The Countess wrote that afternoon to Baron Goldbirn, of Vienna, and to the Princess Anatolie, now in Styria, that the engagement between her daughter and Signor Guido d'Este was broken off by mutual agreement. She had told Cecilia that she had been to see Guido and had confessed the plain truth, and that there need be no more comedies, because men never died of that sort of thing after all, and it was much better for them to be told everything outright. Cecilia seemed perfectly satisfied and thanked her. Then the Countess said she would like to go to Brittany, or perhaps to Norway, where she had never been, but that if Cecilia preferred Scotland, she would make no objection. She would go anywhere, provided the place were cool, and on the top of a mountain, or by the sea, but she wished to leave at once. Everything had been ready for their departure several days ago.
"You do not really mean to leave Rome till Guido—I mean, till Signor d'Este is out of all danger, do you?" asked the young girl.
"My dear, since you are not going to marry him, what difference can it make?" asked the Countess, unconsciously heartless. "The sooner we go, the better. You are as pale as a sheet and as thin as a skeleton. You will lose all your looks if you stay here!"
Cecilia was in a loose white silk garment with open sleeves. She looked at the perfect curve of her arm, from the slender wrist to the delicately rounded elbow, and smiled.
"I am not a skeleton yet," she said.
"You will be in a few days," her mother answered cheerfully. "There is a telegraph to everywhere nowadays, and Signor Lamberti will be here and can send us news all the time. You cannot possibly go and see the poor man, you know. If you could only guess how I felt, my dear, when I found myself there this morning alone with him! I confess, I half expected that the walls would be covered with the most dreadful pictures, those things I do not like you to look at in the Paris Salon, you know. Women apparently waiting for tea on the lawn—before dressing—that sort of thing." The good Countess blushed at the thought.
"They are only women!" said Cecilia. "Why should I not look at them?"
"Because they are horrid," answered the Countess. "But I must say I saw nothing of the sort in Guido's rooms. Nevertheless, I felt like the wicked ladies in the French novels, who always go out in thick veils and have little gold keys hidden somewhere inside their clothes. It must be very uncomfortable."
She prattled on and her daughter scarcely heard her. All sorts of hard questions were presenting themselves to Cecilia's mind together. Had she done wrong, or right? And then, though it might have been quite right to let Lamberti know that she loved him, had her behaviour been modest and maidenly, or over bold? After all, could she have helped putting out her hand to find his just then? And when she had found it, could she possibly have checked herself from drawing him nearer to her? Had she any will of her own left at that moment, or had she been taken unawares and made to do something which she would never have done, if she had been quite calm? Calm! She almost laughed at the word as it came into her thought.
Her mother was reading theFigaronow, having given up talking when she saw that Cecilia did not listen. Ever since Cecilia could remember her mother had read theFigaro. When it did not come by the usual post she read the number of the preceding day over again.
Cecilia was trying to decide where to spend the rest of the summer, tolerably sure that she could make her mother accept any reasonable plan she offered. By a reasonable plan she meant one that should not take her too far from Rome. For her own part she would have been glad not to go away at all. There was Vallombrosa, which was high up and very cool, and there was Viareggio, which was by the sea, but much warmer, and there was Sorrento, which had become fashionable in the summer, and was never very hot and was the prettiest place of all. Something must be decided at once, for she knew her mother well. When the Countess grew restless to leave town, it was impossible to live with her. A startled exclamation interrupted Cecilia's reflections.
"My dear! How awful!"
"What is it?" asked Cecilia, placidly, expecting her mother to read out some blood-curdling tale of runaway motor cars and mangled nursery maids.
"This is too dreadful!" cried the Countess, still buried in the article she had found, and reading on to herself, too much interested to stop a moment.
"Is anybody amusing dead?" enquired Cecilia, with calm.
"What did you say?" asked the Countess, reaching the end. "This is the most frightful thing I ever heard of! A million of francs—in small sums—extracted on all sorts of pretexts—probably as blackmail—it is perfectly horrible."
"Who has extracted a million of francs from whom?" asked Cecilia, quite indifferent.
"Guido d'Este, of course! I told you—from the Princess Anatolie—"
"Guido?" Cecilia started from her seat. "It is a lie!" she cried, leaning over her mother's shoulder and reading quickly. "It is an infamous lie!"
"My dear?" protested the Countess. "They would not dare to print such a thing if it were not true! Poor Guido! Of course, I suppose they take an exaggerated view, but the Princess always gave me to understand that he had large debts. It was a million, you see, just that million they wished us to give for your dowry! Yes, that would have set him straight. But they did not get it! My child, what an escape you have made! Just fancy if you had been already married!"
"I do not believe a word of it," said Cecilia, indignantly throwing down the paper she had taken from her mother's hand. "Besides, there is only an initial. It only speaks of a certain Monsieur d'E."
"Oh, there is no doubt about it, I am afraid. His aunt, 'a certain Princess,' his father 'one of the great of the earth.' It could not be any one else."
"I should like to kill the people who write such things!" Cecilia was righteously angry.
The seed sown by Monsieur Leroy was bearing fruit already, and in a much more public place than he had expected, or even wished. The young lawyer cared much less for the money he might make out of the affair than for the advantage of having his name connected with a famous scandal, and he had not found it hard to make the story public. The article appeared in the shape of a letter from an occasional correspondent, and said it was rumoured that since her nephew was to make a rich marriage the Princess would bring suit to recover the sums she had been induced to lend him on divers pretences. Her legal representative in Rome, it was stated, had been interviewed, but had positively refused to give any information, and his name was given in full, whereas all the others were indicated by initials followed by dots. The lawyer flattered himself that this was a remarkably neat way of letting the world know who he was and with what great discretion he was endowed.
