Elizabeth Robins

“ From without all the world might see the admirable proportions and perfect finish of this dark green miracle of elegance, with its touches of bright scarlet, its four gray horses with scarlet trappings, its liveried servants behind and jaunty groom on the box, with the long coach-horn shining like new gold and sending troops of triumphal echoes flying into the mountains. Certainly there was no gayer spectacle that Summer in all the gay playground of Europe than Count Bellucci in Tyrolese-green, driving this flashing equipage along the blinding white roads of the Engadine. ”

“ But Bellucci could laugh at all that now. To be sure, she had said little, very little. She was no chatterer, thank God! A peerless creature like that could afford to leave the meaner arts of conversation, and of smiles, to her poorer sisters. Was it not her beautiful quietness that first of all had cast a spell upon him, worn out with the restless tricks of other women—social acrobats, he called them in his contempt. It was impossible to conceive Alicia Paravicini condescending to vivacity. ”

“ And he flung the man some gold.
Bellucci wandered about, a few miserable days, in places too dismal, as it seemed to him, for it to be likely that he should meet anyone who knew him. When he had endured it as long as he could he made up his mind it was best to go to Paris. At Bâle a glimpse of two of his former boon companions passing the window made him realize that he could not, after all, face the world as yet—his world—gay, cynical, unsparing. So, like a hunted creature, he doubled in his track, and set his face grimly toward Castellontano again. ”

“ If it had been anything else in all the world!—and he fell to laying plans for entrapping her proud reserve into confession of other dreams and dearer longings, that he, in satisfying them, might conjure back the light in those lamps of Italy. For, true hedonist as he was, Bellucci was at times quite as ready as more generous men to brighten his own way by the reflected radiance of another’s pleasure. ”

“ Alicia faces danger as she faces life, with the same dead calm with which the rock of Castellontano looks up to the sunrise, or down at nightfall into the blackness underneath!” He paused an instant—and then, with something like a sob, he caught his breath. “I pour out my heart to her—she wears an air of listening, but her soul is far away. If I ask her questions, she smiles vaguely or shakes her head. ”

“ After the ceremony and the signing of the register Madame Paravicini kissed Alicia and parted from her in the vestibule of the church. Standing back there in the shadow, she watched Bellucci lead out his bride through a dense crowd gathered at the door, and put her in the waiting coach.
Alicia’s demeanor struck Bellucci as nothing short of perfection. He had seen ladies under this trying ordeal who wept and made their husbands ridiculous; ladies who giggled nervously and were facetious with their friends; ladies who grew red and awkward and tripped over their trains. ”

“ Faint pleasure, dim regret—she kept the light and the shadow alike inside her eyes; nothing ever overflowed the long-fringed margins of those wells of darkness.
She had learned at last that when Bellucci was with her she must lay aside her fantastic work. As he sat moodily smoking, surreptitiously watching her listless hands and far-away eyes, she would sometimes rise and carry a little inlaid table over to the south window of the tower, and lay out the patience cards, her only other occupation. ”

“ Would he come to fear the lifting of his eyelids, lest he should see by sunlight or by moonlight patterned across the sky this design to turn men’s brains? As he stood there he fell into trembling, for albeit his eyes were closed he saw the vision still—only clearer, with more color and more motion—as he had seen it in Alicia’s arras when it seemed to rock the tower—as he had seen it through many an hour of the night, painted on the dark. ”

“ Bellucci moved nearer to the narrow mouth of the cavern, till he could see that she had put down beside the lantern a ball of vari-colored silk and was loosening the great gold heart from the chain about her neck. She made the heart fast to the end of the silk and, with eyes gleaming, rapidly told off loop on loop, as sailors coil their rope. ”

“ Madame Paravicini smiled ironically. “Your complaint against her is that she is not talkative. But you knew that.”
Bellucci smothered an oath.
“But Alicia is always well-bred,” Madame Paravicini went on calmly. “She will always answer you, when you speak to her—unless you speak rudely. A harsh word silences her.”
“A harsh word! My God! or a kind one, or any word of any sort. At most I have got ‘Thank you,’ or echoed repetitions of what I myself have said.”
“Surely an ideal characteristic in a wife, Satanuccio. She will never disagree with you.” ”

