The Child of Pleasure Part 25

'Courage! courage!--only a few hours more. Manuel will be here to-morrow morning. We shall leave on Sunday, and on Monday I shall be with my mother.

'Just now, I returned him two or three books he had lent me. In the volume of Sh.e.l.ley I underlined with my nail the last two lines of a certain verse and put a mark in the page--

"And forget me, for I _can never_-- Be thine!"

'_October 9th._--Night. All day long he has sought an opportunity for speaking to me. His distress is evident. And all day long I have done my utmost to avoid him, so that he might not sow fresh seeds of pain, of desire, of regret and remorse in my heart. And I have triumphed--I was strong and brave--My G.o.d, I thank Thee!

'This night is the last. To-morrow we leave--all will be over.

'All will be over? A voice out of the depths cries unto me--I do not understand its words, but I know that it tells me of coming disaster, unknown but inevitable, mysterious and inexorable as death. The future is lugubrious as a cemetery full of open graves, ready to receive the dead, with here and there a flicker of pale torches which I can scarce distinguish, and I know not if they are there to lure me on to destruction or to show me to a path of safety.

'I have re-read my Journal slowly, carefully, from the 15th of September, the day of my arrival. What a difference between the first entry and the last!

'I wrote:--I shall wake up in the house of a friend, to the enjoyment of Francesca's cordial hospitality, in Schifanoja, where the roses are so fair and the cypresses so tall and grand. I shall wake with the prospect of some weeks of peace before me--twenty days or more of congenial intellectual companionship--Alas! where is that promised peace? But the roses, the beautiful roses, were they, too, faithless to their promise?

Did I perhaps, on that first night in the loggia, open my heart too wide to their seductive fragrance while Delfina slept? And now the October moon floods the sky with its cold radiance, and through the closed windows I see the sharp points of the cypresses, all sombre and motionless, and on that night they seemed to touch the stars.

'Of that prelude there is but one phrase which finds a place in this sad finale: So many hairs on my head, so many thorns in my woeful destiny!

'I am going, and what will he do when I am far away? What will Francesca do?

'The change in Francesca still remains incomprehensible, inexplicable--an enigma that torments and bewilders me. She loves him--but since when?--and does he know it? Confess, oh, my soul, to this fresh misery. A new poison is added to that already infecting me--I am jealous!

'But I am prepared for any suffering, even the most horrible; I know well the martyrdom that awaits me; I know that the anguish of these days is as nought compared to that which I must face presently, the terrible cross on which my soul must hang. I am ready. All I ask, oh my G.o.d, is a respite, a short respite for the hours that remain to me here. To-morrow I shall have need of all my strength.

'How strangely sometimes the incidents of one's life repeat themselves!

This evening in the drawing-room, I seemed to have gone back to the 16th of September, when I first played and sang and my thoughts began to occupy themselves with him. This evening again I was seated at the piano, and the same subdued light illumined the room, and next door Manuel and the Marchese were at the card-table. I played the Gavotte _of the Yellow Ladies_, of which Francesca is so fond and which I heard some one trying to play on the 16th of September while I sat up in my room and began my nightly vigils of unrest.

'He, I am sure, is not asleep. When I came upstairs, he went in and took the Marchese's place opposite to my husband. Are they playing still?

Doubtless he is thinking and his heart aches while he plays. What are his thoughts?--what are his sufferings?

'I cannot sleep. I shall go out into the loggia. I want to see if they are still playing, or if he has gone to his room. His windows are at the corner, in the second story.

'It is a clear, mild night. There are lights still in the card-room. I stayed a long time in the loggia looking down at the light shining out against the cypresses and mingling with the silvery whiteness of the moon. I am trembling from head to foot. I cannot describe the almost tragic effect of those lighted windows behind which the two men are playing, opposite to one another, in the deep silence of the night, scarcely broken by the dull sob of the sea. And they will perhaps play on till morning, if he will pander so far to my husband's terrible failing. So we shall all three wake till the dawn and take no rest, each a prey to his own pa.s.sion.

'But what is he really thinking of? Of what nature is his pain? What would I not give, at this moment, to see him, to be able to gaze at him till the day breaks, even if it were only through the window, in the night dews, trembling, as I do now, from head to foot. The maddest, wildest thoughts rush through my brain like flashes of lightning, dazzling and confusing me. I feel the prompting of some evil spirit to do some rash and irreparable thing, I feel as if I were treading on the edge of perdition. It would, I feel, lift the great weight from my heart, would take this suffocating knot from my throat if, at this moment, I could cry aloud, into the silence of the night, with all the strength of my soul--"I love him! I love him! I love him!"'

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

Two or three days after the departure of the Ferres, Sperelli and his cousins returned to Rome, Donna Francesca, contrary to her custom, wishing to shorten her stay at Schifanoja.

After a brief stay at Naples, Andrea reached Rome on the 24th of October, a Sunday, in the first heavy morning rain of the Autumn season.

He experienced an extraordinary pleasure in returning to his apartments in the Casa Zuccari, his tasteful and charming _buen retiro_. There he seemed to find again some portion of himself, something he had missed.

