The Child of Pleasure Part 21

Among all the women of the great world I have ever known there is certainly not one to compare with her, and of all my friends, she is the one I care for most.

'Her children are not like her, they are not handsome. But the youngest, Muriella, is a dear little thing, with the sweet laugh and the eyes of her mother. She did the honours of the house to Delfina with all the air of a little lady; she has certainly inherited her mother's perfect manner.

'Delfina seems to be happy. She has already explored the greater part of the grounds, as far as the sea, and has run down all the flights of steps. She came to tell me about all the wonderful things she had seen--panting, swallowing half the words, her eyes looking almost dazzled. She spoke continually of her new friend Muriella--a pretty name that sounds still prettier from her lips.

'She is fast asleep. When her eyes are closed, her lashes cast a long, long shadow on her cheeks. Francesca's cousin was struck by their length this evening and quoted a beautiful line from Shakespeare's Tempest on Miranda's eyelashes.

'The scent of the flowers is too strong in this room. Delfina was anxious to keep the bouquet of roses by her bedside, but now that she is asleep I shall take them away and put them out into the loggia in the fresh air.

'I am tired, and yet I have written four pages; I am sleepy, and yet I would gladly prolong this languor of soul, lulled by I know not what unwonted sense of tenderness diffused around me. It is so long--so long--since I have felt myself surrounded by a little kindness!

'I have just carried the vase of roses into the loggia and stayed there a few moments to listen to the voices of the night, moved by the regret of losing in the blindness of sleep the hours that pa.s.s under so beautiful a sky. How strange is the harmony between the song of the fountains and the murmur of the sea! The cypresses seemed to be the pillars of the firmament; the stars shining just above them tipped their summits with fire.

'_September 16th._--A delightful afternoon, spent almost entirely in conversation with Francesca in the loggia, on the terraces, in the avenues, at the various points of outlook of this villa, which looks as if it had been built by a princely poet to drown a grief. The name of the Palace at Ferrara suits it admirably.

'Francesca gave me a sonnet of Count Sperelli's to read--a trifle, but of rare literary charm, and inscribed on vellum. Sperelli has a mind of a very high order, and is most intense. To-day at dinner, he said several very beautiful things. He is recovering from a terrible wound received in a duel in Rome last May. In all his actions, his looks, his words, there is that affectionate and charming licence which is the prerogative of the convalescent, of those who have newly escaped the clutches of death. He must be very young, but he has gone through much and lived fast. He bears the evidences of it.... A charming evening of conversation and music all by ourselves after dinner. I talked too much, or, at any rate, with two much eagerness. But Francesca listened and encouraged me, and so did Count Sperelli. That is just the delightful part of a conversation not on common subjects--to feel the same degree of warmth animating the minds of all present. Only then do one's words have the true ring of sincerity and give real pleasure, both to the speaker and the hearer.

'Francesca's cousin is a most cultivated judge of music. He greatly admires the masters of the eighteenth century, Domenico Scarlatti being his special favourite. But his most ardent devotion is reserved for Sebastian Bach. He does not care much for Chopin, and Beethoven affects him too profoundly and perturbs his spirit.

'He listened to me with a singular expression, almost as if dazed or distressed. I nearly always addressed myself to Francesca, but I felt his eyes upon me with an insistence which embarra.s.sed but did not offend me. He must still be weak and ill and a prey to his nerves. Finally he asked me--"Do you sing?" in the same tone in which he would have said--"Do you love me?"

'I sang an air of Paisiello's and another by Salieri, and I played a little eighteenth century music. I was in good voice and my touch on the piano happy.

'He gave me no word of thanks or praise, but remained perfectly silent.

I wonder why?

'Delfina was in bed by that time. When I went upstairs afterwards to see her, I found her asleep, but with her eyelashes wet as if with tears.

Poor darling! Dorothy told me that my voice could be heard distinctly up here, and that Delfina had wakened from her first sleep and begun to sob, and wanted to come down.

'She is asleep again now, but from time to time her little bosom heaves with a suppressed sob which sends a vague distress into my own heart, and a desire to respond to that involuntary sob, to this grief which sleep cannot a.s.suage. Poor darling!

'Who is playing the piano downstairs, I wonder? With the soft pedal down, some one is trying over that gavotte of Rameau's, so full of bewitching melancholy, that I was playing just now. Who can it be?

Francesca came up with me--it is late.

