“Yes. I suppose so. But this is rather more than a coincidence. I do not understand it at all. After all, I am a perfectly healthy man. It never occurred to you that my mind might be unbalanced, did it?”
Guido looked at the rugged Roman head, the muscular throat, the broad shoulders.
“No,” he answered. “It certainly never occurred to me.”
“Nor to me either,” said Lamberti, and he ate slowly and thoughtfully.
“My friend,” observed Guido, “you are just a little enigmatical this evening.”
“Not at all, not at all! I tell you that my nerves are good. You know something about archæology, do you not?”
The apparently irrelevant question came after a short pause.
“Not much,” Guido answered, supposing that Lamberti wished to change the subject on account of the servant. “What do you want to know?”
“Nothing,” said Lamberti. “The question is, whether what I dreamt last night was all imagination or whether it was a memory of something I once knew and had forgotten.”
“What did you dream?” Guido sipped his wine and leaned back to listen, hoping that his friend was going to speak out at last.
“Was the temple of Vesta in the Forum?” enquired Lamberti.
“Certainly.”
“But why did they always say that it was the round one in front of Santa Maria in Cosmedin? I have an old bronze inkstand that is a model of it. My mother used to tell me it was the temple of Vesta.”
“People thought it was — thirty years ago. There is nothing left of the temple but the round mass of masonry on which it stood. It is between the Fountain of Juturna and the house of the Vestals. I have Signor Boni’s plans of it. Should you like to see them?”
“Yes — presently,” answered Lamberti, with more eagerness than Guido had expected. “Is there anything like a reconstruction of the temple or of the house — a picture of one, I mean?”
“I think so,” said Guido. “I am sure there is Baldassare Peruzzi’s sketch of the temple, as it was in his day.”
“I dreamt that I saw it last night, the temple and the house, and all the Forum besides, and not in ruins either, but just as everything was in old times. Could the Vestals’ house have had an upper story? Is that possible?”
“The archæologists are sure that it had,” answered Guido, becoming more interested. “Do you mean to say that you dreamt you saw it with an upper story?”
“Yes. And the temple was something like the one they used to call Vesta’s, only it was more ornamented, and the columns seemed very near together. The round wall, just within the columns, was decorated with curious designs in low relief — something like a wheel, and scallops, and curved lines. It is hard to describe, but I can see it all now.”
Guido rose from his seat quickly.
“I will get the number that has the drawing in it,” he said, explaining.
During the few moments that passed while he was out of the room Lamberti sat staring at his empty place as fixedly as he had stared at the dark line of the Janiculum a few minutes earlier. The man-servant, who had been with him at sea, watched him with a sort of grave sympathy that is peculiarly Italian. Then, as if an idea of great value had struck him, he changed Lamberti’s plate, poured some red wine into the tumbler, and filled it up with water. Then he retired and watched to see whether his old master would drink. But Lamberti did not move.
“Here it is,” said Guido, entering the room with a large yellow-covered pamphlet open in his hands. “Was it like this?”
As he asked the question he laid the pamphlet on the clean plate before his friend. The pages were opened at Baldassare Peruzzi’s rough pen-and-ink sketch of the temple of Vesta; and as Lamberti looked at it, his lids slowly contracted, and his features took an expression of mingled curiosity and interest.
“The man who drew that had seen what I saw,” he said at last. “Did he draw it from some description?”
“He drew it on the spot,” answered Guido. “The temple was standing then. But as for your dream, it is quite possible that you may have seen this same drawing in a shop window at Spithœver’s or Lœscher’s, for instance, without noticing it, and that the picture seemed quite new to you when you dreamt it. That is a simple explanation.”
“Very,” said Lamberti. “But I saw the whole Forum.”
“There are big engravings of imaginary reconstructions of the Forum, in the booksellers’ windows.”
“With the people walking about? The two young priests standing in the morning sun on the steps of the temple of Castor and Pollux? The dirty market woman trudging past the corner of the Vestals’ house with a basket of vegetables on her head? The door slave sweeping the threshold of the Regia with a green broom?”
“I thought you knew nothing about the Forum,” said Guido, curiously. “How do you come to know of the Regia?”
“Did I say Regia? I daresay — the name came to my lips.”
“Somebody has hypnotised you,” said Guido. “You are repeating things you have heard in your sleep.”
“No. I am describing things I saw in my sleep. Am I the sort of man who is easily hypnotised? I have let men try it once or twice. We were all interested in hypnotism on my last ship, and the surgeon made some curious experiments with a lad who went to sleep easily. But last night I was at home, alone, in my own room, in bed, and I dreamt.”
Guido shrugged his shoulders a little indifferently.
“There must be some explanation,” he said. “What else did you dream?”
Lamberti’s lids drooped as if he were concentrating his attention on the remembered vision.
“I dreamt,” he said, “that I saw a veiled woman in white come out of the temple door straight into the sunlight, and though I could not see the face, I knew who she was. She went down the steps and then up the others to the house of the Vestals, and entered in without looking back. I followed her. The door was open, and there was no one to stop me.”
