Neale could not sleep. Of course he could not sleep. Sleep was for fools with nothing to think about. But Neale had ... such things to think about!
She had let him in. She had let him in. He stood in the holy of holies and knew that he was welcome.
Now he knew the meaning of her look that first evening on the roof. Now he knew why, up there under the ilex trees that morning, her dear eyes had been for an instant wild as if with fright when he drew near. And yet, even before she had let him in, her eyes had softened from fright to quiet trust as he looked down at her, had softened to that look,herlook, which thrust him through and through with love for her.
He turned impatiently back and forth on his bed, seeing, everywhere he looked, those liquid dark eyes, that sweet, sweet mouth, till he held his empty arms out longingly in the dark. His desire was like a fire. He knew such pain as he had not dreamed of, and he would not for any price have lost an instant of that pain. Had he ever said he was an unlighted torch? He was flaming now, to his last fiber.
Presently he got up, lighted his candle and dressed. It was impossible to lie still with this fire of life blazing in him. He would be beside himself by dawn, if he had not worked some of it off. He let himself out carefully into the corridor, and walked down to her door. There, before it were her shoes, her little, dusty shoes which had brought her back to him. He picked one up and held it in his hand. He stroked it like something alive. The dust on it was dear to him.
When he stepped out into the silent, deserted piazza a church clock struck two, boomingly. The night air was cool on his cheek. The great, starlit dusky sky, spacious over his head, was none too large to hold the greatness in hisheart that night. It filled all space to the last dim, shining star. He set off at random, anywhere, not noticing where his feet took him, up one street and down another—blindly, as he had lived. And yet somehow he had found his goal.
The splash of water struck on his ear. He saw in the starlight the dim sheen and sparkle of a fountain—Trevi. He stood still to think of what it reminded him—Madison Square and Martha.
His heart went out to Martha as he stood there. He thought of her not with embarrassment, as the woman he had loved before he met Marise. He had not loved her. He thought of Martha tenderly, calmly, with deep gratitude. He owed all this to her. She had saved him from the second-rate, dingy life he had been so dingily ready to accept. She had somehow divined that there must be something else. Something else! Neale was shaken at the thought! Why, now, this instant, if some one struck him down dead as he stood there, he would have lived more, known more of the joy and sacredness of love than after forty years with Martha. He wished he knew how to pray, so that he could pray that Martha too might know it.
And then, with a rush, Martha was gone from his mind, and Marise stood there, Marise, looking up at him with piteous, frightened eyes that softened to trust, to quiet trust.
He set off swiftly, swinging his arms and talking to himself. How could he be worthy of such a trust! Hewouldbe worthy of it. By God, he would give her a square deal. A square deal such as no other woman ever had! The whole of his heart, his respect, his honor. He would share his life with her loyally, as with an equal ... no hidden thoughts, no half-way openness, no dark corners of compromise, no secret chambers kept for himself. All the great gates flung open to welcome her into her own home.
He flung his arms wide, and looked up at the stars, which were beginning faintly to grow dim against the whitening sky.
His passion seized on him now and shook him till he was faint with it.
When it passed for a little, he turned back towards theeast, towards the Pincian hill where he had so often walked with her, where he had seen her that morning. The shade of the ilex trees was full of her presence to him. He was far from there, half across the city. As if it were a goal he had set himself, he began to hasten, to lengthen his stride, to let out some of the strength that boiled up in him like a geyser.
It did him good to walk furiously fast, to tire himself a little. His thoughts grew less wild, his heart stopped leaping and pounding. She had looked frightened because she was afraid of love, poor darling, as she was of life. He would show her what love could be. He would wash all that old poison of doubt and distrust and fear out of her life with the ocean of his love. They would live together so openly, so honestly, so naturally, that she could forget wholly all the sick, morbid impressions that her life had left on her, that she would come to trust and love life and love and nature, with its serene progression of birth, growth, death, even the decay which is only preparation for another birth.