“ You will not starve her body—you cannot starve her soul.” She began to laugh hysterically.
“Give me credit for true judgment. She was the very woman for you—the only woman who with impunity could be trusted to your keeping. Go back to Castellontano in what black mood you will—or stay away and leave the lady there alone—she will not languish. She will not pine!” The voice rose sharp with the gathered anguish of years. “Alicia is the one woman in the world whose heart you cannot break.”
Without a word, without raising his haggard eyes, Count Bellucci left the room. ”

“ Why shouldn’t the marriage take place in a fortnight or so, if you used your influence in my favor?”
“Why should I be at pains to serve you—you, of all men on the face of the earth?”
“Why shouldn’t you—for Alicia’s sake? Ought you, can you stand between her and happiness? For though you may smile and though you may sneer, I shall make her happy!” ”

“ We are on our way to Italy.”
Bellucci maintained a face absolutely guiltless of expression.
“Yes, I have promised for years to show Alicia her father’s country. She has wanted all her life to go to the South. Poor child! She loves Italy”—Madame Paravicini’s eyes fell on Bellucci—“she loves Italy as exiles do.”
He saw the girl fading out of his reach. That wall, not to be scaled by him, was rising up between them, icy, impassable, peak on peak—the mighty Alps! ”

“ He walked away a few steps in the darkness, stopped and called back, “Understand, as well as a mind like yours is able—that I make great sacrifice to you of the interests of science. There is much still to find out about the laws of glacial erosion—why their movement is like man’s, like the course of Empire, always and unerringly from east to west. “Ah,” cried the old voice, “you do not understand, but Madame la Comtesse could tell you”—he groped a few paces back to where Bellucci stood—“Madame la Comtesse could tell you that the inside of these——”
Bellucci’s wild laughter stopped him. ”

“ The black one full of inky water goes down—down under the world. ’Sh! Sh! Come away. Pull the slab back. No one must know.”
Bellucci would lie and wait for dawn—for the blessed time of daylight, when dumbness should descend again. In vain each morning he resolved that he would sleep next night in the chamber farthest off from her, or else without the castle walls—in some safe place, where her horrible whispering could not torture his strained ears. ”

“ Bellucci, to his joy, was as good as alone, for the Duc de Boutray had found diversion in Madame la Baronne Sauvan. Everyone at Vulpera—everyone at Tarasp and even as far as Schulz—knew that the driver of the smart coach, the famous Count Renzo Bellucci, was infatuated by the English beauty at the Waldhaus, and one and all they speculated upon the result.
Certain it was that Bellucci alone had been able to overcome, to some extent, the icy aloofness of the mother. Ah, yes, the old story. Bellucci was irresistible. Men chaffed in public, and in private some of them sighed. ”

“ The laborious vivacity of the average smart woman was beginning to be to him a mortal weariness—another significant symptom! In any case, to marry one of them ... He shuddered. It would be like marrying a brass band.
He was driving in the Engadine the following Summer—not the first time, for he was a famous whip. But for this occasion Monsieur Binder of Paris had turned out a new and marvelous coach after Bellucci’s own design. The luxurious inside, or, to speak by the card, the insides, were a miracle of ingenious devices for supplying all the comforts of home. ”

“ Bellucci tried to master his disappointment and to mask his anger.
“I am disappointed,” he said, “that you—that Alicia, after agreeing to so much should not let me see her oftener.”
“A woman who marries at a fortnight’s notice has much to do.”
“To go to Alp Grum, for instance.”
Madame Paravicini turned away.
“I tell you,” he began hotly; and then, as often happened, he caught himself back from the pitfall of impetuosity, conscious that whether or not it was essential to “walk warily” in Alicia’s sight, he must at all events make shift to do so before the enigmatic eyes of “the mother.” ”

