. Neither touched him; he laughed again in the content of his triumph.
"What price, my Countess? None!"
"You want gold—you love gold. You would sell your soul for gold. You shall have it"
The dread upon her made her voice deep and hushed, like the stealing of an autumn storm-wind through forests; the scorn within her made her £ace flush, and darken, and quiver, as though the flicker of a torch played on it. Neither moved him to shame.
"Oh yes," he said, with a slow smile—"gold, gold, gold. Of course you would give me that. As much as you would throw away on a banquet, or a diamond, or a web of lace, should come to me, if I would stay aloof and hold my peace, and let the Border Eagle build his eyrie on the Roumelian hills, and Miladi pleasure her new passion among her rose-gardens. Oh yes! gold—as much gold as you have twisted in your hair for a mask ball might be mine, of course; and he—he should succeed to Julian's dominion and Julian's domain; he should have all that wood and water, and palace and mountain, that I have been banned out of so long; he should be chief there, and lord, and his sons, maybe, have the heirship of the Vassalis line! A charming cast for us both! With all gratitude for my share, and your will to allot it me, I must decline such a distribution betwixt your lover and me. Gold, gold! No, Miladi, gold will not strike the balance between us now."
She listened in silence; only that passionate shadowy quiver, as of the light of a flame, on her face giving sign or response to him. Her lips were close pressed together, and scarce seemed to move as the words came through them, hard, like the dropping of stones on a stone.
"Your sin is envy? Well, it is only another added to a long list. Mere gold will not buy you. What will?"
"Nothing."
"You are so incorruptible!"
"Yes, here."
"Through envy, avance, and hate!"
"Through three common movers of mankind, if so."
"You own them yours? Then listen here. I speak nothing of your guilt to me—nothing of your críme against him. I will deal with you as though none of all that measureless iniquity were on you. Conscience you have not; shame you do not know. I appeal to neitlier. I will treat with your avarice alone. You love self-indulgence, luxury, vice, mirth, indolence, splendour; you have coveted my heritage from the Vassalis, you have been thirsty for my riches; you have wanted all that Eastern pomp and princely fief, you have hungered for Count Julian's possessions, you have hated me for many things, yet for none so much as for the inheritance of that great wealth; that you used it, and wasted it, and were welcomed to it long as though it were your own, mattered nothing. It was mine, and not yours; you never forgave the difference. Well, bear me now. All that shall be yours—all—all—to the last stone of the jewels, to the lowest chamber of the palace, to the poorest fíg-tree on the bills, to the farthest landmark on the plains. You shall have all, and reign there as you will."
An intense eagerness thrilled through her voice, the wavering light upon her face grew hotter and darker, the chained bitterness and fierceness in her gave but the subtler inflection to the eloquence and the command that ran as of old through all her words; for the moment, she dazzled and swayed and staggered him.
"All!" he echoed. "I!"
"Yes—all! Every coin, every rood, every bead of gold in that treasure-house of splendíd waste: I will make all yours—all that the Vassalis ever owned. I will not keep a pearl from the jewels, or a date from the palms. All shall be yours—all the things of your desire."
"And you!"
"I—I shall be beggared."
Yet while she spoke, over her face swept one swift gleam, líke the glow of an Eastern sun.
He gazed at her like one blinded.
"And for all this what will you ask of me?"
"Of you I shall purchase—my freedom and his life."
His mouth quivered with rage as he laughed aloud once more.
"So-so! Ah, the wildness of woman's passions! You would buy your lover at that cost? Oh, fool! yon who once were subtle and wise as the serpent!"
Her teeth set tight, but she kept down her wrath.
"Profit by my folly," she said, briefly. "Take all I have—leave me only him."
The first words were stern; over the three last her voice unconsciously softened with an infinite pathos and yearning.
That involuntary thrill of longing tenderness steeled him in an instant to the first eager impulse of acceptance, prompted by his lust for wealth and ease and power, and all the half-barbaric voluptuous royalties of the Roumelian palace, that had seethed in him for so long. Other evil instincts were more potent still than avarice. He smiled—a slow and cruel smile.
