He indulged long in pleasurable meditation on this episode. What particularly took his fancy was the arch and graceful touch Elena had given to her caprice. The thought of the boa evoked the image of Donna Maria's coils, and so, confusedly, all the amorous fancies he had woven round that virginal mass of hair by which, once on a time, the very school-girls of the Florentine convent had been enthralled. And again he let his two loves melt into one and form the third—the Ideal.
The musing mood still upon him while he dressed for dinner, he thought to himself—'Yesterday, a grand scene of passion almost ending in tears; to-day, a little episode of mute sensuality—and I seemed to myself as sincere in my sentiment yesterday as I was in my sensations to-day. Added to which, scarcely an hour before Elena's kiss, I had a moment of lofty lyrical emotion at Donna Maria's side. Of all this not one vestige remains. To-morrow, most assuredly I shall begin the same game over again. I am unstable aswater; incoherent, inconsistent, a very chameleon! All my efforts towards unity of purpose are for ever vain. I must resign myself to my fate. The law of my being is comprised in the one word—Nunc—the will of the Law be done!'
He laughed at himself, and from that moment began a new phase of his moral degradation.
Without mercy, without remorse, without restraint, he set all his faculties to work to compass the realisation of his impure imaginings. To vanquish Maria Ferrès he had recourse to the most subtle artifices, the most delicate machinations; taking care to deceive her in matters of the soul, of the spiritual, the ideal, the inmost life of the heart. In carrying on the two campaigns—the conquest of the new and the re-conquest of the old love—with equal adroitness, and in turning to the best advantage the chance circumstances of each enterprise, he was led into an infinity of annoying, embarrassing, and ridiculous situations, to extricate himself from which he was obliged to descend to a series of lies and deceptions, of paltry evasions, ignoble subterfuges and equivocal expedients. All Donna Maria's goodness and faith and single mindedness were powerless to disarm him. As the foundation of his work of seduction with her he had taken a verse from one of the Psalms:—Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor—lavabis me et super nirem dealbabor. And she, poor, hapless, devoted creature, imagined that she was saving a soul alive, redeeming an intellect, washing away by her own purity the stains that sin had left on him. She still believed implicitly in the ever-remembered words he had spoken to her in the park, on that Epiphany of Love, within sight of the sea; and it was just in this belief that she found comfort and support in the midst of the religious conflict that rent her conscience; this belief that blinded her to all suspicion and filled her with a soil of mystic intoxication wherein she opened the secret floodgates of her heart and let loose all her pent-up tenderness, and let the sweetest flowers of her womanhood blossom out resplendently.
For the first time in his life, Andrea Sperelli found himselfface to face with arealpassion—one of those rare and supreme manifestations of woman's capacity for love which occasionally flash their superb and terrible lightnings across the shifting gray sky of earthly loves. But he did not care a jot, and went on with the pitiless work which was to destroy both himself and his victim.
The next day, according to their agreement at the concert, Andrea found Donna Maria in the Piazza di Spagna with Delfina, looking at the antique jewellery in a shop window. At the first sound of his voice she turned, and a bright flush stained the pallor of her cheek. Together they then examined the eighteenth-century jewels, the paste buckles and hair ornaments, the enamelled watches, the gold and ivory tortoise-shell snuff-boxes, all these pretty trifles of a by-gone day which afforded an impression of harmonious richness under the clear morning sun. Everywhere about them, the flower-sellers were offering yellow and white jonquils, double violets, and long branches of flowering almond. There was a breath of Spring in the air. The column of the Immaculate Conception rose lightly into the sunshine, like a flower stem with theRosa mysticaon its summit; the Barcaccia glistened in a shower of diamonds, the stairway of the Trinità opened its arms gaily towards the church of Charlesviii., the two towers of which stood out boldly against the blue cloud-flecked sky.
'How exquisite!' exclaimed Donna Maria. 'No wonder you are so deeply enamoured of Rome!'
'Oh, you don't know it yet,' Andrea replied, 'I wish I might be your guide'—she smiled—'and undertake a pilgrimage of sentiment with you this spring.'
She smiled again, and her whole person assumed a less grave and chastened air. Her dress, this morning, had a quiet elegance about it, but revealed the refined taste of an expert in style and in the delicate combinations of colour.Her jacket, of a shade of gray inclining to green, was of cloth trimmed round the edge with beaver and opening over a vest of the same fur, the blending of the two tones—indefinable gray and tawny gold—forming a harmony that was a delight to the eye.
'What did you do yesterday evening?' she asked.
'I left the concert-hall a few minutes after you and went home; and I stayed there because I seemed to feel your spirit near me. I thought much. Did you notfeelmy thought?'
'No, I cannot say I did. I passed a very cheerless evening. I do not know why. I felt so dreadfully alone!'
The Contessa di Lucoli passed in her dog-cart, driving a big roan. Giulia Moceto, accompanied by Musellaro, passed on foot, and then Donna Isotta Cellesi.
