The Child of Pleasure Part 17

Donna Maria smiled a mournful, dreamy smile. Her lips were slightly parted, the upper one projecting the least little bit beyond the under one; the corners of her mouth drooped plaintively, the soft curve losing itself in shadow which gave her an expression both sad and kind, but with a dash of that pride which reveals the moral elevation of those who have suffered much and been strong.

To Andrea the story of these girls enamoured of a plait of hair, enflamed with pa.s.sion and jealousy, wild to pa.s.s a comb or their fingers through the living treasure, seemed a charming and poetic episode of convent life, and in his imagination, this woman with the sumptuous hair became vaguely illumined like the heroine of some Christian legend of the childhood of a saint destined for martyrdom and future canonisation.

At the same time, it struck him what rich and varied lines might be afforded to the design of a female figure by the undulating ma.s.ses of that black hair.

Not that it was really black, as Andrea perceived next day at dinner, when a ray of sunshine touched the lady's head, bringing out sombre violet lights, reflections as of tempered steel or burnished silver.

Notwithstanding its density too, it was perfectly light, each hair seeming to stand apart as if permeated by and breathing the air. Her conversation revealed keen intelligence and a delicate mind, much refinement of taste and pleasure in the aesthetic. She possessed abundant and varied culture, a vivid imagination, and the rich, descriptive language of one who has seen many lands, lived under widely different climes, known many people. To Andrea, she seemed to exhale some exotic charm, some strange fascination, some spell born of the phantoms of the far off things she had looked upon, the scenes she still preserved before her mind's eye, the memories that filled her soul; as if she still bore about her some traces of the sunshine she had basked in, the perfumes she had inhaled, the strange dialects she had heard--all the magic of these countries of the Sun.

That evening, in the great room opening off the hall, she went over to the piano, and opening it, she said: 'Do you still play, Francesca?'

'Oh, no,' replied the Marchesa, 'I have not practised for years. I feel that listening to others is decidedly preferable. However, I affect to be a patroness of Art, and during the winter I gladly preside at the execution of a little good music. Is that not so, Andrea?'

'My cousin is too modest, Donna Maria; she does something more than merely patronise--she is a reviver of good taste. Only last February, thanks to her, we were made acquainted with a quintett, a quartett, and a trio of Boccherini, and besides that with a quartett of Cherubini--music that was well-nigh forgotten, but admirable and always new. Boccherini's adagios and minuets are deliciously fresh; only the finales seem to me a trifle antiquated. I am sure you must know something of his.'

'I remember having heard one of his quintetts four of five years ago at the Conservatoire in Brussels, and I thought it magnificent--in the very newest style and full of unexpected episodes. I remember perfectly that in certain pa.s.sages the quintett was reduced to a duet by employing the unison, but the effects produced by the difference in the tone of the instruments was something marvellous! I cannot recall anything the least like it in other instrumental compositions.'

She discussed music with all the subtlety of a true connoisseur, and in describing the sentiments aroused in her by some particular composition, or the entire work of a master, she expressed herself most felicitously.

'I have played and heard a great deal of music,' she said, 'and of every symphony, every sonata, every nocturne I have a separate and distinct picture, an impression of shape and colour, of a figure, a group, a landscape, so that each of my favourite compositions has a name corresponding to the picture;--for instance, the Sonata of the Forty Daughters-in-law of Priam; the Nocturne of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, the Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies, the Gigue of the Mill, the Prelude of the Drops of Water, and so on.'

She laughed softly, a laugh which surprised one with its ineffable grace on that plaintive mouth.

'You remember, Francesca, the mult.i.tude of notes with which we afflicted the margins of our favourite pieces at school. One day, after a most serious consultation, we changed the t.i.tle of every piece of Schumann's we possessed, and each t.i.tle had a long explanatory note. I have the papers still. Now, when I play the _Myrthen_ or the _Alb.u.mblatter_, all these mysterious annotations are quite incomprehensible to me; my emotions and my point of view have changed completely, but there is a delicate pleasure in comparing the sentiments of the present with those of the past, the new picture and the old. It is a pleasure very similar to that of re-reading one's diary, only perhaps rather more mournful and intense. A diary is generally the description of real events, a chronicle of days happy or otherwise, the gray or rosy traces left by time in its flight; the notes written in youth on the margin of a piece of music are, on the contrary, fragments of the secret poems of a soul that is just breaking into bloom, the lyric effusions of our ideality as yet untouched, the story of our dreams. What language? What a flow of words! You remember, Francesca?'

She talked with perfect freedom, even with a touch of spiritual exaltation, like a person long condemned to intercourse with inferiors, who has the irresistible desire to open her mind and heart to a breath of the higher life. Andrea listened to her and was conscious of a pleasing sense of grat.i.tude towards her. It seemed to him that in speaking of these things in his presence, she offered him a kindly proof of friendship, and permitted him to draw nearer to her. He thereby caught a glimpse of her inner world, less through the actual words she uttered than by the modulations of her voice. And again he recognised the accents of _the other_.