"Magnificent ransom for a landless courier. But at what price will not your sex gratify its capríces—especially the caprices of the passions? For myself, the bribe is high; but I decline it."
The blood faded from her face, even from her lips; a grey, heavy shadow, as of desperation, fell over her, that seemed to drain the very colour from her eyes and from her form, and leave her, white and chill there, as a statue.
"What will you gain?"—she spoke with a hard, brief, stony tranquillity.
"Why—a romantic thing to be sure, and an unremunerative; yet the sweetest thing, as men find, that the world holds—vengeance."
"Neither he nor I have wronged you."
"Maybe. But both have galled me; both"
"Been wronged by you. True. I forgot the reason of your hate."
His face flushed darkly.
"I do not bear you hate. I tried to free you. But I swear this man shall not wed with you, and live."
"And why? Have you not done us injury enough? You poisoned my life with infamy, and would have taken his in a thief's slaughter. Can you not let us be? Can you not sell yourself for pity's sake, as you have so often sold yourself for shameful things? Take my bríbe. Impoverish me as you will; enjoy all I have to give; seize all you have ever coveted; bind it fast to you on what terms you choose; make me poor as the poorest that ever asked my charity; only leave me this one thing, his life."
She spoke still with the same strange enforced serenity, but beneath it there ran an intense melancholy, an intense yearning; they could not move, but steeled him in, his purpose.
"The thing I will not leave you," he said, savagely. "Ah! I know how men go mad for that beauty of yours; he would hold himself rich as emperors were that his own, though you had no other gold than just what gleams in the coil of your hair. I know, I know! And so you can love at last, my queen!—all that ransom for one wild mountaineer! But you shall only ransom him one way, Miladi; only by—forsaking him."
"I will never forsake him."
"So! Then his wedding-night will be his last."
Her hand worked with a fierce, rapid, clenching movement on the butt of the pistoL
"Wait," she said, slowly, while each word fell on the silence like the falling of the great slow drops of a storm. "You threaten him? One word from me, and he will give you over to justice for your crime to him. One shot this moment from me, and he will be here to take his vengeance."
He shrank slightly, for cowardice was ingrained in him; but he knew how to deal with the brave and generous nature of the woman whom he tortured. He looked her full in the eyes.
"True. You might send me to the galleys. But you will not."
Her lips parted, her breast heaved, a great shudder shook her. She answered nothing.
"You can summon your lover," he pursued, after a pause. "You can tell him of my 'crime,' and—also of my tie to you. You can see us fall on each other, and fight as tígers fight. You can wed him in peace if he kill me; as most likely he will, since he is so far the stronger. You can do this. But you will not."
"I cannot! You know it."
He laughed slightly.
"No. I did not know it. Women soon vanquish scruples and tread out memories to gratify a passion. Well, since you hesitate so far, perhaps you will hesitate yet farther. You will not break your oath by betraying me; will you, betray this one man whom you say you 'honour,' linking him, in his good faith and his ignorance, with us?"
She gave a sharp, quick breath, as though a blow were struck her.
"God forbid! I have said, all bonds between me and the past are severed for ever."
"I see! You will lock the book, and throw it aside, and your blind worshipper will credit you on your telling that the pages were all pure blanks! And yet—I thought you said you 'honoured' him?"
All the haughty, fiery blood in her flushed to life under the subtle sneer.
"I do so; from my soul. Let his name be. It has no place on your lips—yours—that gave the word to murder him."
"Fine phrases! And yet you will deceive him?"
"I!"
"Yes, you, Miladi. You will not betray me to him—you cannot. So—telling him nothing—you will leave him ignorant. And one fine day, were I to let you run your passion's course, he would learn the truth, and find his sovereign, his idol, his mistress, his wife, my"
"Wait! You have said enough!"
"No. I say more. Forsake him, and he is safe from me. Give yourself to him, and I will add him his marriage-gift—death. Just such a death as he would have dealt me on the Bosphorus shore. I can see the gleam of his steel, and the thirst of his eyes, now!"
"If he had killed you, what would he have done more than justice?"
"At least he would have rendered you inestimable service, Miladi!"
She stopped him with an irrepressible gesture.
"Hush, hush! Such words between us!"