Why, that was something he coulddofor her! He had something to give her, something she needed, something to match a little the golden treasure she poured out on him with her every glance. It was incredible good fortune! How under the sun could a man, a poor, plain, ordinary human being, live so that he might be worthy of such transcendent good fortune?
He was swinging up the long steps now, the dawn white and clear about him. Here was where he had turned that morning and saw her standing afar off, bright under the black shade, come back to him! Here was where he had been near enough to see her face, her brows drawn together, the seeking look in her eyes. He had always thought Marise's eyes seemed to be looking for something. Here was where he had seen that they looked frightened. And now he stood on the very spot where she had stood, and he saw again her eyes soften into quiet trust.
If somehow she might find in him what she was looking for! His heart stood still in awe.
He looked out over the sleeping city, its roofs and domes and towers coming palely into the new day; and he saw her dark eyes soften from fright to quiet trust.
God! Suppose he had never lived, never known Marise! The sweat stood out on him at the thought.
If she could ... if she could look into his face and find that life had put there what she sought.
The sun rose magnificently and cast over all the world a flood of golden light.
Neale stood in it, praising and magnifying God, who had sent him into life.
They were on their way to hear a Palestrina mass in a chapel at St. Peter's, and stopped beside one of the great fountains rushing with a leap into the brilliant air and falling in white clouds of spray.
"I've heard," said Livingstone, "that if you get at the right angle to the sun, you can see a million little rainbows."
They began to walk here and there over the wet, moss-grown paving-stones around the base of the fountain, looking up at the glittering splendor of the upward plunging water, their ears filled with the liquid silver plashing and dripping of its fall. "Perhaps this isn't the right fountain, with the sun where it is," suggested Livingstone. He and Eugenia walked off across the wide piazza towards the other fountain. Neale turned towards Marise. She was standing on the other side of the basin, and as he looked at her the wind flung the huge white veil of spray over her. She stood in its midst like a novice in her white robes ... or like a bride. Her eyes were lifted to the great plume of the leaping water.
He sprang toward her, crying jealously, "What do you think of when you look like that?" He raised his voice to drown out the shouting uproar of the water.
The wind caught the spray and cast it away to the other side.
She answered him, dreamily, "I was wondering how we could ever know what we are made for?"
The wind shifted and for an instant cast the white veil over them both. Through it he called to her, "Iknow! I know what I was made for! To love you all the days of my life."
The wind whirled away the sparkling curtain of water. They stood in the quiet golden sunshine. His ears rang in the silence. Had he really at last cried it out to her? Orwas it only one more of the thousand times when he had cried it soundlessly to his own heart? Eugenia and Livingstone had come back, were beside them now, between them; carrying them along up the endless steps to the church door. It was like walking in a dream. Neale tried to see Marise's face, but it was hidden by the broad-brimmed droop of her hat. Only the sweet, sweet lines of her lips....
No, it could not be that he had spoken. It had been only another of those blinding moments when his heart flung itself up, shouting, into the sunshine of her look.
They stepped silently into the dusky, incense-perfumed chapel. Mass had begun. Eugenia and Marise sank to their knees, Livingstone standing on one side, Neale on the other, the crowd pressing thick and close about them.
From the choir came a long, sonorous chant, and then a silence, in which Neale's thoughts, pounding and hammering in his head, were stilled to one great, solemn petition.
The priest turned and passed from one side of the altar to the other. He raised his hands over the heads of the kneeling people and chanted the "Pax vobiscum."
"Et cum spiritu tuo," responded the choir, on three long, sighing notes that brought peace with them.
Standing there, upright, looking over the heads of the densely packed crowd, his eyes fixed on the steady yellow flame of the altar-candles, Neale felt a touch on his hand. His heart stopped beating. He knew the lightest touch of that hand, as he knew the lightest sound of that voice.
He stood motionless, not breathing ... waiting.