'I went out and leaned over the loggia. The room opening into the vestibule is dark, but there is light in the room next to it, where Manuel and the Marchese are still playing cards.

'The gavotte has stopped, some one is going down the steps into the garden.

'Why should I be so alert, so watchful, so curious? Why should every sound startle me to-night?

'Delfina has wakened and is calling me.

'_September 17th._--Manuel left this morning. We accompanied him to the station at Rovigliano. He will return about the 10th of October to fetch me, and we all go on to Sienna, to my mother. Delfina and I will probably stay at Sienna till after the New Year. I shall see the Loggia of the Pope and the Fonte Gaja, and my beautiful black and white Cathedral once more--that beloved dwelling-place of the Blessed Virgin, where a part of my soul has ever remained to pray in a spot that my knees know well.

'I always have a vision of that spot clearly before me, and when I go back I shall kneel on the exact stone where I always used to. I know it as well as if my knees had left a deep hollow there. And there too I shall find that portion of my soul which still lingers there in prayer beneath the starry blue vault above, which is mirrored in the marble floor like a midnight sky in a placid lake.

'a.s.suredly nothing there is changed. In the costly chapel, full of palpitating shadow and mysterious gloom, alive with the glint of precious marble, the lamps burned softly, all their light seemingly gathered into the little globe of oil that fed the flame as into some limpid topaz. Little by little, under my intent gaze, the sculptured stone grew less coldly white, took on warm ivory tints, became gradually penetrated by the pallid life of the celestial beings, and over the marble forms crept the faint transparency of angelic flesh.

'Ah, how fervent and spontaneous were my prayers then! When I absorbed myself in meditation, I seemed to be walking through the secret paths of my soul as in a garden of delight, where nightingales sang in the blossoming trees and turtle-doves cooed beside the running waters of Grace divine.

'_September 18th._--A day of nameless torture. Something seems to be forcing me to gather up, to re-adjust, to join together the fragments of a dream, half of which is being confusedly realised outside of me, and the other half going on equally confusedly in my own heart. And try as I will, I cannot succeed in piecing it completely together.

'_September 19th._--Continued torture. Long ago, some one sang to me but never finished the song. Now some one is taking up the strain at the point where it broke off, but meanwhile, I have forgotten the beginning.

And my spirit loses itself in vain gropings after the old melody, nor can it find any pleasure in the new.

'_September 20th._--To-day, after lunch, Andrea Sperelli invited me and Francesca to come to his room and look at some drawings that had arrived for him yesterday from Rome.

'It would not be too much to say that an entire Art has pa.s.sed before our eyes to-day--an art studied and a.n.a.lysed by the hand of a master draughtsman. I have never experienced a more intense pleasure.

'The drawings are Sperelli's own work--studies, sketches, notes, mementos of every gallery in Europe; they are, so to speak, his breviary, a wonderful breviary in which each of the Old Masters has his special page, affording a condensed example of his manner, bringing out the most lofty and original beauties of his work, the _punctum saliens_ of his entire productions. In going through the large collection, not only have I received a distinct impression of the various schools, the movements, the influences which have combined to develop the art of painting in various countries, but I feel that I have had a glimpse into the spirit, the essential meaning of the art of each individual painter.

I am as if intoxicated with art, my brain is full of lines and figures, but in the midst of the apparent confusion there stand out clearly before me the women of the early masters, those never-to-be-forgotten heads of Saints and Virgins which smiled down upon my childish piety in old Sienna from the frescoes of Taddeo and Simone.

'No masterpiece of art, however advanced and brilliant, leaves upon the mind so strong and enduring an impression. All these slender forms, delicate and drooping as lily-buds, these grave and n.o.ble att.i.tudes for receiving a flower offered by an angel, placing the fingers on an open book, bending over the Holy Infant, or supporting the body of Christ; in the act of blessing, of agonising, of ascending into Heaven--all these things, so pure, so sincere, so profoundly touching, affect the soul to its depths and imprint themselves for ever on the memory.

