V
At five o'clock of the same afternoon Freemantle, Gates, and Beckett, with Arthur Abercrombie, came running along the narrow streets of a village some miles from Pæstum.
The stone houses of which this village was composed stood like two solid walls facing each other, rising directly from the stone-paved road, which was barely ten feet wide; down this conduit water was pouring like a brook. The houses were about forty in number, twenty on each side, and this one short street was all there was of the town.
It was raining, not in drops, but in torrents, with great pats of water coming over, almost like stones, and striking upon the heads of those who were passing below; every two or three minutes there came a glare of blindingly white lightning, followed immediately by the crash of thunder, which seemed to be rolling on the very roofs of the houses themselves. The four boys must have been out in the storm for some time, for they paid no attention to it. Their faces were set, excited. Every thread of their clothing was wet through.
"This is the house," said Arthur.
They looked up, sheltering their eyes with their arms from the blows of the rain-balls. From the closed windows above, the faces of Isabella Holland and the three Abercrombie girls looked down at them, pressed flatly against the small panes, in order to see; for the storm had made the air so dark that the street lay in gloom.
The next moment the boys entered.
"No, we haven't found him," said Arthur, in answer to his white sisters' look. "But we're going to."
"Yes, we're going to," said the others. And then, walking on tiptoe in their soaked shoes, they went softly into an inner room.
Here on a couch lay Griffith Carew, dying.
An Italian doctor was still trying to do something for the unconscious man. He had an assistant, and the two were at work together. Near by, old Mrs. Preston sat waiting, her hands folded upon the knob of a cane which stood on the floor before her, her chin resting upon her hands. In this bent position, with her disordered white hair and great black eyes, she looked witch-like. Three candles burned on a table at the head of the bed, illumining Carew and the two doctors and the waiting old woman. The room was long, and its far end was in shadow. Was there another person present—sitting there silent and motionless? Yes—Pauline. The boys came to the foot of the bed and gazed with full hearts at Griff.
Griff had been shot by John Ash two hours before. The deed had been done just as they had reached the shelter of this village, swept into it almost by a tornado, which, preceding the darker storm, had driven them far from their rightful road. The darker storm had broken upon them immediately afterwards with a terrible sound and fury; but the boys had barely heard the crash in the sky above them as they carried Griff through the stony little street. They had found a doctor—two of them; they had done everything possible. Then they had been told that Griff must die, and they had gone out to look for the murderer.
He could not be far, for the village was small, and he could not have quitted the village, because the half-broken young horses that had brought him from Salerno, frightened by the incessant glare of the lightning, had become unmanageable, dragged their fastenings loose, and disappeared. In any case the plain was impassable; the roar of the sea, with the night coming on, indicated that the floods were out; they had covered the shore, and would soon be creeping inland; the road would be drowned and lost. Ash, therefore, could not be far.
Yet they had been unable to find him, though they had searched every house. And they had found no trace of his mother.
During these long hours four times the boys had sallied forth and hunted the street up and down. The Italians, crowded into their narrow dark dwellings from fear of the storm, had allowed them to pass freely in and out, to go from floor to floor; some of the men had even lighted their little oil lamps and gone down with them to search the shallow cellars. But the women did not look up; they were telling their beads or kneeling before their little in-door shrines, the frightened children clinging to their skirts and crying. For both the street and the dark houses were lighted every minute or two by that unearthly blinding glare.
The village version of the story was that the two forestieri had sprung at each other's throats, maddened by jealousy; poniards had been drawn, and one of them had fallen. One had fallen, indeed, but only one had attacked. And there had been no poniards: it was a well-aimed bullet from an American revolver that had struck down Griffith Carew.
The four boys, brought back each time from their search by a sudden hope that perhaps Griff might have rallied, and forced each time to yield up their hope at the sight of his death-like face, were animated in their grief by one burning determination: they would bring the murderer to justice. It was a foreign land and a remote shore; they were boys; and he was a bold, bad man with a wonderful brain—for they had always appreciated Ash's cleverness, though they had never liked him. In spite of all this he should not escape; they would hunt him like hounds—blood-hounds; and though it should take months, even years, of their lives, they would bring him to justice at the last.
This hot vow kept the poor lads from crying. They were very young, and their heads were throbbing with their unshed tears; there were big lumps in their throats when poor Griff, opening his dull eyes for a moment, knew them, and tried to smile in his cheery old way. But he relapsed into unconsciousness immediately. And the watch went on.
The gloomy day drew to its close; by the clocks, evening had come. There was more breathing-space now between the lightning flashes and the following thunder; the wind was no longer violent; the rain still fell heavily; its torrent, striking the pavement below, sent up a loud hollow sound. One of the doctors left the house, and came back with a fresh supply of candles and various things, vaguely frightful, because hidden, concealed in a sheet. Then the other doctor went out to get something to eat. Finally they were both on guard again. And the real night began.
Then, to the waiting group in the lighted silent room, there entered a tall figure—Azubah Ash; drenched, without bonnet or shawl, she stood there before them. Her frightened look was gone forever: she faced them with unconscious majesty. "My son is dead"—this was her announcement.