As Cecilia thought of Guido's face as she had seen it that morning, her heart beat with anger and she clenched her hand and turned away. Her mother believed the story, or a part of it, and others would believe as much. TheFigarohad come in the morning, and the article would certainly appear in the Roman papers that very evening. Guido would not hear of it at present, because Lamberti would keep it from him, but he must know it in the end.
The girl was powerless, and realised it. If she had been mistress of her own fortune she would readily have satisfied the Princess's demands on Guido, for she suspected that in some way the abominable article had been authorised by his aunt. But she was still Baron Goldbirn's ward, and the sensible financier would have laughed to scorn the idea of ransoming Guido d'Este's reputation. So would her mother, though she was generous; and besides, the Countess could not touch her capital, which was held in trust for Cecilia.
"What a mercy that you are not married to him!" she said, reading the article again, while her daughter walked up and down the small boudoir.
"You should not say such things!" Cecilia answered hotly. "Why do you read that disgusting paper? You know the story is a vile falsehood, from beginning to end. You know that as well as I do! Signor Lamberti will go to Paris to-night and kill the man who wrote it."
Her eyes flashed, and she had visions of the man she loved shaking a miserable creature to death, as a terrier kills a rat. Oddly enough the miserable creature took the shape of Monsieur Leroy in her vivid imagination.
"Monsieur Leroy is at the bottom of this," she said with instant conviction. "He hates Guido."
"I daresay," answered the Countess. "I never liked Monsieur Leroy. Do you remember, when I asked about him at the Princess's dinner, what an awful silence there was? That was one of the most dreadful moments of my life! I am sure her relations never mention him."
"He does what he likes with her. He is a spiritualist."
"Who told you that, child?"
"That dear old Don Nicola Francesetti, the archæologist who showed us the discoveries in Saint Cecilia's church."
"I remember. I had quite forgotten him."
"Yes. He told me that Monsieur Leroy makes tables turn and rap, and all that, and persuades the Princess that he is in communication with spirits. Don Nicola said quite gravely that the devil was in all spiritualism."
"Of course he is," assented the Countess. "I have heard of dreadful things happening to people who made tables turn. They go mad, and all sorts of things."
"All sorts of things," in the Countess's mind represented everything she could not remember or would not take the trouble to say. The expression did not always stand grammatically in the sentence, but that was of no importance whatever compared with the convenience of using it in any language she chanced to be speaking. She belonged to a generation in which a woman was considered to have finished her education when she had learned to play the piano and had forgotten arithmetic, and she had now forgotten both, which did not prevent her from being generally liked, while some people thought her amusing.
Just at that moment she seemed hopelessly frivolous to Cecilia, who was in the greatest distress for Guido, and left her to take refuge in solitude. She could remember no day in her life on which so much had happened to change it, and she felt that she must be alone at last.
In her old way she sat down to let herself dream with open eyes in the darkened room. There could be no harm in it now, and the old longing came upon her as if she had never tried to resist it. She sat facing the shadows and concentrated all her thoughts on one point with a steady effort, sure that presently she should be thinking of nothing and waiting for the vision to appear, and for the dream-man she had loved so long. He might take her into his arms now, and she would not resist him; she would let his lips meet hers, and for one endless instant she would be lifted up in strong and strange delight, as when to-day her veiled cheek had pressed against his for a second—or an hour—she did not know. He might kiss her in dreams now, for in real life he loved her as she loved him, and some day, far off no doubt, when poor Guido was well and strong again, and Lamberti had silenced all the calumnies invented against him, then it would all surely come true indeed.
But now she waited long, patiently, in the certainty that she could go back to the marble court and stand by the pillar in the morning light till she felt him coming up behind her. Yet she saw nothing, and her eyes grew weary of watching the shadows, and closed themselves, for it was afternoon, and very hot, and she was tired. She fell into a sweet sleep in her chair, and presently the refreshing breeze that springs up in Rome towards five o'clock in summer blew through the drawn blinds to fan her delicate cheek, and stir the little golden ringlets at her temples. While she slept her face grew sad by slow degrees, and on her lap her hands moved and lay with their palms turned upwards as if she were appealing piteously to some higher power for mercy and help.
Shadows darkened softly under her eyes, as she lay thus, and the young lids swelled and trembled; and she, who never shed tears waking, wept silently in her sleep. The bright drops hung by the lashes and broke, trickling down her cheeks, one by one, till they fell sideways upon her bare white neck. Many they were and long they fell, and when they ceased at last, her face was very white and still, as if she were quite dead, and dead of a sorrow that could be consoled only in heaven.
She had dreamed that the Vestal's vow was broken at last, and that she was sitting alone at night on the steps of the closed Temple, leaning back against the base of a pillar, watching the stars that slowly ascended out of the east; and she was thinking of what she had been, and that she should never again stand within the holy place to feed the sacred fire with the consecrated wood, and sweep the precious ashes into the mysterious pit beneath the altar. Never again was she to write down the records of the lordly Roman unions that had kept the stock great and pure and the free blood clean from that of slaves for a thousand years. Never might she sit at the feet of the Chief Virgin in the moonlit court, listening to tales of holy Vestals in old time, while the slow water murmured in the channels between one fountain and another.
It was all over, all ended, all behind her in the past for ever. Her vow was broken, because her veiled cheek had touched the cheek of a living, breathing man who had laid a strong hand upon her neck and had pressed her close to him, she consenting, and always to consent. She was not to die for it, since it was no mortal sin, but she was no longer a Vestal now, and the Temple and the house of the pure in heart were shut against her henceforth and would not be opened again. She knew that she had passed the threshold for the last time, and that the man she loved would soon come and take her away to another life. After that there would be no fear in the world, since she would always be with him, and he would make her forget all. But he had not come yet, and while she waited her tears flowed quietly and sadly for all that was no more to be hers, but most of all because she had broken a high and solemn promise which had been the foundation of her life. In the old dream, when the Vestals were dismissed from their office each to her own home, she was the most faithful of them all, to the very end. But now she had been the very first to yield, and they had put her out of their midst, sadly and silently, to wait alone in the night for him she loved. So she waited and wept, and the night wind seemed to freeze the salt tears on her face and neck; yet he did not come.
