Cecilia Part 9

Lamberti's similes lacked sequence, but not character.

"The Romans," observed Guido, "began with the egg and ended with the apple. I have an idea that we are going to do the same thing at dinner, and that there will be nothing between. But we can smoke between the courses."

"Yes," answered Lamberti, who had not heard a word. "I daresay."

Guido looked at him again, rather furtively. Lamberti never drank and had iron nerves, but he was visibly disturbed. He was what people vaguely call "not quite himself."

Guido went to the door of his bedroom.

"Where are you going?" asked Lamberti, sharply.

"I am going to wash my hands before dinner," Guido answered with a smile. "Do you want to wash yours?"

"No, thank you. I have just dressed."

He turned his back and went to the open window as Guido left the room.

In a few seconds his cigar had gone out again, and he was leaning on the sill with both hands, staring at the twilight sky in the west. The colours had all faded away to the almost neutral tint of straw-tempered steel.

The outline of the Janiculum stood out sharp and black in an uneven line. Below, there were the scattered lights of Trastevere, the flowing river, and the silence of the deserted Via Giulia. Lamberti looked steadily out, biting his extinguished cigar, and his features contracted as if he were in pain.

He had come to his friend instinctively, as his friend would have come to him, meaning to tell him what had happened. But he hesitated.

Besides, it might all have been only his imagination; in part it could have been nothing else, and the rest was a mere coincidence. But he had never been an imaginative man, and it was strange that he should be so much affected by a mere illusion.

He started and turned suddenly, sure that some one was close behind him.

But there was no one, and a moment later Guido came back. Anxious not to annoy his friend by anything like curiosity, he made a pretence of setting his writing table in order, turned one of the lamps down a little--he hated electric light--and then looked at the picture over the fireplace.

"Did you ever hear of that Baumgarten, the German art critic?" he asked, without turning round.

"Baumgarten--let me see! I fancy I have seen the name to-day." Lamberti tried to concentrate his attention.

"You just read it in my aunt's letter," Guido answered. "You remember--she asks if he may come to-morrow. I wonder why."

"To value your property, of course," replied Lamberti, roughly.

"Do you think so?" Guido did not seem at all surprised. "I daresay. She is quite capable of it. She is welcome to everything I possess if she will only leave me in peace. But just now, when she has evidently made up her mind to marry me to this new heiress, it does not seem likely that she would take trouble to find out what my pictures are worth, does it?"

"It all depends on what she thinks of the chances that you will marry or not."

"What do you think of them, yourself?" asked Guido, idly.

He was glad of anything to talk about while Lamberti was in his present mood.

"What a question!" exclaimed the latter. "How should I know whether you are going to fall in love with the girl or not?"

"I am half afraid I am," said Guido, thoughtfully.

His man announced dinner, and the two friends crossed the hall to the little dining room, and sat down under the soft light of the old-fashioned olive-oil lamp that hung from the ceiling. Everything on the table was old, worn, and spotless. The silver was all of the style of the first Empire, with an interlaced monogram surmounted by a royal crown. The same device was painted in gold in the middle of the plain white plates, which were more or less chipped at the edges. The gla.s.ses and decanters were of that heavy cut gla.s.s, ornamented with gold lines, which used to be made in Venice in the eighteenth century. Some of them were chipped, too, like the plates. It had never occurred to Guido to put the whole service away as a somewhat valuable collection, though he sometimes thought that it was growing shabby. But he liked the old things which had come to him from the ex-king, part of the furniture of a small shooting box that had been left to him, and which he had sold to an Austrian Archduke.

Lamberti took a little soup and swallowed half a gla.s.s of white wine.

"I had an odd dream last night," he said, "and I have had a little adventure to-day. I will tell you by-and-by."

"Just as you like," Guido answered. "I hope the adventure was not an accident--you look as if you had been badly shaken."

"Yes. I did not know that I could be so nervous. You see, I do not often dream. I generally go to sleep when I lay my head upon the pillow and wake when I have slept seven hours. At sea, I always have to be called when it is my watch. Yes, I have solid nerves. But last night----"

He stopped, as the man entered, bringing a dish.

"Well?" enquired Guido, who did not suppose that Lamberti could have any reason for not telling his dream in the presence of the servant.

Lamberti hesitated a moment, and helped himself before he answered.

"Do you believe in dreams?" he asked.

"What do you mean? Do I believe that dreams come true? No. When they do, it is a coincidence."

"Yes. I suppose so. But this is rather more than a coincidence. I do not understand it at all. After all, I am a perfectly healthy man. It never occurred to you that my mind might be unbalanced, did it?"

Guido looked at the rugged Roman head, the muscular throat, the broad shoulders.

"No," he answered. "It certainly never occurred to me."

"Nor to me either," said Lamberti, and he ate slowly and thoughtfully.

"My friend," observed Guido, "you are just a little enigmatical this evening."

"Not at all, not at all! I tell you that my nerves are good. You know something about archaeology, do you not?"

The apparently irrelevant question came after a short pause.

"Not much," Guido answered, supposing that Lamberti wished to change the subject on account of the servant. "What do you want to know?"

"Nothing," said Lamberti. "The question is, whether what I dreamt last night was all imagination or whether it was a memory of something I once knew and had forgotten."

"What did you dream?" Guido sipped his wine and leaned back to listen, hoping that his friend was going to speak out at last.

"Was the temple of Vesta in the Forum?" enquired Lamberti.

"Certainly."

"But why did they always say that it was the round one in front of Santa Maria in Cosmedin? I have an old bronze inkstand that is a model of it.

My mother used to tell me it was the temple of Vesta."

"People thought it was--thirty years ago. There is nothing left of the temple but the round ma.s.s of masonry on which it stood. It is between the Fountain of Juturna and the house of the Vestals. I have Signor Boni's plans of it. Should you like to see them?"

"Yes--presently," answered Lamberti, with more eagerness than Guido had expected. "Is there anything like a reconstruction of the temple or of the house--a picture of one, I mean?"

"I think so," said Guido. "I am sure there is Balda.s.sare Peruzzi's sketch of the temple, as it was in his day."