Cecilia Part 21

"No."

"He did not believe me either."

"And of course he asked you what there was between us," said Lamberti.

"Yes. I said that I could not tell him. What did you say?"

"The same thing."

There was a pause, and both realised that they were talking as if they had known each other for years, and that they understood each other almost without words. At the end of the walk they turned towards one another, and their eyes met.

"Why did you run away from me?" Lamberti asked.

"I was frightened. I was frightened to-day when you spoke to me. Why did you go to the Forum that morning?"

"I had dreamt something strange about you. It happened just where I found you."

"I dreamt the same dream, the same night. That is, I think it must have been the same."

She turned her face away, blushing red.

He saw, and understood.

"Yes," he said. "What am I to tell d'Este?" he asked, after a short pause.

"Nothing!" said Cecilia quickly, and the subsiding blush rose again.

"Besides," she continued, speaking rapidly in her embarra.s.sment, "he would not believe us, whatever we told him, and it is of no use to let him know----" she stopped suddenly.

"Has he no right to know?"

"No. At least--no--I think not. I do not mean----"

They were standing still, facing each other. In another moment she would be telling Lamberti what she had never told Guido about her feelings towards him. On a sudden she turned away with a sort of desperate movement, clasping her hands and looking over the low wall.

"Oh, what is it all?" she cried, in great distress. "I am in the dream again, talking as if I had known you all my life! What must you think of me?"

Lamberti stood beside her, resting his hands upon the wall.

"It is exactly what I feel," he said quietly.

"Then you dream, too?" she asked.

"Every night--of you."

"We are both dreaming now! I am sure of it. I shall wake up in the dark and hear the door shut softly, though I always lock it now."

"The door? Do you hear that, too?" asked Lamberti. "But I am wide awake when I hear it."

"So am I! Sometimes I can manage to turn up the electric light before the sound has quite stopped. Are we both mad? What is it? In the name of Heaven, what is it all?"

"I wish I knew. Whatever it is, if you and I meet often, it is quite impossible that we should talk like ordinary acquaintances. Yes, I thought I was going mad, and this morning I went to a great doctor and told him everything. He seemed to think it was all a set of coincidences. He advised me to see you and ask you why you ran away that day, and he thought that if we talked about it, I might perhaps not dream again."

"You are not mad, you are not mad!" Cecilia repeated the words in a low voice, almost mechanically.

Then there was silence, and presently she turned from the wall and began to walk back along the wide path that pa.s.sed by the central fountain.

The sun, long out of sight behind the hill, was sinking now, the thin violet mist had begun to rise from the Campagna far to south and east, and the mountains had taken the first tinge of evening purple. From the ilex woods above the house, the voice of a nightingale rang out in a long and delicious trill. The garden was deserted, and now and then the sound of women's laughter rippled out through the high, open door.

"We must meet soon," Lamberti said, as they reached the fountain.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should say it. She stopped and looked at him, and recognised every feature of the face she had seen in her dreams almost ever since she could remember dreaming.

Her fear was all gone now, and she was sure that it would never come back. Had she not heard him say those very words, "We must meet soon,"

hundreds and hundreds of times, just as he had said them long ago--ever so long ago--in a language that she could not remember when she was awake? And had they not always met soon?

"I shall see you to-night," she answered, almost unconsciously.

"Tell me," he said, looking into the clear water in the fountain, "does your dreaming make you restless and nervous? Does it wear on you?"

"Oh no! I have always dreamt a great deal all my life. I rest just as well."

"Yes--but those were ordinary dreams. I mean----"

"No, they were always the same. They were always about you. I almost screamed when I recognised you at the Princess's that afternoon."

"I had never dreamt of your face," said Lamberti, "but I was sure I had seen you before."

They looked down into the moving water, and the music of its fall made it harmonious with the distant song of the nightingale. Lamberti tried to think connectedly, and could not. It was as if he were under a spell.

Questions rose to his lips, but he could not speak the words, he could not put them together in the right way. Once, at sea, on the training ship, he had fallen from the foreyard, and though the fall was broken by the gear and he had not been injured, he had been badly stunned, and for more than an hour he had lost all sense of direction, of what was forward and what was aft, so that at one moment the vessel seemed to be sailing backwards, and then forwards, and then sideways. He felt something like that now, and he knew intuitively that Cecilia felt it also. Amazingly absurd thoughts pa.s.sed through his mind. Was to-morrow going to be yesterday? Would what was coming be just what was long past?

Or was there no past, no future, nothing but all time present at once?

He was not moved by Cecilia's presence in the same way that Guido was.

Guido was merely in love with her; very much in love, no doubt, but that was all. She was to him, first, the being of all others with whom he was most in sympathy, the only being whom he understood, and who, he was sure, understood him, the only being without whom life would be unendurable. And, secondly, she was the one and only creature in the world created to be his natural mate, and when he was near her he was aware of nature's mysterious forces, and felt the thrill of them continually.

Lamberti experienced nothing of that sort at present. He was overwhelmed and carried away out of the region of normal thought and volition towards something which he somehow knew was at hand, which he was sure he had reached before, but which he could not distinctly remember.

Between it and him in the past there was a wall of darkness; between him and it in the future there was a veil not yet lifted, but on which his dreams already cast strange and beautiful shadows.

"I used to see things in the water," Cecilia said softly, "things that were going to happen. That was long, long ago."

"I remember," said Lamberti, quite naturally. "You told me once----"

He stopped. It was gone back behind the wall of darkness. When he had begun to speak, quite unconsciously, he had known what it was that Cecilia had told him, but he had forgotten it all now. He pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead, and suddenly everything changed, and he came back out of an immeasurable distance to real life.

"I shall be going away in a few days," he said. "May I see you before I go?"

"Certainly. Come and see us about three o'clock. We are always at home then."

"Thank you."

They turned from the fountain while they spoke, and walked slowly towards the house.