Then she heard his step; but she was wakened by the soft sound of the latch bolt of her door in its socket, and she sprang to her feet, straight and white, with a little sharp cry, for the fancied sound had always frightened her as nothing else could. This time she had not turned the key, and the door opened.
"Did I startle you, child?" asked her mother's voice, kindly. "I am sorry. Signor Lamberti is in the drawing-room. I think you had better come. He has heard of the article in theFigaro, and is reading it now."
"I will come in a minute, mother," Cecilia answered, turning her face away. "Let me slip on my frock."
"It is only Signor Lamberti," the Countess observed, rather thoughtlessly. "But I will send you Petersen."
The door was shut again, and Cecilia heard her mother's tripping footsteps on the glazed tiles in the corridor. She knew that she had blushed quickly, for she had been taken unawares, but the room was darkened and her mother had noticed nothing. She was suddenly aware that her cheeks and her neck were wet, and she remembered what she had dreamt and wondered that her tears should have been real. She had let in more light now and she looked at herself in the glass with curiosity, for she did not remember to have cried since she had been a little girl. The dried tears gave her face a stained and spotted look she did not like, and she made haste to bathe it in cold water. Even the near-sighted Petersen might see something unusual, and she would not let Lamberti guess that she had been crying on that day of all days.
It was all very strange, and while she dressed she wondered still why the real tears had come, and why she had dreamt she had broken her vow. She had never dreamt that before, not even when she used to meet Lamberti in her dreams by the fountain in the Villa Madama. It was stranger still that she should not have been able to call up the waking vision in the old way. It was as if some power she had once possessed had left her very suddenly, a power, or a faculty, or a gift; she could not tell what it was, but it was gone and something told her that it would not return. She made haste, and almost ran along the broad passage.
When she went into the drawing-room Lamberti was standing with theFigaroin his hand, before her mother who was sitting down. He bowed rather stiffly, though he smiled a little, and she saw that his blue eyes glittered and his face had the ruthless look she used to dread. She knew what it meant now, and was pleased. She wished she could see him shake the wretch who had written the article; she was glad that he was just what he was, not too tall, strong, active, red-haired and angry, a fighting man from head to foot, roused and ready for a violent deed. She had waited for him so long, outside the closed Temple of Vesta in the cold night wind!
"It is not the article that matters," he said, taking it for granted that she knew the contents. "It is what Guido would feel if he read it."
"Especially just now," observed the Countess, looking at Cecilia.
"What are you going to do?" Cecilia asked as quietly as she could. "Shall you go to Paris?"
"No! this was written in Rome. I will wager my life that the lawyer who is mentioned here wrote it all and got some clever Frenchman to translate it for him. I know the fellow by name."
"I thought Monsieur Leroy was at the bottom of it," said Cecilia.
Lamberti looked at her a moment.
"I daresay," he said. "I am sure that the Princess never meant that anything of this sort should be printed. Did Guido ever tell you about her money dealings with him?"
Guido had never mentioned them, of course, and Lamberti explained in a few words exactly what had happened, and the nature of the receipts Guido had given to his aunt.
"I daresay you are right about Monsieur Leroy," he concluded, "for the old lady is far too clever to have done such an absurd thing as this, and it is just like his blundering hatred of Guido."
"I wish he were here," said Cecilia, looking at Lamberti's hands. "I wonder what you would do to him."
"The lawyer is here, which is more to the purpose," Lamberti answered.
"You cannot fight a lawyer, can you?" asked the young girl. "You cannot shoot him."
"One can without doubt," returned Lamberti, smiling. "But it will not be necessary."
"My dear child," cried the Countess in a reproachful tone, "I had no idea you could be so bloodthirsty! Your father fought with Garibaldi, but I am sure he never talked like that."
"Men have no need of talking, mother. They can fight themselves."
"May I take theFigarowith me?" asked Lamberti. "I may not be able to buy a copy. By the bye, Baron Goldbirn is your guardian, is he not? He must have important relations with the financiers in Paris."
Cecilia looked at her mother, meaning her to answer the question.
"He is always in Paris himself," said the Countess. "I mean when he is not in Vienna."
"Can you telegraph to him to use his influence in Paris, so that theFigaroshall correct the article? Newspapers never take back what they say, but it will be enough if a paragraph appears in a prominent part of the paper stating that some ill-disposed people having supposed that the person referred to in a recent letter from a Roman correspondent was Guido d'Este, the editors take the opportunity of stating positively that no reference to him was intended. Will you telegraph that?"
"But will it be of any use?" asked the Countess, who was slightly in awe of Baron Goldbirn.
"Please write the telegram yourself," Cecilia said. "Then there cannot be any mistake. The address is Kärnthner Ring, Vienna."
"You will find writing paper in my boudoir," said the Countess. "Cecilia will show you."
The young girl led the way to her mother's table in the next room, and Lamberti sat down before it, while she pulled out a sheet of paper and gave him a pen. Neither looked at the other, and Lamberti wrote slowly in a laboured round hand unlike his own, intended for the telegraph clerk to read easily.
"How shall I sign it?" he asked when he had finished.
"'Countess Fortiguerra.'"
He wrote, blotted the page, and rose. For one moment he stood close beside her.
"Shall I tell your mother?" he asked, in a low voice.
"Not yet."
He bent his head and looked at her, and his face softened wonderfully in that instant. But there was not a touch of their hands, though they were alone in the room, nor a tender word spoken in a whisper to have told any one that they loved each other so well. They were alike, and they understood without speech or touch.
Lamberti read the telegram to the Countess, who seemed satisfied, but not very hopeful about the result.