Nothing was altered; everything about him retained, in his eyes, that indescribable look of life which material objects a.s.sume, amongst which one has lived and loved and suffered. His old servants, Jenny and Terenzio, had taken the utmost care of everything, and Stephen had attended to every detail likely to conduce to his master's comfort.

It was raining. Andrea went to the window and stood for some time looking out upon his beloved Rome. The piazza of the Trinita de' Monti was solitary and deserted, left to the guardianship of its obelisk. The trees along the wall that joins the church to the Villa Medici, already half stripped of their leaves, rustled mournfully in the wind and the rain. The Pincio alone still shone green, like an island in a lake of mist.

And as he gazed, one sentiment dominated all the others in his heart; the sudden and lively re-awakening of his old love for Rome--fairest Rome--that city of cities, immense, imperial, unique--like the sea, for ever young, for ever new, for ever mysterious.

'What time is it?' Andrea asked of Stephen.

It was about nine o'clock. Feeling somewhat tired, he determined to have a sleep: also, that he would see no one that day and spend the evening quietly at home. Seeing that he was about to re-enter the life of the great world of Rome, he wished, before taking up the old round of activity, to indulge in a little meditation, a slight preparation; to lay down certain rules, to discuss with himself his future line of conduct.

'If any one calls,' he said to Stephen, 'say that I have not yet returned; and let the porter know it too. Tell James I shall not want him to-day, but he can come round for orders this evening. Bring me lunch at three--something very light--and dinner at nine. That is all.

He fell asleep almost immediately. The servant woke him at two and informed him that, just before twelve o'clock, the Duke of Grimiti had called, having heard from the Marchesa d'Ateleta that he had returned to town.

'Well?'

'Il Signor Duca left word that he would call again in the afternoon.'

'Is it still raining? Open the shutters wide.'

The rain had stopped, the sky was lighter. A band of pale sunshine streamed into the room and spread over the tapestry representing _The Virgin with the Holy Child and Stefano Sperelli_, a work of art brought by Giusto Sperelli from Flanders in 1508. Andrea's eyes wandered slowly over the walls, rejoicing in the beautiful hangings, the harmonious tints; and all these things so familiar and so dear to him seemed to offer him a welcome. The sight of them afforded him intense pleasure, and then the image of Maria Ferres rose up before him.

He raised himself a little on the pillows, lit a cigarette and abandoned himself luxuriously to his meditations. An unwonted sense of comfort and well-being filled his body, while his mind was in its happiest vein. His thoughts mingled with the rings of smoke in the subdued light in which all forms and colours a.s.sume a pleasing vagueness.

Instead of reverting to the days that were past, his thoughts carried him forward into the future.--He would see Donna Maria again in two or three months--perhaps much sooner; there was no saying. Then he would resume the broken thread of that love which held for him so many obscure promises, so many secret attractions. To a man of culture, Donna Maria Ferres was the Ideal Woman, Baudelaire's _Amie avec des hanches_, the perfect _Consolatrix_, the friend who can hold out both comfort and pardon. Though she had marked those sorrowful lines in the volume of Sh.e.l.ley, she had, most a.s.suredly, said very different words in her heart. 'I can never be thine!' Why _never_? Ah, there had been too much pa.s.sionate intensity for that in the voice in which she answered him that day in the wood at Vicomile--'I love you! I love you! I love you!'

He could hear her voice now, that never-to-be-forgotten voice!

Stephen knocked at the door. 'May I remind the Signor Conte that it is three o'clock?'

Andrea rose and pa.s.sed into the octagonal room to dress. The sun shone through the lace window screens and sparkled on the Hispano-Mauresque tiles, the innumerable toilet articles of crystal and silver, the bas-reliefs on the antique sarcophagus; its dancing reflections imparting a delightful sense of movement to the air. He felt in the best of spirits, completely cured, full of the joy and the vivacity of life.

He was inexpressibly happy to be back in his home once more. All that was most frivolous, most capricious, most worldly in him awoke with a bound. It was as if the surrounding objects had the power to evoke in him the man of former days. His sensual curiosity, his elasticity, his ubiquity of mind reappeared. He already began to feel the necessity of expansion, of mixing in the world of pleasure and with his friends.

He discovered that he was very hungry, and ordered the servant to bring the lunch at once. He rarely dined at home, but for special occasions--some _recherche_ lunch or private little supper--he had a dining-room decorated with eighteenth century Neapolitan tapestries which Carlo Sperelli had ordered of Pietro Dinanti in 1766 from designs by Storace. The seven wall panels represented episodes of Bacchic love, the portieres and the draperies above the doors and windows having groups of fruit and flowers. Shades of gold--pale or tawny--predominated, and mingling with the warm, pearly flesh-tints and sombre blues, formed a harmony of colour that was both delicate and sumptuous.

'When the Duke of Grimiti comes back, show him up,' he said to the servant.

Into this room too, the sun, sinking towards the Monte Mario, shot his dazzling rays. You could hear the rumble of the carriages in the piazza of the Trinita de' Monti. The rain over, it looked as if all the luminous gold of the Roman October were spread out over the city.

'Open the window,' he said to the servant.

The noise of the carriage wheels was louder now, a soft damp breeze stirred the curtains lightly.

'Divine Rome!' he thought as he looked at the sky between the wide curtains.

An irresistible curiosity drew him to the open window.