Читать книгу Time's Door - Esther Meynell - Страница 17

She was justified in her feeling that she must stay by her husband, little need as he appeared to have of her. On one of her visits, futile and sad as ever, she had turned away, her hand on the latch to leave him, when she heard her name called in a sighing undertone. Her back was towards Luigi, and for a moment she dared not turn round, she felt it must be some trick of memory, not his actual voice. But it came again in a firmer tone that there could be no mistaking. In an instant she was kneeling by the low wooden bed—for a considerable time past Luigi had been steadily growing weaker and had entirely ceased to take any interest in his fiddle, no longer caring to have it in his sight.

“Gerda,” said Luigi, looking at her, knowing her,LUIGI’S RETURN loving her, “Where have you been, why did you leave me?”

I must not distress him by explaining anything, thought Gerda. So she told him that she had been obliged to go away for a little while, but came back as soon as she could possibly do so and would never go away again.

“I have been ill?” asked Luigi, looking at his emaciated hand.

“Yes, my poor one, you have been ill, but you are better now.”

“Where is Giovanni? He will be entirely forgetting all that I have taught him.”

“Oh, Luigi, something very wonderful has occurred. Paganini is teaching our son. He is with him now in Milan.”

Luigi lay in silence for a moment, absorbing this news.

“God is good,” he said.

After a while, for his weakness was very great, he asked one or two questions. “Was it because I was ill that Paganini took him?”

Gerda hesitated. “Yes,” she answered.

“Then he saw the boy’s gift, otherwise he would not have done that. He but rarely teaches. All is well.”

Into Gerda’s mind floated a phrase of falling notes from the Johannespassion—“It is finished.” It was as though the mighty Bach had reached out across space and time to warn her. Luigi lay in exhausted silence, holding her hand in a clutch that even through his weakness had some of its old fierceness. Not again should she leave him. When the monk who nursed him returned he felt Luigi’s pulse and fetched him a cordial, his eyes expressing a silent surprise and a silent warning.

Luigi intercepted his glance at Gerda. “Yes,” he“IT IS FINISHED” said, “I am dying—‘It is finished,’ ” he faintly sang the phrase. He looked up at Gerda’s startled face, “You had it in your mind a moment ago, I heard it sing.”

Gerda put her arm round his shoulder. What need to deny the truth to the dying?

“Yes,” she murmured, her cheek laid to his, “It was in my mind.”

“And it was a message,” said Luigi quietly, “Fetch to me the holy oils, give me Viaticum for my last journey.”

The Brother who had been watching him solemnly left the little whitewashed room.

Luigi turned again to Gerda, “I have but one thing to ask of you, my love, my wife. Give Giovanni the Letters when I am dead and tell him to cherish them all the days he lives in this world. Those Letters, I see—Paolo—Giovanni——” A strange look came in his eyes, his voice choked in his throat.