Shadows of Flames Part 50

"But I thought----"

She broke off.

"The faith of the simple-hearted is always moving," he said. "It isn't the faith of the people I question. It is the good faith of the Roman Catholic Church towards the people."

"I see," Sophy said thoughtfully. Then she turned to him again.

"You are so much more serious about it than the other Italians I've known, who were anti-clerical. They seemed just to shrug their shoulders over it--took it half laughingly."

"A man shouldn't take it with a shrug or half laughingly that the women of his country are under the thumb of a hierarchy," said Amaldi with some vehemence. "There is a great hour coming for women, all over the world--yet a true Italian can't wish this for his country-women, as long as their fuller power would be just another weapon in the hands of priests."

"You look far ahead, Marchese. Your mother told me to-day of another movement that you foresaw. Something about 'Iconoclasts.'"

"Yes," he said, "lands that have been saturated with beauty as Italy has must precipitate some reactionary movement sooner or later. First we have the mere inertia of saturation--the numbness to beauty--the incapacity to produce or even appreciate it. Next will come the positive reaction--the rise of the Image-Breakers. What queer name they will call themselves by I can't divine--but I can forefeel their rising."

Sophy walked on in silence for a moment, then she said:

"It must be wonderful to have such a country as Italy for your birthright, and to love it as much as you do."

He glanced at her with a changed look.

"Yes--I love it," he said. But he was thinking how much more than any country he loved her.

When they left, Signorina Rosalia accompanied them down to the little landing. The engine of the _Fretta_ took up its busy hum again. Swiftly they backed away from Isola Pescatori, and spun round towards Pallanza.

"_Buona sera, Signora! Buona sera, Signor Marchese!_" called the Padrone's daughter in her high, fluting voice. She stood on the little quay in the moonlight till they were some distance out upon the lake.

"_Gli amanti--gli amanti_," she was thinking sentimentally. She stood there thrilled with the romance that she felt rushing away from her into the ecstatic moonlight....

And out there in the soft magnificence of the summer night Sophy and Amaldi sat silent, with only the little steering wheel between them.

They felt the sense of exhilaration that comes from being close to the prow of a boat speeding low on the water: they were so intimately breast to breast with the vastness of air and lake. Stresa lay behind them, a tangle of yellow sparks. The Barromean Islands brooded sleeping on their shadows. Pallanza was a faint spangle to the left. Far away in front, towards Switzerland, what seemed a silvery mist shaped like mountains, floated against the pearl dust of the sky.

Sophy leaned towards him suddenly. Her eyes looked dark and mysterious under her white, moonlit brow.

"Need we go quite so fast?" she said. "It seems a pity to hurry through such beauty."

Her obvious faith in him gave him joy and pain at the same time. If she had felt one hundredth part for him what he felt for her, she could not have suggested so simply a thing that meant their being longer together.

He set the engine to a slower speed. They had pa.s.sed Pallanza, and were running near enough the sh.o.r.e to see the ghostly loveliness of white roses and oleanders pouring above the walls of villa gardens. Where the sh.o.r.e was wild and overgrown, tangles of honeysuckle showered them with voluptuous fragrance. Above, on the hills, the little villages shone in the moonlight, like handfuls of scattered mica.

Now they had pa.s.sed Intra. The dark foliage of the Villa Bianca came into view. They could see the colonnade of its old eucalyptus trees, above the retaining-wall of granite.

"Oh, why should such lovely hours have to end--when they need not,"

sighed Sophy. "I hate convention when it lops off such hours as these like a grudging old Procrustes. Don't you hate the sheer tyranny of convention, Marchese?"

"Indeed--yes," said Amaldi.

Glancing back at their evening together, as he spoke, Sophy thought that he had been unusually taciturn. He was not a talkative man, but it really seemed to her, now that she thought of it, that he had been almost oddly silent most of the time. She wondered if he were worried about something.

High up above the thirty-foot retaining-wall, behind its palms and pollard acacias, the chalet was pouring forth a stream of light from its open door. The faithful Luigi was evidently sitting up for her.

Amaldi stepped out and held out his hand to her. Sophy was close to Amaldi on the narrow plank of the _banchetta_. That look in his face hurt her. Then his eyes turned suddenly away.

"Thank your mother for me, please, Marchese," she said, "for the lovely day she gave me, and for lending me her cloak."

She slipped it from her shoulders as she spoke and put it, all warm with herself, into Amaldi's arms. He shivered as he felt the warmth of the folds under his hands. Murmuring some civil commonplace, he stood aside to let her pa.s.s. She went up the little pathway followed by Luigi.