"I never could understand what financiers and newspapers have to do with each other," she observed. "They seem to me so different."
"There is not often any resemblance between a horse and his rider," said Lamberti, enigmatically.
"Will you come this evening and tell us what the lawyer says?" Cecilia asked.
"Yes, if I may."
"Pray do," said the Countess. "We should so much like to know. Poor Guido! Good-bye!" Lamberti left the room.
When Lamberti reached the Palazzo Farnese at eight o'clock he had all Guido's receipts for the Princess's money in his pocket. He had difficulty in getting the lawyer to see him on business so late in the afternoon, and when he succeeded at last he did not find it easy to carry matters with a high hand; but he had come prepared to go to any length, for he was in no gentle humour, and if he could not get the papers by persuasion, he fully intended to take them by force, though that might be the end of his career as an officer, and might even bring him into court for something very like robbery.
The lawyer was obdurate at first. He of course denied all knowledge of the article in theFigaro, but he said that he was the Princess's legal representative, that the case had been formally placed in his hands, and that he should use all his professional energy in her interests.
"After all," said Lamberti at last, "you have nothing but a few informal bits of writing to base your case upon. They have no legal value."
"They are stamped receipts," answered the lawyer.
"They are not stamped," Lamberti replied.
"They are!"
"They are not!"
"You are giving me the lie, sir," said the lawyer, angrily.
"I say that they are not stamped," retorted Lamberti. "You dare not show them to me."
The lawyer was human, after all. He opened his safe, in a rage, found the receipts, and showed one of them to Lamberti triumphantly.
"There!" he cried. "Are they stamped or not? Is the signature written across the stamp or not?"
Lamberti had the advantage of knowing positively that when Guido had given the acknowledgments to his aunt, there had been no stamps on them. He did not know how they had got them now, but he was sure that some fraud had been committed. It was broad daylight still, and he examined the signature carefully while the lawyer held the half sheet of note paper before his eyes. The paper was certainly the Princess's, and the writing was Guido's beyond doubt. The Princess always used violet ink, and Guido had written with it. It struck Lamberti suddenly that it had turned black where the signature crossed the stamp, but had remained violet everywhere else. Now violet ink sometimes turns black altogether, but it does not change colour in parts. As he looked nearer, he saw that the letters formed on the stamp were a little tremulous. Though he had never heard of such a thing, it now occurred to him that the stamp had been simply stuck upon the middle of the signature, and that the part of the latter that had been covered by it had been cleverly forged over it.
"The stamp makes very much less difference in law than you seem to suppose," said the lawyer, enjoying his triumph.
"It will make a considerable difference in law," answered Lamberti, "if I prove to you that the stamp was put on over the first writing, and part of the signature forged upon it. It has not even been done with the same ink! The one is black and the other is violet. Do you know that this is forgery, and that you may lose your reputation if you try to found an action at law upon a forged document?"
The lawyer was now scrutinising the signatures of the notes one by one in the strong evening light. His anger had disappeared and there were drops of perspiration on his forehead.
"There is only one way of proving it to you," Lamberti said quietly. "Moisten one of the stamps and raise it. If the signature runs underneath it in violet ink, I am right, and the wisest thing you can do is to hand me those pieces of paper and say nothing more about them. You can write to Monsieur Leroy that you have done so. I even believe that he would pay a considerable sum for them."
It was as he said, and the lawyer was soon convinced that he had been imposed upon, and had narrowly escaped being laughed at as a dupe, or prosecuted as a party accessory to a fraud. He was glad to be out of the whole affair so easily. Therefore, when Lamberti reached his friend's door, he had the receipts in his pocket and he now meant to tell Guido what had happened, after first giving them back to him. Guido would laugh at Monsieur Leroy's stupid attempt to hurt him. But some one had been before Lamberti.
"He is very ill," said the servant, gravely, as he admitted him. "The doctor is there and has sent for a nurse. I telephoned for him."
Lamberti asked him what had happened, fearing the truth. Guido had felt a little better in the afternoon and had asked for his letters and papers. Half an hour later his servant had gone in with his tea and had found him raving in delirium. That was all, but Lamberti knew what it meant. Guido did not take theFigaro, but some one had sent the article to him and he had read it. He had brain fever, and Lamberti was not surprised, for he had suffered as much on that day as would have killed some men, and might have driven some men mad.
Lamberti did not wish to frighten Cecilia or her mother, but he sent them word that he would not leave Guido that night, nor till he was better, and that he had seen the lawyer and had recovered a number of forged papers.
After that there was nothing to be done but to watch and wait, and hear the broken phrases that fell from the sick man's lips, now high, now low, now laughing, now despairing, as if a host of mad spirits were sporting with his helpless brain and body and mocking each other with his voice.
So it went on, hour after hour, and all the next day, till his strength seemed almost spent. Lamberti listened, because he could not help it when he was in the room, and again and again Cecilia's name rang out, and the first passionate words of speeches that ran into incoherent sounds and were drowned in a groan.
Lamberti had nursed men who were ill and had seen them die in several ways, but he had never taken care of one who was very near to him. It was bad enough, but it was worse to know that he had an unwilling share in causing his friend's suffering, and to feel that if Guido lived he must some day be told that Lamberti had taken his place. It was strangest of all to hear the name of the woman he loved so constantly on another's lips. When the two men talked of her she had always been "the Contessina," while she had been "Cecilia" in the hearts of both.