She walked forward to the bed, and gazed at the man lying there. "Perhaps he will not die," she said, turning her head to glance at the others. "God is kind—sometimes; perhaps he will not die." She bent over and stroked his hair tenderly with her large hand. "Dear heart, live! Try ter live!" she said; "we want yer to, so much!"
Then she left him, and faced them again. "I thought of warning you," she began; "you"—and she looked at Mrs. Preston; "and you"—she turned towards the figure at the end of the room. "My son was not himself when he was in a passion—I have known it ever sence he was born. Even when he was a little fellow of two and three I used ter try ter guard him; but I couldn't do much—his will was stronger than mine. And he was always very clever, my son was—much cleverer than me. Twice before, three times before, I've ben afraid he'd take some one's life. You see, he didn't care about life so much as some people do; and now he has taken his own."
There was an involuntary stir among the boys.
Mrs. Ash turned her eyes towards them. "Would you like ter see him, so's ter be sure? In one moment."
She went towards the bed again, and clasped her hands; then she knelt down, and began to pray beside the unconscious man in hushed tones. "O God, O our Father, give us back this life: do, Lord—O do. It's so dear ter these poor boys, and it's so dear ter many; and perhaps there's a mother too. O Lord, give it back to us! And when he's well again, help him ter be all that my poor son was not. For Christ's sake."
She rose and crossed to where the boys were standing. "Will you come now?" she said. "I'm taking him away at dawn." Then, very simply, she offered her hand to Mrs. Preston. "He was a great deal at your house; he told me that. I thank you for having ben so kind ter him. Good-bye."
"But I too will go with you," answered Mrs. Preston, in her deep tones. She rose, leaning on her cane. Mrs. Ash was already crossing the room towards the door.
The boys followed her; then came Mrs. Preston, looking bent and old. The figure of Pauline in her dark corner rose as they approached.
"No," said Mrs. Ash, seeing the movement. She paused. "Don't come, my dear; I really can't let you; you'd think of it all the rest of your life if you was ter see him now, and 'twould make you feel so bad. I know you didn't mean no harm. But you mustn't come."
And Pauline, shrinking back into the shadow, was held there by the compassion of this mother—this mother whose nobler nature, and large glance quiet in the majesty of sorrow, made her, made all the women present, fade into nothingness beside her. In the outer room Isabella and the excited, peering Abercrombies were like four unimportant, unnoticed ghosts, as the little procession went by them in silence, and descended the stairs. Then it passed out into the storm.
Mrs. Ash walked first, leading the way, the rain falling on her hair; the three boys followed; behind them came Mrs. Preston, leaning on her nephew's arm and helping herself with her cane. They passed down the narrow street, and the people brought their small lamps to the doorways to aid them in the darkness. The street ended, but the mother went on: apparently she was going out on the broad waste. They all followed, Mrs. Preston merely shaking her head when Arthur proposed that she should turn back.
At some distance beyond the town there was a grove of oaks; they went round an angle of this grove, stumbling in the darkness, and came to a mound behind it; on the summit of the mound there was something—a square structure of stone. Mrs. Ash went up, and entered a low door. Within there was but one room, empty save for a small lighted lamp standing on the dirt floor; a stairway, or rather a flight of stone steps, ascended to a room above. Mrs. Ash took the lamp and led the way up; Mrs. Preston's cane sounded on the stones as she followed.
The room above was square, like the one below; it was the whole interior of the ancient house, or rather the ancient watch-tower; its roof of beams was broken; the rain came through in several places and dropped upon the floor. There was a second small lamp in the room besides the one which Mrs. Ash had brought; the two shed a dim ray over a peasant's rude bed, where something long and dark and straight was stretched out. Mrs. Ash went up to the bed, and motioning away the old peasant who was keeping watch there, she took both lamps and held them high above the still face. The others drew near. And then they saw that it was John Ash—dead!
There were no signs of the horror of it; his mother had removed them all; he lay as if asleep.
The mother held the lights up steadily for a long moment. Then she placed them on a table, and coming back, took her son's lifeless hand in hers.
"Now that you've seen him, seen that he's really gone, will you leave me alone with him?" she said. "I think there's nothing more."
There was a dignity in her face as she stood there beside her child which made the others feel suddenly conscious of the wantonness of further intrusion. As they looked at her, too, they perceived that she no longer thought of them, no longer even saw them: her task was ended.
Without a word they went out. Mrs. Preston's cane sounded on the stairway again; then there was silence.
At dawn they saw her drive away. Griff might live, the doctors had said. But for the moment the gazing group of Americans forgot even that. She was in a cart, with a man walking beside the horse; the cart was going slowly across the fields, for the road was over-flowed. The storm had ceased; the sky was blue; the sun, rising, shed his fresh golden light on the tall, lonely figure with its dark hair uncovered, and on the long rough box at its feet.
Looking the other way, one could see in the south the beautiful temples of Pæstum, that have gazed over that plain for more than two thousand years.