Andrea bowed to each. Donna Maria asked him the names of the ladies. That of Giulia Moceto was not new to her. She recalled the day on which she heard Francesca mention it while looking at Perugino's Archangel Michael, when they were turning over Andrea's drawings at Schifanoja. She followed her curiously with her eyes, seized with a sudden vague fear. Everything connecting Andrea with his former life was distasteful to her. She wished that that life, of which she knew next to nothing, could be entirely wiped out of the memory of this man who had flung himself into it with such avidity and dragged himself out with so much weariness, so many losses, so many wounds—'To live solely in you and for you, with no to-morrow and no yesterday—without other bond or preference—far from the world——' Were not those his words to her? What a dream!
Matters of very different import were troubling Andrea. It was fast approaching the Princess of Ferentino's lunch hour.
'Where are you bound for?' he asked of his companion.
'Wishing to make the most of the sunshine, Delfina and I had tea and sandwiches at Nazzari's and thought of going up to the Pincio and visiting the Villa Medici. If you wouldcare to come with us——'
He had a moment of painful hesitation. The Pincio, the Villa Medici, on a February afternoon—with her! But he could not well get out of the lunch; besides, he was desperately anxious to meet Elena again after yesterday's episode, for though he had gone to the Angelieris', she did not put in an appearance.
He therefore answered with an inconsolable air—'How wretchedly unfortunate! I am obliged to be at a lunch in a quarter of an hour. I accepted the invitation a week ago, but if I had known, I would have found some way of getting out of it—What a nuisance!'
'Oh, then you must go without losing a moment—you will be late.'
He looked at his watch.
'I can walk a little further with you.'
'Mamma, do let us go up the steps,' begged Delfina. 'I went up yesterday with Miss Dorothy. You should see it!'
They turned back and crossed the square. A child followed them persistently, offering a great branch of flowering almond, which Andrea bought and presented to Delfina. Blonde ladies issued from the hotels armed with red Bædekers; clumsy hackney coaches with two horses jogged past with a glint of brass on their oldfashioned harness; the flower-sellers thrust their overflowing baskets in front of the strangers, vociferating at the pitch of their voices.
'Will you promise me,' Andrea said to Donna Maria, as they began to ascend the steps—'will you promise me not to go to the Villa Medici without me? Give it up for to-day—please do.'
For a moment she seemed preoccupied by sad thoughts, then she answered: 'Very well, I will give it up.'
'Thanks!'
Before them the great stairway rose triumphantly, its sun-warmed steps giving out a gentle heat, the stone itself having the polished gleam of old silver like that of the fountains at Schifanoja. Delfina ran on in front with her almond-branchand, caught by the breeze of her movement, some of its faint pink petals fluttered away like butterflies.
A poignant regret pierced the young man's heart. He pictured to himself the delights of a sentimental walk through the quiet glades of the Villa Medici in the early hours of the sunny afternoon.
'With whom do you lunch?' asked Donna Maria, after an interval of silence.
'With the old Princess Alberoni,' he replied.
He lied to her once more, for some instinct warned him that the name Ferentino might arouse some suspicion in Donna Maria's mind.
'Good-bye, then,' she said, and held out her hand.
'No—I will come up to the Piazza. My carriage is waiting for me there. Look—that is where I live,' and he pointed to the Palazzo Zuccari, all flooded with sunshine.
Donna Maria's eyes lingered upon it.
'Now there you have seen it, will you come there sometimes—in spirit?'
'In spirit always.'
'And shall I not see you before Saturday evening?'
'I hardly think so.'
They parted—she turning with Delfina into the avenue, Andrea jumping into his brougham and driving off down the Via Gregoriana.
He arrived at the Ferentinos' a few minutes late. He made his apologies. Elena was already there with her husband.
Lunch was served in a dining room gay with tapestries representing scenes after the manner of Peter Loar. In the midst of these beautiful seventeenth-century grotesques, a brisk fire of wit and sarcasm soon began to flash and scintillate. The three ladies were in high spirits and prompt at repartee. Barbare la Viti laughed her sonorous masculine laugh, throwing back her handsome boyish head and making free play with her sparkling black eyes. Elena was in a more than usually brilliant vein, and impressed Andrea as being sofar removed from him, so unfamiliar, so unconcerned, that he almost doubted whether yesterday's scene had not been all a dream. Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of Ferentino aided and abetted the ladies; Lord Heathfield entertained his 'young friend' by boring him to extinction with questions as to the coming sales and giving him minute details of a very rare edition of theMetamorphosesof Apuleius—Roma, 1469—in folio, which he had acquired a day or two ago for fifteen hundred and twenty lire. He broke off every now and then to watch Barbarella, and then that gleam of dementia would flash into his eyes, and his repulsive hands trembled strangely.