There was something in the thought of not having told Guido all before the delirium seized him, that still offended Lamberti's scrupulous loyalty. It would be almost horrible if Guido should die without knowing the truth. Somehow, his consent still seemed needful to Lamberti's love, and it seemed so to Cecilia, too, and there was no denying that he was now in danger of his life. If he was to die, there would probably be a lucid hour before death, but what right would his best friend have to embitter those final moments for one who would certainly go out of this world with no hope of the next? Yet, when he was gone at last, would it be no slur on the memory of such true friendship to do what would have hurt him, if he could have known of it? Lamberti was not sure. Like some strong men of rough temperament, he had hidden delicacies of feeling that many a girl would have thought foolish and exaggerated, and they were the more sensitive because they were so secret, and he never suffered outward things to come in contact with them, nor spoke of them, even to Guido.
Some people said that Guido was Quixotic, and he was certainly the personification of honour. If the papers Lamberti had safe in his pocket had come into Guido's possession as they had come into Lamberti's own, Guido would have sent them back to Princess Anatolie, quite sure that she had a right to them, whether they were partly forged or not, because he had originally given them to her and nothing could induce him to take them back. The reason why Guido's illness had turned into brain fever was simply that he believed his honourable reputation among men to have been gravely damaged by an article in a newspaper. Honour was his god, his religion, and his rule of life; it was all he had beyond the material world, and it was sacred. He had not that something else, simple but undefinable, and as sensitive as an uncovered nerve, that lay under his friend's rougher character and sturdier heart. Nature would never have chosen him to be one instrument in that mysterious harmony of two sleeping beings which had linked Cecilia and Lamberti in their dreams. It was not the melancholy and intellectual Cassius who trembled before Cæsar's ghost at Philippi; it was rough Brutus, the believer in himself and the man of action.
The illness ran its course. While it continued Lamberti went every other day to the Palazzo Massimo and told the two ladies of Guido's state. He and Cecilia looked at each other silently, but she never showed that she wished to be alone with him, and he made no attempt to see her except in her mother's presence. Both felt that Guido was dying, and knew that they had some share in his sufferings. As soon as the Countess learned that the danger was real she gave up all thought of leaving Rome, and there was no discussion about it between her and her daughter. She was worldly and often foolish, but she was not unkind, and she had grown really fond of Guido since the spring. So they waited for the turn of the illness, or for its sudden end, and the days dragged on painfully. Lamberti was as lean as a man trained for a race, and the cords stood out on his throat when he spoke, but nothing seemed to tire him. The good Countess lost her fresh colour and grew listless, but she complained only of the heat and the solitude of Rome in summer, and if she felt any impatience she never showed it. Cecilia was as slender and pale as one of the lilies of the Annunciation, but her eyes were full of light. In the early morning she often used to go with her maid to the distant church of Santa Croce, and late in the afternoons she went for long drives with her mother in the Campagna. Twice Lamberti came to luncheon, and the three were silent and subdued when they were together.
Then the news came that Princess Anatolie had died suddenly at her place in Styria, and one of the secretaries of the Austrian embassy, who was obliged to stay in town, came to the Palazzo Massimo the same afternoon and told the Countess some details of the old lady's death. There was certainly something mysterious about it, but no one regretted her translation to a better world, though it put a number of high and mighty persons into mourning for a little while.
She died in the drawing-room after dinner, almost with her coffee cup in her hand. It was the heart, of course, said the young secretary. Two or three of her relations were staying in the house, and one of them was the man who had been at her dinner-party given for the engaged couple, and who resembled Guido but was older. The Countess remembered his name very well. It had leaked out that he was exceedingly angry at the article in theFigaroand had said one or two sharp things to the Princess, when Monsieur Leroy had come in unexpectedly, though the Princess had sent him away for a few days. No one knew exactly what followed, but Monsieur Leroy was an insolent person and the Princess's cousin was not patient of impertinence nor of anything like an attack on Guido d'Este. It was said that Monsieur Leroy had left the room hastily and that the other had followed him at once, in a very bad temper, and that the Princess, who thought Monsieur Leroy was going to be badly hurt, if not killed, had died of fright, without uttering a word or a cry. She had always been unaccountably attached to Monsieur Leroy. The secretary glanced at Cecilia, asked for another cup of tea, and discreetly changed the subject, fearing that he had already said a little too much.
"I believe Guido may recover, now that she is dead," Lamberti said, when he heard the story.
The change in Guido's state came one night about eleven o'clock, when Lamberti and the French nun were standing beside the bed, looking into his face and wondering whether he would open his eyes before he died. He had been lying motionless for many hours, turned a little on one side, and his breathing was very faint. There seemed to be hardly any life left in the wasted body.
"I think he will die about midnight," Lamberti whispered to the nurse.
The good nun, who thought so too, bent down and spoke gently close to the sick man's ear. She could not bear to let him go out of life without a Christian word, though Lamberti had told her again and again that his friend believed in nothing beyond death.
"You are dying," she said, softly and clearly. "Think of God! Try to think of God, Signor d'Este!"
That was all she could find to say, for she was a simple soul and not eloquent; but perhaps it might do some good. She knelt down then, by the bedside.
"Look!" cried Lamberti in a low voice, bending forwards.
Guido had opened his eyes, and they were wide and grave.
"Thank you," he said, after a few seconds, faintly but distinctly. "You are very kind. But I am not going to die."
The quiet eyes closed, and the mystery of life went on in silence. That was all he had to say. The nun knelt down again and folded her hands, but in less than a minute she rose and busied herself noiselessly, preparing something in a glass. It would be the last time that anything would pass his lips, she thought, and it might be quite useless to give it to him, but it must be ready. Many and many a time she had heard the dying declare quietly that they were out of danger. Lamberti stood motionless by the bedside, thinking much the same things and feeling as if his own heart were slowly turning into lead.
He stood there a long time, convinced that it was useless to send for the doctor, who always came about midnight, for Guido would probably be dead before he came. He would stop breathing presently, and that would be the end. The lids would open a little, but the eyes would not see, there would be a little white froth on the parted lips, and that would be the end. Guido would know the great secret then.
