Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  The Countess sighed and looked at her daughter with a sort of half-comical and loving hopelessness in her eyes — as a faithful dog might look at his master who, seeming to be hungry, would refuse to steal food that was within reach. The dog would try to lead the man to the bread, the man would gently resist; each would be obeying the dictation of his own conscience — the man would know that he could never explain his moral position to the dog, and the dog would feel that he could never understand the man. Yet the affection between the two would not be in the least diminished.

  On the next evening Cecilia found herself next to Guido d’Este at dinner. Though she was not supposed to make her formal appearance in society before the garden party, the Countess’s many old friends, some of whom had more or less impecunious sons, were anxious to welcome her to Rome, and asked her to small dinners with her mother. Guido had arrived late, and had not been able to speak to her till he was told by their host that he was to take her in. It was quite natural that he should, for, in spite of his birth, he was only plain Signor d’Este, and was not entitled to any sort of precedence in a society which is, if anything, overcareful in such matters.

  Neither spoke as they walked through the rooms, near the end of the small procession. Guido glanced at the young girl, who knew that he did, but paid no attention. He thought her rather pale, and there was no light in her eyes. Her hand lay like gossamer on his arm, so lightly that he could not feel it; but he was aware of her perfectly graceful motion as she walked.

  “I suppose this was predestined,” he said, as soon as the rest of the guests were talking.

  She glanced at him quickly now, her head bent rather low, her eyebrows arching higher than usual. He was not sure whether the little irregularity of her upper lip was accentuated by amusement, or by a touch of scorn.

  “Is it?” she asked. “Do you happen to know that it was arranged?”

  It was amusement, then, and not scorn. They understood each other, and the ice was in no need of being broken again.

  “No,” Guido answered with a smile. Then his voice grew suddenly low and earnest. “Will you please believe that if I had been told beforehand that I was asked in order to sit next to you, I would not have come?”

  Cecilia laughed lightly.

  “I believe you, and I understand,” she answered. “But how it sounds! If you had known that you were to sit next to me, nothing would have induced you to come!”

  From her place next the master of the house, the Countess Fortiguerra looked at them, and was pleased to see that they were already on good terms.

  “Thank you,” Cecilia added in a quiet voice, and gravely. “Besides,” she continued, “there is no reason, in the world why we should not be good friends, is there?”

  She looked full at him now, without a smile, and he realised for the first time how very young she was. A married woman with an instinct for flirtation might have made the speech, but a girl older than Cecilia would have known that it might be misunderstood. Guido answered her look with one in which doubt did not keep the upper hand more than a single second.

  “There is no reason whatever why we should not be the best of friends,” he answered, in a tone as low as her own. “Perhaps I may be of service to you. I hope so. Besides, I am made for friendship!”

  He laughed rather carelessly as he spoke the last words, and glanced round the table to see whether anybody was watching him. He met the Countess Fortiguerra’s approving glance.

  “Why do you laugh at friendship?” asked Cecilia, not quite pleased.

  “I do not laugh at friendship at all,” Guido answered. “I laugh in order that people may see me and hear me. This is the first service I can render you, to be natural and unconcerned, as I generally am. If I behaved in any unusual way — if I were too grave, or too much interested — you understand!”

  “Yes. You are thoughtful. Thank you.”

  There was a little pause, during which a luxuriant lady in green, who sat on Guido’s other side, determined to attract his attention, and spoke to him; but before he could answer, some one opposite asked her a question about dress, which was intensely interesting to her, because she dressed abominably. She promptly fell into the snare which had been set for her with the evil intention of leading her on to talk foolishly. She followed at once, and Guido was free again.

  “Now that we are friends,” he said to Cecilia, “may I ask you a friendly question?”

  “Ask me anything you like,” she answered, and her innocent eyes promised him the truth.

  “Were you told anything, before we met at my aunt’s the other day?”

  “Not a word! And you?”

  “Nothing,” he replied. “I remember that on that very afternoon—” he stopped short.

  “What?”

  “You may not like what I was going to say.”

  “I shall, if it is true, and if you have a good reason for saying it.”

  “Lamberti and I were together, talking, and I said that nothing would ever induce me to marry an heiress, unless it were to save my father or mother from ruin. As that can never happen, all heiresses are perfectly safe from me! Do you mind my having said that?”

  “No. I am sure you were in earnest.”

  A shadow had crossed her face at the mention of Lamberti’s name.

  “You do not like my friend,” he said, and as he spoke, the shadow came again and deepened.

  “How can I like him or dislike him? I hardly know him.”

  She felt very uncomfortable, for it would have been quite natural that Lamberti should have spoken to Guido of her strange behaviour in the Forum. Guido answered that one often liked or disliked people at first sight.

  “I think that you and I liked each other as soon as we met,” he concluded.

  “Yes,” Cecilia answered, after a little thought. “I am sure we did. Tell me, what makes you think that I dislike your friend? I should be very sorry if he thought I did.”

  “When I first spoke of him a few moments ago, your expression changed, and when I referred to him again, you frowned.”

