The Child of Pleasure Part 22

'She is asleep now, shaded from the lamp which shines with the soft radiance of the moon. Her face--white with dewy freshness of a white rose, seems half buried in the ma.s.ses of her dark hair. One would think the eyelids were too delicately transparent to veil the splendour of her eyes. As I lean over her and gaze at her, all the sinister voices of the night are silenced for me, and the silence is measured only by her gentle respiration.

'She feels the vicinity of her mother. The longer I contemplate her, the more does she a.s.sume in my eyes the aspect of some ethereal creature, of a being formed of "such stuff as dreams are made of."

'She shall grow up nourished and enwrapped by the flame of my love--of my great, my _only_ love----

'_September 24th._--I can form no resolve--I can decide upon no plan of action. I am simply abandoning myself a little to this new sentiment, shutting my eyes to the distant peril, and my ears to the warning voice of conscience, with the shuddering temerity of one who, in gathering violets, ventures too near the edge of a precipice at the foot of which roars a hungry torrent.

'He shall never know anything from my lips, I shall never know anything from his. Our two souls will mount together, for a brief s.p.a.ce, to the mountain-tops of the Ideal, will drink side by side at the perennial fountains, and then each go on its separate way, encouraged and refreshed.

'How still the air is this afternoon! The sea has the faint milky-blue tints of the opal, of Murano gla.s.s, with here and there a patch like a mirror dimmed by a breath.

'I am reading Sh.e.l.ley, a favourite poet with him, that divine Ariel feeding upon light and speaking with the tongues of angels. It is night----

'_September 25th._--_Mio Dio! Mio Dio!_ His voice when he spoke my name--the tremor in it--oh, I thought my heart was breaking in my bosom, and that I must inevitably lose consciousness.--"You will never know,"

he said--"never know how utterly my soul is yours."

'We were in the avenue of the fountains--I was listening to the sound of the water; but from that moment, I heard nothing more. Everything around me seemed to flee away, carrying my life with it, and the earth to open beneath my feet. I made a superhuman effort to control myself. Delfina's name rose to my lips and I was seized with a wild impulse to fly to her for protection, for safety. Three times I cried that name, but in the intervals my heart ceased to beat and the breath died away upon my lips.

'_September 26th._--Was it true? Was it not merely some illusion of my overwrought and distracted spirit? Why should that hour yesterday seem to me so far away, so _unreal_?

'He spoke a second time, at greater length, close to my side while I walked on under the trees as in a dream.--Under the trees was it? It seemed to me rather that I was walking through the hidden pathways of my soul, among flowers born of my imagination, listening to the words of an invisible spirit that yet was part of myself.

'I can still hear the sweet and dreadful words--"I would renounce all that the future may hold for me to live in a small corner of your heart--Far from the world, wholly lost in the thought of you--until death, to all eternity"--And again--"Pity from you would be far dearer to me than love from any other woman. Your mere presence suffices to intoxicate me--I feel it flowing into my veins like my life's blood and filling my soul with rapture beyond all telling."

'_September 27th._--When he gathered the spray of blossom at the entrance to the wood and offered it to me, did I not, in my heart, call him--_Life of my life_?

'When, in the avenue, we pa.s.sed again by the fountain where he first spoke to me, did I not call him _Life of my life_?

'When he took the wreath from off the Hermes and gave it back to my child, did he not give me to understand that the woman exalted in these verses had fallen from her high estate, and that I, I alone, was all his hope? And once more I called him _Life of my life_.

'_September 28th._--How long I have been in finding peace!

'From that moment onwards, what hours of struggle and travail I have had, how painfully I have striven to penetrate the real state of my mind, to see things in their true light, bring a calm and fair judgment to bear upon what has happened, to recognise and determine upon my duty!

But I continually evaded myself, my mind became confused, my will was but a broken reed on which to lean, every effort was vain. By a sort of instinct, I have avoided being alone with him, kept close to Francesca or my child, or stayed here in my room as in a haven of refuge. When my eyes did meet his, I seemed to read in them a profound and imploring sadness. Does he not know how deeply, deeply, deeply I love him?