“That is very improbable,” observed Guido. “There must have always been a slave at the door.”
“I went in,” continued Lamberti without heeding the interruption, “and she was standing beside one of the pillars, a little way from the door. She had one hand on the column, and she was facing the sun; her veil was thrown back and the light shone through her hair. I came nearer, very softly. She knew that I was there and was not afraid. When I was close to her she turned her face to mine. Then I took her in my arms and kissed her, and she did not resist.”
Guido smiled gravely.
“And she turned out to be some one you know in real life, I suppose,” he said.
“Yes,” answered Lamberti. “Some one I know — slightly.”
“Beautiful, of course. Fair or dark?”
“You need not try to guess,” Lamberti said. “I shall not tell you. My head went round, and I woke.”
“Very well. But is it this absurd dream that has made you so nervous?”
“No. Something happened to me to-day.”
Lamberti ate a few mouthfuls in silence, before he went on.
“I daresay I might have invented some explanation of the dream,” he said at last. “But it only made me want to see the place. I never cared for those things, you know. I had never gone down into the Forum in my life — why should I? I went there this morning.”
“And you could not find anything of what you had seen, of course.”
“I took one of those guides who hang about the entrance waiting for foreigners. He showed me where the temple had been, and the house, and the temple of Castor and Pollux. I did not believe him implicitly, but the ruins were in the right places. Then I walked up a bridge of boards to the house of the Vestals, and went in.”
“But there was no lady.”
“On the contrary,” said Lamberti, and his eyes glittered oddly, “the lady was there.”
“The same one whom you had seen in your dream?”
“The same. She was standing fac
ing the sun, for it was still early, and one of her hands was resting against the brick pillar, just as it had rested against the column.”
“That is certainly very extraordinary,” said Guido, his tone changing. Then he seemed about to speak again, but checked himself.
Lamberti rested his elbows on the table and his chin on his folded hands, and looked into his friend’s eyes in silence. His own face had grown perceptibly paler in the last few minutes.
“Guido,” he said, after what seemed a long pause, “you were going to ask what happened next. I do not know what you thought, nor what stopped you, for between you and me there is no such thing as indiscretion, and, besides, you will never know who the lady was.”
“I do not wish to guess. Do not say anything that could help me.”
“Of course not. Any woman you know might have taken it into her head to go to the Forum this morning.”
“Certainly.”
“This is what happened. I stood perfectly still in surprise. She may have heard my footstep or not; she knew some one was behind her. Then she slowly turned her head till we could see each other’s faces.”
He paused again, and passed one hand lightly over his eyes.
“Yes,” said Guido, “I suppose I can guess what is coming.”
“No!” Lamberti cried, in such a tone that the other started. “You cannot guess. We looked at each other. It seemed a very long time — two or three minutes at least — as if we were both paralysed. Though we recognised each other perfectly well, we could neither of us speak. Then it seemed to me that something I could not resist was drawing me towards her, but I am sure I did not really move the hundredth part of a step. I shall never forget the look in her face.”
Another pause, not long, but strangely breathless.
“I have seen men badly frightened in battle,” Lamberti went on. “The cheeks get hollow all at once, the eyes are wide open, with black rings round them, the face turns a greenish grey, and the sweat runs down the forehead into the eyebrows. Men totter with fear, too, as if their joints were unstrung. But I never saw a woman really terrified before. There was a sort of awful tension of all her features, as though they were suddenly made brittle, like beautiful glass, and were going to shiver into fragments. And her eyes had no visible pupils — her lips turned violet. I remember every detail. Then, without warning, she shrieked and staggered backwards; and she turned as I moved to catch her, and she ran like a deer, straight up the court, past those basins they have excavated, and up two or three steps, to the dark rooms at the other end.”
“And what did you do?” asked Guido, wondering.
“My dear fellow, I turned and went back as fast as I could, without exactly running, and I found the guide looking for me below the temple, for he had not seen me go into the Vestals’ house. What else was there to be done?”
“Nothing, I suppose. You could not pursue a lady who shrieked with fear and ran away from you. What a strange story! You say you only know her slightly.”
“Literally, very slightly,” answered Lamberti.
He had become fluent, telling his story almost excitedly. He now relapsed into his former mood, and stared at the pamphlet before him a moment, before shutting it and putting it away from him.
“It is like all those things — perfectly unaccountable, except on a theory of coincidence,” said Guido, at last. “Will you have any cheese?”
Lamberti roused himself and saw the servant at his elbow.
“No, thank you. I forgot one thing. Just as I awoke from that dream last night, I heard the door of my room softly closed.”
“What has that to do with the matter?” enquired Guido, carelessly.
“Nothing, except that the door was locked. I always lock my door. I first fell into the habit when I was travelling, for I sleep so soundly that in a hotel any one might come in and steal my things. I should never wake. So I turn the key before going to bed.”
“You may have forgotten to do it last night,” suggested Guido.
“No. I got up at once, and the key was turned. No one could have come in.”