  “Is that all? Are you sure that is the only reason for your opinion?”

  Guido laughed a little.

  “What other reason could I have?” he asked. “Do not take it so seriously!”

  “He might have told you that he himself had the impression—”

  “He has hardly mentioned your name since we both met you,” Guido answered.

  It was a relief to know that Lamberti had not spoken of having met her unexpectedly, and of her cry, and of her flight. Yet somehow she had already been sure that he had kept the matter to himself. As a matter of fact, Guido had never thought of her, even in the most passing way, as the possible heroine of the adventure in the Forum. The story had interested him, but the personality of the lady did not; and, moreover, from the way in which Lamberti had spoken, Guido had very naturally supposed her to be a married woman, for it would not have occurred to him that a young girl could be strolling among the ruins quite alone.

  Cecilia felt relieved, and yet, at the same time, she felt a little girlish disappointment at the thought that Lamberti had hardly ever spoken of her to his most intimate friend, for she was quite sure that Guido told her the exact truth. She was angry with herself for being disappointed, too. The man’s face had haunted her so long in half-waking dreams; or at least, a face exactly like his, which, the last time, had turned into his without doubt. Yet she had evidently made no impression upon him, until she had made a very bad one, the other day. She wondered whether he thought she was a little mad. She was afraid of meeting him wherever she went, and yet she now wished he were at the table, in order that she might prove to him that she was not only sane, but very clever. She knew that she wished it, and for a few moments she did not hear what Guido was saying, but gazed absently at the flowers on the table, unconsciously hoping that she might see them turn into the face she feared; but that did not happen.

  Guido talked on, till he
saw that she was not listening, and then he was silent, and only glanced at her from time to time while he heard in his ears the cackling of the vivid lady in green. There was going to be a change in the destinies of womankind, and everybody was to be perfectly frightful for ever afterwards. To be plain, the sleeves “they” were wearing now were to be altogether given up. “They” had begun to wear the new ones already in Paris. Réjane had worn them in her new piece, and of course that meant an imminent and universal change. And as for the way the skirts were to be made, it was positively indecent. Réjane was far too much of a lady to wear one, of course, but one could see what was coming. Here some one observed that coming events cast their shadows before.

  “Not at all, not at all!” cried the lady in green. “I mean behind.”

  “How long shall you stay in Rome?” Guido asked, to see whether Cecilia would hear him now.

  “Always,” she answered. “For the rest of my life.”

  “I am glad of that. But I meant to ask how late you intended to stay this year?”

  “I should like to spend the summer here.”

  “It is the pleasantest time,” Guido said.

  “Is it? Or are you only saying that in order to agree with me? You need not, you know. I like people who have their own opinions, and are full of prejudices, and try to force them upon everybody, whether they are good for every one or not!”

  “I am afraid I shall not please you, then. I have no prejudices to speak of, and my opinions are worth so little that I never hesitate to change them.”

  “But you do not look at all feeble-minded,” said Cecilia, innocently studying his face.

  “Thank you!” Guido laughed. “You are adorable!” he added rather flippantly.

  “Is that your opinion?” asked the young girl, smiling, too, as if she were pleased.

  “Yes. That is my firm opinion. Do you object to it?”

  “Oh no!” Cecilia answered, still smiling sweetly. “You have just told me that your opinions are worth so little that you never hesitate to change them. So why in the world should I object to any of them?”

  “Exactly,” said Guido, unmoved. “Why should you? Especially as this particular one gives me so much pleasure while it lasts.”

  “It will not last long, I daresay. Do you know that you are not at all dull?”

  “No one could be in your company.”

  “That is the first dull thing you have said this evening,” Cecilia answered, to see what he would say.

  “Shall it be the last?” he asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  There was a little wilful command in the tone that Guido liked. He felt her presence in a way he did not remember to have felt that of any woman, and in the atmosphere of her own in which she seemed to live he breathed as one does in some very high places, less easily, perhaps, but with conscious pleasure in drawing breath. He could not have described his sensations in those first meetings with her, and he could have analysed them less. One might as well seek the form and perfume of the flower in the first tender shoot that thrusts up its joy of living out of the mystery of the dull brown earth. Yet he knew well enough that something was beginning to grow in him which had not begun, and grown, and perished before.

  Many times he had talked with women famous for their beauty, or for their charm, or for their wit, and he himself had said clever things which he had remembered with a little vanity or had forgotten with regret, and had turned compliments in many manners, guessing at the taste of her who sat beside him, wishing to please her, and wishing even more to find some general key to women’s thought, some universal explanation of their ways, some logical solution of their seemingly inconsequent actions. His mind was of the sort that is satisfied by suspended judgment, that dreads the chillingly triumphant phrase of reason, “which was to be proved,” as much as the despairing tone of a reduction to the impossible. He loved problems that could not be solved easily, if at all, because he could think of them continually in a hundred new and different ways. He hated equally a final affirmation past appeal, and an ultimate negation which might make his thoughts ridiculous in his own eyes. A quiet suspense was his natural state of equilibrium. Anything might be, or might not be, and decision was hateful; it was delicious to float on the calm waters of meditative indifference, between the giant rocks, hope and despair, in the straits that lead the sea of life to the ocean of eternity.