He felt Marise slip her hand into his, and hold it fast in a close, close clasp. But not so firm as his own on hers. Through the dear flesh of that dear hand he felt her pulse beating against his own, as if he held her in his arms.
The yellow flames of the altar-candles flickered and blurred before his eyes.
A great "Hosanna!" burst from the choir. Or was it in his heart?
How suddenly it had all broken up, Livingstone thought forlornly, their pleasant little quartet of walks and talks. He had the sensation of being left stranded by the ebbing of a tide which had seemed to buoy him up on great depths. With the disappearance of Miss Mills back to her Paris apartment, the very light had gone out of everything. Miss Allen never had had the social grace and ease of Miss Mills, and now she ate her meals silently and vanished immediately, and Crittenden, not being a social light on any occasion, was of less than no use in saving the situation.
Livingstone was reduced to solitary mornings spent in museums, with a book of art criticism in his hand; or on Sunday mornings, when admission was free, on a bench in the park on the Palatine. The benches were very comfortable there, not mere backless slabs of stone, and when you felt like sight-seeing you could get up and lean over the wall and look down into the Forum and pick out where the different buildings had stood.
He stood thus, his back to the long, cypress-shaded path, trying to be archeological, his guide-book open on the wall. Which of the battered rows of stumps of pillars had been the Temple of Vesta and which the Fornix Fabianus?
He heard voices back of him. To be exact he heard Miss Allen's voice back of him. Livingstone was so paralyzed by the quality of it that, gentleman though he tried to be to the marrow of his bones, he was for an instant incapable of stirring and announcing his presence.That, Miss Allen's voice! She sounded as though she had come into a fortune. But what under the sun was she saying?
"Here, exactly here, is where we stood when you said you were like the puppy, and when you rolled the dusty weight of all those centuries off my shoulders. And nowcome along. The next place in the pilgrimage is St. John Lateran, where you said, you brutal Prussian, that nothing would induce you to protect a woman!"
"Come, come, this is eavesdropping. Something must be done!" said Livingstone to himself. He shut his guide-book with a slam to give them warning, and faced about resolutely. But they had paid no attention to his warning. They stood with their backs to him, and, oh! hand in hand like rustics at a country fair. But she had called him a brutal Prussian! And a puppy!
"Ahem!" said Mr. Livingstone, loudly, not knowing what else to say.
They turned about, and saw him, and seemed neither surprised nor ashamed. Miss Allen stepped quickly towards him, smiling and saying, "Oh, Mr. Livingstone, we were meaning to tell you anyhow.... Mr. Crittenden and I are going to be married."
She smiled at him dazzlingly as she spoke, but Livingstone was not at all sure from the expression of her eyes that she saw him. It crossed his mind that she would have smiled as dazzlingly as that if a lamp-post had stood in his place.
"Married!" he cried, really aghast for both of them. That sensitive, imaginative girl tied for life to that unfeeling, rough, hard fellow. What on earth did she, even for a moment, see in him? And as for Crittenden ... any man with a little money of his own, personable enough to marry advantageously, throwing himself away on a girl without a penny either now or in prospect! To what a wretched, cramped life he was dooming himself and her ... back rooms in greasy, third-rate pensions, never any margin for decent clothes....
"Yes, and we're going to live in Ashley, Vermont."
Livingstone sank down on his bench, appalled. Worse than third-rate pensions! Worse than the human mind could conceive!
"Oh, no! No! No!" he cried to her as though he were clutching at her as she sank to ruin. "No! Don't say that! You've no idea ... my dear young lady, you haven't thefaintest idea what an impossible life that would be. You mustn't consider it for a moment. Crittenden, you mustn't let her consider it. An American country village. Good God! You don't know what it is, what the people are!"
"Yes, I do, too," she told him gaily, giving the effect, though she stood quite still, of executing a twirling pirouette of high spirits. "I've lived there. It's really going back home for both of us."