“A mouse, then,” said Guido, rather contemptuously.
CHAPTER V
CECILIA PALLADIO WAS very much ashamed of having uttered a cry of terror at the sight of Lamberti, and still more of having run away from him like a frightened child. To him it seemed as if she had really shrieked with fear, whereas she fancied that she had scarcely found voice enough to utter an incoherent exclamation. The truth lay somewhere between the two impressions, but Cecilia now felt that she could easily have accounted for being startled into crying out, but that it would always be impossible to explain her flight. She had run the whole length of the Court, which must be fifty yards long, before realising what she was doing, and had not paused for breath till she was out of his sight and within the second of the three rooms on the left. There were no gates to the rooms then, as there are now, and she could not have given any reason for her entering the second instead of the first, which was the nearest. The choice was instinctive.
She certainly had not gone there to join the elderly woman servant who had come to the Forum with her. That excellent and obedient person was waiting where Cecilia had made her sit down, not far from the entrance to the Forum, and would not move till her mistress returned. The young girl hated to be followed about and protected at every step, especially by a servant, who could have no real understanding of what she saw.
“I shall only be seen by foreigners and Cook’s Tourists,” she had said, “and they do not count as human beings at all!”
Therefore the middle-aged Petersen, who was a German, and therefore a species of foreigner herself, had meekly sat down upon the comparatively comfortable stone which Cecilia had selected for her, and which was one of the steps of the Julian Basilica. She was called Frau Petersen, Mrs. Petersen, or Madame Petersen, according to circumstances, by the servants of different nationalities who were successively in the employment of the Countess Fortiguerra, for she was a superior woman and the widow of a paymaster in the Bavarian army, and so eminently respectable and well educated that she had more than once been taken for Cecilia’s governess.
Petersen was excessively near-sighted, but her nose was not adapted by its nature and position for wearing eyeglasses; for it was not only a flat nose without anything like a prominent bridge to it, but it was placed uncommonly low in her face, so that a pair of eyeglasses pinched upon it would have found themselves in the region of Petersen’s cheek-bones. Even when she wore spectacles, they were always slipping down, which was a great nuisance; so she resigned herself to seeing less than other people, except when something interested her enough to make the discomfort of glasses worth enduring.
This sufficiently explains why she noticed nothing unusual in Cecilia’s looks when the latter came back to her, pale and disturbed; and she had not heard her mistress’s faint cry, the distance being too great for that, not to mention the fact that the huge ruins intercepted the sound. Cecilia was glad of that, as she drove home with Petersen.
“Signor Lamberti has called,” said the Countess Fortiguerra the next day at luncheon. “I see by his card that he is in the Navy. You know he is one of the Marchese Lamberti’s sons. Shall we ask him to dinner?”
“Did you like him?” enquired Cecilia, evasively.
“He is not very good-looking,” observed the Countess, whose judgment of unknown people always began with their appearance, and often penetrated no farther. “But he may be intelligent, for all that,” she added, as a concession.
“Yes,” said Cecilia, thoughtfully, “perhaps.”
“I think we might ask him to dinner, then,” answered the Countess, as if she had given an excellent reason for doing so.
“Is it not rather early, considering that we have only met him once?” Cecilia ventured to ask.
“I used to know his mother very well, though she was older than I. It is pleasant to find that he is so intimate with Signor d’Este. We
might ask them together.”
“After the garden party,” suggested Cecilia. “Of course, as you and the Marchesa were great friends, that is a reason for asking the other, but Signor d’Este — really! It would positively be throwing me at his head, mother!”
“He expects it, my dear,” answered the Countess, with more precision than tact. “I mean,” she added hastily, “I mean, that is, I did not mean—”
Cecilia laughed.
“Oh yes, you did, mother! You meant exactly that, you know. You and that dreadful old Princess have made up your minds that I am to marry him, and nothing else matters, does it?”
“Well,” said the Countess, without any perceptible hesitation, “I cannot help hoping that you will consent, for I should like the match very much.”
She knew that it was always better to be quite frank with her daughter; and even if she had thought otherwise, she could never have succeeded in being diplomatic with her. While her second husband had been alive, her position as an ambassadress had obliged her to be tactful in the world, and even occasionally to say things which she had some difficulty in believing, being a very simple soul; but with Cecilia she was quite unable to conceal her thoughts for five minutes. If the girl loved her mother, and she really did, it was largely because her mother was so perfectly truthful. Cynical people called her helplessly honest, and said that her veracity would have amounted to a disease of the mind if she had possessed any; but that since she did not, it was probably a form of degeneration, because all perfectly healthy human beings lied naturally. David had said in his heart that all men were liars, and his experience of men, and of women, too, was worth considering.
“Yes,” Cecilia said, after a thoughtful pause, “I know that you wish me to marry Signor d’Este, and I have not refused to think of it. But I have not promised anything, either, and I do not like to feel that he expects me to be thrust upon him at every turn, till he is obliged to offer himself as the only way of escaping the persecution.”
“I wish you would not express it in that way!”
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