Andrea's irritation, disgust, and boredom at last reached such a pitch that he was unable to conceal his feelings.
'You seem out of spirits, Ugenta,' said the princess.
'Well, a little, perhaps—Miching Mallecho is ill.'
Barbarisi at once overwhelmed him with importunate questions about the horse's ailments; and then Lord Heathfield recommenced the story of theMetamorphosesfrom the beginning.
The Princess turned to her cousin. 'What do you think, Ludovico,' she said with a laugh, 'yesterday, at the concert, we surprised him in a flirtation with an Incognita!'
'So we did,' added Elena.
'An Incognita?' exclaimed Ludovico.
'Yes, but perhaps you can give us further information. She is the wife of the new Minister for Guatemala.'
'Aha—I know.'
'Well?'
'For the moment, I only know the Minister. I see him playing at the Club every night.'
'Tell me, Ugenta, has she been received at court yet?'
'I really do not know, Princess,' Andrea returned with some impatience.
The whole business had become simply intolerable to him. Elena's gaiety jarred horribly on him, and her husband's presence was more odious than ever. But if he was out oftemper, it was more with himself than with the rest of the company. At the root of his irritation lay a dim longing after the pleasure he had so lately rejected. Hurt and offended by Elena's indifference, his heart turned with poignant regret to the other woman, and he pictured her wandering pensive and alone through the silent avenues, more beautiful, more noble than ever before.
The Princess rose and led the way into an adjoining room. Barbarella ran to the piano, which was entirely enveloped in an immense antique caparison of red velvet embroidered with dull gold, and began to sing Bizet's Tarantelle dedicated to Christine Nilsson. Elena and Eva leaned over her to read the music, while Ludovico stood behind them smoking a cigarette. The Prince had disappeared.
But Lord Heathfield kept firm hold of Andrea. He had drawn him into a window and was discoursing to him on certain little Urbanese 'coppette amatorie' which he had picked up at the Cavaliere Davila's sale, and the rasping voice with its aggravating interrogative inflections, the gestures with which he indicated the dimensions of the cups, and his glance—now dull and fishy, now keen as steel under the great prominent brow—in short, the whole man was so unendurably obnoxious to Andrea that he clenched his teeth convulsively like a patient under the surgeon's knife.
His one absorbing thought was how to get away. His plan was to rush to the Pincio in the hope of finding Donna Maria and taking her, after all, to the Villa Medici. It was about two o'clock. He looked out of the window at the glorious sunshine; he turned back into the room, and saw the group of pretty women at the piano, bathed in the red glow struck out of the velvet cover by a strong golden ray. With this red glow the smoke of the cigarette mingled lightly as the talking and laughter mingled with the chords Barbarella Viti struck haphazard on the keys. Ludovico whispered a word or two in his cousin's ear, which the Princess forthwith communicated to her friends, for there was a renewed burst of laughter, ringing and deep, like a string of pearls dropping into a silverbowl. Then Barbarella took up Bizet's air again in a low voice—
'Tra, la la—Le papillon s'est envolé—Tra, la la——'
Andrea was anxiously on the watch for a favourable moment at which to interrupt Lord Heathfield's harangue and make his escape. But the collector had entered upon a series of rounded periods, each intimately connected with the other, without one break, without one pause for breath. A single stop would have saved the persecuted listener, but it never came, and the victim's torments grew more unbearable every minute.
'Oui! Le papillon s'est envolé—Oui! Ah! ah! ah! ah!'
Andrea looked at his watch.
'Two o'clock already! Excuse me, Marquis, but I must go.'
He left the window and went over to the ladies.
'Will you excuse me, Princess, I have a consultation at two with the veterinary surgeons at my stables?'
He took leave in a great hurry. Elena gave him the tips of her fingers, Barbarella presented him withfondant, saying—'Give it to poor Mallecho with my love.'
Ludovico offered to accompany him.
'No, no—stay where you are.'
He bowed and left—flew down the stairs like lightning and jumped into his carriage, shouting to the coachman—
'To the Pincio—quick!'
He was filled with a frenzied longing to reach Maria Ferrès' side, to enjoy the delights which he had refused before. The rapid pace of his horses was not quick enough for him. He looked out anxiously for the Trinità de' Monti, the avenue—the gates.
The carriage flashed through the gates. He ordered the coachman to moderate his pace and to drive through each of the avenues. His heart gave a bound every time the figure of a woman appeared in the distance through the trees. He got out and, on foot, explored the paths forbidden to vehicles. He searched every nook and corner—in vain.
The Villa Borghese being open to the public, the Pincio lay deserted and silent under the languid smile of the February sun. Few carriages or foot-passengers disturbed the peaceful solitude of the place. The grayish-white trees, tinged here and there with violet, spread their leafless branches against a diaphanous sky, and the air was full of delicate spider-webs which the breeze shook and tore asunder. The pines and cypresses—all the evergreen trees—took on something of this colourless pallor, seemed to fade and melt into the all-prevailing monotone.
