Shadows of Flames Part 5

"Will you dance this with me?" Amaldi was asking.

And as she moved off with him, it seemed as if they had often danced together before.

When they stopped they found themselves near the conservatory.

"Let us sit in there a while," she said.

They sat down near a bank of gardenias, and Amaldi fanned her with her fan of white peac.o.c.k feathers.

"You're not afraid to use peac.o.c.k's feathers?" he asked, smiling. "In Italy we are superst.i.tious about them."

She answered, smiling also: "I have my full share of superst.i.tion, but not about things like that. Are you really afraid of peac.o.c.k's feathers?"

"No; but my mother wouldn't have one near her for worlds. She says that she has added all the Italian superst.i.tions to the American ones."

"Is your mother an American?" said Sophy, surprised and pleased at this idea. If Amaldi's mother was an American, that would account in a great measure, she thought, for her feeling towards him--that odd feeling of having known him before.

"Yes," Amaldi was saying. "I am half American through my mother. She was a Miss Brainton."

"I am an American," said Sophy; "a Virginian. My name was Sophy Taliaferro. And that's odd"--she broke off, realising that her maiden name was probably of Italian origin--"because, though it's p.r.o.nounced 'Tolliver,' it's spelt 'Taliaferro.' I never really thought of it before--but the first Taliaferro must have been an Italian!"

"Why, yes," said Amaldi eagerly, "There is a Tagliaferro family in Italy."

"So you're half American and I'm half Italian," she went on, looking at him pleasedly out of her candid eyes. "Such coincidences _are_ strange, aren't they?"

"They're very delightful," said Amaldi, in a voice as frank as her look.

He was thinking: "You are the woman I have imagined all my life. It seems very wonderful that you should have Italian blood."

Sophy liked this frank voice of his and the clear look in his eyes so much that she gave way to impulse.

"It seems to me," she said with the smile that he was beginning to watch for, "that Fate means us to become friends."

Amaldi thought: "And there is something of the child in you that makes me worship."

He said a little formally, but with feeling:

"I should consider that the greatest honour that could come to me." Then he added, also under impulse: "Since you're so kind, I'd like to confess something. May I?"

"Yes--do!" said Sophy, still smiling.

"It is this: When Varesca introduced me to you this evening, I had the feeling of having known you before. Strange, wasn't it?"

She was looking at him, her lips parted. She hesitated an instant, then said:

"It was even stranger than you know--because I, too, had that feeling about you. Such things almost make one believe in the old Hindu ideas.

Perhaps in some other world and age we have been friends already. It's really very mysterious...."

"But, after all," said Amaldi, "mystery is what makes life worth while."

"I know," she said; "yet people are always trying to solve it...."

"Yes; that's one of its chief uses, I suppose--but not its end."

Sophy looked at him, interested.

"What do you think its end is?" she asked.

"Itself," he answered. He went on in a lighter tone: "The destiny of the Churchly G.o.d has always seemed so dreary to me. Think of it! A supremely well-informed Supreme Man--for whom there could be no mystery. An immortality of sound information that couldn't be added to or subtracted from!"

"We really couldn't help being friends, you know!" said Sophy, smiling.

"You must come to see me. My husband is not very well--so I don't give dinners or parties or go out much myself. But I like to have my friends come to see me."

Amaldi thought:

"You have the most beautiful heart, and I don't misunderstand it. It is full only of kindness. I shall suffer ... _ma ciao!_"

"_Ciao_" is Milanese, and it means many things.

V

It was four o'clock when Sophy and Mrs. Arundel left the ball. Olive would not hear of her taking a cab, but sent her home in her own carriage. As she rolled through the empty streets, above which the dawn was beginning to quicken, Sophy had a queer feeling of driving through the echoing halls of a vast and sinister house from which the roof had been lifted.

Above Regent's Park a late moon hung bleak and gla.s.sy. It shone with that wan glare as of a planet sick to death. Richard Burton's line about the moon occurred to her: "A corpse upon the way of night." The reaction of her extraordinary exhilaration of the early evening was upon her. All about her seemed eldritch, sinister. Even the sparrows, the town's familiars, the excellent, shrewd gossips of the pavement, seemed unlike real birds.

When she entered her own hall, the sight of the pallid, heavy-eyed footman who admitted her distressed her still further. She hated servants to have to wait up for her. She always gave Tilda strict orders to go to bed.

The footman lighted and gave her her bedroom candle. Chesney disliked gas to burn all night.

"Good-night, William. I'm afraid you are very tired," said Sophy.

"Not at all, madam," said William politely. His tone suggested that he really preferred taking his rest on a hard hall-chair with an hour's nap in bed before rising at six o'clock.

Sophy sighed as she went upstairs. All her exultant feeling of the evening had been only another illusion. The time was out of joint again.

As she pa.s.sed Chesney's door, a thick, heavy smell of lamp-smoke made her turn. She tried the k.n.o.b softly. The door opened, and the nauseous smell flooded her. Yes; he had gone to sleep still poring over that odious book. The lamp, almost burnt out, was sending up a thick, brownish smoke--the wick, barely moist with oil, was fringed with little mushrooms of fire. Sophy extinguished the lamp and stood gazing down at her husband. He had been a magnificent looking man, three years ago. He was still handsome, but in the way that a fine stallion is still handsome when its withers and back begin to sink. It was as if he were sinking in on himself--as if the great muscles and sinews were relaxing like elastic that has been over-used. Holding the candle closer, Sophy gazed and gazed at him. It was as if she were gazing at a stranger.

There was a fine spangling of sweat on his broad forehead; as he breathed his lips puffed in and out. They looked dry and cracked. He slept heavily, as though his veins held lead, as though his limbs were weighted. The solid heaviness of his sleep struck her as appalling. And, suddenly, what Olive had told her rushed over her again. Standing motionless, her eyes took frightened scurries about the room, over the bed, the dressing-table, the little stand that supported the lamp. A gla.s.s and bottle that had held cognac stood empty. She bent closer--then suddenly drew back ashamed. She was not like Psyche spying on Love with her candle; but a woman gazing at defenceless sensuality--at the degraded body that had once housed love. An immense pity came over her.

She felt that she had been guilty towards him--guilty of staring at his bare degradation with calm eyes while he lay unconscious. She was not being his wife but a cold critic. And perhaps--perhaps, it was only she who could save him, who could restore to him his real self.

Setting down her candle, she drew away the obscene book from under his heavy hands, closed it, and laid it to one side. He did not stir or mutter. Then she knelt down beside him, hiding her face against the bed.

She wished to pray for him and for herself. But her thoughts scattered, whirled with the coiling sparkles against her closed eyelids.

"Mystery ... Mystery ... Mystery ..." This word kept beating through her mind. Yes; it was all mysterious--pain, joy, illness, health, goodness, vice--even love. But love was the greatest mystery of all. Whence did it come, and whither go? Where was her love for Cecil?

"Mystery ... Mystery ... Mystery."