one afternoon in november, stelio returned on the steamer from the lido, accompanied by daniele glauro. they had left behind them the thunder of the greenish waves of the adriatic, the trees of san niccolò despoiled by a predaceous wind, whirlwinds of dead leaves, heroic phantoms of departures and arrivals, the memory of the archers playing to win the scarlet ensign, and the mad rides of lord byron, devoured by the desire to surpass his own destiny.
"i too, to-day, would have given a kingdom for a horse," said effrena, in self-ridicule, irritated by the mediocrity of life. "not a cross-bow nor a horse in san niccolò, not even the courage of an oarsman! perge andacter! so here we are, on this ignoble gray carcass that smokes and seethes like a kettle. look at venice, dancing down there!"
the anger of the waves was extending to the lagoon. the waters were agitated by a violent wind, and the agitation seemed to reach to the foundations of the city, and the palaces, cupolas, and campaniles appeared to heave like vessels on the water. clusters of floating seaweed showed their white roots; and flocks of sea-gulls circled in the wind, their strange, wild laughter echoing above the crested waves.
"wagner!" daniele glauro said suddenly, in a low tone, touched with emotion, as he pointed at an old man leaning against the railing of a prow. "there he is, with franz liszt and donna cosima. do you see him?"
stelio's heart beat quicker; for him too all other surrounding figures disappeared; his bitter sense of ennui and inertia disappeared; and he felt remaining only the suggestion of superhuman power evoked by that name, and realized that the only reality hovering over all those indistinct phantoms was the ideal world conjured up by that name around the little old man leaning over the troubled waters.
victorious genius, fidelity of love, unchangeable friendship, the supreme apparitions of heroic nature, were reassembled in silent union beneath the tempestuous sky. the same dazzling whiteness crowned the three heads, whose hair had become blanched through sadness. a troubled sorrow was revealed in their faces and attitudes, as if the same undefined presentiment oppressed their blended spirits. the white face of the woman had a beautiful, strong mouth, with clear-cut lines, revealing a tenacious soul; and her light, steel-like eyes were fixed continually on him who had chosen her for the companion of his noble warfare, watching over him who, having vanquished all hostile forces, would be powerless to vanquish death, whose menace perpetually pursued him. that feminine vigil, full of fear, opposed itself to the invisible gaze of the other woman, and threw around the old man a vague, funereal shadow.
"he seems to be suffering," said daniele glauro. "do you not see? he seems almost on the point of swooning. shall we go to them?"
effrena looked with inexpressible emotion at those white locks blown about by the sharp wind on the aged neck under the broad brim of the felt hat, and at the almost livid ear, with its swollen lobe. that body, which had withstood the keenest warfare by the proud instinct of its own domination, now looked as limp as some rag which the wind could bear away and destroy.
"ah, daniele! what can we do for him?" said stelio, yielding to an almost religious impulse to manifest in some way his reverence and pity for that great oppressed heart.
"what can we do?" repeated glauro, to whom that ardent desire to offer something of himself to the hero now suffering the human fate had immediately communicated itself. their souls were blended in that impulse of fervor and gratitude, that sudden exaltation of their innate nobility; but they could give nothing more than that. nothing could check the secret ravages of the fatal malady; and both were filled with profound sorrow as they saw the snowy hair tossed about on the old man's neck by the wind coming from afar, and bringing to the quivering lagoon the murmur and the foam of the open sea.
"ah, glorious sea, thou shalt hear me still! never shall i find on the earth the health i seek. to thee, therefore, will i remain faithful, o waves of the boundless sea!" the impetuous harmonies of the flying dutchman returned to effrena's memory, with the despairing call that pierces through them from time to time; he fancied that in the rushing wind he could hear again the wild chant of the crew on the ship with the blood-red sails: "iohohé! iohohé! come ashore, black captain! seven years have passed!" again his imagination conjured up the figure of richard wagner in youth; he saw once more the lonely one wandering in the living horror of paris, poor yet undaunted, devoured by the fever of genius, his eyes fixed on his star, and his mind resolved to force the world to recognize it. in the myth of the shadowy captain, the exiled one had seen the image of his own breathless race, his furious struggle, his supreme hope. "but some day the pale hero may be delivered, should he meet on earth a woman that will be faithful to him until death."
the woman was there, beside the hero, an ever vigilant guardian. she too, like senta, knew the sovereign law of fidelity; and death was soon to dissolve the sacred vow.