Surely something of Donna Maria's sadness still lingered in the atmosphere. Andrea stood for several minutes leaning against the railings of the Villa Medici, crushed beneath a load of melancholy too heavy to be borne.
In the days that followed, the double pursuit continued with the same tortures, or worse, and with the same odious mendacity. By a phenomenon which is of frequent occurrence in the moral degradation of men of keen intellect, he now had a terrible lucidity of conscience, a lucidity without interruptions, without a moment of dimness or eclipse. He knew what he was doing and criticised what he had done. With him self-scorn went hand in hand with feebleness of will.
But his variable humour, his incertitude, his unaccountable silences and equally unaccountable effusions, in short, all the peculiarities of manner which such a condition of mind inevitably brings along with it, only increased and excited the passionate commiseration of Donna Maria. She saw him suffer, and it filled her with grief and tenderness. 'By slow degrees I shall cure him,' she thought. But slowly and surely, without being aware of it, she was losing her strength of purpose and was bending to the sick man's will.
The downward slope was gentle.
In the drawing-room of the Countess Starnina, an indefinable thrill ran through her when she felt Andrea's gaze upon her bare shoulders and arms. It was the first time he had seen her in evening dress. Her face and her hands were all he knew. This evening he saw how exquisite was the shape of her neck and shoulders and of her arms too, although they were a little thin.
She was dressed in ivory-white brocade trimmed with sable. A narrow band of fur edged the low bodice and imparted an indescribable delicacy to the tints of the skin. The line ofthe shoulders, from the neck to the top of the arms, had that gracious slope which is such a sure mark of physical aristocracy and so rare nowadays. In her magnificent hair, arranged in the manner affected by Verocchio for his busts, there was not one jewel, not one flower.
At two or three propitious moments, Andrea murmured words of passionate admiration in her ear.
'This is the first time we have met in society,' he said to her. 'Give me a glove as a souvenir.'
'No.'
'Why not, Maria?'
'No, no. Be quiet.'
'Oh, those hands of yours! Do you remember when I copied them at Schifanoja? I feel as if I had a right to them; as if you ought to grant them to me; of your whole person they are the part that is most intimately connected with your soul, the most spiritualised, almost, one might say, the purest—Oh, hands of kindness—hands of pardon. How dearly I should love to possess at least a semblance of their form, some token to which their delicate perfume still clings. You will give me a glove before you leave?'
She did not answer. The conversation dropped. A short time afterwards, on being asked to play, she consented, and drawing off her gloves laid them on the music-stand in front of her. Her fingers, tapering and glittering with rings, looked very white as she drew off their delicate covering. On the ring finger of her left hand blazed a great opal.
She played the two Sonata-Fantasias of Beethoven (Op. 27). The one, dedicated to Giulietta Guicciardi, expressed a hopeless renunciation, told of an awakening after a dream that had lasted too long. The other, from the first bars of theAndante, described by its full smooth rhythm the calm that comes after the storm; then, passing through the disquietude of the second movement, opened out into anAdagioof luminous serenity, and ended in anAllegro Vivacein which there was a rising note of courage, almost of fervour.
Though surrounded by an attentive audience, Andrea feltthat she was playing for him alone. From time to time, his eyes wandering from the fingers of the pianist to the long gloves hanging from the music stand, which still retained the form of those hands, still preserved an inexpressible charm in the small opening at the wrist where, but a short time ago, a tiny morsel of her soft flesh had been visible.
Maria rose amidst a round of applause. She left the piano, but she did not take away her gloves. Andrea was tempted to steal them.—Had she not perhaps left them for him?—But he only wanted one. As a connoisseur in amatory matters has said, a pair of gloves is a totally different thing from a single one.
Led back to the piano by the insistence of the Countess Starnina, Maria removed her gloves from the desk and placed them in a corner of the keyboard, in the shadow. She then played Rameau's Gavotte—the Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies—the never-to-be-forgotten dance of Indifference and Love.
Andrea regarded her fixedly with a little trepidation. When she rose, she took up one of her gloves. The other she left in the shadowy corner of the piano—for him.
Three days afterwards, when astonished Rome had awakened to find itself under a covering of snow, Andrea received a note to the following effect—
'Tuesday, 2 p. m.—To-night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, you will wait for me in a carriage in front of the Palazzo Barberini, outside the gates. If by midnight I am not there, you can go away again.—A stranger.'
The tone of the note was mysterious and romantic. Was it in remembrance of the 25th of March two years ago? Lady Heathfield seemed particularly fond of the use of carriages in her love affairs. Had she the intention of taking up the adventure at the point where it broke off? And why—A stranger? Andrea could not repress a smile. He had just come back from a visit to Maria—a very pleasing visit—and his heart inclined, for the moment, more to the Siennese than to the other. His ear still retained the sound of her sweet and gentle words as they stood together at the windowand watched the snow falling soft as peach or apple blossom on the trees of the Villa Aldobrandini, already touched with the presentiment of the coming Spring. However, before going out to dinner, he gave very particular orders to Stephen.