"Home! Why, Crittenden certainly told me he'd never been there in his life!"
"Oh, pshaw, Livingstone, don't be so heavy-handed and literal. Why wet-blanketeveryimaginative fancy?" said Crittenden, laughing loudly as though some one had made a joke. He might, for the impression he made on Livingstone, have joined hands with the girl to dance madly around him in a circle. But this was no laughing matter. This was terrible! Tragic! They had simply lost their heads, both of them, lost their heads and had no idea what they were doing. You could tell that by the wild glitter in their eyes. They were infatuated, that was it, infatuated. He must try to recall them to their senses. He turned imploringly to the girl. "But ... but ... but...." He was so agitated that he could not bring out his words. He stopped, drew a long breath, and passed his hand over his forehead. Then, very solemnly, "Do you know," he said to her, warningly, "do you know that you will probably have todo your own work?"
At this, she burst into an inexplicable, foolish shout of laughter, opening her eyes very wide at him and saying, "Appalling!"
She looked up at Crittenden, who for his part never took his eyes an instant from her.
How foolishly she talked! How foolishly she laughed! Why, they were acting as sentimentally as ... Mr. Livingstone could not think of any comparison adequate to their foolishness.
They were moving away now, nodding good-by to him and smiling at each other. At the top of the dark steps leading down through the Palace of the Cæsars to the Forum theyturned and cast a backward glance at him, who stood stock-still where they had left him, staring after them, dumfounded. Miss Allen looked at him and then came flying back, running, her light dress fluttering. What did she want? What was she going to do, with that shining, tremulous, mirthful face? Livingstone felt afraid of her, as if, like a swift bolt of summer lightning, she might strike him through and through.
What she did was to take his face in her two hands and give him a hearty kiss on each cheek. "DearMr. Livingstone!" she said (or was it "poor"?)
Livingstone had the impression, from the expression of her face, that she would have kissed a cabman with equal fervor, and that Crittenden would have watched her do it with the same fatuous look he had now.
They went down together into the vaulted darkness and desolation of the ruined palace. Livingstone, leaning on the wall high above, saw them emerge together into the Forum and step off over the ancient flagged paving. And still hand in hand! Mr. Livingstone had by this time thought of an adequate comparison. They were as sentimental as a couple of Rogers statuettes!
Looking up, they saw him leaning there. They waved their hands and called up some laughing greeting to him. But he could not understand what they said, because they were too far away from him.
Hand in hand in the fierce, literal brightness of the noonday sun, they trod their new path over the ancient stones.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without comment.Minor inconsistencies in hyphenated words have been adjusted to conform with the author's most frequent usage, except for bed-room/bedroom which are left as in the original.On page 68, "Meisonnier" was changed to "Meissonier" to correspond with the correct spelling of the 19th century painter, as found later on the same page.Accent marks have been added to the following words, based on context, and author's most frequent usage:aperitif: page 152 (in the phrase, "... apéritif at the cafe....")menage: page 156 (in the phrase, "... a young ménage;...")chateau: page 452 (in the phrase, "... of the château Country....")In the html version of the book, the music illustration on page 78 has been supplemented with a "midi" file, so that the reader can listen to the musical phrase shown in the image.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without comment.
Minor inconsistencies in hyphenated words have been adjusted to conform with the author's most frequent usage, except for bed-room/bedroom which are left as in the original.
On page 68, "Meisonnier" was changed to "Meissonier" to correspond with the correct spelling of the 19th century painter, as found later on the same page.
Accent marks have been added to the following words, based on context, and author's most frequent usage:
aperitif: page 152 (in the phrase, "... apéritif at the cafe....")menage: page 156 (in the phrase, "... a young ménage;...")chateau: page 452 (in the phrase, "... of the château Country....")
In the html version of the book, the music illustration on page 78 has been supplemented with a "midi" file, so that the reader can listen to the musical phrase shown in the image.