'Thus, one by one, the women of the Early Masters pa.s.sed in review before us. Francesca and I were seated on a low couch with a great stand before us, on which lay the portfolio containing the drawings which the artist, seated opposite, slowly turned over, commenting on each in succession. I watched his hand as he took up a sheet and placed it with peculiar care on the other side of the portfolio, and each time I felt a sort of thrill, as if that hand were going to touch me--Why?--

'Presently, his position doubtless becoming uncomfortable, he knelt on the floor, and in that att.i.tude continued turning over the drawings. In speaking, he nearly always addressed himself to me, not at all with the air of imparting instruction, but as if discussing the pictures with a person as familiar with the subject as he was himself; and, at the bottom of my heart, I was conscious of a sense of complacency mingled with grat.i.tude. Whenever I exclaimed in admiration, he looked at me with a smile which I can still see, but cannot define. Two or three times, Francesca rested her arm on his shoulder in unconscious familiarity.

Looking at the head of the first-born of Moses, copied from Botticelli's fresco in the Sistine Chapel, she said--"It has a look of you when you are in one of your melancholy moods."--And when we came to the head of the Archangel Michael from Perugino's Madonna of Pavia, she remarked---"It is a little like Giulia Moceto, is it not?" He did not answer, but only turned the page over rather sooner than usual. Upon which she added with a laugh--"Away with the pictures of sin!"

'This Giulia Moceto is, I suppose, some one he was once in love with.

The page once turned, I had a wild, unreasoning desire to look at the Michael again and examine the face more closely. Was it merely artistic curiosity?

'I cannot say, I dare not pry into my heart, I prefer to temporise, to deceive myself; I have not the courage to face the battle, I am a coward.

'And yet the present is so sweet. My imagination is as excited as if I had drunk strong tea. I have no desire to go to bed. The night is soft and warm as if it were August, the sky is cloudless but dimly veiled, the breathing of the sea comes slow and deep, but the fountains fill up the pauses. The loggia attracts me--shall we go out and dream a little, my heart and I?--dream of what?

'The eyes of the Virgins and the Saints pursue me--deep-set, long and narrow, with meekly downcast lids, from under which they gaze at one with that charmed look--innocent as the dove, and yet a little side-long like the serpent. "Be ye harmless as doves and wise as serpents," said Our Lord--

'Yes, be wise--go, say your prayers, and then, to bed and sleep----

'_September 21st._--Alas, must the heavy task ever painfully begin again from the beginning, the steep path be climbed, the battle that was won fought over again!

'_September 22nd._--He has given me one of his poems, _The Story of the Hermaphrodite_, the twenty-first of the twenty-five copies, printed on vellum and with two proof engravings of the frontispiece.

'It is a remarkable work, enclosing a mystic and profound idea, although the musical element predominates, entrancing the soul by the unfamiliar magic of its melody, which envelopes the thoughts that shine out like a glister of gold and diamonds through a limpid stream. Certain lines pursue me incessantly and will continue to do so for long, no doubt--they are so intense.... Every day and every hour he subjugates me more and more, mind and soul--against my will, despite my resistance.

His every word and look, his slightest action sinks into my heart.

'_September 23rd._--When we converse with one another, I sometimes feel as if his voice were an echo of my soul. At times, a sudden wild frenzy comes over me, a blind desire, an unreasoning impulse to make some remark, utter some word that would betray my secret weakness. I only save myself from it by a miracle, and then there falls an interval of silence, during which I am shaken with inward terror. Then, when I do speak again, it is to say something trivial in the lightest tone I can command, but I feel as if a flame were rushing over my face--that I am going to blush. If he were to seize this moment to look me boldly in the eyes, I should be lost!

'I played a good deal this evening, chiefly Bach and Schumann. As on the first evening, he sat in a low chair to the right but a little behind me. From time to time, at the end of each piece, he rose and leaned over me, turning the pages to point out another Fugue or Intermezzo. Then he would sit down again and listen, motionless, profoundly absorbed, his eyes fixed on me, forcing me to _feel_ his presence.

'Did he understand, I wonder, how much of myself, of my thoughts and griefs found voice in the music of others?

'It is a threatening night. A hot moist wind blows over the garden and its dull moaning dies away in the darkness only to begin again more loudly. The tops of the cypresses wave to and fro under an almost inky sky in which the stars burn with feeble ray. A band of clouds spans the heavens from side to side, ragged, contorted, blacker than the sky, like the tragic locks of a Medusa. The sea is invisible through the darkness, but it sobs as if in measureless and uncontrollable grief--forsaken and alone.

'Why this unreasoning terror? The night seems to warn me of approaching disaster, a warning that finds its echo in a dim remorse within my heart.

'But I always take comfort from my daughter, she heals my fever like some blessed balm.