“ A fellow-creature who had done you not the smallest wrong, who trusted you—”
With both hands she thrust the menacing figure back, stood up and faced him in the dusk.
“An echo! an echo across thirty years! They are my own words to you, that night we said good-bye. No, Satanuccio, the only new thing is that the parts are changed. You have played yours for thirty years—I played mine this one little month of Summer. As for Alicia! Alicia knows neither happiness nor unhappiness. You have had proof of it for a few days. I for twenty-six years. ”

“ With a vague sense of cynical amusement Bellucci realized that the discovery had had the same effect upon his wife as on the savant. It melted the snows of their silence and marked with both the end of the Reign of Ice.
“No other woman,” the old man said with something like enthusiasm, “no other woman, I do verily believe, has ever been before so responsive to the majesty of these great forces—of,” his voice sank reverently, “of the gigantic forces that make the best things man has done seem child’s play. Man! ”

“ A fresh course was being served at the moment. Madame Paravicini leaned forward and whispered something. The girl, without opening her lips, got up and changed seats with her mother. Her back was turned to Bellucci’s party, so that instead of a new love’s mysterious beauty Madame Paravicini’s cold but open scorn confronted her ancient enemy.
Bellucci shook himself free of his friends about nine o’clock that night. He scribbled a few words on a card, sent it up to Madame Paravicini’s sitting-room, and waited over half-an-hour thereafter, fearing and fuming in his own apartments. ”

“ By a circuitous route, keeping clear of the road, he reached the abandoned building to the right of the castle. He made his way round to the side that was overlooked by the tower, and crouched down, keeping as well as he was able out of the keen gusts of searching wind that tore so fiercely round the corner. Looking up, he could see Alicia’s only untapestried windows, the two looking down Chiavenna way. For an hour and a half he crouched there—long after all the lights were out save those in the two south windows. And still he kept his post, in spite of weariness and cold. ”

“ What was most remarkable about Castellontano, architecturally, was its foundation. The castle was upborne upon a mighty series of arches or short tunnels rising massively to a considerable height, out of the mother rock.
“It was daring,” said Madame Paravicini, looking up and seeing how on all sides, save the one by which they came, the foundation walls sheered down steep to the valley, “yes, it was a daring thought to set a castle on this wild hill-top.”
“More daring than you dream. ”

“ Moritz stopped to stare. Up on the high piazza of the Hôtel du Lac Bellucci saw, with a sense of reassurement, Madame Paravicini and her daughter waiting to assist at his triumphal entry.
That night he drew from the elder woman the admission that she had taken the opportunity during their long drive to speak of him and to say the preparatory word.
“I said very little—I thought it to your interest.”
“Then may I—?” he looked longingly across the private sitting-room to where the girl sat languidly laying the patience-cards.
“I wouldn’t say anything tonight; she is tired by the long drive.” ”

“ He stopped by an empty table.
“But, Monsieur le Comte—”
“Bring me the menu.”
“But that table is taken, monsieur.”
“I know, I have taken it. Wine-list!” A little Frenchwoman bustled past, stopping to greet Bellucci.
“Fancy meeting people one knows in this out-of-the-way place. I’ve just caught sight of Madame Paravicini.” She bustled on and greeted with effusion the travelers from Davos. Bellucci made as if only that moment had he recognized the neighbor with her back to him.
He rose and followed the Frenchwoman. “How do you do again, Madame Paravicini?” he said. “Mademoiselle,” he bowed. ”

“ But that sound I speak of is the melted ice rushing fiercely into the shaft of a Glacier Mill. If the water finds at the bottom a loose boulder—hugged up by the glacier, and carried maybe for miles—the terrific force of the falling water dashes the boulder round and round in its prison, till it hollows out a basin for itself in the solid rock. A basin first, and, as the ages pass, the glacier mill-stones hollow out vast pits. There are two of them down there.”
“-and in one a murdered woman,” Bellucci’s thought pieced out. ”