But the breathing did not cease, and the eyes did not open again; on the contrary, at the end of half an hour Lamberti was almost sure that the lids were more tightly closed than before, and that the breath came and went with a fuller sound. In ten minutes more he was sure that the sick man was peacefully sleeping, and not likely to die that night. He turned away with a deep sigh of relief.
The doctor came soon after midnight. He would not disturb Guido; he looked at him a long time and listened to his breathing, and nodded with evident satisfaction.
"You may begin to hope now," he said quietly to Lamberti, not even whispering, for he knew how deep such sleep was sure to be. "He may not wake before to-morrow afternoon. Do not be anxious. I will come early in the morning."
"Very well," answered Lamberti. "By the bye, a near relation of his has died suddenly while he has been delirious. Shall I tell him if he wakes quite conscious?"
"If it will give him great satisfaction to know of his relative's death, tell him of it by all means," answered the doctor, his quiet eye twinkling a little, for he had often heard of the Princess Anatolie, and knew that she was dead.
"I do not think the news will cause him pain," said Lamberti, with perfect gravity.
The doctor gave the nurse a few directions and went away, evidently convinced that Guido was out of all immediate danger. Then Lamberti rested at last, for the nun slept in the daytime and was fresh for the night's watching. He stretched himself upon Guido's long chair in the drawing-room, leaving the door open, and one light burning, so that the nurse could call him at once. He had earned his rest, and as he shut his eyes his only wish was that he could have let Cecilia know of the change before he went to sleep. A moment later he was sitting beside her on the bench in the Villa Madama, by the fountain, telling her that Guido was safe at last.
When he awoke the sun had risen an hour.
"I am like Dante," said Guido to Lamberti, when he was recovering. "I have been in Hell, and now I am in Purgatory. But I shall not reach the earthly Paradise at the top, much less the Heaven beyond."
He smiled sadly and looked at his friend.
"Who knows?" Lamberti asked, by way of answer.
"Beatrice will not lead me further."
Guido closed his eyes, and wondered why he had come back to life, out of so much suffering, only to be tormented again in the same way, perhaps when the end really came. His memories of his serious illness were vague and indistinct, but they were all horrible. He only recalled the beginning very clearly, how he had glanced through the newspaper article and had dropped it in sudden and overwhelming despair; and then, how he had roused himself and had felt in the drawer for his revolver; not finding it, he had lost consciousness just as he realised that even that means of escape from life had been taken from him. He remembered having felt as if something broke in his brain, though he knew that he was not dying.
After that, fragments of his ravings came back to him with the still vivid recollection of awful pain, of monstrous darkness, of lurid lights, of hideous beings glaring and gnashing their jagged teeth at him, and of a continual discordant noise of voices that had run all through his delirium like the crying out and moaning of many creatures in agony. It was no wonder that he compared what he remembered of his sufferings to hell itself.
And now that he was alive, of what use was life to him? His honour was cleared, indeed, for Lamberti had taken care of that. Lamberti had burned the papers before his eyes after telling him how Princess Anatolie had died, and had read him the paragraph which Baron Goldbirn had caused to be inserted in theFigaro. The Princess was dead, and Monsieur Leroy would probably never trouble any one again. When he had squandered what she had left him, he would probably get a living as a medium in Vienna. Guido knew the secret of the tie that bound him to the Princess, but was quite sure that the proud old woman had never let him guess it himself, in spite of her doting affection for him. Those of her family who knew it would not tell him, of all people, and if Monsieur Leroy ever begged money of Guido he would not present himself as an unfortunate cousin.
Guido foresaw no difficulties in the future, but he anticipated no happiness, and his life stretched before him, colourless, blank, and idle.
Since his delirium had ceased, he had not once spoken of Cecilia, and Lamberti began to fear that he would not allude to her for a long time. That did not make it easier to tell him the story he must hear, and the time had come when he must hear it, come what might, lest he should ever think that he had been intentionally kept in ignorance of the truth. Lamberti was glad when he spoke of Cecilia as a Beatrice who would never appear to lead him further, and knew at once that the opportunity must not be lost.
It was the hardest moment in Lamberti's life. It had been far easier to hide what he felt, so long as he had not guessed that Cecilia loved him, than it was to speak out now; it had cost him much less to be steadfast in his silence with her while Guido's illness lasted. To make Guido understand all, it would be necessary to tell all from the beginning, even to explaining that what he had taken for mutual aversion at first, had been an attraction so irresistible that it had frightened Cecilia and had made Lamberti compare it with a possession of the devil and a haunting spirit.
The two men were sitting on the brick steps of the miniature Roman theatre close to the oak which is still called Tasso's, a few yards from the new road that leads over the Janiculum through what was once the Villa Corsini. It was shady there, and Rome lay at their feet in the still afternoon. The waiting carriage was out of sight, and there was no sound but the rustling of leaves stirred by the summer breeze. It was nearly the middle of August.
"They are still in Rome," Lamberti said, after a moment's pause, during which he had decided to speak at last.
"Are they?" asked Guido, coldly.
"Yes. Neither the Countess nor her daughter would go away till you were well."
"I am well now."
He was painfully thin and his eyes were hollow. The doctor had ordered mountain air and he was going to stay with one of his relatives in the Austrian Tyrol as soon as he could bear the journey without too much fatigue.
"They wish to see you," Lamberti said, glancing sideways at his face.
"I cannot refuse, but I would rather not see them. They ought to understand that, I think."
He was offended by what seemed very like an intrusion on the privacy of a suffering that was still keen. Why could they not leave him alone?
"They would not have gone away in any case till you recovered," Lamberti answered, "but the Contessina would not have the bad taste to wish for a meeting just now, unless there were a reason which you do not know, and which I must explain to you, cost what it may."
Guido looked at Lamberti in surprise and then laughed a little scornfully.
"Is she going to be married?" he asked.
"Perhaps."
"Already!"