Eleven o'clock found him in front of the palace, devoured by impatience and curiosity. The novelty of the situation, the spectacle of the snowy night, the mystery and uncertainty of it all, inflamed his imagination and transported him beyond the realities of life.
Over Rome, on that memorable February night, there shone a full moon of fabulous size and unheard of splendour. In that immense radiance, the surrounding objects seemed to exist only as in a dream, impalpable, meteoric, and visible at a great distance by virtue of some fantastic irradiation of their own. The snow covered the railings of the gateway, concealing the iron and transforming it into a piece of open-work, more frail and airy than filigree; while the white-robed Colossi supported it as oaks support a spider's web. The garden looked like a motionless forest of enormous and mis-shapen lilies all of ice; a garden under some lunar enchantment, a lifeless paradise of Selene. Mute, solemn and massive the Palazzo Barberini reared its great bulk into the sky, its most salient points standing out dazzlingly white and casting a pale blue shadow as transparent as light.
He waited, leaning forward on the watch; and under the fascination of that marvellous spectacle, he felt the spirits that wait on love awake in him, that the lyric summits of his sentiment began to gleam and glitter like the frozen shafts of the gateway under the moon. But he could not make up his mind which of the two women he would prefer as the centre of this fantastic scenery: Elena Heathfield robed in imperial purple, or Maria Ferrès robed in ermine. And as he lingered pleasurably over this uncertainty of choice, he ended by mingling and confounding his two anxieties—the real one for Elena and the imaginary one for Maria.
A clock near by struck in the silence with a clear vibratingsound, and each stroke seemed to break something crystalline in the air. The clock of the Trinità de' Monti responded to the call, and after that the clock of the Quirinal—then others faintly out of the distance. It was a quarter past eleven.
Andrea strained his eyes towards the portico. Would she dare to traverse the garden on foot? He pictured the figure of Elena in the midst of all this dazzling whiteness, then, in an instant, that of Donna Maria appeared to him, obliterating the other, triumphant over the whiteness,Candida super nivem. This night of moonlight and snow then was under the dominance of Maria Ferrès as under some invincible actual influence. The image of the pure creature grew symbolically out of the sovereign purity of the surrounding aspect of things. The symbol re-acted forcibly on the spirit of the poet.
While still watching to see if the other one would come, he gave himself up to a vision suggested by the scene before him.
It was a poetic, almost a mystic dream. He was waiting for Donna Maria—she had chosen this night of supernatural purity on which to sacrifice her own purity to her lover's desire. All the white things about her, cognisant of the great sacrifice about to be accomplished, were waiting to cryAveandAmenat the passage of their sister. The silence was alive.
And behold, she comes!Incedit per lilia et super nivem.She comes, robed in ermine; her tresses bound about with a fillet; her steps lighter than a shadow; the moon and the snow are less pale than she—Ave!
A shadow, azure as the light that tints the sapphire, accompanies her. The great mis-shapen lilies bend not as she passes; the frost has congealed them, has made them like the asphodels that illumine the paths of Hades. And yet, like those of the Christian paradise, they have a voice and say with one accord—Amen.
So be it—the Beloved glides on to the sacrifice. Alreadyshe nears the watcher sitting mute and icy, but whose eyes are burning and eloquent. And on her hands, the dear hands that close his wounds and open the doors of dreams, he presses his kiss.—So be it.
Then on her lips, the dear lips that know no word of falseness, he lays his kiss. Released from the fillet, her hair spreads like a glorious flood in which all the shadows of the night put to flight by the moon and the snow seem to have taken refuge.Comis suis obumbrabit tibi, et sub comis peccavit. Amen.
And still the other did not come! Through the silence, through the poetry, the hours of men sounded again from the towers and belfries of Rome. A carriage or two rolled noiselessly past the Four Fountains towards the Piazza or crawled slowly up towards Santa Maria Maggiore; and each street-lamp shone yellow as a topaz in the light. It seemed as if the night, reaching its highest point, had grown more luminously radiant. The filigree of the gateway twinkled and flashed as if its silver embroideries were studded with jewels. In the palace, great circles of dazzling light shone on the windows like diamond florins.
'What if she does not come?' thought Andrea to himself.
The flood of lyric fervour that had passed over his soul at Maria's name had submerged the anxiety of his vigil, had appeased his desire and calmed his impatience. For a moment, the thought that she would not come only made him smile. But the next, the anguish of uncertainty began again worse than ever, and he was tortured by the vision of the joys that might have been his, here in the warm carriage where the roses breathed so sweet an atmosphere. Besides which, his sufferings were further increased, as on New Year's Eve, by a sharp touch of wounded vanity; it annoyed him particularly that his delicate preparations for a love scene should thus be wasted and useless.