It was an ambiguous voice, a voice with double chords in it, so to speak. The more virile tones, deep and slightly veiled, would soften, brighten, become feminine, as it were, by a transition so harmonious that the ear of the listener was at once surprised, delighted, and perplexed by it. The phenomenon was so singular that it sufficed by itself to occupy the mind of the listener independently of the sense of the words, so that after a few minutes the mind yielded to the mysterious charm and remained suspended between expectation and desire to hear the sweet cadence, as if waiting for a melody played upon an instrument. It was the feminine note in this voice which recalled _the other_.

'You sing?' asked Andrea half shyly.

'A little,' she replied.

'Then please sing a little,' entreated Donna Francesca.

'Very well, but I can only give you a sort of idea of the music, for, during the last year, I have almost lost my voice.'

In the adjoining room, Don Manuel was silently playing cards with the Marchese d'Ateleta. In the drawing-room the light of the lamps shone softly red through a great j.a.panese shade. The sea-breeze, entering through the pillars of the hall, shook the high Karamanieh curtains and wafted the perfume of the garden on its wings. Beyond the pillars was a vista of tall cypresses, ma.s.sive and black as ebony against a diaphanous sky throbbing with stars.

'As we are on the subject of old music,' said Donna Maria seating herself at the piano, 'I will give you an air of Paisiello's out of _Nina Pazza_, an exquisite thing.'

She accompanied herself as she sang. In the fervour of the song, the two tones of her voice blended into one another like two precious metals combining to make a single one--sonorous, warm, caressing, vibrating.

Paisiello's melody--simple, pure and spontaneous, full of delicious languor and winged sadness, with a delicately light accompaniment--issued from that plaintive mouth and rose with such a flame of pa.s.sion that the convalescent was moved to the depths of his being, and felt the notes drop one by one through his veins, as if all the blood in his body had stopped in its course to listen. A cold shiver stirred the roots of his hair, shadows, thick and rapid, pa.s.sed before his eyes, he held his breath with excitement. In the weak state of his nerves his sensations were so poignant that it was all he could do to keep back his tears.

'Oh, dearest Maria!' exclaimed Donna Francesca, kissing her fondly on the hair when she stopped.

Andrea could not utter a word; he remained seated where he was, with his back to the light and his face in shadow.

'Please go on,' said Francesca.

She sang an Arietta by Antonio Salieri, then she played a Toccata by Leonardo Leo, a Gavotte by Rameau, a Gigue by Sebastian Bach. Under her magic fingers the music of the eighteenth century lived again--so melancholy in its dance airs, that sound as if they were intended to be danced to in a languid afternoon of a Saint Martin's summer, in a deserted park, amid silent fountains and statueless pedestals, on a carpet of dead roses by pairs of lovers on the point of ceasing to love one another.

CHAPTER IV

'Let down a rope of your hair to me that I may climb up,' Andrea called laughingly from the terrace below to Donna Maria, where she stood between two pillars of the loggia opening out of her rooms.

It was morning, and she had come out into the sun to dry her wet hair, which hung round her like a heavy mantle, and accentuated the soft pallor of her face. The black border of the vivid orange-coloured awning hung above her head like a frieze, such as one sees round the antique Greek vases of the Campagna. Had she had a garland of narcissus on her brows and at her side a great nine-stringed lyre with bas-reliefs of Apollo and a greyhound, she might have been taken for a pupil of the school of Mytilene, or a Lesbian musician in repose as imagined by a Pre-Raphaelite.

'You send me up a madrigal,' she answered in the same playful tone, but drawing back a little from view.

'Very well, I will go and write one in your honour on the marble bal.u.s.trade of the lowest terrace. Come down and read it when you are ready.'

Andrea proceeded slowly to descend the steps leading to the lower level.

In that September morning his soul seemed to dilate with every breath he drew. A certain sanct.i.ty seemed to pervade the air; the sea shone with a splendour of its own, as if the sources of magic rays lay in its depths; the whole landscape was steeped in sunshine.

He stood still from time to time. The thought that Donna Maria was perhaps watching him from the loggia disturbed him curiously, made his heart beat fast and flutter timidly, as if he were a boy in love for the first time. It was unspeakable bliss merely to breathe the same warm and limpid air that she did. An immense wave of tenderness flooded his heart and communicated itself to the trees, the rocks, the sea, as if to beings who were his friends and confidants. He was filled with a desire to worship humbly and purely; to bend his knee and clasp his hands and offer up to some one this vague mute adoration which he would have been at a loss to explain. He felt as if the goodness of all created things was being poured out upon him and mingling with all he possessed of goodness into one jubilant stream.