"do you think that, steeped as he is in poetic myths, he has dreamed of some extraordinary manner of dying, and that he now prays every day to nature to conform his end to his dream?" said glauro, thinking of the mysterious will that induced the eagle to mistake for a rock the brow of ?schylus, and led petrarch to die alone over the pages of a book. "what would be an end worthy of him?"
"a new melody of unheard-of power, which in his youth had been to him indistinct and impossible to fix, should suddenly rend his soul like a terrible sword."
"true!" said glauro.
the wind-driven clouds were battling in phalanxes through space; the towers and cupolas seemed swaying in the background; the shadows of city and sky, equally vast and mobile on the troubled waters, alternately changed and blended, as if they had been produced by things equally near dissolution.
"look at the magyar, daniele; there is a generous soul! he has served the hero with boundless faith and devotion; and by this service, more than by his art, he has won glory. but see how this very feeling, so strong and so sincere, inspires him with almost theatrical affectation, because of his continual wish to impose upon his spectators a magnificent image of himself, which shall delude them."
the abbé liszt straightened his thin and bony frame, which seemed encased by a coat of mail, and drawing himself to his full height he bared his head to pray, addressing a mute prayer to the god of tempests. the wind stirred his thick white hair, that leonine mane that at times seemed to emit electric currents which affected his listeners, and many women. his magnetic eyes were raised to heaven, while the words of his inaudible prayer moved his thin lips, lending a mystic air to that face so deeply furrowed with wrinkles.
"what matters it?" said glauro. "he possesses the divine faculty of fervor and a taste for all-powerful strength and dominating passion. does not his art aspire toward prometheus, orpheus, dante, tasso? he was attracted by richard wagner as by some great force of nature; perhaps he heard in him the theme he has attempted to express in his symphonic poem: 'that which is heard on the mountain'."
"that may be," said effrena.
but both started on seeing the old man turn suddenly, with the gesture of one groping in darkness, and clutch convulsively at his companion, who uttered a cry. they ran toward the group. everyone on the boat crowded around them, struck by that cry of anguish. a look from the woman prevented the curious from venturing too close to the apparently lifeless body. she herself supported him, laid him on a bench, felt his pulse, and bent over to listen to his heart-beats. her love and her grief traced an inviolable circle around the stricken one. the bystanders stepped back and waited in silence, anxiously looking on that livid face for signs of either life or death.
the face was still and pale, as it lay on the woman's knees. two deep furrows descended along the cheeks toward the half-open mouth, deepening near the imperious nose. puffs of wind ruffled the thin, fine hair on the full forehead, and the white collar of beard below the square chin where the vigor of the jawbone was visible through the wrinkled skin. the temples were covered with perspiration, and one of the feet twitched slightly. the smallest detail of that fallen figure impressed itself forever on the minds of the two young men.
how long did his suffering endure? the shadows continued to float over the dark water, broken at intervals by long shafts of sun-rays that appeared to pierce the air and bury themselves like arrows in the dark waves. the regular cadence of the engine beat upon the air; and now arose the wild laughter of the sea-gulls, and a sort of dull, prolonged moan from the tempest-stricken city.
"we must carry him," said stelio in his friend's ear; he was intoxicated by the sadness of the situation and by the solemnity of his own visions.
the motionless face gave a slight sign of returning life.
"yes, let us offer our services," said glauro, whose face was pale.
they looked at the woman with the snow-white cheeks; then they advanced and offered their arms.
how long did that terrible removal last? the distance from the boat to the shore was not great, but those few steps seemed a long journey. the waves dashed against the posts of the pier; the distant moan came to them from the grand canal as if from the winding paths of a cavern; the bells of san marco rang for vespers; but this confusion of sounds had lost all immediate reality, and seemed infinitely profound and distant, like a lament of the ocean itself.
in their arms they bore the hero's body—the unconscious form of him who had inundated the world with the flood of melody from his oceanic soul, the mortal being of the revealer who had translated into infinite song the essence of the universe for man's adoration. with an ineffable thrill of terror and joy, such as would stir a man who should see a mighty river dashing itself over vast rocks, a volcano bursting into flame, a conflagration devouring a forest, a dazzling meteor obscuring the light of the stars, effrena felt beneath the hand that he had slipped under the shoulder to sustain the body—and he paused an instant to gather his strength, which was failing him, and gazed at that white head against his breast—he felt the renewed beating of that sacred heart.