In the carriage, the cold was tempered by the pleasant warmth diffused by a metal foot-warmer, full of hot water. A bunch of white roses, snowy, moonlike, lay on the bracketin front of the seat. A white bear-skin covered his knees. Everything pointed to an intentional arrangement of a sort ofSymphonie en blanc-majeur.
The clocks struck for the third time. It was a quarter to twelve. The vigil had lasted too long—Andrea was growing tired and cross. In Elena's apartments, in the left wing of the palace, there was no light but that which came from outside. Was she coming? And if so, in what manner? Secretly? Under what pretext? Lord Heathfield was certainly in Rome—how would she explain her nocturnal absence? Once more the soul of the former lover was torn with curiosity; once more jealousy gnawed at his heart and carnal passion inflamed him. He thought of Musellaro's derisive suggestion about the husband, and he determined to have Elena again at all costs, both for pleasure and for revenge. Oh, if only she would come!
A carriage drove through the gates and into the garden. He leaned forward to look at it. He recognised Elena's horses and caught a glimpse inside of the figure of a woman. The carriage disappeared into the portico. He remained perplexed. She had been out then? She had returned alone? He fixed a scrutinising gaze upon the portico. The carriage came out, passed through the garden and drove away towards the Via Rasella; it was empty.
It wanted but two or three minutes to midnight and she had not come!
It struck the hour. A bitter pang smote the heart of the deluded watcher. She was not coming.
Unable to see any cause for her having missed the appointment he turned upon her in sudden anger; he even had a suspicion that she might have wished to inflict a humiliation, a punishment upon him, or else that she had merely indulged in a whim in order to inflame his desire afresh. The next moment he called to the coachman—
'Piazza del Quirinale.'
He yielded to the attraction of Maria Ferrès; he abandoned himself once more to the vaguely tender sentiment which,ever since his visit in the afternoon, had left, as it were, a perfume in his soul and suggested to him thoughts and images of poetic beauty. The recent disappointment, proving, as he considered, Elena's malice and indifference, urged him more strongly than ever towards the love and goodness of the other. His regret for the loss of so beautiful a night increased, under the influence of the vision he had dreamed just now. And, truth to tell, it was one of the most enchanting nights Rome had ever known; one of those spectacles that oppress the human soul with deep sadness, because they transcend all power of admiration, all possibility of human expression.
The Piazza del Quirinale, magnified by the all-pervading whiteness, lay spread out solitary and dazzling, like an Olympian acropolis above the silent city. The edifices surrounding it reared their stately proportions into the deep sky; Bernini's great portal to the royal palace surmounted by the loggia offered an optical delusion by seeming to detach itself from the building and stand out all alone in all its unwieldy magnificence, like some mausoleum sculptured out of a meteoric block of stone. The rich architraves to the Palazzo della Consulta were curiously transformed by the accumulated masses of snow. Sublime amidst the uniform whiteness, the colossal statues seemed to dominate all things. The grouping of the Dioscuri and the horses looked bolder and larger in that light; the broad backs of the steeds glittered under jewelled trappings, there was a sparkle as of diamonds on the shoulders and the uplifted arm of each demi-god.
An august solemnity flowed from the monument. Rome lay plunged in a death-like silence, motionless, empty—a city under a spell. The houses, the churches, the spires and turrets, all the confusion and intermingling of Christian and Pagan architecture, resolved itself into one unbroken forest between the heights of the Janiculum and the Monte Mario, drowned in a silvery vapour, far off, infinitely immaterial, reminding one a little of a lunar landscape, calling up visionsof some half extinct planet peopled by shades. The dome of St. Peter's, shining with a peculiar metallic lustre in the blue atmosphere looked gigantic and so close that one might have thought to touch it. And the two youthful Heroes, sons of the Swan, radiant with beauty in the vast expanse of whiteness as in the apotheosis of their origin, seemed to be the immortal Genii of Rome guarding the slumbers of the sacred city.
The carriage stopped in front of the palace and remained there for a long time. The poet was once more absorbed in his impossible dream. And Maria Ferrès was quite near, was perhaps watching and dreaming also, perhaps she too felt the grandeur of the night weighing upon her heart and crushing it in vain.
Slowly the carriage passed her closed door, while the windows reflected the full moon gazing at the hanging gardens of the Villa Aldobrandini where the trees looked like aërial miracles. And as he passed, the poet threw the bunch of roses on to the snow before Donna Maria's door in token of homage.