'He does not know it, nor ever will. That is my firm resolve--that is my duty. Courage!

'Help me, oh my G.o.d!

'_September 29th._--Why did he speak? Why did he break the enchanted silence in which I let my soul be steeped, almost without regret or fear? Why tear away the veil of uncertainty and put me face to face with his unveiled love? Now I have no further excuse for temporising, for deluding myself. The danger is there--certain, undeniable, manifest--it attracts me to its dizzy edge like a precipice. One moment of weakness, of languor, and I am lost.

'I ask myself--am I sincere in my pain and regret at this unexpected revelation? How is it that I think perpetually of those words? And why, when I repeat them to myself, does a wave of ineffable rapture sweep over my soul? Why do I thrill to the heart's core at the imagined prospect of hearing more--more such words?

'Night. The agitation of my soul takes the forms of questions, riddles--I ask myself endless questions to which I never have an answer.

I have not had the courage to look myself through and through--to form a really bold and honest resolution. I am pusillanimous, I am a coward. I shrink from pain, I want to suffer as little as possible, I prefer to temporise, to hang back, to resort to subterfuges, to wilfully blind myself instead of courageously facing the risks of a decisive battle.

'The fact of the matter is this--that I am _afraid_ of being alone with him, of having a serious conversation with him, and so my life is reduced to a series of petty schemes and manoeuvrings and pretexts for avoiding his company. Such devices are unworthy of me. Either I must renounce this love altogether, and he shall hear my sad but firm resolve, or I shall accept it, in so far as it is pure, and he will receive my spiritual consent.

'And now I ask myself--What do I really want? Which of the two paths am I to choose? Must I renounce--shall I accept?

'My G.o.d! my G.o.d! answer Thou for me--light up the path before me!

'To renounce is like tearing out a piece of my heart with my own hands.

The agony would be supreme, the wrench would exceed the limits of the endurable. But, by G.o.d's grace, such heroism would be crowned by resignation, would be rewarded by that sweet and holy calm which follows upon every high moral impulse, every victory of the soul over the dread of suffering.

'I shall renounce--my daughter shall keep possession of my whole life, of my whole soul. That is the path of duty, and I will walk in it.

'Sow in tears, oh mourning souls, that ye may reap with songs of gladness!

'_September 30th._--I feel somewhat calmer in writing these pages. I regain, at least for the moment, some slight balance of mind. I can look my misfortune more clearly in the face, and my heart seems relieved as if after confession.

'Oh, if I could but go to confession!--could implore counsel and help of my old friend and comforter, Dom Luigi!

'What sustains me most of all in my tribulation, is the thought that in a short time I shall see him again and be able to pour out all my griefs and fears to him, show him all my wounds, ask of him a balm for all my ills, as I used to in the days when his benign and solemn words would call up tears of tenderness to my eyes, that knew not then the bitterness of other tears or--more terrible by far--the burning pain of dry-eyed misery.

'Will he understand me still? Can he fathom the deep anguish of the woman as he understood the vague and fitful melancholy of the girl?

Shall I ever again see him lean towards me in pity and consolation, that gentle brow, crowned with silvery locks, illumined with purity and holiness, and sanctified by the hand of the Lord?

'In the chapel, after ma.s.s, I played on the organ music of Bach and of Cherubini. I played the same prelude as the other evening.

'A soul weeps and moans, weighed down with anguish, weeps and moans and cries to G.o.d, asking His pardon, imploring His aid, with a prayer that rises to heaven like a tongue of fire. It cries and it is heard--its prayer is answered; it receives light from above, utters songs of gladness reaches at length the haven of Peace and Truth and rests in the Lord----

'The organ is not large nor is the chapel, but, nevertheless, my soul expanded as in a basilica, soared up as under some vast dome, and touched the pinnacle of high Heaven where blazes the Sign of Signs in the azure of Paradise, in the sublime ether.