His tone was sad, and pitying, and slightly contemptuous. His lips closed after the single word and he drew his eyelids together, as he looked steadily out over the deep city towards the hills to eastward.
"Then it was true that she cared for another man," he said, in a low voice.
"Yes. It was quite true."
"She wrote me in that letter that he did not know it."
"That was true also."
"And that he was not in the least in love with her."
"She thought so."
"But she was mistaken, you mean to say. He loved her, but did not show it."
"Precisely. He loved her, but he was careful not to show it because he understood that her mother and the Princess wished to marry her to you, and because he happened to know that you were in earnest."
"That was decent of him, at all events," Guido said wearily. "Some men would have behaved differently."
"I daresay," Lamberti answered.
"Is he a man I know?"
"Yes. You know him very well."
"And now she has asked you to tell me his name. I suppose that is why you begin this conversation. You are trying to break it gently to me." He smiled contemptuously.
"Yes!"
The word was spoken as if it cost an effort. Lamberti held his stout stick with both hands over his crossed knee and leaned back, so that it bent a little with the strain.
"My dear fellow," said Guido, with a little impatience, "it seems to me that you need not take so much trouble to spare my feelings! If you do not tell me who the man is, some one else will."
"No one else can," Lamberti answered, with emphasis.
"Why not? I would rather speak of her with you, if I must speak of her at all, of course. But some obliging person is sure to tell me, or write to me about it, as soon as the engagement is announced. 'My dear d'Este, do you remember that girl you were engaged to last spring?' And so on. Remember her!"
"There is no engagement," Lamberti said. "No one will write to you about it, and no one knows who the man is, except the Contessina and the man himself."
"And you," corrected Guido. "You may as well keep the secret, so far as I am concerned. I have no curiosity about it. There will be time enough to tell me when the engagement is announced."
"I do not think that there can be any engagement until you know."
"Oh, this is absurd! The Contessina was frank. She did not love me, she told me so, and we agreed that our engagement should end. What possible claim have I to know whom she wishes to marry now?"
"You have the strongest claim that any man can have, though not on her. The man is your friend."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Guido, becoming impatient. "A dozen men I like might be called friends of mine, I suppose, but you know very well that you are the only intimate friend I have."
"Yes, I know."
"Well? I can hardly fancy that you mean yourself, can I?"
Lamberti did not move, but as Guido looked at him for an answer, he saw that he could not speak just then, and that he was clenching his teeth. Guido stared at him a moment and then started.
"Lamberti!" he cried sharply.
Lamberti slowly turned his head and gazed into Guido's eyes without speaking. Then they both looked out at the distant hills in silence for a long time.
"The Contessina was very loyal to you, Guido," Lamberti said at last, in a low tone. "She could not tell you that it was I, and I did not know it."
Again there was a silence for a time.
"When did you know it?" Guido asked slowly.
"After she had been to see you. It was my fault, then."
"What was your fault?"
"When we went downstairs, I thought I should never see her again, and I never meant to. How could I know what she felt? She never betrayed herself by a glance or a tone of her voice. I loved her with all my heart, and when you had both told me that everything was quite over between you, I wanted her to know that I did. Was that disloyal to you, since you had definitely given up the hope of marrying her, and since I did not expect to see her again for years and thought she was quite indifferent?"
"No," Guido answered, after a moment's thought. "But you should have told me at once."
"When I came upstairs the Countess was still there, and you were quite worn out. I put you to bed, meaning to tell you that same evening, after you had rested. When I came back you had brain fever, and did not know me. So I have had to wait until to-day."
"And you have seen each other constantly while I have been ill, of course," said Guido, with some bitterness. "It was natural, I suppose."
"Since that day when we spoke on the staircase we have only been alone together once, for a moment. I asked her then if I should tell her mother, and she said 'Not yet.' Excepting that, we have never exchanged a word that you and her mother might not have heard, nor a glance that you might not have seen. We both knew that we were waiting for you to get well, and we have waited."
Guido looked at him with a sort of wonder.
"That was like you," he said quietly.
"You understand, now," Lamberti continued. "You and I met her on the same day at your aunt's, and when I saw her, I felt as if I had always known her and loved her. No one can explain such things. Then by a strange coincidence we dreamt the same dream, on the same night."
"Was it she whom you met in the Forum, and who ran away from you?" asked Guido, in astonishment.
"Yes. That is the reason why we always avoided each other, and why I would not go to their house till you almost forced me to. We had never spoken alone together till the garden party. It was then that we found out that our dreams were alike, and after that I kept away from her more than ever, but I dreamt of her every night."
"So that was your secret, that afternoon!"
"Yes. We had dreamt of each other and we had met in the Forum in the place we had dreamt of, and she ran away without speaking to me. That was the whole secret. She was afraid of me, and I loved her, and was beginning to know it. I thought there was something wrong with my head and went to see a doctor. He talked to me about telepathy, but seemed inclined to consider that it might possibly be a mere train of coincidences. I think I have told you everything."
For a long time they sat side by side in silence, each thinking his own thoughts.
"Is there anything you do not understand?" Lamberti asked at last.
"No," Guido answered thoughtfully. "I understand it all. It was rather a shock at first, but I am glad you have told me. Perhaps I do not quite understand why she wishes to see me."
"We both wish to be sure that you bear us no ill-will. I am sure she does, and I know that I do."
There was a pause again.
"Do you think I am that kind of friend?" Guido asked, with a little sadness. "After what you have done, too?"
"I am afraid my mere existence has broken up your life, after all," Lamberti answered.
"You must not think that. Please do not, my friend. There is only one thing that could hurt me now that it is all over."
"What is that?"
"I am not afraid that it will happen. You are not the kind of man to break her heart."
"No," Lamberti answered very quietly. "I am not."