'I saw—I guessed—I had been at the window for a long time, unable to tear myself away from the fascination of all that whiteness. I saw the carriage pass slowly in the snow. I felt that it was you, before I saw you throw the roses. No words can describe to you the tenderness of my tears. I wept for you from love and for the roses out of pity. Poor roses! It seemed to me that they were alive and must suffer and die in the snow. I seemed to hear them call to me and lament like human creatures that have been deserted. As soon as your carriage had disappeared, I leaned out of the window to look at them. I was on the point of going down into the street to pick them up. But a servant was still in the hall waiting up for some one. I thought of a thousand plans but could find none that was practicable. I was in despair—You smile? Truly, I hardly know what madness had come over me. I watched the passers-by anxiously, my eyes full of tears. If any one of them had trodden on the roses, he would have trampled upon my heart. And yet in all this torment I was happy, happy in your love, in the delicacy of your passionate homage, in your gentleness, your kindness.—When, at last I fell asleep, I was sad and happy together; the roses must have been nearly dead by that time. After an hour or two of sleep, the sound of spades upon the pavement woke me up. They were shovelling away the snow just in front of my door. I listened; the noise and the voices continued till after daylight and filled me with unutterable sadness!—Poor roses! But they will always live and bloom in my heart. There are certain memories thatcan perfume a soul for ever—Do you love me very much, Andrea?'
She hesitated for a moment, and then—'Do you love only me? Have you forgotten all the rest? Do all your thoughts belong to me?'
Her breath came fast and she was trembling.
'I suffer—at the thought of your former life,—the past of which I know nothing—of your memories, of all the marks left upon your soul, of that in you which I shall never understand never possess. Oh, if I could but wipe it all out for you! Incessantly, Andrea, I hear your first, your very first words. I believe I shall hear them at the moment of my death——'
She panted and trembled, shaken by the force of all-conquering passion.
'Every day I love you more, every day more!'
He intoxicated her with words of honied sweetness; he was more fervent than herself; he told her of his visions in the night of snow and of his despairing desire and some plausible story of the roses and a thousand other lyric fancies. He judged her to be on the point of yielding—he saw her eyes swim in melting languor, and on her plaintive mouth that nameless contraction which seems like an instinctive dissimulation of the physical desire to kiss; he looked at her hands, so delicate and yet so strong, the hands of an archangel, and saw them trembling like the strings of an instrument expressing all the anguish of her soul. 'If, to-day, I could succeed in stealing even the most fleeting kiss from her,' he thought, 'I should find myself considerably nearer the goal of my desires.'
But, conscious of her peril, she rose hastily with an apology and, ringing the bell, ordered tea and sent to ask Miss Dorothy to bring Delfina to the drawing-room.
'It is better so,' she said, turning to Andrea with the traces of her agitation still visible in her face; 'forgive me!'
And from that day she avoided receiving him except on Tuesday and Saturday when she was at home to every one.
Nevertheless, she allowed Andrea to conduct her on long peregrinations through the Rome of the Emperors and the Rome of the Popes, through the villas, the museums, the churches, the ruins. Where Elena Muti had passed, there Maria Ferrès passed also. Often enough, the sights they visited suggested to the poet the same eloquent effusions which Elena had once heard. Often enough, some recollection carried him away suddenly from the present and disturbed him strangely.
'What are you thinking of at this moment?' Donna Maria would ask him, looking him deep in the eyes with a shade of suspicion.
'Of you—always of you!' he answered. 'I am sometimes seized with curiosity to look into my own soul to see if there remains one tiny particle that does not belong to you, one smallest corner still closed to your light It is an exploration made for you, as you cannot make it for yourself. I may say with truth, Maria, that I have nothing more to give you. You have absolute dominion over me. Never, I think, in spirit has one human being possessed another so entirely. If my lips were to meet yours my whole life would be absorbed in yours—I believe I should die of it.'
She had full faith in his words, for his voice lent them the fire of truth.
One day, they were in the Belvedere of the Villa Medici and were watching the gold of the sun fade slowly from the sky while the Villa Borghese, still bare and leafless, sank gently into a violet mist. Touched with sudden melancholy she said:
'Who knows how many times you have come here to feel yourself beloved?'
'I do not know,' he answered, like a man lost in a dream, 'I do not remember. What are you saying?'
She was silent. Then she rose to read the inscriptions written on the pillars of the little temple. They were, for the most part, written by lovers, by newly-married couples, by solitary dreamers. All expressed some sentiment of love,grave or gay; they sang the praises of a beauty or mourned a lost delight; they told of some burning kiss or ecstasy of languor; they thanked the ancient wooded glades that had sheltered their love, pointed out some secret nook to the happy visitor of the morrow, described the lingering charms of a sunset they had watched. All of them, whether lovers or married, under the fascination of the eternal feminine had been seized with lyric fervour in this little lonely Belvedere to which they ascended by a flight of steps carpeted with moss as thick as velvet. The very walls spoke. An indefinable melancholy emanated from these unknown voices of vanished lovers, a sadness that seemed almost sepulchral, as if they had been epitaphs in a chapel.