'Night. Alas: nothing is of any avail--nothing gives me one hour, one minute, one second's respite. Nothing can ever cure me, no dream of my mind can ever efface the dream of my heart.--All has been in vain; this anguish is killing me. I feel that my hurt is mortal, my heart pains me as if some one were actually crushing it, were tearing it to pieces. My agony of mind is so great that it has become a physical torment--atrocious, unbearable. I know perfectly well that I am overwrought, nervous--the victim of a sort of madness; but I cannot get the upper hand over myself, cannot pull myself together, cannot regain control of my reason. I cannot--I simply cannot!

'So this, then, is love!

'He went off somewhere this morning on horseback accompanied by a servant before I saw him, and I spent the whole morning in the chapel.

When lunch time came he had not returned. His absence caused me such misery that I myself was astonished at the violence of my pain. I came up to my room afterwards, and to ease my heart I wrote a page of my journal, a devotional page, seeking to revive my fainting spirit at the glowing memory of my girlhood's faith. Then I read a few pieces, here and there, of Sh.e.l.ley's _Epipsychidion_, after which I went down into the park looking for Delfina. But no matter what I did, the thought of him was ever present with me, held me captive and tortured me relentlessly.

'When, at last, I heard his voice again, I was on the first terrace. He was speaking to Francesca in the vestibule. She came out and called to me to come up.

'I felt my knees giving way beneath me at each step. He held out his hand to me and he must have noticed the trembling of mine, for I saw a sudden gleam flash into his eyes. We all three sat down on low cane lounges in the vestibule, facing the sea. He complained of feeling very tired, and smoked while he told us of his ride. He had gone as far as Vicomile, where he had made a halt.

'Vicomile, he said, possesses three wonderful treasures--a pine wood, a tower, and a fifteenth-century monstrance. Imagine a pine wood, between the sea and the hill, interspersed by a number of pools that multiply the trees indefinitely; a campanile in the old rugged Lombardy style that goes back to the eleventh century--a tree-trunk of stone, as it were, covered with sculptured sirens and peac.o.c.ks, serpents and griffins and dragons--a thousand and one monsters and flowers; and a silver-gilt monstrance all enamelled, engraved and chased--Gothico-Byzantine in style and form with a foretaste of Renaissance, the work of Gallucci, an almost unknown artist, but who was the great forerunner of Benvenuto Cellini----

'He addressed himself all the time to me. Strange how exactly I remember every word he says! I could set down any conversation of his, word for word, from beginning to end; if there were any means of doing so, I could reproduce every modulation of his voice.

'He showed us two or three little sketches he had made, and then began again describing the wonders of Vicomile with that warmth with which he always speaks of beautiful things and that enthusiasm for art which is one of his most potent attractions.

'"I promised the Canonico to come back to-morrow. We will all go, will we not, Francesca? Donna Maria ought to see Vicomile!"

'Oh, my name on his lips! If it were possible, I could reproduce the very movements of his lips in uttering each syllable of those two words--Donna Maria----But what I never could express is my own emotion on hearing it; could never explain the unknown, undreamed-of sensation awakened in me by the presence of this man.

'We sat there till dinner-time. Contrary to her usual habit, Francesca seemed a little pensive and out of spirits. There were moments when heavy silence fell upon us. But between him and me there then occurred one of those _silent colloquies_ in which the soul exhales the Ineffable and hears the murmur of its thoughts. He said things to me then that made me sink back against the cushions of my chair faint with rapture--things that his lips will never repeat to me, that my ears will never hear.

'In front of us, the cypresses, tipped with fire by the setting sun, stood up tall and motionless like votive candles. The sea was the colour of aloe leaves, dashed here and there with liquid turquoise; there was an indescribable delicacy of varying pallor--a diffusion of angelic light, in which each sail looked like an angel's wing upon the waters.

And the harmony of faint and mingled perfumes seemed like the soul of the declining day.