"Well! We are enemies; bitter ones enough."
"Yes; enemies as the wronged and the wrong-doer ever are. But your life is sacred to me; how can you curse mine?"
"Mine sacred to you? Is it so, Idalia? Then—being so, you will not betray me to your lover?"
She turned on him a look that had a wearíness, a scorn, an agony, a pity unutterable.
"No! I must bear the burthen of your guilt."
"But you will betray him by leaving him in ignorance of whom beloves—of wbom be weds?"
"Though be knew, he would find mercy and greatness enough to pardon."
Sbe spoke not to bim, but to the memories that rose before her—memories that filled her heart with their bitterness and their sweetness—memories of the exhaustless faith and patience and forgiveness of the man she was bidden to abandon.
"Truly! Then what think you, Miladi? Is it a noble return to cheat him as you meditate? Is it a fine thing to recognise this limitless tenderness borne you, only to dupe it through its own sublime ínsanity? You have fooled sucb idolaters scores of times, I know, only—here I think you said you 'honoured' him? Which makes a difference; or might make it."
She knew well how wide the difference was—wide as between innocence and guilt.
She answered nothing; only in the brooding horror of the deep dilated eyes was there reply; they spoke more than any language of the lips.
The Greek laughed softly.
"His brídal-couch made in the nest of his 'assassins!' is stainless and glorified mistress proved the masker of the Silver Ivy! Madame, I think I might let his passion run untroubled, and leave my vengeance to the future—some future when he should reach the truth from some chance word, from some side-wind, and hear the secret that a woman who 'honoured' him never had told all through the days and nights she lived in his sight and slept upon his heart: hear it when he was bound to her beyond escape, and could gain no freedom through knowing her traitress to him as to all others. Ah! I am not so certain that I will not let you wed him. It will be a surer stab to him than comes from steel—that one truth learned too late."
There was a long silence.
She shuddered from head to foot, as though the scorch of a red-hot brand passed over and marked her; then an intense stillness fell upon her—a stillness in which all life seemed frozen in her, and every breath to cease. He waited, mute and patient now.
At last she raised her head, and turned it full upon him. As the reddened glow of sunrise flickered on it, it was dark, and cold, and resolute, with an exceeding strength and an absolute despair.
"For once you have shown me duty, and saved me from a crime. My hand shall not touch his again."
"Because you will not"
"Because your guilt is on me."
"And yet you were willing to lose all your riches, and your power, and your victories, and your pleasures, for this one man?"
"I am so willing."
"Then it is"
"That you have shown me what would be my sin to him. You cannot be betrayed. He shall not be."
"You mean"
She turned on him ere he could speak with the swift, lithe, terrible grace of a stag hunted and bounded into a fierceness born of sheer torture, and wholly alien to its nature.
"Silence! or I shall forget what you are, and let him take his vengeance on you. Can you not be content? You led me into cruelty and error a thousand times under the masking of fair colours and of fearless aims; you now show me, in the one redemption of my life—the one purer, bettar, higher thing!—only an added guilt, a fresh dishonour. I lose all through you. Are you not content?"
The vivid passion, the agonised irony, died suddenly, as a flame drops to the ground; her head fell, her limbs sank wearily on the broken rocks, a dull apathy retumed on her, in which she lost all memory, even of his presence. He looked at her, hushed, awed, moved to something that was almost dread of his own work, intimidated by the suddenness and the completeness of his own victory; he waited, hesitating, and as one afraid, some moments; she gave no sign that she even remembered he was near; every second wasted might cost them both the loss of liberty, if not of life; but he lacked the boldness that could have pressed on her then the question of mere bodily danger, the mere physical perils from the cell and the rods of her persecutors.
There was that in her attitude, as she sat, with the loosened weight of her hair sweeping down into the salt pools of the beach, and an icy calm on the colourless immutability of her features, that subdued and shamed him.
Some sense of reluctant reverential fear was always on him for the woman whom, nevertheless, he had goaded and trepanned, and injured, through the length of many years. Some touch of love for her ever lingered in him.
He paused a while, at some distance from her. She never noted him; her eyes, without sight in them, gazed at the dusky changing mass of water that here and there beneath the spell of waking light broke into melting lustrous hues, like the gleam of colours on a southern bird's bright throat.