"It was only a dream for me, after all," Guido said, after a little while. "You have the reality. She used to talk of three great questions, and I remember them now as if I heard her asking them: 'What can I know? What is it my duty to do? What may I hope?' Those were the three."
"And the answers?"
"Nothing, nothing, nothing. Those are my answers. Unless—"
He stopped.
"Unless—what?" Lamberti asked.
Guido smiled a little.
"Unless there is really something beyond it all, something essentially true, something absolute by nature."
Lamberti had never known his friend to admit such a possibility even under a condition.
"At all events," Guido added, "our friendship is true and absolute. Shall we go home? I feel a little tired."
Lamberti helped him to the carriage and drew the light cover over his knees before getting in himself. Then they drove down towards the city, by the long and beautiful drive, past the Acqua Paola and San Pietro in Montorio.
"You must go and see her this evening," Guido said gently, as they came near the Palazzo Farnese. "Will you tell her something from me? Tell her, please, that it would be a little hard for me to talk with her now, but that she must not think I am not glad that she is going to marry my best friend."
"Thank you. I will say that." Lamberti's voice was less steady than Guido's.
"And tell her that I will write to her from the Tyrol."
"Yes."
It was over. The two men knew that their faithful friendship was unshaken still, and that they should meet on the morrow and trust each other more than ever. But on this evening it was better that each should go his own way, the one to his solitude and his thoughts, the other to the happiest hour of his life.
On the following afternoon Lamberti waited for Cecilia at the Villa Madama, and she came not long after him, with Petersen. He had been to the Palazzo Massimo in the evening, and a glance and a sign had explained to her that all was well. Then they had sat together awhile, talking in a low tone, while the Countess read the newspaper. When Lamberti had given Guido's brave message, they had looked earnestly at each other, and had agreed to tell her mother the truth at once, and to meet on the morrow at the villa, which was Cecilia's own house, after all. For they felt that they must be really alone together, to say the only words that really mattered.
The head gardener had admitted Lamberti to the close garden, by the outer steps, but had not let him into the house, as he had received no orders. When Cecilia came, he accompanied her with the keys and opened wide the doors of the great hall. Cecilia and Lamberti did not look at each other while they waited, and when the man was gone away Cecilia told Petersen to sit down in the court of honour on the other side of the little palace. Petersen went meekly away and left the two to themselves.
They walked very slowly along the path towards the fountain, and past it, to the parapet at the other end, where they had talked long ago. But as they passed the bench, they glanced at it quietly, and saw that it was still in its place. Cecilia had not been at the villa since the afternoon before Guido fell ill, and Lamberti had never come there since the garden party in May.
They stood still before the low wall and looked across the shoulder of the hill. Saving commonplace words at meeting, they had not spoken yet. Cecilia broke the silence at last, looking straight before her, her lids low, her face quiet, almost as if she were in a dream.
"Have we done all that we could do, all that we ought to do for him?" she asked. "Are you sure?"
"We can do nothing more," Lamberti answered gravely.
"Tell me again what he said. I want the very words."
"He said, 'Tell her that it would be a little hard for me to talk with her now, but that she must not think I am not glad that she is going to marry my best friend.' He said those words, and he said he would write to you from the Tyrol. He leaves to-morrow night."
"He has been very generous," Cecilia said softly.
"Yes. He will be your best friend, as he is mine."
She knew that it was true.
"We have done what we can," Lamberti continued presently. "He has given all he has, and we have given him what we could. The rest is ours."
He took her hand and drew her gently, turning back towards the fountain.
"It was like this in the dream," she said, scarcely breathing the words as she walked beside him.
They stood still before the falling water, quite alone and out of sight of every one, in the softening light, and suddenly the girl's heart beat hard, and the man's face grew pale, and they were facing each other, hands in hands, look in look, thought in thought, soul in soul; and they remembered that day when each had learned the other's secret in the shadowy staircase of the palace, and each dreamt again of a meeting long ago in the House of the Vestals; but only the girl knew what she had felt of mingled joy and regret when she had sat alone at night weeping on the steps of the Temple.
There was no veil between them now, as their eyes drew them closer together by slow and delicious degrees. It was the first time, though every instant was full of memories, all ending where this was to begin. Their lips had never met, yet the thrill of life meeting life and the blinding delight of each in the other were long familiar, as from ages, while fresh and untasted still as the bloom on a flower at dawn.
Then, when they had kissed once, they sat down in the old place, wondering what words would come, and whether they should ever need words at all after that. And somehow, Cecilia thought of her three questions, and they all were answered as youth answers them, in one way and with one word; and the answer seemed so full of meaning, and of faith and hope and charity, that the questions need never be asked again, nor any others like them, to the end of her life; nor did she believe that she could ever trouble her brain again aboutThus spake Zarathushthra, and the Man who had killed God, and the overcoming of Pity, and the Eternal Return, and all those terrible and wonderful things that live in Nietzsche's mazy web, waiting to torment and devour the poor human moth that tries to fly upward.
But as for Kant's Categorical Imperative, in order to act in such a manner that the reasons for her actions might be considered a universal law, it was only necessary to realise how very much she loved the man she had chosen, and how very much he loved her; for how indeed could it then be possible not to live so as to deserve to be happy?
She had thought of these things during the night and had fallen asleep very happy in realising the perfect simplicity of all science, philosophy, and transcendental reasoning, and vaguely wondering why every one could not solve the problems of the universe as she had.
"Is it all quite true?" she asked now, with a little fluttering wonder. "Shall I wake and hear the door shutting, and be alone, and frightened as I used to be?"
Lamberti smiled.
"I should have waked already," he said, "when we were standing there by the fountain. I always did when I dreamt of you."
"So did I. Do you think we really met in our dreams?" She blushed faintly.
"Do you know that you have not told me once to-day that you care for me, ever so little?" he asked.
"I have told you much more than that, a thousand times over, in a thousand ways."
"I wonder whether we really met!"