As she entered the doorway in the terrace-wall, the clock in the Campanile of San Maurizio, on the hill above, began slowly striking midnight. Amaldi stood until it had finished, then started the _Fretta_'s engine. He sat with one hand upon the wheel, the other grasping the folds of the grey cloak. Suddenly he bent and pressed his face upon it. It was still warm, and this warmth gave forth a fresh, faint scent of citron....

x.x.xV

That day at Le Vigne was the beginning of a very happy period for Sophy.

Not only was she infatuated with Italy, but her pleasure in it was doubled by the fact that she had two such charming friends to share it with her, to reveal it to her from within as it were. The Marchesa had perforce to accept Sophy's invitation to lunch with her at Villa Bianca--Amaldi was of course asked, too. His mother was much rea.s.sured by the perfect composure of his manner on this occasion and on others that followed in natural sequence. But what gave her the greatest feeling of security was Sophy herself. No woman in the least _eprise_ with a man could show such perfect, cordial liking for him in his mother's presence. Such was the Marchesa's opinion.

And she began to think that she might have been mistaken also about Marco. His manner, the evening that she had spoken to him on this subject, might very well have resulted from his intense dislike of personal discussions. He had always been astringently reserved, even in childhood. Altogether the Marchesa felt immensely relieved, though she did not relax a whit of her precaution. She was always one of the party on the pleasant trips they took to different points of interest on the lake, that Samuel Butler justly calls "so far the most beautiful of all even the Italian lakes."

Sophy could scarcely realise now those ghastly days at Dynehurst when the never ceasing rain had made misery more miserable. Only when Anne Harding's letters came, as they did about once a week, and when she wrote herself to Cecil, was she plucked for a moment from her joyous illusion of a new existence that might go sparkling on indefinitely. And she began to take a quiet delight in her growing knowledge of Amaldi's character. They spoke to each other without words sometimes, for they had grown to know strangely well how certain things would impress them both. Indeed Sophy did not at all realise how she had come to count on Amaldi's companionship, until one afternoon, when going down to the _banchetta_ to join the Marchesa for one of their jaunts, she saw that he was not with her.

"Yes, my dear," said that lady, answering the question in her eyes, "we shall be two 'lone, lorn women' this evening. Marco has been called to Rome on business. He was much disappointed, as you may imagine. I bring you '_tanti saluti e rincrescimenti_' from him. He went at eight o'clock this morning."

The fact was, Amaldi had come to a point in his pa.s.sion for Sophy when he found it suddenly insupportable to be thus near her day after day, exposed to the kind cruelty of her friendship. He had decided, over night, that he must escape, if only for a breathing spell as it were, and he had invented this excuse of _affari_ at Rome.

Then the Marchesa herself had to go to Milan again for a few days. Sophy was left quite alone, save for Bobby and the maids. And somehow, the whole lakeside seemed different suddenly--beautiful but empty. September was drawing on. Soon she would have to be leaving. She feared the October winds and rains for Bobby. It was apt to be rainy in October, the Marchesa said. Only one month more. Perhaps she would not see Amaldi again before she left. She would not admit the sinking of her heart at this idea. No, her sadness was chiefly that she would have to leave this lovely spot. She thought of going to Florence--or Venice---- She felt unsettled.

One afternoon, when the warm hours dragged rather heavily and she was tired of reading, she ordered a little _carozza_ and went off to hunt antiques at Intra. She spent two dusty, pleasant hours of rummaging, and returned with many parcels.

"Wait," she said to the _cocchiere_; "I will send some one to fetch these things."

It was already dark, the violet dusk that is called "dark" in Italy. She ran quickly up the two flights of stone steps leading to the terrace.

Some one was standing there, and came towards her as she appeared. She thought it was Luigi at first.

"Luigi, please go----" she began. Then broke off short.

"Is it--you?" she asked in a low voice.

Something in this "you"--the way she said it--made Amaldi's heart go hot for an instant. Then he answered quietly:

"Yes---- It's I."

"Ah ..." she breathed. "You--you startled me," she added as if in explanation.

They were standing close together. The light wind blew her long veil against his cheek. From it there came that faint fragrance of citron. He was glad that it was so dark here on the terrace. He said, with an effort:

"Luigi told me that you would be back shortly, so I waited."

"I ... I am glad," she said. Her heart was beating fast. It was because he had startled her, she told herself. She had thought him in Rome. Now he was suddenly here--close to her. She could think of nothing to say.