He drew closer at last, with hesitation.
"You will come with me, then?"
She gave no sign even that she heard the words.
"I am not alone," he pursued. "Lousada, Veni, and the boy Berto sought you. I fell in with them as I neared here; they are fugitives, and proscribed themselves; they lie hid by day in an old sea-den of Veni's; they look to get away by the coast in a night or so; they would give their bodies to shot and sabre to save your hand from a rough touch. Will you come to them?"
He could not tell whether she heeded him; he saw her face in profíle; it was still, cold, passionless, stem with a mute intolerable suffering, like some Greek head, in stone, of Destiny.
He spoke afresh, rather to break that death-like silence, than for the sake of what he uttered.
"Veni's sea-nest is safe—safe, at least, for a little while; it lies yonder, through there, where a passage-way pierces the rocks. All that acanthus hides the entrance. It has sheltered many before; Fiesoli lay there once, in the first days of his proscription. Lousada doubts little that he can get a brig from Salerno, and steal away off westward three nights henee. It is the best chance. You will come?"
At last she lifted her head, and looked at him.
"But for Giulio Villaflor I would go—far sooner—back to the dungeon of Taverna."
His face paled; he knew her meaning—knew the unspeakable loathing and scorn of himself that made the severities of captivity and wretchedness look fairer in her sight than every recovered freedom shared with his companionship.
"There is no other alternative," he said, sullenly.
"You will come?"
"I will come."
He was once more victorious; and once more with victory stole over him a strange chill dread, as he who has brought down and netted the lioness of the plains will feel something of awe, something of fear, when in his toils lies the daughter, the mate, the mother of free-born kings of untrodden soil—when beneath the rain of his blows, and from out the meshes of his trap, the great fearless luminous leonine eyes look at him, suffering but unquailing.
"Why do you wait, then?" he asked.
"I wait—for him."
"So! You will, after all be false to one of us. Which?"
"Neither."
"What gage have I of that?"
"That I have said it."
He was silent a moment; he scarcely dared dispute that single bond, her word. Traitor himself to her, he knew that his treachery would never be repaid him by its own coin.
"You wait for him?" he said. "Then so also do I."
"Are you weary of the shame of your life that you seek to lose it?"
"No. But he shall take it rather than I will leave you here."
Through the calm upon her face, the calm of martyrdom, of despair, he saw the conflict of many passions, of infinite misery.
"Will you choose for us to meet?"
Where her forehead rested on her hands that were thrust among the masses of her hair, the great dews started as they had never done when the scourge was lifted at Taverna.
"We shall not part alive," he pursued. "Perhaps you count on that? Your lover is the younger and the stronger; there are few men he would not worst. You rode all day through the heat and press of a battle under Verona once, I remember; maybe you wish to see a life-and-death combat."
She answered nothing; a shiver as of intense cold ran through her.
"You can enjoy your new passion, true, if he kill me;—a dead body flung with a kick into that surf, the waves to wash it seaward, none on earth to care enough for me to ask where I have drifted,—it would be easy work. Is that the reason why you wait?"
"Heaven! how can you link such guilt with me, even in thought?"
"Why not? That will be the end if we meet in your sight to-day, unless, indeed, fate turns the other way, and your lover falls through me. Sit there, Miladi, and watch the struggle; you will never have seen two harder foes. Turn your thumb downward, like those dainty, haughty Roman dames you copy in philosophies and seductions; turn it down for the slaughter-signal, if you see me at his mercy. How free you will be then! But—listen just a little—if he press me too close, we of the south and east have not the northern scorn of a timely thrust, and it will be but in self-defence!"
As he spoke, he drew gently half out of its sheath the blade of a delicate knife that was thrust in his waistband, and let the beams of the sunrise play brightly on the narrow shining steel.
The glitter flashed close beside her. It sent fire and life like an electríc shock through all the icy stillness of her limbs; she rose with a convulsive force; her eyes had the gleam of an opium-drinker's in them, her voice had scarcely a likeness of itself.
"I come, I come; do what you will with me, so that his life escapes you!"