  He knew that he was the end of a race that had reigned and could never reign again. It was better that the end should be a question than a hope deceived, or a cry of impotent hatred uttered against Something which might not exist after all. If he had a philosophy it was that, and nothing more; and though it was not much, it had helped him to live without much pain and almost always with a certain dreamy, intellectual, wondering pleasure in his own thoughts. Sometimes he was irritated out of that state by the demands and doings of the Princess Anatolie, as on the day when he and his friend had talked in the garden beyond the river; and then he spoke of ending all at a stroke, and almost believed that he might do it; and he envied Lamberti his love of life and action. But such moods soon passed and left him himself again, so that he marvelled how he could ever have been so much moved. It was always the same, in the end, but such as it was the world was not a bad world for him.

  Here was something different from all the past, and it had begun without warning, and was growing against his will, because it fed on that with which his will had nothing to do. There is no fatalism like that of the indifferent man who believes in nothing, not even in himself, and who admits nothing to be positive except crime and dishonour. Why should he not fall in love with Cecilia Palladio, since he had previously stated to himself, to her, and to his trusted friend, that nothing could induce him to marry her? It was quite clear from the first that she, on her side, would never fall in love with him. He looked upon that as altogether out of the question, and perhaps with reason. On the other hand, he had not the slightest faith in the lasting nature of anything he might feel, and therefore he was not afraid of consequences, which rarely indeed frighten a man who is doing what he likes. It is more generally the woman that thinks of them, and points them out because “there is still time!” She also heaps her scorn upon the man if he is wise enough to agree with her; but that is a detail, and perhaps it ought not to be mentioned.

  As for the fact that he was beginning to be in love, Guido no longer doubted it. The pleasure he felt in saying to Cecilia things of even less than average conversational merit was proof enough that it was not only what he said that interested him. When a man of ordinary assurance wishes to shine in the eyes of a woman, he generally succeeds at least in shining in his own.

  Guido was not any more self-conscious than most people, and he was certainly not more diffident of his own gifts, which he could judge impartially because he attached little importance to what they might bring him. But the categorical command to say nothing dull made it quite impossible to say anything witty, and the conversation languished a little and then broke off.

  It was past ten o’clock when Guido again found a chance of speaking to Cecilia. He had looked at her more often than he knew, after dinner, and had given rather vague answers to one or two people who had spoken to him. He had moved about the great room idly, looking at the familiar old portraits, and at objects he had known in the same places for years. He had smoked a cigarette, standing with his host, while the latter talked to him about the Etruscan tomb he had just discovered on his place, and he had nodded pleasantly to the sound of the old gentleman’s voice without hearing a word. Then he had smoked another cigarette at the opposite end of the room with a group of younger men, who talked of nothing but motor cars; and when they asked his opinion about something, he had said that he had none, and preferred walking, which speech caused such a perceptible chill that he turned away and left the young men to their discussion.

  All the while his eyes followed Cecilia’s movements, and lingered upon her when she stood still
or sat down. In the course of the evening each of the young men who talked about motor cars managed to try his luck at a conversation with her, and all, by way of being original, talked to her about the same thing. As she had just come from Paris, and was rich, it was to be supposed that she, of course, owned a motor car, had passed her examination as an engineer, and spent most of her time in a mask and broad-visored cap scouring Europe at the rate of fifty miles an hour.

  “But why do you not get an automobile?” asked each of the young men, as soon as her answer had disappointed him.

  “Do you play the violin?” she enquired sweetly of each.

  “No,” each answered.

  “Then why do you not get a violin?”

  In this way she confounded the young men, and their heads moved uneasily on the tops of their high collars, until they were able to get away from her.

  Guido saw how they left her, with a discomfited expression, and as if they had suddenly acquired the conviction that their clothes did not fit them, for that is generally the first sensation experienced by a very well-dressed young man when he has been made to feel that he is foolish. Guido saw, and understood, and he was worldly wise enough to know that unless Cecilia would show a little more willingness to seem pleased, she would presently be sitting alone on a sofa, waiting for her mother to go home. As soon as this inevitable result followed, he sat down beside her. She turned her face slowly, when he had settled himself, and she looked at him with slightly bent head, a little upwards, from under her lids. The light that fell from a shaded lamp above her marked the sharp curve of arching brows sharply against the warm shadow over the deep-set and widely opened eyes.

  For a few seconds Guido returned the steady gaze, before he spoke.

  “Are you the Sphinx?” he asked suddenly. “Have you come to life again to ask men your riddle?”

  “I ask it of myself,” she answered softly, and then looked away. “I cannot answer it.”

  “Are you good or evil?” Guido asked, speaking again.

  The questions came to his lips as if some one else were asking them with his voice.