'Can it be that I love her?' he asked himself. But he dared not look closely into his soul, lest the delicate enchantment should disperse and vanish like a dream at break of day.

'Do I love her? And what does she think? And if she comes alone, shall I tell her that I love her?' He took pleasure in thus asking himself questions which he did not answer, intercepting the reply of his heart by another question, prolonging his uncertainty--at once so tormenting and so sweet. 'No, no--I shall not tell her that I love her. She is far above all the others.'

Arrived at the lowest terrace, he turned round and looked up, and there in the loggia, in the full blaze of the sun, he could just make out the indistinct outline of a woman's form. Had she followed him with her eyes and her thoughts down the long flights of steps? A childish impulse made him suddenly p.r.o.nounce her name aloud on the deserted terrace. 'Maria!

Maria!' he repeated, listening to his own voice. No word, no name had ever seemed to him so sweet, so melodious so caressing. How happy he would be if she would only allow him to call her Maria, like a sister.

This woman--so spiritual, so soulful--inspired him with the highest sentiment of devotion and humility. If he had been asked what he considered the sweetest possible task, he would have answered in all sincerity--'To obey her.' Nothing in the world would have mortified him so much as to be accounted by her a commonplace man. By no other woman had he so ardently desired to be praised, admired, understood, appreciated in his tastes, his cultivation, his artistic aspirations, his ideals, his dreams, all the n.o.blest parts of his spirit and his life. And his highest ambition was to fill her heart.

She had now been ten days at Schifanoja, and in those ten days how entirely she had subjugated him! They had conversed sometimes for hours seated on the terrace or on one of the numerous marble benches scattered about the grounds or in the long rose-bordered avenues, while Delfina sped like a little gazelle through the winding paths of the orange groves. In her conversation she displayed a charming flow of language, many gems of delicate yet keen observation, occasionally affording glimpses of her inner self with a candour that was full of grace; and when speaking of her travels, she would often, by a single picturesque phrase, call up before Andrea's eyes wide vistas of distant lands and seas. On his part, he did his utmost to show himself to the best advantage, to impress upon her the wide range of his culture, the refinement of his taste, the exquisite keenness of his susceptibilities, and his heart swelled with pride when she said in tones of unfeigned sincerity after reading his _Story of the Hermaphrodite_--

'No music has ever carried me away like this poem, nor has any statue ever given me such an impression of harmonious beauty. Certain lines haunt me persistently, and will continue to do so for long, I am sure--they are so intense.'

As he sat now on the marble bal.u.s.trade, he was thinking of these words of hers. Donna Maria was no longer in the loggia, the awning concealed the whole s.p.a.ce between the pillars. Perhaps she would soon be down--should he write the madrigal he had promised her? But even the slight effort necessary for writing the lines thus in hot haste seemed intolerable to him here in the wide and opulent garden, blossoming under the September sunshine in a sort of magical Spring. Why disturb these rare and delicious emotions by a hurried search after rhymes? why reduce this far reaching sentiment to a brief metrical sigh?

He resolved to break his promise and remained as he was, idly watching the sails on the distant horizon, like fiery torches outshining the sun.

But as time went on, he grew restless and nervous, turning round every minute to see if a feminine form had not appeared between the columns of the vestibule which gave access to the steps--'Was this then a love tryst? Did he expect her to join him here for some secret interview? Had she any idea of his agitation?'

His heart gave a great throb--it was she!

She was alone. Slowly she descended the steps, and when she reached the first terrace she stopped beside the fountain. Andrea followed her intently with his eyes; her every movement, every att.i.tude sent a delicious thrill through him, as if each one of them had some special significance, were a form of individual expression. Thus she pa.s.sed down the succession of steps and terraces, appearing and disappearing, now completely hidden by the rose-bushes, now only her head or her rounded bust visible above them. Sometimes the thickly interlaced boughs hid her for several minutes, then, where the bushes were thinner, the colour of her dress would show through them and the pale straw of her hat would catch the sunlight. The nearer she came the more slowly she walked, loitering among the verdant shrubs, stopping to gaze at the cypresses, stooping to gather a handful of fallen leaves. From the last terrace but one, she waved her hand to Andrea standing waiting for her at the foot of the steps, and threw down to him the leaves she had gathered, which first rose fluttering in the air like a cloud of b.u.t.terflies and then floated down--now fast, now slow,--noiseless as snowflakes on the stones.

'Well?' she asked, leaning over the bal.u.s.trade, 'what have you got for me?'

Andrea bent his knee to the step and lifted his clasped hands.

'Nothing!' he was obliged to confess. 'I implore you to forgive me; but, this morning, you and the sun together filled the whole world for me with sweetness and light. _Adoremus!_

The confession was perfectly sincere, as was the adoration also, though both were uttered in a tone of banter. Donna Maria evidently felt the sincerity, for she coloured slightly as she said with peculiar earnestness--