Suddenly Maria turned to Andrea. 'You have been here too,' she said.
'I do not know,' he answered again, looking at her in the same dreamy way as before, 'I do not remember. I remember nothing. I love you.'
She read, written in Andrea's hand, an epigram of Goethe's, a distich, the one beginning—Sage, wie lebst du?Say, how livest thou?Ich lebe!I live! 'And were it mine to live a hundred, hundred years, my only wish would be that to-morrow should be as to-day.' Underneath this there was a date:Die ultima februarii1885, and a name:Helena Amyclæ.
'Let us go,' she said.
The canopy of branches cast deep shadows over the little moss-carpeted stairway.
'Will you take my arm?' he asked.
'No, thank you,' she replied.
They went on in silence. The heart of each was heavy.
Presently she said—'You were very happy two years ago.'
And he, persisting in his tone of reverie—'I do not know—I do not remember.'
In the green twilight, the path was mysterious. The trunks and branches of the trees were coiled and interlacedlike serpents; here and there a leaf gleamed through the shade like an emerald green eye.
After an interval of silence, she began again—'Who was that Elena?'
'I do not know, I have forgotten. I remember nothing but that I love you. I love none but you. I think only of you. I live for you alone. I know nothing, I wish for nothing but your love. Every fetter that binds me to my former life is broken. Now I am far from the world, utterly lost in you. I live in your heart and in your soul; Ifeel myselfin every throb of your pulse; I do not touch you, and yet I am as close to you as if I held you in my arms, pressed to my lips, to my heart. I love you and you love me; and that has been for ages and will last for ages, to all eternity. At your side, thinking of you, living in you, I am conscious of the infinite—the eternal—I love you and you love me. I know nothing else—I remember nothing else.'
On all her sadness, all her suspicions, he poured out a flood of warm fond eloquence. And she listened, standing straight and slender in front of the balustrade that runs round the wide terrace.
'Is it true? is it true?' she repeated, in a faint voice like the echo of a moan out of the depth of her soul—'is that true?'
'Yes, it is true—and that alone is true. All the rest is a dream. I love you and you love me. I am yours as you are mine. I know you to be so absolutely mine that I ask for no caress; I ask for no proof of your love. I can wait. My dearest delight is to obey you. I ask for no caresses, but I can feel them in your voice, in your eyes, your attitudes, your slightest movement. All that comes to me from you intoxicates me like a kiss, and when I touch your hand I know not which is greater, the rapture of my senses or the exaltation of my soul.'
He lightly laid his hand on hers. She trembled, drawn by a wild desire to throw herself upon his breast to offer him, at last, her lips, her kiss, herself. It seemed to her—for shebelieved blindly in Andrea's words—that by so doing, she would bind him to her finally with an indissoluble bond. She felt that she was going to swoon, to die. It was as if the tumults of passion from which she had already suffered swelled her heart and increased the present storm; as if, into this one moment of time were gathered all the varying emotions she had experienced since she first knew this man. The roses of Schifanoja bloomed again among the shrubs and laurels of the Villa Medici.
'I shall wait, Maria. I shall be true to my promises. I ask nothing of you. I wait and look forward to the supreme moment. That moment will come, I know it, for the power of love is invincible. And all your fears, all your terrors will vanish; and the communion of the body will seem to you as pure as the communion of the soul; for all flames are alike in purity.'
He clasped Maria's ungloved hand in his. The gardens seemed deserted. From the palace of the Accademia came not a sound, not a voice. Clear through the silence, they heard the lisp of the fountain in the middle of the esplanade; the avenues stretched away towards the Pincio, straight and rigid as if enclosed between two walls of bronze, upon which the gilding of the sunset still lingered; the absolute immobility of all things suggested the idea of a petrified labyrinth; the reeds round the basin of the fountain were not less motionless than the statues.
'I feel,' said Donna Maria, half-closing her eyes, 'as if I were on one of the terraces at Schifanoja—far, far away from Rome—alone—with you. When I shut my eyes, I see the sea.'
Born of her love and of the silence, she saw a vision rise up before her and spread wide under the setting sun. Andrea's gaze was upon her; she said no more, but she smiled faintly. As she uttered the two words—'with you'—she closed her eyes, but her mouth seemed suddenly to grow luminous as if on it were concentrated all the splendour veiled by her quivering lids and her eyelashes.
'I feel as if none of these things existed outside of my consciousness, but that you had created them in my soul, for my delight. I am profoundly affected with this illusion each time I stand before some spectacle of beauty and you are at my side.'
The words came slowly, with pauses in between, as if her voice were the halting echo of some other voice imperceptible to the senses, imparting to her words a singular accent, a tone of mystery, revealing that they proceeded from the innermost depths of her heart; they were no longer the ordinary imperfect symbols of thoughts, they were transformed into a more intense means of expression, transcendant, quivering with life, of infinitely ampler signification.